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      ‘We’re ready’: Miami police prepared for Trump arraignment

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      As court officials set up barricades and police tape around the Miami courthouse where Donald Trump is due to be arraigned on Tuesday afternoon, police officials sought to assure local residents they would safely handle any protests.“Make no mistake about it, we’re taking this event extremely seriously, and there’s a potential for things to take a turn for the worse,” said the city’s police chief, Manuel Morales, adding “but that’s not the Miami way.“We’re bringing enough resources to handle crowds, anywhere from 5,000 to 50,000,” he added. “We don’t expect any issues. We’re ready. Ready for it to be over and done.”Miami’s mayor, Francis Suarez, also said he was confident the city’s police will be able to handle the crowds and any protests if they occur as Trump is due to be booked and brought before a judge on federal criminal charges.“I have full faith and confidence our police will have the right action plan and resources in place,” Suarez said during the news conference. “We are prepared for what will happen tomorrow.”Public reaction to Trump’s scheduled arraignment at the Wilkie D Ferguson federal courthouse may be a window into the shifting political character of Miami and Trump’s strong support among Latino Americans.The Associated Press reported that Alex Otaola, a Cuban-born YouTube personality who is running for Miami-Dade county mayor, has rallied followers to show up in support of the former president.“Those of us who believe that America’s salvation only comes if Donald Trump is elected for a second term, we will gather on Tuesday,” Otaola said in a YouTube clip.Trump left Bedminster, New Jersey, where he had played golf at his club there over the weekend, on Monday to fly into Miami airport and stay overnight at his Trump National Doral Miami golf club.According to CBS News, a motorcade protected by Miami-Dade police will escort Trump to the downtown courthouse where he will be handed over to the security of US marshals for his arraignment.“In there you’re going to have City of Miami, probably the chief himself, you’re going to have Miami-Dade county, Secret Service, FBI, the marshals. They’ll all be there to make sure there’s a unified command,” the retired Miami police chief Jorge Colina told the outlet. More

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      There will be no civil war over Trump. Here’s why | Robert Reich

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      The former president of the United States, now running for re-election, assails “the ‘thugs’ from the Department of Injustice”, calls Special Counsel Jack Smith a “deranged lunatic” and casts his prosecutions and his bid for the White House as part of a “final battle” for America.In a Saturday speech to the Georgia Republican party, Trump characterized the entire American justice system as deployed to prevent him from winning the 2024 election.“These people don’t stop and they’re bad and we have to get rid of them. These criminals cannot be rewarded. They must be defeated.”Once again, Trump is demanding that Americans choose sides. But in his deranged mind, this “final battle” is not just against his normal cast of ill-defined villains. It is between those who glorify him and those who detest him.It will be a final battle over … himself.“SEE YOU IN MIAMI ON TUESDAY!!!” he told his followers on Friday night in a Truth Social post, referring to his Tuesday arraignment.It was chilling reminder of his 19 December 2020, tweet, “Be there, will be wild!” – which inspired extremist groups to disrupt the January 6 certification.At the Georgia Republican party convention on Friday night, the Arizona Republican Kari Lake – who will go to Miami to “support” Trump – suggested violence.“If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me and you’re going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me,” Lake exclaimed to roaring cheers and a standing ovation. “Most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA,” the National Rifle Association gun lobby. “That’s not a threat, that’s a public service announcement.”Most Republicans in Congress are once again siding with Trump rather than standing for the rule of law.A few are openly fomenting violence. The Louisiana representative Clay Higgins suggested guerrilla warfare: “This is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. Hold. rPOTUS [a reference to the real president of the United States] has this. Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm.”Most other prominent Republicans – even those seeking the Republican presidential nomination – are criticizing Biden, Merrick Garland and the special counsel Jack Smith for “weaponizing” the justice department.All this advances Trump’s goal of forcing Americans to choose sides over him.Violence is possible, but there will be no civil war.Nations don’t go to war over whether they like or hate specific leaders. They go to war over the ideologies, religions, racism, social classes or economic policies these leaders represent.But Trump represents nothing other than his own grievance with a system that refused him a second term and is now beginning to hold him accountable for violating the law.In addition, the guardrails that protected American democracy after the 2020 election – the courts, state election officials, the military, and the justice department – are stronger than before Trump tested them the first time.Many of those who stormed the Capitol have been tried and convicted. Election-denying candidates were largely defeated in the 2022 midterms. The courts have adamantly backed federal prosecutors.Third, Trump’s advocates are having difficulty defending the charges in the unsealed indictment – that Trump threatened America’s security by illegally holding (and in some cases sharing) documents concerning “United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack”, and then shared a “plan of attack” against Iran.Republicans consider national security the highest and most sacred goal of the republic. A large number have served in the armed forces.Trump’s own attorney general, Bill Barr, said on Fox News Sunday that he was “shocked by the degree of sensitivity of these documents and how many there were, frankly … If even half of it is true, then he’s toast. I mean, it’s a very detailed indictment, and it’s very, very damning. And this idea of presenting Trump as a victim here, a victim of a witch-hunt, is ridiculous.”None of this is cause for complacency. Trump is as loony and dangerous as ever. He has inspired violence before, and he could do it again.But I believe that many who supported him in 2020 are catching on to his lunacy.Trump wants Americans to engage in a “final battle” over his own narcissistic cravings. Instead, he will get a squalid and humiliating last act.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      Republicans censure senator for backing LGBTQ+ rights and gun control

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      The Republican US senator Thom Tillis has been reprimanded by party officials in his home state of North Carolina after his support of gun control and same-sex marriage.More than 1,000 delegates at the North Carolina Republican party’s annual convention voted behind closed doors on Saturday to censure Tillis, a move that does not affect his elected position but signals strong dissatisfaction with him.“We need people who are unwavering in their support for conservative ideals,” the Republican delegate Jim Forster told the Associated Press about censuring Tillis, who has been willing to break with party stances on LGBTQ+ rights, gun control and immigration policy. “His recent actions don’t reflect the party’s shift to the right – in fact, they’re moving in the exact wrong direction.”Tillis, who has held his Senate seat since 2015, does not apologize for his voting record, according to a statement from a spokesperson for his office.The censure against Tillis comes after Republicans in Texas and Wyoming approved similar measures against federal lawmakers who opposed the preferences of party officials in those states.Texas Republicans in March censured party member Tony Gonzales after the congressman voted in favor of gun control and same-sex marriage, which Americans mostly support.Meanwhile, in 2021, Wyoming Republicans censured congresswoman Liz Cheney for voting to impeach Trump before losing her re-election campaign during a primary last year.Tillis was among just 15 Republicans in the Senate who supported the gun control bill that Joe Biden signed into law last year. The legislation expanded background checks for the youngest gun buyers while funding mental health and violence intervention programs, though – according to the non-partisan Gun Violence Archive – it has not prevented the US from recording nearly 300 shootings with four or more victims so far this year.He also voted in favor of legislation which enshrined protections for same-sex and interracial couples. His support for the Respect for Marriage Act came about a decade after he played a pivotal role in the same-sex marriage ban that North Carolina passed in 2012, when he was the speaker of the state’s house of representatives.Tillis also often spoke out against the generally restrictive immigration policies which Donald Trump pursued during his presidency.His voting record on those issues gained him the reputation as one of Capitol Hill’s bipartisan dealmakers. And not every North Carolina Republican agreed with Saturday’s censure.One state senator, Bobby Hanig, said such a divisive action ahead of the 2024 presidential election was unwise.“A mob mentality doesn’t do us any good,” Hanig said. “Senator Tillis does a lot for North Carolina … so why would I want to make him mad?”Another state senator, Jim Burgin, added: “I don’t think we need to be attacking our own. You don’t shoot your own elephants.”The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Kari Lake’s vow to defend Trump with guns threatens democracy, Democrat says

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      The Arizona Republican Kari Lake’s vow of armed resistance over Donald Trump’s indictment for retaining classified records “threatens the very core of our democracy”, an Arizonan Democratic congressman said.Ruben Gallego is running to replace the former Democrat Kyrsten Sinema in the US Senate next year.He said: “I know this language isn’t just hyperbole – it’s dangerous and it threatens the very core of our democracy.”The 38-count federal indictment against Trump was unsealed on Friday. He is due to appear in court in Florida on Tuesday. Jack Smith, the special counsel, told reporters he would “seek a speedy trial”.Trump was already in unprecedented legal jeopardy. He and other Republicans responded to the indictment under the Espionage Act with incendiary rhetoric.Lake, a TV news anchor turned far-right firebrand, lost the election for Arizona governor last year. She continues to insist without evidence her defeat was the result of fraud.Speaking to Georgia Republicans on Friday, she said: “I have a message tonight for [US attorney general] Merrick Garland, and Jack Smith, and Joe Biden. And the guys back there in the fake news media, you should listen up as well, this one’s for you.“If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me, and you’re going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me.“And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA [National Rifle Association]. That’s not a threat – that’s a public service announcement.“We will not let you lay a finger on President Trump. Frankly, now is the time to cling to our guns and our religion.”Lake was speaking in place of Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president who escaped the mob Trump sent to the Capitol on January 6, some of whom chanted about hanging him, to preside over certification of Biden’s election win.Pence is now a candidate for the Republican nomination but like all others he trails Trump by large margins, as the former president ruthlessly capitalises on – and successfully monetises – the various charges against him.Trump faces criminal charges at state level, in New York, over a hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels, and federally, over his retention of classified records and obstruction of moves to secure their return.In a New York civil trial, found liable for sexual assault and defamation against the writer E Jean Carroll, he was ordered to pay $5m.Also expected to be indicted over his election subversion, at state level in Georgia and federally in an investigation also supervised by Smith, Trump denies wrongdoing.According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Lake’s remarks in Columbus on Friday met with a standing ovation.Responding to a reporter, Lake tweeted: “I meant what I said.”Gallego said: “As a marine who went all the way to Iraq to defend this country, our democracy, and our freedoms, I know this language isn’t just hyperbole – it’s dangerous and it threatens the very core of our democracy.”He also said Lake “owes every America-loving Arizonan an apology”, as the state had rejected “her off-the-rails rhetoric that does nothing but sow doubt in our elections”.But Lake remains an eager Trump ally, seen by some as a possible pick for vice-president. On Friday, she said she was “more than willing to fill Mike Pence’s shoes”.Like Trump, who features on a song splicing his voice with those of imprisoned Capitol rioters, Lake has released a single. Its title, 81 Million Votes My Ass, is a reference to Biden’s winning total. More

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      Fears that Republicans’ rhetoric after Trump indictment could spark violence

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      Belligerent and conspiracy-laden rhetoric from high-profile Republican backers of Donald Trump has heightened fears that the former US president’s campaign against his legal troubles could trigger political violence.Fewer than 24 hours after Donald Trump was indicted, Arizona congressman Andy Biggs went on Twitter and used violent language to call for retribution. “We have now reached a war phase,” he said. “An eye for an eye.”Clay Higgins, another Republican congressman from Louisiana, gave militaristic instructions to his followers. “This is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. Hold. rPOTUS has this,” he tweeted, using an abbreviation to refer to Trump as the real president.Higgins added: “Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm. That is all,” he added, using an apparent reference to military-scale maps. (Two days later Higgins tweeted: “Let Trump handle Trump, he’s got this. We use the Constitution as our only weapon. Peace. Hold.”)The statements from the two far-right congressmen – both of whom voted to overturn the 2020 election – underscore the alarming way that violent rhetoric has seeped into mainstream US political discourse in the Republican party especially in the wake of Trump’s indictment.An estimated 12 million adults – 4.4% of the US population – believe violence is justified to return Trump to power, according to a recent survey by the University of Chicago’s Project on Security & Threats (CPOST).“I’ve been reporting on rightwing movements for 20 years. The ‘heat’ is hotter, the blast stronger. And the source more pungent,” said Jeffrey Sharlet, a professor at Dartmouth College and author of The Undertow, a book studying the far right. “The ‘rhetoric’ is specific: while Twitter giggled at what it took to be the ‘word salad’ of Higgins’ statement, those who study militias read it as the call to arms it is.”It is language that has been encouraged by Trump himself since before he was elected but that perhaps peaked around the January 6 attack on the US Capitol as his supporters invaded the building to try and prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.As a candidate in 2016, Trump pledged to cover the legal fees of supporters who assaulted protesters at his rallies. “I’d like to punch him in the face,” he said of one protester at a 2016 rally.On 6 January 2021, Trump used violent language as he encouraged his supporters to descend on the US Capitol to block the certification of the electoral college vote. “We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” he said. What followed was the deadliest assault on the US capitol in American history with five people dying in connection with the attack.There was evidence that Trump’s violent language was inspiring his supporters. On The Donald, a pro-Trump forum, users called for violence in order to restore Trump to the presidency, Rolling Stone reported. “The only way this country ever becomes anything like the Constitution says this country should be is if thousands of traitorous rats are publicly executed,” one user wrote, according to the magazine.A 2020 survey by ABC News found at least 54 criminal cases in which Trump was invoked in connection with violent acts or threats of violence.“What’s happening in the United States is political violence is going from the fringe to the mainstream,” Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago who leads CPOST, told the Guardian earlier this month.Trump allies outside of Washington have also relied on violent language to defend the former president since his most recent indictment for his handling of classified documents after he left the White House.“If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me, and you’re going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me,” Kari Lake, the failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate, said in a speech on Friday to applause. “And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA. That’s not a threat, that’s a public service announcement.”Pete Santilli, a far-right talk show host, called on the military to use zip-ties to detain Biden, put him in the back of a pickup truck and get him out of the White House, according to the New York Times.Another guest on the show said he would “probably shoot” Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, if it were legal, the Times reported. Santilli also previously called for the execution of former president Barack Obama and other officials if Trump was indicted.Sharlet, the Dartmouth professor, said the violent rhetoric got worse each day that it persisted.“Every day it corrodes the hope of democracy. Every day it encourages so-called ‘lone wolves’ – the real militia to whom such not-so-coded signals are broadcast – to take action,” he said. More

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      Republican red meat: Ron DeSantis bids to outflank Trump on the right

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      Donald Trump is not the most rightwing candidate running for the White House. That is a statement few would have thought possible after the former president’s brand of nativist-populism reshaped the Republican party.But as the Republican primary election for 2024 gathers pace, Trump finds himself eclipsed on the right by Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who is betting that the party’s voters are spoiling for an even more extreme agenda.From Covid to crime, from immigration to cultural issues, DeSantis is staking out territory that leaves the 76-year-old frontrunner fending off a once unthinkable criticism: he might be a bit too liberal.“DeSantis’s strategy for now is that he is going to try to outflank Trump to the right and there’s opportunity there,” said Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution thinktank at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. “He can go after Trump’s record as president on spending. He can go after Trump on refusing to address entitlement reform, which Republicans seemed to abandon writ large.”This week, Trump was indicted on charges of mishandling classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. DeSantis did not attempt to capitalise but rather condemned the “weaponization of federal law enforcement”. He has been dubbed a “mini-Trump” who seeks to emulate the former president. But in his first 10 days on the campaign trail, DeSantis has assailed Trump from the right.He told a conservative radio host “this is a different guy than 2015, 2016,” before deriding bipartisan criminal justice reform legislation that Trump championed as “basically a jailbreak bill” letting dangerous people out of prison.On immigration, DeSantis has played to the base by flying migrants from Florida to Massachusetts and California while arguing that Trump “endorsed and tried to ram” an “amnesty” bill through Congress. The governor even claimed Trump’s signature issue for himself by asserting that he would finish building a wall on the US-Mexico border.DeSantis can point to a hard-right record in Florida and suggest that he gets the job done in contrast to Trump’s unfulfilled promises at the White House. He has accused Trump of “turning the reins over” to Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert, during the Covid pandemic while he says he kept Florida open for business. “We chose freedom over Faucism,” DeSantis told voters last week.Whalen, who served as a speechwriter for the Bush-Quayle re-election campaign, said: “What DeSantis is going to attack him on is that Donald Trump turned loose Anthony Fauci. Trump at no point fired anybody. Trump let Fauci drive children’s healthcare policy. If Trump wants to engage with this on a conversation over who handled Covid better, boy, if I’m Ron DeSantis, bring it on.”Extraordinarily, Trump finds himself on the defensive over what many neutral observers and critics regard as one his few positive achievements: the development of coronavirus vaccines in less than a year.Campaigning in Grimes, Iowa, he received a pointed question from a woman who claimed that “we have lost people because you supported the jab,” a reference to conspiracy theories about mRNA vaccines, which have been credited with saving millions of lives.While Trump did not dismiss her suggestion – and stressed that he was never in favour of mandates – he explained that “there’s a big portion of the country that thinks that was a great thing, you understand that. Not a lot of the people in this room, but there is a big portion.”DeSantis has also taken a swipe at Trump for saying he did not like the term “woke” because people struggle to define it. The governor retorted: “Woke is an existential threat to our society. To say it’s not a big deal, that just shows you don’t understand what a lot of these issues are right now.”The skirmishes imply that DeSantis and Trump are running separate races. While the governor is aiming to woo Republican primary voters who have spent years embracing extremism, Trump is already looking ahead to a general election against Joe Biden where moderate swing state voters are critical.Trump has repeatedly hit DeSantis from the left, arguing that his votes to cut social security and Medicare in Congress will make him unelectable in a general election – even though Trump’s proposed budgets also repeatedly called for major entitlement cuts.Although Trump is quick to remind voters that he appointed three supreme court justices who, last year, helped end the constitutional right to abortion, he has also suggested that Florida’s new six-week abortion ban is “too harsh”.In a Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity, he urged pragmatism with an eye on the general election: “I happen to be of the Ronald Reagan school in terms of exemptions, where you have the life of the mother, rape and incest. For me, that’s something that works very well and for probably 80, 85%, because don’t forget, we do have to win elections.”Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “Trump’s current campaign strategists know that abortion is a huge weakness for the Republicans on a national stage going into 2024, evidenced by what happened in the midterms with the issue of abortion.“Trump is trying to thread the needle and sound more pragmatic on that because he’s actually thinking about the general at this point for that specific issue. There’s a good chunk of Republican voters who are not happy with the extreme abortion bans that are being pushed by the party.”DeSantis’s even-harder right approach could backfire in a national race against Biden, according to Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill.“It’s a risky proposition by the DeSantis camp to try to run to the right of Trump at this point because it feels as though it’s a very myopic strategy to just get out of the primary. Given how extreme his policies have been in Florida and what he’s advocated for, if by some miracle he did defeat Trump in the primaries, how does he walk all of that back to appeal to a general election electorate in this country?“This idea that he wants to scale up Florida is anathema to what the majority of the American people across the country actually want policy-wise. It’s not out of the ordinary that candidates tack more to the middle once they get into a general but we have never seen this level of extreme policy positions in a primary translate to a general election and be successful.”Trump is not willing to be entirely out-Trumped.He has pushed the death penalty for drug dealers and renewed his pledge to use the US military to attack foreign drug cartels. He also revived his pledge to end birthright citizenship, saying he would sign an executive order on the first day of his second term to change the long-settled interpretation of the 14th amendment.The posturing from both men might come to nought. History suggests that policy can be less important to voters than personality. Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “DeSantis is running to the right of Trump on policy. The particular niche of Trump is that his rhetoric and his populism remains further right than DeSantis.“DeSantis has been a governor, a member of Congress. For all of his rhetorical policy stances and the policies he’s signed into law, he’s still part of the government. Sure, Trump was president, but he has carved a place for himself as a demagogue, as someone who is running both for and against the political and economic system in America.”Jacobs added: “DeSantis would like him to run on policy and then DeSantis can run on his record of what he’s accomplished and try to win over Trump’s rightwing base.“But I don’t think Trump is going to let him do that. He’s going to continue to mock and portray DeSantis as part of the problem, someone who’s feeble and lacks the grit and the guts of a strong leader.”Trump allies dismiss DeSantis as an imitator who rings hollow. Roger Stone, a political consultant and self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” based in Florida, said: “He can try to sound like Trump, he can try to position himself like Trump, but I don’t think those are his real politics. He’s an establishment Republican. If you have a choice of seeing the Beatles or seeing a Beatles tribute band, which one are you going to go see?” More

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      The Observer view on Donald Trump’s indictment: it will also put Joe Biden on trial | Observer editorial

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      It is a measure of the topsy-turvy world of US politics that last week’s first-ever federal indictment of a former president, Donald Trump, on criminal charges may help him win the Republican party’s nomination in the 2024 race for the White House.True to form, Trump’s initial reaction to the US justice department’s charges was to play the victim and proclaim his innocence on social media. The multimillionaire’s next move was to appeal for cash donations from his adoring, ever-credulous Make America Great Again fanbase.The subdued and awkward reaction to the charges of Trump’s rivals for the nomination suggests they understand this political reality. Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, is closest to Trump in the polls – yet he trails by about 30 points. He declined to defend the former president. But he did not criticise him either, merely repeating a familiar complaint about supposed “weaponisation of federal law enforcement” by Joe Biden’s administration. DeSantis evidently believes kicking Trump at this point would alienate many party voters.Other Republican hopefuls, such as Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, and Mike Pence, the ultra-loyal vice-president who turned on Trump after the failed Capitol Hill coup, may be more inclined to confront their old boss. And it’s early days. Perhaps they will benefit from Trump’s travails. But at present, their poll ratings, and those of others such as Senator Tim Scott, are in single figures. Amazingly, Trump remains his party’s clear favourite – although the impact of the case on his popularity among US voters in general could be much more negative.It’s plain the federal indictments, like previous felony charges filed in New York state over alleged hush money payments to a porn star, will be used by Trump to reinforce his claims of political persecution. Judging by his recent CNN “town hall” appearance, the former president lacks new policies or initiatives. Instead, predictably enough, his pitch to voters is all about him and his obsessive belief that Biden and the Democrats are determined by any means, fair or foul, to deny him victory again.All such huffing and puffing aside, it remains entirely possible that Trump’s proliferating legal problems will end his political career – and land him in jail. Justice department special counsel Jack Smith has accused him on 37 counts of criminal wrongdoing, including jeopardising national security by his retention of classified documents, false testimony and obstruction of justice. Boxes of secret papers relating to nuclear programmes, Iran, and allies’ defence plans were found in Trump’s bathroom, Smith revealed. America must now contemplate the extraordinary prospect of a melodramatic, televised court battle starring Trump the defendant overlapping with the 2024 battle for the White House, starring Trump the Republican candidate. Egged on by Fox News and hard-right cheerleaders, he will seek to make maximum capital out of such a spectacle, regardless of the gravity of the charges. He will try to turn serious legal proceedings into a campaign rally.Biden already faces numerous obstacles to his hopes of a second term, including concerns about his advanced age, relatively low approval ratings, and a vulnerable post-pandemic economy. He, too, is under investigation for his handling of classified documents. Now the president will also have to fend off claims he is conducting a politicised legal vendetta and abusing his power to eliminate his chief rival.The criminal indictment of Trump is welcome, fully justified by the facts, and long overdue. But the coming courtroom showdown will also put Biden – and a divided America – on trial. More

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      Trump indictment is stress test for US democracy as Republicans rally round

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      Former US president Donald Trump’s stunning criminal charges have triggered a fierce counterattack from Republicans, putting America on a collision course between partisan politics and the rule of law ahead of a potentially explosive election.On Friday prosecutors unsealed a devastating 37-count indictment against Trump, accusing him of risking some of the country’s most sensitive security secrets after leaving the White House in 2021. He mishandled classified documents that included information about the secretive US nuclear programme and potential domestic vulnerabilities in the event of an attack, the indictment said.Trump is the first former president in US history to be charged with federal crimes. But he is also the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. This week’s indictment – and other cases against him – raise the prospect that he will spend the next 18 months hurtling between campaign rallies and court appearances. The convergence of the electoral and legal calendars could threaten America’s fragile democracy.Far from disowning a former president who played fast and loose with national security and the lives of Americans overseas, Republicans rallied around him with renewed zeal. They falsely asserted that Joe Biden was seeking to jail his political opponent. They stepped up efforts to turn the tables by accusing Biden of a bribery scandal without providing evidence. And they used incendiary language that evoked political violence.“We have now reached a war phase,” tweeted Andy Biggs, a Republican from Arizona who sits on the House of Representatives’ judiciary committee. “Eye for an eye.”Republican Congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana used what appeared to be military code words when he wrote on Twitter: “Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm. That is all.”The 49-page indictment unsealed by special counsel Jack Smith puts Trump in his gravest legal peril yet. He kept the documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and his golf club in New Jersey. Mar-a-Lago hosted tens of thousands of guests at more than 150 events during the time they were there, the indictment alleges.The indictment includes photos showing boxes of classified documents stacked on a ballroom stage, around a toilet in a club bathroom and in a storage room, where some of the contents, including a secret intelligence document, spilled on the floor.It also alleges that Trump discussed with lawyers the possibility of lying to government officials seeking to recover the documents and moved others around Mar-a-Lago estate to prevent them being found. It states that Trump asked one of his lawyers: “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”US District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, has been initially assigned to oversee the case. Trump is due to make a first appearance in the case in a Miami court on Tuesday, a day before his 77th birthday. Since he would serve any sentences concurrently if convicted, the maximum prison time he would face is 20 years for obstruction of justice, a charge carrying the highest penalty.The case does not bar Trump from campaigning or taking office if he were to win the election in November 2024. Legal experts say there would be no basis to block his swearing-in even if he were convicted and sent to prison. As president, Trump could potentially try to pardon himself, a legal move that would be controversial and unprecedented.Such possibilities pose the latest, perhaps the ultimate, stress test for American democracy after years in which Trump sought to undermine institutions, foreign powers meddled in elections, misinformation flooded the political discourse and many Republicans embraced anti-democratic lies and conspiracy theories.Trump proclaimed his innocence and attacked Smith on his Truth Social platform with typically crude language: “He is a Trump Hater – a deranged ‘psycho’ that shouldn’t be involved in any case having to do with ‘Justice.’”The Trump campaign, accusing the “Biden Justice Department” of abuse of power and attempted election interference, circulated comments from more than 50 Republican officials and conservative commentators backing the former president.Among them was the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who asserted that Biden had indicted “the leading candidate opposing him” – a baseless claim since the justice department operates independently of the White House. The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, who is challenging Trump for the Republican nomination, nevertheless condemned “the weaponization of federal law enforcement” and drew false equivalence with allegations against Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, and Biden’s son Hunter.Michael Steele, a former chairperson of the Republican National Committee, said “You’ve got his political opponents rallying to his defence. Why would Republican voters reject that? ‘OK, y’all think this is going out after Donald Trump? Then yeah, he is the guy.’ The thinking is to rally around Trump and then complain afterwards why is he still so popular among the base? You helped him stay popular! You gave the voters no reason to move on.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionConventional wisdom suggests that Trump’s deepening legal woes would hurt him in a presidential election against Biden. But Steele still expects it to be close. “You cannot underestimate the vitality of his base to not just turn out but to cause disruption. The Maga [Make America Great Again] base are now running things. They’re on election boards, they are part of the electoral apparatus, they are members of Congress“If this thing for whatever reason gets thrown to the House with Kevin McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Greene leading the charge? Nothing should be taken as oh, yeah, this’ll get a lot easier in the general election for Joe Biden. No the hell it won’t.”To that end, Republicans are working around the clock to weaken Biden. James Comer, chairperson of the House oversight committee, has been pushing allegations that, during Biden’s vice-presidency between 2009 and 2017, he was engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national. Comer is yet to provide evidence for abuses he claims “make Watergate look like jaywalking”.But when Trump announced his own indictment on Thursday night, Republicans were quick to blame “two-tier justice” and insinuate a politically motivated prosecution designed to deflect from Biden’s own supposed crimes. Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee tweeted: “The Biden DOJ buries investigations of President Biden and his family while it charges his political rivals. Making America look like a banana republic is incredibly irresponsible.”Their efforts targeting Biden and Hunter are likely to become even more aggressive as Trump sinks further into the legal mire: he is due to go on trial in New York next March in a state case stemming from a hush-money payment to an adult film star; he is under investigation by Smith over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election; he faces a separate criminal investigation into his bid to subvert democracy in Georgia that year.Kurt Bardella, who was a spokesperson and senior adviser for Republicans on the House oversight committee from 2009 to 2013, commented: “We’ve seen already their willingness to use their congressional authority to try and muddy the waters and smear the Biden family. Despite the fact that there is to this day zero evidence that implicates President Biden in any way, shape or form, that doesn’t stop the Republicans from just going out there and making grandiose statements without any substance or proof.”There are additional forces threatening to tear at the legal, political and social fabric of the nation during an election that Trump has dubbed “the final battle”. YouTube recently announced that it will no longer remove content that promotes false claims about US elections. Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter and the rise of artificial intelligence pose further misinformation risks.Meanwhile, with more than 1,000 people having been charged in relation to the January 6 riot, a recent survey by the University of Chicago found that an estimated 12 million American adults, or 4.4% of the population, believe that violence is justified to restore Trump to the White House. There are more guns in the US than people and, as of late May, there had been more than 260 mass shootings this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.Bardella, now a Democratic strategist, warned: “We know that Donald Trump’s supporters are capable of fomenting violence when they don’t get their way so I do think that America needs to prepare for the worst possible outcome, which is Donald Trump once again fomenting violence. That right there is the illustration of what happens when someone isn’t held accountable already. They’ll just do it again and again and again.”But Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, struck a more optimistic note. He said: “We’ve heard all this bluster from the Maga people, mainly from Trump in veiled ways or [Senator] Lindsey Graham: if you go after Trump, particularly during the election year, there’ll be this great uprising. Well, they predicted this great uprising when Trump was indicted in New York and I think five people showed up. It was an absolute fizzle. So I’m not really worried about these threats of a great Maga uprising.” More