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    Congress returns with only days left to avert federal government shutdown

    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. Because of House Republicans’ narrow majority, McCarthy can only afford to lose a handful of votes within the conference, and hard-right members have capitalized on that dynamic to push for policy concessions in the spending negotiations.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, will likely 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.Speaking to reporters on Tuesday on Capitol Hill, McCarthy was asked whether it would be possible to take up a continuing resolution if the appropriations bills fail to advance.“I never give up,” McCarthy said. “I’ve got a lot of things I can try.”Even if House Republicans can pass their spending package, the proposal will be dead on arrival in the Senate, where the Democrats who hold the majority have roundly rejected additional funding cuts.While the House remains at odds, the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, is taking matters into his own hands by attempting to advance a shell bill that could serve as a legislative vehicle for a continuing resolution. The Senate plans to hold an initial vote on that bill on Tuesday evening.“As I have said for months, we must work in a bipartisan fashion to keep our government open, avoid a shutdown and avoid inflicting unnecessary pain on the American people,” Schumer said last week. “This action will give the Senate the option to do just that.”As the House standoff stretches on, the White House has accused Republicans of playing politics at the expense of the American people. In a video shared to X, formerly known as Twitter, Joe Biden warned on Tuesday that a shutdown could force US service members to go without pay as they remain on duty.“I’m prepared to do my part, but the Republicans in the House of Representatives refuse. They refuse to stand up to the extremists in their party. So now everyone in America could be forced to pay the price,” Biden said. “Funding the government is one of the most basic responsibilities of the Congress. It’s time for these Republicans in the House to start doing their job – doing the job America elected them to do. So let’s get it done.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut Republicans simultaneously face pressure from the leader of their party, Donald Trump, to hold the line in the budget talks – even if that means risking a shutdown.Trump wrote in a post shared on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Sunday: “UNLESS YOU GET EVERYTHING, SHUT IT DOWN!”McCarthy could attempt to pass a continuing resolution with Democratic support, but such a choice would face immediate backlash from hard-right Republicans, who have threatened to oust the speaker if he opts for that bipartisan strategy.One source familiar with the thinking of more moderate House Republicans argued that only a bipartisan proposal can ultimately pass both chambers of Congress, criticizing hard-right members for seeking “to burn the place down”.“These are not serious people,” the source said. “They believe anything that Biden wants is bad, but the margins are so thin that their votes count.”Martin Pengelly contributed reporting More

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    Cassidy Hutchinson says Republicans face ‘make-or-break’ moment on Trump

    The former Donald Trump White House aide who became a crucial witness to the January 6 attack says she believes the Republican party is facing a “make-or-break moment” over whether to nominate him in the 2024 presidential race.“We’re talking about a man who at the very essence of his being almost destroyed democracy in one day, and he wants to do it again,” Cassidy Hutchinson said of Trump during an interview with MSNBC’s Rachael Maddow on Monday, a clear reference to the assault on the US Capitol that the ex-president’s supporters staged after his electoral defeat to his Democratic rival Joe Biden nearly three years ago.“He wants to run for president to do it again.”Alluding to the more than 90 charges pending against Trump across four separate criminal indictments, Hutchinson added: “He has been indicted four times since January 6. I would not have a clear conscience and be able to sleep at night if I were a Republican … that supported Donald Trump. And I think that if they’re not willing to split with that, then we’re in serious trouble.”In a separate notable portion of her interview with Maddow, Hutchinson addressed and summarily dismissed rumors that she had dated Matt Gaetz, the far-right Republican US congressman from Florida who helped spread the claims himself.“I will say on behalf of myself – I never dated Matt Gaetz,” said Hutchinson, who appeared on Maddow’s show to promote her memoir Enough, hitting bookshelves on Tuesday. Explaining that the pair had an “amicable working relationship” and “were good friends at points”, she added: “I have much higher standards in men.”Those remarks seemingly build on a cameo from Gaetz in Enough, in which the congressman is shown to unexpectedly take Hutchinson up on an offer to meet several Washington DC political aides out for drinks one night. Later that evening, according to Enough, Gaetz brushes his thumb across Hutchinson’s chin and tells her: “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a national treasure?”Despite the prominence of men like Trump and Gaetz in her party, Hutchinson reiterated that she still considered herself a Republican, though more in the mold of Senator Mitt Romney or the late president Ronald Reagan, whom some see as more moderate conservatives in retrospect.“I do not believe that Mr Trump is a strong Republican,” Hutchinson said. “In this election cycle, in my opinion, it’s a make-or-break moment for the Republican party. Now is the time if these politicians [in the party] … want to make the break and want to take the stand – they have to do it now.”Under subpoena, Hutchinson gave some of the most dramatic testimony about the Capitol attack during live congressional hearings in the summer of 2022. One key moment she described being told about was Trump’s accosting of a Secret Service agent and his lunging for the steering wheel of the car he was in when he was told he would not be driven to the Capitol on the day of the attack.That wasn’t all she endured that day. In Enough, Hutchinson recounts how on January 6 she was groped by Rudy Giuliani, the Trump lawyer and former New York City mayor.A short while after Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell”, they mounted the January 6 attack on the Capitol in a desperate but unsuccessful maneuver aimed at preventing Congress from certifying Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election weeks earlier.The uprising has been linked to nine deaths. More than 1,100 people have been charged in connection with the attack, and the majority of them have either pleaded guilty or been convicted by judges or juries at trial.Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges filed against him. The various charges collectively accuse him of retaining classified documents after his presidency, hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, and efforts to subvert his 2020 defeat which led to the January 6 attack.Despite the legal peril, Trump maintains dominant polling leads over other candidates pursuing the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.Enough plots out the 27-year-old Hutchinson’s trek from being an earnest believer in Trump to disenchantment with him. She was working for Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, at the time of the January 6 attack.Martin Pengelly contributed reporting More

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    Democracy and distrust: overcoming threats to the 2024 US election

    The Guardian US and the Chicago Project on Security and Threats (Cpost) at the University of Chicago are co-hosting an event on Tuesday focusing on dangers to democracy and anticipated threats to the 2024 election.The Guardian’s Fight for Democracy project has been working with Cpost since June 2023, reporting on the project’s Dangers to Democracy surveys which dive into Americans’ views on political violence, conspiracy theories and threats to US elections. The first survey found that a staggering 12 million American adults, or 4.4% of the adult population, believe violence is justified to restore Donald Trump to the White House.The latest September survey found that Trump’s presidential candidacy and the now mounting indictments against him are radicalizing Americans on both sides of the aisle to support violence to achieve political goals.More specifically, the survey found that 5.5% of Americans, or 14 million people, believe the use of force is justified to restore Trump to the presidency, while 8.9% of Americans, or 23 million people, believe force is justified to prevent Trump from being president.The Guardian is committed to reporting on these threats as the 2024 election approaches, including what election officials and other policymakers are doing to combat them, how voters may be affected, how misinformation might amplify them, and how the country could be better prepared to prevent another violent attack like what occurred on 6 January 2021.In the past few months alone, the Guardian has tracked Republican efforts to use conspiracy theories to oust Wisconsin’s respected and bipartisan top election official, reported on various rightwing attempts to skew electoral maps to dilute the power of minority voters, and featured deep dives into the people trying to hold Trump and his allies accountable for attempting to steal the 2020 election.The Fight for Democracy team will continue to track these efforts and more as the next presidential election nears and threats become more pervasive, including publishing Cpost’s latest findings.“We are now in the age of what I call ‘violent populism’ where violent ideas by a dedicated minority are moving from fringe to mainstream, creating an environment where incendiary political rhetoric can stimulate violent threats to our democracy,” said Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago who directs Cpost.The September survey found that Americans are more deeply distrustful of their democratic institutions and democratically elected leaders and more supportive of violence than in January 2023, when the survey about political violence was started, according to Pape.The survey has been assessing nine measures of antidemocratic attitudes, including the beliefs that elections won’t solve America’s fundamental problems and that political elites are the most corrupt people in the US. Eight of the nine measures are worse today than at the beginning of 2023, Pape said.Still, a vast majority of all Americans think Republicans and Democrats in Congress should make a joint statement condemning any political violence.“We need to lean into this finding with bipartisan cooperation among our frontline democratic institutions to safeguard democracy,” Pape said. “If incendiary rhetoric stimulates political violence, calming rhetoric can diminish it.” More

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    Congressional Republicans are trapped in a dangerous absurdity of their own making | Sidney Blumenthal

    The House Republicans have triggered a Chernobyl of their own, a chain reaction that will inexorably lead to a meltdown to their core surrounded by a radioactive forbidden zone. Saboteurs rush in unobstructed, setting blazes and planting explosives. The nominal fire chief stands dumbfounded, an observer transfixed at the raging conflagration, anxious about his escape route. “This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down,” the fire chief fumes. Then, smoke billowing behind him, he flees the scene and tells everyone to go home for a week.The speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, is the speaker in name. He has the part. He will do anything to retain the honorific. Gesture by gesture he dispenses with the powers of his office for the sake of wearing its polished badge. If nature abhors a vacuum, his unnatural enemies thrive in it. He agreed to their demand that instead of proposing a continuing resolution for 30 days to continue negotiations on the budget he would divide appropriations into 14 separate bills, each requiring a procedural vote to be able to consider them. Twice he dutifully brought to the floor the procedural votes for the defense appropriations bill, and twice they were contemptuously rejected. His heedless appeasement was a defeat foretold. The federal government shutdown looms.McCarthy could have ignored his hostage takers. He could have made an agreement with the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, on the basis of the already negotiated bipartisan budget deal with the Senate Republicans. McCarthy could have brought along some of his caucus and that with the Democrats would be a comfortable majority. And he could still attempt to make a deal. If the far right initiates a motion to vacate, to try to remove him, the Democrats could join with a portion of the Republicans to maintain him.But the consequences of demonstrating that he has a backbone would almost certainly spark the motion. To survive, he would have to confront his tormentors; to vanquish them, he would have to discredit them. To discredit them, he would have to contend with the greater power behind their cabal whom they imitate and serve, Donald Trump, who presses for the catastrophic outcome because he prospers on disorder.In the meantime, the sidelined Democrats watch and wait. If the Republican illogic reaches its logically absurd conclusion in a shutdown, would McCarthy, if he resisted, be removed? And, after numerous inconclusive ballots to elect a speaker, would five Republicans agree to vote for Jeffries as speaker, who would give them committee chairmanships, so that the House would be a functioning body? Perhaps, in the speculative possibility, there would be no speaker, without which there would be no functioning House, therefore no functioning Senate, and therefore no functioning government. It would be Trump’s dream come true. Would President Biden have to step in to authorize emergency funding until there is a Democratic House?McCarthy would seem to prefer to die the coward’s death of a thousand cuts. In the midst of the meltdown, McCarthy chose to appear on Fox News to state that Trump is the certain Republican nominee, “stronger than he has ever been”, and that his rival Ron DeSantis is “not at the same level”. The fire chief is the pyromaniac enabler in chief. Yet he still complains about the arsonists.None of his Trump worship helps McCarthy quell the Trump miscreants, or calms anybody else in the House Republican Conference, for that matter. McCarthy is perceived as having the vision of a mole, the courage of a squirrel and the dignity of a dunk-tank clown. But that’s only what Republicans think of him. The feeling is not reserved to those who wish to destroy him, but held by those sustaining him.From the more regular Republicans the nicest thing said about him is that he’s “weak”, as Representative Victoria Spartz, Republican from Indiana, recently put it. “It’s Kevin McCarthy who failed us,” she said, invoking the founding fathers “rolling over in their graves”. She is so disgusted she is not running for re-election. Representative Mike Garcia, Republican from California, accused his party’s irreconcilables of being Manchurian candidates. “This city,” he said, “Washington DC, is riddled with Chinese sympathizers.” Representative Don Bacon, Republican from Nebraska, went biblical: “Some of these folks would vote against the Bible because there’s not enough Jesus in it.” Representative Mike Lawler, Republican from New York, declared: “This is not conservative Republicanism. This is stupidity … It’s a clown show.”Matt Gaetz, the towel-snapping bullyboy, is the ringleader of the rump caucus desperately seeking to bring the House to a halt. Preening as a lady-killer, he has notoriously remarked of women’s rights activists: “Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions? Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.” The congressman from Florida was not charged earlier this year in a justice department investigation into his alleged involvement with the sex trafficking of a minor in which a close associate of his pleaded guilty. But the House ethics committee began questioning witnesses in July in an investigation of Gaetz’s alleged sexual misconduct and illicit drug use. The kindest things he has said about McCarthy are that he is “unhinged” and “lying like a dead dog”.Gaetz has furiously been trying to force McCarthy out and to close the ethics committee investigation. “Matt is upset about an ethics complaint,” McCarthy explained. In response, Gaetz called him “a sad and pathetic man who lies to hold on to power”. Gaetz has drafted a resolution of a single sentence to remove McCarthy: “That the office of speaker of the House is hereby declared to be vacant.” The date was left empty on the document, a copy of which was discovered on a baby-changing table in a bathroom near the House chambers.The proximate source of McCarthy’s quandary lies in his devil’s pact to gain the office he has long coveted, since he failed in his bid in 2015 to succeed the retiring speaker, John Boehner. He finally secured the post after 15 ballots in which he was dragged around for four days by Gaetz & Company. His Faustian bargain was to promise all things to all fringes. The premise of his getting power was to relinquish it.McCarthy “has made promises on each of those issues to different groups. And now it is all coming due at the same time,” said the rightwing representative Ken Buck. One of Gaetz’s allies, Representative Tim Burchett, Republican from Tennessee, compared McCarthy unfavorably to the former Democratic speaker Nancy Pelosi (“Well, he’s not as mean as she is”), and added, “We are very dysfunctional right now.”Representative Chip Roy, Republican from Texas – who inhabits an outer reach of the right and who, as Senator Ted Cruz’s chief of staff, was instrumental in precipitating a federal government shutdown in 2013 in a vain attempt to overturn the Affordable Care Act – declared: “I honestly don’t know what to say to my fellow Republicans other than you’re going to eat a shit sandwich and you probably deserve to eat it.”The origins of the self-destructiveness of the House Republicans always run to the rise of Newt Gingrich. When he was a backbencher, the leadership thought it could unleash him to damage only the Democrats, a gambit from which the party regulars would reap the ultimate benefit. But Gingrich quickly became uncontrollable, torpedoing President George HW Bush when he made a deal with the Democratic Congress to raise taxes. When Gingrich rocketed into the speakership, fueled with grandiosity, he staged two federal government shutdowns in 1995 and 1996, but was stood down by President Bill Clinton, which laid the pathway to his re-election.Among Gingrich’s insidious techniques was the introduction of an unstated rule that a bill could be brought up for a vote only on the basis of approval of a majority of the majority, which was in fact a minority of the overall body. This tilt empowered the right within the House Republican Conference and isolated moderates. Under Gingrich, the rule was not actually often applied. But under the speakership of Dennis Hastert, who replaced him, it became known as the Hastert rule, canonizing the rule of the minority.From the Hastert rule onward, the tyranny of the minority in the House became an operative principle. Whether it was applied or not, the right could exercise its power through its sabotaging veto, leading to a spiraling descent. Ever smaller minorities wielded threats; ever more facsimiles of Gingrich spontaneously generated. (Hastert himself was convicted in 2016 of sexually molesting four boys as a high school wrestling coach and imprisoned.)In 2015, a gaggle of House rightwingers led by Jim Jordan formed the Freedom Caucus, which in a relatively short time systematically wrecked the Republican speakerships of John Boehner and Paul Ryan – and, by the way, kept Kevin McCarthy out of the office.But after the Republicans lost the House majority in 2018, McCarthy had enough juice to beat Jordan in the contest to become minority leader. A careening Trump became so dependent on the Freedom Caucus as his defender that he made its chair, Mark Meadows – a congressman from North Carolina, and a Jim Jordan finger puppet – his chief of staff, where he ultimately became a central figure in the management of the January 6 attempted coup.McCarthy, Trump’s redoubtable “My Kevin”, was shocked by the assault on the Capitol, but swiveled to defend Trump from impeachment and removal. Just one week after Trump went into exile at Mar-a-Lago, on 27 January 2021, McCarthy traveled as a supplicant to bend his knee. There he issued a statement denouncing the impeachment for the January 6 insurrection, and, without missing a beat in the same sentence, condemned the incoming Biden administration’s efforts to deal with climate change, “destroying blue-collar jobs” as the “radical Democratic agenda” – twin olive branches, one to the disgraced Trump and the other to the fossil fuel industry that is a pipeline of dark money into Republican campaign coffers. By his abasement to Trump, McCarthy made himself a hostage to fortune. The rest is the corrupt bargain.If the Republicans were to lose the House in 2024, they would do so by forfeiting many if not most of the 18 swing districts that Biden won in 2020, currently held by more moderate or old-style conservative types, hanging by a thread that may be cut by a shutdown. Redistricting may also yield the Democrats at least six to 10 seats, perhaps seven in New York, enough by themselves to shift the balance of power, despite the possible gerrymandering of North Carolina districts by a Republican-dominated state supreme court. The aftermath of a purged and reduced Republican conference would leave a more purified, embittered and vengeful far right in an even more ideologically homogeneous and compact minority.House Republicans’ fear of losing their majority is an unstated motive driving the accelerated radicalization of the rump caucus forcing a shutdown, demanding their wishlist of maximum reactionary policies, to which McCarthy has caved, and if necessary overthrowing McCarthy.The folly would not end either with a shutdown or its avoidance by means that may or may not ignite the motion to vacate, while the Senate and the White House would reject the House budget, if there ever is one, and it all starts over. Scene by scene, the absurdist play unravels until it begins again. It is a jumble of Eugène Ionesco plays.Is it The Chairs? Chairs are arranged for invisible people. An old couple welcome the king, who is also invisible. An orator who cannot hear or speak promises to deliver a message to save humanity. The old couple jump out the window. The orator scrawls incoherent words on a blackboard. The empty chairs remain. Or is it The Bald Soprano, with a fleeting glance at Lauren Boebert before the blackout to signal that the play starts from the beginning in an endless feedback loop?A character without character is the main character. Delinquent members of the chorus rip apart his script and order him to dance to their discordant music. He taps awkwardly along for a while, shouts incoherently into the wings, shakes his fist, lowers his head and walks in circles. His haphazard fecklessness, learned helplessness and empty commands move the play rapidly to the blackout.But the incredible lightness of Kevin McCarthy is actually a scene in a heavier drama. Behind the facade of the theater of the absurd a more menacing play is being rehearsed. “Republicans in Congress can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized Government,” Trump wrote recently on Truth Social. “This is also the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots. They failed on the debt limit, but they must not fail now. Use the power of the purse and defend the Country!” Or as he put it in another post: “UNLESS YOU GET EVERYTHING, SHUT IT DOWN!”Trump stokes a shutdown to bring it all down. The deadlock that can produce a temporary crisis is a continuation of his rolling coup to delegitimize the government and seize maximum power. He will bring the Capitol to a stop without the mob at the doors, but instead inside the chamber. The greater the chaos, the greater the demand for the dictator; the worse, the better. After the bleak comedy, the joke is on us. After McCarthy, Trump.When the Ionescu comedy dissolves, what is revealed is Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. Written in 1941, the play is a parable of a Chicago gangster ruthlessly eliminating anyone in his way to absolute power: “Now you stand defenseless in a cold world where, sad to say, the weak are always trampled. You’ve got only one protector left. That’s me, Arturo Ui.”
    Sidney Blumenthal is the author of The Permanent Campaign, published in 1980, and All the Power of the Earth: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1856-1860, the third of a projected five volumes. He is the former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and senior adviser to Hillary Clinton More

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    Bob Menendez says money found in police search was for personal use – as it happened

    From 5h agoOne of the most striking aspects of Robert Menendez’s indictment was photos showing bundles of cash that investigators found in his home during a search last year.Prosecutors say the senator and his wife accepted bribes from agents of the Egyptian government, and investigators found a total of $480,000 stuffed in a safe, clothing and closets throughout his home.In his press conference, the senator addressed the money. “For 30 years, I have withdrawn 1000s of dollars in cash from my personal savings accounts, which I have kept for emergencies and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba,” said Menendez, whose parents are from the island.“Now this may seem old fashioned, but these were monies drawn from my personal savings accounts based on the income that I have lawfully derived over those 30 years. I look forward to addressing other issues in trial.”In a defiant speech to reporters, New Jersey’s Democratic senator Robert Menendez rejected charges brought against him by federal prosecutors, who claimed he illegally used his position to help the Egyptian government in exchange for bribes. Menendez made clear he would not step down, but remained vague about whether he’d run for re-election, while saying the cash investigators turned up at his house was merely for emergencies. Joe Biden’s spokeswoman, meanwhile, declined to say if the president believes the senator should resign, but an increasing number of Democratic lawmakers think he should.Here’s what else happened today:
    Donald Trump teased buying a Glock pistol while campaigning in South Carolina, which may have violated federal law. He ultimately did not go through with the purchase.
    The president welcomed the leaders of Pacific island nations to the White House, in a bid to build alliances against China’s influence.
    John Fetterman, the first senator to call for Menendez to resign, gave back money the New Jersey lawmaker donated to his campaign.
    Biden cheered a tentative agreement to end the Hollywood writers’ strike, ahead of his visit planned for tomorrow to a United Auto Workers picket line in Michigan.
    Trump will skip Wednesday’s debate of Republican presidential candidates to make his own visit to striking autoworkers in Michigan.
    During a campaign speech in South Carolina, Donald Trump attempted to shout out the state’s Republican senator Lindsey Graham, only to find his name attracted boos:It’s unclear what the boos were about. Graham is one of the more well-known conservatives in the Senate, though he has broken with some in the Trump wing of the party with his steadfast support for continued American aide to Ukraine.Punchbowl News reports that a Republican-controlled House panel plans to vote on Wednesday on releasing new whistleblower documents concerning Hunter Biden:The House will hold their first hearing of their impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden that day, which centers on unverified allegations of corruption against the president. His son’s business activities have been at the heart of those claims, but despite months of investigation, the GOP has yet to turn up proof that the elder Biden was involved in or benefited from his son’s overseas business dealings.In July, two Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers told the House oversight committee the Biden administration meddled in a Donald Trump-appointed US attorney’s investigation of Hunter Biden, however CNN reports that other IRS and FBI officials who spoke to investigators have disputed those claims.A Charleston Post and Courier reporter who attended Donald Trump’s campaign event today reports the former president did not go through with his purchase of a Glock pistol:Thus sidestepping the potential violation of federal law – or perhaps, newly permissible activity made possible by the supreme court’s conservative majority and its friendliness to public gun carrying – that would have followed.Donald Trump, campaigning in South Carolina, appears to have bought a Glock pistol – which may or may not be illegal under federal law.The former president and current frontrunner in the race for the GOP’s presidential nomination is on a successful swing through the Palmetto state, where he today announced he had received the endorsements from several of its top Republicans, including attorney general Alan Wilson, state House majority leader Davey Hiott and secretary of state Mark Hammond. The state’s governor Henry McMaster and its lieutenant governor have already endorsed him, in something of a blow to two other South Carolinians in the presidential race, senator Tim Scott and former governor Nikki Haley.In a now-deleted post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Trump’s campaign spokesman Steven Cheung posted a video where the former president poses with the pistol and says he wants to buy one.As NBC News reports, if he went through with the purchase, that would seem to break a federal law banning people who are under indictment – like Trump – from buying a weapon. But because of a supreme court decision last year expanding the ability of people to carry concealed weapons, judges have lately said that law is no longer valid:Joe Biden today welcomed the leaders of Pacific island nations to the White House in a bid to counter China’s courtship of the strategically important region. Here’s more on the visit’s significance, from the Guardian’s Siosifa Pomana and Julian Borger:Joe Biden has offered $40bn in economic aid to Pacific islands at a White House meeting with leaders from the region aimed at bolstering US engagement in the face of growing a growing Chinese presence.The president also announced formal US recognition of two new island nations, the Cook Islands and Niue, at the start of the Pacific Islands Forum, two days of Washington meetings with leaders from the group’s 18 members.“The United States committed to ensuring an Indo-Pacific region that is free, open, prosperous and secure. We’re committed to working with all the nations around this table to achieve that goal,” Biden said at the forum’s welcoming ceremony.The visiting leaders having been feted by the administration, brought down from New York where most attended the UN general assembly, on a special train to Baltimore where they were take to an American football game at the Baltimore Ravens’ stadium. There they were brought out on field and celebrated for “for their roles as American friends in the Indo-Pacific”.The Pacific leaders were also taken onboard a US Coast Guard cutter in Baltimore Harbor and they were briefed by the Coast Guard commandant, Adm Linda Fagan, on operations to combat illegal fishing and manage maritime domains. Over the next two days they will meet top members of the administration. The secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield will host a dinner for the visitors on Monday night, and on the second night, the Australian embassy will host a barbecue.“I think what the Biden administration has been able to do is to step up our game considerably in a short period of time in the Indo-Pacific,” a senior administration official said. “We have deep moral, strategic and historic interests here. And I think we’re reaffirming that promise.”White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dodged the question when asked whether Joe Biden believes Bob Menendez should resign his Senate seat.From her press conference today:Far-right Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has drawn ridicule for using an image of a Hanukah menorah in an attempt to commemorate the unrelated Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.Green on Sunday posted a message on X – previously known as Twitter – on Sunday wishing observers a meaningful fast for Monday’s observation of Yom Kippur. She tried to add a traditional Yom Kippur greeting but misspelled it: “Gamar Chasima Tova!”The backlash soon ensued.Critics noted that Greene’s use of a menorah in her message recognized a completely unrelated Jewish holiday observed in December. Past comments of hers which alluded to antisemitic tropes also undermined her message to Jewish observers.Greene subsequently deleted the original post without an apology and reposted the original text without the menorah image.John Fetterman,the first senator to call for Robert Menendez to resign, said he plans to give back the $5,000 that he received from the New Jersey senator towards his 2022 campaign.The Pennsylvania senator wants to return the donation in envelopes full of hundred-dollar bills, the Messenger reported. “We are in process of returning the money,” said a spokesperson for Fetterman, “in envelopes stuffed with $100 bills.”Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Democratic California governor Gavin Newsom will take part in a televised debate on 30 November.The 90-minute debate will be moderated by Fox News host Sean Hannity and air on Hannity’s 9pm prime-time program.In a statement issued through the network, Hannity said he is “looking forward to providing viewers with an informative debate about the everyday issues and governing philosophies that impact the lives of every American.”DeSantis is also scheduled to also participate in the second GOP primary debate on Wednesday. Donald Trump, the clear frontrunner in the Republican race, will not attend.Observers reacted toDonald Trump’s threat to NBC, MSNBC and Comcast with a mixture of familiarity and alarm.In a statement, Andrew Bates, White House deputy press secretary, said:
    To abuse presidential power and violate the constitutional rights of reporters would be an outrageous attack on our democracy and the rule of law. Presidents must always defend Americans’ freedoms – never trample on them for selfish, small and dangerous political purposes.
    Elsewhere, Paul Farhi, media reporter for the Washington Post, pointed to Trump’s symbiotic relationship with outlets he professes to hate, given that only last week Trump was “the featured interview guest last week on Meet the Press, the signature Sunday morning news program on … NBC”.Others noted that on Monday night, the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, a key witness for the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack on Congress, which Trump incited, was due to be interviewed on MSNBC.Sounding a louder alarm, Occupy Democrats, a progressive advocacy group, said Trump had gone “full fascist” with an “unhinged Sunday-night rant”. More

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    Top Trump aide burned so many papers wife noticed ‘bonfire’ smell, book says

    Mark Meadows burned so many papers in his office fireplace as Donald Trump’s presidency came to its chaotic end that the then White House chief of staff’s wife complained about the cost of dry-cleaning his suits to remove the “bonfire” smell, Cassidy Hutchinson writes in her eagerly awaited memoir.The New York Times reported the passage about Meadows burning documents, before MSNBC confirmed it.Hutchinson, a senior aide to Meadows, emerged as a key witness before the House January 6 committee, which investigated the deadly attack on Congress Trump incited in an attempt to stay in power.Hutchinson’s book, Enough, will be published on Tuesday. Last week, the Guardian first reported Hutchinson’s description of being groped by Rudy Giuliani backstage on January 6. Giuliani denied it.For the Times, Robert Draper wrote: “It was, by [Hutchinson’s] telling, an administration awash in paranoia, with Mr Meadows and others refusing to dispose of daily litter in ‘burn bags’ for fear that someone from the ‘deep state’ might intercept the contents.“Instead, she writes, Mr Meadows burned so many documents in his fireplace in the final days of the Trump presidency that his wife complained to Ms Hutchinson about how expensive it had become to dry-clean the ‘bonfire’ aroma from his suits.”Meadows’ habit of burning documents was previously known. In May last year, the New York Times and Politico reported that Hutchinson had in testimony described Meadows burning papers. Politico said he did so after meeting Scott Perry, a hard-right Pennsylvania Republican congressman involved in attempts to overturn Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden.Later, transcripts released by the committee showed Hutchinson saying she saw Meadows burn documents around a dozen times between December 2020 and January 2021.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs MSNBC pointed out, ahead of its own interview with Hutchinson on Monday night, Trump himself has without evidence accused the January 6 committee of “destroy[ing] all ‘evidence’ and records”.Last week, the former US president claimed to NBC the committee “burned all the evidence, OK? They burned all the evidence.” More

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    ‘Full fascist’ Trump condemned after ‘treason’ rant against NBC and MSNBC

    Donald Trump said Comcast, the owner of NBC and MSNBC, “should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason’” and promised to do so should he be re-elected president next year.In response, one progressive group said the former US president and current overwhelming frontrunner in the Republican 2024 presidential nomination race had “gone full fascist”.The Biden White House said Trump threatened “an outrageous attack on our democracy and the rule of law”.The US media was “almost all dishonest and corrupt”, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday, “but Comcast, with its one-side and vicious coverage by NBC News, and in particular MSNBC … should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason’.”Listing familiar complaints about coverage of his presidency – during which he regularly threatened NBC, MSNBC and Comcast – Trump added: “I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I win the presidency of the United States, they and others of the lamestream media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events.”Trump also used familiar terms of abuse for the press: “the enemy of the people” and “the fake news media”.Observers reacted to Trump’s threat to NBC, MSNBC and Comcast with a mixture of familiarity and alarm.In a statement, Andrew Bates, White House deputy press secretary, said: “President Biden swore an oath to uphold our constitution and protect American democracy. Freedom of the press is a fundamental constitutional right.“To abuse presidential power and violate the constitutional rights of reporters would be an outrageous attack on our democracy and the rule of law. Presidents must always defend Americans’ freedoms – never trample on them for selfish, small and dangerous political purposes.”Elsewhere, Paul Farhi, media reporter for the Washington Post, pointed to Trump’s symbiotic relationship with outlets he professes to hate, given that only last week Trump was “the featured interview guest last week on Meet the Press, the signature Sunday morning news program on … NBC”.Others noted that on Monday night, the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, a key witness for the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack on Congress, which Trump incited, was due to be interviewed on MSNBC.“Female political or media antagonists really cause blood to come pouring out of Trump’s eyes,” wrote Howard Fineman, a columnist and commentator.Sounding a louder alarm, Occupy Democrats, a progressive advocacy group, said Trump had gone “full fascist” with an “unhinged Sunday-night rant”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“There you have it, folks,” it said. “While Trump and his Republican enablers love to falsely accuse Democrats of ‘weaponizing’ the government against Trump, Trump himself is now openly threaten[ing] to weaponize the presidency to completely remove entire news channels from the airwaves simply because they expose his rampant criminality.”Juliette Kayyem, a Kennedy School professor and CNN national security analyst, pointed to a previous warning: “To view each of Trump’s calls to violence in isolation – ‘he attacked Milley’ or ‘he attacked NBC’ or ‘he attacked the jury, the prosecutor, the judge’ – is to miss his overall plan to ‘introduce violence as a natural extension of our democratic disagreement’.”Trump’s rantings were also coupled with threats to Gen Mark Milley, the chair of the joint chiefs of staff whose attempts to cope with Trump were detailed in an Atlantic profile last week.They come after a Washington Post poll gave Trump a 10-point lead over Joe Biden, who beat him in 2020, in a notional 2024 general election matchup.The Post said the poll was an “outlier” but Trump dominates the Republican nomination race and generally polls close to Biden despite facing 91 criminal charges – for election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments – and civil threats including a defamation trial arising from an allegation of rape a judge said was “substantially true”.Another new poll, from NBC, showed Trump and Biden tied at 46% but Trump up 39%-36% if a third-party candidate was added. A “person familiar with White House discussions” about the prospect of a candidacy from No Labels, a centrist group, said it was “concerning”, NBC said. Biden, the report added, was “worried”. More

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    Far-right Marjorie Taylor Greene ridiculed for Yom Kippur error

    Far-right Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has drawn ridicule for using an image of a Hanukah menorah in an attempt to commemorate the unrelated Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.The derision the Georgia representative brought upon herself comes after she was previously criticized for perpetuating antisemitic conspiracy theories.Green on Sunday posted a message on X – previously known as Twitter – on Sunday wishing observers a meaningful fast for Monday’s observation of Yom Kippur. She tried to add a traditional Yom Kippur greeting but misspelled it: “Gamar Chasima Tova!”The backlash soon ensued.Critics noted that Greene’s use of a menorah in her message recognized a completely unrelated Jewish holiday observed in December. Past comments of hers which alluded to antisemitic tropes also undermined her message to Jewish observers.Florida congressman Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat, corrected his Republican counterpart by noting that the solemn Yom Kippur and celebratory Hanukah were completely different occasions.Mentioning that Yom Kippur focused on the atonement of sins, Moskowitz added: “Lord knows you will be very busy.”Greene subsequently deleted the original post without an apology and reposted the original text without the menorah image.MeidasTouch, a liberal political action committee, criticized Greene for the “wildly offensive” gaffe.The group also called her “Ms Jewish Space Lasers” – a reference to her false conspiracy claim that California’s devastating wildfires in 2018 were started for profit by a space laser funded by corporate interests, including the Rothschild banking firm.State investigations concluded that the 2018 wildfires were “caused by electrical transmission lines owned and operated by Pacific Gas and Electricity”, the state’s largest utility.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a separate tweet, MeidasTouch’s co-founder Brett Meiselas added: “Frankly, Jews don’t need an antisemitic maniac who gives speeches at Nazi events sending out holiday messages in the first place.”Greene had previously downplayed speaking at the America First Political Action Conference, which was founded by the white nationalist Nick Fuentes in 2020.Even as she deleted the menorah image, Bill Prady – the co-creator of the TV series The Big Bang Theory – knocked Greene for preserving the “bad Hebrew” in the post.MeidasTouch pointed out on its website that the accepted Yom Kippur greeting is “g’mar chatima tovah”, which translates to “a good final sealing”.The greeting refers to the belief that one’s fate is written on the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah and then sealed on Yom Kippur. More