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      Trump calls FBI, DoJ ‘vicious monsters’ in first rally since Mar-a-Lago search

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      Trump calls FBI, DoJ ‘vicious monsters’ in first rally since Mar-a-Lago searchFormer president also calls Joe Biden’s Philadelphia address the ‘most vicious, hateful, divisive speech’02:19Speaking in Pennsylvania on Saturday, at his first rally since the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago for top-secret material taken from the White House and since Joe Biden used a primetime address to warn that Republicans were assaulting US democracy, Donald Trump lashed out. Democracy is under attack – and reporting that isn’t ‘violating journalistic standards’ | Robert ReichRead moreThe former president said: “The FBI and the justice department have become vicious monsters, controlled by radical-left scoundrels, lawyers and the media, who tell them what to do.”Trump nominated the FBI director, Christopher Wray, in 2017.Biden spoke outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia, a site with tremendous resonance in US history, on Thursday night.Presenting a “battle for the soul of the nation”, he said: “This is a nation that rejects violence as a political tool. We are still, at our core, a democracy. Yet history tells us that blind loyalty to a single leader and the willingness to engage in political violence is fatal in a democracy.”In Wilkes-Barre on Saturday night, Trump called Biden’s remarks “the most vicious, hateful, and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president”.The former president was appearing in support of Mehmet Oz, the Republican candidate for US Senate, and Doug Mastriano, the candidate for governor.Oz, a TV doctor, is struggling against the lieutenant governor, John Fetterman. On Saturday night, Trump called the Democrat “a socialist loser”. He also claimed without evidence that Fetterman, who recently suffered a stroke and whose health has been mocked by the Oz campaign, used illegal drugs.“Fetterman supports taxpayer-funded drug dens and the complete decriminalization of illegal drugs, including heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, and ultra lethal fentanyl,” Trump said. “By the way, he takes them himself.”Trump also said: “Fetterman may dress like a teenager getting high in his parents’ basement, but he’s a raging lunatic hell-bent on springing hardened criminals out of jail in the middle of the worst crime wave in Pennsylvania history.”Mastriano is a supporter of Trump’s lie that Biden’s 2020 election victory was the result of electoral fraud. The candidate has compared the January 6 assault on the US Capitol to the Reichstag fire, the event in Berlin in 1933 which propelled Adolf Hitler to power. He has also been photographed wearing the uniform of a Confederate soldier.Biden’s speech continues to resonate. In Philadelphia, he spoke against a dramatic, deep-red background. Republicans protested, some saying the speech was too political to be delivered amid the trappings of the presidency, including attendant US Marines.On Sunday, Tiffany Smiley, the Republican candidate for Senate in Washington state, was asked on CNN’s State of the Union if she believed Biden won the 2020 election fairly and legitimately – a question now asked of most Republican candidates for state and national office.Smiley said she did. But she also said she was “extremely disappointed” with the speech in Philadelphia, “because unity is not conformity. And I think President Biden got that really, really mixed up”.Michael McCaul, a Republican congressman from Texas, told ABC’s This Week: “If this was a speech to unify the American people, it had just the opposite effect. It basically condemned all Republicans who supported Donald Trump in the last election. That’s over 70 million people.”More than 81 million voted for Biden. In his speech, the president said he wanted “to be very clear, very clear up front: not every Republican, not even a majority of Republicans, are Maga [pro-Trump] Republicans … [who] represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”In Wilkes-Barre, Trump told his audience that under Biden, they were “enemies of the state”. Of Biden, he said: “He’s an enemy of the state, you want to know the truth.”Of the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said: “It was not just my home that was raided last month. It was the hopes and dreams of every citizen who I’ve been fighting for.”Calling the search “one of the most shocking abuses of power by any administration in American history” and “a travesty of justice”, he said: “They’re trying to silence me and more importantly they’re trying to silence you. But we will not be silenced, right?”Investigators recovered thousands of documents, including more than 100 with classified and top-secret markings. A Trump-appointed judge is considering Trump’s request for the appointment of a court official to review the documents for any covered by executive privilege.Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016, one success in a string of usually Democratic states which fueled his victory over Hillary Clinton. But Biden won it in 2020, its call four days after election day putting him in the White House. As the 2022 midterms approach, Biden is due back in the state on Monday, the Labor Day holiday, for an event in Pittsburgh.Trump in increasing legal peril one month on from Mar-a-Lago searchRead moreReporters in Pennsylvania for Trump’s rally found support for the former president over the Mar-a-Lago search. Roy Bunger, 65, told the New York Times the Biden administration was “deliberately targeting” Trump “to keep him from running again”.But there are signs that Trump’s endorsement will not be enough to help Oz win a Senate seat Republicans have targeted in their attempt to take back the chamber. Larry Mitko voted for Donald Trump in 2016. He told the Associated Press he would not back Oz, “No way, no how.”Mitko said he did no feel like he knew the celebrity heart surgeon, who narrowly won his May primary with Trump’s backing. Mitko said he would vote for Fetterman, with whom he has been familiar with since Fetterman was mayor of nearby Braddock.“Dr Oz hasn’t showed me one thing to get me to vote for him,” he said. “I won’t vote for someone I don’t know.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS midterm elections 2022US politicsUS CongressRepublicansPennsylvanianewsReuse this content More

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      Thanks to bad electoral laws, Detroit will soon have no Black members of Congress | David Daley

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      Thanks to bad electoral laws, Detroit will soon have no Black members of CongressDavid DaleyIf we’re to avoid a future in which the nation’s largest Black-majority city lacks representation that looks like most of its citizens, we need electoral reform Detroit has been represented by at least one Black member of Congress since 1955. That’s four years before Berry Gordy founded Motown Records, three years before Ozzie Virgil became the first person of African descent to play for the Detroit Tigers, and 17 years before General Motors hired its first Black automotive designer in 1972.Now that long, proud run is nearing an end. After this November’s elections, Detroit – nearly 80% Black, the largest percentage, by far, of any major American city – will probably be left without any Black representation in the House of Representatives. An era that covered parts of eight decades, and the careers of heavyweights such as Representatives John Conyers and Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick will close.New legal filings paint Trump as a flailing liar surrounded by lackeys | Lloyd GreenRead moreHow is this possible? This is a story about redistricting, good intentions and unintended consequences, about population loss and suburban growth. It’s about the cold, unforgiving math of our political system, and the way overcrowded primaries divide votes and distort outcomes. And it points to the electoral reforms we desperately need – especially ranked-choice voting, but also an end to single-member congressional districts – if we’re to avoid having the nation’s largest Black majority city lacking representation that looks like the majority of its citizens.Let’s start here: every congressional map in the nation gets redrawn every 10 years, post-census, to account for population changes. When Michigan’s maps were redrawn in 2011, Republicans held the pen and sought to create as many Republican-leaning districts as they could get away with.Any gerrymander involves two key tools: cracking and packing – the art of either spreading the other side’s voters thinly across many districts, or packing them into as few as possible. In Michigan, Republicans packed Black voters – who tend to vote for Democrats – into two wildly contorted, even snake-like districts, then carved the Detroit suburbs into a pinwheel of whiter, Republican-friendlier seats.Michigan’s 13th (56% Black) and 14th (57% Black) districts overwhelmingly elected Black representatives to Congress for much of the decade, usually with 80% or more of the vote and little organized opposition. The 2011 Republican gerrymander worked as expected, however – and, with so many Democratic voters packed into those two seats, Republicans held nine of the 14 seats in this Democrat-leaning swing state for several consecutive election cycles. The state legislature, drawn with the same intent, also produced reliable Republican majorities, even when Democrats won more votes.Frustrated citizens, recognizing correctly that their votes didn’t really matter, demanded a fairer approach to redistricting. In 2018, 61% of Michiganders supported an amendment to the state constitution that would take the line-drawing power away from politicians and put it in the hands of an independent citizen commission that included voices representing many ethnicities, ideologies and geographic backgrounds.The members of that citizen panel did a tremendous job. They held public hearings across the state, worked openly and transparently, consulted experts on the Voting Rights Act – and drew the fairest and most equitable state legislative and congressional districts that Michigan has seen in several decades. Non-partisan experts graded the maps highly for partisan fairness and competitiveness. This fall, the party that wins the most votes will, in almost every likelihood, win the most seats.Yet this decade Michigan lost one of its seats in Congress to faster-growing states. Detroit’s population has plunged; the 2020 census recorded 10.5% fewer residents than the one a decade earlier. Some of that decline could be attributed to Black residents moving from Detroit to nearby suburbs. The Voting Rights Act experts retained by the commission produced a study showing that there was enough “crossover” or coalition voting in metro Detroit that Black voters could still elect a member of their own choosing even if the overall Black voting-age population was less than 50%.But those experts missed something crucial. Black voters, along with white crossover voters, might still elect a Black candidate in the general election. Yet a primary election in a Black political stronghold, where several strong candidates might seek office and divide votes, could be something else entirely. Black voters, in that case, could be punished for producing multiple candidates and having to choose among them.This shouldn’t have been a theoretical concern. It’s exactly what happened in the 2018 primary. Four Black candidates – including the Detroit city council president, a state senator, a former state representative, and Conyers’s son – earned 55.6% of the primary vote between them. Rashida Tlaib ultimately won the race with just 31.2% of the vote, defeating Brenda Jones, the council president, by 900 votes.The same thing happened in the Democratic primary this year. Eight of the nine candidates for the new 13th district seat were Black. They divided 71.7% of the vote. The winner, Shri Thanedar, captured Michigan’s last-remaining Black seat with 28.3% of the vote.There’s a better way to do this – one that would allow more Black candidates to run without fears of dividing the vote, provide fair representation to the communities represented by Tlaib and Thanedar, and also guarantee that more votes mean more seats.If Michigan adopted ranked-choice voting (RCV) for primary elections, and required any winner to earn at least 50% support, there would be no spoilers. RCV works much like an instant runoff; if no one earns 50% on the first round, the last-place candidates are eliminated and second choices come into play. This would allow multiple Black candidates to run without fear of vote splitting. And while Thanedar, for example, assured Black voters he would be their representative too, RCV would have pushed him to campaign more within Black communities and work for second choices, rather than best a deeply divided field with a mere 28% plurality victory.Better still, we could end gerrymandering altogether and fix one of the core problems in our politics if we moved from single-member congressional districts to larger, multi-member seats, under a plan currently before Congress called the Fair Representation Act. Under this measure, Michigan, for example, would have the same 13 members of Congress – but they would be elected from districts of five, four and four members. A five-member district with metro Detroit and its suburbs at its heart would probably elect at least two Black Democrats, Tlaib (one of only two Muslims in Congress) and perhaps as many as two Republicans.Under a more proportional system such as this, communities of color and communities that include diverse political perspectives are not pitted against one another. Instead, everyone receives representation according to the number of votes they earn. The side with the most votes would receive the most seats, but everyone would have a voice. This would put an end to our poisonous zero-sum, winner-takes-all politics, in which politicians cater to their base, by providing strong new incentives for leaders to talk to every voter and work together in Washington.It’s outrageous that Detroit lacks any Black representation in Congress. But it’s an outrage that makes clear how damaging plurality primaries and single-member districts have become. Detroit’s story shows how the imbalances and vote-rigging that plague our voting system distort and interfere with equitable representation – and the harm they create for voters who ought to be able to choose among candidates without fearing that their community will lose representation altogether. Fortunately, it’s an outrage that can be fixed.
      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
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      The US has a ruling class – and Americans must stand up to it | Bernie Sanders

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      The US has a ruling class – and Americans must stand up to itBernie SandersIn the year 2022, three multibillionaires own more wealth than the bottom half of American society – 160 million Americans. This is unsustainable Let’s be clear. The most important economic and political issues facing this country are the extraordinary levels of income and wealth inequality, the rapidly growing concentration of ownership, the long-term decline of the American middle class and the evolution of this country into oligarchy.We know how important these issues are because our ruling class works overtime to prevent them from being seriously discussed. They are barely mentioned in the halls of Congress, where most members are dependent on the campaign contributions of the wealthy and their Super Pacs. They are not much discussed in the corporate media, in which a handful of conglomerates determine what we see, hear and discuss.So what’s going on?We now have more income and wealth inequality than at any time in the last hundred years. In the year 2022, three multibillionaires own more wealth than the bottom half of American society – 160 million Americans. Today, 45% of all new income goes to the top 1%, and CEOs of large corporations make a record-breaking 350 times what their workers earn.Meanwhile, as the very rich become much richer, working families continue to struggle. Unbelievably, despite huge increases in worker productivity, wages (accounting for real inflation) are lower today than they were almost 50 years ago. When I was a kid growing up, most families were able to be supported by one breadwinner. Now an overwhelming majority of households need two paychecks to survive.Today, half of our people live paycheck to paycheck and millions struggle on starvation wages. Despite a lifetime of work, half of older Americans have no savings and no idea how they will ever be able to retire with dignity, while 55% of seniors are trying to survive on an income of less than $25,000 a year.Since 1975, there has been a massive redistribution of wealth in America that has gone in exactly the wrong direction. Over the past 47 years, according to the Rand Corporation, $50tn in wealth has been redistributed from the bottom 90% of American society to the top 1%, primarily because a growing percentage of corporate profits has been flowing into the stock portfolios of the wealthy and the powerful.During this terrible pandemic, when thousands of essential workers died doing their jobs, some 700 billionaires in America became nearly $2tn richer. Today, while the working class falls further behind, multibillionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are off taking joyrides on rocket ships to outer space, buying $500m super-yachts and living in mansions with 25 bathrooms.Disgracefully, we now have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any developed nation on Earth and millions of kids, disproportionately Black and brown, face food insecurity. While psychologists tell us that the first four years are the most important for human development, our childcare system is largely dysfunctional – with an inadequate number of slots, outrageously high costs and pathetically low wages for staff. We remain the only major country without paid family and medical leave.In terms of higher education, we should remember that 50 years ago tuition was free or virtually free in major public universities throughout the country. Today, higher education is unaffordable for millions of young people. There are now some 45 million Americans struggling with student debt.Today over 70 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured and millions more are finding it hard to pay for the rising cost of healthcare and prescription drugs, which are more expensive here than anywhere else in the world. The cost of housing is also soaring. Not only are some 600,000 Americans homeless, but nearly 18m households are spending 50% or more of their limited incomes on housing.It’s not just income and wealth inequality that is plaguing our nation. It is the maldistribution of economic and political power.Today we have more concentration of ownership than at any time in the modern history of this country. In sector after sector a handful of giant corporations control what is produced and how much we pay for it. Unbelievably, just three Wall Street firms (Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street) control assets of over $20tn and are the major stockholders in 96% of S&P 500 companies. In terms of media, some eight multinational media conglomerates control what we see, hear and read.In terms of political power, the situation is the same. A small number of billionaires and CEOs, through their Super Pacs, dark money and campaign contributions, play a huge role in determining who gets elected and who gets defeated. There are now an increasing number of campaigns in which Super Pacs actually spend more money on campaigns than the candidates, who become the puppets to their big money puppeteers. In the 2022 Democratic primaries, billionaires spent tens of millions trying to defeat progressive candidates who were standing up for working families.Dr Martin Luther King Jr was right when he said: “We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power” in America. That statement is even more true today.Let us have the courage to stand together and fight back against corporate greed. Let us fight back against massive income and wealth inequality. Let us fight back against a corrupt political system.Let us stand together and finally create an economy and a government that works for all, not just the 1%.
      Bernie Sanders is a US senator from Vermont and the chairman of the Senate budget committee
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionUS CongressBernie SandersRichard BransonElon MuskUS economyJeff BezoscommentReuse this content More

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      Trump ‘knowingly put national security at risk’ by stashing classified documents, Schiff says – as it happened

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      Adam Schiff, a senior Democrat who led the first House impeachment of Donald Trump, says the former president and his allies “knowingly put our national security at risk” by stashing highly classified documents at his Florida residence.The California congressman gave his assessment in a series of Tweets following the justice department’s legal filing that suggests Trump obstructed an investigation into his improper retention of the documents, lied about having them and tried to conceal them.The government’s brief is devastating. The legal arguments are compelling, but what is most striking are the facts outlining how the former president and his team knowingly put our national security at risk.Here’s what stands out to me:(1/7) pic.twitter.com/VTS69C22hb— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) August 31, 2022
      “The legal arguments are compelling, but what is most striking are the facts outlining how the former president and his team knowingly put our national security at risk,” Schiff wrote.“This is Trump’s counsel swearing there were no more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. That was obviously false. Someone isn’t telling the truth,” he posted alongside an image of the filing in which Trump’s team claims a “diligent search” failed to turn up documents later recovered by the FBI.“It’s no wonder they wouldn’t allow a look inside the boxes – there were still lots of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago [Trump’s Palm Beach residence and resort].“The deception was deliberate. The government found classified papers in multiple locations throughout Mar-a-Lago, a public hotel. Considering the secret markings, this is reckless in the extreme”.Most damning of all, Schiff added, the documents “so sensitive, so protected that senior FBI agents and DOJ attorneys couldn’t even initially review them. [They] were kept at a public resort. Potentially available to God knows who”.It is not the first time Schiff, a frequent critic of Trump, has accused him of selling out his country. During his fiery closing argument to Trump’s first Senate trial in February 2020, Schiff, the House impeachment manager, said: “He has betrayed our national security, and he will do so again.“You can’t trust this president to do the right thing. Not for one minute, not for one election, not for the sake of our country. You just can’t. He will not change and you know it”.The Republican majority in the Senate subsequently acquitted Trump of obstructing Congress and abuse of power.We’re closing the US politics blog now, thanks for joining us. Donald Trump put the security of the country at risk by illegally stashing highly classified documents at his Florida residence and lying about having them, senior Democrat Adam Schiff said.The California congressman was among a number of political figures reacting Wednesday to the sensational justice department court filing stating its opposition to the former president’s request for an independent “special master” to oversee the investigation into his hoarding. Trump claims without evidence he “declassified” the documents before leaving office, an assertion the justice department is seeking to debunk.Here’s what else we followed today:
      Bloomberg News reported that federal prosecutors are likely to wait until after the November election to announce any charges against Trump, if they determine he broke laws. But the news website says it’s not clear a determination will have been made by then.
      There will be enough Covid-19 boosters for everyone who wants one, the White House says, after the FDA approved shots of new multi-variant vaccines. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said shots could be in arms as early as next week.
      Secretary of state Antony Blinken paid tribute to former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who died aged 91, as “a man who changed the course of human history”. Jean-Pierre said it was not decided if the government would send a representative to Gorbachev’s funeral in Russia, especially since most administration officials are banned from the country.
      Charlie Crist, who last week won the Democratic nomination for governor of Florida, resigned from Congress on Wednesday to concentrate on his campaign to try to unseat Republican Ron DeSantis.
      Please join us again tomorrow as Joe Biden prepares to deliver a primetime address to the country on “saving the soul of our nation”.The Biden administration says there will be enough Covid-19 boosters for everyone who wants one, and that shots of the new multi-variant vaccines approved by the FDA this morning could start going into arms as soon as next week.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at an afternoon briefing that both the both the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech retooled vaccines targeting the BA.4/BA.5 Omicron coronavirus subvariants will shortly be shipped to “tens of thousands” of sites nationwide.She said the last step was final authorization from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which she indicated was imminent:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Teams are have already started the process of packing and shipping doses across the country and pending CDC action we expect shots in arms to begin in earnest starting after Labor Day weekend.
      We’ve been working with providers, clinics, clinicians, local health departments and other critical groups, and we’ve been doing all of this preparation despite the lack of funding from Congress.She answered “yes” when asked directly if there would be enough vaccines for anyone who wants, or needs one.Karine Jean-Pierre is more comfortable talking about Joe Biden’s prime time address to the country on Thursday night entitled “the battle for the soul of the nation”, although she says she won’t “get ahead” of his comments.But she is happy to talk about the rightwing ‘Make America Great Again’ wing of the Republican party that Biden has taken to attacking in recent weeks, and will no doubt go after again tomorrow night in Philadelphia:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The president thinks there is an extremist threat to our democracy. He is as clear as he can be on that when we talk about democracy, when we talk about our freedoms.
      The way that he sees it, the Maga Republicans are the most energized part of the Republican Party. That extremism is an extreme threat to our democracy, our freedom to our rights. They just don’t respect the rule of law.
      The president is not going to shy away, to call out what he clearly sees is happening in this country. We’re calling it the soul of the nation. He takes it very seriously when it comes to our democracy.Other reporters will try, but White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has just shot down the first question about the justice department’s filing in the Donald Trump classified documents investigation at her afternoon briefing.Had Joe Biden seen the photo of secret papers strewn on Trump’s floor at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence? Has the president been briefed on the status of the inquiry?Jean-Pierre was resolute:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}As I’ve said many times… we’re just not going to comment on the investigation. Anything, any underlying pieces of investigation, any content of the investigation.
      This is an ongoing, as you all know, investigation of the department of justice. We are not going to politically interfere, we are not going to comment on anything connected to the investigation. And we’re just going to keep it there.So that’s a no, then.Another one of the former president’s men has appeared before the special grand jury sitting in Georgia.The grand jury is hearing evidence related to allegations that Donald Trump illegally attempted to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election result and prevent Joe Biden from taking power.John Eastman follows hot on the heels of Rudy Giuliani in making an appearance in that case.Trump lawyer John Eastman appeared before the Fulton County grand jury today and pleaded the fifth, according to a statement from his lawyers. He also asserted attorney-client privilege. pic.twitter.com/Z7YF2b2Tm9— Katherine Faulders (@KFaulders) August 31, 2022
      In addition to utilizing his right against self-incrimination, Eastman, who was part of Trump’s campaign to stay in office despite losing the November 2020 election, the one-time lawyer to Trump also invoked invoked attorney-client privilege his non-response to some questions asked today in the criminal investigation.Eastman “is one of a group of Trump allies who were subpoenaed by that panel, which is hearing testimony in Atlanta,” CNBC noted.The Guardian’s Chris McGreal reported at the weekend that of all the legal investigations into Trump and his business, in Washington, DC, New York and Florida, the Georgia case might have him in the greatest legal peril.Of all the legal threats Trump is facing, is this the one that could take him down?Read moreHere’s John Eastman on January 6, 2021.Bloomberg is reporting that federal prosecutors are likely to wait until after the November election to announce any charges against Donald Trump, if they determine he broke laws.The news website cites “people familiar” with the justice department’s investigations into the former president, one over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden, and the more recent inquiry into his improper retention of top secret documents at his Florida residence.“Under long-standing department policy, prosecutors are barred from taking investigative steps or filing charges for the purpose of affecting an election or helping a candidate or party, traditionally 60 days before an election,” Bloomberg says.“This year, that would be by Sept 10, which makes it unlikely anything would be announced until after November 8.”Bloomberg said its sources asked to remain anonymous when speaking about potential justice department actions.It further notes that it is not clear if any of the investigations into Trump will have reached the point by November that a decision on charging him could be made.Secretary of state Antony Blinken paid tribute to former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who died aged 91, as “a man who changed the course of human history”.In a statement posted to the state department’s website, Blinken gave Gorbachev credit for several “massive achievements” of the last century – including the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall and reductions in nuclear arms:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We join people around the world in mourning the passing of Mikhail Gorbachev. Perhaps no word is more closely associated with Mr Gorbachev than glasnost, or openness. That’s fitting for a man whose openness changed the course of human history.
      Mr Gorbachev was open to acknowledging his country’s history – not just its triumphs, but its tragedies – what he called the ‘blank spots’ of the Soviet Union’s past. He created space for dissenting views, and freed dissidents who had spent years in exile or prison. He was also open to working with other nations, including adversaries like the United States, driven by the conviction that dialogue was in the interest of his people – and all people.
      It’s tempting to see the massive achievements of that engagement – including the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first-ever agreement to reduce the nuclear arsenals of the US and USSR – as inevitable. But those achievements would have been unimaginable without the courage and determination Mr Gorbachev brought to his pursuit of openness, and the trust he built with presidents Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush.
      He never lost faith in the transformative power of such engagement, even as some of his greatest accomplishments were weakened. In 2018, he wrote, ‘Is it too late to return to dialogue and negotiations? I don’t want to lose hope … We must not resign, we must not surrender’.
      He was right, and his life is a powerful reminder of all that can be achieved when we make those ideals a reality.Donald Trump is repeating his assertion, debunked in the justice department’s legal filing, that he “declassified” the top secret documents seized by the FBI in their raid on his Florida home.Among a series of posts by the former president on his favored Truth Social platform on Wednesday, he also accused federal agents of “haphazardly” scattering the documents on the floor to photograph them:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Terrible the way the FBI, during the Raid of Mar-a-Lago, threw documents haphazardly all over the floor (perhaps pretending it was me that did it!), and then started taking pictures of them for the public to see.
      Thought they wanted them kept Secret? Lucky I Declassified!As the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports, Trump has produced no paperwork that might confirm the insistence of himself and allies that he issued some sort of a standing order when he was president that any materials he took to Mar-a-Lago were declassified. The justice department, meanwhile, noted in the filing that at no time in the months during which national archives officials were seeking the documents’ return did Trump’s lawyers make any argument he declassified them. Trump’s predictable response echoes the reaction on Wednesday by Republicans, at least those willing to comment publicly. They attacked the FBI and justice department, and glossed over the fact that numerous top secret documents were recovered, some in his desk, after Trump’s legal team claimed a “diligent search” had failed to yield any.Vocal Trump acolyte Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota, told Fox and Friends: “The one thing I’ve heard across this country Republicans, Democrats, the public, they don’t trust the [department of justice] and they want this to be transparent.“Hiding these documents and this information, keeping it within the DoJ is wrong. It needs to be transparent so people can start to build trust back in the FBI and the DoJ and what they’re doing”.Donald Trump boasted to close associates that he knew secrets about Emmanuel Macron’s sex life from US intelligence sources, it has been reported.The report in Rolling Stone magazine comes in the wake of the release of court documents on the classified and national defence documents found in a search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on 8 August, which mention a file referred to as “info re: President of France”.It is unclear whether the file on Macron was classified or what it contained. But Rolling Stone claimed that its mention in the official inventory of what was seized at Mar-a-Lago caused a “transatlantic freakout” between Paris and Washington.A French embassy spokesperson said: “We do not comment on legal proceedings in the US and … the embassy has not asked the administration for any information concerning the documents retrieved at former President Trump’s residence.”Neither the state department nor Trump’s office have so far responded to a request for comment.The Rolling Stone report said that during and after his presidency, Trump claimed to some of his closest associates that he knew details of Macron’s private life, which he had gleaned from “intelligence” he had seen or been briefed on.Macron initially courted Trump, inviting him to the Bastille Day military parade in 2017 just two months after he was elected, inspiring the US president to badger his own generals to stage a similar show of military pageantry in Washington.Relations soon soured between the two leaders, particularly after Macron’s failure to persuade Trump to stay in the nuclear deal with Iran. Trump took the US out of the deal in 2018, and it has unravelled since then.Read the full story:Trump boasted he had ‘intelligence’ on Macron’s sex lifeRead moreAdam Schiff, a senior Democrat who led the first House impeachment of Donald Trump, says the former president and his allies “knowingly put our national security at risk” by stashing highly classified documents at his Florida residence.The California congressman gave his assessment in a series of Tweets following the justice department’s legal filing that suggests Trump obstructed an investigation into his improper retention of the documents, lied about having them and tried to conceal them.The government’s brief is devastating. The legal arguments are compelling, but what is most striking are the facts outlining how the former president and his team knowingly put our national security at risk.Here’s what stands out to me:(1/7) pic.twitter.com/VTS69C22hb— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) August 31, 2022
      “The legal arguments are compelling, but what is most striking are the facts outlining how the former president and his team knowingly put our national security at risk,” Schiff wrote.“This is Trump’s counsel swearing there were no more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. That was obviously false. Someone isn’t telling the truth,” he posted alongside an image of the filing in which Trump’s team claims a “diligent search” failed to turn up documents later recovered by the FBI.“It’s no wonder they wouldn’t allow a look inside the boxes – there were still lots of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago [Trump’s Palm Beach residence and resort].“The deception was deliberate. The government found classified papers in multiple locations throughout Mar-a-Lago, a public hotel. Considering the secret markings, this is reckless in the extreme”.Most damning of all, Schiff added, the documents “so sensitive, so protected that senior FBI agents and DOJ attorneys couldn’t even initially review them. [They] were kept at a public resort. Potentially available to God knows who”.It is not the first time Schiff, a frequent critic of Trump, has accused him of selling out his country. During his fiery closing argument to Trump’s first Senate trial in February 2020, Schiff, the House impeachment manager, said: “He has betrayed our national security, and he will do so again.“You can’t trust this president to do the right thing. Not for one minute, not for one election, not for the sake of our country. You just can’t. He will not change and you know it”.The Republican majority in the Senate subsequently acquitted Trump of obstructing Congress and abuse of power.Charlie Crist, who last week won the Democratic nomination for governor of Florida, resigned from Congress on Wednesday to concentrate on his campaign to try to unseat Republican Ron DeSantis.Crist, himself a former Florida governor as a Republican, was House representative for St Petersburg, on the state’s west coast where he has his campaign headquarters, since 2017.He told the Tampa Bay Times in a brief statement that his resignation from Washington DC would be effective at the end of Wednesday.He gave no reason for his decision, but there are fewer than 10 weeks left before the November election in which he faces an uphill battle to topple DeSantis, a popular figure in Republican circles for his “culture war” agenda and a likely candidate for the party’s nomination in the 2024 presidential election.Representing the people of his district, Crist said, was “an honor and a privilege”.His resignation erodes Democrats’ working majority in the House, i.e. only voting members, to just three votes. As a first-time presidential candidate, Donald Trump repeatedly demanded that Hillary Clinton be sent to jail. “Lock her up” emerged as a battle cry for the 45th president and his fans. He also pledged that his presidency would properly handle the nation’s secrets.“In my administration, I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information,” Trump intoned at a 2016 rally in North Carolina. “No one will be above the law.” As promises go, this one aged badly – much like his commitment to release his tax returns.On Tuesday night, the government filed its 36-page opposition to the ex-reality-show host’s demand that a special master be appointed. (A special master is an independent mediator appointed to go through documents and determine which may be protected by privilege.)Trump’s gambit backfired, however. Once again, he looks like a liar. Beyond that, his lawyers became his lackeys. Christina Bobb meet William Barr.New legal filings paint Trump as a flailing liar surrounded by lackeys | Lloyd GreenRead more More

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      Americans are starting to get it: we can’t let Trump – or Trumpism – back in office | Austin Sarat and Dennis Aftergut

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      Americans are starting to get it: we can’t let Trump – or Trumpism – back in officeAustin Sarat and Dennis AftergutRepublicans have put all their chips on extremism. But voters are sending more and more signals that they’re fed up with it Polls and election results over the last week reminded Americans that politics seldom moves in a straight line. As in physics, action produces reaction. Overreach invites backlash.For a long while former President Trump and his cronies seemed to be immune from this rule of political life and from the consequences of even the most outrageous conduct. As Trump himself once famously said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”And so it seemed. He escaped conviction in not one but two impeachment trials and cowed Republican leaders to fall in line after the January 6 insurrection. He remains the leading contender for the Republican party’s 2024 presidential nomination.Today Republicans are still falling over themselves to prove their loyalty to him by outdoing each other in extremism.On 19 August, a Republican candidate for Florida’s state assembly even took to Twitter to call for violence against federal law enforcement officials. “Under my plan,” Luis Miguel tweeted, “all Floridians will have permission to shoot FBI, IRS, ATF and all other [federal agents] ON SIGHT! Let freedom ring!”In Washington, the US supreme court cast aside almost 50 years of settled precedent to overturn Roe v Wade. Republican-dominated state legislatures rushed to enact draconian restrictions on women’s reproductive rights.This kind of extremism may be off-putting to swing voters. There are signs that most Americans aren’t ready to trade their rights and freedoms for a strongman and his election-denying, rights-infringing, violence-threatening allies. As the Cook Report’s Amy Walters wrote on 26 August: “The more Trump is in the news, the more dangerous the political climate for the GOP.”But let’s start with the supreme court’s Dobbs decision.Dobbs sent shock waves across the political spectrum and has jolted Democratic turnout. On 25 August, Axios reported that immediately after Dobbs, “Democratic primary turnout for governors’ races increased … in five of the eight states holding contested primaries.”Similarly, a report from TargetSmart suggests that in states like Michigan and Wisconsin “where reproductive rights are at stake”, women “are out-registering men by significant margins.”This pattern portends a “pink wave” in November, as women mobilize to defeat pro-life candidates. We saw evidence of this in the 23 August special congressional election in New York, where Democrat Pat Ryan defeated Republican Marc Molinaro, 52% to 48% in a bellwether swing district.Ryan’s campaign message was largely focused on protecting abortion rights. His victory follows the striking 2 August referendum vote in Kansas, where voters overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to ban abortion.Are Republicans being taught a lesson they should have learned from history?When the supreme court gets too far out in front of – or too far behind – the American public by ignoring American sentiment, political backlash results. That happened in the 1850s in the run-up to the civil war and in the 1930s when the conservative court that Franklin Roosevelt inherited struck down a new minimum wage law.It happened again after Roe v Wade, when abortion foes reacted and organized for a 50-year battle that resulted in a reactionary court majority.Republicans may now be reaping what those reactionaries on the court sowed.And it isn’t only that many Americans have been alarmed and aroused by what the court did last June. They are also awakening to the threats posed by Trump’s “big lie” and the election denial it has inspired.Democratic messaging that has called out the “big lie”, along with the meticulously presented hearings of the January 6 congressional hearings, seem to be taking root.Americans are coming to see that, as President Biden has warned, “A poison is running through our democracy … with disinformation massively on the rise. But the truth is buried by lies, and the lies live on as truth.”At the start of this summer’s January 6 hearings, Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney echoed that sentiment: “People must pay attention. People must watch, and they must understand how easily our democratic system can unravel if we don’t defend it.”An NBC News poll last week suggests that the American people are indeed now paying attention. It found that more respondents ranked “threats to democracy” as the most important issue facing the country, more important than inflation or jobs.Other polls suggest that candidates who are running as election deniers or opponents of a woman’s right to choose will pay a price in November.Take Pennsylvania, for example. A Franklin & Marshall poll released on 25 August found that the Democratic candidate for the Senate, John Fetterman, is leading Trump-endorsed election denier Mehmet Oz, 43% to 30%. Fetterman is also a vocal abortion rights supporter, while Oz supported overturning Roe.The same poll also shows that the Democratic candidate for governor in Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, leads the Trump favorite and abortion foe, Republican Doug Mastriano, by 44% to 33%.According to the Washington Post, “In 2020, Mastriano tried to block Pennsylvania’s certification of Biden’s victory by introducing a resolution asserting incorrectly that the Republican-dominated legislature had the right to choose which electors’ votes should be counted.” As the Post also notes, “He attended the Jan. 6 riot … where he was captured on video crossing the police line.”This is not to say that in Pennsylvania or elsewhere the Trump fever has completely broken. And polls are not the same thing as an election. But they are signs of hope.Democracy won’t save itself. Abortion rights will not restore themselves. The American majority’s power to defeat Trumpism lies at the ballot box. If Trumpist candidates lose in general elections, over time Republicans may get the message that they’ve placed a losing bet on extremism.There is much to be done by Americans committed to preserving our republic and to saying “no” to Trump. As former president Obama put it in his 2017 farewell address: “It falls to each of us to be … jealous guardians of democracy.” Across America, a majority of voters are ready to do just that.
      Austin Sarat is a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College and the author of Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty
      Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionRepublicansDonald TrumpUS midterm elections 2022US SenateUS CongressHouse of RepresentativescommentReuse this content More

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      Republicans thought they had midterms in the bag. Voters just rejected them again | Lloyd Green

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      Republicans thought they had midterms in the bag. Voters just rejected them againLloyd GreenTuesday’s special election in New York state was more evidence that voters are furious about Republican attacks on abortion rights – and going to the polls to boost Democrats Abortion and Donald Trump will both appear on November’s ballot. On Tuesday, Pat Ryan, a Democrat and a decorated Iraq war veteran, upset Republican Marc Molinaro in a special congressional election in New York’s Upper Hudson Valley. Ryan won 52-48 after pre-election polls had painted him as the clear underdog.“This is a huge victory for Dems in a bellwether, Biden +1.5 district,” according to Dave Wasserman, the doyen of congressional-race watchers, with the key words being “huge” and “bellwether”. Said differently, Republican efforts to convert the contest into a referendum on the Democrats and inflation failed.On the campaign trail Ryan made abortion a central issue. “Choice is [on] the ballot, but we won’t go back,” he posted to Facebook hours before the polls opened. “Freedom is under attack, but it’s ours to defend.”Usually, midterms spell disaster for the “in” party that controls the White House. From the looks of things, 2022 may be different.There is a clear backlash against the US supreme court’s evisceration of the rights to privacy and personal autonomy. At the same time, nonstop reports of Trump’s mishandling of top-secret documents, and possible obstruction of justice charges against the 45th president, cloud his party’s future.The end of Roe v Wade is not the blessing Republicans had assumed it would be. Looking back, the defeat of Kansas’s anti-abortion referendum was not a one-off event.For the court’s majority, it appears that being “right” was more important than being smart. Ginni Thomas’s husband and four of his colleagues could have upheld Mississippi’s abortion law without demolishing a half-century of precedent.Chief Justice Robert’s concurrence made that reality crystal clear. Yet around the country, Republican candidates still appear hellbent on doubling-down.Tudor Dixon, Michigan’s Republican candidate for governor, spoke of the upside of a 14-year-old rape victim carrying the child to term. “The bond that those two people made and the fact that out of that tragedy there was healing through that baby, it’s something that we don’t think about,” Dixon told an interviewer.Meanwhile, in Florida, an appellate court affirmed a lower court’s order that barred a parentless 16-year-old from ending her pregnancy. The unnamed mother-to-be had failed to demonstrate that she was “sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy”.On the other hand, the learned judges and the Republican state legislature believed her to be sufficiently adult to deliver and raise a child.And then there is Texas. Later this week, physicians who perform abortions stand to face life in prison and fines of at least $100,000. Under Texas’s current law, abortions are banned after six weeks, and the state’s statute contains no exceptions for rape or incest.Heading into the fall, Democrats will also be bolstered by Joe Biden’s slowly rising approval numbers, tamer inflation figures, and the emergence of democracy’s precarity as a campaign issue. According to a recent NBC poll, the threat to US democracy has overtaken the cost of living as the No 1 issue for voters.Or, in the words of Congressman-elect Ryan, “Our democracy is fragile, but we will fight for it.”Adding to Republican woes is the poor performance of Trump-endorsed Senate candidates in pre-election trial heats. In Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia, they all lag.By the numbers, forecasters give the Democrats better than a three-in-five chance of continuing to control the upper chamber and leaving their imprimatur on Biden judicial nominations. These days, even Senator Mitch McConnell concedes that the odds of him again becoming majority leader are iffy: “Flipping the Senate … It’s a 50/50 proposition … I think the outcome is likely to be very, very close either way.”He also reminded Republicans that running for Senate is not the same thing as running for a House seat albeit with a louder and larger microphone. “Senate races are statewide,” McConnell observed. “They’re just different in nature from individual congressional districts.”Apparently, Senator Rick Scott, the chairman of the Republican National Senatorial Committee, has not yet noticed. First, he burned-through a pile of campaign cash. Now, he has been spotted vacationing on a luxury yacht off the coast of Italy while Americans struggle.On Monday, Scott tweeted: “Another week of President Biden vacationing in Delaware vs. working at the White House.” Cluelessness is not just the province of Justices Alito, Thomas and Kavanaugh.
      Lloyd Green served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
      TopicsDemocratsOpinionRepublicansUS politicsUS CongressRoe v WadeAbortionNew YorkcommentReuse this content More

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      New York primaries: Nadler beats Maloney in bitter Democratic fight

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      New York primaries: Nadler beats Maloney in bitter Democratic fightHouse judiciary chair declared the winner over House oversight chair in heavyweight bout as gerrymandered map causes upheaval In an unpleasant end to a bitter New York Democratic primary on Tuesday, allies of two powerful House committee chairs traded nasty barbs – before one saw a long career in Congress brought to an untimely end.Carolyn Maloney, chair of the House oversight committee, said her opponent in New York’s 12th district, Jerrold Nadler, was “half-dead”, possibly senile and unlikely to finish his next term in Washington, CNN reported. Allies of Nadler, the judiciary chair, called Maloney “kooky” and “not entirely sober”.Florida: Charlie Crist wins Democratic primary to challenge Ron DeSantisRead moreIn the end, Nadler’s political career remained wholly alive. With nearly 90% of results in when the race was called, he had taken 56% of the vote to 24% for Maloney. A third candidate, Suraj Patel, brought up the rear.Speaking before the vote, Nadler told CNN: “It’s obviously not true that I’m half-dead, it’s obviously not true that I’m senile … Let them flail away.”In his victory speech, Nadler said he and Maloney “have spent much of our adult lives working together to better both New York and our nation. I speak for everyone in this room tonight when I thank her for her decades of service to our city.”Nadler and Maloney, both septuagenarians with 30-year Washington careers, were forced into their undignified fight to stay in Congress by redistricting, after the New York supreme court said Democrats gerrymandered the map.Nadler, 75, was first elected in 1992. As chair of the House judiciary committee, he led both impeachments of Donald Trump. He was buoyed in the last weeks of the primary campaign by endorsements from the New York Times and Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader.He said he would go back to Congress “with a mandate to fight for the causes so many of us know to be right”, including abortion access and climate change.Maloney, 76, also first elected in 1992, is the first woman to chair the House oversight committee. Known for her advocacy for 9/11 first responders seeking compensation for diseases they attribute to contamination from the destruction of the World Trade Center, she once wore a firefighter’s jacket on Capitol Hill and at the 2019 Met Gala.On Tuesday, Maloney said women in politics still face misogyny, something she said she experienced herself in her primary campaign.“I’m really saddened that we no longer have a woman representing Manhattan in Congress,” Maloney said. “It has been a great, great honor and a joy and a privilege to work for you.”Among other New York Democratic contests teed up by district changes, Sean Patrick Maloney, a senior party figure, saw off Alessandra Biaggi, a progressive backed by the congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, by a comfortable margin, 67% to 33% at the point the race was called.Elsewhere, Daniel Goldman, lead counsel in Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, beat Mondaire Jones, one of the first two gay Black men in Congress, and Yuh-Line Niou, another progressive candidate, in a tightly fought race.In the Republican primaries, Carl Paladino – a far-right former candidate for governor who has praised Hitler, made racist remarks about Barack and Michelle Obama and said the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, should be executed – established an early lead over his opponent in a Buffalo-area seat before being reeled in and defeated by Nick Langworthy, chair of the state party.There was also a key special election for Congress, in which Pat Ryan, the Democrat, established an early lead over Marc Molinaro, his Republican challenger in the 19th district. Molinaro made up ground as the night went on – before the race was called for Ryan, 51% to 49%.Ryan will only sit in Congress until the end of the year, as both men will fight other seats in November. But observers were watching closely for clues as to voter intentions less than three months before the midterms.Republicans are favoured to retake the House, as opposition parties often do in the first midterms of a presidential term. But the win for Ryan will be seized upon by national Democratic leaders hoping that recent domestic legislative successes and the excesses of the conservative-dominated supreme court, particularly on abortion, could tilt the midterms contests their way.The New York seat fell vacant when Antonio Delgado, a Democrat, resigned from Congress to become lieutenant governor to Kathy Hochul. Republicans targeted the district as a possible flip, with heavy campaign spending.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022New YorkDemocratsHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Americans should focus on Biden’s accomplishments, says chief of staff – as it happened

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      Here’s the meat of White House chief of staff Ron Klain’s argument to American voters, as he put it to Politico:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“Elections are choices, and the choice just couldn’t be any clearer right now. Democrats have stood up to the big special interests. They stood up to the big corporations and insisted that all corporations pay minimum taxes, stood up to the big oil companies and passed climate change legislation. They stood up to Big Pharma and passed prescription drug legislation. They stood up to the gun industry and passed gun control legislation. Things that this city [was] unable to deliver on for decades because the special interests had things locked down, Joe Biden and his allies in Congress have been able to deliver on.”The point of interviews like these is to get the administration’s message out ahead of November’s midterms, when voters will get a chance to decide which lawmakers they want representing them, and ultimately which party controls Congress. Considering Biden’s low approval ratings, the base case now is that Republicans have a good shot at taking the House, while Democrats seem favored to narrowly keep the Senate, though anything could happen.The White House would, of course, prefer Democrats hold onto both chambers. If one falls into the hands of the GOP, the prospects for any major legislation getting through Congress become dramatically slimmer for the next two years. Klain and others seem to be hoping that two things will happen: either enough voters change their minds about Biden, or they divorce their dislike of the president from their opinions of Democrats on the ballot. It may be premature to say whether the latter is happening, but when it comes to the former, polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight does show the president’s approval rating recovering from something of a nadir reached in mid-July.In closing, Klain offered this comment on Biden’s public profile, as compared to the previous White House occupant:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“I don’t think it’s true he’s out there less than his predecessors. I just think Donald Trump created an expectation of a president creating a shitstorm every single day.”The Biden administration took advantage of a quiet week in Washington to lay the groundwork for the roughly two months of campaigning before the November midterm elections, when Democrats will have to fight for control of Congress.Here’s what else happened today:
      White House chief of staff Ron Klain gave an interview to Politico, where he promoted Biden’s legislative accomplishments and previewed Democrats’ message to voters.
      A Georgia judge blocked senator Lindsey Graham’s attempt to quash a subpoena compelling his appearance before the special grand jury investigating election meddling in the state.
      Democrats attacked Mike Pence’s trip to Iowa, as the former vice president continues exploring whether to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
      An Ohio House Democrat criticized Biden in a television advertisement. She is fighting to keep her seat representing a district whose boundaries have been redrawn to include more Republican voters.
      More LGBTQ politicians are holding elected office in America than ever before, according to a new survey.
      The supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade may be causing a surge in women registering to vote, a political data firm has found.
      “Joe Biden’s letting Ohio solar manufacturers be undercut by China.” Sounds like a Republican campaign advertisement. It’s not – instead, it’s a television spot from an Ohio House Democrat fighting for her seat in a newly redrawn district that’s become much more friendly to the GOP.The New York Times reports that Marcy Kaptur has become the latest and most prominent Democratic lawmakers to publicly break with Biden with an ad that also highlights her collaboration with Rob Portman, Ohio’s retiring Republican senator. It’s a reversal from just last month, when she greeted the president at the airport in Cleveland during his visit to the city. However, such conduct is not unheard of for Democrats this election cycle. Maine representative Jared Golden aired an ad where he described himself as an “independent voice” that voted against “trillions of dollars of President Biden’s agenda because I knew it would make inflation worse,” according to the Times.Then there are the somewhat bizarre actions of Carolyn Maloney of New York, who is fighting to keep her House seat against a challenge from Jerry Nadler, a fellow Democrat. She had to apologize after saying Biden wasn’t planning to stand for reelection in 2024, only to make the same comment again. Democrat apologises for saying Biden won’t run in 2024 – then says it againRead moreRepublican House candidates who are facing close races are being advised not to talk too much about Donald Trump, but rather try to concentrate voters’ attention on the issues where they see an advantage over Democrats, CNN reports.“I don’t say his name, ever. I just avoid saying his name generally,” a Republican lawmaker in a tight race told the network. “I talk about the policies of his that I like.”The advice comes from Tom Emmer, a GOP House representative and chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is tasked with reclaiming Congress’ lower chamber in the November elections. While a spokesman for Emmer didn’t address the report about Trump, he told CNN, “Candidates know their districts best,” and “public and private polls show the midterms will be a referendum on Joe Biden and Democrats’ failed agenda that’s left voters paying record prices, dealing with soaring violent crime and facing billions in middle-class tax hikes.”As the report notes, this strategy could become complicated if Trump opts to announce another campaign for the presidency before the November midterms. Earlier this week, The Guardian reported he was being counseled to do so to avoid an indictment by the justice department over his handling of classified material.Trump should announce run for 2024 soon to avoid indictment, source saysRead moreThe investigation into Donald Trump’s ties to Russia was one of the earliest and most intense scandals of his presidency, and the legal wrangling over it still hasn’t finished.The Associated Press reports that a federal court of appeals panel has found that William Barr, Trump’s attorney general in 2019, wrongly withheld a memo that he cited to say that Trump did not obstruct justice during in the investigation into his ties with Moscow.Here’s more from the AP:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}At issue in the case is a March 24, 2019, memorandum from the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, or OLC, and another senior department official that was prepared for Barr to evaluate whether evidence in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation could support prosecution of the president for obstruction of justice.
      Barr has said he looked to that opinion in concluding that Trump did not illegally obstruct the Russia probe, which was an investigation of whether his campaign had colluded with Russia to tip the 2016 election.
      The Justice Department turned over other documents to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington as part of the group’s lawsuit, but declined to give it the memo. Government lawyers said they were entitled under public records law to withhold the memo because it reflected internal deliberations among lawyers before any formal decision had been reached on what Mueller’s evidence showed.
      But U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said last year that those arguments were disingenuous because the memo was prepared for Barr at about the same time as a separate Justice Department letter informing Congress and the public that Barr and other senior department leaders concluded that Trump had not obstructed justice.
      The memo noted that “Mueller had declined to accuse President Trump of obstructing justice but also had declined to exonerate him” and “recommended that Barr ‘reach a judgment’ on whether the evidence constituted obstruction of justice,” the panel wrote Friday. The memo also noted that “the Report’s failure to take a definitive position could be read to imply an accusation against President Trump” if the confidential report were released to the public, the court wrote.Busy day for courts in Georgia. A federal judge in the state has just rejected another bid by Republican senator Lindsey Graham to quash a subpoena compelling his appearance before a special grand jury probing attempts to meddle in the 2020 elections by Donald Trump’s allies.“Senator Graham raises a number of arguments as to why he is likely to succeed on the merits, but they are all unpersuasive, not least because they largely misconstrue the Court’s holdings,” judge Leigh Martin May wrote in denying the senator’s motion.“A stay is not justified even assuming for the sake of argument that Senator Graham has shown ‘a substantial case on the merits.’”Earlier this week, Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani appeared before the panel, which has informed him he is a target of their investigation.Rudy Giuliani informed he is target of criminal investigation in GeorgiaRead moreHowever in Georgia, a judge will allow a state law provision that bans giving food and water to voters standing in line to go into effect for the November midterm elections, though it is still subject to further legal challenges, the Associated Press reports. The law, passed last year, was part of a Republican-backed effort to reform the state’s election system, which Democrats attacked as an attempt to make it harder for the poor and racial minorities to vote. But as the AP notes, the legal battle isn’t over:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee said the voting rights groups may ultimately prevail on part of their challenge, but he agreed with the state that it’s too close to the election to block any part of the provision. He noted that requiring different rules for the general election than those in place for the primaries earlier this year could cause confusion for election workers.
      Boulee said that voting rights groups had failed to show that prohibiting the distribution of food and drinks within 150 feet (45 meters) of a polling place violates their constitutional rights. But he said that another part of the provision that bars people from offering food and drink within 25 feet (7.6 meters) of any person in line is probably unconstitutional because that zone is tied to the location of voters and could stretch thousands of feet from the polling place. More