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      Utah emerges as a pivotal battleground amid race to redraw congressional maps

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      In the fast-escalating national arms race over redistricting, Utah has emerged as an unexpected and potentially pivotal battleground.The campaign began in Texas, where Donald Trump openly declared he was “entitled to” five additional Republican House seats. It quickly expanded to California, where Democratic lawmakers are asking voters to retaliate with new congressional maps drawn to “neutralize” Texas.At least half a dozen other states have been recruited into what has is now an unprecedented push to redraw their congressional boundaries in ways that could lock in political advantage ahead of next year’s midterms.The president has been candid about his aims: to safeguard Republicans’ fragile hold on the House. A loss of the speaker’s gavel would derail Trump’s legislative ambitions in the second half of his term – and open the door to a wave of investigations, from his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files to its mass detention and deportation policies.Deeply conservative Utah, by contrast, has been pulled into the redistricting fray not by the president but by a judge.This week, Judge Dianna Gibson tossed out Utah’s current congressional map and gave the Republican-led state legislature until 24 September to submit a new one.The existing boundaries fracture Salt Lake City – a splash of blue in a sea of red – across all four congressional districts, effectively diluting Democrats’ political influence. A redrawn map could consolidate more of Utah’s capital city into one district, giving Democrats a rare opening in one of the nation’s most reliably Republican states.“There’s no doubt that any map that complies with this ruling would be more competitive than the current map,” said David Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst at the non-partisan Cook Political Report. But he cautioned that lawmakers could still carve up Salt Lake City in ways that would maintain a Republican edge.On Friday, lawyers for the Utah legislature asked Gibson to pause her gerrymandering order to allow time for lawmakers to appeal the decision to the state supreme court, according to local news reports. The request comes a day after the state’s Republican legislative leaders said they would comply with the ruling, which they denounced as “misguided” and “unreasonable” given the 30-day deadline.“While we will continue to pursue every legal option available – including requesting a stay from the Utah Supreme Court if necessary – we will attempt to redistrict under these unprecedented constraints, consistent with our oath to represent the best interests of Utah,” the state house speaker, Mike Schultz, and senate president J Stuart Adams, said in a statement.The ruling in the Utah case stems from a yearslong legal battle over Proposition 4, a ballot initiative narrowly passed by voters in 2018 that aimed to ban partisan gerrymandering through the creation of an independent redistricting commission. Although the Republican-controlled legislature weakened the commission and enacted its own map, the state supreme court – made up of five justices all appointed by Republican governors – ruled last year that lawmakers had probably overstepped, paving the way for this week’s decision.Mark Gaber, an attorney representing the groups challenging Utah’s congressional maps, called the ruling a “vindication of a fair and neutral process”.“The voters passed this in 2018 to effectively ban partisan gerrymandering and now we’re seeing a push across the country to gerrymander,” he said. “It’s nice to see this standing out as a shining example of a process that can work.”Mid-decade redistricting on this scale is extraordinary. Typically states draw new congressional maps at the start of each decade following the census to account for population shifts.At stake is the balance of power in Congress, where the president’s party typically loses ground in midterm elections. House Democrats need to flip only a handful of seats to retake the majority, and early signs point in their favor: Trump’s approval ratings are low and falling, and since his return to the White House, Democrats have outperformed expectations in a series of low-turnout contests from Florida to Iowa.In a tit-for-tat redistricting fight, political analysts and experts say Republicans still hold the advantage: they control more state legislatures and have fewer constraints on gerrymandering.Yet the Texas plan, which was signed into law on Friday by the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, faces multiple lawsuits, including one alleging that the new districts are racially discriminatory. In California, Republicans have asked the state supreme court to block the proposed countermeasure from reaching the ballot. And even seats drawn to favor one party can become competitive depending on candidate quality, voter turnout and the national mood.In a closely fought election, even a single seat could tip the balance of power, making the prospect of a Democratic pickup in Utah all the more worrying for the president.On Wednesday night, Trump called the Utah decision “absolutely unconstitutional”.“How did such a wonderful Republican State like Utah, which I won in every Election, end up with so many Radical Left Judges?” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “All Citizens of Utah should be outraged at their activist Judiciary, which wants to take away our Congressional advantage, and will do everything possible to do so.”Gibson, the judge, was appointed to the district court in 2018 by the then governor Gary Herbert, a Republican.Trump continued, urging Republicans in Utah to “stay united” and ensure the state’s “four terrific Republican Congressmen stay right where they are!” (One of Utah’s four House members, Celeste Maloy, is a woman.)Trump’s outrage over the Utah ruling is a reminder, experts say, that courts – and voters – also have a say in shaping the political map.Kareem Crayton, the vice-president of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Washington DC office and a leading expert on redistricting, said the Utah ruling “achieves something closer to redistricting with guardrails” – in stark contrast to what is unfolding elsewhere.The lurch toward maximalist gerrymandering underlines the need for national standards, long sought by advocates of less partisan maps, Crayton said, but for now the message from the White House is: “Do more of it.”“This system is broken,” he said. “It’s a broken one when the outcome of the people’s house – the one that’s actually supposed to be the most representative of the public – turns out to be the least representative because people are going back to the maps multiple times and, with no abandon, with respect to partisanship, drawing districts that choose their voters and not the other way around.” More

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      ‘He’s trying to rig the midterms’: Trump intervenes to protect his allies in Congress

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      They are more than a year away – a lifetime in today’s fast and furious political cycle. But one man is already paying attention, pulling the levers of power and trying to tip the scales of the 2026 midterm elections.Donald Trump has made clear that he is willing to bring the full weight of the White House to bear to prevent his Republican party losing control of the US Congress in the midterm elections next year, orchestrating a more direct and legally dubious intervention than any of his predecessors.The US president’s multipronged approach includes redrawing congressional district maps, seeking to purge voter rolls, taking aim at mail-in voting and voting machines, and ordering the justice department to investigate Democrats’ prime fundraising tool.“Nobody’s ever tried to do this,” said Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington. “Most American presidents, Democratic or Republican, have basically played by the same rules and been careful of the constitution. But in his business career Trump never cared about whether he was doing something legal or not; he just went to court and same thing here.”Campaigning, not governing, has often been Trump’s comfort zone. He is constitutionally barred from running for president again but already has an eye on the November 2026 elections that will determine control of the House of Representatives and Senate.He senses that law and order, a populist cause long exploited by Republicans, could play to his advantage. Earlier this month Trump deployed the national guard to reduce crime in Washington DC and threatened similar federal interventions in other big cities. Fifty-three per cent of the public approve of how he is handling crime, according to an AP-NORC poll, higher than other issues.Trump told a cabinet meeting this week: “I think crime will be the big subject of the midterms and will be the big subject of the next election. I think it’s going to be a big, big subject for the midterms and I think the Republicans are going to do really well.”But this is no ordinary campaign. Trump said at the same marathon meeting: “I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States.”Taking a familiar political manoeuvre to new extremes, he has pushed Republican state legislators in Texas to redraw their congressional map because he claims “we are entitled to five more seats”, and he is lobbying other red states, including Indiana and Missouri, to take similar steps to pad the margin even more.Other steps involve the direct use of official presidential power in ways that have no modern precedent. He ordered his justice department to investigate ActBlue, an online portal that raised hundreds of millions of dollars in small-dollar donations for Democratic candidates over two decades.The site has been so successful that Republicans launched a similar venture, called WinRed. But Trump did not order a federal investigation into WinRed.Trump’s appointees at the justice department have also demanded voting data from at least 19 states in an apparent attempt to look for ineligible voters. Earlier this year he signed an executive order seeking documented proof of citizenship to register to vote, among other changes, though much of it has been blocked by courts.Last week the president announced that lawyers were drafting an executive order to end mail-in balloting, a method used by nearly one in three Americans, and threatened to do away with voting machines. He claimed that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, told him mail-in voting was responsible for his 2020 election loss.There is nothing remarkable about a sitting president campaigning for his party in the midterms and trying to bolster incumbents by steering projects and support to their districts. But Trump’s actions constitute a unique attempt to interfere in a critical election before it is even held, raising alarms about the future of democracy.Allan Lichtman, a distinguished history professor at American University in Washington, said: “We’re seeing a new concerted assault on free and fair elections, harkening back to the discredited efforts of the white supremacists in the Jim Crow south. He’s trying to rig the midterms and then of course beyond that the next presidential election in his political favour.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump previously attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, which culminated in an insurrection by his supporters at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. On that occasion, he was constrained by elected Republicans such as his then vice-president, Mike Pence, and the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. This time he has locked down near-total loyalty from the party and assembled a cabinet that again this week offered an ostentatious display of fealty.His power grab will not go entirely unchallenged. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, signed legislation that will allow voters to decide in November on a redrawn congressional map designed to help Democrats win five more House seats next year, neutralising Republicans’ gerrymandering in Texas.But Democrats, activists and lawyers will have to find others ways to “fight fire with fire” when it comes to Trump’s more extreme meddling.Lichtman, author of a new book, Conservative at the Core, added: “Republicans have no principles; Democrats have no spine. Democrats need to grow a spine. They need to stop playing not to lose – that’s a sure way to lose. They need to respond to these outrages powerfully and aggressively by whatever means are possible or we’re going to lose our democracy.”Yet while Trump’s gambit is a flex of executive power, it could also be seen as an admission of potential weakness. The incumbent president’s party typically loses seats in midterm elections. In 2018, Democrats won enough to take back the House, stymieing Trump’s agenda and leading to his impeachment.Only 37% of voters approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released on Wednesday, while 55% disapprove. House Republicans, who currently have just a three-seat margin, have faced a series of raucous town halls that bode ill for their fortunes.Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “President Trump and the Republicans would not be trying to stack the deck if they didn’t think they were going to lose the hand. They are looking at poll numbers and they know midterms are bad to incumbent presidents over the last 60 years and it’s a very slim margin in the House.“In order for Trump to sustain the loyalty of the House – he’s already gotten everything he pretty much wants – he needs them to think he’s on their side so he’s going to go out and be very public about rigging the voting system to keep them in power.”But Schiller added: “Will that be enough to overcome general unhappiness at the moment that the voters seem to have with the economy, inflation, even Trump’s border policies? It’s not enough to keep the Republicans in line. You have to get independent voters to vote for you again and that’s at risk for the Republicans right now.” More

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      Bernie Sanders demands that RFK Jr step down as health secretary

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      Bernie Sanders has joined in on growing public calls for Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, to resign, after recent chaos across US health agencies.In an op-ed published in the New York Times on Saturday, the Vermont senator accused Kennedy of “endangering the health of the American people now and into the future”, adding: “He must resign.”“Mr Kennedy and the rest of the Trump administration tell us, over and over, that they want to Make America Healthy Again. That’s a great slogan. I agree with it. The problem is that since coming into office President Trump and Mr Kennedy have done exactly the opposite,” Sanders wrote.Sanders pointed to the White House’s firing of Susan Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as four other top CDC officials who resigned in protest this week after Monarez “refused to act as a rubber stamp” for Kennedy’s “dangerous policies”.“Despite the overwhelming opposition of the medical community, secretary Kennedy has continued his longstanding crusade against vaccines and his advocacy of conspiracy theories that have been rejected repeatedly by scientific experts,” Sanders wrote.“Against the overwhelming body of evidence within medicine and science, what are secretary Kennedy’s views? … He has absurdly claimed that ‘there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective’… Who supports secretary Kennedy’s views? Not credible scientists and doctors. One of his leading ‘experts’ that he cites to back up his bogus claims on autism and vaccines had his medical license revoked and his study retracted from the medical journal that published it.”Sanders went on to add: “The reality is that secretary Kennedy has profited from and built a career on sowing mistrust in vaccines. Now, as head of [the Department of Health and Human Services] he is using his authority to launch a full-blown war on science, on public health and on truth itself.”Pointing to what he described as “our broken health care system”, Sanders said that Kennedy’s repeated attacks against science and vaccines will make it more difficult for Americans to obtain lifesaving vaccines.“Already, the Trump administration has effectively taken away Covid vaccines from many healthy younger adults and kids, unless they fight their way through our broken health care system. This means more doctor’s visits, more bureaucracy and more people paying higher out-of-pocket costs – if they can manage to get a vaccine at all,” he wrote.The senator warned that Kennedy’s next target may be the childhood immunization schedule, which involves a list of recommended vaccines for children to protect them from diseases including measles, chickenpox and polio.“The danger here is that diseases that have been virtually wiped out because of safe and effective vaccines will resurface and cause enormous harm,” Sanders said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn recent days, the Trump administration has faced rare bipartisan pushback following its firing of Monarez, which came amid steep budget cuts to the CDC’s work as well as growing concerns of political interference.Meanwhile, Kennedy has continued to make questionable medical and health claims – and has been lambasted in response by experts and lawmakers alike.Since he assumed leadership over the health department, Kennedy – a longtime anti-vaccine advocate – has fired health agency workers and entertained conspiracy theories. Last week, more than 750 current and former employees at US health agencies signed a letter in which they criticized Kennedy as an “existential threat to public health”.The health agency workers went on to accuse the health secretary of being “complicit in dismantling America’s public health infrastructure and endangering the nation’s health by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information”.The letter comes after a deadly shooting at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta earlier this month, when a 30-year-old gunman fired more than 180 rounds into the buildings, killing a police officer before dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The shooter had been struggling with mental health issues and was influenced by misinformation that led him to believe the Covid-19 vaccine was making him sick, according to the gunman’s father. More

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      Duke Cunningham, Vietnam flying ace and congressman convicted of bribery, dies at 83

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      Randy “Duke” Cunningham, whose feats as a US navy flying ace during the Vietnam war catapulted him to a House of Representatives career that ended in disgrace when he was convicted of accepting $2.4m in bribes, has died. He was 83.Cunningham died Wednesday at a hospital in a Little Rock, Arkansas, according to former representative Duncan L Hunter, who spent time with him a week before his death.He “represented the very best of American heroes who go out to meet our enemies at the gates”, said Hunter, whose served alongside Cunningham in Congress.Cunningham was one of the most highly decorated pilots in the Vietnam war, becoming the first navy fighter ace in the war for shooting down five enemy aircraft. He received a Navy Cross, two Silver Stars, 15 Air Medals and a Purple Heart for his actions during the war.“With complete disregard for his own personal safety he continued his attack through a hail of cannon fire to rescue his wingman,” read the citation for his second Silver Star.He went on to serve eight terms in Congress before pleading guilty in 2005 to receiving illegal gifts from defense contractors in exchange for government contracts and other favors, in what was considered at the time to be the largest bribery scandal in congressional history.The Republican congressman from San Diego admitted to accepting a luxury house, a yacht, a Rolls-Royce, lavish meals and $40,000 in Persian rugs and antique furniture from companies in exchange for steering lucrative contracts their way. He was sentenced to eight years and four months in prison in March 2006.His corruption case was one of several that led to the creation of the Office of Congressional Ethics in 2008.“In my life, I have known great joy and great sorrow. And now I know great shame,” Cunningham said in his resignation statement. “I cannot undo what I have done. But I can atone.”He took a less contrite tone as time went on, telling news organizations and others that he regretted his guilty plea and complaining that the Internal Revenue Service was draining his savings.“A lot of these things that they say are bribes I can absolutely black-and-white prove 100% that they were reimbursement for things that I had already paid,” Cunningham said in a phone interview with KGTV while he was in prison.In December 2012, Cunningham was released from a federal prison in Arizona to serve the remainder of his sentence in a federal halfway house in New Orleans. It was the longest prison sentence for a member of Congress for taking bribes until Louisiana Democrat William Jefferson got 13 years in 2009.His sentence also required he pay $1.8m for back taxes and forfeit an additional $1.85m for bribes he received, plus proceeds from the sale of a home in the highly exclusive San Diego suburb of Rancho Santa Fe. He was ordered to pay $1,500 a month in prison and $1,000 monthly after his release.Cunningham was born in Los Angeles on 8 December 1941, but grew up in Shelbina, Missouri, where his parents owned a five-and-dime store, according to court documents. He graduated from the University of Missouri and a few years later enlisted in the navy in 1967.He retired as a navy commander in 1987 and gained national recognition as a media commentator on military topics. When he ran for office in 1990, he replaced Democratic congressman Jim Bate in a left-leaning district who had been driven from office by charges of sexual harassment.Cunningham took an interest in military affairs while in Congress and supported socially conservative positions. He drew attention for his outbursts – during a floor debate in 1995, he attacked his adversaries as “the same ones that would put homos in the military”.“He brought military operational expertise to the debates in Congress,” said Hunter, recalling a debate he watched Cunningham have with a colleague over the fate of a fighter jet. “He was a strong conservative, strongly opinionated, and brought a real spark of light to the US Congress.”The disgraced former congressman received one of the pardons issued by Donald Trump in 2021 at the end of his first term.He has largely stayed out of the public eye since his release from prison, enjoying retirement in the countryside and serving as the president of the American Fighter Aces Association, according to Hunter.He is survived by his wife, Sharon Cunningham, his adult son and two daughters, and other family members. His family could not be immediately reached for comment. More

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      Republican senator Joni Ernst of Iowa will not run for re-election

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      The US Republican senator Joni Ernst of Iowa is not expected to seek re-election next year, according to multiple news reports, a move that could open a competitive seat in the high-stakes battle to control the chamber.CBS News was the first to report that Ernst had told confidantes that she intends to announce her decision not to seek re-election next week. Ernst’s office and campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Ernst, 55, became the first woman to represent Iowa in the US Senate when she was elected in 2014. Her decision follows an announcement by the Iowa governor, Republican Kim Reynolds, to not seek re-election. Earlier this week, a Democrat prevailed in a special election for a state senate seat in an Iowa district that voted heavily for Donald Trump in 2024. The victory raised Democrats’ hopes in a state that has drifted away from them over the past decade and where they haven’t won a statewide Senate race since 2008.Republicans currently control the US Senate by a 53-to-47 margin. Despite Trump’s low approval ratings, growing economic uncertainty and historical patterns that show the president’s party losing ground in the midterm elections, nonpartisan election analysts say Republicans are favored to keep control of the Senate.Ernst would be the second Republican senator to not seek re-election, after Thom Tillis, a two-term incumbent from North Carolina, announced his retirement a day after voting against Trump’s signature domestic policy bill. Of the 22 Republican seats up for election next year, only the North Carolina race is rated a toss-up, according to the Cook Political Report. It had ranked Ernst’s seat “likely” to remain in the Republican column.Earlier this summer, Ernst drew fierce backlash when she appeared to dismiss voter fears that Medicaid cuts in the Republican immigration and tax package would put lives at risk, telling a town hall audience: “We all are going to die.”Rather than backtrack or apologize, Ernst doubled down in a video. “I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this earth,” she said. “So I apologize, and I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well.”Ernst had also faced sharp criticism from the president’s supporters when she expressed reservations with Pete Hegseth, then Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Defense who faced allegations of sexual assault – which he denied – and repeatedly expressed opposition to women in combat roles.Facing threats of a rightwing primary challenge, Ernst, a survivor of sexual assault who had become a champion of issues related to women in the military, caved to the pressure and ultimately voted to confirm Hegseth.Democrats celebrated Ernst’s prospective retirement. At least five Democratic candidates have announced they will run for the seat.“Joni Ernst is retiring because she knows that Iowans are furious at her and Washington Republicans for threatening our healthcare and spiking costs for families,” said Rita Hart, chair of the Iowa Democratic party. “Iowans continue to show that they are ready for change, and we will be working overtime to elect a Democrat to represent us in the Senate in 2026.” More

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      RFK Jr continues to make dubious health claims as CDC roils under his leadership

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      In a week of chaos at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has continued to make questionable medical and health claims – and has been slammed for them by experts and lawmakers alike.In recent days, Kennedy has been facing increasing calls for his resignation following the Trump administration’s firing of the CDC director, Susan Monarez, which in turn prompted four other top officials to quit the agency. The chaos across US health agencies also comes as Kennedy released a slew of controversial and contradictory rules surrounding Covid-19 vaccines.On top of all this turmoil, Kennedy has also met with significant backlash for a handful of outlandish remarks and revelations, which have only fueled the controversy surrounding his leadership at the health department.After the deadly mass school shooting in Minneapolis this week where two children were killed and 17 others injured, Kennedy suggested that psychiatric drugs may be contributing to the rise in gun violence across the country.During an appearance on Fox & Friends, the host Brian Kilmeade asked Kennedy if the health department was investigating whether medications used to treat gender dysphoria might be linked to school shootings.According to court documents reviewed by the Guardian, the 23-year-old shooter, Robin Westman, had changed their birth name from Robert to Robin because they identified as a woman.In response to Kilmeade’s question, Kennedy, without acknowledging the prevalence and easy accessibility of firearms across the US – said that his department was “launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors] drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence”.Kennedy’s comments triggered criticism from the Minnesota senator Tina Smith, who took to X and wrote: “I dare you to go to Annunciation School and tell our grieving community, in effect, guns don’t kill kids, antidepressants do. Just shut up. Stop peddling bullshit. You should be fired.”This week, Kennedy also suggested that he could identify “mitochondrial challenges” in children at airports just by looking at them.Speaking at an event in Texas alongside the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, Kennedy claimed: “I’m looking at kids as I walk through the airports today, as I walk down the street, and I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, with inflammation. You can tell from their faces, from their body movements, and from their lack of social connection. And I know that that’s not how our children are supposed to look.”In response, Ashish Jha, former White House Covid-19 response coordinator under the Biden administration, said: “I’m sorry but what?”“This is wacky, flat-earth, voodoo stuff, people. This is not normal,” Jha added on X.Then, in a revelation on Thursday, Demetre Daskalakis – who recently resigned as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases in protest of Monarez’s firing – revealed that Kennedy had never been briefed by CDC experts before making major public health decisions.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSpeaking to CNN, Daskalakis said: “I think that another important thing to ask the secretary is, has he been briefed by a CDC expert on anything, specifically measles, Covid-19, flu? I think that people should ask him that in that hearing,” referring to Kennedy’s upcoming hearing before the Senate finance committee.Upon being asked what Kennedy’s answer would be, Daskalakis said: “The answer is ‘no’. No one from my center has ever briefed him on any of those topics … He’s getting information from somewhere, but that information is not coming from CDC experts.”In a separate statement to the Daily Beast, Daskalakis said: “It’s not just that he hasn’t asked us. I asked for us to be able to do briefings, and I was told by his office of the secretary officials, some of whom are now fired, that they would be happy to have us do briefings, that they would reach out to be able to set them up. They’ve never done so.”Since he assumed leadership over the health department, Kennedy – a longtime anti-vaccine advocate – has fired health agency workers and entertained conspiracy theories. Last week, more than 750 current and former employees at US health agencies signed a letter in which they criticized Kennedy as an “existential threat to public health”.The health agency workers went on to accuse Kennedy of being “complicit in dismantling America’s public health infrastructure and endangering the nation’s health by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information”.The letter comes after a deadly shooting at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta earlier this month, when a 30-year-old gunman fired more than 180 rounds into the buildings, killing a police officer before dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. According to the gunman’s father, the shooter had been struggling with mental health issues and was influenced by misinformation that led him to believe the Covid-19 vaccine was making him sick. More

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      Step back and take it in: the US is entering full authoritarian mode | Jonathan Freedland

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      If this were happening somewhere else – in Latin America, say – how might it be reported? Having secured his grip on the capital, the president is now set to send troops to several rebel-held cities, claiming he is wanted there to restore order. The move follows raids on the homes of leading dissidents and comes as armed men seen as loyal to the president, many of them masked, continue to pluck people off the streets …Except this is happening in the United States of America and so we don’t quite talk about it that way. That’s not the only reason. It’s also because Donald Trump’s march towards authoritarianism is so steady, taking another step or two every day, that it’s easy to become inured to it: you can’t be in a state of shock permanently. And, besides, sober-minded people are wary of sounding hyperbolic or hysterical: their instinct is to play down rather than scream at the top of their voice.There’s something else, too. Trump’s dictator-like behaviour is so brazen, so blatant, that paradoxically, we discount it. It’s like being woken in the night by a burglar wearing a striped shirt and carrying a bag marked “Swag”: we would assume it was a joke or a stunt or otherwise unreal, rather than a genuine danger. So it is with Trump. We cannot quite believe what we are seeing.But here is what we are seeing. Trump has deployed the national guard on the streets of Washington DC, so that there are now 2,000 troops, heavily armed, patrolling the capital. The pretext is fighting crime, but violent crime in DC was at a 30-year low when he made his move. The president has warned that Chicago will be next, perhaps Baltimore too. In June he sent the national guard and the marines into Los Angeles to put down protests against his immigration policies, protests which the administration said amounted to an “insurrection”. Demonstrators were complaining about the masked men of Ice, the immigration agency that, thanks to Trump, now has a budget to match that of the world’s largest armies, snatching people from street corners or hauling them from their cars.Those cities are all run by Democrats and, not coincidentally, have large Black populations. They are potential centres of opposition to Trump’s rule and he wants them under his control. The constitution’s insistence that states have powers of their own and that the reach of the federal government should be limited – a principle that until recently was sacred to Republicans – can go hang.Control is the goal, amassing power in the hands of the president and removing or neutering any institution or person that could stand in his way. That is the guiding logic that explains Trump’s every action, large and small, including his wars on the media, the courts, the universities and the civil servants of the federal government. It helps explain why FBI agents last week mounted a 7am raid on the home and office of John Bolton, once Trump’s national security adviser and now one of his most vocal critics. And why the president hinted darkly that the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie is in his sights.View image in fullscreenIt’s why he has broken all convention, and possibly US law, by attempting to remove Lisa Cook as a member of the board of the Federal Reserve on unproven charges of mortgage fraud. Those charges are based on information helpfully supplied by the Trump loyalist installed as federal housing director and who, according to the New York Times, has repeatedly leveraged “the powers of his office … to investigate or attack Mr Trump’s most recognisable political enemies”. The pattern is clear: Trump is using the institutions of government to hound his foes in a manner that recalls the worst of Richard Nixon – though where Nixon skulked in the shadows, Trump’s abuses are in plain sight.And all in the pursuit of ever more power. Take the firing of Cook. With falling poll numbers, especially on his handling of the economy, he craves the sugar rush of an interest rate cut. The independent central bank won’t give it to him, so he wants to push the Fed out of the way and grab the power to set interest rates himself. Note the justification offered by JD Vance this week, that Trump is “much better able to make those determinations” than “unelected bureaucrats” because he embodies the will of the people. The reasoning is pure authoritarianism, arguing that a core principle of the US constitution, the separation of powers, should be swept aside, because all legitimate authority resides in one man alone.Of course, the greatest check on Trump would come from the opposition winning power in a democratic election, specifically Democrats taking control of the House of Representatives in November 2026. Trump is working hard to make that impossible: witness this month’s unabashed gerrymander in Texas, where at Trump’s command, Republicans redrew congressional boundaries to give themselves five more safe seats in the House. Trump wants more states to follow Texas’s lead, because a Democratic-controlled House would have powers of scrutiny that he rightly fears.Meanwhile, apparently prompted by his meeting with Vladimir Putin, he is once again at war against postal voting, baselessly decrying it as fraudulent, while also demanding a new census that would exclude undocumented migrants – moves that will either help Republicans win in 2026 or else enable him to argue that a Democratic victory was illegitimate and should be overturned.In that same spirit, the Trump White House now argues that, in effect, only one party should be allowed to exercise power in the US. How else to read the words of key Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who this week told Fox News that “The Democrat party is not a political party; it is a domestic extremist organisation.”It’s the same picture on every front, whether it’s plans for a new military parade in Trump’s honour or the firing of health officials who insist on putting science ahead of political loyalty. He is bent on amassing power to himself and being seen to amass power to himself, even if that means departing from economic conservative orthodoxy to have the federal government take a stake in hitherto private companies. He wants to rule over every aspect of US life. As Trump himself said this week, “A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we’d like a dictator.’” The former Obama adviser David Axelrod is not alone when he says, “We have gone from zero to Hungary faster than I ever imagined.”The trouble is, people still don’t talk about it the way they talk about Hungary, not inside the US and not outside it. That’s partly the It Can’t Happen Here mindset, partly a reluctance to accept a reality that would require, of foreign governments especially, a rethink of almost everything. If the US is on its way to autocracy, in a condition scholars might call “unconsolidated authoritarianism”, then that changes Britain’s entire strategic position, its place in the world, which for 80 years has been predicated on the notion of a west led by a stable, democratic US. The same goes for the EU. Far easier to carry on, either pretending that the transformation of the US is not, in fact, as severe as it is, or that normal service will resume shortly. But the world’s leaders, like US citizens, cannot ignore the evidence indefinitely. To adapt the title of that long-ago novel, it can happen here – and it is.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

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      Fulton county election board faces $10,000 a day fine for not appointing Republicans

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      The Fulton county commission in Georgia will be fined $10,000 a day for violating a court order to appoint two Republicans associated with Trump-aligned groups pushing voter fraud conspiracies to the county’s election board.The county charter states that commissioners “shall” appoint two Republicans and two Democrats nominated by their respective county party chairperson, for two-year terms. When commissioners rejected the nomination by Fulton county’s Republican party chair, the superior court judge David Emerson issued an order requiring the board to appoint them.In a civil contempt case that threatened jail time, Emerson found the Democratic commissioners have “been stubbornly litigious and acted in bad faith in its conduct prior to this litigation by its failure to comply with clear local legislation which forced the plaintiff to file this action,” Emerson’s ruling Wednesday states. Emerson awarded attorney’s fees to the Republican plaintiffs.The plaintiffs were seeking an order of both civil and criminal contempt for failing to comply with the order. Civil contempt has historically meant an ever-increasing series of daily fines until the board complies with the order. But a finding of criminal contempt would have meant jail time until enough Democratic commissioners agree to vote for the appointment.The Fulton county Republican party chair, Stephanie Endres, nominated Jason Frazier for a term and renominated Julie Adams to serve another term.Frazier is among the most prolific challengers of voter registrations in Georgia, and unsuccessfully sued Fulton county in federal court in 2024, attempting to force the board of registration and elections to purge nearly 2,000 Fulton county voters from the state’s rolls before the presidential election.Adams is a member of an election-denial activist network founded by Cleta Mitchell, a Trump ally who aided his efforts to overturn the election in Georgia and elsewhere. As a member of the Fulton county board of registration and elections, Adams refused to certify the May 2024 primary, which led to a Fulton county court case that ultimately compelled her to affirm the election.That case loomed large in court today. The court in Adams v Fulton county held that the act of certification was ministerial – a requirement, not a choice – because of the language in the law, noted Thomas L Oliver III, an attorney for the Republicans.Facing the court’s order, Adams ultimately complied, Oliver said. “Now they want to be on the other side of that argument. It’s pretty rich,” he added.In a previous ruling, Emerson said: “The court finds that the ‘shall’ as used here is mandatory, and the [board of commissioners] does not have discretion to disapprove an otherwise qualified nominee.” Emerson cited the mandatory nature of the language in the Adams case as applicable to the commissioners as well.Don Samuel, the county’s attorney, argued that the commissioners were refusing to complete the appointment because they were hoping to overturn the lower court’s order on appeal, and making the appointment would render an appeal moot. The ministerial function implicit in the language of the law of an elected official and an appointed official is a legal distinction for the appellate court, he said.“They are not defying this court out of disrespect of this court in any way,” Samuel said, acknowledging how their refusal to comply with the order looked in light of Democratic arguments about federal administration officials’ defiance of court orders. “We can’t help but read in the paper about the defiance of the judiciary,” he said. “We are not, despite the plaintiff’s overbroad argument here, we are not in defiance of the order. We’re trying to protect our rights in appeal.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFulton county has seven elected commissioners, five of whom are Democrats. The lawsuit only named those five: Dana Barrett, Mo Ivory, Khadijah Abdur-Rahman, Marvin Arrington and chair Robb Pitts. Pitts, Abdur-Rahman and Arrington did not vote on the appointment, leaving Barrett and Ivory to vote against it for a 2-2 tie.Social media messages from Ivory and Barrett were presented in court, in which the two Democrats pledged not to make the appointment.“Those who oversee elections must be fully independent and accountable,” Ivory said on Instagram.“No judge can compel any elected official to vote in any way,” said Barrett, also on Instagram. “Our elections are under attack in this country … This is just another arena where they’re trying to chip away at free and fair elections.”The law governing appointments to election boards in Georgia is an inconsistent patchwork. In neighboring Dekalb county, the chief judge of the county’s superior court is the appointment authority. Earlier this year, the judge allowed one controversial Republican nominee to be appointed while denying another. In Republican-controlled Cherokee county, an affluent northern suburb of Atlanta, county commissioners rejected the nomination of the county’s Democratic party to the election board, opting instead to find a Democrat they preferred to serve. More