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      US historians sign brief to support Colorado’s removal of Trump from ballot

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      Twenty-five historians of the civil war and Reconstruction filed a US supreme court brief in support of the attempt by Colorado to remove Donald Trump from the ballot under the 14th amendment, which bars insurrectionists from running for office.“For historians,” the group wrote, “contemporary evidence from the decision-makers who sponsored, backed, and voted for the 14th amendment [ratified in 1868] is most probative. Analysis of this evidence demonstrates that decision-makers crafted section three to cover the president and to create an enduring check on insurrection, requiring no additional action from Congress.”Lawyers for Trump argue that the presidency is not an “office” as described in the 14th amendment, that only congressional action can stop someone from running, and that Trump did not incite an insurrection.Trump was impeached in Congress (for the second time) for inciting an insurrection: the Capitol attack of 6 January 2021, an attempt to overturn defeat by Joe Biden now linked to nine deaths, more than 1,200 arrests and hundreds of convictions.Impeached with the support of 10 House Republicans but acquitted when only seven Senate Republicans voted to convict, Trump now dominates his party and its presidential primary, 91 criminal charges (17 for election subversion), civil trials and ballot challenges notwithstanding.Maine has also sought to remove Trump from its ballot, a ruling delayed, like that in Colorado, while the supreme court considers the issue. Oral arguments are set for 8 February.Amicus briefs allow interested parties to make relevant arguments. Earlier this month, nearly 180 Republicans joined a brief in support of Trump.The 25 historians – among them James McPherson of Princeton, the pre-eminent civil war scholar – pointed to 1860s congressional debate.“Senator Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, a Democratic opponent of the 14th amendment, challenged sponsors as to why section three omitted the president. Republican Lot Morrill of Maine … replied, ‘Let me call the senator’s attention to the words “or hold any office civil or military under the United States”.’ Johnson admitted his error; no other senator questioned whether section three covered the president.”The historians also cited Andrew Johnson, in 1868 the first president impeached, referring to himself as “chief executive officer”.Pointing out that section 3 of the 14th amendment is self-executing, and that “no former Confederate instantly disqualified from holding office under section three was disqualified by an act of Congress”, the historians also noted that Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, cited his own disqualification as reason an indictment for treason should be quashed.“Contemporary information provides direct evidence of the enduring reach of the 14th amendment,” the historians wrote. “Congress … chose to make disqualification permanent through a constitutional amendment.“Republican senator Peter Van Winkle of West Virginia said, ‘This is to go into our constitution and to stand to govern future insurrection as well as the present.’ To this end, the Amnesty Acts of 1872 and 1898 did not pardon future insurrectionists.”The historians also said “adverse consequences followed” amnesty, many ex-Confederates winning office and “participat[ing] in the imposition of racial discrimination in the south that vitiated the intent of the 14th and 15th amendments to protect the civil and political rights of the formerly enslaved people.”The historians concluded: “The court should take cognisance that section three of the 14th amendment covers the present, is forward-looking, and requires no additional acts of Congress for implementation.”Some political and legal observers have suggested Trump should be allowed to run regardless of the constitution, because to bar him would be anti-democratic.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a forthcoming article for the New York Review of Books, seen by the Guardian, Sean Wilentz of Princeton – an eminent historian not part of the supreme court brief – calls such arguments “risible”.“By their reasoning,” Wilentz writes, “Trump’s misdeeds aside, enforcement of the 14th amendment poses a greater threat to our wounded democracy than Trump’s candidacy. In the name of defending democracy, they would speciously enable the man who did the wounding and now promises to do much more.”Trump and allies including Elise Stefanik of New York, a House Republican leader, have refused to commit to certifying the result should Trump lose in November.Wilentz continues: “Whether motivated by … fear of Trump’s base, a perverted sense of democratic evenhandedness, a reflexive hostility toward liberals, or something else, [commentators who say Trump should stay on the ballot] betray a basic ignorance of the relevant history and thus a misconception of what the 14th amendment actually meant and means. That history, meanwhile, has placed the conservative members of the supreme court in a very tight spot.”Wilentz says justices who subscribe to originalism, a doctrine that “purports to divine the original intentions of the framers [of the constitution] by presenting tendentious renderings of the past as a kind of scripture”, will in the Colorado case have to contend with evidence – as presented by the historians’ brief – of what the framers of the 14th amendment meant.Recently used to remove the right to abortion and to gut voting rights, originalism now threatens, Wilentz says, to become a “petard … exploding in the majority’s face.”He also writes: “The conservative majority of the supreme court and the historical legacy of the [Chief Justice John] Roberts court have reached a point of no return. The law, no matter the diversions and claptrap of Trump’s lawyers and the pundits, is crystal clear, on incontestable historical as well as originalist grounds … the conservatives face a choice between disqualifying Trump or shredding the foundation of their judicial methodology.”If the court does not “honour the original meaning of the 14th amendment and disqualify Donald Trump”, Wilentz writes, “it will trash the constitutional defense of democracy designed following slavery’s abolition; it will guarantee, at a minimum, political chaos no matter what the voters decide in November; and it will quite possibly pave the way for a man who has vowed that he will, if necessary, rescind the constitution in order to impose a dictatorship of revenge.” More

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      The search for Trump’s running mate: ‘like auditions for The Apprentice’

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      The last person who occupied the job of US vice-president ended up the target of a violent mob calling for him to be hanged. Even so, as Donald Trump closes in on the Republican nomination for 2024, there is no shortage of contenders eager to be his deputy.It is safe to assume that Mike Pence, who was Trump’s running mate in 2016 and 2020, will not get the job this time. His refusal to comply with his boss’s demand to overturn the last election caused a permanent rift and made Pence a perceived traitor and target of the January 6 insurrectionists.Undeterred, Trump’s campaign surrogates in the recent Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, both of which he won handily, have been trying to outdo each other with extravagant displays of fealty. “It’s very clear he’s holding these open auditions like it’s The Apprentice,” said Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist. “He will flirt with everyone. He will make them dance. They will all debase themselves and humiliate themselves and jockey for that spot.”When he first ran for president in 2016, Trump understood that he needed a vice-presidential pick who could help shore up support among Republican evangelicals and social conservatives, who were suspicious of the thrice-married reality TV star. Pence, the then Indiana governor and fierce social conservative, was from what Trump likes to call central casting.This year Trump’s allies and Republican strategists believe that he needs help attracting suburban swing voters in a handful of battleground states, where November’s election will likely be decided. Many commentators therefore predict that he will choose a woman or a person of colour, especially since the demise of the constitutional right to abortion.Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, said one of the factors important to Trump is “just how much of a sycophant they would be, not just in terms of ‘Oh, I love you, Donald Trump’, but do you love me enough when I tell you to violate your oath of office in the constitution that you’ll do it?’ And that person for me is Elise Stefanik.”Stefanik, 39, the highest-ranking woman in the Republican conference in the House of Representatives and one of the first members of Congress to endorse Trump, appears to have timed her run perfectly.She gained national prominence last month after embarrassing the heads of three top universities about antisemitism on their campuses during a congressional hearing, which prompted two of them to later resign. Stefanik claimed victory and declared: “I will always deliver results.” Trump reportedly described her as a “killer”.Since then she has outdone even the notoriously obsequious Pence. Soon after Trump described those convicted of crimes in the insurrection as “hostages”, she parroted the same term on NBC television’s flagship Meet the Press programme. When Trump confused rival Nikki Haley with former House speaker Nancy Pelosi while discussing January 6, Stefanik brazenly denied what everyone had heard.Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “She’s running flat out for it. That’s the only explanation for the things she says and does. I’m embarrassed for her but she’s not embarrassed because she only has one career goal. She says whatever she thinks he’ll like. He does like it.”In what is currently Washington’s favourite parlour game, the smart money is currently on Stefanik. Bill Whalen, a former media consultant for politicians including the former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, said: “Just based on what she did at that congressional hearing, what could make Trump more pleased than watching her take apart the Ivy League presidents? That would be very appealing for him to put her on the ticket.”Another contender is Kristi Noem, serving her second term as South Dakota’s governor after a landslide re-election victory in 2022. She gained national attention after refusing to impose a statewide mask mandate during the coronavirus pandemic. Noem campaigned for Trump at several events in Iowa earlier this month.Then there is the South Carolina senator Tim Scott, who is African American and could help Trump make inroads among Black voters. Scott was a one-time Republican rival to Trump but dropped out of the race in November. He has since endorsed Trump and told him during his victory speech in New Hampshire: “I just love you!” He also just announced his engagement to be married.Other potential running mates are Trump’s former White House press secretary and current Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders; Ben Carson, who was Trump’s housing secretary; Kari Lake, who narrowly lost a gubernatorial bid in Arizona in 2022 and is now running for the Senate there; Florida congressman Byron Donalds; Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene; and Ohio senator JD Vance.There appears to be broad resistance to picking Haley, Trump’s former UN ambassador and his last rival for the Republican nomination. On 19 January she said being a running mate was “off the table” while Trump said he would “probably” not pick her. Since then relations between the two have soured with Trump using insults such as “birdbrain” and Haley critiquing his age and mental acuity.In addition, Haley’s hawkish views on foreign policy, including military aid for Ukraine, are anathema to Trump’s “America first” base. Rightwing broadcaster Tucker Carlson vowed recently: “I would not only not vote for that ticket, I would advocate against it as strongly as I could.”Trump has publicly said he has already made up his mind, but he is reportedly still calling friends, supporters and donors for advice on whom he should pick. The stakes are unusually high this time and the oft-quoted old saw from Franklin Roosevelt’s deputy John Nance Garner – “The vice-presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss” – may not apply in 2024: Biden is 81 and Trump is 77, meaning that a vice-president’s ability to assume command has never been more pertinent.Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution thinktank at Stanford University, said: “A wary, sceptical voter is going to be thinking: ‘OK, what happens if … ?’ It makes the choice of the running mate all the more important.“We talk about this every election and we then dismiss it as voters don’t really think that way. But it’s on the table in this election in ways it hasn’t been in the past because you are focusing on the candidate’s health and their mental faculty, and the chance that one or both could not finish out a term.“That does lead to a different calculation with Trump in this regard. It’s not so much about picking up some electoral votes or reaching out to a group. It is the question of picking somebody who credibly can say they’re ready to lead from day one. You would think their chops would be more important than just their demographic.”Trump may not be in a hurry to make a final decision. The longer he dangles the prospect of the vice-presidency, the more that aspirants will genuflect and make elaborate attempts to get in his good graces.Wendy Schiller, a political scientist at Brown University, agreed. She said: “He doesn’t think he needs anybody to win this election so my guess is he’ll require lots of prominent people to come and pay homage to him. Then he’ll wait for the convention [in July] to announce it because he wants to make clear that VP – that they’re irrelevant. Generally, we worry more who his VP will be than he does.” More

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      Biden vows to ‘shut down the border’ if Senate immigration bill is passed

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      Joe Biden said on Friday that the border deal being negotiated in the US Senate was the “toughest and fairest” set of reforms possible and vowed to “shut down the border” the day he signs the bill.The bipartisan talks have hit a critical point amid mounting Republican opposition. Some Republicans have set a deal on border security as a condition for further Ukraine aid.Earlier in the day, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, said the deal is “dead on arrival” in its current form, according to a letter to Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives reviewed by Reuters.Biden, a Democrat seeking another term in the 5 November elections, has grappled with record numbers of migrants caught illegally crossing the US-Mexico border during his presidency. Republicans contend Biden should have kept the restrictive policies of Republican former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for his party’s nomination.“What’s been negotiated would – if passed into law – be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country,” Biden said in a statement.“It would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed. And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.”The White House has agreed to new limits on asylum at the border, including the creation of an expulsion power that would allow migrants who cross the US-Mexico border illegally to be rapidly returned to Mexico if migrant encounters surpass 4,000 per day, three sources familiar with the matter said.If encounters pass 5,000 per day, the use of the expulsion authority would become mandatory, according to the sources who requested anonymity to discuss details of the private negotiations.In December, encounters averaged more than 9,500 per day, according to US government statistics released on Friday.The sweeping authority would be comparable to the Covid-era Title 42 policy put in place under Trump during the pandemic and which ended under Biden in May 2023.Migrants trying to claim asylum would still be able to do so at legal border crossings if the expulsion power was in effect, one of the sources said.The US would be required to allow at least 1,400 migrants per day to approach legal crossings to claim asylum if the expulsions were in effect, the source added.The bill aims to resolve asylum claims in six months without detaining migrants, the source said, faster than the current process, which can take years.Trump, however, took to social media last week to warn against any deal that fails to deliver everything Republicans want to shut down border crossings.Biden also urged Congress on Friday to provide the funding he asked for in October to secure the border.“This includes an additional 1,300 border patrol agents, 375 immigration judges, 1,600 asylum officers, and over 100 cutting-edge inspection machines to help detect and stop fentanyl at our south-west border,” the president said. More

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      Trump’s ‘achilles heel’? Haley’s refusal to drop out infuriates ex-president

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      It was a moment for Donald Trump to be gracious, magnanimous, perhaps even presidential. Instead he lashed out at his opponent’s clothes. “When I watched her in the fancy dress that probably wasn’t so fancy, I said, ‘What’s she doing? We won,’” he said of rival Nikki Haley in New Hampshire on Tuesday night.Trump had just won the first primary election of 2024 and all but clinched the Republican nomination for US president. Party leaders and campaign surrogates are now eager to banish Haley to irrelevance, move on from the primary and unify against Democrats. They want Trump to pivot to an almost inevitable rematch with Democrat Joe Biden in November.Yet the 77-year-old remains consumed with rage over Haley’s unwillingness to quit the race. His petulance offers a reminder of the unhinged behaviour that turned off independent voters in New Hampshire and could prove to be a liability in a head-to-head contest with Biden. It is also at odds with what is an unusually professional and disciplined campaign operation.Wendy Schiller, a political scientist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “Donald Trump wants the race to be over and we see evidence of why that’s important for the Trump campaign from his speech, which was essentially a train wreck and exhibited all the worst tendencies of Donald Trump. It was an undisciplined Trump and this is what turns off independent voters.”She added: “This is the achilles heel for the Trump campaign and they know it. The sooner this gets wrapped up then he doesn’t have any more of those impromptu late night speeches. Their worry is not that they’re not going to win the nomination; their worry is the damage that Trump having to respond to Haley will do in the general election with independent voters.”Trump’s investment of emotion and energy in attacking Haley is wildly out of proportion for the minimal threat that Haley poses. He won the Iowa caucuses in a landslide – she was third – and beat her by double digits in New Hampshire. No other Republican candidate in history who won the first two contests has failed to clinch his party’s nomination. His dominance looks set to render the next five months of primaries irrelevant.Newt Gingrich, a former House of Representatives speaker and ex-presidential candidate, said: “Trump’s best strategy is to assume he is the nominee and go straight at Biden and ignore Haley, let her flounder around until she either runs out of money or realises that there is no future. She’ll presently disappear.”Republicans have coalesced around the former president, putting pressure on Haley to step aside. She is not competing in next month’s Nevada caucuses. Trump has racked up endorsements from most of South Carolina’s leading Republicans and opinion polls show him with a big lead in the state, which has a strong base of Christian evangelicals, ahead of the primary on 24 February.View image in fullscreenYet Haley, 52, a former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the UN, is soldiering on. She tweeted on Thursday: “Underestimate me, that’s always fun.” Next week she is scheduled for a fundraising tour that includes stops in New York, Florida, California, Texas and South Carolina. She is expected to continue to draw donor support as Never Trumpers within the party make a last stand and hope he could yet be derailed by the 91 criminal charges against him.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “I do know some of her donors and my guess is they want her staying in to put Trump through his paces. They don’t put it on the record but they think there’s a reasonable chance that something will happen to Trump, either health-wise or conviction to the extent that he can no longer be the nominee.”Haley describes herself as “scrappy”, continues to hold rallies and is becoming more aggressive in her denunciations of Trump. On Wednesday she launched a $4m advertising campaign in South Carolina describing the prospect of a Biden v Trump election as “a rematch no one wants”. Its narrator says: “Biden – too old. Trump – too much chaos. There’s a better choice for a better America.”How long can she last? Michael Steele, a Trump critic and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “My bet is two weeks. You really want to go into that race in your home state and lose by 30 or 40 points? Where is the political viability after that? We’ve seen candidates who run actual general election presidential campaigns and they lose their home state and we never heard from them again.”Haley’s tenacity has enraged Trump. He has branded her “birdbrain”. He has threatened to blacklist anyone who donates to her campaign. He has railed against her frequently on social media, writing: “Could somebody please explain to Nikki that she lost – and lost really badly. She also lost Iowa, BIG, last week. They were, as certain non-fake media say, ‘CRUSHING DEFEATS.’”The insults and outbursts are a reminder of why Trump alienated moderate voters in the past. While his win in New Hampshire was historic, it also exposed general election vulnerabilities, showing him to be highly popular with Republicans but highly unpopular with independents, who were allowed to take part in the Republican primary under the state’s rules.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere has never been such a wide gap between the Republican vote and the independent vote in a New Hampshire Republican primary. According to CNN’s exit polls, Trump won Republican voters by 74% to 25%, but Haley won independents 58% to 39%.Forty-two per cent of voters said they would not consider Trump to be fit for office if he were convicted of a crime. An analysis by Fox News found that 35% of voters in New Hampshire would be so dissatisfied with a Trump nomination that they would not vote for him in November.Steele, a host on the MSNBC cable news network, added: “There’s 91 indictments hanging over this guy. Of course he’s vulnerable but everyone wants to keep puffing him up like he’s some tiger or some lion. It’s just ridiculous.“I just wish people would get honest about what’s in front of them. This guy is vulnerable as hell. He’s weak as hell. But in reality TV land, he’s the guy that fires people: he’s rough, he’s tough, he’s single-minded. No, he’s a petulant little boy who shows that petulance when he’s challenged.”Biden’s campaign is working on the premise that Trump will be the nominee. He has delivered two major speeches about the threat that Trump poses to democracy and the dangerous rise of white supremacy. This week he held a joint event with his vice-president, Kamala Harris, in Virginia to promote reproductive freedom, highlighting Trump’s role in the supreme court’s Dobbs decision that overturned the constitutional right to abortion.Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist, said: “The Dobbs decision basically became this before-and-after moment in American politics where there just became this sense that the Republican party had become too ugly, too extreme, too dangerous, and it has struggled mightily in election after election since the spring of 2022.”He added: “You’re starting to see, even in the early going here, there is a lot more weakness than strength coming out of the Republican party in the last couple of weeks. It’s because Maga [Make America great again] has become unattractive even to Republican voters. Fear and opposition to Maga is the most powerful force in American politics. It’s why Republicans keep losing, and Republicans have chosen a candidate who is ultra-Maga to be their nominee in 2024.” More

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      He’s beaten his Republican rivals and is ahead in the polls. But Trump is vulnerable | Jonathan Freedland

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      You’d think a week spent in the snow and ice of New Hampshire, watching Donald Trump stroll to a double-digit victory over his last remaining Republican rival, would have left me filled with angst about the presidential election in November. Sure enough, given that a second Trump presidency would have a truly disastrous impact on the US and the world, the fact that the now near-certain rematch of Trump and Joe Biden remains a “coin flip”, in the private assessment of one of America’s foremost electoral analysts, still makes my palms go clammy.But to my surprise, I left the frozen American north-east not hopeful, exactly, but lifted by the thought that Trump is weaker, and Biden stronger, than this week’s headlines – or the latest polls showing the current president six points behind the previous one – might suggest. Now when I hear the words “coin flip”, I react like Jim Carrey’s character in Dumb and Dumber, when told that the odds of him winning over the woman of his dreams are one in a million: “So you’re telling me there’s a chance.”Of course, the causes for gloom have not gone away. Biden’s age remains the biggest single obstacle to his re-election: even Democrats worry that he might just be too old to serve a second term, which would see him leave his Oval Office desk at the age of 86. Inflation has hurt him: a pair of 18-year-olds at Bedford High School told me they had cast their first vote for “Donald J Trump”, as they reverentially put it, in part because of high petrol prices. And too many voters blame Biden for the fact that “the world is on fire”, to quote Trump’s challenger, Nikki Haley. They see wars in Ukraine and in Gaza, hear Trump boast that there was no such trouble when he was in charge, and blame Biden.That aversion to overseas conflict, and fear of the US getting sucked in, is now loud in the once hawkish Republican party, but anti-war sentiment among Democrats poses its own danger to Biden. He is struggling to hold his party together. The left, and younger voters especially, are appalled by his support for Israel in its fight against Hamas – a sentiment that will only harden after the international court of justice’s ruling on Friday demanding that Israel ensures acts of genocide are not committed in Gaza. Young voters were a bedrock for Biden in 2020, but he can rely on them no longer. Those teenagers for Trump I met in Bedford were not the only ones.And yet, there are encouraging signs. In New Hampshire, Trump’s win over Haley was assured by his three-to-one lead among registered Republicans. His overall margin narrowed because she beat him convincingly among undeclared or independent voters, who under New Hampshire’s rules are allowed to take part in a party primary. I spoke to dozens of them, and few were motivated by admiration for the former US ambassador to the UN. On the contrary, their driving purpose was to stop “that man”, many expressing plain disgust for Trump.In the race for his party’s nomination, those views were easily swept aside by the Maga, or Make America Great Again, majority. But in a general election, independents can make the difference between victory and defeat. That they so heavily rejected Trump – 58% backing Haley – spells trouble for the former president. Those are voters Biden should be able to win over, but there are seams to mine among dissident Republicans too. In New Hampshire, about 25% of them could not stomach voting for Trump. Even if most Republicans eventually fall in line, it would take only a small slice to defect to Biden or stay home to deny Trump a second term.That may not be so hard to achieve. For the presumptive nominee remains as repellent as ever. His victory speech on Tuesday was a reminder of his talent for obnoxiousness. He humiliated one-time rivals who now back him and, as if setting out to alienate the suburban female voters who often form a decisive swing bloc in US elections, nodded along as the crowd chanted the nickname he’s given Haley – “birdbrain” – while he mocked the outfit she had worn at her own event earlier that evening: “I watched her in the fancy dress that probably wasn’t so fancy.”The macho boor stuff works well inside the Maga bubble, where the devotees love it, but it will do Trump no favours over the course of an exceptionally long general election campaign, which began, in effect, this week and will stretch to November. Paradoxically, Trump may have benefited from his post-6 January spell of enforced exile from most social media platforms, limiting how much Americans saw him. Now the spotlight is back on – and it is rarely flattering.That is especially true of his multiple and continuing court cases. Among the Republican base, the 91 felony charges against him are a badge of honour, proof that he’s a victim of the liberal deep state; among the wider US electorate, they don’t play so well. Note that even among those who voted for Trump in New Hampshire, 13% believe that, were he convicted of a crime, he would not be fit to be president. A verdict may not come in time for 5 November, but it’s further proof of Trump’s vulnerability.What of Biden’s strength? There was no real Democratic primary in New Hampshire, but there was a challenger, a perfectly competent congressman called Dean Phillips. Even though the president was not on the ballot, he crushed Phillips, thanks to a drive to get Democrats to “write in” Biden’s name. That suggests organisational muscle.And he can press at least two issues that have a proven record of winning elections for Democrats. The first is abortion, following the Supreme Court’s decision in the 2022 Dobbs case to end the constitutional protection of abortion rights. Trump brags that he’s “proud” of that, because it was he who appointed three rightwing judges to the court. But it’s not a popular position. On the contrary, Republicans have repeatedly lost at the ballot box since the court’s ruling, whether in elections or state-level referendums. “Dobbs may have broken the Republican party,” says the Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, who accurately predicted his party’s success in the 2022 midterms and is bullish about Biden’s chances now.The second issue is the core anti-Trump argument: that the man who tried to overturn the 2020 election is a would-be dictator who poses a threat to democracy. Add to that some healthy economic numbers and rising consumer confidence, and you can see the outline of a winning message.To be sure, the messenger remains flawed, though the veteran Republican consultant Mike Murphy thinks there’s a line Biden could use to deal with the age issue, one that would draw the contrast with his opponent: “We’re both old – but he’s old and crazy.” There’s peril, too, in third-party candidacies who would split the anti-Trump vote. The point is, no one could possibly be complacent about a Biden victory and Trump defeat in 2024. Like the man said, it’s a coin flip – but the evidence is telling us there’s a chance.
      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

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      Mitt Romney: Trump’s call to stonewall Democrats on immigration ‘appalling’

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      Donald Trump’s directive to congressional Republicans to not agree to a deal with Democrats on immigration and border control is “appalling”, Mitt Romney said.“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump,” Romney, the Republican senator from Utah, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday.“And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame [Joe] Biden for it is … really appalling.”Having won in Iowa and New Hampshire and with only the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley still in the race, Trump is the clear favourite for the Republican presidential nomination to face Biden in November.His progress has not been impeded by 91 criminal charges, attempts to remove him from the ballot for inciting the January 6 attack on Congress and assorted civil trials.It was widely reported this week that Trump has sought to dynamite Senate talks for an immigration deal long linked to prospects of a new aid package for Ukraine.Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, reportedly acknowledged that Trump’s opposition makes it highly unlikely immigration talks will succeed, given hardline Republicans’ hold on the House and its speaker, Mike Johnson, a far-right congressman from Louisiana.Romney is a former Massachusetts governor who became the Republican nominee for president in 2012 before winning a Senate seat in Utah in 2018.Though he flirted with working for Trump when he won the White House, Romney has since emerged as a constant opponent.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe sole Republican to vote to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial, for seeking political dirt in Ukraine, Romney was one of seven senators to find Trump guilty in his second such trial, for inciting the January 6 insurrection.On Thursday, Romney said: “The reality is that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border, and someone running for president ought to try and get the problem solved, as opposed to saying: ‘Hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later.’” More

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      US border policy deal within reach despite efforts by Trump to derail it, senators say

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      Congressional negotiators said a border deal was within reach on Thursday, despite efforts by Donald Trump and his allies on Capitol Hill to derail the talks.With the fate of US aid for Ukraine hanging in the balance, the outlook for border compromise had appeared grim following reports on Wednesday night that the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, was walking away from a compromise that he suggested could “undermine” Trump’s chances in a November general election against Joe Biden. But by Thursday afternoon, senators involved in the discussions were insisting that the opposite was true: an agreement was within reach and legislative text could be released in the coming days.Referring to Trump as the “nominee”, McConnell reported told Republicans in a closed-door meeting on Wednesday night that “politics on this have changed”, according to a report in Punchbowl News. With Trump as their likely standard bearer, he suggested that it would be unwise to move forward with a bipartisan immigration bill that could possibly neutralize one of Biden’s biggest vulnerabilities. “We don’t want to do anything to undermine him,” McConnell said, referring to Trump.“That’s like parallel universe shit,” Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican of North Carolina involved in the negotiations, fumed to reporters on Thursday. “That didn’t happen.”It would amount to a surprising about-face for McConnell, a strong supporter of sending aid to Ukraine and no friend of the former president, who has leveled racist broadsides against McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, and mercilessly disparaged the Republican leader as an “old crow”.Walking through the Capitol on Thursday, McConnell told Bloomberg News that the immigration talks were “ongoing”. Later he reportedly assured his confused conference that he was “fully onboard” with the negotiations, and brushed off reports that suggested otherwise.The proposal under discussion in Congress would have changed immigration policy to discourage migration. It would include major concessions from Democrats on immigration in exchange for Republican support on passing military assistance to Israel and Ukraine, a country whose cause the party’s far right has turned against.But the politics of a deal have only become more challenging as Trump consolidates support from Republican officials in what many view as his inevitable march toward the GOP nomination.On social media, Trump implored Mike Johnson, the arch-conservative House speaker, not to accept a deal “unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION of Millions and Millions of people”.Failure to strike a deal would have global implications, with the Pentagon warning that Ukrainian soldiers on the frontlines of its grinding war with Russia risk running out of ammunition. The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has said the “future of the war in Ukraine” and the “security of our western democracy” depend on Congress reaching an agreement.Biden had requested tens of billions of dollars from Congress to send aid to Ukraine and Israel as well as to allies in the Asia Pacific region. But the funding package has been stalled for months in Congress amid Republican demands for dramatic changes to border policy.View image in fullscreenSenate Republicans who support the border talks said the party should seize the opportunity to address the record rise of people arriving at the US southern border, a situation both parties and the White House have described as a crisis.“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump,” the Utah senator Mitt Romney, a Republican who has pressed his party to approve military aid for Ukraine, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday. “And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling.”He continued: “The reality is that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border. And someone running for president ought to try and get the problem solved as opposed to saying: ‘Hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later.’”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEven in less contentious times, immigration remains one of the thorniest issues in American politics, and efforts to reform the nation’s outdated system have failed repeatedly. But as an unprecedented number of people fleeing violence, poverty and natural disasters seek refuge at the US-Mexico border, the issue has become top of mind for many Americans who overwhelmingly disapprove of the Biden administration’s handling of the matter.Trump has already made immigration a central issue of his campaign, outlining a draconian vision for his second term that includes mass raids, detentions camps and more funding to build his long-promised wall along the border with Mexico.Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill have argued that a bipartisan deal would only serve to give Biden political cover without actually solving the problem. Others argue that the Senate plan was designed to force the hand of the Republican-controlled House, where the speaker is under pressure from the far-right flank of his party not to compromise on the issue.At a press conference earlier this week, the Texas senator Ted Cruz, a Republican, denounced the proposal, the details of which have not yet been released, as a “stinking pile of crap” that “represents Senate Republican leadership waging war on House Republicans”.Cruz alleged that the negotiators involved cared only about supporting Ukraine and not fixing the issues at the southern border.If a deal falls apart, Schumer and Biden will be forced to look for alternative legislative paths to approving aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. But with Republicans demanding border security measures in exchange for their votes, it remains far from certain that tying the aid to must-pass spending bills or bringing it to the floor as a standalone measure would garner the necessary 60 votes in the Senate.The world will likely know soon whether a deal is possible, the Connecticut senator Chris Murphy, one of the Democratic negotiators, told reporters on Thursday.“I think the Republican Congress is going to make a decision in the next 24 hours as to whether they actually want to get something done or whether they want to leave the border a mess for political reasons,” he said. More

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      Ex-Trump adviser Peter Navarro sentenced to four months in prison

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      Peter Navarro, a top former Trump administration official, was sentenced to four months in federal prison and fined $9,500 after he was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House select committee that investigated the January 6 Capitol attack.The sentence imposed by Amit Mehta in federal district court in Washington was lighter than what prosecutors recommended but tracked the four-month jail term handed to former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who was similarly convicted for ignoring the panel’s subpoena.“You are not a victim, you are not the object of a political prosecution,” the US district judge said from the bench. “These are circumstances of your own making.”Navarro, 74, was found guilty in September of two counts of contempt of Congress after he refused to produce documents and testimony in the congressional investigation into the Capitol attack, claiming that executive privilege protections meant he did not have to cooperate.The committee took a special interest in Navarro because of his proximity to Trump and his involvement in a series of efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including to have members of Congress throw out the results in a plot he named “the Green Bay Sweep”.But Navarro’s subpoena defiance prompted a criminal referral to the US attorney’s office for the District of Columbia, which brought the charges and ultimately asked for six months in jail because he brazenly ignored the subpoena even after being told executive privilege would not apply.“He cloaked his bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt behind baseless, unfounded invocations of executive privilege and immunity that could not and would never apply to his situation,” prosecutors wrote of Navarro in their sentencing memorandum.Within hours after the judge handed down the sentence, Navarro’s lawyers John Rowley and Stanley Woodward filed a notice of appeal to the US court of appeals for the DC circuit. As with Bannon, Navarro is expected to have his punishment deferred pending appeal.Navarro’s lawyers had asked for probation, saying the judge himself seemed to acknowledge at one point that Navarro genuinely believed Trump had invoked executive privilege, a separation-of-powers protection aimed at ensuring White House deliberations can be shielded from Congress.The privilege, however, is not absolute or all-encompassing. The January 6 committee had sought both White House and non-White House material, the latter of which would not be included, and the judge concluded in any case at a hearing that Trump had never formally invoked the privilege.Regardless of what Navarro may have believed, the judge found, he failed to prove the existence of a conversation or communication from Trump that explicitly instructed Navarro not to cooperate with the January 6 committee’s subpoena specifically.That proved to be the central problem for Navarro.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBefore charging Navarro, prosecutors decided not to bring charges against two other Trump White House officials – Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff , and Dan Scavino, former deputy chief – even though they also did not cooperate with the January 6 committee and were referred for contempt.The difference with Meadows and Scavino, as the record later appeared to show, was that they had received letters from a Trump lawyer directing them not to respond to subpoena requests from the panel on executive privilege grounds.Navarro received a similar letter from Trump directing him not to comply with a subpoena from around the same time issued by the House committee that investigated the Covid pandemic. But he was unable to produce an invocation with respect to the later January 6 committee.“Had the president issued a similar letter to the defendant, the record here would look very different,” the judge said at a hearing last year.The January 6 committee completed its work last January, writing in its final report that Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the results of the 2020 election, conspiring to obstruct Congress and conspiring to defraud the United States.Last year, the US justice department charged Trump on four criminal counts related to his efforts to reverse his 2020 election defeat and impede the transfer of power. Trump was also charged in Georgia for violating the state’s racketeering statute for election interference efforts there. More