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      Pro-Israel Pac pours millions into surprise candidate in Maryland primary

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      A pro-Israel lobby group has dropped millions into a Maryland congressional race as tensions remain high over the war in Gaza.The primary race in the third congressional district, which will be held on Tuesday, has attracted national interest thanks to the candidacy of one Democrat in particular: Harry Dunn. A former US Capitol police officer, Dunn and his colleagues won praise for their actions defending lawmakers against a violent mob of Donald Trump’s supporters on January 6. In his New York Times bestselling memoir, Standing My Ground, Dunn recounted how the insurrectionists repeatedly used the N-word as they attacked him and other Black officers.Dunn announced his bid to replace retiring Democratic congressman John Sarbanes on the third anniversary of January 6, marking his first formal foray into electoral politics. Despite Dunn’s high name recognition, the group United Democracy Project, a Super Pac affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), has thrown its support behind another primary candidate.According to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission, UDP has spent over $4.2m supporting state senator Sarah Elfreth.UDP’s investment comes after the group spent $4.6m on its failed effort to block the Democratic congressional candidate Dave Min from advancing to the general election in California’s 47th district. But the group notched one of its biggest wins of the election cycle so far on Tuesday, when the former Republican representative John Hostettler lost his primary race in Indiana’s eighth district. UDP had devoted $1.6m to defeating Hostettler because of his voting record on Israel and some of his past comments that were criticized as antisemitic.View image in fullscreenUDP’s decision to wade into the crowded Maryland primary came as somewhat of a surprise, given that neither Dunn nor Elfreth has made a point to highlight their position on Israel in their campaign messaging. A UDP ad for Elfreth does not mention Israel at all and instead focuses on her legislative record, applauding her work in the state senate.“Sarah Elfreth gets things done,” the ad’s narrator says. “With so much at stake – abortion rights, the environment, our democracy – we need a congresswoman who will deliver.”UDP did not respond to a request for comment, but in a statement to HuffPost last month, the group’s spokesperson acknowledged Dunn’s “support for a strong US-Israel relationship” but suggested concern about other candidates in the primary.“There are some serious anti-Israel candidates in this race, who are not Harry Dunn, and we need to make sure that they don’t make it to Congress,” spokesperson Patrick Dorton said.That comment appeared to reference progressive candidate John Morse, a labor lawyer who has received the endorsement of Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and has centered his campaign on his vocal support for a ceasefire in Gaza. In a recent interview with Fox45 Baltimore, Morse said: “I am the most outspoken on a permanent humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza because I think that’s the critical issue that’s going on right now.”Meanwhile, UDP’s investment has helped Elfreth compete against Dunn’s massive fundraising haul, as the first-time candidate has brought in nearly $4.6m since he entered the race. In comparison, Elfreth’s campaign has raised roughly a third as much money, $1.5m, and all 20 other candidates lag even further behind.UDP’s support for Elfreth is not part of this total; federal regulations prohibit Super Pacs from contributing directly to political candidates, but the groups can spend unlimited amounts of money to promote or criticize specific campaigns.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe financial contest could help decide what is widely expected to be a close race. A poll commissioned by Dunn’s campaign showed him leading Elfreth by four points, 22% to 18%, with state senator Clarence Lam trailing in third at 8%. The winner of the primary will almost certainly go on to win a seat in the House of Representatives, given the district’s liberal leanings. In 2022, Sarbanes won re-election by 20 points in the third district, which includes Annapolis and suburbs of Washington and Baltimore.Elfreth has said that she, like her opponents, was surprised by UDP’s support, although she has not rejected the group’s help.“I’m uncomfortable with dark money as well,” Elfreth told Maryland Matters last month. “I don’t like it. But I’m not in a position to say no to people who want to amplify my message.”Despite remaining mostly silent about the war in Gaza, Dunn has now found himself indirectly affected by UDP’s electoral strategy, and he has turned the group’s involvement in the race into a campaign issue. When news of UDP’s investment broke last month, Dunn responded by calling on all candidates to “condemn this dark-money spending bankrolled by Maga [Make America Great Again] Republicans”. In a statement to the Guardian, Dunn framed the Super Pac’s involvement as an insult to the legacy of Sarbanes, who made campaign finance reform one of his top priorities over his nine terms in Congress.“Our grassroots movement won’t be scared off by this dark money spending. I’ve made protecting and strengthening our democracy the center of our campaign,” Dunn said. “We’re going to win this race, and when I get to Congress, I know who I will work for and I will be accountable to – and it won’t be the dark money donors or the special interest groups.”That message seems to be resonating with voters, as Dunn’s team boasts that more than 100,000 people have donated to his campaign. FEC filings show that, of the $4.6m raised by Dunn, nearly $3.7m came in the form of unitemized contributions, meaning they derived from donors who gave less than $200 to the candidate across the election cycle. According to Dunn’s team, the average contribution to the campaign has been $21.64.In comparison, of Elfreth’s $1.5m raised, only $85,000 came from unitemized contributions, indicating that most of her donations came from supporters who gave more than $200. Her FEC filings show that some of her larger contributions came from some well-known Republican donors – including Robert Sarver, former owner of the Phoenix Suns, and Larry Mizel, one of Trump’s campaign finance chairs in 2016. Mizel has also served as a member of the board of directors of Aipac. More

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      ‘Madman in a circular room screaming’: ex-aide’s verdict on Trump in book

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      Donald Trump’s defense secretary called him “a madman in a circular room screaming” and stayed away from the White House, a new book quotes a senior Trump aide as saying regarding the man now facing 88 criminal charges but set to be the Republican presidential nominee for a third successive election.“Anybody with sense – somebody like Mattis or Tillerson – they immediately shunned and stayed away from Trump,” Tom Bossert, formerly homeland security adviser to Trump, tells George Stephanopoulos in the ABC News anchor’s new book, The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis.“I mean, you couldn’t get Mattis into the White House,” Bossert says. “His view was, ‘That’s a madman in a circular room screaming. And the less time I spend in there, the more time I can just go about my business.’”Stephanopoulos’s book is a survey of how presidents have used the White House Situation Room, “the epicentre of crisis management for presidents for more than six decades”. Co-written with Lisa Dickey, a prolific ghostwriter who has also worked with the first lady, Jill Biden, and the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, the book will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.James Mattis, a retired US Marine Corps general, was Trump’s first defense secretary. Rex Tillerson, an oil industry executive, was Trump’s first secretary of state. Both were among so-called “adults in the room” who famously sought to contain Trump.Mattis’s frustrations and ultimate opposition to Trump’s re-election are widely known. Tillerson was reported to have called Trump a “fucking moron”. Trump fired him by tweet.Bossert worked in the Trump White House for 15 months, from the inauguration in 2017 to his resignation in April 2018. He is now an analyst for ABC News. He and other former aides tell Stephanopoulos Trump avoided Situation Room briefings – which his predecessor, Barack Obama, consumed – because, in Bossert’s words, “He didn’t like the idea that he had to go into it. He wanted everybody to come to him.”Bossert also says Trump had Situation Room aides produce “books of chyron prints” – a way to boil down cable news to the messages displayed at the bottom of screens. Stephanopoulos and Hickey call this “surely one of the most prosaic tasks ever required of the highly trained intelligence officers serving in the White House”.Though Bossert’s White House tasks including advising the president on cyber security, in August 2017 it was revealed that he gave his personal email address to a British prankster pretending to be Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and chief adviser.Still, Bossert was a strong advocate of cracking down on leaks and leakers. In March 2017, he made headlines by calling people who leaked government secrets “enemies to our state”, adding: “They need to be caught, punished, and treated as such.”Throughout his presidency, Trump fumed about leaks, both of sensitive information and regarding his chaotic White House.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn summer 2020, as protesters for racial justice came close to White House grounds and Trump was reported to have been hurried to a protective bunker, Trump reportedly called those who leaked the story treasonous and said they should be executed.Trump was said to have become “obsessed” with finding leakers. But Trump has long been known to be a prolific leaker himself.Bossert tells Stephanopoulos: “I caught him doing it. I was walking out of the room, and he picks up the phone before I’m out of earshot and starts talking to a reporter about what just happened. And I turned around and pointed right at him. ‘Who in the hell are you talking to?’”Trump, the authors say, “essentially shrugged, seemingly unbothered”.“He does it, so he assumed everybody was that way,” Bossert says. “His paranoia was in part because he assumes everyone else acts like he acts.” More

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      Trump’s strategy to delay cases before the election is working

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      Despite some dismal days spent in the courtroom, Donald Trump earned two significant legal victories this week with separate decisions that make it all but certain two of the pending criminal trials against him will take place after the 2024 election.As had been expected for months, Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday scrapped a 20 May trial date that had been set in south Florida over the former president’s handling of classified documents. The delay was almost entirely the doing of Cannon, a Trump appointee, who allowed far-fetched legal arguments into the case and let preliminary legal matters pile up on her docket to the point where a May trial was not a possibility.On Thursday, the Georgia court of appeals announced it would hear a request from Trump to consider whether Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, should be removed from the election interference case against him because of a relationship with another prosecutor. The decision means both that Trump will continue to undermine Willis’s credibility and draw out the case. “There will be no trial until 2025,” tweeted Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University who has been closely following the case.The third pending case against Trump, a federal election interference case in Washington, also appears unlikely to go to trial before the election. The US supreme court heard oral arguments on whether Trump has immunity from prosecution last month and seemed unlikely to resolve it quickly enough to allow the case to move forward ahead of the election.The decisions mean that voters will not get a chance to see Trump held accountable for possible criminal conduct during his last term in office before they decide whether to give him another term in office. (Trump is currently in the middle of a criminal trial in Manhattan that centers around allegations he falsified business records to cover up hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, but it happened before his presidency, during the 2016 campaign.)The developments vindicate a pillar of Trump’s legal strategy. Facing four separate criminal cases, his lawyers have sought to use every opportunity they can to delay the cases, hoping that he wins the election in November. Were he to return to the White House, he would make the two federal cases against him go away (he has said he would appoint an attorney general who would fire Jack Smith, the justice department’s special prosecutor). It’s unclear if Fani Willis, the Fulton county DA, could proceed with a criminal case against a sitting president.“In all likelihood, Trump’s election would pause the proceedings against him in Georgia. There is a large consensus among legal academics that a sitting president cannot be tried for crimes. That, however, is an untested constitutional theory, which Fani Willis will probably challenge,” Kreis said. “If I had to hedge a bet, should Trump win in November, his Fulton county co-defendants will be tried mid-2025 and Trump would stand trial alone after his second term ends.”While Trump may have successfully secured delays in three of the cases against him, prosecutors in Manhattan continued to move ahead this week in laying out evidence for why he should be found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records. Testimony from key accounting employees at the Trump Organization helped connect Trump to the monies that were paid out to Michael Cohen. Stormy Daniels, the adult film star who alleges she had an affair with Trump in 2006, also testified in detail about the incident, irritating Trump, and bringing one of the most embarrassing episodes back to the center of the public discourse.Trump’s lawyers objected to the testimony and requested a mistrial, saying the lurid details Daniels disclosed had prejudiced jurors against defendants. Judge Juan Merchan rejected that request, but still conceded jurors had heard information they should not have.While Trump is likely to use the episode in any potential appeal, experts doubted whether he would succeed.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Skirmishes like this happen all the time, and defense attorneys call for mistrials in many, if not most, criminal trials. I don’t think this was even close to cause for a mistrial and don’t think it would end up being a major issue on appeal,” said Rebecca Roiphe, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office who now teaches at New York Law School.“The details of the sexual encounter are relevant because they go to why Trump would want to suppress her story. The judge tried to limit any prejudicial effect by asking the witness to be less colorful in her description. She didn’t abide by this until warned a few times, but this hardly seems like a cause for concern on appeal.” More

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      US says hold on weapons delivery won’t be a one-off if Israel presses ahead with Rafah city offensive – as it happened

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      US officials are making clear today that the hold put on a delivery of US-made bombs last week would not be a one-off if Israel presses ahead with an offensive on Rafah city but would be the start of a major pivot in the US-Israel relationship.Arms deliveries that have already been approved could be delayed, and shipments waiting for approval could also face obstacles.The Biden administration refuses to use the phrase “red line”, but it is making clear that the US president was serious when he told Benjamin Netanyahu in a call on 4 April that an attack on Rafah would lead to a major re-evaluation of the relationship.Although the paused shipment included huge 2000lb bombs, administration officials insist that they were not selected because of legal concerns about their use in a densely populated area (as Israel has done frequently over the course of this war) could constitute a war crime. This was a policy decision, they say, not a legal one.Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
      The Republican House judiciary committee has referred Michael Cohen to the Department of Justice for prosecution. In a letter to Merrick Garland, the US attorney general, Jim Jordan and James Comer, chairs of the judiciary committee as well as the oversight and accountability committee, wrote: “Cohen’s testimony is now the basis for a politically motivated prosecution of a former president and current declared candidate for that office.”
      The US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, has confirmed that the US has paused a shipment of weapons to Israel and is “reviewing others”. Miller, at briefing today, cited “the way Israel has conducted its operations in the past” as well as concerns about Israel’s actions in Rafah, Channel 4 News’s Siobhan Kennedy reported.
      US officials are making clear today that the hold put on a delivery of US-made bombs last week would not be a one-off if Israel presses ahead with an offensive on Rafah, but would be the start of a major pivot in the US-Israel relationship. Arms deliveries that have already been approved could be delayed, and shipments waiting for approval could also face obstacles.
      Following the Biden administration’s decision to pause a weapons shipment to Israel over its plans for a Rafah invasion, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said: “Given the unprecedented humanitarian disaster that Netanyahu’s war has created in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of children face starvation, President Biden is absolutely right to halt bomb delivery to this extreme, rightwing Israeli government. But this must be a first step.”
      Georgia’s state court of appeals has granted Donald Trump’s request to consider the disqualification of Fani Willis, the district attorney who brought the 2020 election interference charges against Trump. According to a notice, the court said that it had granted the appeal request and ordered Trump’s legal team to file a notice of appeal in the next 10 days, NBC reports.
      Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell refused to comment on Donald Trump’s ongoing criminal trial surrounding his hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, McConnell said: “I’m not going to be commenting on the presidential election … I’m going to concentrate on trying to turn this job over to the next majority leader of the Senate.”
      Robert F Kennedy Jr, the third-party presidential candidate, said a health problem he experienced in 2010 “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died”, according to a report. In a divorce case deposition from 2012 the New York Times said it obtained, Kennedy said he experienced “memory loss and mental fogginess so severe that a friend grew concerned he might have a brain tumor”.
      That’s it as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you for following along.Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and California’s Democratic representative Ro Khanna have revealed a bill aimed at cancelling all medical debt.The Guardian’s Joan Greve reports:The bill, introduced with Oregon senator Jeff Merkley and Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, would create a federal grant program to cancel all existing patient debt and amend the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to block creditors from collecting past medical bills.The legislation would also update billing requirements for medical providers and alter the Consumer Credit Reporting Act to prevent credit agencies from reporting information related to unpaid medical bills, alleviating the risk of such debt damaging patients’ credit histories.Sanders and Khanna described the legislation as vital for many families’ financial security, as millions of Americans struggle with the burden of medical debt. According to a 2022 investigation by NPR and KFF Health News, more than 100 million Americans, including 41% of adults, hold some kind of healthcare debt. A KFF analysis of the Census Bureau’s survey of income and program participation suggests that Americans owe at least $220bn in medical debt.Read the full story here:Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has refused to comment on Donald Trump’s ongoing criminal trial surrounding his hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels.Speaking to reporters on Wednesday in response to whether Trump’s ongoing trial would give him pause over his support for Trump as president, McConnell said:
      I’m not going to be commenting on the presidential election … I’m going to concentrate on trying to turn this job over to the next majority leader of the Senate.”
      Here are further details on the US signaling to Israel potential future pauses in arms shipments over Israel’s planned invasion of Rafah:US officials have signalled to Israel that more arms shipments could be delayed if the Israeli military pushes ahead with an offensive in Rafah, Gaza, in what would mark the start of a major pivot in relations between the two countries.Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, confirmed on Wednesday that the Biden administration had paused the supply of thousands of large bombs to Israel, in opposition to apparent moves by the Israelis to invade the city.“We’ve been very clear … from the very beginning that Israel shouldn’t launch a major attack into Rafah without accounting for and protecting the civilians that are in that battle space,” Austin told a Senate hearing.“And again, as we have assessed the situation, we have paused one shipment of high payload munitions,” he said, adding: “We’ve not made a final determination on how to proceed with that shipment.”Read the full story here:The Republican House judiciary committee has referred Michael Cohen to the Department of Justice for prosecution.In a letter to the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, Jim Jordan and James Comer, chairs of the judiciary committee as well as the oversight and accountability committee, wrote:
      Cohen’s testimony is now the basis for a politically motivated prosecution of a former president and current declared candidate for that office.
      In light of the reliance on the testimony from this repeated liar, we reiterate our concerns and ask what the justice department has done to hold Cohen accountable for his false statements to Congress.
      The referral comes as Cohen, once a personal lawyer and fixer for Donald Trump, is expected to testify in the former president’s hush money criminal trial in New York as the prosecutors’ star witness.The US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, has confirmed that the US has paused a shipment of weapons to Israel and is “reviewing others”.Miller, at briefing today, cited “the way Israel has conducted its operations in the past” as well as concerns about Israel’s actions in Rafah, Channel 4 News’ Siobhan Kennedy reported.Even though Israel has said the Rafah operation is limited in scope, “intent is one thing, results are another”, Miller told reporters, adding:
      The results have been far too many innocent civilians dying … That’s why we have such grave concerns.
      Miller also said the state department will not be delivering its report to Congress on whether Israel has violated international humanitarian law during its war in Gaza, CNN reported. He added:
      We expect to deliver it in the very near future, in the coming days.
      Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley won more than 20% of the votes in Indiana’s Republican presidential primary on Tuesday, months after she dropped out of the race.Haley announced she was suspending her presidential campaign in March after being soundly defeated by Donald Trump on Super Tuesday, but her continued support shows persistent discontent among GOP voters with the former president. Haley has not endorsed Trump.Haley’s support was largest in Indiana’s urban and suburban counties, AP reported. She won 35% of the vote in Indianapolis’s Marion county and more than one-third of the vote in suburban Hamilton county.Robert F Kennedy Jr, the third-party presidential candidate, said a health problem he experienced in 2010 “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died”, according to a report.In a divorce case deposition from 2012 the New York Times said it obtained, Kennedy said he experienced “memory loss and mental fogginess so severe that a friend grew concerned he might have a brain tumour”.Neurologists who treated Kennedy’s uncle, the Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy, before his death aged 77 from brain cancer in 2009, told the younger man he had a dark spot on his brain scans, and concluded he too had a tumor. But, Kennedy reportedly said, a doctor at New York-Presbyterian hospital posited another explanation: a parasite in Kennedy’s brain. In the 2012 deposition, Kennedy reportedly said:
      I have cognitive problems, clearly. I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.
      In his recent interview, the Times said, Kennedy said he had recovered from such problems. The paper also said Kennedy’s spokesperson, Stefanie Spear, responded to a question about whether the candidate’s health problems could compromise his fitness to be president by saying:
      That is a hilarious suggestion, given the competition.
      A growing number of Republican lawmakers are pushing to require a citizenship question on the questionnaire for the census, and exclude non-US citizens from the results that determine each state’s share of House seats and electoral college votes.The GOP-led House is expected to vote today on the Equal Representation Act which calls for leaving out “individuals who are not citizens of the United States.” The bill is unlikely to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate and is opposed by the White House.The proposal has set off alarms among redistricting experts, civil rights groups and Democratic lawmakers, and comes as Republicans make immigration a key campaign issue ahead of the November elections.“It’s taking it closer to reality than it has ever been,” a former census official told AP.
      This is part of a cohesive strategy in the GOP … of getting every single possible advantage when the country is so closely divided.
      The 14th amendment says the “whole number of persons in each state” should be counted during the apportionment process. Besides helping allocate congressional seats and electoral college votes, census figures guide the distribution of $2.8tn in federal money.US officials are making clear today that the hold put on a delivery of US-made bombs last week would not be a one-off if Israel presses ahead with an offensive on Rafah city but would be the start of a major pivot in the US-Israel relationship.Arms deliveries that have already been approved could be delayed, and shipments waiting for approval could also face obstacles.The Biden administration refuses to use the phrase “red line”, but it is making clear that the US president was serious when he told Benjamin Netanyahu in a call on 4 April that an attack on Rafah would lead to a major re-evaluation of the relationship.Although the paused shipment included huge 2000lb bombs, administration officials insist that they were not selected because of legal concerns about their use in a densely populated area (as Israel has done frequently over the course of this war) could constitute a war crime. This was a policy decision, they say, not a legal one. More

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      Trump has yet to decide his VP pick – and it’s turning into a pageant of its own

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      Hello there, and welcome to the Guardian’s brand new US election newsletter. I hope you’re having a nice week.It’s less than six months until election day, and Donald Trump, when he’s not in court or looking at racing cars, is spending time weighing his vice-presidential pick. It’s becoming quite the spectacle.But first, some of the happenings in US politics.Here’s what you need to know …1. I don’t feel so goodDonald Trump’s trial over hush-money payments to an adult film star saw Stormy Daniels recall her sexual encounter with the president in front of a presumably nauseous Manhattan courtroom. Will this trial – and the three others he faces – torpedo Trump’s election chances? One poll this week found that it will depend on whether he is convicted. About 80% of Trump’s supporters would definitely stick with him if he becomes a felon, while 16% would “reconsider” their support. Just 4% say they would definitely ditch him.2. Biden gives antisemitism speechIn a speech on Tuesday at a Holocaust remembrance event, Joe Biden condemned what he called the “ferocious surge of antisemitism in America and around the world”, amid widespread student protests over American support for Israel’s war on Gaza. Thousands of students have been arrested around the US, during a frequently militaristic police response. Republicans have tried to use the unrest to paint Biden as weak and sow division among Democratic voters.3. TikTok hits back after US government crackdownTikTok and its parent company are suing the US government after Biden signed bipartisan legislation which could potentially ban the app from the US if it is not sold to another owner. It comes as Russian state-affiliated accounts have used TikTok to draw attention to Biden’s age and immigration policies. Critics have said ByteDance, TikTok’s China-based parent company, could also collect sensitive information about Americans. But others – including TikTok – say the US is unfairly singling out the social media platform, potentially hurting free speech and independent content makers. The debacle is fraught in an election year when many young people get news from TikTok, and Biden himself has a campaign account.Eeny, meeny, miny, moeView image in fullscreenThe election is in November, and Donald Trump has yet to decide on his vice-presidential candidate. That’s not unusual – assuming he’s not in prison by then, he’s got plenty of time – but what is kind of new is the very public auditioning for the role.Trump summoned several of the candidates to Mar-a-Lago over the weekend, where he forced them to parade around on stage, in what sounds like a version of the Miss Universe competition he used to haunt.But the contenders, who range from long-time sycophants to more recent converts, have been doing some parading of their own.Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who ran for president against Trump in 2016 (Trump dubbed him “Little Marco”, Rubio suggested Trump had a small penis, but the two have since made up) has been near-ever present on TV in recent weeks, as has Elise Stefanik, a New York congresswoman who was once seen as a sober legislator, but has since evolved into a Trump disciple.Doug Burgum – recently dubbed “less interesting than a wooden post” – and Tim Scott, who both ran against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination this year, have also been showing up on TV shows to defend Trump’s legal entanglements and threats to undermine the election.There’s also JD Vance, a big-faced beardy man who once believed Trump to be an “idiot” but has since changed his mind, and Byron Donalds, who with Scott is one of the five Black Republicans in Congress.One thing appears to be certain: it will not be Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor who has dominated headlines after admitting that she shot and killed her dog in a gravel pit.Will the identity of Trump’s running mate really make a difference?In 2016, Trump was viewed with suspicion by some evangelical voters – voters he needed to come out in droves for him to defeat Hillary Clinton. That’s why he chose Mike Pence, a devout Christian who just released a book that is literally called So Help Me God.But religious Republicans have pretty much made their peace with Trump since then – largely because the supreme court he appointed overturned the federal right to abortion.Reports indicate that what Trump is really looking for is an uber-loyal attack dog, someone who can tear into Trump’s critics on air, before coming back to the White House to quietly snuggle at his feet.It would be easy to see a vice-president as inconsequential. But since the US became a thing, nine vice-presidents have stepped into the top job: eight times because the sitting president died, and once because the president – Richard Nixon – resigned. Without wanting to be too macabre, Donald Trump is quite old, and is not known as a healthy eater. (In the name of Journalism I once lived like Trump for a week. I genuinely think it took years off my life.)Anyway: some of these people might fancy their chances of ascending to the throne.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn the roadView image in fullscreenA dispatch from our Washington bureau chief, David Smith:Is it a bird? Is it a plane? OK, it’s a plane, with “TRUMP” written in giant gold letters on the side. I watched the Boeing 757 dubbed “Trump Force One” fly into Freeland, Michigan, last week, accompanied by the booming soundtrack of Tom Cruise’s Top Gun.It reminded me that the Trump Show has always been about reality versus fantasy. Reality for Trump right now is hour after hour sitting in a cold, dingy New York courtroom. Fantasy is stepping out of his private jet into afternoon sunshine and the warm glow of a campaign rally where the crowd chants his name.The demographics were telling: overwhelmingly white and dominated by retirees. Every Trump supporter I interviewed is convinced that the trial in New York is a witch-hunt designed to hobble his election chances. When I asked about his dictatorial ambitions, they brushed the question aside and preferred the word “leader”.Who had the worst week?View image in fullscreenOn Monday Judge Juan Merchan, handling Trump’s hush-money payments trial, said he “will have to consider a jail sanction” if Trump doesn’t stop publicly criticizing witnesses and the jury. But if Monday was bad for Trump, Tuesday was worse.“I had my clothes and my shoes off, I believe my bra, however, was still on. We were in the missionary position …” so went the testimony of Stormy Daniels, who was allegedly paid $130,000 to remain quiet about the claimed encounter, which she says took place in 2006, a year after Trump married his wife Melania. (Trump denies having sex with Daniels.)Daniels said that Trump told her she reminded him of Ivanka Trump, his daughter, before the two became intimate. Asked by the prosecution whether the encounter with Trump was “brief”, Daniels said: “Yes.”‘It’s my favorite book’View image in fullscreenI spent no short amount of time last week reading the God Bless the USA Bible, a special version of the holy text Trump is hawking online. If you enjoy the Bible, but feel like it is missing images of American flags and bald eagles, then this is the book for you.If, however, you want a Bible without sticky pages, which hasn’t been dubbed “blasphemous”, and which doesn’t cost $60, then maybe give it a pass.Read the full story here.Elsewhere in US politicsView image in fullscreen Milwaukee is replacing its top election official, Sam Levine and Alice Herman write, which means “there will be a new head of elections in one of the most critical cities in a key battleground state”. Biden won Wisconsin by just 20,000 votes in 2020. Bernie Sanders won more than 13m votes in the 2016 presidential primary, as his brand of democratic socialism inspired young people across the country. He didn’t win, of course, but Martin Pengelly reports that Sanders plans to run for re-election to the Senate. More

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      Trump’s scattershot attacks on justice system are causing real damage

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      Donald Trump’s verbal assaults on judges, prosecutors, witnesses, jurors and the broader US justice system, are undermining the rule of law and American democracy while fueling threats and potential violence against individuals involved with the legal cases against him and egging on his extremist allies, former federal prosecutors and judges say.In his campaign to win the presidency again, and in the midst of various criminal and civil trials, Trump has launched multiple attacks on the American legal system on his Truth Social platform to counter the 88 federal and state criminal charges he faces.Trump, the all but certain Republican presidential nominee for 2024, has accelerated glorifying the insurgents who attacked the Capitol on 6 January 2021. He has called them “patriots” and “hostages”, while promising that if he wins, he will free those convicted of crimes as one of his “first acts” in office.Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on the electoral system. He has refused to say he will accept the results of the 2024 elections, a ploy similar to what he did in 2020 before falsely claiming the election was rigged – a claim he still maintains.“If everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results,” Trump told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”Darkly, Trump has also warned that if he loses the election there will be “bedlam” and a “bloodbath for the country”. These words referred, in part, to the fallout Trump predicted for the auto industry, but have distinct echoes of his false charges that he lost to Joe Biden in 2020 due to fraud.At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on 13 April, right before his first criminal trial in New York began, Trump repeated his bogus claims about his 2020 defeat: “The election was rigged. Pure and simple, 2020 was rigged. We could never let it happen again.”At the same rally he blasted Juan Merchan, the very judge who oversees his trial in Manhattan. In that case, Trump faces 34 counts for altering company records in 2016 to hide $130,000 in hush-money payments that his fixer Michael Cohen made to the porn star Stormy Daniels, who alleged an affair with him.“I have a crooked judge,” Trump raged at Merchan, adding that he was “fully gagged before a highly conflicted and corrupt judge, who suffers from TDS … Trump Derangement Syndrome”.Trump’s multiple attacks on witnesses and jurors, who he had been told were off limits and could spur a contempt citation, have prompted Merchan twice to fine Trump a total of $10,000 for violating a gag order against such attacks.“The court will not tolerate continued willful violations of its lawful orders,” the judge has said, warning that Trump could face jail time if he made similar attacks.Trump insists without evidence that the more than seven dozen federal and state criminal charges he faces in four jurisdictions are “election interference”, and says he has done nothing illegal.Former prosecutors and judges say Trump’s incendiary rhetoric is catnip to his Maga allies and could spur violence in 2024.“At its core, the promise of pardons by Trump signals to anyone prone to insurrectionist behavior that they can expect a get out of jail card free,” said former federal judge John Jones, who is now president of Dickinson College.View image in fullscreen“My fear is that we will have civil unrest that will impede the election. My concern is that you can have vigilante groups under the guise of ‘stop the steal’, patrolling polling places and intimidating voters.”Jones stressed that “every one of the Jan 6 defendants has had appropriate due process”.“They have either been convicted or pled guilty to substantial federal crimes,” he said. “Promising them pardons in the face of that is against every principle in our system of justice.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRegarding Trump’s ongoing claims that the 2020 election was rigged and that the country will see a “bloodbath” if he loses again, Jones said: “The word ‘bloodbath’ is not ambiguous. The last time Trump fomented this kind of post-election destructiveness, people lost their lives.”Ex-federal prosecutors raise similar concerns.“To the extent President Trump is dangling pardons of the J6 defendants he is, in effect, trying to eliminate the deterrent effect of criminal prosecutions with the anticipated result of making violence on his own behalf more likely,” former prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig said.“From a legal perspective, deterrence is critical. The threats of violence in 2024 can only be mitigated by strong, consistent prosecution for violent acts in 2020.”Concerns about the potentially dangerous fallout from Trump’s attacks on the electoral and legal systems are underscored by a Brennan Center study in late April, which showed 38% of over 925 local election officials surveyed had experienced “threats, harassment or abuse”.The Brennan survey, conducted in February and March, also found that 54% of those surveyed were worried about the safety of fellow workers, and 62% were concerned about political leaders trying to interfere with how they do their jobs.On a related track, the DC judge Tanya Chutkan, who has handled a number of cases involving January 6 insurrectionists, has warned starkly about the dangers of more violence this year. Chutkan, who is slated to oversee Trump’s trial on charges by the special counsel Jack Smith that he sought to subvert the 2020 election, echoed Rosenzweig’s warning that more violence is less likely to happen if those convicted or who have pleaded guilty for the January 6 attack receive appropriate sentences.Last month, Chutkan issued a stiff sentence of 66 months for one insurgent who attacked the Capitol and has called the Jan 6 violent Capitol attack by Trump allies that led to injuries of 140 police officers “as serious a crisis as this nation has ever faced”.Notably, Chutkan has stressed that “extremism is alive and well in this country. Threats of violence continue unabated.”Ex-prosecutors also say that Trump’s attacks on the legal system are alarming.“Trump’s persistent denigration of the legal system is surely as divisive as everything else he does because he’s lying,” said the former justice department official Ty Cobb, who worked as a White House counsel for part of the Trump administration. “Trump’s lies in this area seem to have been embraced by his followers as truth.”Cobb stressed that “Trump has not been unfairly targeted by the justice department or the Biden administration, but charged only with serious crimes he has committed. The two state cases in which Trump stands criminally indicted have nothing to do with the Biden administration.” More

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      Bernie Sanders to run for fourth term in US Senate

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      Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent senator and former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, announced on Monday that he will run for a fourth six-year term – at the age of 82.In a video statement, Sanders thanked the people of Vermont “for giving me the opportunity to serve in the United States Senate”, which he said had been “the honor of my life.“Today I am announcing my intention to seek another term. And let me take a few minutes to tell you why.”In his signature clipped New York accent, Sanders did so.Citing his roles as chair of the Senate health, labor and pensions committee, part of Senate Democratic leadership, and as a member of committees on veterans affairs, the budget and the environment, Sanders said: “I have been, and will be if re-elected, in a strong position to provide the kind of help that Vermonters need in these difficult times.”Should Sanders win re-election and serve a full term, he will be 89 years old at the end of those six years. In a decidedly gerontocratic Senate, that would still be younger than the current oldest senator, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who will turn 91 in September. The Republican is due for re-election in 2028 – and has filed to run.Sanders was a mayor and sat in the US House for 16 years before entering the Senate in 2007.In 2016 he surged to worldwide prominence by mounting an unexpectedly strong challenge to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, from the populist left. He ran strongly again in 2020 but lost out to Joe Biden.Announcing another election run, Sanders stressed the need to improve public healthcare, including by defending social security and Medicare and lowering prescription drug prices; to combat climate change that has seen Vermont hit by severe flooding; to properly care for veterans; and to protect abortion and reproductive rights.“We must codify Roe v Wade [which protected federal abortion rights until 2022] into national law and do everything possible to oppose the well-funded rightwing effort to roll back the gains that women have achieved after decades of struggle,” Sanders said. “No more second-class citizenship for the women of Vermont. Or America.”Addressing an issue which threatens to split Democrats in the year of a presidential election, Sanders said: “On October 7, 2023, Hamas, a terrorist organization, began the war in Gaza with a horrific attack on Israel that killed 1,200 innocent men, women and children and took more than 230 hostages, some of whom remain in captivity today. Israel had the absolute right to defend itself against this terrorist attack.”But Sanders, who is Jewish, also said Israel “did not and does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people, which was exactly what it is doing: 34,000 Palestinians have already been killed and 77,000 have been wounded, 70% of whom are women and children. According to humanitarian organizations, famine and starvation are now imminent.“In my view, US tax dollars should not be going to the extremist [Benjamin] Netanyahu government to continue its devastating war against the Palestinian people.”In conclusion, if without mentioning Donald Trump by name, Sanders called the 2024 election “the most consequential election in our lifetimes”.“Will the United States continue to even function as a democracy? Or will we move to an authoritarian form of government? Will we reverse the unprecedented level of income and wealth inequality that now exists? Or will we continue to see billionaires get richer while working families struggle to put food on the table? Can we create a government that works for all of us? Or will our political system continue to be dominated by wealthy campaign contributors?“These are just some of the questions that together we need to answer.” More

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      Noem book contains threat against Biden dog: ‘Commander, say hello to Cricket’

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      The White House condemned as “disturbing” and “absurd” comments in which Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota and a potential running mate for Donald Trump, threatened to harm or kill Joe Biden’s dog.“We find her comments from yesterday disturbing,” Karine Jean-Pierre, Biden’s press secretary, told a White House briefing. “We find them absurd. This is a country that loves dogs and you have a leader that talks about putting dogs down, killing them.”Noem’s bizarre threat is contained in No Going Back, a campaign book that generated unusual buzz after the Guardian revealed how Noem describes in detail the day she shot dead her dog, Cricket, which she deemed untrainable and dangerous, and an unnamed goat.The revelation sparked a political firestorm, widely held to have incinerated Noem’s chances of being named running mate to Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.But as the book neared publication on Tuesday, it became clear Noem was not done when she closed her chapter on killing Cricket, a 14-month-old female wirehaired pointer, and the unnamed male goat, which Noem says was smelly and aggressive and dangerous to her children.At the end of No Going Back, Noem asks: “What would I do if I was president on the first day in office in 2025?”Remarkably, she writes that “the first thing I’d do is make sure Joe Biden’s dog was nowhere on the grounds. (‘Commander, say hello to Cricket for me.’)”Noem adds that her own dog, Foster, “would sure be welcome” at the White House.“He comes with me to the [state] capitol all the time and loves everyone,” she writes.Regardless, a governor widely held to have designs on the presidency in 2028 has at least implied, in print, that she would have a predecessor’s dog killed – whether by herself with a shotgun, like Cricket and the goat, or not.Noem has defended her description of killing Cricket and the goat as evidence of her willingness to do unpleasant but necessary things in farm life as well as in politics.Commander, a German shepherd owned by Joe and Jill Biden, was removed from the White House after biting Secret Service agents.On Monday, Jean-Pierre said: “Commander’s living with family members.”The day before, Noem doubled down.Her host on CBS’s Face the Nation, Margaret Brennan, quoted Noem’s apparent threat to kill Commander and asked: “Are you doing this to try to look tough? Do you still think that you have a shot at being a VP?”Noem said: “Well, number one, Joe Biden’s dog has attacked 24 Secret Service people. So, how many people is enough people to be attacked and dangerously hurt before you make a decision on a dog and what to do with it?”Brennan said: “Well, he’s not living at the White House any more.”Noem said: “That’s a question that the president should be held accountable to.”Brennan said: “You’re saying he [Commander] should be shot?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNoem said: “That what’s the president should be accountable to.”Noem tried to move on, to talk about Covid in South Dakota. But she also said she was “so proud” of a book that contained “a lot of truthful stories”.Elsewhere, though, Noem’s publisher, Center Street, said that at Noem’s request it was removing from her book “a passage regarding Kim Jong-un … upon a reprint of the print edition and as soon as technically possible on the audio and ebook editions”.In her book, Noem writes: “I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. I’m sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants (I’d been a children’s pastor, after all).”As first reported by the Dakota Scout, no such meeting occurred.Noem told CBS: “What bothers me the most about politicians is when they’re fake.”Brennan said: “But if you have to retract … parts of [the book] …”Noem, whose publisher said it would retract part of her book, said: “I’m not retracting anything.”Brennan said: “OK.”On Saturday, Noem attended a Trump Florida fundraiser featuring a host of vice-presidential contenders.Noem was “somebody I love”, NBC reported Trump as saying, adding: “She’s been with me, and a supporter, and I’ve been a supporter of hers for a long time.”But unlike other hopefuls, among them the South Carolina senator Tim Scott and the New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Noem was not called to the stage.She reportedly left early. More