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      ‘A campaign for vengeance’: critics warn of a radical second Trump term

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      The US election primary season is effectively over. Conventional wisdom holds that the two major candidates will now pivot towards the centre ground in search of moderate voters. But Donald Trump has never been one for conventional wisdom.Detention camps, mass deportations, capital punishment for drug smugglers, tariffs on imported goods, a purge of the justice department and potential withdrawal from Nato – the Trump policy agenda is radical by any standard including his own, pushing the boundaries set during his first presidential run eight years ago.“In 2016 he was still, in his own mind at least, positioning himself to be beloved by everybody,” said Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist. “That’s why ‘Drain the swamp’ was a more populist, appealing message to all sides of the aisle because everyone on some level felt like Washington’s broken, Washington’s left us behind.“Now you flash-forward to 2024 and we’re getting a much darker version of Donald Trump, one who seems to be driven by imaginary grievances from the 2020 election. There’s nothing unifying about that message in any way; it’s incredibly self-centred. This is a campaign for vengeance. In a lot of ways he is Ahab and Moby Dick is the United States of America.”Eight years ago Trump, seeking to become the first US president with no prior political or military experience, was running with a clean slate. If anything, there was a suspicion that his background as a thrice-married New York celebrity implied some ideological fluidity and latent liberal instincts.But he announced his candidacy in June 2015 by promising to build a wall on the southern border, using xenophobic language to portray Mexicans as “criminals” and “rapists” and promising to “make America great again”.During the campaign he described international trade deals as “a disaster” and called for increased tariffs on imports. He promised sweeping tax cuts and vowed to repeal Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act and environmental regulations, describing climate change as “a total hoax”.Trump pledged to nominate supreme court justices opposed to abortion and, in one TV interview, suggested that women who have abortions should be punished. With backing from the National Rifle Association, he opposed gun safety reforms.Overseas, the Republican candidate deployed the slogan “America first”, questioning the Nato alliance while calling for improved relations with Russia. He vowed to destroy the Islamic State and called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on”.Trump did implement his first attempt at a Muslim ban almost immediately after taking the Oval Office in January 2017, prompting protests, airport chaos and a long legal battle in the courts. The supreme court ruled in June 2018 that the third iteration of the law could go into full effect, meaning considerable restrictions on Muslim travellers entering the country.Trump failed to overturn the Affordable Care Act, but his presidency was hugely consequential in other ways. His $1.5tn tax cut added to the national debt and, research has shown, helped billionaires more than the working class. The US pulled out of the Paris climate agreement. Trump reshaped the federal judiciary and appointed three supreme court justices who would be instrumental in ending the constitutional right to abortion.He botched the response to a coronavirus pandemic that has now left more than a million Americans dead, initially underplaying the threat and later suggesting that patients might inject bleach as a cure. In the summer of 2020, Trump is said to have wanted the US military to shoot peaceful protesters in Washington during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations.In the aftermath of his 2020 election defeat, and dozens of criminal charges against him, Trump’s extremism has broadened and deepened as he heads into an electoral rematch with Joe Biden. He won the Republican primaries with ease, prompting commentators to warn of “collective amnesia” and “the banality of chaos” as many voters seemingly become numb to his demagoguery.However, an AP VoteCast poll found six in 10 moderate Republicans in New Hampshire and South Carolina were concerned that Trump was too extreme to win a general election.View image in fullscreenFor example, he now argues that presidents should have total immunity and openly threatens the guardrails of American democracy. “I only want to be a dictator for one day,” he told supporters in Manchester, New Hampshire, earlier this year.He has said he would try to strip tens of thousands of career employees of their civil service protections as he seeks to “totally obliterate the deep state”. Given his rage at the FBI and federal prosecutors pursuing criminal cases against him, Trump may target people linked to those prosecutions for retribution.His signature issue, border security, is once again taking centre stage with record levels of migrants caught crossing into the US. In response, he has pledged to launch the biggest deportation effort in American history. This would involve far-reaching roundups and detention camps to hold people while they await removal, the New York Times reported. He has also refused to rule out reinstating a Muslim travel ban and a hugely controversial family separation policy.Trump further wants to build more of the border wall – his first administration built 450 miles (724km) of barriers across the 1,954-mile (3,144km) border, but much of that replaced existing structures. He also wants to end automatic citizenship for children born in the US to immigrants living in the country illegally, an idea he flirted with as president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFormer Republican congressman Joe Walsh said: “He’s even uglier in his language now. He’s even more cruel in his approach. He’s gotten much more extreme, which you would think means, oh my God, how stupid politically, because he needs people in the middle. But it is big issue and Democrats have never understood how important immigration and the border are and so Trump feels as if he can demagogue it in even more of an extreme fashion.”Trump has called for the death penalty for drug smugglers and those who traffic women and children. In a broader anti-crime push, he says he will require local law enforcement agencies to use divisive policing measures including stop-and-frisk. Last year, he told a rally in Anaheim, California: “Very simply, if you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store.”Under the mantra “Drill, baby, drill”, Trump says that he would increase oil drilling on public lands and offer tax breaks to oil, gas and coal producers. He would again exit the Paris climate accords, end wind subsidies and eliminate environmental regulations.Trump has suggested that he is open to making cuts to the social security and Medicare welfare programmes. But one area in which he has hinted at moderation is abortion, publicly acknowledging that the national ban favoured by some Republicans would be electoral kryptonite, although it was reported last month that he privately expressed support for a 16-week limit with exceptions.Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “His campaign has been smart to float the 16-week ban because I think most Americans fall somewhere between 16 and 20 weeks as something they can live with. If he basically says the federal government will not try to do a six-week ban, we’re not going to come after a foetal heartbeat bill – so if you live in a swing state like Michigan that has codified abortion, I’m not coming after you – that is strategically a smart position. But it would be considered a modification to the centre on abortion by Trump.”On foreign policy, Trump claims that even before he is inaugurated, he will have settled the war between Russia and Ukraine. Last week, after visiting the former president at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Hungary’s autocratic prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said Trump promised him that he will end Russia’s war with Ukraine by not giving “a single penny” in aid.The Republican nominee also says he will continue to “fundamentally re-evaluate” Nato’s purpose and mission. At one recent rally, he said he would “encourage” Vladimir Putin’s Russia to attack Nato allies who do not pay their bills. And he says he will institute a system of tariffs of perhaps 10% on most foreign goods.Sometimes it can all seem like campaign bluster unlikely to survive the scrutiny of advisers, Congress or the courts. But whereas Trump’s 2016 win took everyone by surprise, perhaps including him, resulting in a first term marred by infighting and hastily written executive orders, this time there are allies who consider a second term is possible, or even probable, and are ready to hit the ground running.Trump’s campaign and groups such as the Heritage Foundation and America First Policy Institute thinktanks are assembling Project 2025 policy books with detailed plans. Groups of conservative lawyers are sizing up what orders Trump might issue on a second presidency’s first day. With lessons learned, his administration could be even more ruthless and efficient.Lanhee Chen, a fellow in American public policy studies at the Hoover Institution thinktank in Stanford, California, said: “Some of the general framing and themes around what it is he wants to do are relatively consistent. What is different this time around is that there’s more of an architecture and infrastructure supporting a lot of these policy proposals.“If you look at the ecosystem of organisations that’s involved in helping him think through what a second term agenda would look like, it’s much more robust in 2024 than it was in 2016. So I don’t necessarily subscribe to the view that the substance is all that different or somehow more extreme. It’s just there’s a lot more people who are thinking about it. Some of them are authorised; some of them are probably not authorised.”Critics of Trump warn that, while Trump himself has few core beliefs, he would effectively become a vehicle for extremists to push a far-right agenda wildly out of step with the majority of Americans. Reed Galen, a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said: “He is an empty vessel for these other people around him who do have very specific policy ideas, most of them rooted in straight authoritarianism or some noxious mix of authoritarianism and Christian dominionism.“He doesn’t care. For all of it, it’s a means to an end. If I win do these people help me or do they hurt me? Do they give me more control? Do they give me less control? Do they give me more access to making sure I’m never going to go to jail, that I can persecute and prosecute my political enemies, that I can make life harder for the media?”Galen added: “In many ways, he is the leader of the torchlight parade but he’s being taken arm in arm and pushed from behind by a bunch of very noxious individuals with what I would call fundamentally anti-democratic and un-American ideology.” More

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      ‘Democracy is teetering’: at ground zero for Trump’s big lie in Arizona

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      On a glorious spring day in Phoenix, in an atrium beneath the majestic cupola of the old state capitol, the secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, is celebrating Arizona’s 112th birthday.He solemnly recites President William Howard Taft’s proclamation welcoming Arizona as the 48th state of the union. Speeches fete the state’s breathtaking landscapes, from the mighty Grand Canyon to the sprawling deserts of Yuma and lush green forests of Coconino. Then, a cake iced with the state seal is cut into 112 pieces and devoured in the sun-dappled Rose Garden.There is only one discordant note on this otherwise joyous day: who is that person standing silently and alert behind Fontes? Why is Arizona’s chief election administrator, responsible for the smooth operation of November’s presidential election, in need of a bodyguard?“It’s very sad,” Fontes said. “It’s a sad state of affairs that in a civil society, in one of the most advanced civilizations that anybody could have imagined, we have to worry about physical violence.”These are troubled times in Arizona. Until 2020, election officials were the largely anonymous folk who did the important yet unseen work of making democracy run smoothly.“Nobody knew who we were, what we did,” Fontes said ruefully. “It’s a little bit different now.”All changed with Donald Trump’s unprecedented refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 election. His conspiracy to subvert the election has had an explosive impact in Arizona, a battleground state that has become arguably ground zero for election denial in America.In 2020, the Republican-controlled state legislature sponsored a widely discredited “audit” of votes in Maricopa county, the largest constituency, which contain Phoenix. Republican leaders put themselves forward as fake electors in a possibly criminal attempt to flip Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona to Trump’s.Two years later, in the midterms, armed vigilantes dressed in tactical gear stalked drop boxes in a vain hunt for “mules” stuffing fraudulent ballots into them. Amid the furore, election officials found themselves assailed by online harassment and death threats.No longer faceless bureaucrats, they had become public enemy No 1.With the likely presidential rematch between Trump and Biden just eight months away, Fontes, as the top elections administrator, is facing a formidable challenge. He is preparing for it like the marine veteran that he is.The secretary of state is staging tabletop exercises in which officials wargame how to react to worst-case scenarios. What would they do if a fire broke out at the ballot-printing warehouse, or if a cargo train spilled its toxic load on to the facility storing voting equipment?“Tiger teams” have been assembled to be quickly dispatched across the state to fix software or other voting problems. To anticipate bad actors using artificial intelligence to create malicious deepfakes of candidates, his office has done its own AI manipulations, making videos in which individuals speak fluently in languages they do not know such as German and Mandarin. “They were very, very believable,” Fontes noted.Specialists from the Department of Homeland Security have been deployed to advise counties on physical and cyber security. Active-shooter drills have been rehearsed at polling stations.As the Washington Post reported, kits containing tourniquets to staunch bleeding, hammers for breaking glass windows and door-blocking devices have been distributed to county election offices. “These are not things we would ever want to train anybody on,” Fontes said. “But given the environment … ”With all this under way, Fontes insists he’s ready for anything. “We will prepare as best we can for any contingencies,” he said. “And then we have no choice but to march forward, hopefully.”View image in fullscreenA single statistic underlines the looming danger hanging over the 2024 presidential contest. More than half – 53% – of Arizonans are currently represented in the state legislature by Republicans with a proven track record of election denial.That arresting figure comes from the election threat index, a database compiled by the voting rights organization Public Wise. The directory is designed as an accountability tool, tracking local and state officials who spread misinformation and participate in legislation undermining democracy.“This is a race to the bottom,” said Reginald Bolding, a Public Wise adviser and former Democratic minority leader in the Arizona house. “We are seeing the Republican party reward whoever’s most extreme about elections.”All the big names in Arizona’s flourishing market in election denial remain active traders. Kari Lake, the Phoenix TV anchor who reinvented herself as a Trump acolyte, continues to deny her idol’s 2020 presidential defeat as well as her own failure in Arizona’s 2022 gubernatorial race; she is now running for a US Senate seat.Mark Finchem, the former state legislator and member of the Oath Keepers militia who was present at the US Capitol insurrection on 6 January 2021, is attempting to return to the Arizona legislature in a state senate seat. He has founded an election-denial outfit, the Election Fairness Institute, and, as the monitoring group Media Matters has revealed, continues to brag about uncovering “phantom voters” while offering zero evidence.View image in fullscreenAbe Hamadeh last month lodged yet another lawsuit claiming that Arizona’s attorney general post had been stolen from him after he lost the midterm race. Now he is vying for a congressional seat.For seasoned political observers, the midterms were like a controlled experiment that proved that election denial is unpopular among most Arizonans. Prominent deniers lost all statewide elections in 2022 – Lake to Katie Hobbs in the governor’s race, Finchem to Fontes for secretary of state, and Hamadeh to Democrat Kris Mayes for attorney general.“It was the perfect case study,” said Mike Noble, a pollster based in Arizona. “All the election deniers standing in statewide races lost, while everything else down-ticket went to the Republicans.”Opinion polls tell the same story. A whopping 70% of Republicans nationally are still wedded to Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Yet such fondness for conspiracy theories does not translate to the general population.Republicans form 34% of Arizona’s electorate. But 30% identify as Democrats and another 35% are unaffiliated independents – voting blocs that are much less susceptible to the stolen election lie.Strangely, blanket statewide defeats do not appear to have dampened the Republican embrace of Trump’s deceit. “The rhetoric hasn’t stopped, terrible as it is for them,” Noble said.If anything, the debate around stolen elections has intensified. “New political careers have been created out of it. A whole industry and infrastructure now exists to make sure that it perpetuates itself,” said Stephen Richer, the Republican recorder of Maricopa county tasked with maintaining the voter files of 2.6 million citizens.Mayes, the state attorney general who is being sued – again – by Hamadeh two years after she beat him, is stark about the enduring strength of election denial. She was a Republican until 2019 when, dismayed by the direction in which Trump was dragging the party, she defected to the Democrats.“The Republican party in Arizona has been taken over by a faction that wants to undermine our democracy by sowing seeds of doubt about our election system,” she said. “As a former Republican, I find that horrendous, and nothing short of heartbreaking.”View image in fullscreenOf the first 13 cases prosecuted by the election threats taskforce, the unit set up within the US justice department in 2021 to protect election officials from the attacks unleashed by Trump, by far the largest number – five – relate to Arizona.Two of those involved death threats against Fontes’s office, including a bomb threat. A third was a threatened lynching directed at Clint Hickman, a Republican on the Maricopa county board of supervisors.The final two prosecutions both involved menaces against Richer. In one of the attacks, a Missouri man left a voicemail in which he warned the recorder to stop criticizing the state senate’s “audit” or “your ass will never make it to your next little board meeting”.In an interview, Richer was hesitant to discuss the bombardment he and his family have suffered from fellow Republicans. But he did say this: “The fracturing of my party saddens me. There are people who I consider to be part of my tribe, part of my team, who now view me as a bona fide enemy.”Even moderate Republicans who have long been forced out of the legislature are exposed to the aggravation. Rusty Bowers, the former speaker of the Arizona house who was ousted in 2022 for refusing to illegally overturn Biden’s win, has been out of office for 13 months but was still subjected on the day after Christmas to swatting – a fake prank anonymous call that brought police cars screeching to his house and officers scouring the premises.Bowers has a take on why he is still attracting Maga wrath all these months later: “Fear brings people tighter together, justifying mistreatment even of your own. It all becomes magnified. You know, we’re falling apart.”Arizona is suffering one of the severest brain drains of electoral knowhow in the country. Of its 15 counties, 12 have lost a top election administrator since the last presidential cycle, prised out by a constant barrage of bile.Most of those quitting are women, a reflection of the predominance of female election officials and the often sexually charged nature of the threats.Of the five members of the Maricopa county board of supervisors, two have announced they are not standing for re-election. Hickman, recipient of the lynching threat, said recently that “it’s gotten worse and worse … I thought I was looking way too much in the rearview mirror”.View image in fullscreenThe second departing supervisor is Bill Gates. In January, the attorney general secured a sentence of three years’ probation for a man who accused Gates of being a “corrupt Democrat” and threatened to poison him to death “multiple times”.In fact, Gates has been a loyal Republican since he was a teenager – he set up a Republican club in his high school when he was 16. “I’m a true child of the Reagan revolution,” he said in an interview.Gates had to evacuate his family from their home twice after being advised by the local sheriff they were in imminent danger. The low point came one Christmas when he posted a photo of his family on social media. A Trump supporter responded that his daughter should be raped.As the pressure reached a boiling point, Gates was diagnosed with PTSD. Since then he has worked hard to stabilize himself through therapy, but he struggles.It’s not just the death threats. Like Richer, he feels wounded that the attacks are coming from his own people.“It’s my team that’s going after me,” he said. “Four of us supervisors are Republicans in Maricopa. We stood up for democracy, we stood up for elections that are safe and secure, and we’ve been called Rinos, traitors, Marxist communists on a daily basis.”Gates said that there were several factors behind his decision, at this point, to leave public office once the presidential election is done. One of the largest is the trauma of these past four years.He said he would leave the supervisor job with a heavy heart, as he regards it as the most important work of his professional life. He will also depart with foreboding.“Democracy is teetering,” he said.What does he mean?“It is extremely difficult to win a Republican primary if you defend our election system. If that’s not teetering, I don’t know what is.”Kris Mayes is on the frontline of efforts to hold together Arizona’s teetering democracy. As the state’s top prosecutor, she is painfully aware that the eyes of the world were on Arizona in 2020 and 2022, and will be again in 2024.“Every election cycle, we seem to face a test,” she said, speaking in her office in downtown Phoenix. “I think we’re going to pass it, but it’s dangerous.”Mayes has aggressively prosecuted those who allegedly violate election laws. Last year she secured felony indictments for two Republican supervisors in Cochise county in the south of the state who were refusing to certify 2022 election results.View image in fullscreenIn Mohave county, a deeply conservative community in the north-west, she intervened in a fierce dispute over hand counts. Republican supervisors were pressing for hand counts only, calling for the scrapping of vote-counting machines – a move that Mayes pointed out in a letter would be unlawful and could attract serious legal consequences.She told the Guardian that her motive was deterrence. “We want to send a message that we will not put up with violations of the law, whether that’s sending a death threat to an election official or creating chaos in the election system,” she said.Despite the attorney general’s efforts, those in the thick of the gathering election storm are on edge. Security has been increased at the Runbeck Elections Services factory where ballots are printed.CEO Jeff Ellington said the aim was to protect staff and reassure voters that the process is watertight. Public tours of the factory have been stepped up. Extra cameras have been installed, and the facility has been reinforced against cybersecurity attacks. All trucks transporting ballots around the state and beyond are monitored with GPS.Most tellingly, armed guards are stationed at the facility around the clock.Ellington admits to being worried that the volatile events of 2020 and 2022 will repeat themselves. “People are very amped up. There’s a lot of misinformation out there. We’re just not a trusting nation right now,” he said.Assuaging such fears is one of the attorney general’s top priorities. “My focus is making sure we protect our elections, and our officials, against threats of violence,” Mayes said.One of her biggest pending decisions is whether to charge the 11 Republican “fake electors” who gathered on 14 December 2020 to cast “alternative” electoral college votes for Trump, even though by then his defeat had been confirmed. A “very serious investigation” is under way, she said, promising that it would be completed.But she was coy about whether she would follow Georgia, Michigan and Nevada in pressing charges against the fake electors. “We’re spending the time we need to see that justice is done,” was her careful choice of words.The attorney general’s decision will be of some interest to Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern, leading Republicans in the state senate. They were among the 11 fake electors, and Kern went on to appear at the attack at the US Capitol on January 6.The two senators are also key members of the Freedom Caucus, the alliance of far-right Republican lawmakers that dominates the legislature. Since the advent of Trump, the Arizona Republican party has moved relentlessly to the right, with the Freedom Caucus accumulating power while moderate Republicans have been driven out.The Freedom Caucus is umbilically linked to Turning Point Action, the political arm of Turning Point USA, which is based in Phoenix. The group, under the leadership of the pro-Trump activist Charlie Kirk, has catalyzed the party’s rightward march.Before he entered the legislature, Hoffman was head of communications for Turning Point USA. The group’s chief operating officer, Tyler Bowyer, is a close ally of Hoffman’s and represents Arizona on the Republican National Committee.“Turning Point is now a national advocacy group for culture warriors,” said Chuck Coughlin, a Phoenix-based political consultant and CEO of Highground Inc. “They’ve taken over the Arizona Republican party.”According to Public Wise, 12 of the 16 Republicans in the Arizona senate have participated in election denialism or other acts that undermine confidence in democracy. Of the 32 Republican state lawmakers listed on the election threats index, almost half have introduced anti-democratic legislation and 84% have voted for it.Recent bills proposed by far-right lawmakers include:
      House bill (HB) 2472, which would make it easier to challenge election results in court, removing legal hurdles that led to Lake and Hamadeh’s lawsuits being dismissed for lack of evidence;

      Senate bill (SB) 1471 and HB2722, which would promote hand counts of all ballots, a key demand of election deniers who claim without proof that vote-counting equipment is rigged; and

      (HB)2415, which would strip Arizonans from the early voter list whenever they fail to vote.
      None of these bills have hope of being enacted, given the veto power of Hobbs, the Democratic governor. Last year she vetoed a record 143 bills, dismissing them with such tart remarks as “the 2020 election is settled” and “it’s time to move on”.Of all the recent moves from Republican lawmakers, the most striking has been SCR1014, a senate constitutional resolution introduced in January by Kern. It rehashes a highly dubious judicial doctrine championed by Trump’s lawyer John Eastman in the buildup to the January 6 insurrection.The “independent state legislature theory” claims that the US constitution gives state legislatures – as opposed to individual voters – the power to choose who becomes the next president. “The Legislature, and no other official, shall appoint presidential electors in accordance with the US Constitution,” Kern’s resolution bluntly states.SCR1014 has no chance of becoming law – it would require a majority of Arizonans to back the idea in a ballot initiative, which in effect would be asking the state’s 4 million registered voters to disenfranchise themselves. But the resolution does lay down a road map of the Freedom Caucus’s intentions.The Guardian invited Kern to explain his resolution, but he did not respond.Sonny Borrelli, the majority leader of the Arizona senate and a fellow Freedom Caucus member, was willing to talk.In his senate office, he began by reaffirming his conviction that Arizona’s 2020 result, which put Biden ahead by 10,457 votes, was unreliable. “I believe that it was an uncertifiable election, so whether Trump won or Biden won, we just don’t know,” he said.View image in fullscreenHe ran through several allegations of fraud, all of which have been thoroughly investigated and debunked. They included “video footage of people stuffing ballots” into drop boxes (the core of the discredited film 2000 Mules by the conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza) and “22,000 dead voters’ signatures”.Last year Borrelli sponsored SB1074, which would require all vote-counting equipment to be made exclusively out of US-manufactured parts. Hobbs vetoed that bill too, pointing out that no such machines existed.Borrelli then went on a grand tour of Arizona counties, instructing election supervisors that they had to conform to a non-binding resolution banning electronic voting machines. “We need to go back to hand-count paper ballots,” he told the Guardian. “Anything is hackable, so why take that chance?”November’s presidential contest will not be hand-counted in Arizona. The elections director of Maricopa county has estimated that it would take an additional 25,000 temporary workers to carry out a hand count of the presidential election, working nine-hour shifts for 25 straight days – a monumental feat that would set the county back some $71m.Borrelli is confident that despite failing to secure hand counts, his side is ready for November.“People throughout the state are stepping up. There will be a lot more volunteers at the polls, and they will be more aware. They are going to be watching better.”View image in fullscreenWhat if the presidential contest erupts in a fiery dispute, as it did in Arizona in 2020? Could he conceive of Kern’s resolution being rolled out and the legislature wresting control?“I believe our US constitution grants us the authority,” Borrelli said. “We have plenary authority over the presidential election, meaning we can choose the electors – the constitution says so.”But wouldn’t that be overturning the will of the Arizonan people?“How could you overturn the will of the people,” he said, “if the people didn’t actually get what they were supposed to be getting?”The drive west to Borrelli’s constituency traverses moonscapes of dry cactus deserts, cracked rocky outcrops and windswept mesa. The politics of the 30th district are, like the scenery, unforgiving, rugged and proud.First stop is Kingman, a scraggy town of 32,000 on Route 66. A bikers’ shop on the side of the highway sells Trump memorabilia and other Maga delights.There are T-shirts imprinted with Trump’s scowling mugshot taken when he was charged with illegally trying to overturn the election in Georgia, above the caption: “Nuff said.” Confederate flags fly from the roof stamped with the motto “Heritage not hate”.Maggie Passaro, 69, is a Kingman resident who at a public meeting of the Mohave county supervisors board in November became so distraught over hand counts that she almost burst into tears.She tells her life story over coffee in the Route 66 diner. She inherited from her father strong anti-government leanings. “Little one, don’t ever trust the government, they all lie and cheat,” he would tell her.As an adult, Passaro worked variously as a bartender, dancer, artist and caregiver to her ailing mom. She flirted with the Tea Party and with the birther movement that claimed falsely that Barack Obama was not American, but her true engagement with politics only came with Trump.After her mother died, she became so detached from public life that she didn’t vote in 2016. On 20 January 2017, she was listening to a local radio station and was astonished to hear Trump’s inauguration speech – she hadn’t even realized he had won the presidency.With Trump in the White House, she started burrowing down into online rabbit holes, following Cathy O’Brien and other conspiracy theorists. Her news source became the podcast of Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon and the misinformation website of Dan Bongino.A warm and affable woman, Passaro admitted freely that she tends to obsess over things. She watches online videos for days on end. “I won’t sleep until I’ve seen them all,” she said.One such obsession is the alleged stealing from Trump of the 2020 election using rigged vote-counting machines. Passaro talked with animation about PCAPS – so called “packet captures” that Trump associates like the My Pillow founder, Mike Lindell, claim are proof that China controlled the machines.By last fall, Passaro had become so incensed that when she heard that Mohave county supervisors were holding a public meeting to discuss hand counts, she vowed to be there. That’s when she almost wept: when she heard someone say that hand counts were too slow and expensive to adopt in Mohave county.“I thought:‘Oh, you stupid ass!’” Passaro said, her eyes welling up again. “How much value do you put on your freedom? What’s your life worth? It’s priceless, you can’t put a value on it! You cannot have a life without freedom!”Why was that moment so overwhelming for her?“I do get very, very emotional,” she said.Why?“I’m afraid we’re losing our country.”About an hour’s drive farther west is Lake Havasu City, a dusty desert city on the banks of the Colorado River. This is home to Ron Gould, the Mohave county supervisor who has spearheaded the push to scrap machines and move to hand counts.When the Guardian asked Gould to give his take on why hand counts are so important, he offered a different analysis. He wasn’t touting PCAPs or Chinese hacking.He even admitted that hand counts weren’t necessary in a place like Mohave. “Machines aren’t the big problem, it’s not really an issue in my county,” he said.The paradox is that the loudest, most passionate expressions of election denial are being made in staunch conservative parts of the state where the results of ballots are never in dispute. Trump trounced Biden in Mohave county by 75% to 24% – a margin that nobody would challenge.View image in fullscreenSo why is Gould so fired up? At the public meeting in which Passaro teared up, he told the crowd that he was willing to go to jail if it meant his county could hand-count the ballot. He also recently sued Mayes over the attorney general’s letter warning of criminal charges if the supervisors switched to manual counting.Gould explained his suit in personal terms: “I’m tired of them threatening me, that’s really what my lawsuit is about.”But he cast his compulsion for hand counts in much more portentous terms. It was all about democracy, he said: “I’m concerned that people are losing faith in elections. I’m concerned that people will decide not to vote because they think it’s rigged, and then you lose the democratic process. If going to a hand count takes care of it, that’s why I back it.”Gould is seeking to alleviate his constituents’ growing doubts about democracy by sowing doubts about democracy. Wouldn’t it be easier than moving to costly and cumbersome hand counts simply to tell his constituents that voting machines work?“They’re hearing that from everybody, and that doesn’t make them believe it’s true. So if hand counts are what they want, I’m going to give them what they want,” he said.Where does he think this could end?“In a revolution, actually,” he said. “People are ginned up. They feel disenfranchised, disgusted, that they have no control over their lives or the political direction of their country. If they can’t solve it at the ballot box, then they’re going to do it in other ways.” More

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      ‘Everything is possible’: a worrying new book explores the danger of disinformation

      by

      You might not have heard of Rosanne Boyland. She made the 10-hour drive from Kennesaw, Georgia, to Washington on 5 January 2021. The next day, the 34-year-old died after losing consciousness in the crush of a mob of Donald Trump supporters as it surged against US Capitol police. She would never have been there, her sister said later, “if it weren’t for all the misinformation”.The tragedy opens Barbara McQuade’s new book, Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America. The NBC News and MSNBC legal analyst explores how the deliberate spreading of lies disguised as truth has been weaponised to consolidate power in the hands of the few, undermine legal structures and drive voters such as Boyland. It is both cause and symptom of the US’s corrosive polarisation.A former national security prosecutor, McQuade has seen the threat of disinformation evolve from al-Qaida to Islamic State to cyber-attacks from Russia. Teaching at the University of Michigan Law School, where she is a professor, she had her students study special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on 2016 election interference by Russia.“I was fascinated by the details of accounts that were created by Russian operatives with names like Blacktivist or Heart of Texas posing as grassroots activists on the right or the left or various groups, and then taking very divisive stands on various issues just in an effort to sow discord,” McQuade, 59, says in an interview in the lobby of a Washington hotel.It was then Trump’s bogus “stop the steal” movement in 2020, based on the big lie of widespread voter fraud rejected in more than 60 lawsuits and by his own attorney general, that inspired her to write the book. It considers lessons learned ahead of a potential repeat in 2024 as the US braces for a Joe Biden v Trump rematch.“We will definitely get interference from foreign adversaries, including Russia and probably China, North Korea, maybe Iran, but there is a domestic part of this now where we are already hearing Donald Trump talk about how voting by mail is unreliable and laying the groundwork so that, if and when he loses, and there are more Democrats who have voted by mail than Republicans, he will have credibility.View image in fullscreen“He will say: ‘See, I won the election and then it all flipped for me. It was fraud.’ The same strategy that he used in in 2020. I don’t know if he’ll have new strategies but ‘stop the steal’ was a classic disinformation influence campaign based on no evidence whatsoever.”Trump commentary falls into categories. Some stop short of drawing comparisons with Adolf Hitler, perhaps wary of Godwin’s law, which holds that as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches. Others dive in, arguing that some aspects of Trump’s authoritarianism, nativism and charisma do evoke the Nazi tyrant in enlightening ways.McQuade goes there with an “authoritarian playbook” charting a brief history of disinformation from Hitler and Benito Mussolini to Jair Bolsonaro and Trump and noting the tactics: demonising the other, seducing with nostalgia, silencing critics, muzzling the media, condemning the courts and stoking violence.She elaborates: “Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that there are two things that are essential to effective propaganda. One was a very simple repeatable message because when people hear a message repeated again and again – and start hearing it from different sources – they begin to believe it to be true.“The other is that the bigger the lie, the more likely it is to be believed. All of us are guilty of white lies from time to time that we might say out of kindness. My sister might say your hair looks fine when she means anything but, or my husband might say to me, no, dear, that dress doesn’t make you look fat.“They’re saying these things out of kindness, even though they might be technically lying. As Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, most people would not ever imagine that anyone could have the audacity to lie about something that is so significant – he was talking about the role of Jewish people in society, for example.“But here the big lie for Trump was that the election has been stolen because people say: ‘How could you possibly pull that off? It’s so ridiculous.’ That’s part of what gives it its credibility and he knows that so I worry we’re going to begin to hear that again, and there are a significant number of Americans who still believe that the 2020 election was stolen. There will always be people who are manipulated by those strategies.”Now the history of the January 6 insurrection itself is being rewritten, with the rioters recast as “patriots” and, if tried and imprisoned, as “hostages” whom Trump is promising to pardon if elected. Opinion polls show that more than a third of Americans believe that Biden’s election was illegitimate; Republicans are more sympathetic to the US Capitol rioters now than they were in 2021.McQuade says with some dismay: “They assaulted people, they brought weapons, they broke windows, they spread faeces on the walls of the temple of democracy, they carried Confederate flags in there. Now to refer to it as legitimate political discourse or ordinary tourist activity, and then to refer to people who have been arrested, charged and imprisoned for their crimes as hostages, is absolutely a brand of disinformation. I’m curious to see how many people will continue to fall for that in this election.”View image in fullscreenTrump svengali Steve Bannon, an arch election denier and vaccine conspiracy theorist, once memorably declared that the real opposition was the media and the way to deal with them was to “flood the zone with shit”. This brings to mind the Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin. McQuade cites the Russian author and journalist Peter Pomerantsev on “the fog of unknowability”.She explains: “Everything is possible and nothing matters, and so everything’s PR because people begin to doubt the very existence of truth. One day Putin might say the missiles were shot by Ukraine; the next day the missiles were shot by Russia; the next day the missiles were shot by Nato.“People don’t know what to think and consistency doesn’t matter. In fact, inconsistency is part of the point, because first people become angry and then they become cynical and then finally they become numb and disengaged from politics altogether and so that’s a very dangerous place for democracy.“The other thing that people think in Russia is that truth is for suckers: you should just get what you can while you can and everybody is corrupt, which is one of the things that causes Donald Trump to constantly be suggesting that the Bidens are corrupt – if everybody is corrupt, then it gives you permission to overlook Donald Trump’s corruption, right?“‘Well, they’re all corrupt. Who knows what to believe? All these investigations are themselves weaponised and corrupt so I might as well look for someone who is strong, who will advance my values despite all of his corruption.’ This normalisation of corruption is something that is part of it all as well.”How has it come to this? McQuade, who was born in Detroit and lives Ann Arbor, Michigan, identifies three central causes. First, the delivery mechanism of disinformation has changed. For centuries, the deceiver had to rely on word of mouth or leaflets or planting a false story, perhaps in a foreign newspaper, in the hope that someone would pick it up and pass it on. Now someone can spread a lie at the push of a button.“Social media is a wonderful tool and can connect us to people all over the world in wonderful ways, but can also be used as a weapon when people want to and so it has been a really efficient vehicle for delivering disinformation,” says the author. “They’re completely unaccountable and we have ceded all of our power on social media to a handful of young bro billionaires, whose interest, of course, is in their own profits, not in the social good.”Second, we are living through the worst political divisions in America since the 1861-1865 civil war. McQuade reckons it began with the combative, attention-grabbing Republican Newt Gingrich in the 1990s, and has grown as parties concentrate on turning out their bases rather than finding common ground. With elections framed as an existential struggle between good and evil, voters demand political purity. “If my tribe says X then I say X too, even if I don’t believe X to be true.”Third, there is anxiety about a changing world: the climate crisis, refugees and border security, economic shifts with potential job losses. It is fertile soil for demagogues who promise that they alone can fix it. “We have leaders who want to use that to stoke fear because they perceive that that will be in their own political interest to attract those voters who are concerned about those changes and attract them into their own fold.“It’s a combination of those three things that Donald Trump has exploited in this country like no one we’ve ever seen. I don’t think that he’s necessarily a political genius, but I do think he’s a conman and a marketing genius who knows how to sell things. He’s a huckster and he has taken advantage of this moment for personal and political gain.”The huckster’s rise nearly a decade ago caught the media off guard. The old and laudable rules of balance, impartiality and not editorialising no longer seemed to work when one candidate was so blatantly mendacious. The New York Times newspaper broke the seal in 2016 with the headline: Trump Gives Up a Lie but Refuses to Repent. But as another election looms, McQuade worries that journalists have still not figured out how to cover him.“That which is novel is always newsworthy, that which is controversial is always newsworthy, and so they present those things. But in an effort to present both sides of a story and in a tradition of not calling people liars, they have allowed Donald Trump and his supporters to manipulate them and play them. They’ll just say he made a statement that is not backed up by evidence; say he’s lying! You gotta say it out loud.”View image in fullscreenBut Attack from Within is not a letter of surrender or obituary of America. McQuade offers solutions for countering disinformation and maintaining the rule of law, such as making domestic terrorism a federal crime, reviving local journalism, criminalising doxxing (the act of revealing identifying information about someone online) and considering a ban on online anonymous accounts.The former US attorney for the eastern district of Michigan urges politicians to get ahead of the curve of artificial intelligence. “I hope that our Congress can do something which we failed to do with social media, which is get ahead of it, because if it can put things in place before they create havoc, it’s much easier than trying to react after the fact.”Individual citizens, she says, can gain skills be critical consumers of social media. “We can educate ourselves and take responsibility by doing things like, when we read an article, don’t rely just on the headline; we should actually read the article before we forward it to someone else.“We should look for second sources of a story; if there’s an outrageous story, someone else will be reporting it. If there is data in a story, we should look at that data. How big was the sample set? Was it a sample of three or a sample of 3m? That makes a difference. Were the results of this study a causation or just coincidence with an outcome? We need to do that.”McQuade also calls for increasing media literacy in schools and a revival of teaching civics rather than focusing on test scores. “Civics education is important for all of us, because when someone explains to you how the separation of powers works and how the three branches of government work, it is impossible to believe that a president could be immune from prosecution. We all need that education.”
      Attack from Within is out now More

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      Fani Willis thanks deputy Nathan Wade for ‘patriotism and courage’ after accepting his resignation – as it happened

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      Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor in the Georgia racketeering case against Donald Trump and his co-defendants, has resigned.Wade’s resignation comes after a ruling by the judge overseeing the Trump Georgia case that district attorney Fani Willis can continue to head the prosecution, as long as Wade steps down from the case.Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
      Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor in the Georgia racketeering case against Donald Trump and his co-defendants, has resigned. Wade’s resignation comes after a ruling by the judge overseeing the Trump Georgia case that district attorney Fani Willis can continue to head the prosecution, as long as Wade steps down from the case.
      Donald Trump has responded to Nathan Wade’s resignation in yet another fiery Truth Social post. Writing on his social media platform, Trump said: “…Nathan was the ‘Special,’ in more ways than one, Prosecutor ‘engaged’ by Fani (pronounced Fauni!) Willis, to persecute TRUMP for Crooked Joe Biden and his Department of Injustice…”
      Donald Trump has endorsed John Barrasso for the next Senate Republican whip, the conference’s number two spot. Barrasso is a “fantastic” senator for Wyoming who will “never let you down”, Trump posted to Truth Social on Thursday evening.
      New York judge Juan Merchan has delayed Donald Trump’s hush money trial, which was set to begin on March 25, to mid-April. “There are significant questions of fact which this Court must resolve before it may rule on Defendant’s motion,” Merchant wrote.
      The White House’s top lawyer told House Republicans to give up on their impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden in a letter addressed to the House speaker, Mike Johnson. A spokesperson for Johnson said it was not up to the White House to decide what happened with the inquiry.
      Joe Biden defended the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, over comments he made on Thursday calling on Israel to hold new elections and harshly criticizing its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. “I’m not going to elaborate on the speech. He made a good speech,” Biden said.
      Joe Biden welcomed the Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, at the White House. Varadkar told Biden that his priority was to get a ceasefire in Gaza as soon as possible to allow humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory.
      New York judge Juan Merchan has delayed Donald Trump’s hush money trial, which was set to begin on March 25, to mid-April.“There are significant questions of fact which this Court must resolve before it may rule on Defendant’s motion,” Merchant wrote.Earlier this month, Trump’s lawyers had argued for a 90-day delay, saying that they needed more time to review thousands of pages of evidence. However, they later said that they agreed to the 30-day delay “in an abundance of caution and to ensure that defendant has sufficient time to review the new materials.”The hush money case revolves around alleged payments Trump secretly made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016 during his presidential campaign in an attempt to conceal their alleged sexual encounter.Last year, Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony charges in the case.Donald Trump is the true winner in the decision on Fani Willis in the Georgia election interference case, the Guardian’s Sam Levine writes:Fani Willis may have survived a high-stakes effort to disqualify her from prosecuting the high-stakes election interference case in Georgia. But the biggest winner from the episode is likely Donald Trump.The Fulton county district attorney can now continue prosecuting her case against Trump and 14 co-defendants as long as Nathan Wade, a top deputy with whom she had a romantic relationship with, resigns, Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee ruled on Friday. Wade did just that a few hours later.But both the opinion and the extraordinary hearing that preceded it lends a hugely significant judicial imprimatur to Trump’s successful effort to diminish Willis’ credibility in the public eye.Trump and his co-defendants have waged a successful campaign to diminish the perception of her – puncturing her reputation as an impartial prosecutor seeking justice and instead offering up the image of a flawed public official whose romantic feelings led to a lapse in judgment.For the full story, click here:Donald Trump has responded to Nathan Wade’s resignation in yet another fiery Truth Social post.Writing on his social media platform, Trump said:“The Fani Willis lover, Mr. Nathan Wade Esq., has just resigned in disgrace, as per his and her reading of the Judge’s Order today. Nathan was the ‘Special,’ in more ways than one, Prosecutor ‘engaged’ by Fani (pronounced Fauni!) Willis, to persecute TRUMP for Crooked Joe Biden and his Department of Injustice, for purposes of Election Interference and living the life of the Rich & Famous…”In his resignation letter to district attorney Fani Willis, Nathan Wade said:“I am offering my resignation in the interest of democracy, in dedication to the American public, and to move this case forward as quickly as possible.I am proud of the work our team has accomplished in investigating, indicting and litigating this case. Seeking justice for the people of Georgia and the United States, and being part of the effort to ensure that the rule of law and democracy are preserved, has been the honor of a lifetime.”Nathan Wade’s resignation allows Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis to remain on the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump, but the long-term damage to her credibility and the public perception of the prosecution remains unclear.Despite Judge Scott McAfee’s ruling giving Willis the option to stay on the case, his decision offered a harsh analysis of her conduct and underscoring questions about her judgment that were exposed during a multi-day hearing.In his ruling, McAfee said Willis had demonstrated “tremendous lapse in judgment”, noting that Georgia law “does not permit the finding of an actual conflict for simply making bad choices – even repeatedly maintaining such a relationship.”Trump and allies are likely to seize on those punches as they continue to defend themselves in the case.Donald Trump has endorsed John Barrasso for the next Senate Republican whip, the conference’s number two spot.Barrasso is a “fantastic” senator for Wyoming who will “never let you down”, Trump posted to Truth Social on Thursday evening.Barrasso, 71, is the third-ranking Senate Republican as chair of the Senate Republican conference and relatively popular with the Republican right. He endorsed Trump in January and has also supported several “Make America great again” candidates for the Senate, including election denier Kari Lake in Arizona.Barrasso is running unopposed for the whip position to replace John Thune, who is running to replace Mitch McConnell as Senate Republican leader.Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis accepted Nathan Wade’s resignation from the election interference case against Donald Trump and his co-defendants in Georgia in a letter where she thanked him for his “patriotism, courage, and dedication to justice.”In the letter, Willis said she accepted her top deputy’s resignation effective immediately, and said she will “always remember … that you were brave enough to step forward and take on” the investigation into the former president and his allies. She wrote:
      I compliment you for the professionalism and dignity you have shown over the last 865 days, as you have endured threats against you and your family, as well as unjustified attacks in the media and in court on your reputation as a lawyer.
      She concluded the letter by writing:
      Please accept my sincere gratitude on behalf of the citizens of Fulton county Georgia for your patriotism, courage, and dedication to justice. I wish you the best in your future endeavors.
      The decision by Nathan Wade to step down from his role as special prosecutor in the Georgia racketeering case against Donald Trump and his co-defendants means that district attorney Fani Willis can continue leading the prosecution.The ruling earlier today by Judge Scott McAfee came after hearings that offered a dramatic deviation from the case against Trump and his allies as it investigated Willis’s romantic relationship with Wade, her top deputy.The question at the heart of the matter was whether Willis had a conflict of interest in the case because of her relationship with Wade. Michael Roman, one of the 14 remaining defendants in the case, filed a motion in January saying Willis should be disqualified from handling the case because of her romantic relationship with Wade, which was not publicly known at the time.The two eventually admitted their relationship, but said it did not begin until 2022, after Wade was hired to work on the Trump case. Wade acknowledged that he paid for vacations for the two of them to places such as Napa in California and Aruba, but he and Willis both said she paid him back in cash.In his ruling, the judge said Wade could withdraw from the case, “allowing the district attorney, the defendants, and the public to move forward without his presence or remuneration distracting from and potentially compromising the merits of this case”.Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor in the Georgia racketeering case against Donald Trump and his co-defendants, has resigned.Wade’s resignation comes after a ruling by the judge overseeing the Trump Georgia case that district attorney Fani Willis can continue to head the prosecution, as long as Wade steps down from the case.After the House fast-tracked a bill that would force China-based ByteDance to divest from TikTok or face a nationwide ban, senators say they want the chamber to take its time deciding whether to back the legislation.The House voted 352-65 on Wednesday, just eight days after the proposal was introduced. There is broad support in the Senate for taking action to address national security threats from foreign apps like TikTok but no agreement on the right approach.The Senate commerce committee chair, Maria Cantwell, said in an interview with Reuters she wants legislation to address broad concerns about foreign apps that will hold up in court and is not sure the House bill goes far enough.“We’ll probably have a better idea in a week what we think the options are,” Cantwell said, adding that she had thought about holding hearings.Senator Ron Wyden, a leading Democrat on tech issues, said he was still reviewing the House bill and has “serious concerns about any app that gives the Chinese government access to Americans’ private data.
      I’ll also say this: history teaches us that when lawmakers rush to legislate on tech and social media, mistakes get made.
      Fani Willis may have survived a high-stakes effort to disqualify her from prosecuting the high-stakes election interference case in Georgia. But the biggest winner from the episode is likely Donald Trump.The Fulton county district attorney can now continue prosecuting her case against Trump and 14 co-defendants as long as Nathan Wade, a top deputy with whom she had a romantic relationship with, resigns, Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee ruled on Friday.But both the opinion and the extraordinary hearing that preceded it lends a hugely significant judicial imprimatur to Trump’s successful effort to diminish Willis’ credibility in the public eye.Trump and his co-defendants have waged a successful campaign to diminish the perception of her – puncturing her reputation as an impartial prosecutor seeking justice and instead offering up the image of a flawed public official whose romantic feelings led to a lapse in judgment.Friday’s developments are extremely significant. The Georgia case has long been considered one of the strongest against Trump. Unlike the two criminal cases being pursued by the justice department, it is also insulated from any direct interference by Trump should he win the 2024 election since he cannot dismiss the prosecutor or pardon himself in Georgia, even if he occupies the White House.Read the full analysis by the Guardian’s voting rights reporter, Sam Levine: Trump is the true winner in the decision on Fani Willis in the Georgia caseThe Georgia judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state on Friday declined to remove Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, from leading the prosecution, finding there was no conflict of interest stemming from her romantic relationship with her top deputy.But the judge, Scott McAfee, ruled the relationship had the “appearance of impropriety” and gave Willis a choice: either she could step down, or the deputy, special prosecutor Nathan Wade, could do so.If, as seems likely, Wade is now to be dropped from the prosecution, the case against Trump can continue with Willis leading it. But it will be one that is deeply politically damaged, especially due to the scathing criticism of her by McAfee.Here are the top takeaways from the 23-page ruling.Leo Varadkar, the Irish taoiseach, is in Washington today visiting Joe Biden and attending happenings on Capitol Hill.Varadkar used his remarks at a luncheon to thank the United States for its work to bring peace between Ireland and Northern Ireland — part of the United Kingdom — with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, The Associated Press reports.Joe Biden said:
      May the hinge of our friendship never grow rusty.”
      Both the US president and the Irish taoiseach, or prime minister, spoke up for continued international support for Ukraine in its grinding resistance two years into Russia’s invasion.
      Ukraine must not fall and together, we need to stand by Ukraine for as long as it takes. We look forward to working with America for the next 100 years,” said Varadkar.
      Joe Biden and Mike Johnson have been shaking hands, smiling, sitting next to each other. You’d almost think Congress was functioning and the Democratic-controlled White House was happy with everything that’s going on in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.The US president and the Speaker of the House are at, to quote the White House, the Friends of Ireland Caucus St Patrick’s Day Luncheon.You know that when someone says “luncheon” it’s an official function calling for decorum and delicacies, both diplomatic and gastronomic.The White House pool report says that Johnson stepped to the microphone first in the Rayburn Room. He introduced Biden, who was smiling while he sat nearby listening, as “someone who is known everywhere as America’s most famous Irishman.”Pool continues: The president, in a blue suit and green tie, then made general remarks about Ireland – Irish poets, Irish history, Irish American heritage.“And excuse me for saying this,” Biden said turning his attention to the situation in Ukraine after noting the shared US and Irish commitment to freedom, “but I think the vast majority of members of Congress” are willing to do their part” to stand up to Russian aggression.The latest tranche of US funding for Ukraine to counter the Russian invasion passed the Senate but has stalled in the House.Irish leader Leo Varadkar is visiting Biden today and is attending the luncheon.Israel said on Friday it would send a delegation to Qatar for fresh talks on a ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza, keeping faint hopes for a truce alive despite rejecting a long-awaited counter-offer from Hamas, Reuters reports.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office also said he had approved a plan for an assault on Rafah, the city on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip where more than half of the territory’s 2.3 million residents are sheltering, though it gave no timeframe for such an attack.Negotiators failed this week to reach a ceasefire agreement for the Gaza war in time for the Ramadan Muslim holy month. But Washington and Arab mediators are still determined to reach a deal to head off an Israeli assault on Rafah and let in humanitarian aid to stave off mass starvation.Underlining growing disquiet in Washington, US Secretary of State Antony Blinkentold reporters in Austria that the United States needed to see a clear and implementable plan for Rafah, including to get civilians out of harm’s way.You can follow all the developments from the Middle East in our story coverage and, currently, our separate live blog on the situation in Gaza.The lawyer who filed the original motion against Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis has called the judge’s ruling “a vindication”.Ashleigh Merchant, who represents Donald Trump’s co-defendant Michael Roman, released the following statement:
      The judge clearly agreed with the defense that the actions of Willis are a result of her poor judgment and that there is a risk to the future of this case if she doesn’t quickly work to cure her conflict.
      While we do not agree that the courts suggested cure is adequate in response to the egregious conduct by the district attorney, we look forward to the district attorneys response to the demands by the court.
      The Georgia judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state has ruled that the district attorney Fani Willis can continue to head the prosecution, as long as a special prosecutor in the case and her top deputy, Nathan Wade, steps down. The decision avoids catastrophe for Willis, but it still significantly harms her credibility and underscores questions about her judgment.
      Here are the top takeaways from the 23-page ruling by the judge, Scott McAfee.
      You can also read the judge’s full decision here.
      Trump lawyer Steve Sadow said his team will “use all legal options available” to continue to fight the Georgia election case.
      A former assistant US attorney, Andrew Weissmann, called on Willis to voluntarily recuse herself from the case against Trump and his allies.
      Republican senator Lindsey Graham called the judge’s decision “nonsensical” and “bizarre”.
      Also:
      The White House’s top lawyer told House Republicans to give up on their impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden in a letter addressed to the House speaker, Mike Johnson. A spokesperson for Johnson said it was not up to the White House to decide what happened with the inquiry.
      Joe Biden defended the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, over comments he made on Thursday calling on Israel to hold new elections and harshly criticizing its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
      The supreme court will hear oral arguments on Monday in a case with the potential to radically redefine how the US government interacts with social media companies.
      Biden welcomed the Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, at the White House. Varadkar told Biden that his priority was to get a ceasefire in Gaza as soon as possible to allow humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory.
      A spokesperson for House speaker Mike Johnson has responded to a letter sent by the White House’s top lawyer urging House Republicans to give up on their impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.In a scathing letter on Friday, White House counsel Ed Siskel told Johnson “it is clear the House Republican impeachment is over” and noting that despite collecting over 100,000 pages of records and conducting interviews with dozens of witnesses, including multiple public hearings, “none of the evidence has demonstrated that the president did anything wrong.”Raj Shah, a spokesperson for Johnson, accused Biden of lying and said it was not up to the White House to decide what happened with the inquiry. An email shared by Reuters reads:
      The White House does not get to decide how impeachment gets resolved, that is for Congress to decide. More

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      Mike Pence will not endorse Donald Trump’s presidential campaign

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      Mike Pence will not endorse for president Donald Trump, the man he served as vice-president for four years but whose supporters chanted for Pence to be hanged as they attacked Congress on January 6.“It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year,” the former Indiana governor and former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination told Fox News on Friday.Asked why, given that he previously promised to endorse the eventual nominee, Pence mentioned 6 January 2021, the day a mob attacked Congress and Trump was reported to have told aides Pence “deserved” to be hanged for refusing to block certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.But Pence placed more emphasis on policies pursued by Trump as he has secured the Republican nomination, a success achieved despite now facing 88 criminal charges under four indictments and suffering multimillion-dollar civil penalties over his business affairs and a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Pence said he was “incredibly proud of the record of our administration. It was a conservative record that made America more prosperous, more secure, and saw conservatives appointed to our courts in a more peaceful world.“But that being said, during my presidential campaign” – which he ended in October, months before the first vote, in Iowa – “I made it clear that there were profound differences between me and President Trump on a range of issues, and not just our difference on my constitutional duties that I exercised on January 6.“As I have watched his candidacy unfold, I’ve seen him walking away from our commitment to confronting the national debt. I’ve seen him starting to shy away from a commitment to the sanctity of human life.”The US national debt ballooned under Trump and Pence.On abortion rights, the supreme court to which Trump appointed three rightwingers did remove federal rights in 2022. But Republicans have since suffered a succession of election defeats as Democrats campaign on the issue.As Trump claims credit for appointing those justices, Democrats are positioning to make reproductive rights a central issue in November.Pence also cited Trump’s “reversal” on “getting tough on China and supporting our administration’s effort to force the sale of … TikTok”.Pence refused to speculate on why Trump has come out against forcing the sale by ByteDance, TikTok’s China-based parent company.He said: “What I can tell you is that in each of these cases, Donald Trump is pursuing and articulating an agenda that is at odds with the conservative agenda that we governed on during our four years.“And that’s why I cannot in good conscience endorse Donald Trump in this campaign.”Most of Trump’s former rivals for the Republican nomination have now endorsed him. The last to drop out, the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, has not.Opponents of Trump welcomed Pence’s decision not to endorse.Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who retired from Congress over his opposition to Trump, said simply: “Good job Mike Pence.”Tommy Vietor, an aide to Barack Obama turned political commentator, said: “I did not expect this from Mike Pence. Credit to him for showing some backbone. This is a big deal.”But Pence, who has outlined plans to spend $20m this year in an attempt to shape the conservative agenda, told Fox News he would not vote for Biden.“I’m a Republican,” he said. “How I vote when that curtain closes, that’ll be for me.” More

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      Can US Congress control the abuse of AI in the 2024 election? – podcast

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      In January, voters in New Hampshire answered a phone call from what sounded like President Joe Biden. What turned out to be an AI-generated robocall caused a stir because it was trying to convince Democratic voters not to turn up to polling stations on election day.
      In response to this scam, just a couple of weeks later, the US government outlawed robocalls that use voices generated by artificial intelligence. But experts are warning that this story is just one example of why 2024 will be a year of unprecedented election disinformation in the US and around the world.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland and Rachel Leingang discuss why people are so worried about the influence of artificial intelligence on November’s presidential election, and what politicians can do to catch up

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Netanyahu’s Likud party says Israel ‘not a banana republic’ after Chuck Schumer calls for new elections – live

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      Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party has responded to Chuck Schumer’s calls for new elections, saying that Israel is “not a banana republic”.It went on to say, “Contrary to Schumer’s words, the Israeli public supports a total victory over Hamas, rejects any international dictates to establish a Palestinian terrorist state, and opposes the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza.”“Senator Schumer is expected to respect Israel’s elected government and not undermine it. This is always true, and even more so in wartime,” it added.Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
      Prosecutors in Donald Trump’s hush-money case said they were not opposed to a 30-day delay in the trial, currently set to begin on 25 March, due to a recent disclosure of thousands of pages of documents by federal prosecutors.
      Kamala Harris visited a Planned Parenthood clinic in Minnesota, marking what her office said was the first time a president or vice-president has toured a facility that performs abortions, as the White House escalates its defense of reproductive rights in this year’s election.
      Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer called for Israel to hold new elections, saying he believed the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had “lost his way” and risked turning the country into a pariah with its bombardment of Gaza and the worsening humanitarian crisis it caused. Schumer also called for Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas to step down.
      Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell hit back at Schumer’s comments calling for new Israeli leadership, describing them as “grotesque and hypocritical”. Republican House speaker Mike Johnson said Schumer’s comments were “highly inappropriate”. House Republican conference chair Elise Stefanik said Schumer “does not stand with Israel”.
      Israel’s ruling Likud party responded to Schumer by defending Netanyahu’s public support and saying Israel is “not a banana republic”.
      Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Herzog, said Schumer’s remarks were “unhelpful” and “counterproductive to our common goals”.
      Dozens of American Muslim and Palestinian-American organizations and leaders in Chicago turned down a White House meeting over the lack of policy change on Israel’s ongoing killings in Gaza.
      Donald Trump attended a hearing in Fort Pierce, Florida, as a federal judge heard arguments from the former president’s lawyers to dismiss the classified documents prosecution.
      Jim Jordan, the chair of the House judiciary committee, threatened Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis with contempt of Congress if she does not comply with his committee’s investigation into her office.
      Joe Biden came out in opposition to the planned sale of Pittsburgh’s US Steel to Japan’s Nippon Steel.
      The Manhattan district attorney’s office said they will not oppose Donald Trump’s request to delay his hush money trial by 30 days, citing newly disclosed evidence from the US attorney’s office.Jury selection was scheduled to begin on 25 March, marking the former president’s first criminal trial. But in a court filing on Thursday, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg wrote:
      Although the People are prepared to proceed to trial on March 25, we do not oppose an adjournment in an abundance of caution and to ensure that defendant has sufficient time to review the new materials.
      The Biden administration imposed sanctions on three extremist Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank who are accused of harassing and attacking Palestinians.Two Israeli outposts were also targeted in the latest sanctions, which the US state department said had been bases for violence against Palestinians.Washington has repeatedly asked Israel to hold violent settlers accountable and complained that its actions allowing settlement expansion diminish hopes for a two-state solution.In response, Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said the sanctions were “further proof that the US administration does not understand who is an enemy and who is its supporter”, adding:
      The settlers are the best of our sons who build, settle and bring security to the country, they deserve a salute not a knife in the back.
      Dozens of American Muslim and Palestinian-American organizations and leaders in Chicago have turned down a White House meeting over the lack of policy change on Israel’s ongoing killings in Gaza.In a letter sent to White House officials, the organizations said:
      “First, there is no point in more meetings … With a genocide that has flattened Gaza … the White House has not only refused to call for a ceasefire, but also enabled this blatant campaign of ethnic cleansing to take place by providing financial and military means, as well as diplomatic support at the United Nations. A meeting of the minds is nowhere in sight.
      Second, there is no confusion as to our consistent demand for an immediate and permanent ceasefire to end the mass murder of civilians and stave off the worst humanitarian crisis in modern times. We believe another meeting would only act to whitewash months of White House inaction followed by meek handouts …
      … we demand, at minimum, an immediate and permanent ceasefire, complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, ultimately ending the siege and blockade of Gaza, allowing the natural flow of humanitarian aid, reinstating funding to UNRWA, a cessation of weapons sales or transfers to Israel, and accountability measures for all war crimes, crimes against humanity, the crime of genocide, and justice and liberation for the Palestinians.
      That is what history will judge us by, not more token meetings when every day is of the essence.”
      In addition to his calls for new Israeli elections, Chuck Schumer is also calling for Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas to step down.According to Schumer, Abbas must step down for a “new generation of Palestinian leaders who’ll work towards attaining peace with a Jewish state”.“The PA under new leadership must reform to viably serve as the basis for a Palestinian state with the trust of the people,” he added.Schumer has already sparked backlash among Republican leaders and the Israeli government over his calls from earlier today for new elections in Israel.In a series of tweets on Thursday, Chuck Schumer is maintaining his calls for new Israeli elections, saying Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence”.Schumer went on to accuse Netanyahu of pushing support for Israel “to new lows” and said that Israel “can’t survive if it becomes a pariah”.Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party has responded to Chuck Schumer’s calls for new elections, saying that Israel is “not a banana republic”.It went on to say, “Contrary to Schumer’s words, the Israeli public supports a total victory over Hamas, rejects any international dictates to establish a Palestinian terrorist state, and opposes the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza.”“Senator Schumer is expected to respect Israel’s elected government and not undermine it. This is always true, and even more so in wartime,” it added.Chuck Schumer is continuing to defend his calls for new Israeli elections, writing in another post on X:
      “People on all sides are turning away from a two-state solution—including Israel’s PM Netanyahu who has been rejecting Palestinian statehood and sovereignty.
      As the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in America and a staunch defender of Israel, I say:
      This is a grave mistake.”
      House Republican conference chair Elise Stefanik has joined a handful of Republican leaders who have criticized Chuck Schumer over his calls for new Israeli elections.In a statement on Thursday, Stefanik said: “Instead of meddling in elections of a sovereign nation, Chuck Schumer should follow House Republicans’ lead in supporting our ally in their darkest hour. The obstacle to peace is … Chuck Schumer … Chuck Schumer does not stand with Israel. House Republicans do.”Since 7 October, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet have faced increasing opposition and condemnation over their handling of the hostage crisis and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza where its forces have killed more than 30,000 Palestinians while forcibly displacing about 2 million survivors.Despite fierce criticisms from Republican leaders, Chuck Schumer is sticking to his word over his calls for new Israeli elections. In a post on X, Schumer wrote:
      “At this critical juncture, I believe a new election in Israel is the only way to allow for a healthy and open decision-making process about the future of Israel, at a time when so many Israelis have lost their confidence in the vision and direction of their government.”
      John Cornyn, the Republican senator of Texas, said Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer was “out of line” in his comments calling for Israel to hold new elections.Schumer was “undermining” America’s “closest ally and the only democracy in the Middle East,” Cornyn posted to X. He added:
      This is a blatant attempt to appease extremists in his party to the detriment of our relationship with Israel. More

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      in US Politics

      Kamala Harris puts abortion front and center with visit to Minnesota clinic

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      Kamala Harris visited a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic on Thursday, becoming what is believed to be the first vice-president ever to do so.Harris stopped by a clinic in Minnesota, a state where abortion remains legal following the overturning of Roe v Wade, as part of her nationwide tour to highlight the impact of Roe’s downfall. Harris also toured the clinic, which remained open to patients as the nation’s first female vice-president made her historic visit.“Walking through this clinic, that’s what I saw, … people who have dedicated their lives to the profession of providing healthcare in a safe place that gives people dignity,” Harris told reporters after her tour. “And I think we should all want that for each other.”Protesters had already assembled outside the clinic by the time of Harris’s arrival. They carried signs with messages such as “Planned Parenthood = abortion” and “abortion is not healthcare”.Harris and Joe Biden are banking on outrage over Roe to help propel them to a second term in the White House come November. Anger over the landmark decision’s demise was credited with helping stop a much-promised “red wave” of Republican victories in the 2022 midterms, as well as leading abortion rights to triumph in multiple ballot initiatives, including in red states such as Kentucky, Kansas and Ohio.One in eight voters now say that abortion is their top issue in the 2024 elections, according to a KFF poll released last week. Harris and Biden have said that they would like to codify Roe’s protections into law – legislation that is unlikely to move anytime soon, given the degree of inaction and polarization in the US Congress.Biden’s record on and ability to talk about abortion rights dims in comparison to his running mate’s. Biden, a devout Catholic, has said that he is personally “not big” on abortion. And while Biden highlighted the threat to “reproductive freedom” in his State of the Union address to Congress last week, he did not say the word “abortion”.In contrast, Harris has spoken far more openly about the issue. On Thursday, she mentioned “abortion care” and said that the overturning of Roe has led to a “healthcare crisis”.“Elections matter,” Harris told reporters. “When it comes to national elections and who sits in the United States Congress, there’s a fundamental point on this issue that I think most people agree with, which is that one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling women what to do with her body.”Asked about her role in this issue, Harris said: “My role is to do what I just did, which is to articulate exactly these points and to continue to articulate them, and to organize folks around what I know is an issue that is impacting more people than you will ever really know.” More