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      Don’t be fooled by January 6 – Mike Pence is still an absolute coward | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Three things sum up the essence of Mike Pence, the former vice-president of the US: the first is that he reportedly calls his wife “Mother”. He has denied this, but he is creepy enough that the rumours have never been definitively refuted. The second is that he refuses to eat a meal alone with any woman who isn’t his wife. The third – which may be linked to the first two items – is that he doesn’t have a chance in hell of becoming president.Ever since announcing his campaign for the 2024 nomination, Pence has been polling in the single digits. But you don’t need to look at the polls to realise that the 64-year-old’s chance of being the Republican nominee, let alone the next president of the US, are nonexistent – you just need to look at him. It may be a cliche, but passing the “would I have a beer with them?” test is still an important component of getting elected as president. Vibes matter. And Pence? He has all the vibes of a resurrected corpse of a 17th-century Puritan minister.He has the politics of one as well. Pence, who is an evangelical Christian, is a reactionary zealot who spent his vice-presidency kowtowing to Donald Trump. He is the most anti-abortion mainstream presidential hopeful out there, supporting a federal ban on abortions at just six weeks and a ban on abortion even when pregnancies aren’t viable. He has spent his political career fighting to undermine LGBTQ+ rights and once argued that homosexuality was “learned behaviour”. He has downplayed the climate crisis and wants to ramp up fossil fuel use.The good news is that Pence will never be president. The bad news is, rather than being a genuine presidential run, his campaign feels like a rehabilitation tour. One that seems to be working. And why wouldn’t it? There is nothing that certain factions of the US media seem to love more than whitewashing the reputations of odious politicians. Look at George W Bush: he has gone from being an accused war criminal to being portrayed as a lovable grandpa and latter-day hero. In March, for example, on the 20th anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq, the New York Times published a piece about all the overlooked good stuff that Bush did, with the headline “In This Story, George W Bush Is the Hero.” It was a fascinating way to mark the anniversary of a war that displaced approximately 9 million people, directly killed at least 300,000 civilians, destabilised the Middle East, and unleashed devastating environmental contamination that is causing birth defects in Iraqi children born long after Bush announced that his mission had been accomplished.Pence doesn’t even need to wait 20 years for the “hero” treatment to begin. After all, he is the guy that, during the Capitol insurrection on 6 January 2021, bravely told Trump: “Look, mate, I’m not sure all the votes for Joe Biden were fake. I don’t think you did win the election.” During his appearance at the Iowa state fair last week, Pence played up the image of himself as the saviour of US democracy and a lot of the media seemed to buy into it. “Pence is having a moment. It’s all about Trump and Jan 6,” a Politico headline read. “In Iowa, Mike Pence delivers a powerful message against Trump,” a Washington Post piece opined.I am glad that Pence had the decency not to try to help Trump overturn the results of the 2020 election. But, let’s be clear, the fact that he refused to subvert democracy doesn’t make him a hero; it just means he did the bare minimum. One of the many pernicious legacies of the Trump era is how low he has set the bar for everyone else.Even so, Pence cannot seem to find it in himself to properly stand up to Trump or his rabid supporters. In an interview with NBC over the weekend, Pence dodged questions about whether he considers himself a Maga Republican. Trump supporters wanted Pence hanged over his refusal to overturn the election and he still can’t denounce them!Pence’s recent appearances are a profile in cowardice. He is clearly watching where the wind blows and if Trump seems to have a shot at another term I am sure we will see Pence grovelling at his feet. If Trump’s fortunes fade, then I’m sure Pence will suddenly become a lot more vociferous about his disgust at the Maga crowds. The sad thing is that there are plenty of people out there who will lap his contrition act right up. More

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      Georgia grand jury indictment: what we know so far in Trump case

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      A grand jury in Georgia has issued an indictment accusing the Donald Trump of efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
      Prosecutors brought 11 counts against Trump and his associates, including forgery and racketeering, which is used to target members of organized crime groups.
      Prosecutors charged 18 other people, including Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, and lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman.
      The Trump campaign has responded to the indictment, saying, “President Trump will continue to power through this unprecedented abuse of power”.
      A news conference featuring district attorney Fani T Willis is expected to take place after the indictment is released.
      The court briefly posted a document on its website earlier on Monday listing several felony charges against Trump, but quickly removed it without explanation. Willis’s office said at the time no charges had been filed and declined further comment.
      Over the course of a two-year investigation, Willis has examined Trump’s alleged efforts to pressure state leaders to reverse his 11,000-vote loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the state and organise a slate of illegitimate electors to undermine the process of formalising Biden’s victory. She has also looked into an alleged attempt by Trump’s allies to manipulate voting equipment in rural Coffee county.
      Trump has denied any wrongdoing and accuses Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis, an elected Democrat, of being politically motivated.
      Trump, 77, has been criminally indicted three times so far this year, including once by US special counsel Jack Smith on charges of trying to overturn his election defeat. He has long dismissed the many investigations, including two impeachments, he has faced in his years in politics as a politically motivated “witch-hunt”. More

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      Alabama Republicans refuse to create second majority-Black district

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      Alabama Republicans on Monday defended their decision not to create a second majority-Black district in a hearing before a panel of federal judges over the state’s redrawn congressional maps.State Republicans continue to resist court orders, including from the supreme court in June, to amend the congressional maps to give Black voters increased political power and representation.Lawyers for voters called Alabama’s plan, which maintains one majority-Black district, discriminatory. Abha Khanna, an attorney representing one group of plaintiffs in the case, said Alabama chose “defiance over compliance”.“Alabama has chosen instead to thumb its nose at this court and to thumb its nose at the nation’s highest court and to thumb its nose at its own Black citizens,” Khanna said.The three-judge panel, which blocked the use of the state’s old map last year, will decide whether to let Alabama’s new districts go forward or step in and draw new congressional districts for the state. The results of the extended court battle could also determine whether Democrats pick up another seat in Congress, where Republicans currently hold a slim majority.In a surprise June decision, the supreme court upheld the panel’s earlier finding that the state’s then map – which had one Black-majority district out of seven in a state where more than one in four residents is Black – likely violated the federal Voting Rights Act.In response to the ruling, Alabama Republicans boosted the percentage of Black voters in the majority-white second congressional district, now represented by Republican representative Barry Moore, from about 30% to 39.9%, failing to give Black voters a majority which would allow them to elect their candidate of choice.A lawyer for the state accused plaintiffs of seeking a “racial gerrymander” over traditional guidelines for drawing districts, such as keeping districts compact and keeping communities of interest together.“It’s unlawful to enforce proportionality over traditional redistricting principles,” Edmund LaCour, Alabama’s solicitor general, told the three-judge panel.Alabama claims the new plan complies with the Voting Rights Act. State leaders are hoping the panel will accept their proposal or that the state will prevail in a second round of appeals to the supreme court.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe judges did not indicate how quickly they will rule.The high-stakes hearing drew a large number of spectators to the federal courthouse in Birmingham where an overflow room was opened to accommodate the large crowd. Plaintiffs in the supreme court case attended with many wearing T-shirts printed with their proposed map which would have two majority-Black districts.“Alabama’s latest congressional map is a continuation of the state’s sordid history of defying court orders intended to protect the rights of Black voters,” former US attorney general Eric Holder, chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement. More

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      Election-interference charges loom for Trump as docket posted then removed

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      The indictment of Donald Trump over his attempted election subversion in Georgia loomed closer on Monday amid an apparent false alarm about charges being filed and a series of angry statements from the former president punctuating a day of prosecution presentations in court.At about midday, a two-page docket report posted to the Fulton county court website indicated charges against Trump including racketeering, conspiracy and false statements. The appearance of the report set off a flurry of news media activity, but then the document vanished.A spokesperson for the district attorney said reports “that those charges were filed [are] inaccurate. Beyond that we cannot comment.”Trump, 77, already faces 78 criminal charges in three other indictments: over hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, his retention of classified documents and his election subversion at the federal level.Despite such unprecedented legal jeopardy, Trump dominates Republican primary polling as the first televised debate nears at the end of this month.Lawyers for Trump have mounted a free speech defense to charges over election subversion. On Monday, Trump was characteristically free with his speech.Using his Truth Social media platform, he lashed out at his perceived persecutors, in one instance appearing to attempt to intimidate a witness against him.“I am reading reports that failed former Lt Governor of Georgia, Jeff Duncan, will be testifying before the Fulton county grand jury,” Trump wrote, misspelling the first name of Geoff Duncan, a Republican witness who said he was due to appear before the grand jury on Tuesday.“He shouldn’t. I barely know him but he was, right from the beginning of this witch hunt, a nasty disaster for those looking into the election fraud that took place in Georgia.”Experts agree that in Trump’s conclusive 2020 defeat by Joe Biden there was no widespread electoral fraud in Georgia or any other state. The federal indictment secured by the special counsel Jack Smith this month contained extensive evidence that Trump was repeatedly told as much but advanced his lie regardless.In Atlanta on Monday, prosecutors began presenting to a grand jury.A former Democratic state senator, Jen Jordan, told reporters as she left the Fulton county courthouse she was questioned for about 40 minutes. News outlets reported that a former Democratic state representative, Bee Nguyen, and Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the office of the Georgia secretary of state, were seen arriving too.For two and a half years, the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has been investigating Trump’s attempt to overturn his narrow loss in Georgia. Barriers and street closures around the courthouse in downtown Atlanta, and statements made by Willis, indicated that indictments could come this week.Nguyen and Jordan attended state legislative hearings in December 2020, during which the former New York mayor turned Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and other aides made false claims of widespread fraud in Georgia.The Trump lawyer John Eastman appeared during at least one of those hearings, saying the election had not been held in compliance with Georgia law and lawmakers should appoint a new slate of electors.Sterling and the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, pushed back against allegations of widespread problems. Both are Republicans.On 2 January 2021, Trump called Raffensperger to say officials should help “find” the votes he needed to beat Biden. The release of a recording of that call prompted Willis to open her investigation.In his social media posts on Monday, Trump said: “Would somebody please tell the Fulton county grand jury that I did not tamper with the election. The people that tampered with it were the ones who rigged it.” He also abused the DA as “Phony Fani Willis” and said she “wants desperately” to indict him.Citing unnamed sources briefed on the matter, the Guardian has reported that Willis is set to announce charges this week against more than a dozen defendants, including crimes related to election law and a racketeering charge, the latter under a statute commonly used to fight organised crime.Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Donald Trump braced for fourth criminal indictment – US politics live

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      From 3h agoGood morning, US politics blog readers. The Fulton county district attorney investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia is expected to seek multiple charges against more than a dozen defendants, including the former president, this week.The timeline for when the district attorney, Fani Willis, would present evidence to a grand jury came into sharper relief over the weekend after prosecutors summoned the former Georgia lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan, and reporter George Chidi to testify on Tuesday.The presentation is expected to take two days, to a grand jury that meets Mondays and Tuesdays. In Georgia, it is typical for prosecutors to ask a grand jury to return indictments the same day. The notifications are the clearest indication that the prosecutors intend to charge the former president this week.Prosecutors have identified roughly seven statutes of the Georgia state criminal code – including a racketeering charge, election law crimes as well as other non-election law crimes – with which to charge more than a dozen defendants in a sprawling indictment, the Guardian reported today, citing sources.Here’s what else we’re watching today:
      10.30am Eastern time: President Joe Biden will depart Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, for the White House.
      1pm: Biden and vice president Kamala Harris will have lunch.
      3pm. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will brief the press.
      The House and Senate are out.
      Donald Trump appeared to warn former Georgia lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan, against testifying before the Fulton County grand jury in the state’s 2020 election investigation.“I am reading reports that failed former Lt. Governor of Georgia, Jeff Duncan, will be testifying before the Fulton County Grand Jury,” Trump posted on Truth Social today.Trump added:
      He shouldn’t. I barely know him but he was, right from the beginning of this Witch Hunt, a nasty disaster for those looking into the Election Fraud that took place in Georgia.
      His post came days after the US district judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing Trump’s January 6 case in Washington DC, warned against making “inflammatory statements” that could intimidate witnesses in that trial.Duncan confirmed he had been asked to testify before the grand jury on Tuesday hearing evidence of alleged meddling in the 2020 presidential election.“Republicans should never let honesty be mistaken for weakness,” Duncan tweeted.The US will send Ukraine a new military aid package worth around $200m, secretary of state Antony Blinken announced.The latest security aid package includes air defense munitions, artillery rounds, anti-armor capabilities, and additional mine-clearing equipment, according to the statement.For more updates on Russia’s war in Ukraine, please follow our live blog. After five years, the US attorney pursuing Hunter Biden has only been able to file tax and unlawful gun possession charges – and that shouldn’t change just because the prosecutor has been named special counsel in the case, the lawyer for the president’s son has said.“If anything changes from his conclusion … the question [that] should be asked [is] what infected the process that was not the facts and the law?” Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. Lowell also said: “There’s no new evidence to be found.“Only thing that will change is the scrutiny on some of the charges.”Lowell’s remarks came after the US attorney in Delaware who has been investigating Hunter Biden’s business dealings, David Weiss, received an appointment on Thursday to become special counsel over the case.The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, has said Weiss told him days earlier that “in his judgment, his investigation [had] reached a stage at which he should continue his work as a special counsel, and he asked to be appointed”. Garland added that he granted the request of Weiss – who was appointed to his post by Joe Biden’s presidential successor Donald Trump – having concluded that it was “in the public interest” to do so.Yet Garland’s justification did little to dampen a political firestorm in Washington DC. Weiss’s probe into Biden’s son is set to continue on a track that is parallel to special counsel investigations into Trump – the Republican frontrunner to challenge Biden in the 2024 race for the White House – which have produced a multitude of criminal charges against him.Democratic presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr’s campaign on Sunday evening tried to walk back on comments he made earlier in the day in support of a nationwide abortion restriction after the first three months of pregnancy.In an interview at the Iowa State Fair, Kennedy told NBC News that he believes “a decision to abort a child should be up to the women during the first three months of life”.Asked if he would sign a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks or 21 weeks of pregnancy if he were elected president, he said “yes, three months”.
      Once a child is viable, outside the womb, I think then the state has an interest in protecting the child.
      But in a later statement, Kennedy’s campaign team said he had “misunderstood” the reporter’s questions, citing a “crowded” and “noisy” exhibit hall at the fair.The statement continued:
      Mr Kennedy’s position on abortion is that it is always the woman’s right to choose. He does not support legislation banning abortion.
      In response, NBC reporter Ali Vitali shared a transcript of the full exchange and said she asked her questions multiple times to make sure the presidential candidate understood the subject.Twice impeached and now arrested and indicted three times. Donald Trump faces serious criminal charges in New York, Florida and Washington over a hush-money scheme during the 2016 election, his alleged mishandling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.As Trump prepares for those cases to go to trial, the former president is simultaneously reeling from a verdict that found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation toward writer E Jean Carroll. A New York jury awarded Carroll, who accused Trump of assaulting her in 1996, $5m in damages.And more criminal charges could be on the way for Trump in Georgia as early as this week.Here is where each case against Trump stands:Prosecutors investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia have gathered evidence directly connecting members of the former president’s legal team to the voting system breach in Coffee County, according to a report.Prosecutors have taken a special interest in the breach of voting machines in Coffee county by Trump allies because of the brazen nature of the operation and the possibility that Trump was aware that his allies intended to covertly gain access to the machines.In a series of particularly notable incidents, forensics experts hired by Trump allies copied data from virtually every part of the voting system, which is used statewide in Georgia, before uploading them to a password-protected website that could be accessed by 2020 election deniers.Investigators are in possession of text messages and emails indicating the breach was a top-down push by Trump’s team to access sensitive voting software, CNN reported, citing sources.Six days before pro-Trump operatives gained unauthorized access to voting systems, the local elections official who allegedly helped facilitate the breach shared a “written invitation” to attorneys working for Trump, according to the report.Investigators have also probed the involvement of Trump’s then attorneys, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, the sources said.Georgia former state senator Jen Jordan has been spotted at the Fulton County courthouse today, according to NBC.Jordan had been expected to testify before a grand jury as part of the Georgia prosecutor’s investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn his election loss in the state.The indictment that the Fulton County district attorney, Fanis Willis, may bring against Donald Trump as early as this week could be the most sprawling case against the former president in response to his efforts to remain in power after losing the 2020 election.“I think people are going to be surprised at the level of preparedness and the level of sophistication of the prosecution,” Clint Rucker, a former prosecutor in Fulton County, told AP.He added that he was not surprised the investigation has taken so long. While Willis is likely to let her team of prosecutors handle the trial, he said there was no question that she is calling the shots.
      When she says stuff like, ‘We’re ready to go,’ that’s not being braggadocious’. It’s her saying pretty much to anybody who’s interested, ‘Look, we’re ready.’
      The synopsis for a Fani Willis biopic would probably go something like this:
      In Fulton county, the first Black woman to serve as district attorney takes on an unlikely case. Willis grew up attending court with her father, a defense attorney and Black Panther. Now, she sits on the opposite side of the courtroom, hoping to indict a former president who sought to overturn election results and often espoused white supremacist rhetoric while doing so.
      The film’s montage would pull from real life, depicting a determined, unflappable Willis relentlessly poring over documents, leading her team through the long work hours and security risks that come with bringing an indictment against an often inflammatory former president, even as national attention on the case reached a groundswell.We’d watch her face racist threats and unsubstantiated rumors of misconduct, but she’d refuse to back down from the task at hand. She’d advocate for what she believed to be right even when it wasn’t popular. She’d appear in press conferences and in media interviews delivering stern soundbites such as: “Lady justice is actually blind. This is the reality. If you come into my community and you commit a crime, you deserve to be held responsible.”According to some of Willis’s colleagues who have worked with her over more than 20 years, all of this would be an accurate depiction of the district attorney.Defense attorney Brian Steel has known Willis her entire career and says she’s both “extremely honest” and “extremely hard working”. Atlanta NAACP president Gerald Griggs described her as “transparent”, a “zealous advocate for the state” and the “best trial attorney” in the Fulton county district attorney’s office. He said:
      What you see on TV is authentic to who she really is.
      Read the Guardian’s full profile of Willis here. The district attorney’s office in Georgia has spent more than two years investigating whether Donald Trump and his allies interfered in the 2020 election in Georgia, including impaneling a special grand jury that made it more straightforward to compel evidence from recalcitrant witnesses.Unlike in the federal system, grand juries in the state of Georgia need to already be considering an indictment when they subpoena documents and testimony. By using a special grand jury, prosecutors can collect evidence without the pressure of having to file charges.The special grand jury in the Trump investigation heard evidence for roughly seven months and recommended indictments of more than a dozen people including the former president himself, its forewoman strongly suggested in interviews with multiple news outlets.Trump’s legal team sought last month to invalidate the work of the special grand jury and have the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, disqualified from proceedings, but the Georgia supreme court rejected the motion, ruling that Trump lacked “either the facts or the law necessary to mandate Ms Willis’s disqualification”.From his Bedminster club in New Jersey, where Trump spends his summers, the former president unleashed a wave of personal attacks against Willis ahead of what would be his fourth indictment after most recently being charged by special counsel Jack Smith with conspiring to subvert the 2020 election.Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that Willis was “racist” and treated gang members with “kid gloves” – two accusations without any merit, especially given her office last week prosecuted members of the PDE gang in Atlanta with a Rico charge and street gang terrorism.In the weeks after the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump and his allies kicked off an aggressive pressure campaign in an attempt to overturn the election results in six swing states where certified results declared Joe Biden the winner.Nowhere was the effort more acute than in Georgia, which became the consuming focus of the former president and his allies, according to a Washington Post report today. Those close to Trump pushed state officials to identify fraud that would cast Biden’s victory in doubt, it writes.
      In the process, they personally targeted individual election workers with false claims of cheating, unleashing waves of threats, and amplified conspiracy theories about rigged machines that persist today. In the end, after Trump sought to use every lever of power to overturn the results, top state Republicans stood in his way, refusing to buckle under the pressure.
      Some of the most fantastical claims of fraud came directly from Trump and his allies, “who amplified baseless accusations on conservative media and unleashed new waves of outlandish tips from rank-and-file Republicans”.The former president’s accusations also turned election workers in Georgia and other states into targets of harassment and threats.
      They spread false claims that thousands of mail ballots should be discarded because of questionable signatures, that a mother-daughter team of election workers in Atlanta had triple-tallied counterfeit votes, that voting machines had been programmed to flip votes from one candidate to another.
      For the purposes of the Trump case, prosecutors in Georgia will be required to show an “interrelated pattern of activity by and through the [public] office” predicated on at least two “qualifying” or predicate crimes drawn from a list of specific statutes.The prosecutors on the Trump case have developed evidence of a pattern of racketeering activity that could lead to a Rico charge based on predicates of influencing witnesses and computer trespass, the Guardian has previously reported.Among the election law charges that prosecutors have been examining: criminal solicitation to commit election fraud through seeking a public or political officer to fail to perform duties and seeking to destroy, deface or delay the delivery of ballots; and conspiracy to commit election fraud.The prosecutors have also developed evidence for the previously unreported state election law charges of intentional interference with performance of election duties, the people said, as well as general criminal solicitation, which is not part of the Georgia election law statutes.In anticipation of charges against Donald Trump and his allies related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, local law enforcement last week started to increase security around the building that contains the Fulton county district attorney’s office and Georgia superior court, closing off roads and installing temporary barricades.The district attorney, Fani Willis, had instructed most of her staff to work remotely through the first weeks of August as a safety precaution, and the public area inside the building for days has been taken over by deputies from the Fulton county sheriff’s office.Good morning, US politics blog readers. The Fulton county district attorney investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia is expected to seek multiple charges against more than a dozen defendants, including the former president, this week.The timeline for when the district attorney, Fani Willis, would present evidence to a grand jury came into sharper relief over the weekend after prosecutors summoned the former Georgia lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan, and reporter George Chidi to testify on Tuesday.The presentation is expected to take two days, to a grand jury that meets Mondays and Tuesdays. In Georgia, it is typical for prosecutors to ask a grand jury to return indictments the same day. The notifications are the clearest indication that the prosecutors intend to charge the former president this week.Prosecutors have identified roughly seven statutes of the Georgia state criminal code – including a racketeering charge, election law crimes as well as other non-election law crimes – with which to charge more than a dozen defendants in a sprawling indictment, the Guardian reported today, citing sources.Here’s what else we’re watching today:
      10.30am Eastern time: President Joe Biden will depart Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, for the White House.
      1pm: Biden and vice president Kamala Harris will have lunch.
      3pm. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will brief the press.
      The House and Senate are out. More

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      Trump running for 2024 ‘to stay out of jail’, Republican rival says

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      Donald Trump is running for election in 2024 “because he’s trying to stay out of jail”, one of his rivals for the Republican White House nomination said, as legal woes continue to surround the former president.Will Hurd, a former Republican congressman for Texas, offered the sharp rebuke of Trump’s conduct in an interview with CNN, as Chris Christie questioned whether “the guy under indictment in four different cases” can beat the Democratic incumbent Joe Biden.The criticism of Trump, who is comfortably leading in Republican polls, came as several primary candidates – including the former president – have refused to sign a pledge committing to support the ultimate GOP nominee.On Sunday, Hurd was asked about a CNN report that Trump’s legal team was connected to a voting system breach in Georgia in January 2021. CNN reported that prosecutors had found text messages and emails documenting an effort by Trump’s team to gain “unauthorized access to voting systems” in Coffee county.“I think this is an example of how this is not about the first amendment,” Hurd told CNN’s State of the Union while referring to the constitutional protection for political speech. “This is about a president trying to overturn an election and creating a conspiracy.“To me, it’s an indication of how fragile our election system is, and how Donald Trump’s efforts were making us increase our lack of trust in our systems.“And [it is] one more example of why Donald Trump is running for president: because he’s trying to stay out of jail. Because as more of this information comes out and as the American people recognizes the extent of his baggage, they’re getting sick and tired of it.”Speaking to ABC’s This Week show, Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who is running for the GOP nomination, drew attention to the fact that Trump has, so far, been indicted three times, with a pending fourth on state election-related charges in Georgia.“Let me remind the viewers out there: if he’s indicted in Atlanta this week, as we’re anticipating that he will be, we will have the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president out on bail in four different jurisdictions: New York, Miami, Washington, and Atlanta. Four different jurisdictions he’s out on bail,” Christie said, referring to the cities where the combination of federal and state authorities who have obtained charges against Trump are based.“What I think Republican voters have to ask themselves is two things. First is: is he really the guy, under indictment in four different cases given the conduct that he committed, someone who can beat Joe Biden or any other Democrat in November 2024?“And when are we going to stop pretending that this is normal? It is not. It is not acceptable.”The criticism of Trump rolled in as several Republican primary candidates have refused to sign a pledge committing to support the ultimate GOP nominee.Addressing the refusal of some of her party’s candidates to sign the “Beat Biden pledge”, Republican National Committee chairperson Ronna McDaniel has said endorsing pledge is required to participate in the first GOP primary debate next week.Hurd, who is yet to meet the polling and donor threshold to make the debate stage, has repeatedly said he will not sign the pledge.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“My issue is, I’m not going to support Donald Trump,” Hurd told CNN.Indignantly invoking the former president’s slogan, Hurd added: “Donald Trump is not running for president to make America great again. Donald Trump is running for president to stay out of prison.”Candidates must have reached 1% in at least three national polls – or 1% in two national polls and 1% in a poll in an early-voting state – to participate in the upcoming Republican debate. They must also prove they have 40,000 unique donors and then sign the loyalty pledge.Christie, who has met the polling and donor threshold, told ABC the pledge was a “bad idea” and would not commit to signing it.Trump himself has said he will not sign the pledge and has not committed to participating in the 23 August debate.“Why would I sign it?” Trump said in an interview with the rightwing news channel Newsmax last week.“I can name three or four people that I wouldn’t support for president. So right there, there’s a problem.” More

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      ‘People just want change’: political circus at Iowa state fair can’t dispel civic discontent

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      Donald Trump held aloft a pork chop on a stick. Ron DeSantis and children rode bumper cars and a ferris wheel, played carnival games and ate snow cones and ice-cream. Vivek Ramaswamy rapped Lose Yourself by Eminem, Marianne Williamson recalled her days as a cabaret singer and Mike Pence said he was hoping to renew his acquaintance with a cow called Chippy.All the fun of the state fair in Iowa includes an agriculture and livestock show, amusement rides, every fried food imaginable and, every four years, a political circus like no other. Presidential aspirants make the pilgrimage to Des Moines to field questions from voters – including hecklers – and show their ability to speak, dress and eat like Middle America in the state that kicks off the Republican nominating contest in January.But for all the sunshine, the opening weekend of this year’s fair did little to dispel a sense of America as nation sunk in a political depression. It was difficult to find fans of Joe Biden. While Trump drew the biggest crowd, plenty of Iowans said they were eager to move on from the former president. Some of the most passionate and sizeable support was for radical outsiders such as Robert Kennedy Jr and Vivek Ramaswamy, suggesting discontent with the status quo and yearning for disrupters, no matter how unorthodox or outrageous.“I see it everywhere – people just want change,” said Gail Buffington, 62, wearing a white “Kennedy 2024” cap and “RFK Jr for president 2024” T-shirt. “They want this oligarchy to be done with. We saw that with Bernie Sanders in 2015. That was the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen in my life.”But this being Iowa, even populism comes deep fried in nostalgia. The fair, first held in 1854 and now spanning about 445 acres and attracting a million people over 11 days, is a point of pride for a state that often feels flown over and left behind. Homages to the way things used to be are everywhere, from a pipe band in revolutionary-era garb to an early 20th-century barber shop to a diner with old school Coca-Cola signs. Each morning, the national anthem is played, and visitors stand to attention.This is a majority white heartland where Trump’s “Make America great again” message still resonates. On Saturday he swooped in on his “Trump Force One” Boeing 757, stealing the thunder of Florida governor DeSantis. He drew thousands of sweaty, chanting supporters to his stops at a pork tent, baby farm animal exhibit and Steer ‘n’ Stein bar. In a dig at DeSantis, he was joined by about a dozen members of Congress from Florida, including Matt Gaetz, who said darkly: “We know that only through force can we make any change in a corrupt town like Washington DC.”Trump was not alone in trading on the idea that America needs to rediscover its mojo. Several other candidates harked back to the country they grew up in: Republican Nikki Haley recalled her childhood in small town South Carolina. “It was always about faith, family and country,” she told a crowd, citing research that 78% of Americans think their kids will not live as good as a life as they did. “And that’s what I want America to be again. That’s what I want us to get back to.”Kennedy also spoke with gauzy nostalgia about living during the period of great prosperity after the second world war. “When I grew up in the sixties, my uncle [John F Kennedy] was president, we had created the greatest generator of wealth in the history of mankind,” he told a big and enthusiastic crowd at the Des Moines Register newspaper’s political soapbox. “We owned half the wealth on the face of the earth in our country.”These laments for the past pointed to malaise in the present. For Democrats, the choice is between an 80-year-old whose son is the subject of a special counsel investigation, a self-help author with no experience in elected office and a vaccine conspiracy theorist who has won praise from Steve Bannon and other far-right extremists.For Republicans, the runaway leader in the opinion polls is twice impeached and facing 78 criminal counts in three separate court cases. There could be a fourth criminal case filed against him within days.His principal rival is running even further to the right and has become embroiled in a debate over whether slavery had upsides. And Ramaswamy, whose youthful energy and talk of “revolution” could appeal to a new generation, speaks of a climate change agenda “hoax” while voting to drill, frack and burn coal as never before. He also vowed to shut down the Federal Bureau of Investigation.It might be argued that neither party is offering an inspirational optimist in the mould of John F Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. The country is divided and at odds with itself. Many voters are turned off, especially by the prospect of a Biden v Trump rematch.Ginny McKee, 73, a retired special education teacher from Claremont, California, said: “I just wish Trump and Biden would go away. Both of them damaged the presidency or, in Trump’s case, what people did to him damaged the presidency.“I don’t think Biden is running the government. There’s just a whole group and they keep him tethered for fear he might say his views. My husband at home watches Fox News all the time so I’m getting a lot of things that other people don’t see: the blunders and all of the word games and all of that.”Despite the White House pointing to figures that show low unemployment, inflation falling and the best post-coronavirus pandemic recovery of any major industrial nation, negativity about the Biden economy now seems baked in with many voters.Patty Reeve, 68, a retired accountant, said: “He caused the inflation with all the excess spending. He continued to pour money into the economy that went far past the point we needed it, continued to pour money into things on the environment. We’re not ready for electric vehicles. We don’t have the infrastructure. He’s pushed that to no end. Just all of his policies have been wrong and I’m not buying his spin on it.”Dennis Alatorre, 30, a call centre worker, claimed that he was living proof of the president’s failure. “I actually just lost my job because of Biden’s economy. The company that I work for no longer could afford to continue to have my position because they were paying so much in taxes and regulations for work-at-home employees. So my position basically just got eliminated.“It had nothing to do with my performance or anything of that nature. It was simply because they just couldn’t afford to continue to have that position for me anymore. So I can directly relate that the unemployment rate has in fact increased and it’s very apparent just based on the economy that Biden has presented. The cost of gasoline is almost the same price as milk.”Even Biden’s supporters wish that someone else was the party nominee. Kathy Jones, 73, a retired public school teacher from Iowa City, said: “I felt like he has accomplished amazing things and he’s too old. I’m sorry that the Democratic party has not been able to come up with a candidate other than, like, Marianne Williamson, who’s kind of out there, or a conspiracy theorist: Robert Kennedy’s son. That’s disappointing.”On the Republican side, Trump continues to reign despite – or because of – criminal charges widely dismissed here as politically motivated. Some fans wore bright green hats that said “Donald Trump Back to Back Iowa Champ” and bright green T-shirts that declared: “Make Our Farmers Great Again”.Joe Wiederien, 52, said: “He says it straight up and he’s the best president we’ve ever had. He says things as he means it and, for the United States, he puts our people first. He had a good, strong economy built up and safe borders.”But there is a significant chunk of Republicans at the state fair who wish it wasn’t so. John Rusk, who refused to vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020, said: “It looks like it’s a done deal. He’s got his 30%, 40% of diehard followers. The others are all splitting the vote – 2% here, 10% there, 15% there. The other problem is they’re still following Trump’s line. They will not come out and tell the truth that Trump is a traitor and shouldn’t be back in the White House. He’s an insurrectionist.”DeSantis once seemed to provide an alternative, but his struggles to show the kind of down home charm that Iowa expects were laid bare again on Saturday. As he held an event with Iowa governor Kim Reynolds, a plane circled overhead with the taunting message, “Be [likable] Ron!” – reportedly paid for by the Trump campaign. The conversation was also interrupted by LGBTQ+ rights protesters blowing whistles and ringing bells. DeSantis also had to run the gauntlet of pro-Trump hecklers at various stops.Rusk added: “Ron DeSantis might have been all right, except he’s trying to out-Trump Trump and he’s fighting the culture wars. The average middle American that’s not too liberal and not too conservative – the poor people in the middle of the political spectrum who don’t have a voice right now – doesn’t care about the culture wars. It’s all been ginned up by the rightwing press. I don’t care if somebody wants to transition to another sex or gender or whatever. It’s none of my damn business.“As a Republican I’m in a small minority but I’m one of the swing voters in the middle that’s going to keep Trump out.”DeSantis, Haley, Pence and Republican candidate Larry Elder had one more important pilgrimage, passing the aroma of cheese curds, corn dogs, cotton candy, funnel cakes and deep fried pickledawgs to visit the state fair’s 600lb butter cow – an attraction dating back more than a century. Sarah Pratt, 46, who has sculpted the butter cow since 2006, said: “It’s tradition, almost like you have to have a corn dog, ride the giant slide, see the butter cow. It’s like a checklist.”Come the end of the fair, the cooler will be switched off, and the cow will melt down and end up in five-gallon buckets. But for those seeking a hopeful metaphor, Pratt and her twin daughters will sculpt it all over again next year. More

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      Losing Our Religion review: Trump and the crisis of US Christianity

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      Christianity and the “powers that be” have weathered two millennia, their relationship varying by time and place. Pontius Pilate condemned Jesus to the cross. Emperor Constantine converted. Henry VIII broke from Rome and founded the Church of England. In the US, the denominational divides of protestantism helped drive the revolution and provided fuel for the civil war.In his new book, the Rev Russell Moore opens a chapter, “Losing Our Authority: How the Truth Can Save”, with the words “Jesus Saves”, followed by a new historical tableau: January 6 and the threat Donald Trump and the mob posed to democracy and Mike Pence.“That the two messages, a gallows and ‘Jesus Saves’ could coexist is a sign of crisis for American Christianity,” Moore writes.Heading toward the Iowa caucus, Trump runs six points better among white evangelicals than overall. As for the devout Pence, a plurality of white evangelicals view him unfavorably.Moore is mindful of history, and the roles Christianity has played: “Parts of the church were wrong – satanically wrong – on issues of righteousness and justice, such as the Spanish Inquisition and the scourge of human slavery.” He is editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, a publication founded by Billy Graham. Losing Our Religion offers a mixture of lament and hope. In places, its sadness is tinged with anger. In the south, the expression “losing my religion”, popularized by REM in a 1991 song, “conveys the moment when ‘politeness gives way to anger’,” Moore explains.Moore’s public and persistent opposition to the election of Trump set him apart from most white evangelicals and would lead to his departure from the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).“The man on the throne in heaven is a dark-skinned, Aramaic-speaking ‘foreigner’, who is probably not all that impressed by chants of “Make America great again,” Moore wrote in spring 2016. “Regardless of the outcome in November, [Trump’s] campaign is forcing American Christians to grapple with some scary realities that will have implications for years to come.”He was prescient. Graham’s son, Franklin, threatened Americans with God’s wrath if they had the temerity to criticize Trump. At the time, Moore was president of the SBC ethics and religious liberty commission. His politics forced him to choose. He opted for Christ and his convictions. He joined a nondenominational church.His new book is subtitled “An Altar Call for Evangelical America” but it aims for a broader audience. It contains ample references to Scripture, but also to the journalist Tim Alberta, Jonathan Haidt of New York University, Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, and Robert Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute, a liberal group.Of white evangelicals, Moore quotes Jones: “Their greatest temptation will be to wield what remaining political power they have as desperate corrective for their waning cultural influence.” Welcome to the culture wars, and to what Ron Brownstein of the Atlantic has called the coalition of restoration.Against the backdrop of rising Christian nationalism and January 6, Moore reads the writing on the wall. He is troubled by the shrinking gap between Christian nationalism and neo-paganism. “The step before replacing Jesus with Thor is to turn Jesus into Thor,” he observes. Moore found the presence of prayers in “‘Jesus’s name’ right next to a horn-wearing pagan shaman in the well of the evacuated United States Senate” disturbing, but not coincidental.The Magasphere and Twitterverse bolster Moore’s conclusions.“President Trump will be arrested during Lent – a time of suffering and purification for the followers of Jesus Christ,” Joseph McBride, a rightwing lawyer who represents several insurrectionists, tweeted last March. “As Christ was crucified, and then rose again on the third day, so too will Donald Trump.”Caesar as deity. We’ve seen that movie before. McBride, however, did not stop there.Hours later, he tweeted: “JESUS LOVES DONALD TRUMP. JESUS DIED FOR DONALD TRUMP. JESUS LIVES INSIDE DONALD TRUMP. DEAL WITH IT.”Three-in-10 adults in the US, meanwhile, are categorized as religious “nones”. Only 40% of Americans call themselves Protestant. The Wasp ascendancy has yielded to Sunday brunch and walks in the woods. “The Father, Son and Holy Ghost, they took the last train for the coast,” as Don MacLean sang. For some, Trump rallies present a variation of community and communion. A younger generation of evangelicals heads for the door. The numbers tell of a crisis of faith.“We see now young evangelicals walking away from evangelism not because they do not believe what the church teaches, but because they believe the “church itself” does not believe what the church teaches,” Moore laments.Predation, lust and greed are poor calling cards for religion. Unchecked abuse within the Catholic church left deep and lasting scars among those who needed God’s love most. Moore notes the Catholic church’s fall from grace in Ireland and posits that “born-again America” may be experiencing a similar backlash, as a powerful cultural institution lacking “credibility” seeks to “enforce its orthodoxies”.Against this backdrop, Catholicism’s boomlet among younger continental Europeans is noteworthy. Recently, hundreds of thousands converged on Lisbon to hear the Pope. The same demographic helps fuel the resurgence of the Spanish far right. Tethering the cross to the flag retains its appeal.That said, Jerry Falwell Jr’s posturing as Trump-booster and voyeur didn’t exactly jibe with Scripture. The ousted head of Liberty University, son of the founder of the Moral Majority, allegedly paid a pool boy to have sex with his wife as he watched.“What we are seeing now … is in many cases the shucking off of any pretense of hypocrisy for the outright embrace of immorality,” Moore writes.America barrels toward a Biden v Trump rematch. The former president is a professional defendant. The country and its religion sag and shudder. Moore prays for revival, even as he fears nostalgia.
      Losing Our Religion is published in the US by Penguin Random House More