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    Mike Pence officially enters 2024 US presidential race, pitting himself against former boss Donald Trump – as it happened

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    From 5h agoFormer vice-president Mike Pence has officially entered the 2024 presidential race, pitting him against his former boss Donald Trump and a host of other candidates including Florida governor Ron DeSantis for the Republican party’s nomination.The Federal Election Commission’s website shows Pence and his campaign committee, Mike Pence for President located in Carmel, Indiana, officially registering today. The former vice-president will publicly announce the bid on Wednesday in Des Moines, Iowa.Mike Pence filed the paperwork necessary to run for president, though he will wait till Wednesday to make his campaign official with a speech in Iowa. Meanwhile in Washington, attorneys for Donald Trump stopped by the justice department, where special counsel Jack Smith is reportedly nearing a decision on whether to recommend charges over the classified documents federal agents discovered last year at Mar-a-Lago.Here’s what else happened today:
    New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu declined to jump into the race for the GOP’s presidential nomination, instead saying he will work to defeat Trump.
    But the 2024 campaign did get another entrant: philosopher, author, critic, actor and civil rights activist Cornel West.
    Military jets attempted to establish contact with a plane that overflew restricted airspace in Washington, DC on Sunday and later crashed, killing all onboard, but the pilot appeared slumped over and never responded.
    Nikki Haley participated in a CNN-moderated town hall last night, but even they couldn’t get her to make her stance on abortion access clear.
    Pence’s edge over other Republicans: he actually rides motorcycles.
    CNN has inserted itself prominently in the American political conversation in recent weeks by hosting town halls with Donald Trump, Nikki Haley and, on Wednesday, Mike Pence. But the network was also heavily criticized for how it handled the event with Trump, and to make matters worse, the Atlantic last week published a damning portrait of the network’s chief executive Chris Licht and his decision making. It’s a major story in American media, and here’s the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt with the latest:The embattled CNN chief executive, Chris Licht, apologized to his employees on Monday after an Atlantic magazine profile revealed he had been aware of the “extra-Trumpy” make-up of the crowd at a widely criticized town hall with the former president last month.According to the Atlantic, Licht had also been critical of CNN’s performance under his predecessor, telling employees they had alienated potential viewers through hostility to Donald Trump.In an editorial call Monday morning, Licht – who had committed to a number of interviews for the Atlantic profile – apologized for his involvement in the piece.The Washington, DC area was yesterday rattled by a sonic boom caused by military jets sent to pursue a wayward plane that later crashed into a remote part of Virginia.The Washington Post reports that military F-16s and air traffic controllers received no response from the Cessna Citation despite repeated attempts to establish contact, but one aviator saw the pilot slumped over. That may be an indication that the cabin had lost pressure, rendering all onboard unconscious and leaving the aircraft to fly on until it lost fuel and crashed, killing all four people onboard.At today’s White House press briefing, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby gave reporters a full account of how the military responded to the plane’s overflight of the city, which saw it traverse airspace restricted since the 9/11 attacks:These sorts of rants from Donald Trump are one reason why he’s earned the ire of a segment of the Republican party.Count New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu among them. Today, the moderate Republican told CNN he would not stand for president in 2024, and in a column for the Washington Post elaborated on his reasons why.“Since 2017, the national Republican Party has lost up and down the ballot, in red states and in blue states, and in elections spanning the House, Senate and presidency. That will happen again unless we Republicans undergo a course correction,” he wrote.The governor continued:
    Current polls indicate Trump is the leading Republican candidate in 2024. He did not deliver on his promises to drain the swamp, secure the border and instill fiscal responsibility while in office — and added $8 trillion to our national debt — yet now he wants four more years.
    If he is the nominee, Republicans will lose again. Just as we did in 2018, 2020 and 2022. This is indisputable, and I am not willing to let it happen without a fight.
    By choosing not to seek the nomination, I can be more effective for the Republican Party in ways few other leaders can. The microphone afforded to the governor of New Hampshire plays a critical role in an early nominating state. I plan to endorse, campaign and support the candidate I believe has the best chance of winning in November 2024.
    We’ll see how big of a threat Sununu’s opposition poses to Trump’s campaign for another four years in the White House. But here are a few other considerations that may have kept Sununu out of the race: his comparatively loose stance on abortion rights, unwillingness to adopt an aggressive gerrymander of the state’s district maps in favor of the GOP, and other centrist policies. He may have figured he wouldn’t have had a chance of winning over the party’s powerful conservative base.Donald Trump made liberal use of the caps lock key in crafting this Truth social post from a few hours ago, on the day his attorneys paid a visit to the justice department:The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that the lawyers for Donald Trump who turned up today at the justice department were meeting with senior officials, but not attorney general Merrick Garland, as they had requested:Such meetings are typical when justice department investigations near their conclusion, as special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago appears to be.Smith is also looking into Trump’s involvement in the January 6 insurrection, and the broader plot to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election win. Those inquiries appear to be ongoing.Should Ron DeSantis’s new feud with California governor Gavin Newsom head to the courts, it would be just the latest instance in which the Florida governor and presidential aspirant’s policies have cost his state money, the Guardian’s Maya Yang reports:Since Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, took office in 2019 and embarked on his culture wars, lawsuits from various communities whose rights have been violated have been stacking up against the far-right Republican.As DeSantis fights the lawsuits with what critics have described as a blank check from the state’s supermajority Republican legislature, the mounting legal costs have come heavily at the expense of Florida’s taxpayers.In recent years, DeSantis’s ultra-conservative legislative agenda has drawn ire from a slew of marginalized communities as well as major corporations including Disney. The so-called “don’t say gay” bill, abortion bans and prohibition of African American studies are just a few of DeSantis’s many extremist policies that have been met with costly lawsuits in a state where residents are already struggling with costs of living.The California governor, Gavin Newsom, has weighed into the row between his state and Florida over the case of a group of 16 migrants who were left outside a Sacramento church.A rights group said the group had been “lied to” and deceived after being transported from Texas to California. The circumstances are similar to a stunt orchestrated by Florida’s rightwing Republican governor last year in Martha’s Vineyard.Now Newsom has mentioned kidnapping charges in relation to the incident. Here’s his tweet, criticising Ron DeSantis after California authorities pointed the finger at the Florida governor over the incident:Cornel West, the philosopher, author, critic, actor and civil rights activist, has announced he is running for president.West launched his campaign for the People’s Party with a Twitter video on Monday.He said:
    “I care about you. I care about the quality of your life, I care about whether you have access to a job with a living wage, decent housing, women having control over their bodies, healthcare for all, the escalating destruction of the planet, the destruction of American democracy.”
    Watch his whole campaign launch video here:The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, is being sued by the SEC over allegations of mishandling customer funds and lying to regulators and investors.Binance has hit back at the claims and my colleague Lauren Aratani is reporting all the latest on the lawsuit in our dedicated blog. You can follow latest updates here:Mike Pence has filed the paperwork necessary to run for president, though he will wait till Wednesday to make the campaign official with a speech in Iowa. Meanwhile in Washington, attorneys for Donald Trump have stopped by the justice department, where special counsel Jack Smith is reportedly nearing a decision on whether to recommend charges over the classified documents federal agents discovered last year at Mar-a-Lago. It’s unclear who the lawyers met with, but when we find out, we’ll let you know.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
    New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu has declined to jump into the race for the GOP’s presidential nomination.
    Nikki Haley participated in a CNN-moderated town hall last night, but even they couldn’t get her to make her stance on abortion access clear.
    Pence’s edge over other Republicans: he actually rides motorcycles.
    Republican voters pining to send a governor to the White House needn’t worry Chris Sununu’s decision to forgo a run.North Dakota governor Doug Burgum – who is little known outside his home state – is expected to also on Wednesday declare his candidacy for president, the same day Mike Pence kicks off his campaign in Iowa. Here’s a teaser video Burgum just posted:Other governor options for Republican voters: Ron DeSantis, who is a distant second place to Donald Trump in the latest polls.In an interview with CNN, New Hampshire’s Republican governor Chris Sununu said he will not run for the party’s presidential nomination next year.“We’ve taken the last six months to really kind of look at things where everything is and I’ve made the decision not to run for president on the Republican ticket in 2024,” said Sununu, who was re-elected to a fourth two-year term as governor last year.Sununu has maintained his popularity in what’s considering a blue-leaning swing state, and also attempted to distance himself from Trump, telling CNN last year that he thinks that “clearly moving on” from the former president.You know who else was at the “Roast and Ride” in Iowa this weekend? The Guardian’s David Smith! He has the full story on what he aptly calls “a slice of pure Americana”:There were hay bales and Harley-Davidsons. There was sliced pork and campaign paraphernalia. There were earnest speeches about defeating Democrats winning back the White House. But at the centre of it all was a Donald Trump-shaped hole.The Republican presidential primary for 2024 got under way in earnest on Saturday when eight contenders – minus Trump – took part in Iowa senator Joni Ernst’s “Roast and Ride”, a combination of barbecue-rally and motorcycle ride.The annual event is a slice of pure Americana. When a young pastor offered a prayer from the back of a pickup truck outside a big yellow barn owned by Harley-Davidson, bikers removed their caps, placed them over their hearts and bowed their heads. The convoy rode in staggered formation past churches, suburban houses with clipped lawns, shopping malls and rolling farmland to the Iowa state fairgrounds.Mike Pence, set to make his entry into the primary official next week, was the only White House hopeful to actually take part in the charity parade. The former vice-president, who turns 64 next week, rode a cobalt blue bike and wore jeans, boots, a white helmet and a black leather vest with patches that said “Indiana”, “Pence”, “rolling thunder” and messages supportive of the military.Pence was among the Republican aspirants who, speaking in front of bales of hay and an outline of the Iowa map, delivered speeches of about 10 minutes each inside a wooden-roofed building where about a thousand voters ate lunch on green table cloths. But none mentioned Trump by name, giving the impression of a party in denial.Say what you will about Mike Pence, but the former president was the only candidate to actually get on a motorcycle this past weekend, when several GOP presidential contenders went to the “Roast and Ride” in Iowa.The event, organized by the state’s GOP senator Joni Ernst, was attended by Florida governor Ron DeSantis, senator Tim Scott and Nikki Haley, all official contenders. Pence hadn’t made his campaign official yet at the time of the rally, but distinguished himself by not just roasting, but also riding:The Democrats have welcomed Mike Pence to the presidential race with a big smile and open arms.Just kidding — they hate him. Pence may have broken with Donald Trump on January 6 and ended up running from a mob of his infuriated supporters, but the Democratic National Committee does not want voters to forget about the policies he supported as vice-president, Indiana’s governor, and a member of the House of Representatives.Here’s what DNC chair Jaime Harrison had to say about Pence, now that he’s officially on the campaign trail:
    In Mike Pence’s own words, he was a member of the extreme Tea Party ‘before it was cool,’ and he hasn’t slowed down since. Pence pushed an extreme agenda in Congress and the Indiana statehouse before becoming Donald Trump’s MAGA wingman for four years and then campaigning for election deniers last year. Now, he’s promising to take the Trump-Pence agenda even further, leading the charge for a national abortion ban, cutting Medicare, and ending Social Security as we know it. Pence’s entrance will no doubt drag an increasingly MAGA 2024 GOP field even further to the extremes.
    Former vice-president Mike Pence has officially entered the 2024 presidential race, pitting him against his former boss Donald Trump and a host of other candidates including Florida governor Ron DeSantis for the Republican party’s nomination.The Federal Election Commission’s website shows Pence and his campaign committee, Mike Pence for President located in Carmel, Indiana, officially registering today. The former vice-president will publicly announce the bid on Wednesday in Des Moines, Iowa. More

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      Trump lawyers meet with DoJ to stave off indictment in Mar-a-Lago case

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      Lawyers for Donald Trump met with top US justice department officials on Thursday to complain about perceived misconduct in the criminal investigation into the former US president’s handling of national security materials and obstruction, according to two people familiar with the matter.The meeting involved Trump lawyers Jim Trusty, John Rowley and Lindsay Halligan speaking with the special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the investigation, and a senior career official to the deputy attorney general, one person said. CBS News first reported the meeting.Trump’s lawyers made a general case as to why Trump should not be charged in the Mar-a-Lago documents case and suggested that some prosecutors working under special counsel Jack Smith engaged in what they considered prosecutorial misconduct, the people said.The exact allegations are not clear but Trump’s lawyers for weeks have complained privately that Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterintelligence and espionage section at the justice department, once sought to induce a witness into confirming something they declined to, one of the people said.Complaints of that nature result in an internal note to the special counsel and are unlikely to delay the criminal investigation.The meeting comes weeks after Trump’s lawyers asked the justice department for a meeting with the attorney general, Merrick Garland, to raise grievances about what they considered as unfair treatment of Trump over his handling of classified documents compared to other former presidents.“No president of the United States has ever, in the history of our country, been baselessly investigated in such an outrageous and unlawful fashion,” said the letter written by Trusty and Rowley.While it is not unusual for lawyers to seek a meeting with prosecutors near the end of an investigation, it typically is not with the attorney general. That is especially the case in special counsel investigations, where charging decisions can only be overruled if department rules were not followed.The development comes as prosecutors have recently asked witnesses before the grand jury hearing evidence in the case in Washington whether Trump showed off national security materials, including a document concerning military action against Iran, people close to the case said.Prosecutors have seemingly been trying to identify whether that Iran document was the same document Trump referenced on an audio recording in which he said he could not discuss it because he did not declassify it while in office – though he should have, the Guardian previously reported.The investigation has also examined whether the failure by Trump to fully comply with a subpoena last year demanding the return of any classified documents was a deliberate act of obstruction, the people said.Last June, the since-recused Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran found 38 classified documents in the storage room at Mar-a-Lago and told the justice department that no further materials remained at the property – which came into question when the FBI seized 101 additional classified documents months later.The Guardian has reported that Corcoran later told associates he felt misled in the subpoena response because he had asked whether he should search elsewhere at Mar-a-Lago, like Trump’s office, but was waved off. Corcoran’s notes also showed he told Trump he had to return all classified documents in his possession. More

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      Cornel West announces US presidential campaign with the People’s party

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      Cornel West, the 70-year-old activist and public intellectual, announced on Monday that he is running for president in the 2024 election as a candidate for the People’s party. West made the announcement in a video posted to Twitter, saying that he had “decided to run for truth and justice”.“I come from a tradition where I care about you,” West said. “I care about the quality of your life, I care about whether you have access to a job with a living wage, decent housing, women having control over their bodies, healthcare for all.”West’s video, interspersed with photos of his life in activism and clips of himself on Joe Rogan’s and Bill Maher’s shows, also directed viewers to his campaign website, which includes some of his political platform and calls for donations. The range of West’s policies include instituting Medicare for All, banning corporate lobbying, disbanding Nato, stopping all foreign military aid and abolishing student debt.West, a professor of philosophy and Christian practice at the Union Theological Seminary and former professor at Harvard University, has been a prominent academic figure and commentator for decades. He has repeatedly criticized what he describes as a neoliberal establishment that dominates politics, and described himself as a democratic socialist. Occasionally he has become more directly involved in politics, including in 2016 when he supported then Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and appeared with him on the campaign trail.West promoted his bid for the presidency on Monday in an appearance on Russell Brand’s popular show on the online video sharing platform Rumble. West told Brand, a frequent amplifier of conspiracy theories, that he watches Brand’s show “religiously” as the two discussed West’s campaign.“We need some radicalism within politics,” Brand said at the start of his show, before mentioning him in the same breath as other long-shot presidential candidates Marianne Williamson and anti-vaccine activist Robert F Kennedy Jr.“Why we were pleased to talk to Marianne Williamson, why we were pleased to talk to Robert F Kennedy on this show, that’s why we are excited to talk to Dr Cornel West.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe field of candidates in the 2024 presidential election is steadily increasing, with Republicans such as Senator Tim Scott and Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, announcing their bids in recent weeks. A Morning Consult poll from last week showed Donald Trump with a 34-point lead over DeSantis for the Republican nomination. More

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      Trump donor whose family died in Washington plane crash lost other daughter in diving tragedy

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      A leading Republican donor whose family members were killed in a plane crash in Virginia on Sunday following a pursuit by US military jets lost another daughter in a scuba diving tragedy almost 30 years ago, it was reported on Monday.John Rumpel, a Florida businessman and frequent contributor to Donald Trump’s political operation, said his daughter Adina Azarian, 49, and two-year-old granddaughter were among four victims of the crash that caused a security scare when the plane flew over restricted airspace in Washington DC.Another daughter, Victoria, 19, was killed in a diving accident in 1994, the Daily Beast reported, and Rumpel and his wife, Barbara, an executive with the National Rifle Association, later named an assisted living facility in their home town of Melbourne, Florida, in her honor.On Sunday, Rumpel, 75, millionaire owner of Florida’s Encore Motors franchise, said nobody could have survived the crash of the Cessna Citation twin-engine jet near Montebello, Virginia, on Sunday afternoon.It is believed the pilot of the jet, who was also killed alongside the Rumpel family’s nanny, lost consciousness en route from Tennessee to Long Island, New York, causing it to stray into airspace over the capital.The North American aerospace defense command (Norad) scrambled two F-16 fighter jets to intercept the Cessna, but they did not shoot it down, military officials said.Sonic booms from the jets were heard in Virginia and Maryland as they raced to catch up with the light aircraft, sending some residents into a brief panic.“They all just would have gone to sleep and never woke up,” Rumpel, who is also a pilot, told the New York Times in a brief emotional interview.“It descended at 20,000ft a minute and nobody could survive a crash at that speed.He said his family members were returning to their home in East Hampton, New York, after spending four days with Rumpel and his wife in North Carolina.Joe Biden was playing golf with his brother near Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, at the time, and was briefed on the crash, the Washington Post reported.The White House said the sonic boom was “faint” where the Bidens were golfing, and referred questions over security arrangements for the president to the Secret Service.Records show that the Rumpels are regular donors to conservative political causes, including Trump’s failed 2020 campaign for re-election to the White House, and Ron DeSantis’s re-election as Florida governor last year.The two Republicans are the leading candidates for their party’s presidential nomination for next year’s general election.According to the flight-tracking website Flight Aware, the plane appeared to reach the New York area and made a nearly 180-degree turn, flying a straight path down over DC with the flight ending in Virginia.The sonic boom caused consternation among many residents in the capital region, who took to Twitter to report hearing a loud noise that shook the ground and walls.A team of investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was expected to reach the crash site on Monday.The Federal Aviation Administration said the rules under which the plane was flying did not require it to have a type of data recorder known as a black box. Generally, black boxes help investigators determine why plane crashes may have occurred.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Republican 2024 candidates criticize Trump for praising Kim Jong-un

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      A number of Republican presidential candidates, including Ron DeSantis, have criticized Donald Trump after the former president again praised the dictatorial leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un.The intervention from Trump’s rivals, who have largely avoided attacking the influential frontrunner, comes as a rare moment of dissension during the campaign.Trump posted a message of support for Kim to his Truth Social site on Saturday, after North Korea was appointed to the board of the World Health Organization.“Congratulations to Kim Jung [sic] Un!” Trump wrote. He posted a link to an article about the appointment to the WHO, which is an agency of the UN.Trump’s praise of Kim has prompted controversy before.In 2018, at a rally in Virginia, the former president spoke about how he and Kim “fell in love” as they got to know each other as world leaders – and how Kim had written him “beautiful” and “great letters”. Those letters later turned up among classified documents Trump retained after he lost the presidency to Joe Biden in 2020, becoming a focus of an investigation by the special counsel appointed by the US attorney general, Merrick Garland.The latest round of positivity which Trump directed at Kim again kicked up a political firestorm.Over the weekend DeSantis, who announced his campaign for president in May, and Nikki Haley condemned the move.“Kim Jong-un is a thug and a tyrant, and he has tested ballistic missiles against our allies,” Haley told NBC News.“He’s threatened us. There’s nothing to congratulate him about. I mean, he’s been terrible to his people. He’s been terrible to America, and we need to stop being nice to countries that hate America.”Haley, a former governor of South Carolina who served as an ambassador to the UN during the Trump administration, is running a long-shot bid for the presidency.DeSantis, who is expected to be Trump’s closest rival for the GOP nomination, said he was “surprised” Trump had praised a “murderous dictator”, USA Today reported.Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice-president who is expected to launch a presidential campaign this week, was similarly critical.“Whether it’s my former running mate or anyone else, nobody should be praising the dictator in North Korea or praising the leader in Russia, who has launched an unprovoked war of aggression in Ukraine,” Pence said in an interview with Fox News.“This is a time when we ought to make it clear to the world that we stand for freedom and we stand with those who stand for freedom.”Asa Hutchinson, a former Arkansas governor whose presidential campaign is yet to make much of a dint on the national stage, tweeted on Saturday:“Kim Jong-un, the tyrant dictator in North Korea should not be praised by Donald Trump for a leadership role in the World Health Organization. We sanction leaders who oppress their people. We do not elevate them on the world stage.”North Korea was added to the WHO executive board on 25 May in a move that human rights advocates condemned.“North Korea, a regime that starves its own people, was just elected to the @WHO Executive Board,” Hillel Neuer, the executive director of the Geneva-based human rights organization UN Watch, wrote on Twitter.“What this means is that one of the world’s most horrific regimes is now a part of a group that sets and enforces the standards and norms for the global governance of health care. It is an absurd episode for a key UN agency that is in much need of self-reflection and reform.”Trump’s praise for Kim and North Korea’s ascension to the WHO was surprising given his contempt for the organization while in office. The then-president suspended US funding to the WHO in 2020, accusing it, without evidence, of withholding information, and of being too close to China.Trump later withdrew the US from the WHO; Joe Biden rejoined the organization in one of his first acts in office. More

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      Trump critics warn of ‘deep decline of rule of law’ if he wins second term

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      As Donald Trump begins another campaign for the presidency, his extremist rhetoric and lies about the 2020 election signal that in a second term, Trump would attempt to thwart the rule of law at the justice department and other agencies in an effort to expand his power and attack critics.Former DoJ officials, some Republicans and academics say that if Trump becomes the Republican nominee and is elected again in 2024, he would most likely appoint officials who would reflexively do his bidding, target dissenters he deems part of the “deep state” and mount zealous drives to rein in independent agencies.Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general during the George HW Bush administration, told the Guardian: “Of all the many reasons Donald Trump’s candidacy should be rejected out of hand, none is more important than his utter disdain for the rule of law – the idea that we are a society governed by rules and not by the will of one person.”Ayer said: “It’s hard to imagine what would become of our legal system if Trump became president again.“In his first term, aided by attorney general William Barr, who made a pretense of believing in even-handed justice, Trump was still able to grossly misuse the Department of Justice as a political campaign tool, to do favors for his friends, and to seriously undermine the separation of powers.“There would be no arguable adults in the room in a second Trump DoJ. Beyond pardons for the January 6 criminals and politically motivated prosecutions, one can expect a broader pattern of abuses aimed at securing his autocratic power.”Trump has given plenty of hints about what he would do in a second term, many of which suggest he would become more extreme than during his previous four years in office.In the wake of his loss to Joe Biden in 2020, Trump falsely claimed the election was rigged and, with help from key allies, he tried to overturn the results in several states Biden won. Separately, after leaving office Trump retained classified documents. These Trump moves have sparked federal and state criminal investigations, which could result in charges against him and others in coming months. Trump has vehemently denied any wrongdoing in all these matters.At campaign stops in Texas, New Hampshire and elsewhere, Trump has demonized critics, including the prosecutors leading these criminal inquiries, and spoken of the inquiries in conspiratorial terms.During a March rally in Waco, Texas, Trump lashed out at the “thugs and criminals who are corrupting our justice system” before denouncing prosecutors and investigators. Ominously, he warned the crowd: “When they go after me, they’re going after you.”He said: “Together, we are taking on some of the most menacing forces and vicious opponents our people have ever seen, some of them from within.”As part of his dark Waco messaging, Trump added: “Either the deep state destroys America, or we destroy the deep state.” One of the targets of Trump’s ire has been the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who charged him earlier this year with 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments he allegedly made to the porn star Stormy Daniels. Daniels claims she had an affair with Trump in 2016.Similarly, at the CNN town hall in New Hampshire in early May, Trump doubled down on his claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. He also seemed to glorify the mob of loyalists who attacked the Capitol on 6 January 2021, which led to the deaths of nine police officers and others.In an appeal to his base, Trump said that if he gets re-elected, he will be “inclined” to pardon “many” of the protesters involved in the insurrection during Joe Biden’s certification by Congress. He even called January 6 “a beautiful day”.Given these comments on the campaign trail and his past performance in office, Trump’s critics say a second term would mean few, if any, checks on Trump’s impulsive behavior, and that he would surround himself with pliant allies.“Donald Trump has no regard for our institutions,” the ex-DoJ inspector general Michael Bromwich told the Guardian. “There is no better proof of this general truth than his attitude towards the Department of Justice. He believes it should be the political tool of the White House, which should target his enemies and go easy on his friends.”Bromwich noted that Trump’s choices of Barr and Jeff Sessions as attorneys general ultimately disappointed him, “because there came a point for both of them that they couldn’t go as far as Trump needed”.“If Trump were re-elected, we can look forward to a swift and deep decline in the rule of law,” Bromwich said. “Top levels of the DoJ would be staffed with election deniers; there would be a wholesale exodus of talented career personnel from every division of DoJ; and large numbers of January 6 insurrectionists would be pardoned. After four more years, the Department of Justice as we know it would be in tatters.”Bromwich stressed too that “Trump doesn’t believe in any type of oversight, whether conducted by Congress or inspectors general”, and that voters “should expect total resistance to any congressional oversight and the firing of IGs who dared to do their jobs of ferreting out waste, fraud, abuse and misconduct”.Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard and the co-author of How Democracies Die, said Trump was an even more extreme candidate now than he was in his previous campaign.“It’s pretty clear that Trump will come in as a more dangerous figure than in 2016. He had no inclination then to respect the rule of law. He saw the state as subordinate to his own will, much like a tinpot dictator. He came in as an authoritarian figure but with no plan,” Levitsky said.“Trump filled his government mostly with conservatives who cared about not breaking the law. They provided some resistance. Civil servants and people he appointed put the brakes on his wildest instincts. Now, he’s angrier and bent on revenge. Trump’s got people he wants to go after, as well as the so-called deep state. He’s going to be much more careful in the people who he appoints. Trump has a much more authoritarian plan.”The prospect of a more authoritarian President Trump is one that scares other critics who say his conduct in his first term was, at least in part, checked by conservative figures such as his ex-chief of staff John Kelly, and former secretary of state Rex Tillerson. Notably, both have voiced their opposition to Trump since they left their posts.Kelly told the Washington Post that Trump’s pardon pledges for the January 6 rioters were not surprising: “All those people who tried to overturn the election, that’s exactly what he wanted them to do. He can’t be turning his back on the people who tried to save him in the election,” he said.Trump has displayed other troubling signs, including allying himself with some of the most extremist Republican figures. One such person is Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who tried to help Trump reverse his loss to Biden. In late May, Trump used his media platform Truth Social to attack the GOP-controlled Texas House for impeaching Paxton over bribery and other alleged misconduct. The ex-president labeled Paxton’s impeachment the work of “radical left Democrats” and “Rinos” [Republicans in name only].In another radical Truth Social post shared in late May, Trump pledged that on his first day in office he would issue an executive order to overturn birthright US citizenship – a right guaranteed in the 14th amendment.Former GOP House member Charlie Dent told the Guardian he believed that “Trump would engage in more conduct through” executive orders upon re-election, and would “use his powers to do executive actions and ignore congressional powers and prerogatives”.Dent predicted that in a second term, “Trump would load up his administration with sycophants, unlike in the first term”, adding that the kinds of conservatives who Trump tapped before, such as the defense secretary James Mattis and Kelly, “will be gone”.“Trump will surround himself with people who would be disinclined to offer any restraints on his worst impulses,” he said.The conservative lawyer George Conway also issued dire warnings about a second Trump presidency.“He’s going to manipulate the levers of government to help himself personally and to go after his enemies,” Conway said. “He’s going to turn our government into a third world government.” More

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      Migrants flown from Texas to California and left outside church were ‘lied to’

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      A rights group has said 16 migrants had been “lied to” and deceived after being transported from Texas to California and dropped off outside a church in Sacramento.The migrants from Venezuela and Colombia entered the US through Texas, reported the Associated Press. They were flown to California from New Mexico via a private chartered plane, but it’s unclear who paid for the travel.The California department of justice and the California governor’s office is currently investigating who paid for the travel and “whether the individuals orchestrating this trip misled anyone with false promises or have violated any criminal laws, including kidnapping”.Eddie Carmona, campaign director at PICO California, a faith-based community organizing group that has been assisting the migrants, said they had been processed by US customs and provided court dates for asylum hearings when individuals claiming to represent a private contractor approached them outside a migrant center in El Paso, Texas, with the promise of offering jobs and assistance.“They were lied to and intentionally deceived,” Carmona told the AP, adding that the migrants had no idea where they were after being dropped off in Sacramento.Over the past year, the Republican governors of Texas and Florida have been bussing and flying immigrants without advance to cities controlled by Democratic party elected officials. The actions have been criticized as political stunts to criticize the Biden administration’s border policies. Florida governor Ron DeSantis established a $12m migrant relocation program in 2022 funded from interest accrued on federal Covid-19 relief funds. More

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      Florida taxpayers pick up bill for Ron DeSantis’s culture war lawsuits

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      Since Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, took office in 2019 and embarked on his culture wars, lawsuits from various communities whose rights have been violated have been stacking up against the far-right Republican.As DeSantis fights the lawsuits with what critics have described as a blank check from the state’s supermajority Republican legislature, the mounting legal costs have come heavily at the expense of Florida’s taxpayers.In recent years, DeSantis’s ultra-conservative legislative agenda has drawn ire from a slew of marginalized communities as well as major corporations including Disney. The so-called “don’t say gay” bill, abortion bans and prohibition of African American studies are just a few of DeSantis’s many extremist policies that have been met with costly lawsuits in a state where residents are already struggling with costs of living.“The list of legal challenges precipitating from DeSantis’s unconstitutional laws is endless,” the Democratic state senator Lori Berman said.“We’ve seen Floridians rightly sue many if not all of the governor’s legislative priorities, including laws that restrict drag shows for kids, prohibit Chinese citizens from owning homes and land in Florida, suppress young and Black and brown voters, ban gender-affirming care and threaten supportive parents with state custody of their children, and of course, all the retaliatory legislation waged against Disney for coming out in support of the LGBTQ+ community,” she said.As a result of the mounting lawsuits against DeSantis, the governor’s legal costs, which the Miami Herald reported last December to cost at least $16.7m, have been soaring.In DeSantis’s legal fight against Disney following the corporation’s condemnation of his anti-LGBTQ+ laws, it is going to cost the governor and his handpicked board nearly $1,300 per hour in legal fees as they look into how the corporation discovered a loophole in DeSantis’s plan to acquire governing rights over Disney World, Insider reports.“Disney is a perfect example. It doesn’t hurt any Floridians. There is nothing. It’s creating a legal issue out of nowhere and now Disney sued so they have to respond and that is going to cost taxpayers’ money. The whole Disney case is just because of DeSantis’s ego and his hurt feelings,” the Democratic state senator Tina Polsky said.“Taxpayers are paying to foot the bills to pass unconstitutional bills and to keep up with his petty vengeance,” she said, adding: “I don’t think they’re aware at all … They’re too brainwashed at this point that they wouldn’t even care.”Meanwhile, in another case covered by the Orlando Sentinel, DeSantis’s administration has turned to the elite conservative Washington DC-based law firm Cooper & Kirk to defend the governor against his slew of “anti-woke” laws. The firm’s lawyers charge $725 hourly, according to contracts reviewed by Orlando Sentinel. As of June 2022, the state authorized nearly $2.8m for legal services from just Cooper & Kirk alone, the outlet reports.With mounting taxpayer-funded legal costs against DeSantis’s legislative agenda, critics ranging from civil rights organizations to the state’s Democratic lawmakers have lambasted DeSantis’s policies as unconstitutional and mere political stunts designed to propel him to the frontlines of the GOP primary.“DeSantis went to Harvard for his [law degree]. This is someone who should understand the constraints placed on him and the state by the United States constitution and the Florida constitution. He knows those constraints, but he doesn’t care. His goal is to intentionally pass unconstitutional laws and set up legal challenges in order for the conservative supreme court to overturn long-held protections,” Berman said.Bob Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University, echoed similar sentiments, comparing DeSantis to his main competition and current GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, both of whom he said are cut “from the same cloth”.“Ron DeSantis is a Harvard law school graduate. He is a lawyer. Whereas Donald Trump at least could make the argument, ‘I’m just the layperson, I don’t know’ if … something is deemed illegal or unconstitutional … DeSantis does not have that defense,” Jarvis said.Nevertheless, DeSantis appears unfazed.“DeSantis knows very well that … what he is doing is unconstitutional and illegal … Lawyers by training are very cautious so this is quite remarkable to have a lawyer-politician who not only knows better, but does not care,” said Jarvis.To DeSantis, it does not matter whether he wins or loses the legal battles as he knows he “ultimately controls the Florida supreme court”, according to Jarvis.“He is playing a ‘heads, I win, tails, you lose’ game. If he gets one of these crazy policies passed and they’re challenged and the court upholds him … he can say to the press and to the public, ‘I was right and the proof is in the pudding because the courts agreed with me,’” he explained.“But even better for DeSantis when they rule against him … DeSantis is able to stand up and say, ‘These crazy judges want our children to watch drag shows, they want our children to be taught to be gay, they want Disney to be this terrible company. That’s why you need a strong governor and why you will benefit from having me as president because I will make sure to get rid of these judges and replace them with judges that have traditional American morals,’” Jarvis added.As DeSantis continues to fight his costly legal battles, the state’s supermajority Republican legislature appears to encourage him wholly.“We’re in a litigious society,” the state senate president, Kathleen Passidomo, told the Tallahassee Democrat while the senate budget chair, Doug Broxson, told the outlet: “We want the governor to be in a comfortable position to speak his mind.”With Republicans rushing to DeSantis’s defense, perhaps the most glaring example of the legislature’s endorsement of his legal wars is the $16m incorporated into the state’s $117bn budget to be used exclusively for his litigation expenses.Speaking to the Guardian, the state’s Democratic house leader, Fentrice Driskell, called the budget a “carte blanche” from Republicans and the result of zero accountability.“The legislature is supposed to be a check on executive power. By giving him a carte blanche to go and fight these wars in court, it’s basically just saying that there are no checks and balances when it comes to the state government in Florida,” said Driskell.“It’s a waste … They are just allowing this single person to impose his will on the state of Florida and they’re willing to waste taxpayer dollars to do it,” she said, adding: “Most Floridians can’t afford their rent and property insurance rates are through the roof. We could have redirected that money towards affordable housing.”Driskell went on to describe Medicaid iBudget Florida, a waiver that provides disabled Floridians with access to certain services and which currently has a waitlist of more than 22,000 residents.“It’s very difficult for them to get off that waitlist because the Republicans underfund Medicaid. We could put that money towards funding the waitlist and getting people off of it. I think there’s only $2m that was put in the budget for that this year. If we added the $16m that was added for these culture wars, my goodness, that’s $18m. Presumably we could help get nine times more people off of the waitlist,” said Driskell.As DeSantis remains embroiled in his legal woes at the expense of Florida taxpayers, there is perhaps a single group of people that have benefited the most out of all the legal drama, Jarvis told the Guardian.“The lawyers who got that $16.7m, that’s money from heaven. That’s money that fell into their laps … Anytime there’s a loser, and the loser here is the Florida taxpayer, there is a winner. The winners here are the lawyers who are collecting those enormous fees. The more that plaintiffs file lawsuits and the more they fight these crazy policies, you know that’s just money in the bank for these lawyers,” Jarvis said.“DeSantis has been God’s gift to lawyers,” he added. More

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      So what if Biden trips up? On the political stage his footwork is the fanciest seen in decades | Will Hutton

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      He stumbles when coming down the stairs of Air Force One; he trips over a sandbag on stage to fall flat on his face when handing out diplomas at the US air force academy; he muddles his words with alarming regularity. It is easy to write off President Joe Biden as a senile, 80-year-old duffer. Yet he is already being regarded by many Democrats, and some Republicans, as significant a Democrat president as Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson. He is dramatically changing the face of the US around Democrat priorities – reindustrialisation to support blue-collar jobs and wages, wholeheartedly fighting climate change, investing massively in science and education, doing more for the poorest and, not least, rejuvenating the US’s decaying public infrastructure.But, unlike his famous predecessors, he has never had their big majorities in Congress, and after November’s midterm elections he does not even control the House of Representatives. He has had to rely on guile, sheer political craft and reading the Washington runes better than any alive. For the last few months we were being warned of financial Armageddon, as an implacable Republican party forced the US to default on its debts, only to be avoided if the administration agreed to its demands for swingeing public spending cuts to avoid going through an artificial debt ceiling limit. Tomorrow was to be the witching day when default occurred and a financial crisis engulfed the world. Instead, last week the wily Biden again outfoxed his opponents, and struck a deal massively weighted in his favour that was voted for by overwhelming majorities. It was an extraordinary victory and, when invited to claim it as such, he replied: “You think that’s going to help me get it passed?” First rule in Washington politics, from which the affable Biden has never deviated: always allow the defeated to save face because you’re soon going to have to cut another deal with them.Yet what lay behind the Republican retreat is important not just for US politics but our own. The ever more ideological US right, so influential among British Tories, has been abandoning fiscal conservatism as a dead end for some time. It goes through the motions of bloodcurdling threats to cuts in public spending, but it does not have the bottle to face the political consequences – the decimation of social programmes beloved of its own base and which any Republican presidential nominee needs preserved to have a hope in 2024. Instead, the new terrain is the fight against “the woke” – from banning drag queen reading hours to penalising investment companies that invest on “environmental, societal and governance” principles – laced with traditional social conservatism fighting against abortion along with a dose of America-first nationalism. It is, in effect, Donald Trump’s politics. The ghastly cocktail might work in the US, although I doubt not enough to win national presidential elections. It certainly won’t work in Britain.Biden’s negotiating tactics were textbook. Publicly, he took seriously the threats of Kevin McCarthy, leader of the House of Representatives, to cut $4.5tn of spending over a decade, talking up the threat and flying back early from the G7 summit to negotiate, showing the depth of his concern. Privately, he knew the Republican would back off: cuts of that scale would mean that social programmes would be decimated, given that so much federal spending is on defence, which the Republicans did not want to touch. This was not 2011, when the Republicans used the same tactic and meant it, when their libertarian tax-cutting right were in control; now they are big spenders too.Biden read the mood swing well: he knows his opponents better than they know themselves. Taking over the key negotiations himself, I am told, he forced the realities home on McCarthy, who successively scaled back his demand to a headline cuts figure of $1.5tn, which helped him save face. But even that was vastly overstated because of a series of side, off-balance-sheet deals. Federal spending will end up by being reduced by 0.2%, if that, over the next 10 years, while all the huge spending programmes on chips, infrastructure and green investment that Biden has negotiated through are intact. A stunning victory.There are problems ahead: the US, accounting for 15% of world GDP, can comfortably afford spending on this scale, but it will just have to increase its tax base. The Internal Revenue Service has been hollowed out over the years. As a first step, Biden wants to build up its capacity to go after the scarcely taxed US super-rich – one area where McCarthy did get a spending cut, if not decisive. But before 2030 the US will have to raise taxes. This will not lower its growth: as the Institute of Government recently reported, there is little or no evidence that tax cuts have any impact on growth. But it will force a huge political battle into the open.Meanwhile, Bidenomics defines the new consensus, what US treasury secretary Janet Yellen describes as “modern supply side” economics, set out in perhaps the best statement of social democratic economic analysis ever to come out of Washington, the 2022 Economic Report of the President. In her recent trip to Washington, the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, met the principal architects, including Yellen, all endorsing her own version of modern supply side economics she has been developing since getting the job in 2021. At its simplest, this is a commitment to ambitious public investment, particularly over net zero, in a deliberative partnership with business as the foundation for economic growth. It is working in the US. It will work in the UK.British Tories are in a parallel position to McCarthy’s Republicans. They may deplore public spending and the big state in principle, but they shrink from the consequences of putting their ideology into action. They find themselves giving aid to new technologies and supporting the green transition as political and economic necessities without believing in either – so their approach is tepid, ad hoc, unconvinced. They are tempted to follow the US right into the poisonous thickets of being anti-woke – but Britain is a much more liberal, easygoing society than the heartlands of the US midwest. And round the corner comes the spectre of having to raise, not cut, taxes. It may be that both Britain and the US will be in the throes of national elections in autumn 2024. For the first time in 40 years, not only does the liberal left have the better argument; with a following wind, they can go all the way. More