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      Stormy Daniels’s testimony paints a dark picture of Trump’s view of sex and power | Moira Donegan

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      He seems to have understood it as a business deal. That’s what Stormy Daniels – the former porn star whose account of a sexual encounter with Donald Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006 is at the center of his criminal hush-money trial – told Anderson Cooper in 2018. When Trump summoned Daniels to his hotel room in Lake Tahoe, he suggested that she might come on his television show, Celebrity Apprentice. Then he demanded sex.In the law this is called quid pro quo – this for that – an arrangement in which work is offered in exchange for sex. It’s illegal: sex cannot be a condition of employment, or a prerequisite for being considered for a job, under laws that are designed to punish sexual harassment and make workplaces accessible and tolerable for women. But Trump has long had a casual relationship to the law.Daniels has described the sex that followed as a grim affair, performed out of a begrudging sense of obligation. “I realized exactly what I’d gotten myself into,” she told Cooper of coming out of the bathroom to find Trump lying on his bed, in his underwear. “And I was like, ‘Ugh, here we go.’ And I just felt like maybe – it was sort of – I had it coming for making a bad decision for going to someone’s room alone. And I just heard the voice in my head, ‘Well, you put yourself in a bad situation and bad things happen, so you deserve this.’”On the stand at Trump’s criminal hush-money trial in New York on Tuesday, she described the same moment, saying, “The room spun in slow motion. I thought, ‘Oh, my God, what did I misread to get here?’” Trump told her that she reminded him of his daughter. He did not use a condom.For a while after that, Trump kept calling Daniels, asking to see her again. When he called, he would again mention the prospect of her appearing on The Apprentice. They met one more time, a year later, in a hotel room where Trump was watching Shark Week. He tried to initiate sex again, and Daniels refused. Later, she got a call informing her that she would not be cast on his show.The hush-money trial that has been proceeding chaotically in New York over the past four weeks is broadly considered to be the weakest of the four criminal cases proceeding against Trump – and, perhaps not incidentally, it is also the only one that will be tried before he again stands for election this November. Before Tuesday, the testimonies were dense with proceduralism, talking about attorney accounting practices and editorial meetings at tabloids. This was all meant to explain to the jury – and to the voters following along at home – the nature of Trump’s “catch-and-kill” scheme with the National Enquirer, an arrangement in which the tabloid purchased the rights to unflattering stories about Trump – like Daniels’s – and then hid them from public view, silencing the relevant parties with NDAs.But the focus on technicalities can obscure the gendered nature of the arrangement: at the center of the allegations is an elaborate, multi-party scheme to prevent women from speaking in public about their experiences with Trump – to stop what they know from becoming what the voters know, and to keep their stories of Trump’s conduct toward them hidden.An anxiety about women’s speech – about what they might say about men, and how their words might affront or embarrass – animates much of our popular discourses around sexual misconduct, due process and the boundaries of acceptable sexual behavior. But it is rare that the mechanisms used to silence women are made so visible, or rendered so explicit in their relation to electoral politics. Trump’s fixers, after all, had reason to be especially worried about the stories of women like Stormy Daniels. At the time that the deal at issue in the case was finalized, in October of 2016, the Access Hollywood tape had been released, in which Trump bragged about grabbing women by their genitals. More than two dozen women have since accused him of sexual misconduct; there are likely others that we don’t know about.Daniels has said repeatedly that she did not refuse the sex with Trump, and that she does not consider herself a victim. She has also said that the encounter was marked by what on Tuesday she called a “power imbalance”, and that she did not feel she had full freedom to decline it. She has always described the encounter as distasteful and unwanted; she has spoken of being afraid of Trump in the aftermath.Conversations over sexual misconduct frequently become conversations over semantics, in which debates about what counts as rape or assault or harassment stand in for the unasked question about what is a decent, respectful and humane way to treat women. But we need not litigate a definition of Daniels’s encounter, or place it into a different category than she does, to say that what Trump did to her in that encounter was marked by a profound sense of sexual entitlement, and by false promises and gestures toward bribery that make it clear he knew that Daniels did not desire him. That such encounters are usually not called rape does not mean that they do not index a gendered form of exploitation, the leveraging of a man’s money and position for access to an unwilling woman’s body.What followed, too, was a gendered form of exploitation: a conspiracy to secure her silence. Trump’s attorneys will argue that paying a woman in order to get her to sign an NDA is not illegal; even the prosecution is arguing that the criminality is not in seeking Daniels’s silence, but in trying to cover up the arrangement afterward.But legality is not the only standard of morality, and it should disturb us all, as believers in free expression, open inquiry and an informed public, that a group of powerful people went to such extensive and allegedly felonious lengths to prevent women from telling the truth about what men did to them. Daniels is the first woman to take the stand in the hush-money trial. That’s partly because the people who arranged the catch and kill scheme were all men.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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

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

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      Mockery, low tactics, sexist tropes: gloriously, Stormy Daniels is repaying Donald Trump in kind

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      The spectacle of Stormy Daniels on the witness stand in a Manhattan courtroom this week sent one back to the image of Trump’s last female antagonist, E Jean Carroll, the advice columnist who famously sued Trump for sexually assaulting her, standing victorious outside another courtroom in January. Daniels, unlike Carroll, is not the plaintiff in this case. Nonetheless, Trump’s fortunes rest, to a large degree, on her credibility, a 45-year-old former porn star who the New York Times described this week as “a complicated and imperfect witness”. If Carroll – elegant, measured, articulate – was the perfect victim, Daniels is practically the archetype of the woman court systems tend to revile. And yet, on the strength of her opening testimony, she strikes me as Trump’s very worst nightmare.This impression is extrajudicial. Daniels, who has already been rebuked by the judge for straying off topic, may prove too wayward a witness to achieve what Carroll did: the civil case equivalent of a guilty verdict against a man almost supernaturally able to avoid them. If we are looking beyond verdicts to the public image, however, Daniels is in some ways by far the more menacing foe for Trump. You couldn’t make up the details of her testimony this week, which sent court reporters scrambling to find sober ways to present her account of spanking Trump with a rolled up magazine and insisting on having sex with her without a condom. This is a woman willing to meet Trump at his preferred site of conflict – public humiliation – and on the evidence so far, he isn’t weathering it well.Last year, during the Carroll hearing, the former president defaulted to the standard tittering, smirking, mocking performance he reserves for critical women – be they accusing him of rape or running against him for president. Accounts from the courtroom this week suggest this persona was no match for Daniels. The Associated Press reported that Trump “squirmed and scowled” during Daniels’ testimony. The Washington Post recorded him in the act of “angry, profane muttering”, which won Trump his own rebuke from the judge. “I understand your client is upset but he is cursing audibly,” said Judge Merchan to Trump’s lawyers. Upset! Go Stormy.As with so many episodes involving Trump, this is a spectacular reversal of cultural norms. Women like Daniels tend not to prosper in court, where unruliness that might be considered rakish in a man is more likely to be read in women as a byword for trash. None of that quite applies here. One has always understood about Daniels that, at some deep level, she has Trump’s number and knows how to hit him where it hurts. If the narrative he constructed around the Carroll accusation was the classic too-ugly-to-rape defence, this won’t work with Daniels – 30 years his junior and a confident sexual operator who appears hellbent on depicting Trump as a pathetic little man. While they were having sex, she said on Tuesday, she recalled, “trying to think of anything other than what was happening”.The lingering question, apart from what the magazine she allegedly spanked him with was (was it the Economist? Or, as all British people over a certain age immediately thought, a Woman’s Weekly? Was it, in a pleasing dramatic irony, a copy of the Enquirer?), is how will this land with his supporters? Trump has long capitalised on the idea that he is the kind of “pussy-grabbing” sexual aggressor who might enjoy sex with a porn star. Until now, we have never heard from the other side – and Daniels’ description of him as a man allegedly more interested in quizzing her on STD testing and whether sex workers are unionised, rather than actually having sex, replaces his swaggering self-image with a fussy, emasculated alternative. If Trump destroys women by reducing them to sexist tropes, Daniels has come back at him with exactly the same.This manoeuvre, as Trump’s lawyers pointed out while asking for a mistrial (it was denied), has nothing to do with the facts of the case, which hinges on whether or not Trump paid Daniels $130,000 (£104,000) in hush money in the run up to the 2016 election, and then covered it up by falsifying business records. Trump and his team know what Daniels is doing – which is flatly, salaciously and in incredible detail – making an absolute mockery of him in front of the world. It is, they have argued, unfair. It is below the belt. It is unmistakably, compellingly, and as it may turn out, successfully, an approach borrowed from Trump’s own playbook.
      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More

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      House quashes Marjorie Taylor Greene motion to oust speaker Mike Johnson

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      The House easily quashed Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resolution to oust the Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, on Wednesday, as members of both parties came together in a rare moment of bipartisanship to keep the chamber open for business.The vote on the motion to table Greene’s resolution was 359 to 43, as 196 Republicans and 163 Democrats supported killing the proposal.Greene took to the House floor on Wednesday evening to announce her plans, prompting boos from fellow Republicans present in the chamber. Her request triggered a countdown clock, as House rules stipulated that members had to vote on the matter within two legislative days. House Republicans chose to take up the matter immediately, as the resolution was widely expected to fail.House Democratic leaders previously indicated that they would vote to kill Greene’s resolution, and the vast majority of their caucus took the same position on Wednesday. However, 32 Democrats and 11 Republicans opposed the motion to table the resolution, and seven members voted “present”.Speaking to reporters after the vote, Johnson thanked his colleagues for helping him to hold on to a post he has held for six and a half months.“I want to say that I appreciate the show of confidence from my colleagues to defeat this misguided effort. That is certainly what it was,” Johnson said. “As I’ve said from the beginning and I’ve made clear here every day, I intend to do my job. I intend to do what I believe to be the right thing, which is what I was elected to do, and I’ll let the chips fall where they may. In my view, that is leadership.”Greene’s maneuver appeared to catch many Republicans off guard, after the hard-right congresswoman spent much of the past few days meeting with Johnson to address her concerns about his leadership. She has repeatedly criticized Johnson for passing significant bills, including a government funding proposal and a foreign aid package, by relying on Democratic support.Greene had said she would force a vote on the motion to vacate this week, but she appeared to back away from that commitment on Tuesday.“We’ll see. It’s up to Mike Johnson,” Greene told reporters when asked if she still planned to demand the vote. “Obviously, you can’t make things happen instantly, and we all are aware and understanding of that. So now the ball is in his court, and he’s supposed to be reaching out to us – hopefully soon.”Donald Trump, who has voiced support for Johnson in recent weeks, reportedly called Greene over the weekend, but she would not disclose details about the call to reporters.“I have to tell you, I love President Trump. My conversations with him are fantastic,” Greene said. “And again, I’m not going to go into details. You want to know why? I’m not insecure about that.”Even though her motion to vacate overwhelmingly failed, Greene and her allies already appear poised to turn the issue into a litmus test for fellow Republican members. Congressman Thomas Massie, a co-sponsor of Greene’s resolution, shared a picture on X of the 11 Republicans who voted against the motion to table.“It’s a new paradigm in Congress,” Massie said. “[Former Democratic speaker] Nancy Pelosi, and most [Republicans] voted to keep Uniparty Speaker Mike Johnson. These are the eleven, including myself, who voted NOT to save him.”View image in fullscreenThe Republicans who rallied around Johnson returned the fire by accusing Greene and her allies of promoting chaos in the House. The episode came less than a year after the ouster of former Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy, which brought the chamber to a standstill for weeks until Johnson’s election.Congressman Mike Lawler, who faces a tough reelection campaign in New York this November, told reporters on Wednesday: “This type of tantrum is absolutely unacceptable, and it does nothing to further the cause of the conservative movement. The only people who have stymied our ability to govern are the very people that have pulled these types of stunts throughout the course of this Congress to undermine the House Republican majority.”Congressman Sean Casten, an Illinois Democrat, offered a more concise and cutting assessment. Writing on X, he said of Greene: “She is so, so dumb. And yet she keeps talking.” More

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      Pete McCloskey, Republican who tried to unseat Richard Nixon, dies aged 96

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      Pete McCloskey, a pro-environment, anti-war California Republican who co-wrote the Endangered Species Act and co-founded Earth Day, has died. He was 96.A fourth-generation Republican “in the mold of Teddy Roosevelt”, he often said, McCloskey represented the 12th congressional district for 15 years, running for president against an incumbent Richard Nixon in 1972.He battled party leaders while serving seven terms in Congress and went on to publicly disavow the GOP in his later years.Years after leaving Washington, McCloskey made one last bid for elective office in 2006 when he challenged Richard Pombo of northern California’s 11th district in a primary race that McCloskey described as “a battle for the soul of the Republican party”.After losing to Pombo, who had spent most of his tenure in Washington attempting to undo the Endangered Species Act, he threw his support behind Democrat Jerry McNerney, the eventual winner.“It was foolish to run against him [Pombo], but we didn’t have anybody else to do it, and I could not stand what a––– they’d become,” the frank-talking former Marine colonel said of the modern GOP in a 2008 interview with the Associated Press.McCloskey cited disillusionment from influence peddling and ethics scandals under the George W Bush administration as reasons why he switched parties in 2007 at the age of 79.“A pox on them and their values,” he wrote in an open letter explaining the switch to his supporters.Born in Loma Linda, California, on 29 September 1927as Paul Norton McCloskey Jr, he graduated from South Pasadena high school, where the second baseman made the school’s baseball hall of fame, although he self-deprecatingly called himself “perhaps the worst player on the baseball team”.He earned a law degree from Stanford University and founded an environmental law firm in Palo Alto before making the move to public office. In 1967, he defeated fellow Republican Shirley Temple Black and Democrat Roy Archibald in a special election for the San Mateo county congressional seat.The left-leaning McCloskey had a thundering presence in Washington, attempting to get onto the floor of the 1972 Republican national convention during his bid to unseat then president Nixon on an anti-Vietnam War platform. He ultimately was blocked by a rule written by his friend and law school debate partner, John Ehrlichman, that said a candidate could not get to the floor with fewer than 25 delegates. McCloskey had one.Still, McCloskey loved to say he finished second.He would later visit Ehrlichman in prison, where Nixon’s former counsel served 1.5 years for conspiracy, perjury and obstruction of justice in the Watergate break-in that led to the president’s resignation.While in office, McCloskey also was known for befriending Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and criticized Israeli influence on US politics. The congressman was the first to demand Nixon’s impeachment, and the first to demand a repeal of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that allowed the Vietnam war.But his enduring legacy is the Endangered Species Act, which protects species designated as endangered or threatened and conserves the ecosystems on which they depend. McCloskey co-wrote the legislation in 1973, after a campaign by young people empowered by Earth Day activities successfully unseated seven of 12 Congress members known as “the Dirty Dozen” for their anti-environment votes.“On that day, the world changed,” McCloskey recalled in 2008. “Suddenly, everybody was an environmentalist. My Republican colleagues started asking me for copies of old speeches I had given on water and air quality.”After 15 years in the House, he lost his run for a Senate seat to Republican Pete Wilson, who went on to be California’s governor. He moved back to rural Yolo county, relishing the life of a farmer and part-time attorney.“You know, if people call you ‘congressman’ all the time, you’ll end up thinking you’re smarter than you are,” he said.McCloskey is survived by his wife, Helen – his longtime press secretary whom he married in 1978 – and four children by his first wife: Nancy, Peter, John and Kathleen. More

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      US public school officials push back in congressional hearing on antisemitism

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      Some of America’s top school districts rebuffed charges of failing to counteract a surge of antisemitism on Wednesday in combative exchanges with a congressional committee that has been at the centre of high-profile interrogations of elite university chiefs.Having previously grilled the presidents of some of the country’s most prestigious seats of higher learning in politically charged settings, the House of Representatives’ education and workforce subcommittee switched the spotlight to the heads of three predominantly liberal school districts with sizable Jewish populations.The hearing was presented as an investigation into how the authorities were safeguarding Jewish staff and students in an atmosphere of rising bigotry against the backdrop of Israel’s war in Gaza.Calling the need for the hearing “a travesty”, Republican member Aaron Bean from Florida said 246 “very vile” antisemitic acts had been reported in the three districts – in New York City, Montgomery county in Maryland and Berkeley in California – since last October’s attack by Hamas on Israel.“Antisemitism is repugnant in all its forms but the topic of today’s hearing is pretty troubling,” he said. “It’s hard to grasp how antisemitism has become such a force in our kindergarten-through-12 [high] schools.”He cited instances of students marching through corridors chanting “kill the Jews”, a pupil caught on a security camera imitating Hitler and performing the Nazi salute, and Jewish children being told to pick up pennies.The three districts insisted in response that they did not tolerate antisemitism in their schools. They said they had taken educational and disciplinary steps to combat antisemitism following the 7 October attack, which led to an Israeli military offensive in Gaza that has triggered a wave of demonstrations on university campuses and beyond.However, the districts gave divergent answers on whether teachers had been fired for actions deemed antisemitic. Each district has received complaints over their handling of post-7 October allegations of antisemitism.David Banks, the chancellor of the New York City school system, engaged in a testy exchange with Republicans over an episode at Hillcrest high school, whose principal had been removed following a protest against a pro-Israel teacher but had been reassigned to an administrative role rather than fired.The Republican representative, Elise Stefanik – noted for her pointed questioning of three university presidents over free speech at a previous hearing last December – sparred with Banks and accused the school leaders of paying “lip service”.Banks stood his ground and appeared to challenge the committee, saying: “This convening feels like the ultimate ‘gotcha’ moment. It doesn’t sound like people trying to solve for something we actually solve for.”He added: “We cannot simply discipline our way out of this problem. The true antidote to ignorance and bias is to teach.”Banks said his district had “terminated people” over antisemitism.Karla Silvestre, president of Montgomery county public schools in Maryland – which includes schools in suburbs near Washington – said no teacher had been fired, prompting Bean to retort: “So you allow them to continue to teach hate?”Enikia Ford Morthel, superintendent of the Berkeley unified school district in California, said her authority’s adherence to state and federal privacy laws precluded her from giving details on disciplinary measures taken against staff and students.“As a result, some believe we do nothing. This is not true,” she said.“Since October 7, our district has had formal complaints alleging antisemitism arising from nine incidents without our jurisdiction. However, antisemitism is not pervasive in Berkeley unified school district.”Echoing previous hearings that featured the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia, Bean asked all three district heads whether they considered the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” antisemitic.Each said yes, although Silvestre and Morthel qualified this by saying their affirmation was dependent on whether it meant the elimination of the Jewish population in Israel – an interpretation disputed by many pro-Palestinian campaigners. Bean said tersely: “It does.”Responding to the three opening statements, Bean said: “Congratulations. You all have done a remarkable job testifying. But just like some college presidents before you that sat in the very same seat, they also in many instances said the right thing. They said they were protecting students when they were really not.”The subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon, accused Republicans of being selective in their stance against antisemitism, singling out the notorious white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, whose participants chanted “Jews will not replace us”. The then president Donald Trump later said the rally included some “very fine people” .She described one of those who took part, Nick Fuentes, as a “vile antisemite … who denied the scope of the Holocaust”, but noted that Trump hosted him at his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida in November 2022.“I will offer my colleagues on the other side of the aisle the opportunity to condemn these previous comments,” Bonamici said. “ Does anyone have the courage to stand up against this?”When committee members remained silent, she said: “Let the record show that no one spoke at this time.” More

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      Peta unveils Kristi Noem ‘ghoulish monster’ Halloween costume

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      Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor and Republican vice-presidential hopeful, is “scarier than any horror movie villain”, the animal rights pressure group Peta said as it unveiled a Halloween costume inspired by Noem’s stunning campaign-book admission that she once shot an “untrainable” 14-month-old dog called Cricket.“Anyone cruel enough to blow a rambunctious puppy’s brains out instead of attempting to train her or find her a more responsible guardian is scarier than any horror-movie villain,” said Ingrid Newkirk, president of Peta.“With Peta Kristi Noem costume, dog lovers everywhere can strike terror in their friends as the most ghoulish monster at their Halloween party.”Halloween is more than five months away but Peta said it was taking orders for the costume, which costs $79.99 and includes “a mask of Noem’s face with devil horns and a camo hat imprinted with ‘Noem: Puppy Killer’, a fake gun, and the pièce de résistance: a stuffed dog to ‘bite’ the neck of the wearer, adorned with a bandanna that reads, ‘Take a Bite out of Cruelty.’”Noem describes killing Cricket – and an unnamed goat she deemed too aggressive – in her book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward.The Guardian first reported the remarkable tale of gravel-pit slaughter, thereby lighting the match on a political explosion widely held to have wrecked any chance Noem had of being named running mate to Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president.Noem has repeatedly defended her decision to kill Cricket the dog and the unnamed goat, as representative of her willingness to do unpleasant things in farm life and thus in politics.She has also rebuffed questions about what appears, later in the book, to be a threat to kill Commander, Joe Biden’s dog which was sent away from the White House after more than 20 biting incidents.This week, Politico reported that editors and advisers stopped Noem including the story in a previous book, because they insisted it would damage her image.Peta said it “urges everyone to consider whether they have the time, patience, and other resources necessary to socialise and train a dog before adding one to the family.“Humane dog training uses only positive reinforcement – never fear, intimidation, or painful methods such as shock collars, which Noem admits to having used on Cricket prior to killing her.” More

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

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