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      Trump plans to block hearings in January 6 case before 2024 election

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      Donald Trump is expected to launch a new legal battle to suppress any damaging evidence from his 2020 election-subversion case from becoming public before the 2024 election, preparing to shut down the potency of any “mini-trials” where high-profile officials could testify against him.The plans come after the US supreme court last week in its ruling that broadly conferred immunity on former presidents opened the door for the US district judge Tanya Chutkan to hold evidentiary hearings – potentially with witnesses – to determine what acts in the indictment can survive.In the coming months, Trump’s lawyers are expected to argue that the judge can decide whether the conduct is immune based on legal arguments alone, negating the need for witnesses or multiple evidentiary hearings, the people said.If prosecutors with the special counsel Jack Smith press for witnesses such as former vice-president Mike Pence or White House officials to testify, Trump’s lawyers are expected to launch a flurry of executive privilege and other measures to block their appearances, the people said.The plans, which have not been previously reported, are aimed at having the triple effect of burying damaging testimony, making it harder for prosecutors to overcome the presumptive immunity for official acts, and injecting new delay into the case through protracted legal fights.Trump has already been enormously successful in delaying his criminal cases, including by succeeding in having the supreme court from taking the immunity appeal in the 2020 election subversion case in Washington, which was frozen while the court considered the matter.The delay strategy thus far has been aimed at pushing the cases until after the November election, in the hope that Trump would be re-elected and then appoint as attorney general a loyalist who would drop the charges.But now, even if Trump loses, his lawyers have coalesced on a legal strategy that could take months to resolve depending on how prosecutors choose to approach evidentiary hearings, adding to additional months of anticipated appeals over what Chutkan determines are official acts.A Trump spokesperson declined to comment on the legal strategy but claimed in a statement: “The entire January 6th case has always been just a desperate, un-constitutional attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election. The only thing imploding faster than the Biden campaign is Deranged Jack Smith’s partisan hoaxes.”View image in fullscreenTrump’s lawyers are not expected to make any moves until the start of August, the people said, when the case is finally returned to the jurisdiction of Chutkan after the conclusion of the supreme court’s 25-day waiting period and a further week for the judgement to formally be sent down.Once Chutkan regains control of the case, lawyers for Trump and for the special counsel have suggested privately that they think she will quickly rule on a number of motions that were briefed before the case was frozen when Trump filed his immunity appeal with the supreme court.That could include Trump’s pending motion to compel more discovery materials from prosecutors. If Chutkan grants the motion, Trump’s lawyers would insist on time to review the new materials before they started sorting through what acts in the indictment were immune, the people said.In the supreme court’s ruling on immunity, the justices laid out three categories for protection: core presidential functions that carry absolute immunity, official acts of the presidency that carry presumptive immunity, and unofficial acts that carry no immunity.Trump’s lawyers are expected to argue the maximalist position that they considered all of the charged conduct was Trump acting in his official capacity as president and therefore presumptively immune – and incumbent on prosecutors to prove otherwise, the people said.And Trump’s lawyers are expected to suggest that even though the supreme court contemplated evidentiary hearings to sort through the conduct, they are not necessary, and any disputes can be resolved purely on legal arguments, the people said.In doing so, Trump will try to foreclose witness testimony that could be politically damaging because it would cause evidence about his efforts to subvert the 2020 election that has polled poorly to be suppressed, and legally damaging because it could cause Chutkan to rule against Trump.Trump’s lawyers have privately suggested they expect at least some evidentiary hearings to take place, but they are also intent on challenging testimony from people like former vice president Mike Pence and other high-profile White House officials.For instance, if prosecutors try to call Pence or his chief of staff Marc Short to testify about meetings where Trump discussed stopping the January 6 certification, Trump would try to block that testimony by asserting executive privilege, and having Pence assert the speech or debate clause protection.Trump’s lawyers would argue to Chutkan that any privilege rulings during the investigation that forced them to testify to the grand jury were not binding and the factual record needed to be decided afresh.Meanwhile, witnesses such as former Trump lawyer John Eastman or former Trump campaign official Mike Roman would almost certainly be precluded from testifying because they have valid fifth amendment concerns of self-incrimination, as they have been separately charged with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results in Fulton county, Georgia. 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      Bob’s Burgers actor Jay Johnston pleads guilty over role in Capitol attack

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      Jay Johnston, an actor best known for his role on the animated comedy show Bob’s Burgers, has pleaded guilty to charges related to his role in the storming of the US Capitol in January 2021.Johnston, 54, faces a maximum of five years in prison and pleaded guilty to a felony count of civil disorder. He was released on a $25,000 bond in June 2023 after an initial court appearance in California.Johnston was also charged with felony obstruction of officers during civil disorder, unlawful entry on restricted buildings or grounds, and impeding passage through Capitol grounds.Documents filed in court allege Johnston joined a mob of protesters attacking police. A video from the incident showed the actor take a shield from an officer and use it to push back law enforcement officers defending the Capitol.Johnston “was close to the entrance to the tunnel, turned back and signaled for other rioters to come towards the entrance”, the charging documents stated. He also acknowledged his role in the Capitol riot, sending a text message that stated it “wasn’t” an attack but that it “kind of turned into that”.“It was a mess,” another message said.Three current or former associates of Johnston identified him as a suspect from photos the FBI published online, according to the agent. The FBI said one of those associates provided investigators with the text message in which Johnston acknowledged being at the Capitol on January 6.Airline records also proved Johnston booked a round-trip flight from Los Angeles to Washington DC, leaving on 4 January 2021 and returning on 7 January, according to FBI filings.In addition to Bob’s Burgers, Johnston has appeared on HBO’s Mr Show with Bob and David and held smaller roles on the Fox sitcom Arrested Development. US district judge Carl Nichols is set to sentence Johnston on 7 October.Also on Monday, a Texas woman pleaded guilty to assaulting a Metropolitan police department officer during the Capitol attack. Video captured Dana Jean Bell cursing at officers inside the Capitol and grabbing an officer’s baton, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit.Bell, 65, of Princeton, Texas, also was shown on video assaulting a local television journalist outside the Capitol that day. The FBI affidavit says Bell appeared to reach out and try to push or grab the journalist, who worked for the Fox affiliate in Washington DC.Bell faces a maximum sentence of eight years in prison. US district judge Timothy Kelly is scheduled to sentence her on 17 October. Her estimated sentencing guidelines recommend a term of imprisonment of between two and two and a half years.Approximately 1,000 people have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to federal crimes related to the Capitol riot, according to the Associated Press, with more than half of those sentenced getting terms of imprisonment ranging from seven days to 18 years. More

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      US supreme court weakens statute cited by January 6 prosecutors

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      Conservative bloc
      Alito – Majority
      Barrett – Minority
      Gorsuch – Majority
      Kavanaugh – Majority
      Roberts – Majority
      Thomas – Majority
      Liberal bloc
      Jackson – Majority
      Kagan – Minority
      Sotomayor – Minority
      The US supreme court has narrowed the statute that prosecutors have relied in the cases over hundreds of rioters who took part in the January 6 Capitol attack for obstruction of an official proceeding – in a ruling with profound implications for hundreds of other participants on that day in 2021.The 6-3 ruling in the case of Fischer v United States could also affect the federal criminal case against Donald Trump, who is charged with similar offences in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the assault. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the conservative justices in the case, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing the majority opinion. Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote a dissenting opinion joined by Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.More details soon… More

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      in Elections

      Kristi Noem pushes pardoning US Capitol attackers so ‘we don’t see another January 6’

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      Kristi Noem, once a contender to be the Republicans’ vice-presidential nominee, has argued that people facing charges over the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol should be individually evaluated for pardons – so as to minimize the chances of a repeat.“Each of those situations needs to be looked at separately,” Noem said on Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. “What I have been very clear about is that we don’t want to see another January 6 again.“Nobody in this country wants to see another day like that again.”The South Dakota governor also offered Donald Trump her support on his promise to grant presidential pardons to those charged or convicted in the Capitol attack that was mounted by his supporters after his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.The former Republican president has said he is considering pardons for approximately 1,186 defendants if he wins a second term in November’s expected rematch with his Democratic rival Biden. He has said one of his first actions in office would be to free jailed or imprisoned January 6 participants, whom he has described as “hostages”.Noem said pardons should be “based on his prerogative and his decision when he looks at those cases”.“Each of those individuals needs to be looked at separately, as far as what their role was and what was happening in that situation,” Noem said.Some political pundits were unimpressed with the argument laid out by the winner of the 1990 South Dakota Snow Queen Festival pageant, including Public Notice’s Aaron Rupar, who wrote on X: “completely incoherent stuff from Kristi Noem on Meet the Press”.Noem has seen her favorability polling fall since she included a passage in her book No Going Back describing her decision to fatally shoot a hunting dog that she insisted did not hunt and was a danger to her family.The unpopularity of that admission virtually ruled her out as Trump’s vice-presidential pick, who he has claimed will be in attendance for his televised debate with Biden in Atlanta on Thursday.Trump’s promises to reveal his running mate for November’s election came despite the fact that the network CNN has agreed with both campaigns that there will be no studio audience.Noem said she had not received any paperwork from the Trump campaign that could indicate she is in contention for the job. But she said she had “conversations with the president, and I know that he is the only one who will be making the decisions on who will be his vice-president”, a role Mike Pence held when Trump was in the Oval Office from 2017 to early 2021.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAsked if it would be a mistake to not pick a woman, Noem added: “He needs to pick the best person for the job. He needs to pick someone that will help him win.”Noem also maintained that Trump would make an effective president despite his conviction in the criminal prosecution involving hush money paid to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels – and despite the fact that he has pending criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by Biden.“I believe that Donald Trump, when he comes back to the White House and is in charge of this country, we’re going to have incredible opportunities to show that people in this country will be safer, that we’ll have law and order back in our streets,” Noem said.A slew of statistics have pointed to a significant decline in violent crime over the past year of Biden’s administration. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump always returns to his folly. And his Republican acolytes always return to him | Richard Wolffe

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      Anyone can rat, as Winston Churchill once supposedly said. But it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.Say what you like about Donald Trump, but there’s no shortage of rodent-like ingenuity around his dealings with the sewer life that populates today’s Republican party.On Thursday, the convicted felon who now leads the party of law and order paid a very special visit to his closest friends on Capitol Hill.This is the same convicted felon who bravely whipped a mob into attacking the same friends, in the same place, along with the police officers paid to protect them, all of three years ago. Which, as it happens, is the average life of a domesticated rat.Back in the mists of time of 2021, all of 10 House Republicans and seven Senate Republicans voted to impeach the soon-to-be-ex-president for inciting insurrection.Most of those brave and principled supporters of the blindingly obvious are no longer with us: either retired or defeated, they long abandoned the sinking ship of sedition. The rest decided to normalize an unhinged insurrectionist whom they all disdain while speaking to reporters in the fetal position of their own fears.For those left scurrying below deck, Thursday’s royal visit from the king of bling was a dizzying display of dubious electioneering. The felonious future nominee managed to rat on the city of Milwaukee that will host his party’s convention next month, around the time he gets sentenced for his very many crimes of paying hush money to a former porn actor.“Milwaukee, where we’re having our convention,” he proclaimed, “is a horrible city.” It also happens to be the largest city in the swing state of Wisconsin, where – until last week – the polls suggested Trump was running neck-and-neck with Joe Biden.Instead of triggering a round of second-guessing about their presumptive nominee, the rat pack of Republicans proceeded to dump on the fine news outlet, Punchbowl, that reported on their friend in low places.According to them, either Trump didn’t say any such thing, or he was talking about the city’s crime rates, or possibly its administration of elections, or its position on public protests against the party’s convention.That’s the thing about re-ratting: it’s all a bit confusing. It’s almost like Trump and his enablers are making it up as they go along.Of course he didn’t stop at Milwaukee. Why would he?Trump has read the polls, or at least had the polls read to him. He knows that the greatest single achievement of his presidency – not peace in the Middle East, but stacking the supreme court with anti-abortion activist justices – is now one of the greatest motivators of votes against him and his hapless party.So he had some choice words of advice for the party that opposes choice. Stop talking about abortion. Or at least talk about abortion with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.There’s just one tiny problem with this position: his own party and his own supreme court justices don’t agree with him.Anyone can rat on any issue. But it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to rat on your signature issue and expect your party to rat alongside you. It’s almost like Trump is expecting his enablers to make it up as they go along.For someone who built his fragile fortune on branding, these ratty moments are something of a challenge to the core Trump-y brand.Yes, the chaos is constant. But you’re supposed to know what you’re getting with Trump. He’s supposed to speak his mind, to mean what he says, even if you think he’s plain old bonkers.Clearly and sadly, this election cycle is dominated, much like the last two presidential contests, by The Trump Question. He drives people to the polls both for and against him, in seemingly equal measure. The president certainly isn’t driving anyone to the polls.However, The Trump Question is not what it used to be. Beyond the issue of whether he should ever walk inside the White House again, there’s an un-Trumpy confusion about what he stands for.Is he for or against the anti-abortion movement? For or against TikTok under Chinese ownership? For or against Milwaukee, for heaven’s sake?Even as he pandered recently to the nation’s richest CEOs, at the Business Roundtable, Trump promised to cut corporate taxes by a less-than-whopping one percentage point, from 21 to 20%. “It’s a nice round number,” he said.At this point, Trump is in danger of flubbing the famous Roger Mudd question that Ted Kennedy fumbled so badly in 1979: Why do you want to be president?It wasn’t that Kennedy couldn’t answer the question. He desperately wanted to say it was his turn to carry the Kennedy flame. He just wouldn’t say it in public.Why does Trump want to be president? To stay out of jail? To seek revenge on his opponents? To pretend like he’s not the loser who lost the 2020 election?They don’t really fit on a red baseball cap. Or a gold pair of sneakers.So the tongue-tied populist returned to Capitol Hill to fire up his troops with a confusing set of ratty statements. Or, as Nancy Pelosi put it so memorably, he returned to the scene of his biggest crime: campaigning for election at the very place where he wanted to stop an election.The writers of the Book of Proverbs might have recognized this story back in biblical times. Like a dog returning to his vomit, Trump can’t help but return to his folly. And his Republican supporters can’t help but return to him.
      Richard Wolffe is a Guardian US columnist More

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      in US Politics

      Pelosi condemns Trump’s Capitol visit: ‘Returning to the scene of the crime’

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      Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic former House speaker, mounted a forceful denunciation of Thursday’s first visit to the US Capitol by Donald Trump since he incited a mob to attack it on January 6 2021, accusing him of returning with “the same mission of dismantling our democracy”.In remarks that triggered a fresh war of words between the pair, Pelosi said the former president’s visit to discuss strategy with congressional Republicans in advance of the election amounted to a symbolic return to the scene of a crime that he deliberately initiated.“Today, the instigator of an insurrection is returning to the scene of the crime,” Pelosi said in a statement. “January 6 was a crime against the Capitol, that saw Nazi and Confederate flags flying under the dome that Lincoln built.”She added: “It was a crime against the constitution and its peaceful transfer of power, in a desperate attempt to cling to power. And it was a crime against members, heroic police officers and staff, that resulted in death, injury and trauma that endure to this day.”Pelosi, whose office was overrun and defiled by invading Trump supporters in the assault, as rioters ran through the halls of Congress calling her name, added: “With his pledges to be a dictator on day one and seek revenge against his political opponents, Donald Trump comes to Capitol Hill today with the same mission of dismantling our democracy. But make no mistake – Trump has already cemented his legacy of shame in our hallowed halls.”Her furious broadside may have provided the fuel for outlandish comments attributed to Trump in his Thursday morning meeting with House Republicans.Jake Sherman, a reporter for the website Punchbowl, posted on X that Trump had digressed to talk about an imagined romantic relationship between Pelosi and himself, which he said had been suggested by one of the former speaker’s daughters, whom he did not identify by name.“Nancy Pelosi’s daughter is a wacko … her daughter told me if things were different Nancy and I would be perfect together. There’s an age difference, though,” Sherman quoted Trump as saying, adding that his words were “close to an exact quote”.The reported comments provoked an angry response from one Pelosi daughter, Christine Pelosi, also on X.“Speaking for all 4 Pelosi daughters – this is a LIE,” she wrote. “His deceitful, deranged obsession with our mother is yet another reason Donald Trump is unwell, unhinged and unfit to step foot anywhere near her – or the White House.”The Hill quoted a spokesman for Pelosi as saying: “That guy has clearly lost his marbles. Not that he had many to begin with.” More

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      in Elections

      Donald Trump to address Republicans at US Capitol in first visit since January 6

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      Donald Trump will go to the US Capitol to rally congressional Republicans today in his first visit since January 6, 2021, when his supporters descended on the building in an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in Trump’s favour.The high-profile meeting will set out Trump’s priorities for a second presidency, but is also expected to see him demand that the GOP further intensify efforts to overturn a recent conviction by a New York court on felony charges.Ahead of the meeting, anti-Trump and pro-Palestinian protesters were seen gathering outside the Capitol Hill Club. One sign visible from one protester read: “No one is above the law.” Some protesters implored Republicans entering the meeting to not “drink the Kool-Aid”.Trump, the presumptive GOP 2024 presidential nominee, was found guilty last month of 34 counts of document falsification relating to hush money paid to an adult film star, Stormy Daniels, shortly before his 2016 election victory.He has since corralled the Republicans into pushing a narrative line that the conviction is a result of the Department of Justice (DoJ) being weaponised against him by Joe Biden – even though the DoJ has no jurisdiction over the New York state court in which he was tried.Thursday’s visit comes a day after his Republican allies secured a significant victory in a House of Representatives vote to hold the attorney general, Merrick Garland, in contempt of Congress. Garland is being held in contempt for refusing to turn over recordings of an interview Biden gave to a special prosecutor, Robert Hur, appointed to investigate the president’s illegal retention of classified documents.The meeting was billed in advance as forward looking, with Trump supposedly focused on his agenda for a future presidency.This was expected to feature pledges against cuts to social security and Medicare in what is seen as a boon to older voters, as well as a promise to make permanent his multitrillion-dollar tax cuts of 2017, which are due to expire next year.He is also expected to amplify his plans for a crackdown on migrants trying to cross the US southern border and flag up plans for a U-turn away from the Biden administration’s foreign policy priorities, which have included aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion, per Politico.But a focus on the legal cases against him is likely to be given equal – or perhaps greater – priority.This could, according to Politico, include urging greater efforts to defund the office of special prosecutor Jack Smith. Smith was notably appointed by the DoJ to investigate Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection and the removal of classified documents from his presidency to his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.Congressional Republicans are also preparing, at Trump’s urging, legislation that would move state state cases against him, including the New York conviction, and a separate charge of attempted election interference in Georgia to federal courts.Trump apparently signified his desire for congressional support in an expletive-laden phone call with Mike Johnson, the House speaker, after his 31 May conviction.Johnson, who initially opposed an attempt by the far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene to defund Smith’s office, has now backtracked and held talks with the House judiciary chairman, Jim Jordan, about how to target it through the congressional appropriations system.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That country certainly sees what’s going on, and they don’t want Fani Willis and Alvin Bragg [the district attorneys in the Georgia and New York cases respectively] and these kinds of folks to be able to continue to use grant dollars for targeting people in a political lawfare type of way,” Jordan, a vocal Trump backer, told Politico.Some GOP members have expressed scepticism about the efforts on behalf of Trump.“We accuse Democrats of weaponising the Justice system. That’s exactly what we’d be doing,” one unnamed congressman, apparently granted anonymity for fear of reprisals from the former president’s Make America Great Again (Maga) allies, told the outlet.In another development underscoring Trump’s vicelike grip on the congressional party, five GOP senators, led by JD Vance of Ohio, reportedly in the running to be the ex-president’s running mate, will announce a plan to subject lower level Biden administration nominees to confirmation votes – a move designed to use up senate floor-time – in protest against the hush money conviction.Such appointments, including federal judges, US attorney and sub-cabinet level appointments, are normally approved without a vote.Thursday’s meeting was to be attended by senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, who has not met Trump since December 2020 after criticising him over the January 6 attack but who has endorsed his 2024 candidacy.Three prominent Republican senators known for their hostility to Trump will be absent; Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. More

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      in US Politics

      She was in Trump’s Maga ‘cult’ – now she’s fighting far-right extremism

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      While dozens of her neighbors piled into buses bound from Michigan for the US Capitol on 6 January, 2021, Penny Swan, a local Republican party activist and an outspoken Trump supporter, stayed home. But not for lack of enthusiasm: Swan wanted to join the throngs fighting to stop the certification of the 2020 election, but has a heart condition and worried about her ability to keep up.Instead, she watched social media in awe, as her friends and neighbors surged toward the Capitol.That was then.Since 2021, Swan, a medical equipment manager, has distanced herself from the rightwing group that organized the 6 January buses from her small, ruby-red town of Hillsdale, Michigan. Swan’s formerly close friends in the movement have become political rivals. And come November, she won’t vote for Trump.In an age of deepening political polarization, Swan’s story, of going deep into the Maga movement and defecting, is a rare one.According to a 2022 Pew study, “partisan antipathy” – deep dislike among members of a political party for the opposing group – has deepened in the US in the last decade. Democrats and Republicans are more likely today than 10 years ago to characterize each other as “unintelligent” and “close minded”. And Republicans who identify strongly with their party tend to prefer Trump overwhelmingly, as evidenced in the Republican primaries, which the former president swept.As the operator of a popular local politics page online and a longtime political activist, Swan has not only evolved as a voter. She has also documented, and at times participated in the unravelling of her county’s conservative movement – which, like the state Republican party, has gone to war with itself over far-right politics.View image in fullscreenA decade before 2,000 of Trump’s most diehard supporters stormed the Capitol, Swan, a lifelong Republican and Hillsdale resident, began documenting local government meetings. Some meetings were livestreamed, but not all – including meetings of the county commissioners.“I thought people needed to see the entire truth,” said Swan. “You could read something in the newspaper and that had a narrative, you could hear something on the radio, and that had a narrative, but it didn’t have the whole story. So I thought people should actually be able to see the entire process.”For years, Swan recorded and uploaded every meeting of local government she could attend on to her Facebook page, a repository of citizen journalism and pissed-off commentary called Penny Swan Political Activist Facts Matter. With more than 1,400 followers – in a town of about 8,000 – Swan’s page has become an important clearinghouse for political updates and a hub for heated debate, offering a window into the fraught world of Michigan conservative politics.In the wake of the 2020 election, the Republican party of Michigan – a swing state that flipped from Trump to Joe Biden in 2020 – saw a widening rift between the party’s establishment and its fired-up Maga base. The split spilled into the county Republican party chapters, with local party organizations devolving into factions. In Hillsdale, a group of Republican activists aligned with the Trump wing of the party created an informal caucus within the party chapter.The Hillsdale group – since dubbed the America First Republicans – aimed to change the local party “from neo-conservatism, your old establishment, George Bush-type crowd, to more of a modern day conservative group”, said Jon Smith, who helped form the caucus in late 2019. The idea, Smith said, was to turn the local GOP from what he viewed as a sleepy and bureaucratic organization into a mobilized one.View image in fullscreenSwan was excited when Smith approached her about a new, more active formation in the local party. It sounded like the perfect opportunity to ramp up her political work.“Those guys were like, ‘Oh, we’re going to take over the party, and we’re going to do more good stuff,’” said Swan. “And I’m like, ‘that sounds good. I’m coming because I want to do something and be proactive.’”And they did: in 2020, Daren Wiseley, an ally of the rightwing faction, was elected chairman of the Republican party of Hillsdale county. Swan continued to work with the party, taking on the role of deputy treasurer and joining the organization’s executive committee. The group was close-knit. They confided in each other about personal matters and hung out after meetings. Swan even spent holidays with Smith’s family.It’s not clear exactly when the relationship began to sour. By Smith’s account, Swan just wasn’t up for the job of deputy treasurer.“When our treasurer quit, [Swan] was the deputy treasurer and we were behind on filing reports,” said Smith. “That kind of pressure, Penny couldn’t handle it.”Swan has a different story. She says she raised concerns about the organization’s handling of finances, which the executives were unable, or unwilling, to address. In a 7 April 2022 email to former chairman Wiseley, Swan resigned.“It is with deep regret that I feel the need to step down as deputy treasurer,” wrote Swan. “I have spoken with you, Vice-Chairman Lashaway and also Secretary Smith about my concerns often over the past six months, to no avail.”Four months later, as the county party prepared for their annual convention, Swan’s old friends purged dozens of members who they viewed as insufficiently loyal to the Maga right. During the convention, armed security guards blocked those delegates, who had been formally “disavowed”, from entering. The standoff in the convention parking lot laid bare the divisions that had been festering in the organization for months and set the stage for a protracted legal battle over the rightful leaders of the Hillsdale county GOP. A court in 2022 found the America First faction could not rightfully claim to represent the county party, a victory for Swan’s faction.To her former friends in the Hillsdale Republican party, Swan is a turncoat – her defection, a betrayal.To others in the community, Swan is a rare ally with an inside view of the far right.“She was kind of brainwashed,” said Gail McClanahan, a Hillsdale county resident who led a successful recall campaign to unseat Stephanie Scott, an election-denying township clerk 2023. “Not now. Penny, she’s not scared,” said McClanahan. “She’s keeping us informed of the truth here in Hillsdale.”Swan’s split from the America First group, she says, was like leaving a “cult”. After she left and began criticizing the group online, her relationships with former friends in the group grew bitter. Swan says she even faced harassment and threats over her new political alignment.View image in fullscreenIn a letter sent to a close contact of Swan’s, someone who identified himself as “Lance” alleged that Swan had “spread hate, lies and misfortune”, and warned that “this is my only and last chance to save her from herself […] I cannot be held responsible for doing what needs to be done in defending my friends who do not deserve what she is doing to them”. Swan filed a police report and installed cameras in her apartment.In April 2022, Swan launched a campaign for an open seat on the city council, running on a pro-transparency platform. The race turned nasty.When a bitter fight broke out over the placement of children’s books with LGBTQ+ themes in the local library, Swan defended the librarian and the books. A meme circulated online, shared by her former friends, calling Swan a pedophile.In an email to the Guardian, Jessica Spangler, a former Hillsdale librarian, said the protracted controversy sparked “a considerable decline in my health, resulting in serious and lasting issues due to the undue stress endured during my tenure”.Joshua Paladino, a rightwing graduate student at Hillsdale College who called for the removal of books from the library, won the open seat.Swan suffered a third heart attack in December 2022, prompting her to back off from political work. She no longer films at every city council meeting, and says she is trying to resist the pull of vitriolic online arguments.But her goal is the same: to resist the current of rightwing extremism that has come to define politics in her town and county.She has found some allies in the Republican party, like Scott Sessions, a member of the Hillsdale county GOP and the former mayor of Hillsdale.“To me, it’s not really conservative,” Sessions said about the America First group. “It’s turned radical.”With elections coming up on 6 August for numerous county seats, Swan is helping out on a few campaigns that she sees as critical to fending off the far-right push. Two stand out in particular: an election for county sheriff, pitting the incumbent Republican against Jon Rutan, a self-proclaimed “constitutional sheriff”, and a race for county clerk, between Abe Dane, the current director of elections, and Stephanie Scott, who was recalled from a former post for embracing election conspiracy theories.The looming elections have Swan back on the politics beat.“When I get up at five o’clock in the morning, I’m reading and writing until I go to work,” said Swan. “For the most part, as soon as I get home at 2.30 or 3, I’m working on it till I go to bed.” More