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      George Santos ordered to reveal identities of mystery bond guarantors

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      The Republican congressman and serial fabulist George Santos has until Friday to appeal an order to reveal the identities of three people who guaranteed his $500,000 bond on fraud charges, a New York judge said on Tuesday.A lawyer for Santos had said identification of the guarantors would imperil their “health, safety and wellbeing”, and claimed the New York congressman would rather go to prison than reveal the names.“My client would rather surrender to pre-trial detainment than subject these suretors to what will inevitably come,” the lawyer, Joseph Murray, wrote to the judge on Monday.At his arraignment in Long Island last month, Santos, 34, pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and making false statements.After entering his plea, Santos told reporters: “It’s a witch-hunt. I’m going to fight my battle, I’m going to fight the witch-hunt, I’m going to take care of clearing my name.”The New York Times sought the identification of Santos’s bail guarantors, arguing they should be identified as they had a chance to exert political influence over a congressman. Other news outlets joined the Times in its effort.On Tuesday, Santos did not immediately comment.Last month, House Republicans deflected a Democratic motion to expel Santos from Congress, referring his case to the ethics committee.Only five members of Congress have ever been expelled from the House: three for fighting against the Union in the civil war and two over convictions for fraud.Santos has admitted “embellishing” a résumé that was ripped apart after he won his seat in Congress last November, even his real name being brought into question.He has denied accusations of wrongdoing including alleged schemes involving stolen cheques and puppies and allegations of sexual harassment from a former aide.After winning a New York district previously held by a Democrat, Santos became a key figure in Republicans’ slim House majority. In January, he backed the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, through 15 rounds of voting to secure the position.Santos has repeatedly said he will not resign, and is running for re-election next year. More

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      Chris Christie, ex-New Jersey governor, launches 2024 presidential run

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      The former New Jersey governor Chris Christie has confirmed his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination next year.Christie filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday afternoon. He was scheduled to announce his presidential run hours later in a town hall hosted at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics in Manchester, New Hampshire.The pugilistic politician joins the primary as a rank outsider but promises a campaign with a singular focus: to take the fight to Donald Trump, the former president who left office in disgrace after the January 6 attack on Congress but who is the clear frontrunner to face Joe Biden again at the polls.Such is Trump’s dominance of Republican polling – in which he leads his closest challenger, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, by wide margins – others in the field have been slow to turn their fire Trump’s way.Declared but low-polling candidates include the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, the South Carolina senator Tim Scott, the former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson and Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur.While Christie has insisted he is “not a paid assassin”, the 60-year-old is certainly a seasoned brawler.Christie’s claims to fame include leaving office in New Jersey amid a scandal about political payback involving traffic on the George Washington Bridge to New York, then leaving the Florida senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign in pieces after a debate-stage clash for the ages.Christie was quick to drop out of that campaign, then equally quick to endorse the clear frontrunner. He stayed loyal despite a brutal firing as Trump’s transition coordinator, fueled by old enmities with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and only broke from Trump after the Capitol attack.Recently, Christie has worked for ABC News as a political analyst, honing his turn of phrase. Speaking to Politico, he insisted he was serious about winning the primary.“I’m not a paid assassin,” he said. “When you’re waking up for your 45th morning at the Hilton Garden Inn in Manchester [New Hampshire], you better think you can win, because that walk from the bed to the shower, if you don’t think you can win, it’s hard.”He also said Trump “needs to be called out and … needs to be called out by somebody who knows him. Nobody knows Donald Trump better than I do.”Trump has taken practice swings of his own.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I hear Chris Christie’s coming in,” Trump told Fox News at an Iowa town hall. “He was at 6% in New Jersey … I love New Jersey, but 6% approval rating in New Jersey. What’s the purpose? And he’s polling at zero.”Most observers think Christie’s second presidential campaign will struggle to last even as long as his first. But not all think he will drop out without leaving his mark.In the Washington Post, columnist Jennifer Rubin said Christie, having followed Trump then abandoned him, “can help create a rationale (what psychologists call a ‘permission structure’) that allows Republicans who voted for Trump to move on”.Rubin also said Christie could be a “truth-teller who can force Republicans to confront reality … and, as a bonus, Christie might be just the right person to take down the other bully in the race: DeSantis.” More

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      At least 100 million people are eligible to run for US president. Why are we left with Robert F Kennedy Jr? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr likes to talk to dead people. In a recent interview, the anti-vaccine activist, who is challenging President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination, said he talks to the dearly departed daily. “They are one-way prayers for strength and wisdom,” he later clarified. “I get no strategic advice from the dead.”It doesn’t seem as if he needs it. Kennedy, who is the nephew of the former President John F Kennedy and the son of the assassinated presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy, is doing pretty well in the land of the living. While it is incredibly unlikely that the 69-year-old will wangle his way into the White House, his long-shot presidential campaign has gained momentum. According to a recent CNN poll, 20% of Democratic voters say they support RFK to be the party’s candidate and 64% say they would consider supporting him. That is well behind Biden (who came in with 60% of supporters) but nothing to sniff at. Particularly considering that Kennedy doesn’t have many policies, just a famous last name – and a penchant for spreading conspiracy theories and referencing Anne Frank in offensive ways.On Sunday, Kennedy got a boost to his campaign when Twitter’s co-founder, Jack Dorsey, retweeted a video of the candidate saying he could beat the former President Donald Trump and the Florida governor Ron DeSantis in 2024. Dorsey captioned the video with: “He can and will.” When a Twitter user asked if the tweet was an endorsement or a prediction, the billionaire replied: “Both.” Dorsey is not exactly a political kingmaker, but he has influence and money so his endorsements matter.Dorsey isn’t the only tech bro eyeing up Kennedy. On Monday, Elon Musk hosted a conversation with RFK on Twitter Spaces. I imagine Musk was thrilled with how this turned out: it wasn’t plagued with the same technical glitches that affected his conversation with Republican DeSantis last month and Kennedy spent much of the conversation licking Musk’s boots. At one point, RFK compared the Twitter troll to colonists who died during the American revolution in order to give “us our constitution.” He went on to blame school shootings on antidepressants: “Prior to the introduction of Prozac we had almost none of these events in our country,” he said. This was among a number of other questionable statements.It’s easy to make fun of RFK, to dismiss him as a wacky conspiracy theorist. But it’s more productive to ask why he resonates with so many people. Again, 64% of Democratic-leaning voters say they either support or would consider supporting him being the Democratic party candidate – that’s not a small number. While Kennedy may spread vaccine misinformation, his platform also taps into very real feelings of frustration and desperation in the US. One of RFK’s big talking points is “the corrupt merger of state and corporate power” and the decimation of the middle class. Those aren’t conspiracy theories; they are facts. The middle class is shrinking in the US and polls show that the majority of Americans on either side of the aisle think the government is corrupt and rigged against normal people. Of course it is going to resonate when a politician rails against this. Of course it’s going to resonate when someone says they are going to challenge the deeply unfair status quo.To be clear: this isn’t an endorsement of RFK. Rather, it’s a primal scream of frustration. Let’s do a bit of quick maths, shall we? There are more than 331 million people in the US. Let’s say more than half of those people can’t run for president because they are too young or don’t fulfil the various technical requirements; that still gives you at least 100 million eligible people. That’s a big talent pool! Surely there should be an inspiring field of candidates standing in 2024?Well, no. There isn’t. There is Biden, obviously. He has decades of experience, sure, but he is also 80 years old and will be 86 at the end of a second term. And he is not particularly popular. Still, the Democratic establishment have closed ranks around him and he’s the only real candidate: his sole challengers are kooky outsiders. RFK, a man who speaks to dead people, and Marianne Williamson, a woman who once tweeted – before deleting the comment – that hurricanes can be stopped with the power of the mind. And on the other side? The leading candidate is Trump, a sexual predator. Why don’t people have any trust in politicians these days? This might be why. More

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      Mike Pence officially enters 2024 US presidential race, pitting himself against former boss Donald Trump – as it happened

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      From 5h agoFormer vice-president Mike Pence has officially entered the 2024 presidential race, pitting him against his former boss Donald Trump and a host of other candidates including Florida governor Ron DeSantis for the Republican party’s nomination.The Federal Election Commission’s website shows Pence and his campaign committee, Mike Pence for President located in Carmel, Indiana, officially registering today. The former vice-president will publicly announce the bid on Wednesday in Des Moines, Iowa.Mike Pence filed the paperwork necessary to run for president, though he will wait till Wednesday to make his campaign official with a speech in Iowa. Meanwhile in Washington, attorneys for Donald Trump stopped by the justice department, where special counsel Jack Smith is reportedly nearing a decision on whether to recommend charges over the classified documents federal agents discovered last year at Mar-a-Lago.Here’s what else happened today:
      New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu declined to jump into the race for the GOP’s presidential nomination, instead saying he will work to defeat Trump.
      But the 2024 campaign did get another entrant: philosopher, author, critic, actor and civil rights activist Cornel West.
      Military jets attempted to establish contact with a plane that overflew restricted airspace in Washington, DC on Sunday and later crashed, killing all onboard, but the pilot appeared slumped over and never responded.
      Nikki Haley participated in a CNN-moderated town hall last night, but even they couldn’t get her to make her stance on abortion access clear.
      Pence’s edge over other Republicans: he actually rides motorcycles.
      CNN has inserted itself prominently in the American political conversation in recent weeks by hosting town halls with Donald Trump, Nikki Haley and, on Wednesday, Mike Pence. But the network was also heavily criticized for how it handled the event with Trump, and to make matters worse, the Atlantic last week published a damning portrait of the network’s chief executive Chris Licht and his decision making. It’s a major story in American media, and here’s the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt with the latest:The embattled CNN chief executive, Chris Licht, apologized to his employees on Monday after an Atlantic magazine profile revealed he had been aware of the “extra-Trumpy” make-up of the crowd at a widely criticized town hall with the former president last month.According to the Atlantic, Licht had also been critical of CNN’s performance under his predecessor, telling employees they had alienated potential viewers through hostility to Donald Trump.In an editorial call Monday morning, Licht – who had committed to a number of interviews for the Atlantic profile – apologized for his involvement in the piece.The Washington, DC area was yesterday rattled by a sonic boom caused by military jets sent to pursue a wayward plane that later crashed into a remote part of Virginia.The Washington Post reports that military F-16s and air traffic controllers received no response from the Cessna Citation despite repeated attempts to establish contact, but one aviator saw the pilot slumped over. That may be an indication that the cabin had lost pressure, rendering all onboard unconscious and leaving the aircraft to fly on until it lost fuel and crashed, killing all four people onboard.At today’s White House press briefing, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby gave reporters a full account of how the military responded to the plane’s overflight of the city, which saw it traverse airspace restricted since the 9/11 attacks:These sorts of rants from Donald Trump are one reason why he’s earned the ire of a segment of the Republican party.Count New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu among them. Today, the moderate Republican told CNN he would not stand for president in 2024, and in a column for the Washington Post elaborated on his reasons why.“Since 2017, the national Republican Party has lost up and down the ballot, in red states and in blue states, and in elections spanning the House, Senate and presidency. That will happen again unless we Republicans undergo a course correction,” he wrote.The governor continued:
      Current polls indicate Trump is the leading Republican candidate in 2024. He did not deliver on his promises to drain the swamp, secure the border and instill fiscal responsibility while in office — and added $8 trillion to our national debt — yet now he wants four more years.
      If he is the nominee, Republicans will lose again. Just as we did in 2018, 2020 and 2022. This is indisputable, and I am not willing to let it happen without a fight.
      By choosing not to seek the nomination, I can be more effective for the Republican Party in ways few other leaders can. The microphone afforded to the governor of New Hampshire plays a critical role in an early nominating state. I plan to endorse, campaign and support the candidate I believe has the best chance of winning in November 2024.
      We’ll see how big of a threat Sununu’s opposition poses to Trump’s campaign for another four years in the White House. But here are a few other considerations that may have kept Sununu out of the race: his comparatively loose stance on abortion rights, unwillingness to adopt an aggressive gerrymander of the state’s district maps in favor of the GOP, and other centrist policies. He may have figured he wouldn’t have had a chance of winning over the party’s powerful conservative base.Donald Trump made liberal use of the caps lock key in crafting this Truth social post from a few hours ago, on the day his attorneys paid a visit to the justice department:The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that the lawyers for Donald Trump who turned up today at the justice department were meeting with senior officials, but not attorney general Merrick Garland, as they had requested:Such meetings are typical when justice department investigations near their conclusion, as special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago appears to be.Smith is also looking into Trump’s involvement in the January 6 insurrection, and the broader plot to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election win. Those inquiries appear to be ongoing.Should Ron DeSantis’s new feud with California governor Gavin Newsom head to the courts, it would be just the latest instance in which the Florida governor and presidential aspirant’s policies have cost his state money, the Guardian’s Maya Yang reports:Since Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, took office in 2019 and embarked on his culture wars, lawsuits from various communities whose rights have been violated have been stacking up against the far-right Republican.As DeSantis fights the lawsuits with what critics have described as a blank check from the state’s supermajority Republican legislature, the mounting legal costs have come heavily at the expense of Florida’s taxpayers.In recent years, DeSantis’s ultra-conservative legislative agenda has drawn ire from a slew of marginalized communities as well as major corporations including Disney. The so-called “don’t say gay” bill, abortion bans and prohibition of African American studies are just a few of DeSantis’s many extremist policies that have been met with costly lawsuits in a state where residents are already struggling with costs of living.The California governor, Gavin Newsom, has weighed into the row between his state and Florida over the case of a group of 16 migrants who were left outside a Sacramento church.A rights group said the group had been “lied to” and deceived after being transported from Texas to California. The circumstances are similar to a stunt orchestrated by Florida’s rightwing Republican governor last year in Martha’s Vineyard.Now Newsom has mentioned kidnapping charges in relation to the incident. Here’s his tweet, criticising Ron DeSantis after California authorities pointed the finger at the Florida governor over the incident:Cornel West, the philosopher, author, critic, actor and civil rights activist, has announced he is running for president.West launched his campaign for the People’s Party with a Twitter video on Monday.He said:
      “I care about you. I care about the quality of your life, I care about whether you have access to a job with a living wage, decent housing, women having control over their bodies, healthcare for all, the escalating destruction of the planet, the destruction of American democracy.”
      Watch his whole campaign launch video here:The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, is being sued by the SEC over allegations of mishandling customer funds and lying to regulators and investors.Binance has hit back at the claims and my colleague Lauren Aratani is reporting all the latest on the lawsuit in our dedicated blog. You can follow latest updates here:Mike Pence has filed the paperwork necessary to run for president, though he will wait till Wednesday to make the campaign official with a speech in Iowa. Meanwhile in Washington, attorneys for Donald Trump have stopped by the justice department, where special counsel Jack Smith is reportedly nearing a decision on whether to recommend charges over the classified documents federal agents discovered last year at Mar-a-Lago. It’s unclear who the lawyers met with, but when we find out, we’ll let you know.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu has declined to jump into the race for the GOP’s presidential nomination.
      Nikki Haley participated in a CNN-moderated town hall last night, but even they couldn’t get her to make her stance on abortion access clear.
      Pence’s edge over other Republicans: he actually rides motorcycles.
      Republican voters pining to send a governor to the White House needn’t worry Chris Sununu’s decision to forgo a run.North Dakota governor Doug Burgum – who is little known outside his home state – is expected to also on Wednesday declare his candidacy for president, the same day Mike Pence kicks off his campaign in Iowa. Here’s a teaser video Burgum just posted:Other governor options for Republican voters: Ron DeSantis, who is a distant second place to Donald Trump in the latest polls.In an interview with CNN, New Hampshire’s Republican governor Chris Sununu said he will not run for the party’s presidential nomination next year.“We’ve taken the last six months to really kind of look at things where everything is and I’ve made the decision not to run for president on the Republican ticket in 2024,” said Sununu, who was re-elected to a fourth two-year term as governor last year.Sununu has maintained his popularity in what’s considering a blue-leaning swing state, and also attempted to distance himself from Trump, telling CNN last year that he thinks that “clearly moving on” from the former president.You know who else was at the “Roast and Ride” in Iowa this weekend? The Guardian’s David Smith! He has the full story on what he aptly calls “a slice of pure Americana”:There were hay bales and Harley-Davidsons. There was sliced pork and campaign paraphernalia. There were earnest speeches about defeating Democrats winning back the White House. But at the centre of it all was a Donald Trump-shaped hole.The Republican presidential primary for 2024 got under way in earnest on Saturday when eight contenders – minus Trump – took part in Iowa senator Joni Ernst’s “Roast and Ride”, a combination of barbecue-rally and motorcycle ride.The annual event is a slice of pure Americana. When a young pastor offered a prayer from the back of a pickup truck outside a big yellow barn owned by Harley-Davidson, bikers removed their caps, placed them over their hearts and bowed their heads. The convoy rode in staggered formation past churches, suburban houses with clipped lawns, shopping malls and rolling farmland to the Iowa state fairgrounds.Mike Pence, set to make his entry into the primary official next week, was the only White House hopeful to actually take part in the charity parade. The former vice-president, who turns 64 next week, rode a cobalt blue bike and wore jeans, boots, a white helmet and a black leather vest with patches that said “Indiana”, “Pence”, “rolling thunder” and messages supportive of the military.Pence was among the Republican aspirants who, speaking in front of bales of hay and an outline of the Iowa map, delivered speeches of about 10 minutes each inside a wooden-roofed building where about a thousand voters ate lunch on green table cloths. But none mentioned Trump by name, giving the impression of a party in denial.Say what you will about Mike Pence, but the former president was the only candidate to actually get on a motorcycle this past weekend, when several GOP presidential contenders went to the “Roast and Ride” in Iowa.The event, organized by the state’s GOP senator Joni Ernst, was attended by Florida governor Ron DeSantis, senator Tim Scott and Nikki Haley, all official contenders. Pence hadn’t made his campaign official yet at the time of the rally, but distinguished himself by not just roasting, but also riding:The Democrats have welcomed Mike Pence to the presidential race with a big smile and open arms.Just kidding — they hate him. Pence may have broken with Donald Trump on January 6 and ended up running from a mob of his infuriated supporters, but the Democratic National Committee does not want voters to forget about the policies he supported as vice-president, Indiana’s governor, and a member of the House of Representatives.Here’s what DNC chair Jaime Harrison had to say about Pence, now that he’s officially on the campaign trail:
      In Mike Pence’s own words, he was a member of the extreme Tea Party ‘before it was cool,’ and he hasn’t slowed down since. Pence pushed an extreme agenda in Congress and the Indiana statehouse before becoming Donald Trump’s MAGA wingman for four years and then campaigning for election deniers last year. Now, he’s promising to take the Trump-Pence agenda even further, leading the charge for a national abortion ban, cutting Medicare, and ending Social Security as we know it. Pence’s entrance will no doubt drag an increasingly MAGA 2024 GOP field even further to the extremes.
      Former vice-president Mike Pence has officially entered the 2024 presidential race, pitting him against his former boss Donald Trump and a host of other candidates including Florida governor Ron DeSantis for the Republican party’s nomination.The Federal Election Commission’s website shows Pence and his campaign committee, Mike Pence for President located in Carmel, Indiana, officially registering today. The former vice-president will publicly announce the bid on Wednesday in Des Moines, Iowa. More

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      Trump donor whose family died in Washington plane crash lost other daughter in diving tragedy

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      A leading Republican donor whose family members were killed in a plane crash in Virginia on Sunday following a pursuit by US military jets lost another daughter in a scuba diving tragedy almost 30 years ago, it was reported on Monday.John Rumpel, a Florida businessman and frequent contributor to Donald Trump’s political operation, said his daughter Adina Azarian, 49, and two-year-old granddaughter were among four victims of the crash that caused a security scare when the plane flew over restricted airspace in Washington DC.Another daughter, Victoria, 19, was killed in a diving accident in 1994, the Daily Beast reported, and Rumpel and his wife, Barbara, an executive with the National Rifle Association, later named an assisted living facility in their home town of Melbourne, Florida, in her honor.On Sunday, Rumpel, 75, millionaire owner of Florida’s Encore Motors franchise, said nobody could have survived the crash of the Cessna Citation twin-engine jet near Montebello, Virginia, on Sunday afternoon.It is believed the pilot of the jet, who was also killed alongside the Rumpel family’s nanny, lost consciousness en route from Tennessee to Long Island, New York, causing it to stray into airspace over the capital.The North American aerospace defense command (Norad) scrambled two F-16 fighter jets to intercept the Cessna, but they did not shoot it down, military officials said.Sonic booms from the jets were heard in Virginia and Maryland as they raced to catch up with the light aircraft, sending some residents into a brief panic.“They all just would have gone to sleep and never woke up,” Rumpel, who is also a pilot, told the New York Times in a brief emotional interview.“It descended at 20,000ft a minute and nobody could survive a crash at that speed.He said his family members were returning to their home in East Hampton, New York, after spending four days with Rumpel and his wife in North Carolina.Joe Biden was playing golf with his brother near Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, at the time, and was briefed on the crash, the Washington Post reported.The White House said the sonic boom was “faint” where the Bidens were golfing, and referred questions over security arrangements for the president to the Secret Service.Records show that the Rumpels are regular donors to conservative political causes, including Trump’s failed 2020 campaign for re-election to the White House, and Ron DeSantis’s re-election as Florida governor last year.The two Republicans are the leading candidates for their party’s presidential nomination for next year’s general election.According to the flight-tracking website Flight Aware, the plane appeared to reach the New York area and made a nearly 180-degree turn, flying a straight path down over DC with the flight ending in Virginia.The sonic boom caused consternation among many residents in the capital region, who took to Twitter to report hearing a loud noise that shook the ground and walls.A team of investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was expected to reach the crash site on Monday.The Federal Aviation Administration said the rules under which the plane was flying did not require it to have a type of data recorder known as a black box. Generally, black boxes help investigators determine why plane crashes may have occurred.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Republican 2024 candidates criticize Trump for praising Kim Jong-un

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      A number of Republican presidential candidates, including Ron DeSantis, have criticized Donald Trump after the former president again praised the dictatorial leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un.The intervention from Trump’s rivals, who have largely avoided attacking the influential frontrunner, comes as a rare moment of dissension during the campaign.Trump posted a message of support for Kim to his Truth Social site on Saturday, after North Korea was appointed to the board of the World Health Organization.“Congratulations to Kim Jung [sic] Un!” Trump wrote. He posted a link to an article about the appointment to the WHO, which is an agency of the UN.Trump’s praise of Kim has prompted controversy before.In 2018, at a rally in Virginia, the former president spoke about how he and Kim “fell in love” as they got to know each other as world leaders – and how Kim had written him “beautiful” and “great letters”. Those letters later turned up among classified documents Trump retained after he lost the presidency to Joe Biden in 2020, becoming a focus of an investigation by the special counsel appointed by the US attorney general, Merrick Garland.The latest round of positivity which Trump directed at Kim again kicked up a political firestorm.Over the weekend DeSantis, who announced his campaign for president in May, and Nikki Haley condemned the move.“Kim Jong-un is a thug and a tyrant, and he has tested ballistic missiles against our allies,” Haley told NBC News.“He’s threatened us. There’s nothing to congratulate him about. I mean, he’s been terrible to his people. He’s been terrible to America, and we need to stop being nice to countries that hate America.”Haley, a former governor of South Carolina who served as an ambassador to the UN during the Trump administration, is running a long-shot bid for the presidency.DeSantis, who is expected to be Trump’s closest rival for the GOP nomination, said he was “surprised” Trump had praised a “murderous dictator”, USA Today reported.Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice-president who is expected to launch a presidential campaign this week, was similarly critical.“Whether it’s my former running mate or anyone else, nobody should be praising the dictator in North Korea or praising the leader in Russia, who has launched an unprovoked war of aggression in Ukraine,” Pence said in an interview with Fox News.“This is a time when we ought to make it clear to the world that we stand for freedom and we stand with those who stand for freedom.”Asa Hutchinson, a former Arkansas governor whose presidential campaign is yet to make much of a dint on the national stage, tweeted on Saturday:“Kim Jong-un, the tyrant dictator in North Korea should not be praised by Donald Trump for a leadership role in the World Health Organization. We sanction leaders who oppress their people. We do not elevate them on the world stage.”North Korea was added to the WHO executive board on 25 May in a move that human rights advocates condemned.“North Korea, a regime that starves its own people, was just elected to the @WHO Executive Board,” Hillel Neuer, the executive director of the Geneva-based human rights organization UN Watch, wrote on Twitter.“What this means is that one of the world’s most horrific regimes is now a part of a group that sets and enforces the standards and norms for the global governance of health care. It is an absurd episode for a key UN agency that is in much need of self-reflection and reform.”Trump’s praise for Kim and North Korea’s ascension to the WHO was surprising given his contempt for the organization while in office. The then-president suspended US funding to the WHO in 2020, accusing it, without evidence, of withholding information, and of being too close to China.Trump later withdrew the US from the WHO; Joe Biden rejoined the organization in one of his first acts in office. More

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      Trump critics warn of ‘deep decline of rule of law’ if he wins second term

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      As Donald Trump begins another campaign for the presidency, his extremist rhetoric and lies about the 2020 election signal that in a second term, Trump would attempt to thwart the rule of law at the justice department and other agencies in an effort to expand his power and attack critics.Former DoJ officials, some Republicans and academics say that if Trump becomes the Republican nominee and is elected again in 2024, he would most likely appoint officials who would reflexively do his bidding, target dissenters he deems part of the “deep state” and mount zealous drives to rein in independent agencies.Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general during the George HW Bush administration, told the Guardian: “Of all the many reasons Donald Trump’s candidacy should be rejected out of hand, none is more important than his utter disdain for the rule of law – the idea that we are a society governed by rules and not by the will of one person.”Ayer said: “It’s hard to imagine what would become of our legal system if Trump became president again.“In his first term, aided by attorney general William Barr, who made a pretense of believing in even-handed justice, Trump was still able to grossly misuse the Department of Justice as a political campaign tool, to do favors for his friends, and to seriously undermine the separation of powers.“There would be no arguable adults in the room in a second Trump DoJ. Beyond pardons for the January 6 criminals and politically motivated prosecutions, one can expect a broader pattern of abuses aimed at securing his autocratic power.”Trump has given plenty of hints about what he would do in a second term, many of which suggest he would become more extreme than during his previous four years in office.In the wake of his loss to Joe Biden in 2020, Trump falsely claimed the election was rigged and, with help from key allies, he tried to overturn the results in several states Biden won. Separately, after leaving office Trump retained classified documents. These Trump moves have sparked federal and state criminal investigations, which could result in charges against him and others in coming months. Trump has vehemently denied any wrongdoing in all these matters.At campaign stops in Texas, New Hampshire and elsewhere, Trump has demonized critics, including the prosecutors leading these criminal inquiries, and spoken of the inquiries in conspiratorial terms.During a March rally in Waco, Texas, Trump lashed out at the “thugs and criminals who are corrupting our justice system” before denouncing prosecutors and investigators. Ominously, he warned the crowd: “When they go after me, they’re going after you.”He said: “Together, we are taking on some of the most menacing forces and vicious opponents our people have ever seen, some of them from within.”As part of his dark Waco messaging, Trump added: “Either the deep state destroys America, or we destroy the deep state.” One of the targets of Trump’s ire has been the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who charged him earlier this year with 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments he allegedly made to the porn star Stormy Daniels. Daniels claims she had an affair with Trump in 2016.Similarly, at the CNN town hall in New Hampshire in early May, Trump doubled down on his claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. He also seemed to glorify the mob of loyalists who attacked the Capitol on 6 January 2021, which led to the deaths of nine police officers and others.In an appeal to his base, Trump said that if he gets re-elected, he will be “inclined” to pardon “many” of the protesters involved in the insurrection during Joe Biden’s certification by Congress. He even called January 6 “a beautiful day”.Given these comments on the campaign trail and his past performance in office, Trump’s critics say a second term would mean few, if any, checks on Trump’s impulsive behavior, and that he would surround himself with pliant allies.“Donald Trump has no regard for our institutions,” the ex-DoJ inspector general Michael Bromwich told the Guardian. “There is no better proof of this general truth than his attitude towards the Department of Justice. He believes it should be the political tool of the White House, which should target his enemies and go easy on his friends.”Bromwich noted that Trump’s choices of Barr and Jeff Sessions as attorneys general ultimately disappointed him, “because there came a point for both of them that they couldn’t go as far as Trump needed”.“If Trump were re-elected, we can look forward to a swift and deep decline in the rule of law,” Bromwich said. “Top levels of the DoJ would be staffed with election deniers; there would be a wholesale exodus of talented career personnel from every division of DoJ; and large numbers of January 6 insurrectionists would be pardoned. After four more years, the Department of Justice as we know it would be in tatters.”Bromwich stressed too that “Trump doesn’t believe in any type of oversight, whether conducted by Congress or inspectors general”, and that voters “should expect total resistance to any congressional oversight and the firing of IGs who dared to do their jobs of ferreting out waste, fraud, abuse and misconduct”.Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard and the co-author of How Democracies Die, said Trump was an even more extreme candidate now than he was in his previous campaign.“It’s pretty clear that Trump will come in as a more dangerous figure than in 2016. He had no inclination then to respect the rule of law. He saw the state as subordinate to his own will, much like a tinpot dictator. He came in as an authoritarian figure but with no plan,” Levitsky said.“Trump filled his government mostly with conservatives who cared about not breaking the law. They provided some resistance. Civil servants and people he appointed put the brakes on his wildest instincts. Now, he’s angrier and bent on revenge. Trump’s got people he wants to go after, as well as the so-called deep state. He’s going to be much more careful in the people who he appoints. Trump has a much more authoritarian plan.”The prospect of a more authoritarian President Trump is one that scares other critics who say his conduct in his first term was, at least in part, checked by conservative figures such as his ex-chief of staff John Kelly, and former secretary of state Rex Tillerson. Notably, both have voiced their opposition to Trump since they left their posts.Kelly told the Washington Post that Trump’s pardon pledges for the January 6 rioters were not surprising: “All those people who tried to overturn the election, that’s exactly what he wanted them to do. He can’t be turning his back on the people who tried to save him in the election,” he said.Trump has displayed other troubling signs, including allying himself with some of the most extremist Republican figures. One such person is Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who tried to help Trump reverse his loss to Biden. In late May, Trump used his media platform Truth Social to attack the GOP-controlled Texas House for impeaching Paxton over bribery and other alleged misconduct. The ex-president labeled Paxton’s impeachment the work of “radical left Democrats” and “Rinos” [Republicans in name only].In another radical Truth Social post shared in late May, Trump pledged that on his first day in office he would issue an executive order to overturn birthright US citizenship – a right guaranteed in the 14th amendment.Former GOP House member Charlie Dent told the Guardian he believed that “Trump would engage in more conduct through” executive orders upon re-election, and would “use his powers to do executive actions and ignore congressional powers and prerogatives”.Dent predicted that in a second term, “Trump would load up his administration with sycophants, unlike in the first term”, adding that the kinds of conservatives who Trump tapped before, such as the defense secretary James Mattis and Kelly, “will be gone”.“Trump will surround himself with people who would be disinclined to offer any restraints on his worst impulses,” he said.The conservative lawyer George Conway also issued dire warnings about a second Trump presidency.“He’s going to manipulate the levers of government to help himself personally and to go after his enemies,” Conway said. “He’s going to turn our government into a third world government.” More

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      Florida taxpayers pick up bill for Ron DeSantis’s culture war lawsuits

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      Since Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, took office in 2019 and embarked on his culture wars, lawsuits from various communities whose rights have been violated have been stacking up against the far-right Republican.As DeSantis fights the lawsuits with what critics have described as a blank check from the state’s supermajority Republican legislature, the mounting legal costs have come heavily at the expense of Florida’s taxpayers.In recent years, DeSantis’s ultra-conservative legislative agenda has drawn ire from a slew of marginalized communities as well as major corporations including Disney. The so-called “don’t say gay” bill, abortion bans and prohibition of African American studies are just a few of DeSantis’s many extremist policies that have been met with costly lawsuits in a state where residents are already struggling with costs of living.“The list of legal challenges precipitating from DeSantis’s unconstitutional laws is endless,” the Democratic state senator Lori Berman said.“We’ve seen Floridians rightly sue many if not all of the governor’s legislative priorities, including laws that restrict drag shows for kids, prohibit Chinese citizens from owning homes and land in Florida, suppress young and Black and brown voters, ban gender-affirming care and threaten supportive parents with state custody of their children, and of course, all the retaliatory legislation waged against Disney for coming out in support of the LGBTQ+ community,” she said.As a result of the mounting lawsuits against DeSantis, the governor’s legal costs, which the Miami Herald reported last December to cost at least $16.7m, have been soaring.In DeSantis’s legal fight against Disney following the corporation’s condemnation of his anti-LGBTQ+ laws, it is going to cost the governor and his handpicked board nearly $1,300 per hour in legal fees as they look into how the corporation discovered a loophole in DeSantis’s plan to acquire governing rights over Disney World, Insider reports.“Disney is a perfect example. It doesn’t hurt any Floridians. There is nothing. It’s creating a legal issue out of nowhere and now Disney sued so they have to respond and that is going to cost taxpayers’ money. The whole Disney case is just because of DeSantis’s ego and his hurt feelings,” the Democratic state senator Tina Polsky said.“Taxpayers are paying to foot the bills to pass unconstitutional bills and to keep up with his petty vengeance,” she said, adding: “I don’t think they’re aware at all … They’re too brainwashed at this point that they wouldn’t even care.”Meanwhile, in another case covered by the Orlando Sentinel, DeSantis’s administration has turned to the elite conservative Washington DC-based law firm Cooper & Kirk to defend the governor against his slew of “anti-woke” laws. The firm’s lawyers charge $725 hourly, according to contracts reviewed by Orlando Sentinel. As of June 2022, the state authorized nearly $2.8m for legal services from just Cooper & Kirk alone, the outlet reports.With mounting taxpayer-funded legal costs against DeSantis’s legislative agenda, critics ranging from civil rights organizations to the state’s Democratic lawmakers have lambasted DeSantis’s policies as unconstitutional and mere political stunts designed to propel him to the frontlines of the GOP primary.“DeSantis went to Harvard for his [law degree]. This is someone who should understand the constraints placed on him and the state by the United States constitution and the Florida constitution. He knows those constraints, but he doesn’t care. His goal is to intentionally pass unconstitutional laws and set up legal challenges in order for the conservative supreme court to overturn long-held protections,” Berman said.Bob Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University, echoed similar sentiments, comparing DeSantis to his main competition and current GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, both of whom he said are cut “from the same cloth”.“Ron DeSantis is a Harvard law school graduate. He is a lawyer. Whereas Donald Trump at least could make the argument, ‘I’m just the layperson, I don’t know’ if … something is deemed illegal or unconstitutional … DeSantis does not have that defense,” Jarvis said.Nevertheless, DeSantis appears unfazed.“DeSantis knows very well that … what he is doing is unconstitutional and illegal … Lawyers by training are very cautious so this is quite remarkable to have a lawyer-politician who not only knows better, but does not care,” said Jarvis.To DeSantis, it does not matter whether he wins or loses the legal battles as he knows he “ultimately controls the Florida supreme court”, according to Jarvis.“He is playing a ‘heads, I win, tails, you lose’ game. If he gets one of these crazy policies passed and they’re challenged and the court upholds him … he can say to the press and to the public, ‘I was right and the proof is in the pudding because the courts agreed with me,’” he explained.“But even better for DeSantis when they rule against him … DeSantis is able to stand up and say, ‘These crazy judges want our children to watch drag shows, they want our children to be taught to be gay, they want Disney to be this terrible company. That’s why you need a strong governor and why you will benefit from having me as president because I will make sure to get rid of these judges and replace them with judges that have traditional American morals,’” Jarvis added.As DeSantis continues to fight his costly legal battles, the state’s supermajority Republican legislature appears to encourage him wholly.“We’re in a litigious society,” the state senate president, Kathleen Passidomo, told the Tallahassee Democrat while the senate budget chair, Doug Broxson, told the outlet: “We want the governor to be in a comfortable position to speak his mind.”With Republicans rushing to DeSantis’s defense, perhaps the most glaring example of the legislature’s endorsement of his legal wars is the $16m incorporated into the state’s $117bn budget to be used exclusively for his litigation expenses.Speaking to the Guardian, the state’s Democratic house leader, Fentrice Driskell, called the budget a “carte blanche” from Republicans and the result of zero accountability.“The legislature is supposed to be a check on executive power. By giving him a carte blanche to go and fight these wars in court, it’s basically just saying that there are no checks and balances when it comes to the state government in Florida,” said Driskell.“It’s a waste … They are just allowing this single person to impose his will on the state of Florida and they’re willing to waste taxpayer dollars to do it,” she said, adding: “Most Floridians can’t afford their rent and property insurance rates are through the roof. We could have redirected that money towards affordable housing.”Driskell went on to describe Medicaid iBudget Florida, a waiver that provides disabled Floridians with access to certain services and which currently has a waitlist of more than 22,000 residents.“It’s very difficult for them to get off that waitlist because the Republicans underfund Medicaid. We could put that money towards funding the waitlist and getting people off of it. I think there’s only $2m that was put in the budget for that this year. If we added the $16m that was added for these culture wars, my goodness, that’s $18m. Presumably we could help get nine times more people off of the waitlist,” said Driskell.As DeSantis remains embroiled in his legal woes at the expense of Florida taxpayers, there is perhaps a single group of people that have benefited the most out of all the legal drama, Jarvis told the Guardian.“The lawyers who got that $16.7m, that’s money from heaven. That’s money that fell into their laps … Anytime there’s a loser, and the loser here is the Florida taxpayer, there is a winner. The winners here are the lawyers who are collecting those enormous fees. The more that plaintiffs file lawsuits and the more they fight these crazy policies, you know that’s just money in the bank for these lawyers,” Jarvis said.“DeSantis has been God’s gift to lawyers,” he added. More