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      House business to resume as McCarthy and Republicans break impasse

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      The US House of Representatives is set to resume votes on a handful of Republican-backed bills on Tuesday after a week-long impasse between Kevin McCarthy, the speaker, and a small group of far-right Republicans.Business is set to resume on the House floor on Tuesday afternoon. A slate of previously stalled votes, including a procedural measure to advance legislation protecting gas stoves, are expected to move forward.The agreement comes after a group of 11 Republicans brought the chamber to a halt last week by voting with Democrats and tanking a pair of GOP-backed bills in a revolt against McCarthy for working with Biden to address the debt ceiling. Members of the House Freedom Caucus criticized McCarthy for weak leadership.McCarthy appeared to have resolved the conflict with the holdouts following a closed-door meeting on Monday afternoon.“We know when we work together and work on conservative issues, we were winning, and we get more victories that way,” McCarthy told reporters after emerging from the talks.But lawmakers warned on Monday that they would continue to stall the GOP agenda if McCarthy did not listen to their demands. Among calls for deeper spending cuts, hardliners asked for a resolution condemning Biden’s calls for stricter gun control.“Perhaps we’ll be back here next week,” Congressman Matt Gaetz, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, told reporters as he exited the meeting.Later on Monday evening, McCarthy announced defense and domestic spending bills would include deeper spending cuts in a sign of the outcomes of the closed-door talks, according to the Washington Post.Since assuming the top House leadership role, McCarthy has struggled to gain the support of the Republican party. It took 15 rounds of votes for McCarthy to win the speakership in January as far-right Republicans stalled his confirmation.Yet other Republican members of the House criticized the hardliners for stalling their agenda. In a weekly closed-door meeting of the Republican conference on Tuesday morning, lawmakers condemned last week’s vote blockade.First-term congressman Derrick Van Orden, of Wisconsin, lashed out against the House Freedom Caucus in a fiery speech, according to multiple reports, saying his daughter is dying of cancer yet he still shows up to work every day. More

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

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

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

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

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      Republicans censure senator for backing LGBTQ+ rights and gun control

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

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

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

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      Fears that Republicans’ rhetoric after Trump indictment could spark violence

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

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

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

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

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