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      Trump privately backs 16-week abortion ban with exceptions, report says

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      Donald Trump likes the idea of a national ban on abortion past 16 weeks of pregnancy with exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother, the New York Times reported on Friday morning.Trump has veered away from taking a firm stance on abortion during his presidential campaign. He has taken credit for the US supreme court’s 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade, since he appointed three of the justices who took part in that decision, but he has also suggested that Republicans who take extreme stances on abortion lose elections.“Know what I like about 16?” Trump told one individual, according to the Times, which based its report on two people with knowledge of Trump’s thoughts. “It’s even. It’s four months.”Trump is waiting until after the conclusion of the Republican primary to publicly discuss his position, the Times reported.Since Roe’s demise, voters have repeatedly rejected attempts to curtail abortion rights and supported state-level ballot measures to protect the right to the procedure. Outrage over Roe is also widely credited with defeating the promised “red wave” in the 2022 midterms and leaving Republicans with fewer victories than anticipated.Last year, Virginia Republicans campaigned in a state election on a pledge to ban abortion past 15 weeks, as a kind of “compromise” position. Their efforts to retake control of the state legislature failed.However, the anti-abortion movement, with its coterie of high-powered activists, has made it clear that they would like to see the procedure totally outlawed. Although most Americans consider themselves “pro-choice”, polling shows they are far less supportive of abortions past the first trimester.After publication of the Times article, the Trump campaign sent out a statement dismissing it as “fake news”.“As President Trump has stated, he would sit down with both sides and negotiate a deal that everyone will be happy with,” said Karoline Leavitt, the campaign’s national press secretary. Leavitt then celebrated Trump’s role in overturning Roe and falsely accused Democrats, among other things, of supporting abortion “after birth”, which is infanticide and already illegal in the United States.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe vast majority of abortions take place in the first trimester of pregnancy. However, someone may have an abortion later on in pregnancy due to a medical emergency.More than a dozen states have enacted near-total abortion bans, several of which do not have exceptions for rape or incest. And doctors have repeatedly said that carve-outs for abortions in cases of medical emergencies have proven so vague as to be unworkable; dozens of women have now come forward to say that they were denied medically necessary abortions.“Now, after being the one responsible for taking away women’s freedom, after being the one to put women’s lives in danger, after being the one who has unleashed all this cruelty and chaos all across America, Trump is running scared,” Joe Biden said in a statement on Friday afternoon. “He’s afraid that the women of America are going to hold him responsible for taking away their rights and endangering their rights at the ballot box in November. That’s exactly what’s going to happen.” More

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      Biden blames Putin for Navalny’s death as Republican ‘apologists’ condemned

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      Joe Biden put the blame for the reported death of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Friday squarely on Vladimir Putin, as many US politicians condemned Putin but also reacted angrily to the silence of some Republican lawmakers.“Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” the US president said from the White House.“What has happened and evolving is yet more proof of Putin’s brutality. No one should be fooled, not in Russia, not at home, not anywhere in the world. Putin does not only target citizens of other countries, as we have seen in what’s going on in Ukraine right now, he also inflicts terrible crimes on his own people.”Meanwhile some leading Republican politicians also decried Navalny’s death, while pointing the finger at some in their own party for appearing to appease the Russian leader.“There is no room in the Republican Party for apologists for Putin. RIP Alexey Navalny,” wrote the former vice-president Mike Pence on social media.Pence added: “Putin is a war criminal and only understands strength”, and urged Congress to “set aside the politics of the moment” and to pass legislation supporting aid to Ukraine.The North Carolina senator Thom Tillis also criticized Republicans who have expressed qualified sympathies for the Russian president.“Navalny laid down his life fighting for the freedom of the country he loved,” Tillis said.“Putin is a murderous, paranoid dictator. History will not be kind to those in America who make apologies for Putin and praise Russian autocracy. Nor will history be kind to America’s leaders who stay silent because they fear backlash from online pundits.”Both men were apparently referring to members of the Republican party who have in recent weeks slowed the passage of a $60bn military aid package to Ukraine.Last week, the Republican senator Ron Johnson was apparently moved to vote against the aid after watching Vladimir Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson. Johnson said that while Putin “is a war criminal [who is] obviously not telling you the whole truth”, his sit-down with the former Fox News host was “very interesting”, and that “an awful lot of what Vladimir Putin said was right … accurate and obvious”.Others, including the Republican congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana, a House Freedom caucus member, have recently expressed open admiration for the Russian president.“Putin is a studied man of resolute spirit, and he always comes across as very sincere in his beliefs. You come away from a conversation with him thinking ‘I may not believe what he says, but I know he believes what he says,’” Higgins has said.In his address on Friday, Biden said that “history is watching the House of Representatives” and a “failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten. It will go down in the pages of history. It’s consequential, and the clock is ticking. This has to happen. We have to help now.”While none of the leaders immediately put out statements about Navalny, the Republican congressman Michael McCaul, who heads the foreign affairs committee, said: “If confirmed, the death of Alexei Navalny is a tragedy. He was a voice for a better Russia amid the corruption and brutality of Putin’s genocidal regime. The Kremlin must be held to account for this outrage.”Democratic leaders, for their part, expressed united outrage at Navalny’s death. The vice-president, Kamala Harris, called Navalny’s death in prison “a further sign of Putin’s brutality”.Whatever story they tell, let us be clear: Russia is responsible, and we will have more to say on this later,” Harris said at the top of keynote remarks at the Munich Security Conference.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionReports of Navalny’s death come days after the likely Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, said the US would not defend Nato allies from Russian attack, a core principle of the alliance, if they did not meet their obligation to spend 2% of their national economic output on defense.On Friday, before the Navalny news, the Biden re-election campaign pushed out a fresh ad targeting Trump’s comments. “Trump wants to walk away from Nato. He’s even given Putin the green light to attack America’s allies,” it states, calling the former president’s rhetoric “shameful”, “weak” and “un-American”.Speaking at the White House, Biden took another swipe at Trump for his Nato comments, saying: “All of us should reject the dangerous statements made by the previous president that invited Russia to invade our Nato allies if they weren’t paying up.”Referring to Trump, Biden went on: “He said if an ally did not pay their dues, he encouraged Russia to, quote: ‘Do whatever the hell they want.’“I guess I should clear my mind a little bit and not say what I’m really thinking, but let me be clear – this is an outrageous thing for a [former] president to say. I can’t fathom it.“As long as I’m president, America stands by our sacred commitment to our Nato allies.”Trump did not mention the Navalny reports on Friday in their immediate aftermath, and instead posted a message about how he would save the Teamster union from the effects of immigration and another about the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis.The Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley hit out at Trump for his past praise of the Russian leader.“Putin did this,” Haley wrote on Friday morning on X, in response to news of Navalny’s death in prison. “The same Putin who Donald Trump praises and defends. The same Trump who said: ‘In all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. I haven’t seen that.’”Biden, asked directly by a reporter at the White House whether Navalny’s death was an “assassination”, responded:“We don’t know exactly what happened but there’s no doubt that the death of Navalny is a consequence of something Putin and his thugs did.” More

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      Georgia voters shrug off Biden-Trump age question

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      Next week, Frank Stovall turns 103. The retired Lockheed engineer has until recently been a lifelong Atlantan, is a veteran of two wars, and is old enough to remember when Republicans were rare in Georgia.“Well, yes, I think they’re both healthy,” Stovall said, when asked at the Church at Wieuca in Buckhead about the mental fitness for office of President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump. “I’m a Republican, but I’m not going to vote for Trump, if I can help it. I hate to say this, but I think he was a traitor to the country on January 6.“Biden? I’ve been really impressed with him on everything except the border thing. But yeah, I think Biden is a good man. If he got mental lapses … goodness, most of us do when you get a few years on you.”Buckhead, an affluent neighborhood of Atlanta, is split between Republicans and Democrats. Georgia is often described as a politically purple state, with strong Democrats and strong Republicans competing to be seen in nearly equal numbers – though spaces where they cohabitate are scarce.So when a special prosecutor at the Department of Justice released a report last week alleging striking gaps in Biden’s memory and mental acuity, political pundits jumped to assess how the issue of age will affect the American presidential election in places like this. But in the US, broad opinions matter much less than those of the relatively small number of persuadable voters.“Basically, you’re catering to a million voters, in a few states,” said Clarence Blalock, a political consultant in Georgia who is competing in the Democratic primary to challenge Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. The average age of voters tends to be older than the general public, he said, and any strategy questioning the competence of the president – or Donald Trump – due to age may backfire. “They may feel insulted by it. I don’t think it’s a good strategy.”Certainly, many on the right saw in the report’s accusations a confirmation of what they already believe about Biden – that he is largely a figurehead, with decisions being made by others. “I feel sorry for him,” said Chris Swindell, 68, a self-described libertarian from Marietta. “He comes out, and he’s not running the country. The people in the background are running the country.”But few will flip their votes over the age issue, Blalock said. He noted that most partisans had already decided to overlook the flaws of their own candidates.One of those is Jimmy Bennett, 67, a staunch Republican and Trump voter.“Listen, we know a lot of older people that are on the money with their mindset,” said Bennett over a slice of pie at Matthew’s Cafeteria in politically ecumenical Tucker, Georgia.“But if they start making these crazy decisions, and start doing things way off, and then you can see the degrade, then that’s the time to step in.”Only about 10% of voters in Georgia consider changing their votes for any reason at all, and no matter who is running. In 2022, despite the threats of defection by stalwart Trump supporters, the Republican governor, Brian Kemp, defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams by about 300,000 votes out of roughly 4m ballots, but on the same day, the Democratic senator Raphael Warnock beat his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker, by about 40,000 votes (and later won a runoff by about 100,000).“We’re never going to have a 60-40 election,” said Brian Robinson, a Republican strategist and political commentator here. “We wouldn’t have a 60-40 election if Biden died and people were voting for a dead person.”Nonetheless, the age issue is top of mind for Americans of both parties, he said, consistently ranking along with immigration and the economy as the main concerns voters express. In that regard, the special prosecutor’s report was a blow to the Biden campaign. “Democrats are hoping that independent voters are coming to Biden because they don’t like Trump. The [age] issue nullifies some of that Democratic advantage,” Robinson said.“The Biden campaign has, in some way, to provide optics that he’s healthy mentally and physically – and that’s a risk.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut Trump has to be careful too, Robinson said. “The Democrats are trying to create an equivalency there. [Trump] has to avoid providing Democrats with ammo showing equivalent incapacity.”That may prove difficult, given Trump’s own propensity for mental lapses – for every time Biden confuses a Macron with a Mitterrand, Trump takes a Haley for a Pelosi – and equally advanced age: currently 81 and 77, both Biden and Trump would, if elected, be the oldest presidents ever.“I think Donald Trump is a fool and an idiot, and I think he has no mental acuity – period – because he doesn’t live in a world of reality. He lives in a fantasy world where facts are not facts,” said Jackie Goodman, 74, a fourth-generation Atlantan.For Goodman, her choice is about policy – she identifies as a pro-choice voter – and less about either man running.“I wish we could have a younger candidate who has a lot more vitality,” she admits. “But I definitely would not vote Republican – and I definitely would not vote for Trump.”Indeed, the question may be less about whether the age issue makes anyone switch their vote, but rather if it makes voters simply check out, said Blalock. Given the importance of turnout in US elections, how many Americans decide not to vote at all could prove crucial.“The idea that Biden doesn’t have it together, so I’m going to vote for Trump … I mean, do people think Trump has it together [either]?” he asked.“Or [do they] just stay home?” More

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      FBI informant charged with lying about Bidens’ role in Ukraine business

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      An FBI informant has been charged with lying to his handler about ties between Joe Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company.Alexander Smirnov falsely told FBI agents in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5m each in 2015 and 2016, prosecutors said on Thursday.Smirnov told the FBI that a Burisma executive had claimed to have hired Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems”, prosecutors said in a statement.The allegations became a flashpoint in Congress over the summer as Republicans demanded the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the allegations as they pursued investigations of Biden and his family. They acknowledged at the time that it was unclear if the allegations were true.The new development sharply undermines the thrust of congressional Republicans’ corruption accusations that the US president was making money from his son Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine.Smirnov, 43, was charged with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record. No attorney was immediately listed for him in court records.Smirnov appeared in court in Las Vegas briefly on Thursday after being charged with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record. He did not enter a plea. The judge ordered the courtroom cleared after federal public defender Margaret Wightman Lambrose requested a closed hearing for arguments about sealing court documents. She declined to comment on the case.The charges were filed by the justice department special counsel David Weiss, who has separately charged Hunter with firearm and tax violations.Hunter’s legal team did not immediately return a message seeking comment.The informant’s claims have been central to the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spark what is now a House impeachment inquiry into Biden.Prosecutors say Smirnov had contact with Burisma executives, but it was routine and actually took place in 2017, after Barack Obama, the US president, and Biden, his vice-president, had left office – when Biden would have had no ability to influence US policy.Smirnov “transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against public official 1, the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for president, after expressing bias against public official 1 and his candidacy,” the indictment said.He repeated some of the false claims when he was interviewed by FBI agents in September last year and changed his story about others and “promoted a new false narrative after he said he met with Russian officials”, prosecutors said.If convicted, Smirnov faces a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.The House oversight committee chairman James Comer, a Republican representing Kentucky, had subpoenaed the FBI last year for the so-called FD-1023 document as Republicans deepened their inquiries into the US president and Hunter ahead of the 2024 presidential election.Working alongside Comer, the Republican senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa released an unclassified document that Republicans at the time claimed was significant in their investigation of Hunter.It added to information that had been widely aired during Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial involving Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to dig up dirt on the Bidens ahead of the 2020 election. The White House said at the time that the claims had been debunked for years.The impeachment inquiry into Biden over his son’s business dealings has lagged in the House, but the panel is pushing ahead with its work. Hunter is expected to appear before the committee later this month for an interview.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      House Republicans will hold hearing with Robert Hur over Biden report

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      House Republicans will hold a public hearing next month with special counsel Robert Hur, who investigated Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents after his vice-presidency, as the White House counsel reportedly wrote to the attorney general attacking Hur’s commentary on the US president’s memory as a violation of federal policy.The House judiciary committee, chaired by rightwing Republican Jim Jordan, will hear testimony from Hur on 12 March, two unnamed people familiar with the plans told the Associated Press on Thursday. The White House declined to comment on the plans.The committee has spearheaded much of the House GOP’s investigations into Biden, including the effort to impeach him. While that effort has floundered, Republicans want to hear from Hur after his report last week offered an unflattering assessment of Biden’s competency and age.Hur’s report concluded that criminal charges would not be warranted against Biden in relation to wrongly retaining classified material.But he elaborated by going on to describe vividly the president’s memory recall as vague and having “significant limitations”, while citing the possibility that Biden would present himself to a jury as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.Biden welcomed the fact that no charges were justified – even if he was out of office – but angrily pushed back on comments about his mental acuity and said his memory is fine, while allies slammed Hur’s focus on that as a “partisan hit job”.Hur was appointed under Donald Trump to be the US attorney in Maryland.Meanwhile, on Thursday, Politico reported that White House counsel Ed Siskel wrote to US attorney general Merrick Garland accusing Hur of “openly, obviously and blatantly” violating the Department of Justice’s policies by including his ad hominem negative conjecture alongside his legal conclusion about the president’s actions.Siskel wrote of Hur’s report, Politico reported, with a link to the letter, that: “We object to the multiple denigrating statements about President Biden’s memory which violate longstanding DOJ practice and policy. The Special Counsel can certainly and properly note that the President lacked memory of a specific fact or series of events. But his report goes further to include allegations that the President has a failing memory in a general sense, an allegation that has no law enforcement purpose.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe letter was one of several Biden’s lawyers sent before the report was published, pushing back and also comparing Hur’s tactic to that of James Comey in 2016. The then FBI director had investigated Hillary Clinton over her use of private email in office as secretary of state. Declining to indict, Comey chose instead to castigate Clinton’s character just before the 2016 election, where Donald Trump beat her and was later deemed by the department watchdog to have violated protocol.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Trump prosecutor Fani Willis tells misconduct hearing: ‘I’m not on trial. These people are on trial for stealing an election’ – as it happened

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      In one furious outburst, Fani Willis is angrily pushing back at what she says are personal attacks on her and Nathan Wade, and says opposing attorneys should focus their attention elsewhere.Asked if she objected to records of flights she took with Wade being demanded, she said:
      I object to you getting records. You’ve been intrusive into people’s personal lives. You’re confused. You think I’m on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020. I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial.
      Willis is also defending Wade’s character, saying they are “good friends”.The judge has ordered another short break.We’re closing the US politics blog now after what was an extraordinary day, on two fronts, in the various legal cases against Donald Trump.
      In Georgia, the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis gave testimony in a fiery first day of a misconduct hearing that could see her removed from the election interference case against the former president. “I’m not on trial here,” she insisted in one of many angry exchanges over her affair with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
      Willis tussled with Trump lawyer Steve Sadow over the “tough conversation” she had with Nathan Wade ending their relationship and, crucially, when it occurred. Telling Sadow “you don’t have to yell at me,” Willis said their relationship was over before she indicted Trump last August.
      Willis insisted she paid Wade back for money he spent on two cruises and other trips he took with her in 2022 and early 2023.
      Willis accused Ashleigh Merchant, a lawyer for another Trump co-defendant, of telling lies about her in another heated exchange.
      Wade also took the stand, confirming their relationship ended last summer.
      Robin Yeartie, a former friend of Willis who worked in her office, testified the relationship began before Wade was hired.
      In New York, a judge set a 25 March start date for Trump’s trial on charges he made illegal hush-money payments to adult movie star Stormy Daniels, and Playboy model Karen McDougal.
      The two stories dominated the day.Also today:Join us again tomorrow, when we’ll have more from the second day of the Fani Willis misconduct hearing.A fiery first day of the misconduct case against Fani Willis, in which a judge will decide if the Fulton county district attorney will be disqualified from prosecuting the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump, has just wrapped up for the day.The final exchange was Harry MacDougald, lawyer for Trump co-defendant Jeffrey Clark, asking Willis about any financial gifts above $100 she received from Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she hired for the case, and with whom she had a romantic relationship.Willis says she never received any, other than him paying for dinner. She says she reimbursed him for everything, and pushed back when McDougald said there was nothing to prove she had withdrawn any cash to do so.“That’s not accurate,” Willis replied.It was a tamer exchange than those that preceded it. In one particularly hostile moment, Willis accused an attorney of repeatedly lying about her, and in another furiously exclaimed: “I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial.”Judge McAfee has told all parties to reconvene at 9am ET on Friday. It’s been quite a day.Steve Sadow’s questioning of Fani Willis has now concluded, and the judge overseeing the misconduct hearing, Scott McAfee, says there’s time for a few more questions before he wraps the hearing up for the day.Next up is Allyn Stockton, lawyer for Trump’s co-defendant and former attorney Rudy Giuliani, who opened with questions about travel Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade might have made together, including trips to Washington DC that Willis has already denied took place.Next, he’s wondering about Willis’s hiring practices and contract-issuing procedures as Fulton county district attorney.It’s not yet clear where he’s going with it, but he seems to be suggesting there might be something improper about the status of employment of two of Wade’s colleagues who reportedly did work for her Willis’s office.Steve Sadow and Fani Willis are now tussling over the “tough conversation” she had with Nathan Wade ending their relationship and, crucially, when it occurred.“The physical relationship was over pre-indictment,” Willis aid, referring to the criminal election interference charges she brought, aided by special prosecutor Wade, against Donald Trump in Georgia in August 2023.But she said women and men “think differently” about what might constitute the end of a relationship. She also said there was a good deal of tension in her relationship with Wade towards the end:
      He told me one time only thing a woman can do for him is make him a sandwich. We would have brutal arguments about the fact that I am your equal.
      I don’t need anything from a man. A man is not a plan. A man is a companion. And so there was tension always in our relationship, which is why I always gave him his money back.
      I don’t need anybody to foot my bills. The only man who’s ever footed my bills completely is my daddy.
      Sadow tried again. “The romantic relationship ended before the indictment was returned. Yes or no?” he said.“To a man, yes,” Willis replied.Steve Sadow, an attorney for Donald Trump, is next to question Fani Willis, and their exchanges are even more hostile than those that preceded them.“You don’t have to yell at me. I’m able to understand. So I would ask you to not yell at me,” Willis replied when Sadow asked a question about her living arrangements during the period she was having a relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.Willis is also repeatedly claiming the phrasing of Sadow’s questions is “inaccurate”, as is definition of “romantic” to describe her relationship with Wade.“A romantic relationship doesn’t necessarily have to be just sex. It can be dating, it can be holding hands. It can be any of those things that one might call romantic. I’m asking you whether or not prior to November 1st 2021 there was a romantic relationship with Mr Wade,” Sadow said.Willis replied: “I do not consider our relationship to have become romantic until early 2022 … sometime between February and April.”Almost inevitably, Donald Trump has now weighed in with an emailed attack on Fani Willis, and almost as inevitably it’s a fundraising appeal from his campaign, which is clearly watching today’s courtroom drama closely:
      Fani Willis was responsible for taking my mugshot! First she coordinated with the Biden White House to take me down! Then she hired her lover to go after me and paid him with taxpayer dollars,” an email to supporters says, repeating numerous unverified allegations.
      But now, right now, her corruption is being broadcast live to the whole world. I told you she’s corrupt as hell.”
      The email concludes with the oft-heard claim of a “witch-hunt” and a request to “patriots” to chip in to defeat Willis.Ashleigh Merchant, the attorney questioning Fani Willis, is asking why she chose to run for district attorney, citing a claim that Willis said she didn’t want to be “finally effed-up again”.It appears relevant because Donald Trump has claimed Willis ran for the office because she was out to get him.Willis says she felt that with her experience she was “the appropriate person” for what was a tough job:
      It was a huge sacrifice to be district attorney in Fulton County. I was doing just fine. I had a municipal court judgeship that was paying me 100 something thousand a year, and we got to show up twice a week … [the] easiest thing I’ve ever done in life.
      I also had private clients that were paying me to represent them, so I was able to have a law practice and raise two daughters by myself. They were times in life where things were hard.
      So I was telling people I don’t really want to for DA. I’m in a good position right now, I got this easy job that I enjoy being the chief judge of the city of South Fulton, making money at the law firm, and I’m not sure that I want to make the sacrifice.
      Eventually, I prayed. I think that I was the appropriate person.
      Merchant’s questioning of Willis has now concluded.Judge Scott McAfee says the heated atmosphere in the courtroom needs to cool down, and ordered a short break.When the session resumed, with Fani Willis still on the stand, he admonished all parties to respect the decorum of the court.Here’s my colleague Sam Levine’s latest take on this afternoon’s fiery proceedings:In her time on the stand, Fani Willis has twice sought to remind the audience about the stakes of the case. At issue isn’t her relationship with Wade, but democracy. “Ms Merchant’s interests are contrary to democracy your honor, not to mine,” she said at one point.In a heated exchange later she said “You’re confused… I’m not on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020.”Willis’s testimony so far has sought to explain some of the biggest questions from Wade’s testimony this morning.Explaining why she repaid Wade in cash for travel, Willis explained that she has always kept significant amounts of cash wherever she lays her head. She took from that stash to repay Wade. She has also been blunter about calling out “lies” in motions seeking to disqualify her.By way of explanation, Ashleigh Merchant, mentioned above, is the attorney currently involved in the back-and-forth with Willis on the stand. She represents Michael Roman, one of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the election interference case that Willis is prosecuting.In one furious outburst, Fani Willis is angrily pushing back at what she says are personal attacks on her and Nathan Wade, and says opposing attorneys should focus their attention elsewhere.Asked if she objected to records of flights she took with Wade being demanded, she said:
      I object to you getting records. You’ve been intrusive into people’s personal lives. You’re confused. You think I’m on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020. I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial.
      Willis is also defending Wade’s character, saying they are “good friends”.The judge has ordered another short break.There were only a handful of trips together with Nathan Wade, Fani Willis is now telling the court:
      We went to Aruba, I consider that one trip. On New Year’s Eve, we went on a cruise to the Bahamas. That’s the second trip.
      We went to Belize. That was my trip, that was, you know, his 50th [birthday] and then Napa Valley. We went around May. I don’t know the dates, but it seems to me like it was close to Mother’s Day.
      And those are the only trips.
      Fani Willis is talking about two cruises out of Miami that she took with Nathan Wade, one in October 2022.She says Wade booked and paid for the first one, but she reimbursed him “whatever it was”:
      He is the one that would book the travel. But we need to be clear when we’re talking about just because he’s booked it doesn’t mean I consider him ever having taken me any place.
      He paid for the cruise and the fights… whatever he told me it was, I gave him the money back.
      She was asked where the cash came from:
      I am sure that the source of the money is always the work sweat and tears of me.
      For many, many years, I have kept money in my house… on my worst day probably only $500 or $1,000. And my best days, I probably had $15,000 in my house, cash.
      There’s always going to be cash in my house or wherever I’m laying my head.
      But Willis said she never paid Wade more than $2,500 in any one payment.The Guardian’s Sam Levine is tweeting from the courtroom about Fani Willis’s testimony.The Fulton county district attorney is angry about “lies” told her earlier in the case, including by her former friend Robin Yeartie, who testified today that a relationship between Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade began before she hired him to work on Donald Trump’s election interference case.She’s being asked about her dealings with Yeartie, and vacations she allegedly took with Wade.Fani Willis said she was “very anxious” to testify today, and ran from her office to get to the courtroom when she heard special prosecutor Nathan Wade’s testimony had concluded.She said she had some “choice words” about the motion to disqualify her from Donald Trump’s election interference case but denies she had any substantive conversation with Wade, or anybody else about it:
      I would not have. I don’t believe I’ve had any conversation with him that is substantive related to this.
      Willis has adopted a defensive, verging on aggressive stance, and says she takes exception to allegations she slept with Wade the first day she met him, at a conference:
      Your motion tried to implicate I slept with him at that conference, which I find to be extremely offensive. Mr Wade was my teacher.
      It’s highly offensive when they replicate that you slept with somebody the first day you met with them, and I take exception to this.
      Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis has just taken the stand in the election interference case in Georgia.Almost as soon as she sat down, the judge called a five-minute break for certain documents to be copied and distributed.She’ll be testifying soon about the nature of her relationship with, and cash payments to special prosecutor Nathan Wade, who wrapped up his lengthy period of testimony just now.Stick with us…Rumours that Russia is planning to deploy nuclear weapons in space have been dampened down by experts who say that while such technology is possible, there is no need to push the panic button.The furore kicked off on Wednesday when the head of the US House of Representatives’ intelligence committee, Mike Turner, called for the Biden administration to declassify information on what he called a “serious national security threat”.While Turner gave no further details, it was later reported by news outlets, citing unnamed sources, to involve Russia’s potential deployment of a nuclear anti-satellite weapon in space. The Kremlin dismissed the claim as a “malicious fabrication”.Dr Bleddyn Bowen, an associate professor at the University of Leicester who specialises in outer space international relations and warfare, said the the lack of detail was no reason to panic. “It’s so vague and cryptic, it could be a number of different things. [But] no matter what they are, none of them are a big deal, to be honest. Everyone needs to calm down about this.”Russia is bound by several legal restrictions regarding the use or presence of nuclear weapons in space. Article 4 of the Outer Space treaty (1967) bans nuclear weapons from being put into orbit, installed on celestial bodies or otherwise stationed in outer space, while the New Start treaty aims to reduce the number of deployable nuclear arms. The Partial Nuclear Test Ban treaty (1963) bans nuclear explosions in space.You can read more here.The White House just announced that the US will engage with Russia and allies on the Outer Space treaty and has no intention of violating it.The White House national security spokesman John Kirby is telling reporters gathered in the west wing a little more detail about the “serious national security threat” that emerged into the public eye yesterday.“It’s not an active capability,” Kirby said, after confirming that the threat was related to “an anti-satellite capability that Russia is developing, while adding that “there is no immediate threat to anyone’s safety.”Kirby did not elaborate on reports that the new capability is about Russian plans to deploy nuclear weapons in space.Kirby said Joe Biden has directed a series of actions by the administration, including briefings to congressional leaders and direct diplomatic engagement with Russia about the program.The administration has not permitted more information to be made public yet, the spokesman said.It was a surprise yesterday when the head of the House intelligence committee, Mike Turner, called for the Biden administration to declassify information on what he called a “serious national security threat”.The emerging Russian system can’t directly cause “physical destruction” on Earth, Kirby just said.The White House media briefing is underway. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre opens by lamenting the mass shooting in Kansas City, Missouri, yesterday.Gunfire erupted towards the end of the victory parade for the Kansas City Chiefs football team, after they won the Super Bowl last weekend.She repeated the White House’s call for the US Congress to ban assault weapons for the general public.Joe Biden has frequently called for such a ban during his presidency, so far to no avail. More

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      Arizona Republican who resisted pro-Trump pressure in 2020 to stand down

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      A Republican elected official in Arizona who protected the vote and withstood a barrage of pressure and threats in 2020 from within his own party to sway the election toward Trump announced on Thursday that he will not seek re-election.Clint Hickman, a supervisor in Maricopa county, the state’s largest county that includes Phoenix, faced death threats for doing his job to confirm the county’s vote totals in 2020, when the state narrowly chose Joe Biden. State Republicans then initiated a sham “audit” of the county’s results, a costly hand count that took months only to conclude that Biden did indeed win.In a statement on Thursday, Hickman cited his family and the desire to spend more time with them as a reason for not running again, the Washington Post first reported.“My family has been gracious and unselfish in supporting me as I’ve campaigned, served, held town halls and breakfasts with constituents, been part of early morning and late-night meetings about county business, made decisions that brought significant attention and had profound impact – all things that come with public service,” he wrote. “I’m proud of this period of my life, but I want more time with my family.”Hickman, who first took office in 2013, will still be in office when the county canvasses the 2024 vote, with his term ending in early 2025. The Maricopa board is dominated by Republicans, with four of the five members affiliated with the GOP.One of the people who threatened Hickman, an Iowa man named Mark Rissi, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison over a threat he made to Hickman and to the state’s attorney general.Rissi had left a voicemail for Hickman in September 2021, telling the supervisor: “When we come to lynch your stupid lying Commie [expletive], you’ll remember that you lied on the [expletive] Bible, you piece of [expletive]. You’re gonna die, you piece of [expletive]. We’re going to hang you. We’re going to hang you.”During a sentencing hearing for Rissi, Hickman shared how protesters came to his house in 2020, while his wife and children were home, Votebeat reported.Elections officials across the country have seen ongoing threats and harassment since the 2020 election. Many of them have left their jobs or been run out by those who believe the election was stolen.In Maricopa county, the threats have not subsided since 2020. In the 2022 midterms, election workers received daily messages that called them names and alluded to their demise. Other county officials have seen their families threatened, with the lead election attorney arming himself and getting body armor for his family after a threat against his children. Bill Gates, another Republican supervisor who said the endless threats gave him post-traumatic stress, is also not running for re-election. More

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene claims ‘bullshit’ as expert says Covid vaccine saved 14m lives

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      Responding to an expert’s statement that “about 3.2 million” American lives have been saved by vaccines against Covid, with “over 14 million lives” saved globally, the far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene said: “I’m not a doctor, but I have a PhD in recognising bullshit when I hear it.”On Capitol Hill on Thursday, Greene attended a hearing staged by the House oversight select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic.The expert Greene responded to, Dr Peter Marks, the director of biologics evaluation and research at the Food and Drug Administration, also described how at the height of the pandemic in the US, “about 3,300 [people], about a World Trade Center disaster a day”, were dying of Covid-19, contributing to a death toll of more than 1.1m.Marks later apologised to viewers, after Greene claimed children should not be given Covid vaccines.Greene, from Georgia, is a former CrossFit gym owner, conspiracy theorist and controversialist who entered Congress in 2021 and has assumed an influential position in a House Republican caucus controlled by the far right.Touting herself as a possible vice-presidential pick for Donald Trump, she is set to act as a manager in the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, a process Greene drove in the House.Speaking after Marks answered questions from the Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin, Greene first dismissed the doctor’s comments as “bullshit”.Then she used her allotted five minutes to deliver rambling remarks about “all kinds of injuries, miscarriages, heart attacks, myocarditis, permanent disability, neurological problems” that she said had arisen from “people being forced to take vaccines”.“There’s been thousands of peer-reviewed medical studies, thousands of them studying vaccine injuries,” Greene said. “They are real. People are dying.“People are having heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, and many other countries are dropping the Covid-19 vaccine and saying we shouldn’t give them to children. It’s time to be honest about the vaccine-injured and we need to stop allowing these Covid-19 vaccines to be given out to children.”The next speaker, the California Democrat Robert Garcia, said: “I’m sorry you all had to go through that. That was a lot of conspiracy theories and wild accusations, which we know have been debunked by medical science. We should be clear that vaccines work and have saved lives, and have saved millions of lives in this country.”Garcia displayed blow-ups of tweets and comments in which Greene has spread conspiracy theories and misinformation including comparing pandemic public health rules to the Holocaust, encouraging parents to deny Covid vaccines to children and claiming vaccines contribute to an increase in “turbo cancers”.As Greene indicated her displeasure, Garcia asked Dr Marks to “clarify once again for the American people, do the Covid vaccines cause ‘turbo cancers’?”“I’m a haematologist and oncologist that’s board certified,” Marks said. “I don’t know what a ‘turbo cancer’ is. It was a term that was used first in a paper on mouse experiments, describing an inflammatory response. We have not detected any increase in cancers with the Covid-19 vaccines.”As Garcia began to speak, Marks interjected.“May I just add something here,” he said. “I do need to apologise to the thousand or so parents of children under four years of age who have died of Covid-19, who were unvaccinated. Because there were deaths and there continue to be deaths among children, and that is the reason why they need to get vaccinated. Thank you.” More