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      ‘Criminal liability for librarians’: the fight against US rightwing book bans

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      In the classic comedy Blackadder, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger demanded “tougher sentences for geography teachers”. So much for satire. In the real world, US Republican politicians are now seeking “criminal liability for librarians”.To Skye Perryman, president and chief executive of the nonprofit Democracy Forward, as absurd as rightwing book bans can seem (a Florida claim that the Arthur books can “damage the souls” of children a particularly florid example), this is no laughing matter at all.She says: “In Arkansas, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a bill into law that would have done a number of things, including creating the potential of criminal liability for librarians.”The law, Act 372, would make it a misdemeanor offense, punishable by up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $2,500, for librarians and booksellers to furnish minors with materials deemed “harmful” by authorities. The law also provides for challenges to materials in public libraries.Last Saturday, two days before the bill was to become law, a federal judge blocked it, as a violation of free speech rights under the first amendment to the US constitution.The judge, Timothy L Brooks, quoted Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel: “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.” Feelings are running high.Arkansas is set to appeal. It will face organised opposition. Democracy Forward is part of a broad coalition including the Arkansas Library Association, the Central Arkansas Library System, community bookstores, the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild, the state branch of the American Civil Liberties Union and individual library users.For Perryman, such work is only beginning.“What we know is that laws like the one in Arkansas are part of a national effort from anti-democratic forces, movements and people that do not represent the vast majority of the American people, or even the vast majority of people in states like Arkansas, that are seeking to sow culture wars in order to undermine democracy.“In Arkansas, we blocked that law with a broad coalition of booksellers, librarians and community members, and I think that’s really important in terms of understanding what’s happening in these communities. We are seeing people who do not typically go to court, who do not typically resort to the legal process, really mobilising.”Attempted book bans in libraries and public schools have proliferated in Republican states, complaints made on grounds of history, race, gender, LGBTQ+ rights and more. Attempts to ban titles by high-profile authors (Maya Angelou, Amanda Gorman, Art Spiegelman) have attracted national headlines. The phenomenon has perhaps been most visible in Florida, under a governor, Ron DeSantis, running for the Republican presidential nomination, and with “grass roots” groups such as Moms for Liberty sprouting and shouting loud.Perryman points to sources of fertiliser for such rapid growth.“We have seen a real effort on the part of anti-democratic and far-right actors like Sarah Huckabee Sanders, like Ron DeSantis in Florida, like [Governor] Greg Abbott in Texas, like legislatures that have developed this [policy]. We have seen a real effort from those sort of lawmakers to develop strategies that are responsive to a very vocal but small minority of people.“The far right has been strategic about trying to organize groups such as Moms for Liberty, formed to provide an appearance that there is an organic movement sprouting across the country, that people are really concerned about children being able to access books, about freedom of expression and what’s being taught in schools.“And what we see time and again is that those voices do not represent a majority of people, and that they are part of a network that is coordinated to try to create issues, in order to be able to roll back progress and roll back our basic freedoms, including the freedom to read and the ability of communities to thrive.“In order to combat that, we have to understand what we’re up against. And so what we have done at Democracy Forward is not only work with on-the-ground communities seeking resources to fight back, who need legal representation … but also to really look and monitor what is happening at the local and state levels throughout the country. And who is behind those efforts.”Democracy Forward was founded after the election of Donald Trump in 2016, by “a dedicated and spirited group” who wanted to take the fight back to the right. Before her current role, Perryman was chief legal officer and general counsel of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, working to “enhance access and equity in healthcare”.She now links book bans to assaults on other civil liberties including access to abortion, a right three Trump appointees to the US supreme court helped remove last year.“If you would have lived a few years ago in the United States, what you would see was laws popping up around the country where there were criminal penalties for doctors for doing their job.“Rightwing actors that were highly coordinated and resourced pushed the law further and further, in order to be able to play in friendly jurisdictions and ultimately they did what they sought to achieve, which was to overturn a constitutional right to access reproductive healthcare through abortion.”Now, Perryman says, “in the censorship space, it is very important to understand that this is a similar playbook.“When you have political movements that do not represent the majority of people … you have to assume that their desire is to fundamentally alter our democracy and to fundamentally alter our first amendment, our ability to express ourselves, the ability of children to be able to get good education and ideas and materials.“And so we take this very seriously, because this is a movement in this country that is a threat to democracy and we will do everything we can to push back.” More

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      Trump looked like ‘scared puppy’ on way to court, Nancy Pelosi says

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      Donald Trump looked like “a scared puppy” before his arraignment in court in Washington on charges related to his election subversion, Nancy Pelosi said, comments likely to anger an ex-president that the former US House speaker has long delighted in baiting.“I wasn’t in the courtroom of course but when I saw his coming out of his car and this or that, I saw a scared puppy,” Pelosi told MSNBC.“He looked very, very, very concerned about the fate. I didn’t see any bravado or confidence or anything like that. He knows the truth that he lost the election and now he’s got to face the music.”Pelosi, 83, stepped down as the House Democratic leader last year but kept her seat in Congress. As speaker, she became a leading hate figure among Republicans, in large part thanks to overseeing Trump’s two impeachments. She and Trump never got on, rarely meeting to discuss government business.The friction between the two was on very public show in February 2020 at the State of the Union address. First, Trump appeared to snub Pelosi’s proffered handshake. Then, Pelosi responded to Trump’s performance by standing from her seat behind him to theatrically rip up his speech.Trump gave Pelosi a signature nickname: Crazy Nancy. He has also called her an “animal”.In federal court in Washington on Thursday, Trump pleaded not guilty to four charges related to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden.He faces (and denies) 78 criminal counts, including charges over hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels and over his retention of classified documents. He is expected to face more charges regarding election subversion in Georgia.On Friday, Trump’s closest – if distant – challenger for the Republican presidential nomination, Ron DeSantis, edged away from Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, as outlined in the indictment obtained by federal special counsel Jack Smith.“All those theories that were put out did not prove to be true,” the Florida governor said in Iowa.But like most of the rest of the Republican field, DeSantis has backed Trump’s claim to be the victim of political persecution.Pelosi told MSNBC it was “really sad” Republicans continued to support Trump, adding: “They have to change the subject and they have nothing to offer the American people in terms of jobs and the rest.”The Republican party, she said, “shouldn’t be a cult to somebody frivolous with the law and his puppets”. More

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      Outrage after DeSantis says he’d ‘start slitting throats’ if elected president

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      Rightwing Florida governor and 2024 presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis was widely condemned after he said that if elected to the White House, he would “start slitting throats” in the federal bureaucracy on his first day in power.The president of the National Treasury Employees Union, Tony Reardon, called the hardline Republican’s comment “repulsive and unworthy of the presidential campaign trail”.The president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), Everett Kelley, said: “Governor DeSantis’ threat to ‘start slitting throats’ of federal employees is dangerous, disgusting, disgraceful and disqualifying.”Among commentators, the columnist Max Boot called DeSantis’s words “deranged” while Bill Kristol, founder of the Bulwark, a conservative site, said the governor was “making a bold play to dominate the maniacal psychopath lane in the Republican primary”.DeSantis is a clear second in the Republican primary but more than 30 points behind Donald Trump in most averages, notwithstanding the former president’s proliferating legal jeopardy including 78 criminal charges.On Friday a major poll by the New York Times and Siena College in the first state to vote, Iowa, put DeSantis 24 points behind.DeSantis is widely seen to be trying to reset his campaign, having fired staffers including a conservative writer who created a video ad containing a Nazi symbol.But the governor has not noticeably retooled his hard-right rhetoric.DeSantis made his comment about slitting throats at an event in the second state to vote, New Hampshire, last Sunday.“On bureaucracy, you know, we’re going to have all these deep state people, you know, we’re going to start slitting throats on day one and be ready to go,” DeSantis said. “You’re going to see a huge, huge outcry because Washington wants to protect its own.”Complaints about the so-called deep state – notionally an embedded government of officials and bureaucrats Republicans claim exists to thwart their agenda – is a common feature of far-right campaigns, from Trump down.Should he return to power, Trump is widely reported to be planning an administrative cull of the federal bureaucracy, seeking to instal loyalists as part of a process his close ally Steve Bannon has long called the “deconstruction of the administrative state”.DeSantis has used his “slitting throats” line before, last week telling the rightwing columnist John Solomon he wanted to appoint a defense secretary who would “slit some throats” and be “very firm, very strong”.Condemning DeSantis’s remarks, Kelley, the president of the AFGE, said: “Federal employees – over a third of whom are veterans now wearing their second uniform in service to their country – have dedicated their lives to serving their fellow Americans.“They support our military, provide healthcare to our nation’s veterans, enforce our laws, safeguard our communities, deliver benefits to America’s most vulnerable citizens, keep our skies safe for air travel, protect human health and our environment, and much more.“These public servants deserve respect and commendation from our nation’s leaders. No federal employee should face death threats from anyone, least of all from someone seeking to lead the US government. Governor DeSantis must retract his irresponsible statement.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere seemed little chance of that, from a candidate who has made harsh rhetoric and confrontational poses cornerstones of a campaign nonetheless failing to outflank Trump on the right.In Florida, Daniel Uhlfelder, a former Democratic candidate for state attorney general, pointed to controversies over DeSantis’s past when he said: “This guy started his legal career at Guantánamo Bay.”As a US navy lawyer, DeSantis was posted to the US facility on the coast of Cuba during the wars after 9/11. He has angrily denied being present at torture sessions, calling one former inmate’s claims “totally, totally BS”.In Congress on Thursday, the Virginia Democratic senator Mark Warner said “inflammatory, violent language” like that used by DeSantis in New Hampshire “can lead to very real, very dangerous consequences”.Kelley of the AFGE agreed, linking DeSantis’s violent imagery to deadly far-right violence.“We’ve seen too often in recent years – from the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 to the sacking of the [US] Capitol on January 6 2021 – that violent anti-government rhetoric from politicians has deadly consequences.”In Oklahoma City, 168 people including 19 children were killed when a bomb planted by the rightwing extremist Timothy McVeigh destroyed a federal building. More than 500 people were injured.Nine deaths have been linked to the attack on the Capitol, in which Trump supporters sought to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden. More than a thousand people have been charged in relation to the riot, Trump among them after being indicted by the special counsel Jack Smith this week.Everett said: “Any candidate who positions themselves within that shameful tradition has no place in public office.” More

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      The far-right financier giving millions to the Republican party to fight ‘woke communists’

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      Newly released tax and election records show that since 2020 controversial financier Thomas Klingenstein has become one of the largest individual donors to national Republicans, contributing more than $11.6m to candidates and Pac, after decades as the far-right Claremont Institute’s biggest donor and board chairman.The spending spree dwarfs the total $666,000 Klingenstein spent between 1992 and 2016, and in the last election cycle put Klingenstein in the top 40 contributors to national Republican candidates and committees.In turn the spending has allowed him to connect with a long-standing network of conservative mega-donors centered on the billionaire-founded Club for Growth, which advocates for the reduction of government.Klingenstein and the Claremont Institute push a harder-edged rightwing politics, and he appeared in a series of videos released in 2022 where he argued that American conservatives are in a “cold civil war” with “woke communists”, and that “education, corporate media, entertainment, big business, big tech… together with the government function as a totalitarian regime”.Heidi Beirich, co-founder and chief strategy officer at the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told the Guardian in a telephone conversation that Klingenstein’s pivot may indicate an effort to “pull of Republican outfits and donors towards more extreme positions”.While the Claremont Institute has been called “the nerve center of the American Right” for its intellectual leadership and formation of hard right activists, Klingenstein appears to have a new appetite for directly impacting electoral politics.The Guardian attempted to contact Klingenstein for comment, including by contacting lawyers for his private foundation, but was unsuccessful in getting a response.Klingenstein is a partner in Wall Street investment firm Cohen Klingenstein, which administers a portfolio worth more than $2.3bn, according to its most recent Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings.Klingenstein’s grandfather was a successful investor, and other members of his family pursue more conventional avenues for their philanthropy, but beginning in the Donald Trump era, Klingenstein has increasingly used his resources to pursue a hard-edged version of rightwing politics.Klingenstein’s characterization of the political divide as a cold civil war – spelled out in a series of glossy YouTube videos – has been previously reported, as have some of his activities as chair of the rightwing Claremont Institute, a Claremont, California-based thinktank.That organization charted a radical, pro-Trump course from 2016, culminating in Senior Fellow John Eastman advising Trump in his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and delivering a fiery speech to the crowd of protesters in Washington DC on 6 January 2021.But newly available filings reveal how he has advanced these ideas in electoral and cultural battles.IRS filings show that Klingenstein has bankrolled Claremont and other rightwing nonprofits from a private foundation for decades. But Federal Election Commission (FEC) campaign finance records show that Klingenstein’s political contributions prior to 2020 were modest and intermittent.More recently, however, he appears to have joined a network of big-money donors centered on the Club for Growth and an associated Pac, Club for Growth Action.A $2.5m donation in January made Klingenstein the fourth largest contributor to the Club for Growth Action Pac, by bringing his total contributions to the PAC to $7m since 2020.The Guardian previously reported that the Club for Growth Pac’s biggest donors are conservative billionaires Richard Uihlein, Jeff Yass, and that the Pac was one of the largest supporters of Republican candidates who wanted to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The most recent FEC data indicates that this is still the case, with Yass’s contributions totaling over $51m and Uihlein’s at over $77m. Another conservative mega donor, Virginia James, has contributed almost $14.5m to the Pac. Klingenstein has now joined them as one of Club for Growth Pac’s foremost funders.Beirich said of the apparent collaboration between Klingenstein and these Club for Growth’s network of megadonors that “the Club for Growth has always prioritized taxes and economic issues and and dabbled in climate denial, but it’s interesting to see Maga types mixing with them”.She added that “it might be an attempt to bring the Club for Growth into the Maga universe”.There are indications that Klingenstein has succeeded in interesting Club for Growth donors in projects for which he is the principal funder.The American Leadership Pac was registered in September 2022, and by mid-October it had received $1.5m in two tranches from Klingenstein, $500,000 from Richard Uihlein, $250,000 from William Koch, and another $250,000 from Koch’s petroleum company, Oxbow Carbon LLC.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLast January, Klingenstein poured another $500,000 to the Pac, bringing his total to $2m.The Pac spent some $1.8m in the lead-up to the 2022 mid-term elections, mostly on text messages in support of a slate of Republicans and attacking their Democratic opponents nationwide, mostly in close districts around the country.In 2020 Klingenstein contributed $500,000 to the American Principles Project Pac, which was the largest single contribution by an individual to that committee in its decade-long history, although Sean Fieler, described by watchdog group Right Wing Watch as an “anti-LGBTQ megafunder” has donated over $1.7m to the Pac in 13 donations since 2013.Other individual donors include Robert Mercer, the rightwing hedge fund manager who achieved prominence after 2016 for his funding of both the Trump campaign and Breitbart News.While the likes of Mercer, Uihlein and Yass let their donations do the talking, and largely eschew public commentary, Klingenstein has sought prominence as a culture warrior and far-right thought leader.Another Pac where he is the leading donor sought not to promote election candidates, but Klingenstein’s own apocalyptic vision of a “cold civil war” in America.In 2021 and 2022, Klingenstein contributed $500,000 to Firebrand Pac. The committee spent almost all of that by the end of 2022, with its main output being five YouTube videos starring Klingenstein, in which he claims that a “a cold civil war… is not a time for too much stability, compromise, or for imputing good motives to the enemy”.Klingenstein’s role as the Claremont Institute’s board chairman and principal donor have been widely reported, but while he told the New York Times last year that Claremont had become “increasingly less reliant on me” for funding, figures released since indicate that he has significantly increased his level of financial support.IRS filings from one of his private foundations, the Thomas D Klingenstein Fund, indicate that he has given more than $19m to the Claremont Institute since 2005, with the most recent publicly available filing showing a $2.97m donation in 2021, his highest to date, and almost half a million dollars more than the $2.5m figure the Times reported for 2019.Klingenstein’s foundation also funds Claremont Institute offshoots like the American Strategy Group, whose website claims it is “dedicated to understanding the existential threats to the United States and western civilization presented by the Islamic world, Russia, China, and the loss of America’s founding principles”.That organization is headed by Brian T Kennedy, a former president of the Claremont Institute, who told an audience at Hillsdale College in April that he had appeared in front of a “grand jury in Washington DC” because “I was one of thirty people subpoenaed from Trumpworld” in the justice department’s ongoing pursuit of those responsible for the events of January 6 2021.Klingenstein’s foundation has also consistently funded the National Association of Scholars, and giving just over $100,000 in 2021 per its IRS filing. That organization is a rightwing nonprofit “that seeks to reform higher education” according to its website, and Klingenstein is a board member. He used the organization’s website to spell out an early version of his vision of “cold civil war” in 2021.There are indications, both in spending records and Klingenstein’s public commentary, that he believes rightwing Florida governor Ron DeSantis to be best placed to prosecute his side of the “war”.In an interview with conservative broadcaster Steve Deace in 2022, posted to Klingenstein’s personal YouTube channel, Klingenstein said that “DeSantis understands that we’re in a war, and that’s the most important thing”.“If you don’t understand we’re in a war, almost nothing else matters,” he added. More

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      Trump supporters condemn January 6 charges after third arraignment this year

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      It’s the third time Donald Trump has been arraigned this year, even as he is the only former US president in history to face criminal charges. Each time, Trump and his supporters, as well as detractors, have moved to gain from his time in court.Trump pleaded not guilty on Thursday in a Washington federal court to three counts of conspiracy and one count of obstruction in a plot to subvert the results of the 2020 election. He similarly denied his guilt in March over hush money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels, and then in June for illegally hoarding classified documents at his Florida resort.A handful of Republicans, though competing with Trump for the 2024 GOP nomination, fired off statements as the ex-president left the courthouse and returned to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.The biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy posted a video message filmed outside the federal courthouse calling the January 6 indictment “politicized persecution.” He earlier vowed to pardon Trump if elected.After Trump was indicted on Tuesday, the former vice-president Mike Pence – whom Trump allegedly called “too honest” after he refused to reject electoral votes according to the indictment – used the arraignment as fodder for his own campaign, including to sell merch. “[A]nyone who puts himself over the constitution should never be president of the United States,” Pence said in a statement.Trump has also moved to profit from each of his own indictments, blasting supporters with a barrage of fundraising requests after his court appearances in Miami and New York.Minutes after Trump left Washington, his son, Eric Trump, sent out a fundraising email with language calling the city “the belly of the beast”, according to NBC News. His campaign pulled in nearly $4m after his first arraignment in March and considerably less but still more than $1m after his arraignment in June, according to the New York Times.Trump earlier said being arrested was “a great honor” in a post on Truth Social, his social media platform. He also posted Thursday ahead of his arraignment: “I NEED ONE MORE INDICTMENT TO ENSURE MY ELECTION!”A district attorney, Fani Willis, is due to hand down a fourth indictment, related to election interference in Georgia, in the coming weeks.Conservative media outlets largely heaped praise on Trump while blasting the current probes against President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. When asked by a CNN reporter if he would follow the indictment as he was cycling on vacation, the president said: “No.”Fox News host Jesse Watters downplayed Trump’s January 6 charges on air while applauding Trump for his “calm demeanor” during the arraignment, according to Mediaite. “By this January 6th indictment, we’re kind of tired of it,” Watters said on Thursday evening.Trump has seemingly grown more comfortable with each indictment, according to NBC News’ Garrett Haake, who has covered each indictment from the ground.While Trump appeared “tight and tense” on his March court date in Manhattan, he was joking with his attorneys in Washington, Haake told MSNBC Thursday evening. “He seemed so much more comfortable and practised at this.”For many, the federal charges against Trump for his role in inciting the violence at the US Capitol were the first steps to finally holding the ex-president accountable for the deadly attack over which 1,000 individuals have been charged. A US Capitol police officer, Sgt Aquilino Gonell, was in the courtroom where Trump appeared for his arraignment, along with two other officers who were overwhelmed by rioters.“On that day, I risked my life defending everyone regardless of their political affiliation,” wrote Gonell in a statement released after Trump left the courthouse. “Our democracy is worth fighting for. Not prosecuting is far riskier than having no consequences for the alleged power grab attempts. Justice and the rule of law must win for our democracy to survive.”Adam Schiff of California, a member of the House January 6 select committee, signed a letter along with dozens of other Democratic lawmakers urging the district court to publicly broadcast the trial proceedings. “It is imperative the conference ensures timely access to accurate and reliable information surrounding these cases and all of their proceedings, given the extraordinary national importance to our democratic institutions and the need for transparency,” the letter said.After the Tuesday indictment, Schiff said in a statement posted online the law “must” be enforced against a former US president and candidate for “the sake of our democracy”.Trump attorney John Lauro, who joined the legal team after special prosecutor Jack Smith informed the ex-president he was a target in the January 6 case, suggested moving the trial to West Virginia, which he called a more “diverse area” than DC in an interview with NPR ahead of the arraignment. Former federal prosecutors and legal experts said there was no basis for doing so.The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, who is the strongest contender for the Republican nomination after Trump, though trailing by a wide margin, said in a statement released after the Tuesday indictment that he would “end the weaponization of government, replace the FBI director, and ensure a single standard of justice for all Americans”.DeSantis did not, however, refer to Trump by name, and said he did not read the indictment. More

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      Trump treats his new indictment as armor. Republican rivals sputter to defend him | Lloyd Green

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      Donald Trump’s fall 2024 general election campaign kicked off Thursday afternoon with a not-guilty plea. Facing a magistrate judge, the 45th president contested the conspiracy charges leveled against him by the government. He was released without posting bail. Minutes after the arraignment, Trump referred to his travails as “persecution” and called it a “sad day” for the United States.None of Trump’s Republican rivals can compete with the free publicity and notoriety he will garner in the months ahead.Unlike them, Trump is a certified martyr. Everyone else is ambitious, ungrateful or both. He will wear this latest indictment like armor while most of the Republican field will be left to sputter defenses of the former guy. That’s not how campaigns usually work.By now, Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy have internalized that the party’s base and machinery belong to Trump. There is nothing they can do about it other than bleat like sheep and wait.Regardless, they already have their main talking point – attacking the District of Columbia as the trial venue. On Wednesday night, Trump posted on social media that it is “IMPOSSIBLE to get a fair trial in Washington, DC, which is over 95% anti-Trump”.Two out of five of the district’s residents are African Americans, who are reliably Democratic voters. In 2020, Trump barely cleared 5% of DC’s vote.Instead, he urges that the trial be transferred to West Virginia where he ran better than two-to-one ahead of Biden. The state is also the third whitest in the union, behind only Vermont and Maine.“The latest Fake ‘case’ brought by Crooked Joe Biden & Deranged Jack Smith will hopefully be moved to an impartial Venue, such as the politically unbiased nearby State of West Virginia!” Trump exclaimed.John Lauro, Trump’s lawyer, seconded West Virginia as a trial site, saying he was searching for a “more diverse area that has a more balanced jury pool”. When it comes to college admissions, however, the Republican party professes to be color-blind.Already, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, is echoing the man he supposedly yearns to supplant. “The reality is, a DC jury would indict a ham sandwich and convict a ham sandwich if it was a Republican ham sandwich,” the star-crossed candidate told Fox News. DeSantis is the one who is drowning and yet he is the one offering Trump a lifeline.“I think the juries are stacked, I think that they’re going to want to convict people that they disagree with,” DeSantis added for good measure. Apparently, he forgot about Trump’s rally cry of “lock her up”.As a legal matter, venue transfers are hard sells. The Watergate burglars and Paul Manafort lost their respective transfer motions decades apart. Politically, however, it’s catnip for the right. The number of Republicans who believe Joe Biden’s win to be illegitimate has floated back up to 70%.Meanwhile, Biden has little reason to gloat. He stands mired in a 43-43 tie with a prospective felon. If two indictments barely moved the needle, don’t hold your breath for the third or fourth ones to be game-changers. Without a Trump conviction, we are talking heat without light.Beyond that, it’s a race to the drain as to whether Biden or Trump is perceived more negatively. Both men turn off a chunk of the US. Meanwhile, Biden’s margins among key voting blocs continue to erode.He is down to 16 points (49-33) among non-white voters without a four-year degree. His lead among Hispanic voters is evaporating (41-38), down 30% since election day 2020. If these numbers hold, Trump stands to flip a chunk of the electoral map. Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin would again be in play.Although inflation may be finally easing, working Americans have been socked with higher prices and watched their paychecks get stretched thin. “Joe Biden is more responsible for high inflation than for abundant jobs,” the Economist blared in May. “The main effect of the president’s economic policies has been to boost prices.”Although the stock market has turned in a strong recent performance, those gains disproportionately benefit the rich; lunch-bucket US, not so much. The country is still hurting.And then there’s Hunter Biden, the problem child who refuses to disappear. With Trump in prosecutors’ crosshairs, expect the Republicans to keep a spotlight on Hunter. And why not?He’s a hot mess. A federal judge rejected his plea deal while information and documents continue to ooze out that tarnish the president by extension. In a sense, actual criminal culpability is beside the point.The closer you look, the Bidens – including the president’s brothers – act like a family business, one that is marginally concerned about ethics and optics. Luckily for them, the Trumps and the Kushners monetized their government tenure, too.A prudent White House would keep Hunter Biden away from state dinners. But this White House and the incumbent don’t always act prudently. For his part, Hunter relishes his defiance.In his memoir, Beautiful Things, the prodigal son announces: “Having a Biden on Burisma’s board was a loud and unmistakable ‘fuck you’ to Putin.”But it doesn’t end there. Describing a series of interviews he granted to the New Yorker’s Adam Entous, regarding Burisma and Ukraine, Hunter writes that he “didn’t know how cathartic the experience would be”.Then for good measure, he adds: “It was my opportunity to tell everyone out there, ‘This is who I am, you motherfuckers, and I ain’t changing!’” Team Trump must be delighted.
      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

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      Trump to hear obstruction and conspiracy charges for Jan 6 indictment in court – live

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      From 6h agoGood morning. It is around 6am in Washington DC, where today we expect to see the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump, in court.The former president is accused of conspiring to defraud the United States government, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiring against rights, and obstruction and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding. Here is what we know and what we are expecting:
      Trump’s third appearance in a courtroom as a criminal defendant is expected at 4pm Eastern time (9pm BST).
      Prosecutors in Washington will outline the four conspiracy and obstruction counts and a judge will set bail conditions.
      The magistrate judge, Moxila Upadhyaya, will set a schedule for pre-trial motions and discovery.
      Both sides are likely later to file motions seeking to shape what evidence and legal arguments will be permitted at trial, which could be many months away.
      In a possible preview of Trump’s defence, his lawyer John Lauro called the indictment “an attack on free speech and political advocacy”, implying Trump’s lies about election fraud were protected under the constitutional right to freedom of expression.
      This is Martin Belam in London. I’ll be covering the build-up to Donald Trump’s court appearance for the next couple of hours before handing over to my colleagues in the US. You can reach me at martin.belam@theguardian.com.Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has called the indictment against Donald Trump a “political assassination.”Greene, a staunch Trump ally, tweeted on Thursday:
      “Today’s indictment of President Trump is a political assassination attempt by Joe Biden and his henchmen to remove the leading presidential candidate from the ballot in 2024.”
      “The American people will reelect President Trump! #Trump2024,” she added.
      Mike Pence has hit back at the “gaggle of crackpot lawyers” that worked with Donald Trump to allegedly attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.The Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt reports:Trump was charged with four felonies this week over his attempts to meddle with the presidential election. The 45-page indictment shows that Pence was a crucial figure in Jack Smith, the special counsel, being able to bring those charges.“Contemporaneous notes” taken by Pence, and referred to in the indictment, document how Trump and his advisors pressured Pence to reject the certification of the election in January, which could have resulted in the House of Representatives handing Trump a second-term in office.On Wednesday, as Trump and his legal team attempted to downplay those efforts – one of Trump’s lawyers suggested that they only asked Pence to do “pause the voting” on January 6 – the usually meek Pence reacted angrily.“Let’s be clear on this point. It wasn’t just that they asked for a pause,” he told Fox News.“The president specifically asked me, and his gaggle of crackpot lawyers asked me, to literally reject votes, which would have resulted in the issue being turned over to the House of Representatives, and literally chaos would have ensued.”For the full story, click here:Donald Trump has vowed to get his revenge on Joe Biden and his attorney general for charging him “with as many crimes as can be concocted”.Posting on Truth Social, the former president wrote:
      Look, it’s not my fault that my political opponent in the Democrat Party, Crooked Joe Biden, has told his Attorney General to charge the leading (by far!) Republican Nominee & former President of the United States, me, with as many crimes as can be concocted so that he is forced to spend large amounts of time & money to defend himself. The Dems don’t want to run against me or they would not be doing this unprecedented weaponization of “Justice.” BUT SOON, IN 2024, IT WILL BE OUR TURN. MAGA!
      US Marshals have been seen inside the federal courthouse where Donald Trump is to due to appear later today.A group of heavily armed men, including members of the service’s special operations unit, were seen arriving inside the court with tactical gear and rifles, CNN reported. A bomb-sniffing dog, a black lab named Legend, was also seen on patrol, as well as Secret Service agents patrolling inside the building.From NBC’s Ryan J Reilly:Federal prosecutors have charged Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, the latest criminal case before the former president that comes just weeks after he was charged with retaining national defense information.You can read the indictment here in full:Biotech entrepeneur and GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy appeared outside the federal courthouse in Washington in an attempt to boost his visibility.In a video posted to Twitter, Ramaswamy questioned why Trump has been indicted in three “supposedly independent prosecutions” in the midst of a presidential election. “The government does not trust the people to select their leaders,” he said.When Donald Trump appears at the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington, DC this afternoon to answer the indictment brought against him by special counsel Jack Smith for allegedly trying to overturn his 2020 election loss, he will not be formally arrested or have his mugshot taken.The former president will undergo digital fingerprinting as part of the booking process at the federal courthouse, and will be required to provide his social security number, date of birth, address, and other personal information, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing US Marshals Service spokesman Drew Wade.Trump will not have his photograph taken during his processing, “since he’s already easily recognizable and there are already many photographs available”.He will also not be placed under arrest, according to Wade. In accepting the indictment on Tuesday, US Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya issued a summons for his appearance, not an arrest warrant.For those involved with the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment brought a collective sigh of relief, according to a Washington Post report.For them, the indictment served as the start of a final stage of accountability for Donald Trump and his allies that the committee long sought, but also as a validation of the group’s work, the paper wrote, citing sources.
      The indictment also elevated their findings outside of the political arena, where their work was subject to constant allegations of partisanship, bringing the credibility of the criminal justice system.
      Retired group chats were revived and calls placed to old colleagues as lawmakers and investigators absorbed the news.
      Tim Heaphy, the lead investigator for the committee, told the paper:
      As I read the indictment, it really struck me how closely it hews to our structure and our findings. Facts are what matters. And lawyers get too much credit for facts. We gathered really important facts because a lot of people came forward and gave us those facts. Those same facts are leading to a criminal indictment of the former president.
      The indictment comes more than two years after a group of Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. The January 6 attack, which has already resulted in more than 1,000 arrests, caused the deaths of seven people, a bipartisan Senate report found.Despite the deadly consequences of the Capitol insurrection, past efforts to hold Trump accountable for the violence and his broader election subversion campaign have fallen short. The House voted to impeach Trump for inciting the insurrection, but he was acquitted by the Senate. The House then passed a bill calling for the formation of an independent commission to investigate the Capitol attack, but that proposal also failed in the Senate.House Democrats instead created a select committee to examine the origins and impact of the January 6 insurrection, and the panel held a series of hearings that painted a damning picture of a president hellbent on remaining in office even after it became clear he had fairly lost his bid for reelection. The select committee ultimately voted to refer Trump to the justice department for criminal prosecution, but the panel itself could not advance charges against the former president.Kristy Parker, a former federal prosecutor and now counsel at the nonpartisan nonprofit Protect Democracy, said:
      The select committee did an outstanding job of presenting a lot of evidence that they gleaned from their interviews with people who essentially were willing to cooperate, but criminal investigators and prosecutors have the ability to subpoena people.
      Unlike Donald Trump’s first two indictments, the former president’s third set of criminal charges stands out as the first major legal effort to hold him accountable for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Pro-democracy experts welcomed the indictment as a victory for the rule of law that could help fortify America’s election systems in the face of ongoing threats from Trump and his allies.The indictment charges Trump with four counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights in his relentless pursuit to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election and remain in office.“This is one of the worst things any American president has ever done,” said Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law.
      The magnitude of the indictment matches the magnitude of what Trump tried to do, which is to overthrow the constitutional system to stay in office.
      The significance of the indictments extends beyond accountability, Parker argued. As Trump and his allies continue to spread lies about rampant voter fraud and threaten the foundation of America’s system of government, the recently announced criminal charges could send a chilling message to anyone else considering similar anti-democratic efforts in the future.“We have been kind of living under a question mark ever since the events of January 6, and that question mark has been: are we as a country going to be able to hold this person accountable, even though he was the 45th president of the United States?” Kristy Parker, a former federal prosecutor and now counsel at the nonpartisan nonprofit Protect Democracy, said.
      If you let a person like that walk away without any kind of accountability, then the chances of something like what we saw on January 6 happening again are extremely high.
      Here are some key takeaways from the latest indictment:Trump faces four chargesThe former president is accused of conspiring to defraud the United States government, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiring against rights, and obstruction and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding.In the 45-page indictment, prosecutors laid out their case in stark detail, alleging Trump knowingly spread false allegations about fraud, convened false slates of electors and attempted to block the certification of the election on January 6.The former president was ‘determined to remain in power’Federal prosecutors said Trump was “determined to remain in power”. Prosecutors said that for two months after his election loss, Trump spread lies to create an “intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger” and “erode public faith in the administration of the election”. They cited an example in Georgia, where Trump claimed more than 10,000 dead people voted in four days even after the state’s top elections official told him that was not true.There are six un-indicted co-conspiratorsThe indictment included six un-indicted co-conspirators as part of Smith’s inquiry, including four unnamed attorneys who allegedly aided Trump in his effort to subvert the 2020 election results, as well as an unnamed justice department official and an unnamed political consultant.While unnamed in the document, the details in the indictment indicate that those people include Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Ken Chesebro as well as the former US justice department official Jeff Clark.The special counsel wants a speedy trialIt’s unclear yet when the case will go to trial, but special counsel Jack Smith said his office will seek speedy proceedings. Smith said in a press conference on Tuesday:
      I must emphasize that the indictment is only an allegation and that the defendant must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, in a court of law.
      Indictments won’t disqualify Trump from officeTrump’s indictments will not bar him from seeking the presidency again, nor will any conviction. However, if he’s convicted, there would likely be lawsuits seeking to disqualify him from the ballot under the 14th amendment, which bars those who have engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” from holding office. But Congress could override that disqualification in the 14th amendment by two-thirds vote.The indictment follows a path laid by the House January 6 committeeThe congressional panel, which was created to investigate the insurrection, concluded last December recommending criminal charges. Over the course of the investigation, the committee conducted more than 1,000 interviews, collected more than a million documents and interviewed key witnesses. In public hearings, some held at prime time, investigators aired dramatic and damning footage, making the case that Trump “was directly responsible for summoning what became a violent mob” despite understanding that he had lost the election.The justice department received what the committee had uncovered, but conducted its own interviews and used its authority to gain key evidence that wasn’t easily accessible to Congress.The final charges against Trump include ones that the committee had recommended, including conspiracy to defraud the United States.Members of the media and public are lining up outside the federal courthouse in Washington, where Donald Trump is expected to appear at 4pm Eastern time (9pm BST).The chief of the Capitol Police told reporters on Wednesday that the force is “prepared for whatever might happen”. He said there is “security plan in place” but declined to go into specifics.Donald Trump’s former attorney general William Bar said he believes Trump “knew well he lost the election” and that special counsel Jack Smith has more evidence to prove that the former president knew the 2020 election was not stolen.Barr, who resigned as Trump’s attorney general weeks after the election in December 2020, told CNN:
      At first I wasn’t sure, but I have come to believe he knew well he had lost the election.
      He went on to say that the four charges Trump is accused of in the latest indictment are just the “tip of the iceberg” and that Smith has “a lot more evidence” against him.
      I think there is a lot more to come, and I think they have a lot more evidence as to President Trump’s state of mind.
      “It would not come out very well for him” if Trump took the stand on that defense, Barr said, adding that he doubted if the former president “remembers all the different versions of events he has given over the last few years.”Good morning from Washington DC. Thursday’s arraignment follows the release of a 45-page indictment that alleges that Donald Trump repeated false claims of election fraud, despite repeated warnings from multiple people in his circle, including senior leaders in the Department of Justice and senior attorneys who had been appointed by Trump, and the former vice-president Mike Pence, who told him “he had seen no evidence of outcome-determinative fraud”.The indictment describes a conspiracy which, at its core, involves Trump and his co-conspirators allegedly trying to dupe Pence into falsely suggesting the outcome of the 2020 election had been in doubt.To do so, prosecutors say Trump tried to use the Department of Justice to open “sham election fraud investigations” and repeatedly tried to co-opt Pence into rejecting electoral college votes for Joe Biden in an effort to stop his election win being certified.When that failed, the indictment says, Trump tried to block the certification and exploited the January 6 Capitol attack by trying to push false claims of election fraud and to convince members of Congress to continue to delay the certification.The indictment also listed six co-conspirators who were not charged in the indictment. While they were unnamed, the descriptions of five of the six matched those of the Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Ken Chesebro as well as the former US justice department official Jeff Clark.This is Léonie Chao-Fong taking over the blog in Washington. You can reach me at leonie.chao-fong@theguardian.comMy colleague in New York, Sam Levine, has put together this useful guide to some of the possible scenarios and outcomes from this criminal legal action against Donald Trump. He addresses some of the key unknowns, like for example “If convicted, can Trump be blocked from holding office?”, “What happens if Trump goes on trial during the presidential primaries?” and “could Trump theoretically pardon himself if he goes on to win the Republican nomination and then the election?”Donald Trump has used his Truth Social platform to issue an early morning screed to call for a change of venue in the trial.Labelling it a “fake ‘case’” which has been “brought by crooked Joe Biden and deranged Jack Smith”, Trump suggested “politically unbiased” West Virginia as a venue, arguing it is impossible for him to get a fair trial in Washington, which he described as “95% anti-Trump”.The message suggests that anybody who thought Trump might temper his language, in light of the charges he faces, was misguided.In the Washington Post this morning, one lawyer is quoted suggesting that the case could hinge on whether the prosecution can prove what is going on inside Donald Trump’s mind. It quotes Robert Kelner, who it describes as a veteran DC lawyer, saying:
      I think the entire indictment really turns on the question of Trump’s intent. Arguably, there isn’t any smoking-gun evidence in the indictment regarding intent, though there is certainly circumstantial evidence. At the heart of the case is really a metaphysical question of whether it’s even possible for Donald Trump to believe that he lost the election, or lost anything else, for that matter.
      [Special Counsel Jack] Smith needs to show that all of the false statements Trump made about the election, which the indictment chronicles in great detail, were understood by Trump to be false; otherwise, it becomes a case about political speech and first amendment rights.
      There is a decades-old question about whether, in the privacy of his own office or bedroom, Donald Trump admits to things that he doesn’t admit publicly or whether, even when he’s staring at himself in the bathroom mirror shaving, he’s telling himself the same lies that he tells the rest of us. I don’t think we know the answer. It may be an unanswerable question.
      In his response to the indictment on Tuesday, Donald Trump’s statement described it as a “pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election”.“Biden Crime Family” has become the latest epithet that Donald Trump drops into his statements in the hope that it will be picked up and amplified by his followers.The former president has a knack for pithy phrases and nicknames which become shortcuts and memes for his fans – think rallies chanting “Lock her up” about opponent “Crooked Hillary” Clinton in the 2016 election or Trump dubbing his opponent “sleepy Joe” in 2020.It isn’t just those in the Democratic party who have been on the receiving end. He has labelled his Florida governor opponent for the 2024 nomination “Ron DeSanctimonious” and Ted Cruz earned the Trump name “Lyin’ Ted”.“Biden Crime Family” isn’t an original Trump phrase though, but one that has been floating around Republican circles for some time. In fact only a week ago Jill Biden’s first husband was using the phrase in a New York Post interview about his experience of dealing with the president and his wife after the split.The “crime family” name derives from a continued Republican fascination with the legal worries of Biden’s son Hunter, who has pleaded not guilty to tax and gun charges. Overseas dealings involving the Biden family have been subject to a House Oversight Committee investigation, which is yet to report any wrongdoing. More

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      Obama reportedly warns Biden over strength of Trump 2024 challenge

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      Barack Obama has reportedly warned Joe Biden about how strong a challenge Donald Trump will be in their second election battle in 2024, should Trump win the Republican nomination next year as expected.Polling now shows Trump and Biden closely matched for a second presidential contest.At a private White House lunch with Biden in June, Obama also “promised to do all he could to help the president get re-elected”, the Washington Post reported. Citing two sources familiar with the meeting, the Post said Biden welcomed the offer of help from the man under whom he was vice-president between 2009 and 2017.Biden, the newspaper said, “is eager to lock down promises of help from top Democrats, among whom Obama is easily the biggest star, for what is likely to be a hard-fought re-election race”.Trump faces unprecedented legal jeopardy including 78 criminal charges, over hush-money payments, retention of classified information and his attempt to overturn Biden’s election victory in 2020.He is expected also to face election subversion charges in Georgia but his grip on the Republican primary has only tightened with each legal reverse. In Republican polling, Trump enjoys leads of more than 30 points over his nearest rival, the hard-right governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis.In 2020, Biden beat Trump by more than 7m ballots and conclusively in the electoral college, a result Trump refused to accept, stoking chaos culminating in the deadly US Capitol attack.Biden and Obama’s relationship has been the subject of widespread reporting and speculation, not least over whether Obama thought Biden should mount a third run for the Democratic nomination in 2020.As a US senator from Delaware, Biden crashed and burned in the primaries of 1988 and 2008, the latter won by Obama, 19 years Biden’s junior. The two men then formed an effective partnership through eight years in power.In 2020, as Biden sought to become the oldest ever president via a campaign based on the need to save “the soul of the nation” from Trump, Obama withheld his memoirs, potentially awkward for his vice-president, until the race was run. But he also long withheld his endorsement.After Biden overcame a rocky start to surge to the nomination, in large part with the support of African American voters, Obama helped drive home his success.Tensions have reportedly remained. For one striking example, the authors Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns described, in their book This Will Not Pass, how Biden, now 80, told one adviser: “I am confident that Barack is not happy with the coverage of this administration as more transformative than his.”Among major challenges, Biden has faced the Covid pandemic, strong economic headwinds, a US body politic under attack from Trump’s extremist Republican party, and the need to marshal global support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. Despite widely acknowledged successes, his popularity ratings remain stubbornly low.Eric Schultz, an Obama adviser, did not comment to the Post about the June lunch.“We place a huge emphasis on finding creative ways to reach new audiences, especially tools that can be directly tied to voter mobilization or volunteer activations,” Schultz told the paper. “We are deliberate in picking our moments because our objective is to move the needle.”A Biden campaign spokesperson, TJ Ducklo, said: “President Biden is grateful for [Obama’s] unwavering support, and looks forward to once again campaigning side-by-side … to win in 2024 and finish the job for the American people.” More