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      The revised indictment against Donald Trump is the last thing he needs right now | Lloyd Green

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      On Tuesday, Jack Smith, the special counsel, delivered a revised 36-page indictment, again charging Donald Trump with conspiring to subvert the final outcome of the 2020 election. How the courts treat the latest indictment remains to be seen. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito may again race to Trump’s rescue. But two weeks before the scheduled 10 September presidential debate, the American electorate and Donald Trump are again reminded that the Republican nominee stands in legal jeopardy. Then again, winning on 5 November may be the simplest way for him to avoid jail time.Already trailing in the polls, this is not good news for Trump, a candidate who has twice lost the popular vote. Without Joe Biden as a foil, his decline and age visibly grow. At 59, Kamala Harris is almost 20 years younger. All too often, Trump, 78, slurs his words and rambles. His dance moves remind folks of their elderly uncle.Trump already labors under a state court felony conviction in New York and a nine-figure pile of civil judgments. His personal liquidity and the future of his family business are in doubt. He must again deflect renewed allegations that he sought to thwart the will of the people and obstruct the outcome of a valid election. That costs more time and money.“Despite having lost, the Defendant – who was also the incumbent President – was determined to remain in power,” the indictment reads.“For more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false.”For a guy who yammers about law and order, it’s a lousy look – as is his campaign’s physical altercation at Arlington national cemetery over its use as a prop in which Trump flashes a thumbs-up.Since Harris emerged as the Democrats’ standard-bearer, Trump is on the short end of a nine-point shift in the polls. This latest legal development will likely hinder his attempt to make up lost ground. If history matters, indictments have a way of doing just that.A veteran of George HW Bush’s losing re-election campaign, I remember Caspar Weinberger, Ronald Reagan’s defense secretary, being re-indicted just days before the 3 November 1992 election. In the run-up to that fateful Friday, the campaign had battled back into a statistical tie with Bill Clinton. The one-count re-indictment, however, derailed the campaign’s final gasp for momentum.Before the latest indictment, Harris already held an 11-point lead over Trump on the question of who is the more honest and trustworthy candidate. Expect Tuesday’s indictment to expand the gap, a development that he can ill afford.The map tells the story. According to Nate Silver, the polling guru, Harris has recaptured a lead in the electoral battlegrounds of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The website he founded, ABC’s 538, gives her nearly a three-in-five shot of winning. PredictIt, an online betting site, puts her chance at 55%.Nationally, House Democrats have improved their chances of retaking the chamber. Over in Texas, the senator Ted Cruz holds a mere two-point advantage over the representative Colin Allred, his Democratic opponent. The loathed incumbent senator is in trouble.This is not the future Trump and the Republicans envisioned after he walloped Biden in the debate. Even worse, this is not the endgame the Trump campaign anticipated. Rather, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles expected Sleepy Joe to hang on until the bitter end. Of all his unforced errors, Trump agreeing to an early debate may have been his most consequential. Lack of imagination can be fatal in politics and war.Adding insult to injury, the Harris campaign announced on Tuesday that Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, will sit for a joint interview to be aired this Thursday night on CNN. For days, the punditocracy repeatedly announced that without a media sit-down she would be unable to maintain her momentum.That box is about to be checked. Team Trump is on verge of losing another talking point.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBeyond that, the Harris-Walz interview falls on the eve of the upcoming Labor Day weekend, when most of the US is on the road, as opposed to being glued to their televisions. If the interview goes poorly for Harris, it is less likely to develop into a real-time disaster.The Trump re-indictment also serves to highlight Harris’s career as a local prosecutor and state attorney general. In this vein, a speech she delivered in late June in Atlanta sets the table for the final weeks of the campaign.“In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds: predators who abused women; fraudsters who ripped off consumers; cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain,” she advised the crowd.“So, hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type. I know the type. And I have been dealing with people like him my entire career.”Meanwhile, her campaign coffers brim. Voter registration among Black women explodes. And Trump is left to hawk another round of digital trading cards.He is not enjoying a “brat summer”.

      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

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      JD Vance attacks childless teachers in newly resurfaced remarks

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      JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate and US senator from Ohio, attacked teachers who do not have children in newly resurfaced remarks from 2021.In the resurfaced clip, Vance, who was speaking at a forum held by the Center for Christian Virtue, attacks “leaders on the left” and Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, for not having children.“So many of the leaders of the left, and I hate to be so personal about this, but they’re people without kids trying to brainwash the minds of our children, that really disorients me and disturbs me,” Vance can be heard saying in the clip.“Randi Weingarten, who’s the head of the most powerful teachers’ union in the country, she doesn’t have a single child. If she wants to brainwash and destroy the minds of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone.”In a post on X, Weingarten responded to Vance’s resurfaced comments, calling them “gross”, and adding that the remarks are “sad and insulting to millions of modern families, and school teachers including Catholic nuns, none of whom should be targeted for their family decisions”.Weingarten, whose union endorsed Kamala Harris for president in July, continued: “Teachers who are in back-to-school mode right now help other people’s children every single day. Those who virtuously serve our communities should be lauded, not vilified.”The remarks resurfaced on social media this week and have already been making the rounds online. Kamala Harris’s campaign also shared the clip of the remarks online on Tuesday.A spokesperson for Vance did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but in a statement sent to NBC News on Tuesday, Taylor Van Kirk, a spokesperson for Vance, said the Ohio senator “will continue to loudly call this crap out to defend our kids”.“There is no bigger threat to American children than the leftwing indoctrination being peddled in our schools by radicals like Randi Weingarten, with the support of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz,” Van Kirk added.The newly resurfaced comments come just weeks after Vance came under fire after a clip of him in 2021 calling leading Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies” resurfaced after he was chosen by the former president Donald Trump to be his running mate in the 2024 election. The comments caused outrage and were quickly denounced by many Democrats, as well as celebrities and some Republicans.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionVance has claimed that the “childless cat ladies” comment was merely a “sarcastic remark”.In additional resurfaced clips, Vance has said that people without children should pay higher taxes, and that people with children should be given more voting power than those without children. More

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      There’s a fair way to ensure third-party candidates don’t ‘spoil’ the US election | David Daley

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr has suspended his presidential campaign and endorsed Donald Trump, in part because he did not want to be a spoiler across competitive swing states. The third-party “spoiler problem”, unfortunately, will not vanish with him.Three committed independents and third-party nominees remain: progressive activist Cornel West, Libertarian Chase Oliver, and Jill Stein of the Green party. They could still tip the balance: the White House looks likely to be won by the tiniest margins across just seven swing states, just as it was in 2016 and 2020.The next president should not be decided by whether Stein earns 0.4% in Michigan or 0.2%, or if Oliver claims 1.1% or 0.8% in Libertarian-friendly Georgia and Arizona. But under our current system, that’s very much possible.We need a modern fix that recognizes that third parties are here to stay, but also that a nation with a guiding principle of majority rule deserves winners who earn more than 50% of their fellow Americans’ votes. The best solution to the urgent “spoiler” problem – which we’ve been exhaustingly debating since Ross Perot’s run in 1992 – is ranked-choice voting (RCV).Two states – Maine and Alaska – have already adopted this common-sense, nonpartisan fix for fairer results and will vote for president this fall with RCV. Others should follow their lead. RCV has lots of benefits. But most crucially, by giving voters the power to rank the field, it fixes the spoiler effect that emerges in any race with more than two candidates.A RCV election works much like an instant runoff. If someone wins a majority of voters’ first choices, they win – like any other election. If not, the last-place finishers are eliminated, one by one, and their supporters’ second choices come into play to identify a majority winner.In other words, a Democrat in Michigan who wants a different approach in Gaza could feel free to rank West or Stein first, and Kamala Harris second. A Sun belt conservative who thinks the national debt grew too quickly under Trump could put Oliver first and the former president second. They could make their voice heard – without worrying that their vote would elect someone they fear could be worse on the issue most important to them.Currently, despite our political nuances and the increasing number of registered independents, the spoiler problem continues to be the prism through which every third-party run is considered. Kennedy never seemed likely to win, but pundits agonized for months over whether he drew more from Democrats or the Republican party. It’s no surprise that serious independent candidates or anti-Trump conservatives such as Larry Hogan and Chris Christie rejected entreaties to run this year, when such a run would be reduced to the question of who they’d “siphon” votes from.It’s too early to judge the effect that Kennedy’s exit will have on the race. His support had softened in recent weeks. Yet almost no matter how his supporters break, the most competitive states remain extremely close.As of 21 August, Harris leads Arizona by 1.2%, Pennsylvania by 1.6%, and North Carolina by 0.2%. Trump holds a lead of 0.8% in Georgia. Any of the remaining third-party candidates could easily exceed the margin of victory in competitive states. It’s not just Florida in 2000, when George W Bush carried the electoral college tipping-point by 537 votes, a margin far surpassed by Ralph Nader voters. In Wisconsin in 2020, the Libertarian Jo Jorgensen and conservative-leaning independents took more than twice as many votes as the margin between Joe Biden and Trump.It’s easy to imagine something similar this year, perhaps even an election night 2024 where the electoral college is knotted up. Harris and Trump each have 251 electoral votes. Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin remain too close to call, each separated by a handful of votes. A tense nation awaits the verdict.Wouldn’t the result have more legitimacy if everyone knew that the electoral votes in those states went to a winner with more than 50% of the vote?Kennedy might have left the scene, but third-party candidates are not going away. Nor should they be forced out. We can adjust to that reality, or we can dig in our heels, repeat this tired debate, blame Ralph Nader and Jill Stein for everything, forever, and – at a time when the country feels ever more polarized – risk electing a president without a majority in the decisive states, leaving us even more divided than we are now.There’s no silver bullet to everything that ails our civic spirit. Yet the road out of this toxicity might begin with embracing values that most of us hold dear: more individual choice is good, all of us should be heard and majorities must rule. Ranked-choice voting makes that possible.

      David Daley is the author of Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count and Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy. He is a senior fellow at FairVote More

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      Trump appoints RFK Jr and Tulsi Gabbard to transition team

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      Donald Trump has appointed Robert F Kennedy Jr and Tulsi Gabbard, two former Democrats who have endorsed his bid for a second presidency, to the transition team that could shape his future administration.The pair will serve as honorary co-chairs of a body that will help him choose policies and personnel if he wins November’s presidential election, the New York Times reported.Kennedy’s appointment came after he suspended his own presidential campaign as an independent candidate last week and threw his weight behind an erstwhile opponent who, just four months ago, branded him a “radical-left lunatic”.He had already flagged up his new role in an interview with Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host and prominent Trump supporter, posted on X.Gabbard, a former member of Congress for Hawaii, unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and left the party shortly thereafter.She has rebranded herself as a pro-Trump celebrity and has been helping the Republican nominee prepare for a 10 September debate with Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent, which is to be hosted by ABC.Gabbard and Harris clashed in a televised primary debate in 2019, footage from which was posted on social media on Tuesday.Gabbard, a former member of the national guard who served in the Middle East, criticised the Democratic party in the debate, saying it was “not the party that is of, by and for the people and continues to be influenced by the foreign policy establishment in Washington represented by [Hillary] Clinton … and other greedy corporate interests”. She also attacked Harris’s record as a prosecutor.Harris responded by describing Gabbard as “someone who during the Obama administration spent four years full-time on Fox News criticising President Obama”. She also accused Gabbard of “buddying up” to Steve Bannon, a key Trump supporter and adviser, to get a meeting with Trump after he won the 2016 presidential election.It is unclear what role Kennedy or Gabbard will play on the transition team, which also features two of Trump’s sons, Donald Jr and Eric, and his vice-presidential running mate, JD Vance.On Tuesday, the Wisconsin elections commission voted to keep Kennedy on the presidential ballot, despite requesting to be removed from the ballot in all swing states when he endorsed Donald Trump last week.US media reported that Kennedy would also remain on the ballot in another key swing state: Michigan. The presence of independent and third-party candidates on the ballots could be a key factor in states where four of the last six presidential elections have been decided by between 5,700 votes and about 23,000 votes.Kennedy, who has traded in debunked conspiracy theories about children’s vaccines and the causes of the Covid epidemic, has been touted as a potential member of a second Trump administration, and has said he would expect any role would involve healthcare and food and drug policy.Trump has supported some of Kennedy’s vaccine scepticism, but played down suggestions that he could appoint him as secretary of health and human services. That post would see him surmounting the potentially problematic hurdle of Senate confirmation.Marc Short, a former chief of staff to Mike Pence, who served as Trump’s vice-president, told the New York Times that the appointment of Kennedy and Gabbard was a setback to conservatives.“From the convention platform to the transition team, free-market, limited-government and social conservatives have been kicked to the curb,” he said. “Doubling down on big-government populists will not energise turnout among traditional conservatives.” More

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      JD Vance asserts faith in Trump after admitting he once ‘didn’t fully believe’

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      JD Vance has admitted he once doubted Donald Trump’s abilities to be US president but insists he was won over by the policies and track record of a man he previously decried as “America’s Hitler” and “cultural heroin”.The Republican vice-presidential nominee obliquely referred to his former hostility at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as he attempted to blame Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, for the policies of the Biden administration at the same time as accusing her of preparing to steal Trump’s ideological clothes.His concession of past skepticism came after he accused Trump’s critics of wrongly forecasting his failure in office.“The same people who screwed this country up for 30 years said President Donald Trump would fail. Remember that?” Vance said. “But I remember, I was myself – I didn’t fully believe in the promises of Donald Trump. He persuaded me because he did such a good job.”He said Trump’s presidency was characterised by low petrol prices, affordable housing and rising wages, while inflation – which has become a political Achilles heel of Joe Biden’s presidency and, potentially, of Harris’s candidacy – was a non-issue.Vance’s brief allusion to his anti-Trump past follows widespread accusations of flip-flopping on his previous views on the former president and 2024 Republican nominee. Trump announced Vance – a first-term senator from Ohio – as his running mate at last month’s party convention in Milwaukee.The announcement drew widespread scrutiny of a litany of critical past comments by Vance, who described himself in 2016 as “a never Trump guy”, adding: “I never liked him.”In his speech, Vance threw the flip-flop accusation back at Harris, who has been accused of ditching previous leftwing stances when she campaigned unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in 2020. “I’m not sure that this is a woman who knows what she actually believes she is,” he said. “If you think about it, she’s just a cog in the wheel of a very corrupt system.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGoing further, he accused Harris of trying to steal Trump’s most successful policies, including his advocacy of a crackdown on illegal immigration at the southern US border.“I read a story this morning that her advisers are considering just copying all of Donald Trump’s policies,” Vance told supporters. “In fact, I’ve heard that for her debate in just a couple of weeks, she’s going to put on a navy suit, a long red tie, and adopt the slogan, ‘Make America great again’ [Trump’s signature slogan].” More

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      Democrats sue Georgia officials over election rules that could ‘invite chaos’

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      Democrats sued Georgia state election officials on Monday, alleging new rules that could allow local officials to delay certification of November’s presidential results were illegal.The lawsuit was filed in the superior court of Fulton county by local Georgia Democratic politicians, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic party of Georgia. It says the rules approved by the Republican-controlled Georgia state election board this month were intended to give individual county election officials the ability to delay or cancel the certification of votes.The lawsuit says the new rules “introduce substantial uncertainty in the post-election process and – if interpreted as their drafters have suggested – invite chaos by establishing new processes at odds with existing statutory duties”.The Georgia secretary of state’s office, which oversees the board, did not respond to requests for comment.Last week, the five-member Georgia election board, which includes three conservative members championed by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, voted 3-2 to empower county election board members to investigate any discrepancies between the number of cast ballots and the number of voters in each precinct before certification.Such mismatches are not uncommon and are not typically evidence of fraud, according to voting rights advocates, who say that rule could permit individual board members to intentionally delay approval of the results.The board has also in recent weeks approved a separate rule that county election boards conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into any irregularities before certifying the results. The rule did not define “reasonable” or set a particular deadline for completing the inquiry.The Democrats’ lawsuit says it is established law that it is the responsibility of the judicial system, not individual county election officials, to resolve allegations of voter fraud.The former president has falsely claimed for years that the 2020 election was rigged by fraud.His infamous January 2021 phone call in which he asked Georgia’s top election official, Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes to sway the outcome helped lead to Trump’s pending indictment on state charges.Voter fraud in the US is vanishingly rare, research shows.Trump faces Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, in the 5 November election. Polls show a close race, with Georgia among seven states likely to determine the outcome. More

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      Special counsel appeals dismissal of Trump classified documents case; Harris endorsed by former Republican staffers – live

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      Special counsel Jack Smith, in a court filing on Monday, urged a federal appeals court to revive the criminal case accusing Donald Trump of retaining classified documents after it was dismissed by US district court judge Aileen Cannon last month.“Congress has bestowed on the Attorney General, like the heads of many Executive Departments, broad authority to structure the agency he leads to carry out the responsibilities imposed on him by law,” Smith’s team wrote.
      The district court’s contrary view conflicts with an otherwise unbroken course of decisions, including by the Supreme Court, that the Attorney General has such authority, and it is at odds with widespread and longstanding appointment practices in the Department of Justice and across the government.
      Rashida Tlaib, the Michigan congresswoman and leading progressive Democrat, criticized the Democratic national convention for denying a speaking slot for a Palestinian American on the main stage last week.Tlaib, who is the sole Palestinian American member of Congress, told Zeteo in a statement:
      It’s hard not to feel invisible as a Palestinian-American. Our trauma and pain feel unseen and ignored by both parties. One party uses our identity as a slur, and the other refuses to hear from us. Where is the shared humanity? Ignoring us won’t stop the genocide.
      The uncommitted national movement, who represent hundreds of thousands of anti-war protest votes from the primary season, staged a multi-day sit-in protest outside the United Center in Chicago where the Democratic convention was being held, after the DNC told the group it would not get a speaker on the main stage.The family of the Israeli American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October, spoke on the convention stage on Wednesday, which the uncommitted movement supported.Tlaib, who did not attend the convention, said the lineup showed that the DNC “made it clear with their speakers that they value Israeli children more than Palestinian children.”Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman who endorsed Donald Trump on Monday, served in the military in Iraq and ran for president in the Democratic primary in 2020.Gabbard quit the Democratic party two years later and has become a fixture at conservative conferences and in rightwing media.Addressing a National Guard Association conference in Detroit, Michigan, where the former president was speaking, Gabbard, who represented Hawaii in Congress and is a former vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee, accused Kamala Harris of retaliating against political opponents, undermining civil liberties and weaponising the US’s institutions against both Trump and herself.Recently Gabbard has been helping Trump prepare for next month’s televised presidential debate against Harris. In 2020 she took Harris to taskon the debate stage over her record as a prosecutor – a clip that still circulates in rightwing media.Her announcement comes a day after Robert F Kennedy Jr, scion of a Democratic dynasty, suspended his own White House bid and threw his weight behind Trump. Elon Musk, who describes himself as “historically a moderate Democrat”, is also backing Trump.The judge overseeing the Arizona “fake electors” case involving a scheme by Republican allies of Donald Trump to overturn his loss in the state during the 2020 presidential election has set a trial date of 5 January 2026.Trump allies including the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani will stand trial on charges they conspired to subvert Arizona’s presidential election results.If you type in NeverWalz.com in your browser, the page that appears probably doesn’t look like what you expected from a webpage donning a slogan against Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and the current vice-presidential candidate for the Democratic party.“Trump is a convicted felon. Let’s vote for adults,” the webpage reads. “Try being joyful instead of an asshole.”After just a few seconds on the webpage, users are automatically redirected to KamalaHarris.com, the official website for Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign.The slogan “Never Walz” is indeed anti-Walz, and was seen recently plastered on a booth set up by an group against Walzt, Action 4 Liberty, at the Minnesota state fair. The group was seen handing out fliers and selling merchandise that criticizes Walz.But, it appears that the group did not secure a website domain for the “Never Walz” slogan, leaving it available for someone else to buy and use.As of Monday, the website domain NeverWalz.com is being used to criticize Donald Trump and then quickly redirects viewers to the Harris campaign website.The Arizona Police Association (APA) announced its endorsement of Democrat Ruben Gallego in the state’s Senate race, despite backing Republican Kari Lake in her gubernatorial bid last cycle.Gallego “understands the complexities of modern policing in American society today”, the group’s president Justin Harris said in a statement posted to Twitter/X.
      The APA does not take our endorsements lightly; we recognize the importance of having a U.S. senator that can bring people together to improve society for all. We believe congressman Gallego will be that U.S. Senator.
      The group publicly threw its support behind Donald Trump just days ago during a rally in Glendale.A messy Michigan Republican party gathering this weekend to nominate candidates for office illustrated the diminished sway of two high-profile Michigan election deniers and highlighted longstanding divisions within the party.Matthew DePerno, who faces charges for allegedly assisting in a scheme to improperly access voting machines in the wake of the 2020 election, withdrew from the race for Michigan’s top court hours before the state party convention. In a statement, DePerno said that instead of running for state supreme court, he would “use my knowledge about how elections work to get Republicans elected”.DePerno, a rightwing attorney from Kalamazoo, Michigan, was a vocal proponent of Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election in Michigan after Trump lost in 2020 to Joe Biden, appearing on rightwing media to promote the claims of widespread fraud and helping fund Arizona’s sham election audit. DePerno ran for Michigan attorney general in 2022 but lost decisively to Dana Nessel – whose office has charged him for his role in allegedly tampering with voting machines.In 2023, he lost his bid to chair the state party to Kristina Karamo – an outspoken elections conspiracy theorist who was ousted from her role earlier this year amid accusations that she had mismanaged the party’s already dwindling finances.During the convention, Karamo faced a more dramatic setback of her own when she was escorted from the venue by police officers. Karamo reportedly entered with an all-access pass, which was revoked during the convention.The US district judge Aileen Cannon threw out the classified documents case against Donald Trump last month after concluding that Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional.Smith’s team appealed to the 11th US circuit court of appeals, arguing that Cannon’s decision was “at odds with widespread and longstanding appointment practices in the Department of Justice and across the government”.It is unclear how long the appeals court’s decision could take, but even if it overturns Cannon’s dismissal there is no chance of a trial before the November presidential election, according to AP.If elected, Trump could then appoint an attorney general who would dismiss the case.The special counsel Jack Smith has urged an appeals court to reinstate his office’s classified documents case against Donald Trump after it was dismissed by a judge last month.At least five Secret Service agents have been placed on leave after the failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump in July.The action is reportedly the latest consequence of the security failings surrounding the 13 July shooting, when a 20-year-old gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, opened fire on Trump as he spoke at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump was wounded after a bullet grazed his right ear. One rally-goer, Corey Comperatore, was killed in the shooting while two others were seriously injured. Crooks was later shot dead by a Secret Service sniper.The agents who were placed on leave work at the Secret Service’s Pittsburgh field office, which was responsible for coordinating security at the rally along with local law enforcement, according to Real Clear Politics, which broke the story. They include the head of the Pittsburgh office.The officers concerned are believed to have been put on administrative leave, which usually involves being taken off operational duties while still receiving a full salary. They are expected to report to the office and may be given paperwork duties.Donald Trump, in his remarks to the National Guard Association of the United States, made reference to “if there is a debate”.In a Truth Social post last night, Trump cast doubt on whether he would participate in a scheduled debate with Kamala Harris next month, claiming that the network that had agreed to host it was “biased” against him.Donald Trump, speaking to the National Guard Association of the United States, pledged to create a “Space National Guard” if he is elected back to the Oval Office.Trump said launching space force in 2019 was one of his proudest achievements in his first term, adding:
      The time has come to create a Space National Guard as the primary combat reserve of the US space force.
      More than 200 former Republican staffers who worked for former president George W Bush, and senators John McCain and Mitt Romney, have signed a letter endorsing vice-president Kamala Harris for president.The letter, obtained and published by USA Today reads in part:
      Of course, we have plenty of honest, ideological disagreements with Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz. That’s to be expected. The alternative, however, is simply untenable.
      At home, another four years of Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership, this time focused on advancing the dangerous goals of Project 2025, will hurt real, everyday people and weaken our sacred institutions.
      Abroad, democratic movements will be irreparably jeopardized as Trump and his acolyte JD Vance kowtow to dictators like Vladimir Putin while turning their backs on our allies.
      We can’t let that happen.
      When endorsing Donald Trump for president, Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic Hawaii congresswoman who is also an Iraq war veteran, told the crowd at the National Guard Association’s conference that she believes that Trump has a better understanding of the “grave responsibility” that a president bears “for every single one of our lives.”Gabbard praised the former president and said that during his first term, Trump “exercised the courage that we expect from our Commander in Chief,” and exhausted “all measures of diplomacy, having the courage to meet with adversaries, dictators, allies and partners alike in the pursuit of peace.”Tulsi Gabbard has just formally endorsed former president Donald Trump for president.Gabbard left the Democratic party in 2022, after her 2020 run for president and it was recently reported that she has been helping Trump prepare for next month’s presidential debate against Kamala Harris.Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic Hawaii congresswoman, has just been introduced on stage by former president Donald Trump at the National Guard Association of the United States Conference in Detroit, Michigan.“She’s a special person” Trump said of Gabbard. “She’s got great common sense, great spirit, she loves our country and she loves the people in this room.”Donald Trump is about to appear at the National Guard Association of the United States Conference in Detroit, Michigan.Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic Hawaii congresswoman, is expected to formally endorse Trump’s presidential bid at the event, CNN reported earlier today, citing a source.Donald Trump has appeared to undercut his campaign’s position on a scheduled televised debate with Kamala Harris by declaring he would prefer to have the microphones on when it was not their turn to speak.

      Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that he’d “rather have it probably on, but the agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time. In that case, it was muted” amid a reported impasse between the Kamala Harris and Trump campaigns over the conditions of next month’s debate.

      Trump, in a Truth Social post on Sunday, threatened to pull out of the 10 September debate with Harris, hurling a trademark “fake news” slur at ABC News.

      Kamala Harris’s campaign said it has now raised $540m for its election battle against Trump. The campaign said it saw a surge of donations during last week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago where Harris and her vice-presidential running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, accepted their nominations.

      Elizabeth Warren said on Sunday that “American women are not stupid” enough to believe JD Vance’s promise that Trump would veto any nationwide abortion ban passed by Congress if Trump is elected again to the Oval Office.

      Kerry Kennedy, the sister of Robert F Kennedy Jr, said on Sunday she was “disgusted” by his decision to drop out and endorse Trump’s presidential bid. Max Kennedy, her brother, also condemned his sibling’s endorsement of Trump.

      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris issued statements on Monday marking the third anniversary of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Donald Trump visited Arlington national cemetery in Virginia on Monday to take part in a wreath laying ceremony as he seeks to tie Harris to the chaotic US pullout and attack at Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate that killed 13 American soldiers.

      Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic Hawaii congresswoman, is expected to formally endorse Donald Trump’s presidential bid today at his event in Detroit, Michigan, according to a report.

      A judge in Arizona will hear arguments on Monday in the “fake electors” case involving a scheme by Republican allies of Trump to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the state during the 2020 presidential election. More

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      Ex-Democrat Tulsi Gabbard endorses Donald Trump in 2024 presidential race

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      Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, has endorsed the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, in the US presidential election.Gabbard, who served in the military in Iraq, ran for president in the Democratic primary in 2020. She quit the party two years later and has become a fixture at conservative conferences and in rightwing media.Addressing a National Guard Association conference in Detroit, Michigan, where Trump was speaking, Gabbard said: “This administration has us facing multiple wars on multiple fronts in regions around the world and closer to the brink of nuclear war than we ever have been before.“This is one of the main reasons why I’m committed to doing all that I can to send President Trump back to the White House, where he can once again serve us as our commander-in-chief. Because I am confident that his first task will be to do the work to walk us back from the brink of war.”Gabbard, who represented Hawaii in Congress and is a former vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee, accused the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, of retaliating against political opponents, undermining civil liberties and weaponising America’s institutions against both Trump and herself.“We as Americans must stand together to reject this anti-freedom culture of political retaliation and abuse of power,” she added.Gabbard’s announcement comes a day after Robert F Kennedy Jr, scion of a Democratic dynasty, suspended his own White House bid and threw his weight behind Trump. Elon Musk, who describes himself as “historically a moderate Democrat”, is also backing the former president.Trump, who has been portraying Harris as a leftwing extremist, told the gathering on Monday: “This fight is no longer between Democrats and Republicans. This is a fight between communism and freedom.“It’s a very serious fight. That’s why millions of traditional Democrats, including FDR Democrats, JFK Democrats, independents and old-fashioned liberals are joining our movement. Our poll numbers are great.”Trump admitted that he had not been aware that Gabbard served as a lieutenant-colonel in the army. “She’s a special person,” he added. “She’s got great common sense, great spirit. She loves our country and she loves the people in this room.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRecently Gabbard has been helping Trump prepare for next month’s televised presidential debate against Harris. In 2020 she took Harris to taskon the debate stage over her record as a prosecutor – a clip that still circulates in rightwing media.Trump, who earlier laid wreaths during a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, was marking the third anniversary of a suicide bombing that killed 13 US service members during the withdrawal from Afghanistan. “The humiliation in Afghanistan set off the collapse of American credibility and respect all around the world,” he said in Detroit, seeking to blame Harris and Joe Biden for the deaths.In her own statement marking the anniversary of the Kabul airport attack, Harris said she mourns the 13 service members who were killed. “My prayers are with their families and loved ones,” she added. “My heart breaks for their pain and their loss.” More