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      Oregon Republican boycott threatens key bills on abortion and gun control

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      Oregon Republicans boycotted the statehouse for a ninth day on Thursday, denying lawmakers the quorum necessary to pass legislation, in a protest that could derail hundreds of bills, including proposals on gun control and abortion rights.While Democrats control the capital in the Pacific north-west state, Republicans have leveraged rules requiring two-thirds of lawmakers be present to pass legislation, which means Democrats need a certain number of Republicans to be there too.Republicans walked out of the statehouse more than a week ago as the chambers prepared for a final vote on a bill that that would have expanded gender-affirming care and abortion protections, and have not returned. Their absence has thrown the capitol into disarray, and threatened Democrats’ legislative agenda.The boycotting lawmakers could face consequences for their protest. Lawmakers with 10 unexcused absences are not eligible for re-election under an initiative passed overwhelmingly last November by voters. Republican and Democratic leaders in the Oregon legislature met privately for a second day on Thursday to try to bridge the divide and agreed to cancel sessions planned for Friday through the weekend.Statehouses around the nation, including in Montana and Tennessee, have been ideological battlegrounds amid rising tensions over issues including gender-affirming care, abortion access and gun violence. Oregon – which pioneered marijuana decriminalization, recycling and protecting immigrants – is often viewed as one of America’s most liberal states. But it also has deeply conservative rural areas.That clash of ideologies has led to the senate being out of action since 2 May. Pending bills are stacked up and the state budget, which must be approved by both the house and senate by the end of June, is left undone.The office of Oregon’s Democratic governor, Tina Kotek, noted on Thursday night that there were many important bills at stake.“Oregonians are demanding that elected leaders deliver results on homelessness, behavioral health, education and other major issues right now,” Kotek’s spokesperson, Elisabeth Shepard, said.To give time for negotiations – and keep boycotters with nine unexcused absences from hitting that 10-day tripwire – Rob Wagner, the senate president, agreed to cancel senate sessions that were scheduled for the coming days. The statehouse is instead scheduled to reconvene on Monday.“I think people, at least people who observe politics, are going to have a pretty anxious weekend,” Priscilla Southwell, professor emerita of political science at the University of Oregon, said on Friday.About 100 people, including members of Moms Demand Action, a gun-safety group, protested against the walkout late on Thursday on the steps of the Oregon state capitol in Salem.“Get back to work,” they chanted.Republican lawmakers in Oregon have stymied several previous legislative sessions.This time, Republican senators insist their stayaway is mostly due to a 1979 law that requires bill summaries to be written at an eighth-grade level. Tim Knopp, the senate minority leader, said Republicans also want Democrats to set aside “their most extreme bills”.But to Democrats, it’s obvious the readability issue is just an excuse to prevent progress on Democratic-priority bills.“It is abundantly clear that there is a concerted effort to undermine the will of people and bring the legislature to a halt in violation of the constitution of the state of Oregon,” Wagner said as he gaveled closed the 5 May floor session because of the lack of quorum.A prolonged boycott by senate Republicans would throw into doubt not only the rest of the 2023 legislative session, which is supposed to end by 25 June, but could sow complications for next year’s primaries and general election.That’s because it is unclear how the boycotters would be disqualified from running again. The 2022 ballot measure is now part of the Oregon constitution, which disqualifies a lawmaker with 10 or more unexcused absences “from holding office” in the next term.An explanatory statement for Ballot Measure 113, signed by a former state supreme court justice and others, says a disqualified candidate “may run for office … and win, but cannot hold office”.But Ben Morris, spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, said the secretary of state’s elections division would not put a disqualified lawmaker on the ballot.Disqualified Republicans are expected to file legal challenges. More

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      There is a clear and present danger of a new Trump presidency. Democrats must act now to prevent it | Jonathan Freedland

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      We may come to remember this period as the interlude: the inter-Trump years. After the sigh of relief heard around the world when Donald Trump was defeated in November 2020, a grim realisation should be dawning: the threat of a Trump return to the White House is growing.His first task is to win the Republican party’s presidential nomination, but that hurdle is shrinking daily. Trump’s grip on his party remains firm, with none of his putative rivals coming close. Of course, the first round of primary voting is months away and much could change, but the shape of the race is already clear – and Trump is dominant. Witness the reaction to an event that would once have been terminal for any politician: this week’s civil court verdict that he had sexually abused the magazine writer E Jean Carroll in a New York department store in the 1990s, and then defamed her by branding her a liar.That “makes me want to vote for him twice”, said Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama of the jury’s decision, articulating the view held by many millions of Republicans that this judgment – and any other legal finding against the former president – proves only that the elites are out to get him.There was a similar Republican response in March when Trump was indicted, also in New York, over hush money paid to the former porn star Stormy Daniels. That saw his approval numbers among Republicans – the self-proclaimed party of family values – go up. For the believers, the indictment merely vindicated Trump’s claim that he is the martyred victim of a liberal deep state. The pattern is clear: what should kill him only makes him stronger.It means Democrats and those who wish to see Trump finished need to let go of the hope that the courts will dispatch him once and for all. There are multiple other cases pending, perhaps the most serious relating to his pressure on election officials in Georgia to “find” the votes that would overturn Joe Biden’s victory in that state. But on the current evidence, a slew of guilty verdicts would barely dent his standing with his own party. As Trump intuited back in 2016, he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and Republicans would still vote for him.It helps that his most obvious challenger, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is growing smaller in the spotlight. He is tetchy and struggles to connect: this week tape surfaced of advisers urging him before a TV debate to write the word “likable” at the top of his notes – just as a reminder. DeSantis’s failure to go after Trump directly makes him look like a coward. Above all, DeSantis is pursuing a flawed strategy. He is offering Trumpism without Trump. The trouble is, too many Republican primary voters like Trump, while DeSantis’s brand of Trumpism is a hard sell to the wider electorate who will vote in November 2024.Plenty of Democrats concede that Trump is likely to win his party’s nomination. Indeed, many want him to win, so sure are they that he will lose to Biden in a rematch of 2020. And he may. But that contest will be far too close for comfort, at least in the electoral college that decides the outcome. In 2020, just 44,000 votes in three states stood between a Biden victory and an electoral college tie. Now the polls look much worse for him.This week a Washington Post/ABC survey not only showed the president six points behind Trump, it also found 63% of Americans believe Biden, who would be 86 at the end of a second term, lacks the mental sharpness to serve effectively, up from 43% in 2020. Put simply, it was a photo finish last time and Trump’s prospects are better now than then.What would a Trump restoration entail? He himself has promised “retribution”, and those who served under him warn that a returned Trump would be less chaotic, more focused, than he was first time around. His appearance at a CNN town hall event this week provided several clues. On policy, Ukraine should get ready to be abandoned, while the world should brace for a US prepared to default on its debts. Americans will once again be deluged with a torrent of lies, delivered so fast that by the time you’ve challenged one, there will have been four more. (That is one reason why the CNN broadcast was horribly misconceived: it failed to learn a key lesson of 2016, when the US media made itself a tool of misinformation.)Trump also called Carroll a “whack job” and dismissed the sexual abuse verdict because it had been delivered in a liberal state under a judge appointed by Bill Clinton. This too has become a pattern, casting the justice system as merely another theatre in the partisan culture wars. Not content with destroying Republicans’ faith in electoral democracy in order to divert attention from the fact he lost an election, Trump is now doing the same to his followers’ trust in the law, this time to distract from the fact that he is a sexual predator.A second-term Trump would set about finishing what he started, breaking any institution that might stand in his way, whether that be the ballot box or the courts. As Senator Mitt Romney, a rare Republican voice of dissent, put it after the CNN show: “You see what you’re going to get, which is a presidency untethered to the truth and untethered to the constitutional order.”None of this is certain, but all of it is possible. Democrats need to snap out of the complacency brought by victory in 2020 and work as if they are in a race against the devil and lagging behind – because they are. They need to address the Biden age issue fast: several party veterans urge the president to get out more, recommending the kind of closeup encounters with the public at which he thrives. They need to sell their achievements, not least a strong record on jobs. And they have to sound the alarm every day, warning of the danger Trump poses. Because it is clear and it is present.
      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
      Join Jonathan Freedland and Marina Hyde for a Guardian Live event in London on Thursday 1 June. Book in-person or livestream tickets here More

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      George Santos, liar and fantasist, fits the Republican party just fine | Moira Donegan

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      When news broke on Tuesday afternoon that the justice department was indicting George Santos – the disgraced Republican Long Island congressman whose election to the House of Representatives in 2022 was enabled by a series of lies about his background and elaborate, inventive frauds – it was at first hard to think of just what he was being indicted for. George Santos, after all, is alleged to have been so prolifically criminal in his 34 years that one imagines law enforcement would have a hard time narrowing things down.Would Santos be charged over the fake pet charity he seems to have invented, collecting money for things like surgery for the beloved dog of a veteran, which was never turned over to the animal’s owner? Or would he face charges stemming from his lies about his professional background, like the claim he made during his most recent congressional campaign, wholly false, that he used to work for Goldman Sachs, or his bizarre story, also a fabrication, about having been a college volleyball star?Would it be something like the check fraud he allegedly committed in Brazil as a teenager, or like the bad check he supposedly wrote to, of all people, a set of Amish dog breeders in Pennsylvania?What George Santos has been indicted for is not one of his funnier or more colorful scandals, but something extremely typical in Washington: lying about money. On Wednesday, prosecutors at a federal courthouse in Central Islip, New York, charged Santos with seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, two counts of making false statements to the House of Representatives, and one count of theft of public funds. He pleaded not guilty, and was released on a half-million dollar bond.The indictment against Santos is sprawling and complicated, reflecting the expansiveness of the congressman’s alleged frauds, but the allegations that federal prosecutors make fall essentially into three columns: first, they charge that Santos set up a fraudulent LLC, where he directed donors to give money that he claimed would be spent on his political campaign. Instead, he used the funds to make car payments, pay off his debts, and notably, to buy expensive clothes.Second, the Department of Justice charges that Santos defrauded the government when he applied for and received special Covid unemployment benefits in New York, despite drawing a salary of approximately $120,000 from an investment firm in Florida. (That firm, Harbor City Capital, is itself alleged to be a “classic Ponzi scheme”.)And third, the indictment claims that Santos falsified financial disclosure forms related to his congressional seat, falsely certifying to Congress that he drew a $750,000 salary and between $1m and $5m in dividends, and had between $100,000 and $250,000 in a checking account and between $1m and $5m in savings. It was often remarked upon with wonder, and not a small amount of alarm, that Santos, who had not long before his election to Congress struggled to pay rent and faced eviction, was suddenly in possession of so much income and such apparent good luck. How, exactly, had Santos come across all that money? Now, a federal indictment alleges that he simply didn’t: he made it up, like so many college volleyball championships.Maybe it’s for the best that Santos is being charged, ultimately, for the most typically white-collar of his crimes: it will help dispel the myth that he is not a typical Republican. Since the revelation of Santos’s seemingly bottomless dishonesty and malfeasance, a number of House Republicans have tried to distance themselves from the congressman. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina congresswoman trying to style herself as a moderate, called for his resignation; so did Max Milner, of Ohio, over Santos’s false claims of Jewish heritage and having lost relatives in the Holocaust. Reportedly, Senator Mitt Romney encountered Santos at the State of the Union address and told him, with his signature air of the put-upon patrician: “You don’t belong here.”But doesn’t George Santos belong in the modern Republican party? After all, how different, really, is Santos’s alleged scheme to defraud donors for his own enrichment from Donald Trump’s insistence, in the aftermath of the 2020 election, that his supports should donate to him to fight the “election fraud” that didn’t exist? How different is Santos’s use of his congressional campaign to raise funds for fancy clothes from Clarence Thomas’s use of his seat on the supreme court to get fancy vacations on Harlan Crow’s dime? How different is George Santos’s alleged falsification of his financial records to Congress from the conspicuous omissions on the financial disclosure forms required of justices of the supreme court?Even where the technicalities of the malfeasance are different, the Republican spirit is the same, in everyone from George Santos to Clarence Thomas to Donald Trump: the use of public office for personal enrichment, the contempt for the public interest, the indignant declarations that any efforts to hold them accountable are partisan, illegitimate and conducted in bad faith. Outside the federal courthouse on Wednesday, George Santos channeled Trump, calling the indictment against him a “witch-hunt”. I’d say he fits in with the Republican party just fine.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      in US Politics

      Schumer decries Republican senator’s ‘revolting’ remarks on white nationalists

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      The Democratic US Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, condemned as “utterly revolting” remarks in which the Alabama Republican Tommy Tuberville appeared to defend white nationalists in the US military.In an interview with the Alabama station WBHM, published on Monday, Tuberville was asked: “Do you believe they should allow white nationalists in the military?”He answered: “Well, they call them that. I call them Americans.”The Senate armed forces committee member added: “We are losing in the military so fast. And why? I can tell you why. Because the Democrats are attacking our military, saying we need to get out the white extremists, the white nationalists, people that don’t believe in our agenda, as Joe Biden’s agenda.”Tuberville is currently attempting to impose his own agenda on the US military, by blocking promotions and appointments in protest of Pentagon rules about abortion access.On Thursday, Schumer said: “Does Senator Tuberville honestly believe that our military is stronger with white nationalists in its ranks? I cannot believe this needs to be said, but white nationalism has no place in our armed forces and no place in any corner of American society, period, full stop, end of story.”Previously, Sherrilyn Ifill, a former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) legal defense fund, said: “I hope we are not getting so numb that we refrain from demanding that Mr Tuberville’s colleagues in the Senate condemn his remarks.”Schumer added: “I urge Senator Tuberville to think about the destructive spectacle he is creating in the Senate. His actions are dangerous.”On Wednesday, a spokesperson for Tuberville said he was “being skeptical of the notion that there are white nationalists in the military, not that he believes they should be in the military”.A Tuberville spokesperson told the Washington Post the senator “resents the implication that the people in our military are anything but patriots and heroes”.The same spokesperson told NBC Tuberville “has kind of a sarcastic sense of humor” and “was expressing doubt about this being a problem in the military”.Reports have shown the US military has a problem with white nationalism and white supremacy, despite the Pentagon having prohibited “active participation” in extremist groups since 1996.In October 2020, a Pentagon report warning of a problem with white supremacists in the military was sent to Congress. It was released in 2021.In February 2022, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremism, co-published documents showing one in five applicants to one white supremacist group claimed ties to the US military.On Thursday, Adam Hodge, spokesperson for the White House national security council, said it was “abhorrent that Senator Tuberville would argue that white nationalists should be allowed to serve in the military, while he also threatens our national security by holding all pending DoD military and civilian nominations.“Extremist behavior has no place in our military. None.”Fact-checking Tuberville, WBHM, an NPR station, noted Pentagon efforts “to keep extremists, particularly fascists, out of the military”.The station also fact-checked a remark about “what [Joe Biden’s] done to our military with the woke ideas, with the [critical race theory] that we’re teaching in our military”.Critical race theory is an academic discipline that examines the ways in which racism operates in US laws and society. Republicans have turned it into an electoral wedge issue.WBHM said: “The US military is not requiring that CRT be taught and there is little evidence that it’s being discussed much at all in the ranks. According to Military Times, the one instance in which it is being used in an educational setting is at the US Military Academy at West Point.” More

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      CNN head defends Trump’s lie-strewn town hall: ‘America was served very well’

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      CNN bosses have defended their decision to host a primetime town hall with Donald Trump, after triggering widespread outrage by allowing the former president to spout lies and disinformation on subjects from sexual assault to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.Addressing staff anger over the decision to host the New Hampshire event, the CNN chief executive, Chris Licht, saluted what he called a “masterful performance” by Kaitlan Collins, the anchor who attempted to cope with Trump’s lies and abusive comments in front of a raucous Republican audience.On an internal call, Licht reportedly told staffers: “You do not have to like the former president’s answers, but you can’t say that we didn’t get them.“Kaitlan pressed him again and again and made news … Made a lot of news, [and] that is our job.”Before the town hall, CNN said it was hosting Trump because he is the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination to face Joe Biden in the presidential election next year.After the event, in a Thursday statement, the network said it had acted “to get answers and hold the powerful to account”.But CNN saw widespread criticism for hosting the twice-impeached former president, who is under investigation for a litany of alleged crimes and civil offenses.Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 criminal charges over a hush-money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels. This week, he was found civilly liable for sexually assaulting and defaming the writer E Jean Carroll.He also faces state and federal investigations for election subversion, federal scrutiny of his retention of classified information and a multimillion-dollar civil suit over his business affairs.Licht took over at CNN last year and has faced criticism for pursuing changes in staffing and tone. His comments on Thursday were reported by Brian Stelter, a media commentator and anchor who Licht pushed out of the network.Licht reportedly said: “While we all may have been uncomfortable hearing people clapping, that was also an important part of the story.”At St Anselm’s College in Manchester, members of an audience of Republican voters clapped when Trump denied assaulting Carroll and mocked her as a “whack job”, a day after he was found liable for assaulting and defaming her and was ordered to pay her around $5m.When Trump denied taking three hours to tell supporters who attacked the Capitol on January 6 to to go home, audience members applauded.When Trump called Collins “nasty” and said she did not know what she was talking about, audience members laughed.Licht reportedly told staffers the audience in New Hampshire, the state which will host the first Republican primary, represented “a large swath of America”, a reality US media missed in 2016, when Trump shocked Hillary Clinton to become president.According to Stelter, Licht also said covering Trump would “continue to be messy and tricky, but it’s our job”, adding: “America was served very well by what we did last night.”Stelter said: “Many CNN employees strongly disagree.”One employee, the reporter Oliver Darcy, began the Reliable Sources newsletter he inherited from Stelter with stern words for his own network.“It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening,” Darcy wrote.Calling Collins “as tough and knowledgable of an interviewer as they come”, Darcy pointed to how she “fact-checked Trump throughout the 70-minute town hall” … repeating “that there was no evidence for the lies he was disseminating on stage.“… Yet … Trump frequently ignored or spoke over Collins as he unleashed a firehose of disinformation upon the country, which a sizable swath of [Republicans] continue to believe.”Reed Galen, a Republican operative turned co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, pointed to CNN’s retreat from the adversarial stance it maintained throughout Trump’s presidency.He said: “Is anyone surprised by what we saw? If you are, you weren’t watching the last eight years. Thanks again to CNN, who helped get us into this in 2016, and is now helping us get deeper into this in 2023.”Galen also said Collins “probably tried the best she could, given the circumstances”.But the anchor was not universally praised, critics pointing for example to her failure to correct or challenge Trump’s comments on abortion, including claiming Democrats support abortion at nine months and killing babies after they are born.The Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, told MSNBC his party’s “position on reproductive freedom is very clear. We support a woman’s freedom to make her own reproductive decisions. And it’s unfortunate that [Trump] was allowed to repeat those lies repeatedly without it being questioned, including by anyone in the audience, which was very disturbing.”In a statement on Thursday, a CNN spokesperson said: “Kaitlan Collins exemplified what it means to be a world-class journalist.“She asked tough, fair and revealing questions. And she followed up and fact-checked President Trump in real time to arm voters with crucial information about his positions as he enters the 2024 election as the Republican frontrunner.“That is CNN’s role and responsibility: to get answers and hold the powerful to account.”Not all observers said CNN was wrong. Jon Ralston, chief executive of the Nevada Independent, said on Twitter: “I still believe CNN should have put Trump on, and Kaitlan Collins did her best.“But for every interview, you have to have a strategy. She didn’t, and that’s why it was a farce. You have to be willing to ignore the audience … and interrupt him and call out every lie.”Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a leading progressive congresswoman from New York, called the decision to host Trump “profoundly irresponsible”.Referring to Carroll, she told MSNBC: “What we saw tonight was a series of extremely irresponsible decisions that put a sexual abuse victim at risk … in front of a national audience and I could not have disagreed with it more. It was shameful.” More

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      in Elections

      Fact-checking Donald Trump’s CNN town hall – video report

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      The former US president consistently spread falsehoods, lies and misinformation throughout his town hall hosted by CNN on Wednesday night in front of a crowd of mostly Republican voters in New Hampshire. Trump made false and misleading claims about the 2020 election, the January 6 insurrection, immigration, his border wall, abortion, his sexual abuse trial, the investigation into his handling of classified documents and other subjects. The host, Kaitlan Collins, attempted to interject and fact-check his claims in real time, though many falsehoods got through, as Trump followed his long history of touting baseless conspiracy theories amid his mounting legal troubles More

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      ‘We’re living in madness’: George Santos’s constituents on federal charges

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      “It’s like we’re living in madness,” said Danielle Gentile at a Brazilian restaurant in Long Island’s Westbury, one of a cluster of towns close to the eastern border of the fabulist Republican congressman George Santos’s third congressional district.“I know politicians lie all the time, but you’ve got to at least try to keep up,” Gentile added. “But what’s he going to say? I didn’t mean to lie? He’s like the Brian Williams of politics.”The hostess’s comments came just hours after Santos was hit with 13 criminal counts in federal court. The 34-year-old politician, flanked by just one defense lawyer, was pitted against five attorneys wielding the power of the government.But Santos did not appear overly fazed, later boasting that he had surrendered earlier in the day to authorities so that his entrance to the imposing criminal justice complex would not happen “under the noses” of the media.He pleaded not guilty to charges alleging financial fraud at the center of a political campaign built on a résumé touting his personal wealth and business success that began to unravel six weeks after he won office.Outside the court, Santos appeared almost to relish the attention of a large number of media that gathered. He refused to answer questions until a podium was produced, and then called the investigation and the charges that followed a “witch-hunt”. He was asked if he would resign (he wouldn’t), and if he would campaign for re-election next year (he would).But within the third congressional district, a typically Democratic suburban district north-east of New York City, the first-generation Brazilian American, who ran as a member of a “new generation of Republican leadership”, is received as a deeply oddball figure.The first five people approached by the Guardian – in a diner and a burger joint – professed to be unfamiliar with Santos or his alleged crimes. “Never heard of him, I’m not into politics,” said one woman crossing the street.A sixth approach – to Jerry Spitzkoff, a gas station manager – elicited a response. “He’s a liar and a thief, and he should go to prison,” Spitzkoff, 70, said. “But I blame both parties and the media. No one looked into him. He’s not the first politician to lie, but this is a beauty: he lied about everything.”Santos’s fabrications were the stuff of a committed fantasist. He had not, in fact, worked at Citigroup or Goldman Sachs, graduated from a New York college, or run a pet rescue charity, and his mother had not been in the 9/11 attacks as he claimed. Nor had he been a producer on the Broadway Spider-Man musical. He had, though, perhaps been a Brazilian drag queen called Kitara Ravache.Not surprisingly, Santos’s tall tales made him a laughingstock and fodder for late-night comics.Life-story embellishments do not produce criminal charges, but material wrongdoing can. On Wednesday, the government charged Santos with crimes ranging from duping donors and stealing campaign funds to lying to Congress and illegally collecting unemployment benefits. He was released on a $500,000 bond about five hours after he surrendered to authorities.“It’s absolutely crazy, but for whatever reason George was able to get through all the traditional checkpoints,” said Joshua Sauberman, who ran for Congress in the district on a Democratic ticket in 2018. “There was no vetting and you had the Democratic candidate saying she couldn’t afford it because they needed to run TV ads. Voters did not have the proper information.”Many in his district maintained a broader distaste for politics of which Santos was a symptom, but not the cause of a political system that has produced two roughly octogenarian presidential frontrunners for 2024.“I wouldn’t trust one word from a politician ever again,” said a tow-truck driver who said his name didn’t matter because he had no intention of getting involved in the business of politics. “I think their job has become to demoralize us. If you listen to them, you just be upset. They bring you down.”But others said Santos’s alleged dishonesty did matter and he would be held accountable for it.“They took his word for it and didn’t check him out because they didn’t think he’d win,” said Rafael Joseph at a restaurant in Mineola. “But nobody knows who he is, and I think they’re going to get rid of him.”On Wednesday evening, the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, said he would not support Santos in his re-election bid. “No, I’m not going to support him,” he told CNN. “I think he has other things to focus on in his life other than running for re-election.”But Santos said he was determined to fight. “I appreciate everyone’s patience with my presence in Congress and allowing this process to play out. I believe in innocence until proven guilty, and I have my right to prove my innocence just as the government has a right to try to find me guilty.”However this plays out in the coming days, there was little question that voter anger lies with the system, and not necessarily Santos, whom one local voter described as self-starring in a fictitious remake of the 2022 con artist film Catch Me If You Can.Meanwhile, back at the Brazilian restaurant, Gentile was beginning to seat diners.“He’s a little crazy,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with wearing drag but it seems a little hypocritical to wear it and support a party that opposes it. Everything about him is lie. At least be who you are.” More

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      Trump repeats conspiracy theories and election lies in CNN town hall

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      Donald Trump appeared at a CNN town hall on Wednesday night to unleash a litany of lies about the 2020 election and E Jean Carroll’s lawsuit, just one day after a New York jury found the former president liable for sexual abuse and defamation.Trump took questions from a friendly crowd of Republican and undeclared voters in New Hampshire, who often greeted the former president’s divisive comments and gestures toward moderator Kaitlan Collins with laughter and applause.Trump offered his thoughts on everything from the debt ceiling to abortion access and the war in Ukraine, but he frequently deflected when asked to outline specific policy objectives if he takes back the White House next year.The town hall turned combative as soon as it began, with Trump reiterating his lies about the 2020 election as Collins repeatedly interjected.Pressed by Collins on whether he would acknowledge Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, Trump refused to do so. When Collins later asked if he would accept the results of the 2024 election regardless of the outcome, Trump replied, “Yeah, if I think it’s an honest election, absolutely.”Collins appeared to grow exasperated as the 70-minute town hall drew on, telling Trump at one point, “The election was not rigged, Mr President. You can’t keep saying that all night long.”Turning to Trump’s many legal liabilities, she asked the former president for his message to voters who argue that the verdict in Carroll’s lawsuit should disqualify him from seeking office. On Tuesday, a New York jury concluded that Trump had sexually abused Carroll 27 years earlier, ordering the former president to pay her $5m in damages for her battery and defamation claims.Trump responded by attacking Carroll as a “whack job” and raising baseless doubts about the objectivity of the judge who oversaw the case. The New Hampshire crowd welcomed Trump’s offensive and often untrue statements, and some audience members laughed when Collins noted that the former president had been found liable for sexual abuse.The verdict in Carroll’s case came a month after Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony charges of falsifying business records in connection to a hush-money scheme during the 2016 election. He also faces potential criminal charges in Georgia and Washington over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his alleged mishandling of classified documents.Asked why he had refused to voluntarily deliver the requested documents to federal authorities, Trump replied by calling Collins as a “nasty person”, echoing his characterization of former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as a “nasty woman” in 2016.Meanwhile, Trump often shied away from offering a direct response to policy questions. Asked whether he would sign a federal abortion ban, he replied, “I’m looking at a solution that’s going to work. Very complex issue for the country. You have people on both sides of an issue, but we are now in a very strong position. Pro-life people are in a strong position to make a deal that’s going to be good and going to be satisfactory for them.”Trump would similarly not state whether he wanted Ukraine to win its war against Russia, which launched an unprovoked invasion last year. “I want everybody to stop dying,” Trump said. “Russians and Ukrainians, I want them to stop dying. And I’ll have that done. I’ll have that done in 24 hours.”The few policy positions that Trump did clearly articulate may be unpopular with a wide swath of the American electorate. Trump said he was “inclined to pardon many” of those convicted for their participation in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. He also discouraged congressional Republicans from approving an increase in the government’s debt ceiling, which could soon cause a disastrous federal default.“I say to the Republicans out there – congressmen, senators – if they don’t give you massive [spending] cuts, you’re going to have to do a default,” Trump said. “I don’t believe they’re going to do a default because I think the Democrats will absolutely cave.”Trump’s position represents a reversal from his stance during his presidency, when he repeatedly suspended the debt ceiling to allow the government to continue borrowing money. Asked why he had changed his tune, Trump replied, “Because now I’m not president.”The flippant comment was met with laughter and applause, underscoring the former president’s enduring hold on the Republican base. Despite his many legal challenges, Trump remains the frontrunner in polls of the Republican primary field.A number of commentators who had criticized CNN for agreeing to host the town hall cited the contentious nature of the conversation and the audience’s positive reaction to Trump’s lies as confirmation of the network’s poor judgement.“CNN should be ashamed of themselves,” progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on Twitter. “They have lost total control of this ‘town hall’ to again be manipulated into platforming election disinformation, defenses of Jan 6th, and a public attack on a sexual abuse victim. The audience is cheering him on and laughing at the host.”But CNN defended its decision, arguing voters deserved the opportunity to hear from the current frontrunner in the Republican presidential primary.“Our job, despite his unique circumstances, is to do what we do best,” a CNN spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday morning. “Ask tough questions, follow up and hold him accountable to give voters the information they need to sort through their choices. That is our role and our responsibility.”Biden appeared to have watched the town hall, as he sent out a fundraising request once the event concluded.“It’s simple, folks,” Biden said on Twitter. “Do you want four more years of that?” More