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      Chris Christie files papers to run for US president ahead of official campaign launch tonight – live

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      From 3h agoNew Jersey’s former Republican governor Chris Christie has officially filed to run for president, according to the Federal Election Commission, setting himself up to face off against Donald Trump and a host of other candidates for the party’s nomination to challenge Joe Biden in the general election next year.Christie will announce his candidacy at 6.30pm eastern time with a town hall in New Hampshire. This campaign will be a sort of rematch for Christie: he was among the slew of Republicans Trump defeated in 2016 to win the party’s nomination, and later that year, the White House.While Christie worked with Trump during his time in the White House, they later had a falling out, and Christie recently said Trump “needs to be called out and … needs to be called out by somebody who knows him. Nobody knows Donald Trump better than I do.”While Christie has insisted he is “not a paid assassin”, the 60-year-old is certainly a seasoned brawler.Christie’s claims to fame include leaving office in New Jersey amid a scandal about political payback involving traffic on the George Washington Bridge to New York, then leaving the Florida senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign in pieces after a debate-stage clash for the ages.Christie was quick to drop out of that campaign, then equally quick to endorse the clear frontrunner. He stayed loyal despite a brutal firing as Trump’s transition coordinator, fueled by old enmities with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and only broke from Trump after the January 6 Capitol attack.Recently, Christie has worked for ABC News as a political analyst, honing his turn of phrase. Speaking to Politico, he insisted he was serious about winning the primary.“I’m not a paid assassin,” he said. “When you’re waking up for your 45th morning at the Hilton Garden Inn in Manchester [New Hampshire], you better think you can win, because that walk from the bed to the shower, if you don’t think you can win, it’s hard.”He also said Trump “needs to be called out and … needs to be called out by somebody who knows him. Nobody knows Donald Trump better than I do.”Read more:Back in the Capitol, here’s more from Fox News on why rightwing lawmakers banded together to frustrate the chamber’s Republican leaders by blocking debate on legislation dealing with gas stoves and federal government rule-making.The revolt caused a vote to start debate on legislation to fail for the first time since 2002. It came after the far-right lawmakers joined with Democrats in what one of their members, Dan Bishop, told Fox was an expression of frustration with House speaker Kevin McCarthy:The Guardian’s Maanvi Singh is on deck now to run the blog through the evening’s news, including Chris Christie’s town hall kicking off his presidential campaign.Here’s more from the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly on Chris Christie’s return to the presidential campaign trail and his primary rematch against foe turned friend turned foe Donald Trump:The former New Jersey governor Chris Christie has confirmed his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination next year.Christie filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday afternoon. He was scheduled to announce his presidential run hours later in a town hall hosted at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics in Manchester, New Hampshire.The pugilistic politician joins the primary as a rank outsider but promises a campaign with a singular focus: to take the fight to Donald Trump, the former president who left office in disgrace after the January 6 attack on Congress but who is the clear frontrunner to face Joe Biden again at the polls.A few hours ago, Donald Trump’s allies released a statement welcoming Chris Christie to the presidential race with a grin – a big, toothy, Cheshire cat grin.“Ron DeSantis’ campaign is spiraling, and President Trump’s dominance over the Republican primary field has opened a mad rush to seize the mantle for [a] runner-up. Ron DeSantis is not ready for this moment, and Chris Christie will waste no time eating DeSantis’ lunch,” said Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Make America Great Again Inc Pac supporting the former president’s campaign.And now that Christie has announced his candidacy, the Democrats are out with their customary roast. Here’s Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison’s statement:
      The American people still remember what happened the last time Chris Christie ran for president. After dropping his own bid in 2016 to wholeheartedly endorse Donald Trump, Christie served as head of Trump’s transition team, gave his presidency an ‘A,’ and used his position as chair of Trump’s Commission on Opioids to land a lucrative consulting contract with big pharma. A longtime champion of the MAGA agenda, Christie backed a federal abortion ban and helped coordinate efforts to restrict access in every state, called for cutting Medicare and Social Security, and vetoed minimum wage increases for working people.Nothing he says can change the fact that Chris Christie is just another power-hungry extremist in the rapidly growing field of Republicans willing to say anything to capture the MAGA base.
      New Jersey’s former Republican governor Chris Christie has officially filed to run for president, according to the Federal Election Commission, setting himself up to face off against Donald Trump and a host of other candidates for the party’s nomination to challenge Joe Biden in the general election next year.Christie will announce his candidacy at 6.30pm eastern time with a town hall in New Hampshire. This campaign will be a sort of rematch for Christie: he was among the slew of Republicans Trump defeated in 2016 to win the party’s nomination, and later that year, the White House.While Christie worked with Trump during his time in the White House, they later had a falling out, and Christie recently said Trump “needs to be called out and … needs to be called out by somebody who knows him. Nobody knows Donald Trump better than I do.”An effort by House Republicans to stop the government from banning gas stoves and change the federal rule-making process has been blocked by a revolt from within the party.Rightwing GOP lawmakers just now joined with Democrats in voting down the rule that would kick off debate on the four bills, a key step before the chamber could vote on their passage:The Biden administration opposes the bills, and there was little chance they would be passed by the Democrat-controlled Senate. We’ll let you know as soon as it becomes clear what fueled the conservative revolt.In other House shenanigans, you will recall that Republican congressman, admitted fabulist and potentially soon-to-be federal inmate George Santos tried and failed to keep secret the names of those who paid for his expensive bail.Reporters at the Capitol have been wondering why he didn’t want these people’s identities publicized, and did what they have done to Santos ever since he first showed up in Washington in January: chased him around while asking him questions. See the pursuit, and the little that he had to say, below, courtesy of CNN:Republicans control the House and should have no trouble voting to start debate on the bills intended to ensure gas stove access. But they are having trouble, and that says something about the state of the GOP today.As you can see in the tweet below from Axios, 10 GOP lawmakers are currently opposing the rule to start debate on the four bills that stop the government from banning gas stoves and also changing the federal rule-making process. That’s enough to stop the legislation from being debated by the House, a formal step that must be taken before the bills can be passed.Who’s doing the revolting? Rightwing members of the House Freedom Caucus, many of whom were behind the days of GOP infighting in January that delayed Kevin McCarthy’s election as speaker of the House. We’ll let you know when we find out what the Freedom Caucus is mad about this time.The White House will “assess” whether an attack on a dam that flooded a swath of southern Ukraine amounts to a war crime, US national security council spokesman John Kirby said at the White House this afternoon.Follow the Guardian’s live blog for the latest on this developing story from Ukraine:The Biden administration has taken a look at the two Republican House bills advertised as protecting Americans’ access to gas stoves, and it does not like what it sees.In a statement, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said it “strongly opposes” the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act and the Save Our Stoves Act, while adding: “The Administration has been clear that it does not support any attempt to ban the use of gas stoves.”Lawmakers are expected to today vote on passage of the former legislation, and consider the latter tomorrow. The OMB’s statement says the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act would undercut the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s job of using “the best available data to promote the safety of consumer products. This Administration opposes any effort to undermine the Commission’s ability to make science-based decisions to protect the public.”The OMB criticizes the Save Our Stoves Act for preventing the energy department from creating and enforcing new standards for stove and oven efficiency, denying “the American people the savings that come with having more efficient new appliances on the market when they choose to replace an existing appliance”.The two bills “would undermine science-based Consumer Product Safety Commission decision-making and block common sense efforts to help Americans cut their energy bills”. While the OMB doesn’t outright say Joe Biden would veto them, it’s hard to see the two pieces of legislation making it through the Democratic-led Senate, or even being considered.The House of Representatives will this week take up two pieces of legislation aimed at blocking new regulations on the use of gas stoves.On Tuesday, the House is expected to vote on the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act – a measure to prevent the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a federal regulatory agency, from taking steps to stop the sale of the appliances, including by labeling them as hazardous.And on Wednesday, representatives will vote on the Save Our Gas Stoves Act, which would bar the Energy Department from finalizing, implementing or enforcing a proposed rule setting efficiency standards for the appliances.If the House advances the Republican bills, they will likely face opposition from the Democratic-controlled Senate.Gas stoves have for months been the subject of ire for rightwingers, after a slew of studies showed that the appliances are damaging to the climate and public health. A recent report found that one in eight cases of childhood asthma in the US is due to the pollution given off by cooking on gas stoves – a level of risk similar to that of exposure to secondhand smoke – while an earlier study found that gas stoves each year pump out as much planet-warming pollution as 500,000 carsr.Late last year, a member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission floated the possibility of banning gas stoves, but the agency quickly backtracked to clarify that no ban is currently under consideration. But US cities and counties are considering policies to limit or even phase out the use of the polluting appliances.Though it has recently become the topic of public concern, researchers and regulators have long suspected that gas stoves are dangerous. In 1973, the Environmental Protection Agency had preliminary evidence that exposure to gas stoves posed respiratory risks, and in 1985 the Consumer Product Safety Commission raised concerns about gas stoves’ nitrogen emissions.The murder rate in a number of large US cities has seen a “sharp and broad decline” this year, new research has found, even as the number of mass shootings around the country continues to climb.My colleague Richard Luscombe writes that statistics compiled by New Orleans-based AH Analytics show a 12.2% drop in murders in 90 US cities to the end of May over the same period last year, although the study notes there are places, such as Memphis and Cleveland, where the murder rate has actually increased.The report will do little to weaken calls by weapons control advocates and Joe Biden for Congress to pass meaningful gun reforms as the US remains on track for a record number of mass killings in 2023.A federal judge has granted media requests to release the names of people who co-signed George Santos’s $500,000 bond in his criminal fraud case, according to The Hill.Santos’s attorney had asked to keep those names secret and Joseph Murray said he feared “for their health, safety and wellbeing”.Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna has criticised what he called the Supreme Court’s partisan decision-making, saying it was a “crisis”.Speaking at the Indian Impact event in Washington, DC, he said: “What we have right now is a court that has lost the legitimacy of the American people.”Khanna was addressing the rulings on reproductive rights, affirmative action and other issues that the conservative majority has continued to push forward. Asking for term limits and more stringent ethical boundaries, he said the current court included “political hacks” and referenced times in history when presidents like Abraham Lincoln called for supreme court reform.“We need a mobilization that is much more explicit and harsh in calling out the supreme court,” he said. “We should get rid of the niceties.”The investigations into Donald Trump grind on, but one may be nearing a conclusion: the inquiry into the classified documents discovered last year at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. His attorneys met with the justice department yesterday, including special counsel Jack Smith, and the former president spent this morning angrily posting on Truth social about the alleged injustice he was facing. House Republicans are rushing to his defense, while also moving forward with a plan to hold FBI director Christopher Wray in contempt for not turning over a document alleging corruption by Joe Biden. The vote on that is set for Thursday.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      US intelligence knew of a Ukrainian plan to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline, though it’s unclear if Kyiv was actually behind its sabotage.
      Trump has feuded with Fox News’s straight-news division, but will on 19 June sit down for an interview with them for the first time since his 2020 election defeat.
      Federal investigators are looking into a swimming pool that was drained at Mar-a-Lago and into room full of servers containing surveillance footage of the resort, according to a report.
      Punchbowl News reports that speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy also supports the push to hold FBI director Christopher Wray in contempt: More

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      George Santos ordered to reveal identities of mystery bond guarantors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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      Republican 2024 candidates criticize Trump for praising Kim Jong-un

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

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

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