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    Trump’s pitch for autoworker votes in car heartland is short on autoworkers

    As the rain came down a small crowd was still left outside Drake Enterprises, a non-union automotive manufacturing plant in Clinton Township, Michigan, on Wednesday night waiting for former president Donald Trump.“We want to take our country back! Let Biden sleep in his hospital bed! We want guns! We want Trump!” shouted one of the 50 or so people still waiting as Trump’s motorcade pulled away from the sodden event. He declined to give his name.Trump spoke at the plant a day after President Joe Biden had joined a picket line in nearby Wayne in support of the United Auto Workers (UAW) strike against Detroit’s big three auto companies.Before the speech began, hundreds of Trump supporters lined the street in an industrial park, erupting in cheers as the former president’s motorcade pulled in.The gathering had all the festive, and sometimes chaotically surreal, energy that is often part of Trump rallies. Supporters banged on drums, breaking to yell “Freedom!” and drawing loud cheers from up and down the street. Many were draped in Trump 2024 flags. Another flag showed Trump as a Rambo-like figure holding a grenade launcher. Passing traffic blared their horns in support.Inside the event, Trump gave a rambling speech for more than an hour. Union workers should support him because electric cars would take their jobs, said Trump. China and other foreign powers were the real enemy, not low wages or incompetent bosses. “Your current negotiations don’t mean as much as you think,” said Trump.By Trump standards, the crowd was small but there was no doubting their enthusiasm and they did not seem to mind the twisting word salad of the speech as it touched on trans rights, the Taliban, grudges against Hillary Clinton and Trump’s current 2024 Republican opponents.Clinton Township is in Macomb county, a crucial battleground in 2024’s election, and the one thing that Trump and Biden have in common is a recognition that voters here are crucially important in the race for the White House.Unsurprisingly given the nature of the event, the crowd was firmly behind Trump.Ed Sands, a 73-year-old retired auto supplier employee, said Trump is “the only one who gives a shit about working people.“Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Obama – they were all terrible for Macomb county, jobs went to China, south, and you see all these people here today because Trump will bring them back,” Sands added.The former US president’s return to office is all but guaranteed, Sands said. “Look around you, look at these people. Do you think he is going to lose? Do you?”Christopher Demopolis, 35, who works in heating and cooling, echoed that sentiment, and said his UAW base will play a role. “I don’t see why he won’t win Michigan next time around – a lot of this is going to determine it,” he said, motioning to the lively crowd. “Trump supports the workers, Biden supports the leaders.”Though the focus of Trump’s event was on auto unions, it was unclear how many union members were there. Several of those who spoke with the Guardian said they were small business owners, or work for small businesses, but their numbers in this swing county are high.“That’s the thing – there are people who are union, but there’s also a whole bunch of us who are not and who work for small businesses, and we are more pro-Trump,” said Laura, who lives in nearby Mount Clemens, she declined to give her last name.Trump’s speech came a day after a New York judge ruled that the former president’s business fortune was built on rampant fraud and blatant lies.None of that seemed to faze his supporters. “I don’t care if he didn’t pay taxes,” said a supporter who declined to give his name. “He shouldn’t even have to pay taxes!” More

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    Trump urges UAW to endorse him in speech at non-union car parts maker

    Donald Trump tried to woo US autoworkers in a rambling speech in Michigan on Wednesday night that took potshots at Joe Biden, electric vehicles and Barack Obama while pushing culture war issues and fell far short of supporting the core issues that have many car workers currently on strike.The speech came a day after Joe Biden spoke to striking United Auto Workers members on a picket line nearby. Biden’s historic appearance was the first time that a sitting president has walked a picket line.Trump dismissed that as a “photo op” at Drake Enterprises, a non-unionised car parts maker in Macomb county, a few miles from where Biden spoke to striking employees picketing a Ford facility.The former US president and other prominent Republicans have consistently attacked unions but many are now being more supportive of the UAW strike. Trump is the overwhelming frontrunner in the Republican 2024 nomination race and Michigan and other rust belt states are seen as crucial battlegrounds in the race for the White House.“Your leadership should endorse me and I will not say a bad thing about them again,” said Trump, though he did not substantively address the issues at stake in the strike beyond expressing support for getting better wages.At one stage Trump said that the UAW leader, Shawn Fain, should endorse him and called him “a good man … he’s got to endorse Trump”. In the run-up to the visit Fain, however, has been withering in his opinion of Trump and declined to meet him.“I see no point in meeting with him because I don’t think the man has any bit of care about what our workers stand for, what the working class stands for,” Fain said before Trump’s visit. “He serves a billionaire class, and that’s what’s wrong with this country.” Biden had attended the UAW picket at Fain’s invitation.Several hundred people attended the speech, which was timed to coincide with the latest Republican presidential debate.“When you look at the thousands of people outside, why couldn’t you get a bigger plant?” said Trump.The crowd appeared to be in the hundreds and while the speech took place, it thinned to less than a hundred as the rain came down. At one moment Trump – who has a long history of exaggerating crowd sizes at his events – falsely claimed that there were “10,000” people outside the venue.“Just get your union guys, your leaders, to endorse me and I will take care of the rest,” said Trump. “Under a Trump presidency, gasoline engines will be allowed and sex changes for children will be banned. Is that OK?”Trump consistently attacked electric vehicles (EVs) and said US autoworkers would lose their jobs if the country made the shift to EVs. He pledged to support gas-powered cars. “We will drill baby drill and it will have zero environmental difference,” he said.Michigan is a crucial battleground for the 2024 election. Hillary Clinton lost the state to Trump in 2016 but Biden took it back from Trump in 2020. It looks set to be a hard-fought race next year.Ahead of the speech, the crowd shouted “Freedom” and “Fuck Joe Biden”.Auto worker Christopher Demopolis, 35, said: “I don’t see why he won’t win Michigan next time around – a lot of this is going to determine it,” he said, motioning to the lively crowd. “Trump supports the workers, Biden supports the leaders.”Debbie Swolfs, a retired caterer who also owned a cleaning business, ran through a litany of complaints of life under Biden: inflation, gas prices, illegal immigrants, the move to electric vehicles.“We need Trump back!” she said. “Do you remember how wonderful things were three years ago? I want that back,” she said. “Biden is compromised by China and he doesn’t need to be impeached – he needs to be put in handcuffs.” More

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    Trump real estate empire under threat after fraud ruling; Senate leader urges House to pass funding bill – US politics live

    From 3h agoThe US secretary of transportation, Pete Buttigieg, warned that a government shutdown could disrupt the nation’s air travel system as he spoke to reporters just days before the deadline.Even a short shutdown would jeopardize the work and the hiring and training of potentially thousands of air traffic controllers and other key department employees, he said in a news conference earlier today.House Republicans who are “comfortable” with a government shutdown should “explain themselves directly to all of the nonpartisan civil servants who make sure that planes land safely, who inspect trucks and railroads and pipelines to prevent disasters, who will have to go without pay”, he said.
    There is no good time for a government shutdown, but this is a particularly bad time for a government shutdown, especially when it comes to transportation.
    The consequences of a shutdown would be “disruptive and dangerous”, he added.Tanya Chutkan, the federal judge presiding over Donald Trump trial on charges related to trying to overturn the 2020 election, has rejected an effort by the former president to remove her from the case, Politico reports:Trump’s legal team earlier this month had filed the motion asking Chutkan to recuse herself from the case, arguing previous statements she had made about his involvement in the January 6 insurrection were disqualifying.We’re about three hours away from the start of the second Republican primary debate at the Ronald Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley, California.The Guardian’s David Smith is on the scene, and reports that the seven candidates who have qualified will have quite the view:The Republican-led House Ways and Means committee today held a press conference to discuss evidence related to Joe Biden’s impeachment, but that was overshadowed by a testy exchange between its chair Jason Smith and a reporter for NBC News.As this video shows, the reporter asked Smith, who chairs one of three committees involved in the impeachment effort, to explain some of the gaps in his evidence. Smith struggles to do so. You can watch more below:Video clips like these play right into the hands of White House officials who argue the Republicans have no case. Here’s Ian Sams, Biden’s spokesman for oversight and investigations:While the Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell is not the type to engage in social media spats, he used his speaking time on the chamber’s floor today to wag his finger at the House Republicans whose intransigence in approving spending may soon cause the government to shut down:And here’s another great example of the intraRepublican fingerpointing that’s probably only going to get worse over the coming hours and days.It’s Montana congressman Ryan Zinke, who aligns with speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Republican leadership, squaring off against insurgent leader congressman Matt Gaetz. The point of contention is which wing of the House GOP was responsible for returning to “regular order” in the chamber, which the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service defines as “a traditional, committee-centered process of lawmaking, very much in evidence during most of the 20th century.”While it’s somewhat in the weeds, the open social media bickering (yes, they really did this in front of everybody on Twitter/X) tells you a lot about how things are going in the House today:They went on from there. Click on the tweets if you want to read more.As Washington shambles towards its 11th government shutdown since 1980, finger pointing is intensifying between lawmakers in Congress.CNN heard from West Virginia’s Republican senator Shelley Moore Capito, who pondered Kevin McCarthy could have averted the crisis that now looms if he had stuck to an agreement reached earlier this year that increased the government’s borrowing limit and also provided a rough outline of future spending plans. Here’s what she had to say:While Joe Biden may not believe that anything is inevitable in politics, he struck a realistic note when reporters traveling with him in California pressed him on his ability to stop the federal government from shutting down. “If I knew that, I would’ve already done it,” the president replied, when asked what he could have done to stop the shutdown.Elon Musk’s X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has axed around half of its global team dedicated to tracking election disinformation, according to a report by the Information.The cuts, which reportedly include the head of the Dublin-based team, come less than a month after the company said it would expand its safety and election teams.X executives told the team last week that “having elections integrity employees based in Europe wasn’t necessary,” according to the report. The team had about two dozen employees before Musk bought the platform, and is now down to less than half of that.Joe Biden said a government shutdown is not inevitable, but that if there is one, a lot of vital work could be impacted in science and health, Reuters reported.The president, speaking to reporters after remarks to a group of science and technology advisers in San Francisco, was asked if he believed a government shutdown was inevitable. He replied:
    I don’t think anything is inevitable … in politics.
    Moderate New York Republican Mike Lawler said members of the GOP blocking efforts to keep the federal government from going into shutdown before a Saturday deadline are “stuck on stupid” in an interview with CNN.Criticising members of his party, Lawler said:
    Some of my colleagues have, frankly, been stuck on stupid and refused to do what we were elected to do, against the vast majority of the conference, who have been working to avoid a shutdown. More

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    Republican contenders gather for key debate with Trump again absent

    Seven Republican presidential contenders gathered in California on Wednesday night for the second primary debate of the 2024 election season, but the absence of Donald Trump, the clear frontrunner in the race for the party’s nomination, again loomed large over the event.Seven candidates qualified for the second debate, held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute in Simi Valley, California. Those candidates were Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, the former vice-president Mike Pence, the former UN ambassador and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, and the North Dakota governor Doug Burgum.Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor who participated in the first primary debate, did not appear on Wednesday because he failed to meet the heightened polling requirements outlined by the Republican National Committee.Trump skipped the event – as he skipped last month’s debate – and instead delivered a speech in Michigan, where auto workers have gone on strike to demand pay increases. A day earlier, Joe Biden joined some of the striking workers on the picket line, and the back-to-back events provided an odd preview of the likely matchup in the 2024 general election.The second debate comes as Republican primary candidates have struggled to put a dent in Trump’s significant polling lead, even as the former president faces 91 felony charges across four criminal cases. One NBC News poll conducted this month showed Trump has the support of 59% of likely Republican primary voters, giving the former president a 43-point edge over DeSantis. Besides Trump and DeSantis, every Republican primary candidate remains mired in the single digits, the poll found.DeSantis in particular could benefit from a breakout moment to help dispel mounting doubts over his ability to challenge Trump for the nomination. The Florida governor has seen his polling numbers tumble in recent weeks, with one New Hampshire survey showing DeSantis dropping to fifth place in the second voting state.With less than four months left for the Iowa caucuses, the pressure is escalating for candidates to quickly prove their mettle in the primary. One Republican candidate, the Miami mayor Francis Suarez, has already dropped out of the race, and others may soon follow suit if they cannot gain momentum in the coming weeks.But some of the candidates, including Hutchinson, insist they will keep fighting for the nomination despite the significant headwinds against them. In a statement released on Monday, Hutchinson said he would move forward with events planned in early voting states even after he failed to qualify for the second debate.“I entered this race because it is critically important for a leader within the Republican party to stand up to Donald Trump and call him out on misleading his supporters and the American people,” Hutchinson said. “I intend to continue doing that.” More

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    Republican says GOP ‘stuck on stupid’ pushing for government shutdown – video

    Moderate New York Republican Mike Lawler said members of the GOP blocking efforts to keep the federal government from going into shutdown before a Saturday deadline are ‘stuck on stupid’ in an interview with CNN.
    Criticising members of his party, Lawler said: ‘Some of my colleagues have, frankly, been stuck on stupid and refused to do what we were elected to do, against the vast majority of the conference, who have been working to avoid a shutdown’ More

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    Republicans pushing for government shutdown ‘stuck on stupid’, says party moderate

    Republicans pushing for a federal government shutdown are “stuck on stupid”, a party moderate said shortly before one rightwinger reported that the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, would not hold a vote on a bipartisan Senate plan advanced as a way to keep the government open.“The American people elected a House Republican majority to serve as a check and balance and be able to govern,” Mike Lawler, a Republican from New York, a heavily Democratic state, told CNN.“Some of my colleagues have, frankly, been stuck on stupid and refused to do what we were elected to do, against the vast majority of the conference, who have been working to avoid a shutdown.”If no agreement to continue funding the government is reached by midnight on Saturday, many federal functions will cease. Employees can expect to be furloughed and the public left without key services.Past shutdowns – most recently in 2013, 2018 and 2019 – have been stoked by Republican hardliners in Congress but have not paid off politically. The most recent closure was prompted by Donald Trump, then president, over immigration policy. The Congressional Budget Office put the cost of the 35-day shutdown at about $18bn and said $3bn was wiped off US GDP.Nonetheless, Trump is now backing a shutdown again and on Wednesday Bob Good of Virginia, a hard-right holdout, told reporters McCarthy had said he would not allow a vote on the stopgap measure reached by senators the day before.McCarthy is widely seen to be in a political vice, running the House with a five-seat majority, beholden to hardliners who in January forced him through 15 votes to become speaker and are now threatening to start proceedings to have him removed.Moderates like Lawler, who was elected in 2022 in an unusually strong Republican showing in New York, are at most risk of losing their seats next year, when Democrats will seek to take back the House.Lawler told CNN: “Two weeks ago, the speaker came forth with a proposal that would reduce spending by 8% in the 30-day continuing resolution, as well as enact most of the provisions of HR2 [a House bill] to deal with our border crisis,” Lawler said. “Unfortunately, folks like Matt Gaetz chose to oppose that for some ridiculous reason.”Gaetz, from Florida and a vocal Trump supporter, has led the charge against McCarthy. On the House floor on Tuesday night, he said the US would soon see if the “failed” speaker would turn to Democrats to keep the government open.“The one thing I agree with my Democrat colleagues on is that for the last eight months, this House has been poorly led,” Gaetz said. “And we own that, and we have to do something about it, and you know what? My Democratic colleagues will have an opportunity to do something about that too, and we will see if they bail out our failed speaker.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocratic and moderate Republican support could help McCarthy keep the government open – but it would almost certainly spell the end of his time as speaker.On Tuesday, a source familiar with the thinking of moderate Republicans predicted the shutdown would “last about five days”, because a House rules committee block on a bipartisan deal meant it could only reach the floor on the first day of the closure, five days then being needed to get the deal to a point where “it will sail through both chambers”.The same source said hard-right Republicans simply wanted “to burn the place down”, adding: “These are not serious people. They believe anything that [Joe] Biden wants is bad, but the margins are so thin that their votes count.”Lawler said: “I’ve been very clear from the start, that I will not support a government shutdown, that we need to do everything we can to avoid one. Nobody wins in a shutdown. And in fact, the American people are going to be the ones that get hurt.” More

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    ‘Almost a troll of the legacy’: Reagan’s spirit looms over Republican debate

    Tourists posed for photos beside the presidential seal, peered inside the cockpit, studied the nuclear football and gazed at a desk where a “Ronald Reagan” jacket slung over the chair, page of handwritten notes and jelly bean jar made it appear as if the 40th US president could saunter back at any moment.Air Force One is the star attraction at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California. But on Wednesday it is competing for attention with a curving Starship Enterprise-style stage set featuring seven lecterns and microphones for the second Republican presidential primary debate.The Reagan library describes this as “the Super Bowl” of Republican debates, against the dramatic backdrop of the Boeing 707 that flew seven presidents and close to the granite gravesite where Reagan was buried in 2004, looking across a majestic valley towards the Pacific Ocean.“As a new field of Republicans make their case to be the next President, the legacy of Ronald Reagan looms larger than ever,” the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, which sustains the library, said in an email statement that will be put to the test at 9pm ET. For there are some who argue that Reagan would no longer recognise a Republican party that now belongs to Donald Trump.“There are no more Reagan Republicans,” said Jason Johnson, a political analyst and professor at Morgan State University in Baltimore. “Having this debate at the Reagan Library is almost a troll of the legacy of actual Republicans in the party because they are no more. The last real Republicans in the party were probably Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. The rest of these people are frauds, clowns and sycophants.”Reagan and Donald Trump are the two best US presidents of the past 40 years, according to Republicans surveyed recently by the Pew Research Center (41% said Reagan, who held the office from 1981 to 1989, did the best job while 37% said Trump did). Neither man will be at the two-hour debate – frontrunner Trump is skipping it again – yet both will help to frame it.Several candidates have been straining to drape themselves in Reagan’s political finery. Former vice-president Mike Pence often talks of how he “joined the Reagan revolution and never looked back”, and took his oath with his hand on the Reagan family Bible. This week Pence received the endorsement of five senior Reagan administration officials who praised his stances on limited government, lower taxes, individual freedom, strong defence and abortion restrictions.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina has fondly recalled Reagan’s “optimistic, positive revolution” while also approvingly recalling his decision to fire more than 11,000 air traffic controllers who went on strike in 1981: “He said, you strike, you’re fired.” Scott’s campaign has promoted a quotation from Senator Mike Rounds: “Tim Scott is the closest to Ronald Reagan that you’re going to see.”Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has asserted that it is this generation’s “time for choosing”, a nod to Reagan’s 1964 speech that made him a breakout conservative leader and paved the way for his election as governor of California. In the first debate, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy called himself “the only candidate in this race, young or old, black or white, to bring all of those voters along to deliver a Reagan 1980 revolution”.Even Trump has recently begun referencing Reagan as he seeks to navigate the electorally awkward territory of abortion restrictions after the fall of Roe v Wade, stating that “like President Ronald Reagan before me, I support the three exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother”.The Reagan Library and Museum, unabashedly laudatory with little discussion of the former president’s record on race relations or Aids, leaves no doubt as to his status as a political touchstone. It chronicles his rise from small-town Illinois (“Almost everybody knew one another”) to General Electric to Hollywood, where his role as football player George Gipp in the film Knute Rockne, All American earned him the nickname “the Gipper” – and the myth-making was under way.A bumper sticker that says “Win it for the Gipper” features in a display on the 1980 presidential election, as does a campaign poster with the pre-Trump slogan: “Let’s make America great again.” The Reagan revolution was assured when he beat Jimmy Carter by 10 percentage points in the popular vote and took 44 of the 50 states – unthinkable in today’s polarised politics.Visitors see a replica of Reagan’s Oval Office, a display of first lady Nancy Reagan’s fashion and a paean to the trickle-down economics now rejected by Joe Biden as a failed economic philosophy, accompanied by the celebrated Morning in America campaign ad and a piano version of Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA – now familiar as Trump’s walk-on song at rallies.There is a gallery devoted to Reagan’s “peace through strength” approach to the cold war and “evil empire” of the Soviet Union, including a replica of the Berlin Wall and statues of Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Among his quotations: “We know only too well that war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong, but when they are weak. It is then that tyrants are tempted.”Jonathan Alter, an author of presidential biographies, said: “Unlike Trump, where it’s all about him, where it’s a cult of personality, with Reagan it was heavily ideological. It was all about trying to restore limited government with a strongly anti-communist foreign policy. So it was cut spending, cut taxes, increase defence. That was their agenda and that became the animating idea of the Republican party.”After he left the presidency, Reagan told the Republican national convention: “Whatever else history may say about me … I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence rather than your doubts.”There has, many would argue, been a significant shift in tone in the Republican party since then. At last month’s first Republican debate in Milwaukee, Pence insisted: “We’re not looking for a new national identity. The American people are the most faith-filled, freedom-loving, idealistic, hard-working people the world has ever known.”Ramaswamy retorted: “It is not morning in America. We live in a dark moment. And we have to confront the fact that we’re in an internal sort of cold, cultural civil war.”This once unthinkable repudiation of Reagan implied that the 40th president’s “shining city on a hill” has given way to the 45th president’s “American carnage”. Bill Kristol, a founding director of the Defending Democracy Together political group and former Reagan administration official, said: “I talked with someone 10 years ago. He was a prominent person who said, ‘I wonder if the mood of America is changing.’ I said something conventional about Reagan Republicans.”Kristol went on: “He said, ‘I don’t think that stuff would work any more. The country’s getting more and more pessimistic.’ I said, ‘Well, the voters still want to have hope and an upbeat message.’ He said, ‘I’m not so sure about that.’ Trump, in the way he’s a good demagogue, saw that. You wouldn’t be penalised for being down. Quite the opposite.”Perhaps the area in which Reaganism is closest to being nothing more than a museum piece is foreign policy. Trump has embraced the old foe, Russia, and called Vladimir Putin a “genius”. He has dragged the party towards “America first” isolationism and anti-interventionism. Ramaswamy has vowed to cut off financial support to Ukraine in its war against Russia.Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman, said: “Reagan believed we were an example for the rest of the world and charged out to help spread freedom around the rest of the world. The fact that the Republican party has become pro-Putin under Trump – Ronnie just wouldn’t understand it. It goes against everything he believes.”Reagan signed a law granting legal status to nearly 3 million immigrants. Walsh added: “This is very much a-build-a-wall-around-America, keep-everybody-out kind of Republican party. Reagan had a lot of flaws … [but] we were the city on the hill and we welcome all who want to come here.”David Prosperi, an assistant press secretary to Reagan, said: “When Ronald Reagan was running for president he said, ‘I didn’t leave the Democratic party. The Democratic party left me.’ I think today he might just say, ‘This Republican party has left me’.”But there is a school of thought that the former film star Reagan and former TV star Trump have more in common than their devotees would like to admit.Reagan’s critics say he cut taxes for the rich and sowed distrust in government. He spun exaggerated yarns about a “Chicago welfare queen” and a “strapping young buck” using food stamps to “buy a T-bone steak”. In a call with President Richard Nixon he referred to African UN delegates as “monkeys”.Reagan launched his 1980 election campaign with a speech lauding “states’ rights” near the site of the notorious Mississippi Burning murders of three civil rights workers – seen by many as a nod to southern states that resented the federal government enforcing civil rights. Once in office, Reagan opposed affirmative action and busing programmes.Kevin Kruse, a history professor at Princeton University, said: “While it’s right to be alarmed by the way in which Trump has moved things into an unprecedented realm, we’d be mistaken to believe this is somehow entirely brand new. I know that the ‘never Trump’ crowd in the Republican party have created this kind of fictitious version of Reagan that was wholly different from Trump. But there are elements of this here.”Reagan arguably tapped into the same populist forces that Trump would later fully unleash. Kruse added: “Reagan, before the presidency, ran for governor of California, where he was very much seen as a backlash candidate, the voice of white resentment. As president, it was much more of a dog whistle approach. Trump is loudly screaming what Reagan said softly with a smile.” More

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    New York judge finds Trump committed fraud by overvaluing business assets and net worth – live

    From 13m agoThe Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, reached an agreement on a stopgap spending plan that would keep the government open past Saturday.A bipartisan Senate draft measure would fund the government through 17 November and include around $6bn in new aid to Ukraine and roughly $6bn in disaster funding, Reuters reported.Speaking earlier today, Schumer said:
    We will continue to fund the government at present levels while maintaining our commitment to Ukraine’s security and humanitarian needs, while also ensuring those impacted by natural disasters across the country begin to get the resources they need.
    The 79-page stopgap spending bill, unveiled by the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, would not include any border security measures, a major sticking point for House Republicans, Reuters reported.The short-term bill would avert a government shutdown on Sunday while also providing billions in disaster relief and aid to Ukraine.The bill includes $4.5bn from an operations and maintenance fund for the defense department “to remain available until Sept. 30, 2024 to respond to the situation in Ukraine,” according to the measure’s text.The bill also includes another $1.65bn in state department funding for additional assistance to Ukraine that would be available until 30 September 2025.The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, reached an agreement on a stopgap spending plan that would keep the government open past Saturday.A bipartisan Senate draft measure would fund the government through 17 November and include around $6bn in new aid to Ukraine and roughly $6bn in disaster funding, Reuters reported.Speaking earlier today, Schumer said:
    We will continue to fund the government at present levels while maintaining our commitment to Ukraine’s security and humanitarian needs, while also ensuring those impacted by natural disasters across the country begin to get the resources they need.
    Joe Biden’s dog, Commander, bit another Secret Service agent at the White House on Monday.In a statement to CNN, a spokesperson, Anthony Guglielmi, said:
    Yesterday around 8pm, a Secret Service Uniformed Division police officer came in contact with a First Family pet and was bitten. The officer was treated by medical personnel on complex.
    Commander has been involved in at least 11 biting incidents at the White House and at the Biden family home in Delaware. One such incident in November 2022 left an officer hospitalized after being bitten on the arms and thighs.Another of the president’s dogs, Major, was removed from the White House and relocated to Delaware following several reported biting incidents.Ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general Letitia James, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered that some of Donald Trump’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment after finding the former president committed fraud by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth.The judge also said he would continue to have an independent monitor oversee the Trump Organization’s operations.James sued Trump and his adult sons last year, alleging widespread fraud connected to the Trump Organization and seeking $250m and professional sanctions. She has said Trump inflated his net worth by as much as $2.23bn, and by one measure as much as $3.6bn, on annual financial statements given to banks and insurers.Assets whose values were inflated included Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, his penthouse apartment in Manhattan’s Trump Tower, and various office buildings and golf courses, she said.In his ruling, Judge Engoron said James had established liability for false valuations of several properties, Mar-a-Lago and the penthouse. He wrote:
    In defendants’ world: rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies. That is a is a fantasy world, not the real world.
    Judge Arthur F Engoron’s ruling marks a major victory for New York attorney general Letitia James’s civil case against Donald Trump.In the civil fraud suit, James is suing Trump, his adult sons, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization for $250m.Today’s ruling, in a phase of the case known as summary judgment, resolves the key claim in James’s lawsuit, but six others remain.Trump has repeatedly sought to delay or throw out the case, and has repeatedly been rejected. He has also sued the judge, with an appeals court expected to rule this week on his lawsuit.A New York state judge has granted partial summary judgment to the New York attorney general, Letitia James, in the civil case against Donald Trump.Judge Arthur F Engoron found that Trump committed fraud for years while building his real estate empire, and that the former president and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing financing, AP reports:
    Beyond mere bragging about his riches, Trump, his company and key executives repeatedly lied about them on his annual financial statements, reaping rewards such as favorable loan terms and lower insurance premiums, Engoron found.
    Those tactics crossed a line and violated the law, the judge said in his ruling on Tuesday.The decision by Judge Engoron precedes a trial that is scheduled to begin on Monday. James, a Democrat, sued Trump and his adult sons last year, alleging widespread fraud connected to the Trump Organization and seeking $250m and professional sanctions.Joe Biden has warned that Americans could be “forced to pay the price” because House Republicans “refuse to stand up to the extremists in their party”.As the House standoff stretches on, the White House has accused Republicans of playing politics at the expense of the American people.Biden tweeted:For an idea of the state of play in the House, consider what Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy said to CNN when asked how he would pass a short-term funding measure through the chamber, despite opposition from his own party.McCarthy has not said if he will put the bill expected to pass the Senate today up for a vote in the House, but if he does, it’s possible it won’t win enough votes from Republicans to pass, assuming Democrats also vote against it.Asked to comment on how he’d get around this opposition, McCarthy deflected, and accused Republican detractors of, bizarrely, aligning themselves with Joe Biden. Here’s more from CNN, on why he said that:In a marked contrast to the rancor and dysfunction gripping the House, the Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, also endorsed the short-term government funding bill up for a vote today, Politico reports:McConnell’s comments are yet another positive sign it’ll pass the chamber, and head to an uncertain fate in the House.The Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, says he expects a short-term government funding measure to pass his chamber with bipartisan support, Politico reports:The question is: what reception will it get in the House? If speaker Kevin McCarthy puts the bill up for a vote, it may attract enough Democratic votes to offset any defections from rightwing Republicans. But those insurgents have made clear that any collaboration between McCarthy and Democrats will result in them holding a vote to remove him as speaker.The House and Senate will in a few hours hold votes that will be crucial to the broader effort to stop the government from shutting down at the end of the week.The federal fiscal year ends on 30 September, after which many federal agencies will have exhausted their funding and have to curtail services or shut down entirely until Congress reauthorizes their spending. But lawmakers have failed to pass bills authorizing the government’s spending into October due to a range of disagreements between them, with the most pronounced split being between House Republicans who back speaker Kevin McCarthy and a small group of rightwing insurgents who have blocked the chamber from considering a measure to fund the government for a short period beyond the end of the month.At 5.30pm, the Democratic-dominated Senate will vote on a bill that extends funding for a short period of time, but lacks any new money for Ukraine or disaster relief that Joe Biden’s allies have requested. Those exclusions are seen as a bid to win support in the Republican-led House.The House is meanwhile taking procedural votes on four long-term spending bills. If the votes succeed, it could be a sign that McCarthy has won over some of his detractors – but that alone won’t be enough to keep the government open.As GOP House speaker Kevin McCarthy mulls a meeting with Joe Biden to resolve the possibility that the federal government will shut down at the end of this week, here’s the Guardian’s Joan E Greve with the latest on the chaotic negotiations between Republicans and Democrats in both chambers of Congress on preventing it:With just five days left to avert a federal shutdown, the House and the Senate return on Tuesday to resume their tense budget negotiations in the hope of cobbling together a last-minute agreement to keep the government open.The House will take action on four appropriations bills, which would address longer-term government funding needs but would not specifically help avoid a shutdown on 1 October.The four bills include further funding cuts demanded by the hard-right House members who have refused to back a stopgap spending bill, known as a continuing resolution, that would prevent a shutdown.The House is expected to take a procedural vote on those four bills on Tuesday. If that vote is successful, the House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, may attempt to use the victory as leverage with the hard-right members of his conference to convince them to back a continuing resolution.But it remains unclear whether those four appropriations bills can win enough support to clear the procedural vote, given that one of the holdout Republicans, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, has said she will not back the spending package because it includes funding for Ukraine.Donald Trump has launched a lengthy and largely baseless attack on wind turbines for causing large numbers of whales to die, claiming that “windmills” are making the cetaceans “crazy” and “a little batty”.Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, used a rally in South Carolina to assert that while there was only a small chance of killing a whale by hitting it with a boat, “their windmills are causing whales to die in numbers never seen before. No one does anything about that.”“They are washing up ashore,” said Trump, the twice-impeached former US president and gameshow host who is facing multiple criminal indictments.
    You wouldn’t see that once a year – now they are coming up on a weekly basis. The windmills are driving them crazy. They are driving the whales, I think, a little batty.
    Trump has a history of making false or exaggerated claims about renewable energy, previously asserting that the noise from wind turbines can cause cancer, and that the structures “kill all the birds”. In that case, experts say there is no proven link to ill health from wind turbines, and that there are far greater causes of avian deaths, such as cats or fossil fuel infrastructure. There is also little to support Trump’s foray into whale science.The House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, said it would be “very important” to meet with Joe Biden to avert a government shutdown, and suggested the president could solve the crisis at the southern border unilaterally.Asked why he was not willing to strike a deal with congressional Democrats on a short-term funding bill to keep the government open, NBC reports that McCarthy replied:
    Why don’t we just cut a deal with the president?
    He added:
    The president, all he has to do … it’s only actions that he has to take. He can do it like that. He changed all the policies on the border. He can change those. We can keep government open and finish out the work that we have done.
    Asked if he was requesting a meeting with Biden, McCarthy said:
    I think it would be very important to have a meeting with the president to solve that issue.
    Here’s a clip of Joe Biden’s remarks as he joined striking United Auto Workers members (UAW) outside a plant in Michigan.Addressing the picketing workers, the president said they had made a lot of sacrifices when their companies were in trouble. He added:
    Now they’re doing incredibly well. And guess what? You should be doing incredibly well, too.
    Asked if the UAW should get a 40% increase, Biden said yes.Joe Biden became the first sitting US president in modern memory to visit a union picket line, traveling to Van Buren township, Michigan, to address United Auto Workers members who have walked off the job at the big three automakers. The president argued that the workers deserve higher wages, and appeared alongside the union’s leader, Shawn Fain – who has yet to endorse Biden’s re-election bid. Back in Washington DC, Congress is as troubled as ever. The leaders of the House and Senate are trying to avoid a government shutdown, but there’s no telling if their plans will work. Meanwhile, more and more Democratic senators say Bob Menendez should resign his seat after being indicted on corruption charges, including his fellow Jerseyman, Cory Booker.Here’s what else is going on:Here was the scene in Van Buren township, Michigan, as Joe Biden visited striking United Auto Workers members, in the first visit to a picket line by a US president: More