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      ‘God spoke to me’: Ryan Binkley’s quixotic quest for the Republican nod

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      In a movie, Ryan Binkley would be storming towards the presidency.At more than 6ft tall, with a strong jaw and an athletic physique, Binkley looks the quintessential Hollywood vision of a political leader. The long-shot Republican candidate for president wears well-cut suits and has a full head of dark brown hair. He has a lovely set of teeth, nice shiny shoes, and he smells nice.But Binkley’s problem? No one knows who he is.The Texan, a pastor and co-founder of a financial services company, has spent more than $8m of his own money on his quixotic presidential campaign. He has been running for president for more than nine months: three-quarters of a year spent in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.The sum total of his efforts so far has been almost zero attention from US media, a lot of puzzlement when he introduces himself to people, and 774 votes in Iowa.On Thursday night Binkley strode confidently into one of his political events, held in a back room of a bar in Manchester, New Hampshire. There was a broad grin fixed on his face, and his right palm was pre-extended, ready to shake the hands of potential voters.That didn’t take long. Only two people had turned up. And they weren’t eligible to vote in New Hampshire.“You know, I’ve been to meetings with one person in it,” Binkley said. “It’s disheartening sometimes, but you know, you do it 200 times and you get used to it.”Binkley is trying to sell people his version of Republicanism: budget balancing and small government, with a heavy dash of Christianity-inspired social conservatism. It’s the faith bit that inspired Binkley to run for president.“I am a business owner, I’m a pastor,” he said.“And God spoke to me many years ago about this. It became increasingly clear that he had a message for our country that … I think is this: we are so far in debt, we’re at a precipice. Something’s coming financially that we’re not ready for. I don’t know what it is.”It would be unfair to paint Binkley as solely a religious candidate – even if his campaign literature stresses that one of his aims is “restoring trust in God and each other”.Binkley has a plan to balance the US budget, and would rein in health insurance companies so Americans can receive better medical care. If elected president, he would “focus on people truly struggling financially”, he said, by improving education and offering job training.Binkley has a proper written-out platform, and can talk at length about his ideas. But there’s no one listening.As the event in Manchester continued it took on a tragicomic air. His sole member of staff had ambitiously laid out Binkley baseball caps, T-shirts and signs, and there was food and an open bar.But only four more people showed up, and only one of them lived in New Hampshire and was actually eligible to vote. He wasn’t fully sold on Binkley.“There’s so many candidates that are coming in and out of the race, you just kind of have to see what’s available the day of. It’s like going to the market. I maintain an open mind,” said Jason Barabas. He’s a professor of government at Dartmouth College, an Ivy League university in New Hampshire, and there was a sense that he was there as an anthropological exercise.“New Hampshire is famously independent, people really like to meet candidates,” Barabas said when asked about Binkley’s chances.“So a lot of New Hampshire voters will appreciate this exact moment, which is he’s coming to New Hampshire trying to meet with voters. I think that’s going to be really impactful for a lot of people.”Binkley’s event was competing against a trivia night taking place in the main bar. Once that had finished, Binkley’s campaign staffer, a pleasant person apparently well-practiced in remaining positive, went round to try to lure people to Binkley’s event. But not even the open bar could tempt a crowd that had largely never heard of the candidate.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I just looked him up. He’s this guy,” said one woman triumphantly, after the Guardian pointed at Binkley and asked if she knew who he was.Did she plan to vote for him?“Probably not, no. I don’t even know his party affiliation.”The next day, at the Red Arrow Diner, a must-visit location for presidential candidates whose walls are adorned with photos of politicians including Binkley’s rivals Donald Trump, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, there was a bit more success.No one was at the diner specifically to meet Binkley, but he seemed to get on well with the smattering of people eating their lunch. A huddle of female staff were impressed too.“He’s so handsome!” one worker said as Binkley loitered at the end of the counter.“Who is he?”Binkley, a high school football star who has an MBA from Southern Methodist University, may have made his money in finance, but it is Create church, the Christian church he co-founded with his wife, Ellie, that appears to be his passion. Housed in a gigantic building just north of Dallas, it’s the kind of modern American church where a band plays electric guitars and keyboards on stage, and parishioners raise both hands in the air and close their eyes as they pray.It is going to take a lot of prayer for Binkley to have a breakout moment on Tuesday, even if his goals for the primary are almost upsettingly low.At the diner, he giddily pointed out that a New Hampshire poll released on Wednesday has him polling four points behind Ron DeSantis, but he failed to mention that the poll had DeSantis at just 6%, and Binkley at 2% of the vote – with a margin of error of plus or minus 3%.“Man, if I could get 2 or 3%, and keep moving up in the polls, that’d be a win for me,” he said.To Binkley’s mind, 3% of the vote here, after the 0.7% he won in Iowa, would represent a sort of rolling progress that could see him win exposure and support. But in any case, for this unknown, religious, good-looking, would-be president, the decision on whether to stay in the race is out of his hands.“I feel like our message will connect,” Binkley said.“And I’m keep standing until it’s heard, and until I feel like God tells me to hang up the cleats.” More

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      Trump takes on ‘dictator’ Biden as his upside down show moves to New Hampshire

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      Snow was falling, lightly dusting the tables full of “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president” and “Fight for Trump” and other “Make America great again” regalia. Still, in subzero temperatures, people waited in a long and winding line on Saturday for a chance to see their greatest showman.Donald Trump, the former US president, was about to hold the biggest campaign rally yet in New Hampshire’s primary elections, where victory would put him within touching distance of the 2024 Republican nomination – and trigger renewed warnings that democracy itself will be on the ballot in November.But his ardent supporters in Manchester, New Hampshire, saw things differently – 180 degrees differently. In their view it is Joe Biden who acts like an autocrat and Trump who is the saviour of the constitutional republic.The ex-president has long deployed strategy in which accusations against him are flipped and turned on the accuser. And the rally, and this election season so far, is proof that it’s working.“The funny thing is that everything the other side seems to accuse Trump of they’re guilty of themselves,” said Steve Baird, 52, a chief financial officer. “I feel more that Biden seems to be running the country like a dictator with all his executive orders and everything else.“Trump might be a billionaire but I feel more of a connection, that he’s more of a president for the people and that he’ll follow the constitution more than what the current establishment is doing.”During a presidential election debate in 2016, when Hillary Clinton called Trump a “puppet” of Russian president Vladimir Putin, he interjected: “No puppet. You’re the puppet.”Trump has perfected this twist of message over the years. In his inverted mirror, “fake news” refers not to online disinformation but a corrupt media ranged against Trump; the threat to democracy stems not from election lies but the weaponisation of the justice department; minority rule is less about gerrymandering than the radical left imposing big government, open borders and “woke” ideology.‘We’re living in dictatorship right now’There is no greater symbol of this reversal than the deadly January 6 insurrection, for which more than 1,200 people have been charged and nearly 900 have been convicted or pleaded guilty. Collectively they have been sentenced to more than 840 years in prison. Yet in Trump’s telling, they are “patriots” and, more recently, “hostages” whom he intends to pardon.Interviews in Manchester, where thousands of Trump supporters packed a sports arena in a show of force that spelled out the challenge facing primary rivals Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, demonstrated that this strategy, amplified by rightwing media, has soaked into the grassroots. If the 2024 election is a battle for democracy, they believe Trump is on the right side of history.Derek Levine, 52, a commercial airline pilot who served for 23 years in the air force, was wearing a “Trump: Save America again” cap. “Trump has already been a president once and he wasn’t a dictator then,” he said.“We’re seeing a dictator right now with weaponizing the FBI against conservative people, calling parents in Virginia who are concerned about what their kids are being taught domestic terrorists. That’s a dictator; not what Trump did.”Jenna Driquier, 31, a hairdresser, added: “We’re living in dictatorship right now. The high prices, trying to get to communism, it’s not what this country was founded on.”The struggle over perception is a struggle over language. As Biden and his allies frequently stress the need to protect democracy at home and abroad, Trump has co-opted the word, repeating it ad nauseam, draining it of meaning and establishing a false equivalence between a man who has served in Washington for half a century and one who attempted a coup.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt Saturday’s rally, early in a speech lasting more than an hour-and-a-half, a giant screen above Trump’s head stated in stark black and white: “Biden attacks democracy.”The Republican frontrunner, wearing his customary dark suit, white shirt and red tie, said: “He is a threat to democracy. He really is. He’s a threat to democracy. We have to get him out. You know why he’s a threat to democracy? A couple of reasons but you know the first reason? He’s grossly incompetent.”Trump, facing 91 criminal charges, accused Biden of weaponising the justice department against him and railed against the president’s “protectors” in the “fake news” media.He did also pivot to attack Haley, seen as his strongest challenger in New Hampshire. Messages on the big screen included: “Nikki Haley is loved by Democrats, Wall Street & Globalists.” In a further piece of political theatre, Trump invited Governor Henry McMaster and other officials from South Carolina to assure him the state will vote in his favour, even though it is Haley’s home turf.Notably, he spent less time on Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who finished second in the Iowa caucuses but is polling weakly in New Hampshire. “You notice I haven’t mentioned the name of Ron DeSanctimonious yet,” he said “I think he’s gone.”Trump addressed a flippant remark that he made on Fox News vowing to be a dictator on “day one”, insisting that he had been unfairly edited. But some of his other comments left room for speculation about his authoritarian impulses.He argued that presidents should be immune from criminal prosecution once they have left office, a case his lawyers are attempting to make as he prepares to stand trial for election subversion. He said of the media: “These are sick people. We have to straighten out our free press.”He heaped praise on Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán and casually observed: “It’s nice to have a strong man running your country.” And for good measure, in a bizarre closing riff accompanied by hypnotic music, he again referred to those imprisoned for their part in the January 6 riot as “hostages”.The crowd went home happy. More

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      Trump’s campaign trail runs via the courthouse – and he’s fine with that

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      Monday night: Des Moines, Iowa, celebrating victory with supporters over beer and popcorn. Tuesday morning: Manhattan, New York, on trial for defaming a woman he sexually abused. Tuesday night: Atkinson, New Hampshire, campaigning for the US presidency. Wednesday morning: court in New York again.Donald Trump, the former US president and frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2024, has intertwined his political and legal calendars until they are all but indistinguishable. At rambunctious campaign rallies, he plays the victim and rails against a biased justice system. In sombre courtrooms, he creates a spectacle that guarantees airtime and fundraising to fuel his run for the White House.The jarring juxtaposition seems to be working.Trump’s 91 criminal charges across four cases did not stop him winning 98 out of 99 counties in Monday’s frigid Iowa caucuses, and interviews with his support base showed they accept his narrative of politically motivated prosecutions. He is leading opinion polls in New Hampshire and looks poised to become the Republican standard bearer.“The court appearances are his campaign,” Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “He’s spending much less time than the other candidates in the key states. He’s not spending as much on TV advertising. He’s doing all kinds of things that candidates for president usually don’t do because he’s got an ace card that none of the others have.“This has convinced not just his supporters but in a broad-based way the whole Republican party that he’s being oppressed, that Joe Biden is using the judicial system to try and put a stake in the heart of his toughest challenger for November. And they buy it.”Trump’s recent court appearances have been voluntary, not obligatory, at a time when his Republican rivals are crisscrossing states in search of votes. Last week the 77-year-old former reality TV star showed up for a hearing in Washington DC to hear his lawyers argue that he is immune from criminal charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election. A day later he was in Des Moines, Iowa, for a Fox News town hall.The duelling schedule evidently did him no harm in Iowa, where he romped to victory over the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, by nearly 30 percentage points, more than twice the biggest winning margin ever achieved by a Republican. During his speech in Des Moines, Trump nodded to his legal tribulations: “I go to a lot of courthouses because of Biden, because they’re using that for election interference.”The following morning, he was in a Manhattan federal court – again by choice – to watch the selection of a jury that will decide whether he should pay damages for defamatory comments he made in office about the writer E Jean Carroll. Last year a jury concluded that Trump sexually abused her in a department store in 1996 and defamed her in 2022.That evening he headed to Atkinson, New Hampshire, for a campaign rally where he boasted about his win in Iowa but told supporters: “If I didn’t get indicted all these times and if they didn’t unfairly go after me, I would have won, but it would have been much closer. I tell you, I don’t know if I would have made the trade. I might have just liked the position we’re in right now.”Come Wednesday, it was back to New York and the Carroll case. This time Trump was animated, shaking his head at testimony he disliked, passing notes to his lawyers and speaking to them while jurors were in the room.He was scolded by Judge Lewis Kaplan after a lawyer for Carroll complained that he was grumbling about the case so loudly that jurors could hear him. When the judge threatened to expel him, Trump retorted: “I would love it.” The judge admonished: “I know you would. You just can’t control yourself in this circumstance, apparently.”Outside the courtroom, the Republican frontrunner then held a press conference, describing the trial as “rigged” and Carroll as “a person I never knew”. He complained that Kaplan, a Bill Clinton appointee, was “a nasty judge” and a “Trump-hating guy” who was “obviously not impartial”.Somehow he had made the case about himself rather than his victim. Maggie Haberman, author of Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, told CNN: “He showed up for her testimony and so instead of us talking about her testimony we are talking about the fact that he was making noises, he was overheard whispering to his lawyer.”She added: “He would have liked to have gotten thrown out because he would then claim he was a victim. It’s heads he wins, tails the other side loses.”Trump was not in court on Thursday so he could attend his mother-in-law’s funeral in Florida. He will soon head back to New Hampshire to hold rallies ahead of Tuesday’s primary election, where he could in effect seal the Republican nomination. As endorsements from senior Republicans pour in, it seems that the party has made a collective decision to carry the legal baggage of a man who now openly brags that he has been indicted more often than Al Capone.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCharlie Sykes, editor of the Bulwark website and a former conservative radio host, said: “He’s going to have a courtroom campaign because Donald Trump relishes the idea of being the martyr. He thinks that being associated with these trials will actually help him in the polls and so far he’s not wrong. Every time he’s been indicted, he’s gone up.”But Sykes believes that Trump’s decision to attend the trial involving E Jean Carroll could be a mistake as he pivots to general election voters. “How many Americans actually know about this case? There’s been such a firehose of indictments, hearings, charges. Now Donald Trump himself has decided that he is going to draw attention to a case that he’s already lost, that has found him liable for sexual assault.“It’s hard for me to imagine any swing voters in the suburbs of Philadelphia or Milwaukee hearing for the first time about this case and thinking, yeah, this is the guy that I want to support for president.”Anna Greenberg, a senior partner at polling firm GQR, also sees limitations in Trump’s gameplan. She said: “He saw that when he got indicted he got a major boost, and you saw it in the primary polls, and so he may be thinking if I engage with these trials against me and I rail and I attack, that’s going to continue to give me some kind of benefit.“I think he already got the benefit. I don’t think there’s any additive benefit for him but I think there’s a real downside for him, which is that’s how he’s spending his time and not out on the campaign trail and doing the campaigning.”Trump has pleaded not guilty in four state and federal criminal cases, including two claiming he tried to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden. This week his lawyers filed paperwork in another case – over his allegedly illegal retention of sensitive classified documents – arguing that intelligence agencies were politically biased against Trump.Some observers fear that the scorched earth approach poses a far-reaching danger to civil society and American legal and political structures. Sykes, author of How the Right Lost Its Mind, added: “Donald Trump is waging a concerted campaign to de-legitimize the justice system in America.“He is trying to discredit not just prosecutors, but also judges and juries and the entire process of legal accountability and the damage is going to be long lasting and it’s going to be profound.” More

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      Nikki Haley bets on frosty New Hampshire to warm up to her candidacy

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      There is rest for neither the wicked nor the warm undergarments among Republican presidential candidates this week, as the Republican primary rolls from a bone-bustingly cold Iowa to an almost-as-frigid New Hampshire.In Manchester, the state’s largest city, the temperature dropped to 10F (-12C) in the days before Tuesday’s primary election, cold enough for icicles to cling to cars, rooftops and, in a park near the center of town, a roundabout.But despite the snow piled high by the sides of roads, and the near constant need for a woolly hat, the remaining Republicans are set to spend the next few days making a last-minute pitch to voters.After a disappointing time in Iowa, where she placed third in the state’s caucuses, Nikki Haley is hoping the Granite state can hand her a boost, as she seeks to prevent what is threatening to become a Donald Trump march to the Republican nomination, and there are some signs that the former governor of South Carolina might just be in luck.In a state that takes an unusually aggressive pride in its independence – “Live free or die”, New Hampshire’s state motto, is the kind of thing a guy might scream before ripping off his shirt and initiating a bar fight – Republican voters at least appear to be considering someone other than their party’s de facto leader.Polls show Haley winning almost 34% of the vote in the state, 13 points behind Trump but riding a surge despite a disappointing performance in Iowa. Haley’s pitch of calm instead of the “chaos” of Trump, and her positioning of herself as a relative centrist, could prove appealing in New Hampshire.“The Iowa Republican party is dominated by conservative evangelical Christians, whose first, second and third concerns are cultural relations – they care about LGBTQ+ issues, they care about abortion, all that sort of stuff,” said Christopher Galdieri, a professor in the department of politics at Saint Anselm College.“Republicans here, there is a constituency for those sorts of issues, but a lot of Republicans here, particularly in what passes for the party’s establishment these days, their main concern is fiscal conservatism, low taxes, low regulation.”Haley, who in the American media’s telling has become the main threat to Trump, was scheduled to hold a slew of events in the coming days, including intimate gatherings in New Hampshire’s smaller towns, such as Keene and Exeter. But in Manchester, where looming red-brick buildings serve as a nod to its UK namesake, it is Trump who seems to have the largest presence, with signs heralding the former president prominent and his campaign headquarters a hub of activity.The former president traveled to New Hampshire on Friday after spending much of Thursday in court in New York, where a judge is deciding what damages he must pay to E Jean Carroll, who a jury found was sexually assaulted by Trump in 1995. The case appears to have distracted him, at least in the short term, from his efforts to win the presidency: Trump spent Thursday night posting more than 30 times on Truth Social, the rightwing social media network he formed after being banned from Twitter (now X) in 2020.Still, as the vote approaches, Trump is following a similar plan as the one he used in Iowa, swooping in to New Hampshire to hold bombastic rallies in venues his rivals could only dream of filling. The one-term former president was due to hold four rallies over the four days before the primary, including one at the 10,000-seat SNHU arena in Manchester.Trump addressed thousands of supporters at the same venue the night before the 2016 primary, memorably calling Ted Cruz, then one of his main rivals, a “pussy”. Trump had narrowly lost to Cruz in Iowa, but swept to victory in New Hampshire with a commanding 20-point victory that lit a fire under Trump’s campaign and propelled him to the Republican nomination.There are signs that things may be closer on Tuesday.In recent days Trump has complained about independent voters, who under state rules are able to vote in the Republican primary, potentially backing Haley, and has launched racist dog-whistle attacks against his opponent. He referred to Haley, whose parents emigrated to the US from India, as Nimrada, a butchering of her legal first name, Nimarata. Haley has gone by Nikki, her middle name, since she was born, a spokesperson said in 2021.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFor her part, Haley is running a new ad in the state which links Trump with Joe Biden, claiming “both are consumed by chaos, negativity and grievances of the past”, and her relative calm seems to have some appeal.“I like her policies. I like what she did in South Carolina. I think she’s got good international experience, obviously, as a former UN ambassador,” said Jeanne Geisser at an event at a fancy hotel in Salem, a 20-minute drive from Manchester. She voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, but said she would cast her ballot for Haley this time.“With Trump, all these lawsuits that are going on, I don’t know what’s gonna happen with those. And just his demeanor, his belittling of people. I don’t see that as presidential,” Geisser said.One person mostly absent from New Hampshire is Ron DeSantis, the cowboy boot-wearing Florida governor who came second to Trump in the Iowa caucuses. Though he beat Haley there, DeSantis is averaging 5% in New Hampshire polls, and though he held some events in the state on Friday, he has largely switched focus to South Carolina.While the focus is on the Republican primary, there are Democratic hopefuls active in New Hampshire too; Dean Phillips, a congressman from Minnesota, and Marianne Williamson, a self-help guru, are engaged in a largely futile battle to replace Joe Biden as the presidential nominee.Both Phillips and Williamson have both spent weeks criss-crossing the state, but New Hampshire will effectively have no say in the Democratic primary, after an internal party feud. The national Democratic party ditched decades of tradition this year in choosing South Carolina, a much more racially diverse state, to host the first presidential primary. When New Hampshire said it would host its primary first anyway, the Democratic National Committee essentially said it would ignore the results.That means most eyes will be concentrated on the Republican side of things next week, where Haley’s wealthy backers are demanding a good result.Ken Langone, the billionaire Home Depot co-founder and a key Haley donor, told the Financial Times on Thursday that he was prepared to spend “a nice sum of money” to support his candidate – but only if she does well in the Granite state.“If she doesn’t get traction in New Hampshire, you don’t throw money down a rathole,” Langone said. More

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      Former Republican candidate Tim Scott to endorse Donald Trump ahead of New Hampshire primary, reports say – as it happened

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      South Carolina’s Republican senator Tim Scott will endorse Donald Trump, according to a new report from the Hill.On Friday, a source familiar with Scott said that the senator, who pulled out of the 2024 presidential race last fall, will endorse Trump on Friday evening.In separate report released by Vanity Fair on Friday, multiple sources said that Trump has been calling Scott in attempts to win his endorsement ahead of next month’s primary in South Carolina, which is also the home state of Trump’s opponent Nikki Haley, who was previously the state’s governor.The report of Scott’s endorsement of Trump comes as the ex-president prepares to rally in New Hampshire this weekend ahead of the state’s primary next week.Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
      Anti-abortion activists gathered in Washington DC on Friday as part of the March for Life campaign. The rally comes ahead of the 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade, which brought national reproductive rights to the country, and ahead of the two-year anniversary of the supreme court’s decision to strike it down.
      Donald Trump has renewed his mistrial request in E Jean Carroll’s defamation case against him. In a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is overseeing the case, Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba said that Carroll’s actions “severely prejudices the president Trump’s defense [sic] since he has been deprived of critical information relating to critical evidence which plaintiff has described to the jury”.
      In response to whether the White House would publicly support a testimony from the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, before the House Armed Services Committee over his recent hospitalization, White House spokesperson John Kirby said: “That’ll be a decision for the secretary of defense and he has to make that decision … I’m not going to get into personal and private discussions that the secretary has had with the president of the United States.”
      Joe Biden has signed a stopgap government funding bill. The bipartisan legislation narrowly avoided a government shutdown at the 11th hour.
      South Carolina’s Republican senator Tim Scott will endorse Donald Trump, according to a new report from the Hill. On Friday, a source familiar with Scott said that the senator, who pulled out of the 2024 presidential race last fall, will endorse Trump on Friday evening.
      Joe Biden has approved the debt cancellation for another 74,000 student loan borrowers across the country. The latest announcement brings the total number of people who have had their debt cancelled under the Biden administration to 3.7 million.
      Former 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang has endorsed the presidential bid of Minnesota’s Democratic representative Dean Phillips. Calling himself a former “campaign surrogate for Joe [Biden]” at a campaign event on Thursday, Yang said: “Dean Phillips is the only one with the courage, the character and conviction to go against the grain, to go against the legion of followers in Washington DC.”
      Donald Trump is trying to convince allies of Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis that the Republican race for a presidential nominee is over, according to a new report by Vanity Fair. As Trump continues to face mounting legal troubles, the ex-president is reported to have been pressuring Haley and DeSantis to drop out of the race.
      Maryland’s Democratic representative Jamie Raskin has pushed back against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal for a Palestinian state, writing in a statement on X:
      Ideological extremism is destroying prospects for peace. Most Americans will support a pragmatic peace strategy to free the hostages, provide aid to the population of Gaza, launch the two-state solution and put Hamas terror & right-wing fanaticism behind us.
      The Guardian’s Carter Sherman is at the March for Life rally in Washington DC where anti-abortion activists are protesting ahead of the 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade.Here are some of her dispatches:Donald Trump has renewed his mistrial request in E Jean Carroll’s defamation case against him.In a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is overseeing the case, Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba said that Carroll’s actions “severely prejudices the president Trump’s defense [sic] since he has been deprived of critical information relating to critical evidence which plaintiff has described to the jury”.Earlier this week, Trump complained loudly in the Manhattan courthouse during Carroll’s testimony, making comments including “It is a witch-hunt” and “It really is a con job” to his lawyers.In turn, Kaplan threatened to remove Trump from the courtroom, to which Trump replied: “I would love it, I would love it.”While speaking at a briefing, White House spokesperson John Kirby answered a question on whether the White House would publicly support a testimony from defense secretary Lloyd Austin before the House Armed Services Committee over his recent hospitalization.Kirby said:
      That’ll be a decision for the secretary of defense and he has to make that decision … I’m not going to get into personal and private discussions that the secretary has had with the president of the United States. They have spoken as recently as late last week. As you have heard the president say himself, he has full trust and confidence in Secretary Austin and his leadership at the Pentagon and that will continue.
      In a letter to Austin on Thursday, Mike Rogers, a Republican representative from Alabama who chairs the committee, said that he is “alarmed” over Austin’s recent hospitalization.He added: “I expect your full honesty and cooperation in this matter. Anything shot of that is completely unacceptable.”Here is where the day stands:
      Joe Biden has signed a stopgap government funding bill. The bipartisan legislation narrowly avoided a government shutdown at the 11th hour.
      South Carolina’s Republican senator Tim Scott will endorse Donald Trump, according to a new report from the Hill. On Friday, a source familiar with Scott said that the senator, who pulled out of the 2024 presidential race last fall, will endorse Trump on Friday evening.
      Joe Biden has approved the debt cancellation for another 74,000 student loan borrowers across the country. The latest announcement brings the total number of people who have had their debt cancelled under the Biden administration to 3.7 million.
      Former 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang has endorsed the presidential bid of Minnesota’s Democratic representative Dean Phillips. Calling himself a former “campaign surrogate for Joe [Biden]” at a campaign event on Thursday, Yang said: “Dean Phillips is the only one with the courage, the character and conviction to go against the grain, to go against the legion of followers in Washington DC.”
      Donald Trump is trying to convince allies of Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis that the Republican race for a presidential nominee is over, according to a new report by Vanity Fair. As Trump continues to face mounting legal troubles, the ex-president is reported to have been pressuring Haley and DeSantis to drop out of the race.
      Anti-abortion activists are gathering in Washington DC today for the annual March for Life campaign.This time the event takes place ahead of the 51st anniversary, on Monday, of the supreme court’s ruling in Roe v Wade in 1973 that brought in the national right to an abortion in the US, and ahead of the two-year anniversary of the current, right-leaning supreme court striking down Roe in 2022.Joe Biden and Kamala Harris plan to highlight the depletion of reproductive rights, which is proving a vote-loser for Republicans, on the 2024 campaign trail next week, amid high Democratic party spending on related ads, Axios reports.The Guardian’s Carter Sherman is in the cold and snowy capital and will be sending a dispatch. Meanwhile, she’s on X/Twitter with vignettes.The move follows the House of Representatives passing the short-term spending bill late on Thursday, sending the legislation to the president’s desk with just two days left before government funding was to run out, in the latest nail-biter.The bipartisan legislation averted a government shutdown that would have begun at one minute past midnight tonight.The bill, which represents the third stopgap spending measure of this fiscal year, will extend government funding at current levels until 1 March for some government agencies and until 8 March for others.The House vote came hours after the Senate approved the bill in a vote of 77 to 18, following bipartisan negotiations that stretched into late Wednesday evening. The Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, praised the bill as a vital measure that would allow lawmakers more time to negotiate over full-year appropriations bills.“Avoiding a shutdown is very good news for the country, for our veterans, for parents and children, and for farmers and small businesses – all of whom would have felt the sting had the government shut down,” Schumer said in a floor speech. “And this is what the American people want to see: both sides working together and governing responsibly. No chaos. No spectacle. No shutdown.”You can read more on the passage of the legislation last night, from my colleague Joanie Greve, here.The Associated Press is also now reporting that Tim Scott of South Carolina is expected to endorse Republican frontrunner Donald Trump for president ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary. It would be a blow to Scott’s fellow South Carolinian Nikki Haley, who was Trump’s pick for ambassador to the United Nations during his presidency.The New York Times was first to report the story today, noting it would “spur more talk” of Scott’s prospects as Trump’s vice-presidential pick.The AP news agency also further reports:
      A person familiar with Scott’s plans confirmed Friday to The Associated Press that Scott would travel from Florida to New Hampshire with the GOP front-runner.
      The person spoke on the condition of anonymity due to not being allowed to discuss the plans publicly.
      Scott launched his own bid to challenge Trump last May before shuttering his effort about six months later. Trump has been appearing on the campaign trail with several other former rivals who have endorsed him, including North Dakota governor Doug Burgum and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.
      Scott’s endorsement was sought by the remaining major contenders in the Republican primary, particularly ahead of South Carolina’s February 24 primary, which has historically been influential in determining the eventual nominee.
      Haley appointed Scott to the Senate in 2012.
      South Carolina’s Republican senator Tim Scott will endorse Donald Trump, according to a new report from the Hill.On Friday, a source familiar with Scott said that the senator, who pulled out of the 2024 presidential race last fall, will endorse Trump on Friday evening.In separate report released by Vanity Fair on Friday, multiple sources said that Trump has been calling Scott in attempts to win his endorsement ahead of next month’s primary in South Carolina, which is also the home state of Trump’s opponent Nikki Haley, who was previously the state’s governor.The report of Scott’s endorsement of Trump comes as the ex-president prepares to rally in New Hampshire this weekend ahead of the state’s primary next week. More

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      There is still a way to stop Donald Trump – but time is running out | Jonathan Freedland

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      The few Republicans who have not succumbed to the cult of Donald Trump cling to one last hope. They are crossing their fingers that on Tuesday night the ex-president’s march to his party’s nomination will be halted, or at least delayed, by a defeat in the New Hampshire primary at the hands of the former governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley. But it is a thin hope.Even if Haley wins a famous victory in this snowbound state, the battles ahead are on terrain far more tricky for her and congenial to him. On Monday, Trump won his party’s contest in Iowa by a record-breaking margin, amassing more votes than all his rivals combined – and the primary electorates that come next look more like Iowa’s than New Hampshire’s, which, unusually, includes a big slice of Trump-sceptic independents. When you combine that with surveys that show Trump even – or better than even – with Joe Biden, making him many forecasters’ favourite to win the White House in November, it prompts a question that confounds blue-state America and baffles most of the rest of the world. Given all that he’s said and all that he’s done, given all that he is, why do so many Americans want Donald Trump to be their next president?Any answer to that question has to begin with the weakness of Trump’s opponents. When the New York Post branded Ron DeSantis “DeFuture” in 2022, hailing him as the man to push Trump aside and become the Republican standard bearer in 2024, it had not reckoned on the Florida governor being astonishingly awkward with the basics of retail politics: smiling, shaking hands, interacting with other people. It’s been painful to watch. (Seeing Nikki Haley flail as she defends her view that the US has “never been a racist country” is not much better.)More important, though, was the strategic miscalculation. DeSantis decided to offer Trumpism without Trump, picking fights with the same culture-war targets as the former president – migrants, the media, the “woke” – but without the chaos and lunacy. Trouble was, that made him too Trumpy for those Republicans eager to move on, and not Trumpy enough for the Maga hardcore. That latter group weren’t looking for Trump-lite, because they’re quite happy with the full-strength original.Still, the larger failure was shared by almost the entire Republican field, including Haley. Even though they were nominally running against Trump, only one of them – Chris Christie of New Jersey – dared make the direct case against him. They feared antagonising the (many) Republicans who love Trump, so tiptoed around his obvious and disqualifying flaws – including his support for a violent insurrection in 2021 that sought to overturn a democratic election. Each candidate hoped someone else would take on that task, knocking out Trump in a kamikaze mission that would leave the remaining contenders to scoop up his supporters.It was a classic collective action problem. Had they combined against Trump, they’d have all benefited. Between them, and in their own different ways, they could have devised what political pros say many Republicans needed in order to make the break from Trump: a permission structure. They could have told Republican voters that they did not make a mistake in choosing Trump back in 2016, but his record of broken promises – he never did build that wall – and association with serial electoral defeats, in midterm contests as well as in 2020, made him the wrong choice in 2024. Haley is edging towards that message now, but it has come as time is running out.Trump has been aided, too, by the opponent he hopes to face in November. Initially, many Republicans were wary of backing Trump because they feared he would lose (again) to Biden. But as the president’s numbers continue to bump along the bottom, that fear has receded. Biden’s parlous standing is not chiefly about his record, but something he can do nothing about: how old he is and, more important, how old he seems. One poll found that just 34% of Americans believe the 82-year-old Biden would complete a second term. Biden’s frailty has led Republicans to dismiss the electability argument that might have compelled them to look for an alternative to Trump.And yet, an uncomfortable truth has to be faced. That Donald Trump is very possibly set to return to the Oval Office is not only down to the weakness of others; it is also a product of his own political strengths. He has a skill lacking in every other major figure in the current US political landscape: the ability to craft a narrative that millions believe. He has, for example, turned what should have been a terminal blow – facing multiple prosecutions and 91 criminal charges – into a winning story, one in which he is a victim of, and courageous fighter against, a liberal establishment engaged in “lawfare”, confecting bogus allegations to keep him from power. That story is false, but it has persuaded nearly half the country.He is helped in that by a news environment in which Americans regard themselves as entitled not only to their own opinions but to their own facts, where their feeds and timelines confirm their prejudices and shield them from any unwelcome evidence to the contrary.But Trump is also helped by some actual facts. When he brags about the health of the economy when he was president, it’s not wholly spurious. During his first three years in office, before Covid-19 struck, the typical US household saw its standard of living go up – with a 10.5% real-terms increase in the median household income – only for that same measure to fall by 2.7% during Joe Biden’s first two years. In that period, inflation surged and Americans’ wages could not keep up with rising costs.Of course, it’s laughable for Trump to claim those healthy pre-Covid economic numbers were all down to him. But that doesn’t stop millions of US voters looking back fondly on, say, the low petrol prices of the Trump years. Meanwhile, memories of the daily mayhem, bigotry and creeping authoritarianism are fading.His opponents are weaker than they needed, and still need, to be; he is stronger than many can bear to admit; and the core issue of any election – the economy – may favour him. For all those reasons, Trump has a plausible, even probable, path back to the White House.The best chance to stop him has already passed. It came in February 2021, when the Senate could have convicted Trump on the “incitement of insurrection” charges levelled against him in his second impeachment following the 6 January riot. Had that happened, Trump would have been barred from public office for life. That was the moment, but Senate Republicans ducked it.Trump has benefited from that cowardice, from that perennial belief that someone else will deal with Trump, eventually. Well, eventually is now – and it may already be too late.
      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
      Jonathan Freedland is presenting three special episodes of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America podcast from New Hampshire. You can hear the first episode here More

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      Former Republican legislative candidate pleads guilty to January 6 role

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      A former Republican legislative candidate has pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement officers during the insurrection by extremist supporters of Donald Trump at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 in the final days of his one-term presidency.Officials said that Matthew Brackley, 40, of Waldoboro, Maine, traveled to Washington DC, Trump’s Stop the Steal rally on January 6, prior to him encouraging the crowd to go to the Capitol.Brackley was among thousands who then stormed the building as part of an effort to stop the US Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory for the Democratic party in the 2020 presidential election.He entered the Capitol building as the mob broke in and asked for the location of then House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office before shouting “Let’s go!” and using his elbows to push past police officers, according to prosecutors.His group was stopped by police before chemical spray was used to break up the demonstrators, prosecutors said.Brackley will be sentenced 14 May in Washington DC, after reaching an agreement in which he pleaded guilty on Thursday to assaulting, resisting or impeding law enforcement officers. The crime carries a maximum penalty of eight years in prison.The defense lawyer Steven Levin said his client has accepted full responsibility for his actions.“His aberrant conduct, which lasted less than an hour and for which he is extremely remorseful, stands in stark contrast to his otherwise lifelong law-abiding character,” Levin said on Friday in an email.Brackley tried unsuccessfully to unseat the Maine Democratic state senator and majority leader, Eloise Vitelli of Arrowsic, last year. His campaign website described him as a Maine Maritime Academy graduate whose approach would be to have “respectful, thoughtful conversations on the issues”.The violent storming of the US Capitol, which caused injuries and led to several deaths among police, delayed the official certification of Biden’s winning the White House until the early hours of 7 January after the Capitol was cleared and lawmakers returned to the floor.Trump was impeached over the insurrection and acquitted in the Senate but now faces a related federal criminal case, amid other legal troubles. More

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      As the election looms, we must be alert to Trump’s threats of vigilante justice | Robert Reich

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      Donald Trump has galvanized an army of vigilantes who are casting a fearsome shadow over the 2024 election.It’s impossible to know how large this potential army is, but last October 41% of pro-Trump Americans agreed with the statement that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” (That view was shared by 22% of independents and 13% of Democrats.)We’re seeing the consequences. The day after the Maine secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, barred Trump from the primary ballot there in late December, her home was “swatted”. As Bellows explained, “That’s when someone calls in a fake emergency to evoke a strong law enforcement response to scare the target. Swatting incidents have resulted in casualties although thankfully this one did not.”Along with the swatting, Bellows discussed “extraordinarily dehumanizing fake images” of her online:“I know from my previous work that dehumanizing a person is the first step in paving the way for attacks and violence against them. These dehumanizing images and threatening communications directed at me and people I love are dangerous. We should be able to agree to disagree on important issues without threats and violence.”The Colorado secretary of state, Jena Griswold, has also faced mounting threats since the Colorado supreme court in December disqualified Trump from the state’s primary ballot.“Within three weeks of the lawsuit being filed, I received 64 death threats,” Griswold has said. “I stopped counting after that. I will not be intimidated. Democracy and peace will triumph over tyranny and violence.”Jack Smith, the special counsel in charge of two federal prosecutions of Trump, has received a number of death threats. Between April and September of last year, the justice department spent more than $4.4m providing increased security for Smith and his team. On Christmas Day he was swatted.On 4 August, Trump posted, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” The following day, a Texas woman left a voicemail for Judge Tanya Chutkan, the judge presiding over the case charging Trump with seeking to overturn the 2020 election, threatening that, “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you.”Security has been increased for Judge Chutkan, as well. On 7 January, she was swatted.On 6 August, two days after Trump’s post, a man left a voicemail threatening the lives of the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, and Sheriff Patrick Labat for their roles in the Georgia criminal election interference case against Trump.Trump has also encouraged people to “go after” the New York attorney general, Letitia James.In addition, the far-right group the Proud Boys, according to the justice department, “played a central role in setting the January 6 attack on our Capitol into motion”. The House select committee investigating the attack found that in the months leading up to it, then-Trump operative Roger Stone regularly communicated with Proud Boys members, including their leader, Enrique Tarrio.In September, Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison on charges related to the attack. (In 2020, Trump issued Stone a blanket pardon.)As of December, roughly 1,240 people have been arrested in connection with the US Capitol attack. Some 170 have been convicted at trial, and 710 have pleaded guilty. So far, more than 720 have received prison sentences, ranging from a handful of days to more than 20 years.Many have sought to defend themselves by saying they were doing what Trump asked them to do. On that fateful day, Trump told the crowd he had summoned to Washington that:
      We will never give up, we will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it any more … We will stop the steal … Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back … You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong … We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.
      Afterward, the crowd stormed the Capitol.There is a direct and alarming connection between Trump’s political rise and the increase in political violence and threats of such violence in America.In 2016, the Capitol police recorded fewer than 900 threats against members of Congress. In 2017, after Trump took office, that figure more than quadrupled, according to the Capitol police.The numbers continued to rise every year of the Trump presidency, peaking at 9,700 in 2021. In 2022, the first full year of Biden’s term, the numbers declined to a still-high 7,500. (The 2023 data is not yet available.)Data also shows extraordinarily high levels of threats against mayors, federal judges, election workers and administrators, public health officials, and even school board members.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe threats have clearly intimidated some Republican lawmakers.The retiring senator Mitt Romney recounted (in McKay Coppins’s biography of him) that during Trump’s 23 January 2021 impeachment for incitement of insurrection, a member of the Republican Senate leadership was leaning toward voting to convict Trump. But after several other senators expressed concern about their personal safety and that of their children, the senator in question voted to acquit.Former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney said that in that impeachment vote, “there were members who told me that they were afraid for their own security – afraid, in some instances, for their lives.” She cited how “members of Congress aren’t able to cast votes, or feel that they can’t, because of their own security.”Just before the House vote on impeachment, the Democratic representative Jason Crow of Colorado said he heard firsthand from Republicans that fear was holding at least two of them back. “I had a lot of conversations with my Republican colleagues last night, and a couple of them broke down in tears – saying that they are afraid for their lives if they vote for this impeachment,” Crow said on MSNBC.Former representative Peter Meijer, a Republican from Michigan, recalls one of his House colleagues voting to overturn the election results on the evening of January 6, hours after the assault: “My colleague feared for family members, and the danger the vote would put them in.” After voting to impeach Trump, Meijer himself faced so many threats that he felt the need to purchase body armor and make changes to his daily schedule.Meijer also noted that his colleagues who voted not to certify the 2020 election “knew in their heart of hearts that they should’ve voted to certify, but some had legitimate concerns about the safety of their families. They felt that that vote would put their families in danger.”When announcing his retirement, former Republican congressman Anthony Gonzalez cited threats to him and his family after his vote in favor of Trump’s impeachment. Gonzalez was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump. In September 2021, Gonzalez announced he would not seek another term.The Republican majority leader of the Pennsylvania state senate explained why she signed a letter backing Trump’s attempt to overturn the results in that state: “If I would say to you, ‘I don’t want to do it,’ I’d get my house bombed tonight.”Political violence is an inherent part of fascism. Hitler’s SA – the letters stood for Sturmabteilung or “Storm Section”, also known as the Stormtroopers or Brownshirts – were vigilantes who did the Nazis’ dirty work before the Nazis took total power.During the German presidential elections in March and April 1932, Brownshirts assembled Alarmbereitschaften, or “emergency squads”, to intimidate voters.On the night of the Reichstag election of 31 July 1932, Brownshirts launched a wave of violence across much of northern and eastern Germany with murders and attempted murders of local officials and communist politicians and arson attacks on local Social Democratic headquarters and the offices of liberal newspapers.When five Brownshirts were sentenced to death for the murders, Hitler called the sentences “a most outrageous blood verdict” and publicly promised the prisoners that “from now on, your freedom is a question of honor for all of us, and to fight against the government which made possible such a verdict is our duty.”A chilling echo of these words can be found in one of Trump’s recent speeches in Iowa, in which he claimed that his supporters had acted “peacefully and patriotically” on 6 January 2021. “Some people call them prisoners,” he said of those who were serving sentences for their violence. “I call them hostages. Release the J6 hostages, Joe [Biden]. Release them, Joe. You can do it real easy, Joe.”America is not the Weimar Republic on the eve of 1933, and Trump is not Hitler. But it is important to understand the parallels.That Donald Trump still has not been held accountable for encouraging the attack on the US Capitol, or for provoking his followers with his blatant lie that the 2020 election was stolen, continues to galvanize an army of potentially violent Americans.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More