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      Biden withdrawal throws spotlight on to role of Democratic delegates

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      It’s been more than 50 years since delegates to a Democratic national convention haven’t known their nominee as they walked through the door. Now, in the wake of Joe Biden’s decision on Sunday not to seek re-election, there’s a mad dash.Delegates are due to convene in Chicago on 19 August, and while the Democratic party seems to be coalescing around Kamala Harris, there’s no guarantee that she will be the nominee, and others could still throw their name into contention.But just a few hours after Biden’s announcement, Google documents were circulating asking delegates to pledge their support for Harris.Jonathan Padilla, a delegate from California, said he could stand for things to be a hair less mad.“I don’t want to be rushed into something,” Padilla said. “I do want to have deliberation. There’s a lot of frustration in the party, and I think having a process to talk to people from the campaign and to the candidate or people around her is necessary … to help us be unified in November.”Delegates are, by and large, local volunteers expected to spend thousands of dollars to fly to Chicago and attend the convention. It’s often viewed as a reward for activism and dedication, but it’s typically a far less consequential role than it might be next month.One delegate who isn’t yet old enough to drink expressed his mounting anxiety about how things are unfolding and how little has been predictable.“I’m a young, young person,” said the delegate, who requested anonymity because he feared being replaced by his state chair. “This is my first convention … And this is scary. It’s super anxiety-inducing, and crazy, and so much.”He said he was disappointed with the party for communicating poorly. “But at the same time, I don’t really feel like I have time to be disappointed. I feel like I just need to go knock on some doors.”In a “normal” election year, each state sends a number of delegates to the convention who have been pledged to a candidate. Those delegates are expected to vote for that candidate , on pain of being replaced by a state chair if their vote is wayward. With a majority going to one candidate, as has happened every election year since the 60s, that’s the end of it. A candidate is chosen.That bureaucratic, uncontroversial process has become an open question this year.In a call on Friday, before Biden dropped out, Elaine Kamarck, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a member of the party’s rules committee, likened the process of selecting a new presidential nominee to a mini-primary, with delegates as the voting audience. If Biden were to drop out, the process would be “scrunched into three weeks or something. It’d be incredibly tight.” The question at the convention would then become whether a consensus had formed on a new nominee.But that’s not exactly what’s happening right now. Instead, members of the California Democratic party have begun circulating a Google document asking delegates to pledge their support for Harris publicly and immediately. According to the list, shared with the Guardian by a delegate, 83 people had already signed on as of 9pm on Sunday. A second Google document is circulating to delegates with a form for pledging their support for Harris on a petition. Before the start of the convention, the Democratic National Committee is also planning to hold a virtual roll call , where a nominee would be chosen for legal purposes.View image in fullscreenOhio presents a problem. State law ostensibly requires parties to select their nominees by 9 August to appear on the ballot. Ohio lawmakers changed the law this year, but Democrats worry that the change won’t take effect in time.Padilla said he expected Harris to be the nominee, but some delegates are unhappy with the pressure for an early decision.“Vice-President Harris has the next 72 to 96 hours to mitigate any serious challenge,” he said. “And pending that, I think the party moves forward with the existing plan of the virtual roll call, which would mitigate risk at the convention, but it does probably leave a lot of delegates who would want a more transparent, deliberative process probably not happy.”Susan Herder, a Biden delegate from Minneapolis, said she thought Biden might be the best president of her lifetime, crediting him with turning the country around from Covid-19 and an economy in which the wealth gap had widened.After the debate and Biden’s exit, she’s ready to start campaigning for Harris. She said she intended to respect all voters and would listen to them to understand their points of view.“I am looking forward to the future,” she said in an email. “I hope everyone who is inclined will help us elect Kamala Harris. It’s a great way to defeat anxiety, fear and feelings of hopelessness. LET’S GET HER ELECTED!”While some delegates have only just come around to supporting someone other than Biden, others had been pushing for a change during the primaries, long before Biden’s disastrous debate.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I think we were feeling like our message has become even stronger in the past few hours,” said Asma Mohammed, leader of Minnesota’s “uncommitted” movement and a Democratic convention delegate. “In the past few hours, there are people who have reached out and said, ‘You know, you’re right. We needed a better candidate.’”Mohammed has been calling for pushback against the Biden administration’s support for the war in Gaza, demanding a plank in the party platform that calls for a ceasefire, an arms embargo and a president ready to support that position. She believes Harris is more sympathetic to her position than Biden was, despite having taking $5m in campaign donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), but wants time to put the question to her.“We are delegates from our communities, and we are being asked to represent,” Mohammed said. “We can’t do that if we’re only being given one option.”A degree of dissent against the virtual roll call had percolated up from delegates days ago. Delegates Are Democracy and Welcome Party, two organizations formed in recent days to help inform confused delegates about their options, have been hosting webinars, airing concerns from delegates about a convoluted process.Chris Dempsey, head of Delegates Are Democracy, said he had been speaking with dozens of delegates who say the process is opaque and that party leaders have been gatekeeping information. He stressed that Delegates for Democracy had not been advocating for Biden to withdraw, but was instead trying to guide delegates, who are often volunteers without deep legal training, about the rules.“We think that conventions are essential at putting forward strong nominees,” Dempsey said. “We can beat Donald Trump in November. But we know that we need credible sources of information to share with delegates. We want to be a place that delegates, the public, the media can come and get good information about how the process works.”Kamarck noted in a call on Friday that delegates were already free to vote for whoever they wanted, more or less. The convention rules contain a loophole, she said.“The loophole is ‘in all good conscience’. That was added after the very, very difficult and bitter 1980 convention.”At that convention, Senator Ted Kennedy challenged President Jimmy Carter in primaries and then a floor fight. At the time, delegates could be removed by state leaders if they changed their vote. The conscience clause emerged after that, to prevent delegates from acting like robots, Kamarck said.“On the Democratic side, there is no such thing as Joe Biden releasing his delegates,” Kamarck said. “And Joe Biden gets this. I don’t know why the rest of the press doesn’t get it. Joe Biden said in his Nato press conference: ‘The delegates can do whatever the hell they want to do.’ And that is basically true.” The delegate rules require their votes to “reflect the sentiments” of those who elected them.That phrase had never really been tested, Kamarck said. Until now.Biden’s withdrawal has set off a hunt for delegates, Kamarck said. Again, in a “normal” process, that hunt would start on the floor of the convention, with potential candidates soliciting signatures on a petition to get on a nomination ballot, with no more than 50 from any one state and 300 delegates to make the ballot.“I suspect that somebody from the [Democratic National Committee (DNC)] or the state parties would organize delegate meetings that would be open to the public – because all DNC meetings are open to the public – for the candidates to come and talk to the delegates, because they’d have to win over the delegates,” she said.The nomination for vice-president would be based on a separate vote, she said on Friday. “I imagine what would happen is that whoever emerged as the frontrunner – and maybe there’d be two or three of them – would all name their vice-presidential candidates. But then we’d have an open vote for vice-president. It could get quite confusing. But this assumes, all of this assumes, that there’s a contest. And I for one am very skeptical that there’ll be much of a contest.” More

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      World leaders react to Biden’s decision to exit presidential race

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      Leaders from around the world have begun to react to Joe Biden’s announcement that he would not seek re-election this year, endorsing vice-president Kamala Harris in the most unorthodox US presidential campaign in generations.US allies largely offered tributes to Biden’s work over decades of government service, discussing his work as a partner in international security, without addressing the tense political debate still unfolding in the US.The US election campaign comes at a pivotal moment with major conflicts ongoing in Ukraine and in Gaza, both parties warning of a growing great-power rivalry with China, and European allies unsettled about a revanchist Russia and potential America First policy under Donald Trump that could see Washington turn its back on the continent.“Dear President @JoeBiden,” wrote Polish prime minister Donald Tusk on X, “you’ve taken many difficult decisions thanks to which Poland, America and the world are safer, and democracy stronger. I know you were driven by the same motivations when announcing your final decision. Probably the most difficult one in your life.”UK prime minister Keir Starmer said that he “respected” Biden’s decision and called his career “remarkable”.“I respect President Biden’s decision and I look forward to us working together during the remainder of his presidency,” Starmer said in a statement. “I know that, as he has done throughout his remarkable career, he will have made his decision based on what he believes is best for the American people.”Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett called Biden a “true friend” of Israel.“President Biden is a true friend of Israel who stood by us in our most difficult moments,” he wrote on X. “During my tenure as Prime Minister, I witnessed his unwavering support of the State of Israel. Thank you for everything.”US adversaries criticised Biden’s record and accused him of standing behind growing tensions around the world.“Biden has caused problems all over the world and in his own country, the United States. Since he sees that he will not be elected, he is withdrawing without waiting for the election,” Russian state Duma leader Vyacheslav Volodin, an ally of Vladimir Putin’s, told reporters on Sunday.Biden “should be held accountable for the war unleashed in Ukraine, for destroying the economies of European countries, and for the sanctions policy against Russia and other countries,” Volodin said.“The issue has not been Biden for a long time,” said Russia’s Federation Council deputy speaker Konstantin Kosyachov. “The Americans are divided in their positions in favour of or against Trump. I believe that whoever leads the Democrats’ campaign after Biden’s withdrawal, this divide will remain in place. And everything will depend on how the Republicans will now organise and complete this campaign.” More

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      Joe Biden withdraws from presidential race after weeks of pressure to quit

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      Joe Biden has withdrawn from his presidential re-election race and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris to take his place at the top of their party’s ticket, an extraordinary decision upending American politics that plunges the Democratic nomination into uncertainty just months before the November election against Donald Trump – a candidate Biden has warned is an existential threat to US democracy.“While it has been my intention to seek re-election, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term,” Biden said in a letter announcing his decision.Biden thanked Harris in his letter and later endorsed her as the Democratic nominee for president in a tweet. He said he planned to speak to the nation in more detail later this week.“My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as president for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my vice-president. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made,” he said.“Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats – it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.”Harris thanked Biden in a statement “for his extraordinary leadership as president”. She also said “with this selfless and patriotic act, President Biden is doing what he has done throughout his life of service: putting the American people and our country above everything else.“I am honored to have the president’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination,” she said. “I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic party – and unite our nation – to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda.“We have 107 days until Election Day. Together, we will fight. And together, we will win.”The president made the stunning announcement after a weeks-long pressure campaign by Democratic leaders, organizers and donors who increasingly saw no path to victory so long as the embattled incumbent remained on the ticket. More than 30 Democratic members of Congress had called on Biden to step aside. As recently as Friday, his campaign had insisted he was staying in the race. An ABC News/Ipsos poll released on Sunday found that 60% of Democrats believed he should end his run. The same poll found that nearly 76% of Democrats would be satisfied with Harris as the nominee.Biden’s decision to withdraw appears to have been abrupt. The president told his senior staff on Sunday afternoon that he had changed his mind about staying in the race, and campaign officials were still reportedly on the phone with delegates asking if they could count on their support.In a post on Truth Social, Trump said Biden “was not fit to run for President, and is certainly not fit to serve – And never was!”Biden “only attained the position of President by lies, Fake News, and not leaving his Basement”, Trump said. “All those around him, including his Doctor and the Media, knew that he wasn’t capable of being President, and he wasn’t.”Trump went on to list a series of falsehoods about immigration, concluding: “We will suffer greatly because of his presidency, but we will remedy the damage he has done very quickly. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”Minutes after Sunday’s announcement, Trump told CNN that he believed it would be easier to defeat Harris than it would have been to beat Biden.It is unclear if any other Democrats will try to challenge Harris for the nomination. And it is still not clear whether she is better positioned to beat Trump. An NBC News poll from earlier this month showed Trump leading Biden and Harris by 2 points, which was within the survey’s margin of error.Barack Obama, the former president who selected Biden as his vice-president for both of his terms, released a lengthy statement on Sunday praising Biden’s decision. There had been reporting in recent days that there was tension between the two men over Biden feeling like Obama and other Democrats were trying to push him out.“Joe Biden has been one of America’s most consequential presidents, as well as a dear friend and partner to me,” said Obama, who won the presidency in 2008. “Today, we’ve also been reminded  –  again – that he’s a patriot of the highest order.“I also know Joe has never backed down from a fight. For him to look at the political landscape and decide that he should pass the torch to a new nominee is surely one of the toughest in his life. But I know he wouldn’t make this decision unless he believed it was right for America. It’s a testament to Joe Biden’s love of the country – and a historic example of a genuine public servant once again putting the interests of the American people ahead of his own – that future generations of leaders will do well to follow.”Obama, who stopped short of endorsing Harris, said Democrats would be navigating “uncharted waters in the days ahead”. He added: “But I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges.”Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who in recent days had become a major figure signaling concerns among Democrats Biden would be able to win the race, spoke glowingly of his decision on Sunday.“President Joe Biden is a patriotic American who has always put our country first. His legacy of vision, values and leadership make him one of the most consequential presidents in American history,” she wrote.Bill and Hillary Clinton endorsed Harris in a joint statement. “We are honored to join the president in endorsing Vice-President Harris and will do whatever we can to support her,” the former president and secretary of state said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHarris’s nomination is not automatic, and there are other Democrats – including the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, the California governor, Gavin Newsom, and the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker – who could seek the nomination. If any of those candidates were nominated in Chicago next month, they would face the monumental task of introducing themselves to voters, crafting a campaign message and defeating Trump – all in two and a half months.Citing sources, CBS News on Sunday reported that neither Whitmer nor Newsom intended to pursue the Democratic nomination. The network added: “There’s no one at this moment preparing behind the scenes to challenge Vice-President Harris.”Whitmer said in a Sunday tweet: “President Biden is a great public servant who knows better than anyone what it takes to defeat Donald Trump. My job in this election will remain the same: doing everything I can to elect Democrats and stop Donald Trump, a convicted felon whose agenda of raising families’ costs, banning abortion nationwide, and abusing the power of the White House to settle his own scores is completely wrong for Michigan.”The chair of the Democratic National Committee, Jaime Harrison, said the party would “undertake a transparent and orderly process to move forward” to choose a candidate to defeat Trump in November.A disastrous debate performance last month, and his uneven public appearances since, have only exacerbated longstanding voter concerns that the 81-year-old president was simply too old to serve another four years.Democrats immediately praised Biden’s decision, including Chuck Schumer, the majority leader in the US Senate, and one of several Democrats who had been pressuring Biden to step aside.“Joe Biden has not only been a great president and a great legislative leader but he is a truly amazing human being. His decision of course was not easy, but he once again put his country, his party, and our future first,” Schumer said in a statement.The US House speaker, Mike Johnson, suggested during appearances on Sunday talkshows that Republicans would bring legal challenges to attempt to block efforts to change the Democratic ticket. Experts are skeptical those efforts will succeed.Johnson was also one of several top Republicans who called on Biden to resign the presidency – something Biden is almost certain not to do.“If Joe Biden is not fit to run for president, he is not fit to serve as president. He must resign the office immediately,” Johnson said, adding that election day on 5 November “cannot arrive soon enough”.The Ohio senator JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, made similar comments on Sunday.Biden’s decision to step aside, though remain as president, caps a singular few weeks in American politics, the latest stunning episode in an unusually tumultuous election season.Trump, the former president and Republican nominee, narrowly survived an attempt on his life during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania that bloodied his ear and left one spectator dead. Biden, after appealing for calm in the wake of attack, had returned to the campaign trail last week determined to salvage his candidacy and once again prove his doubters wrong.In media appearances, the president was defiant, insisting that he would remain the party’s standard-bearer in November. On Wednesday, before delivering remarks at a conference in Nevada, he tested positive for Covid.The president’s withdrawal pushes the Democratic party into largely uncharted waters, with its national convention scheduled to begin on 19 August in Chicago. The nominee will also have a tight window to choose a running mate to take on Trump and Vance. It is not clear how Democrats will choose a new ticket.After serving as Biden’s vice-president, Harris, 59, has the largest national profile of any Democratic candidate, and delegates may view her as the safest option. Campaign finance experts also say that Harris would have the most straightforward legal argument to keep the Biden campaign’s fundraising haul, while another nominee might have to forfeit that money. As of late May, the Biden campaign had $91.6m in cash on hand. More

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      in Elections

      Pro-Trump multimillionaire and election denier boosts funds to far-right voter-conspiracy groups

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      The multimillionaire and prominent election denier Patrick Byrne has been boosting his funding to the Maga-allied America Project and using it to steer six-figure checks to far-right groups that push voting conspiracies in Arizona, Michigan and elsewhere, according to tax records and voting experts.Byrne, the former CEO of online retailer Overstock.com, said last fall that only $3m of the $30m the Florida-based project had raised at that point came from “the public”, with the rest coming from him.In 2022, the America Project almost doubled its revenues to $14.3m versus some $7.7m the prior year, according to tax records first disclosed by Issue One, a bipartisan political reform group.The America Project was launched in April 2021 by Byrne and Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser to Donald Trump when he was president; both Byrne and Flynn have been vocal purveyors of falsehoods that Trump lost the 2020 election due to fraud. They were also both at a meeting with Trump and others in late 2020 to brainstorm ways to overturn his loss.The project’s website features bogus claims about election fraud stemming from early and mail voting, and styles itself as “an America First non-profit organization defending rights and freedoms, election victory, and border security to save America”.The project also boasts that its goal is “to be a symphony conductor of the pro-freedom, pro-constitutional movement, synchronizing and magnifying the efforts of those who wish to ally with us through connecting, training, funding, and working together to save America”.In practice, the America Project and Byrne have sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Arizona-based We the People AZ Alliance, and Michigan-based United States Election Investigation and Lawsuits Inc, triggering alarms by election watchdogs and some GOP veterans due to their incendiary election denialist stances and leaders.The Arizona alliance was co-founded by Shelby Busch, a vice-chair of the Maricopa county Republican party, who in late June was caught on video threatening to kill the top county election official, Stephen Richer, the Maricopa county recorder.Busch opined she would accept only “a good, Christian man that believes what we believe”.Richer, who is Jewish, said in a tweet: “This isn’t healthy. And it’s not responsible. And we shouldn’t want it as part of the Republican party” – noting Busch’s key role as a conservative activist.The Anti-Defamation League and some religious groups have condemned Busch, who is also the state chair to the Republican National Committee, for her remarks. Busch did not return calls seeking comment.Busch, who has been an adviser to Arizona Republican Senate candidate and major election denier Kari Lake, told Politico in a statement in June that “everyone knows I don’t like Richer” but said her comments were just a “joke” and “she would never condone violence”.The Arizona-based Republican consultant Tyler Montague told the Guardian “it takes a lot to make Maga world wince, but it happened when Shelby Busch said she would lynch Stephen Richer, and dog-whistled to Christian nationalists about needing someone with Christian values because Richer is Jewish”.“She was at the heart of promoting election fraud conspiracies, and is connected to Patrick Byrne, who funds the big lie and her Arizona group,” he said.Busch’s group has hauled in close to $400,000 from Byrne personally and the America project since the start of 2023, according to state campaign finance records. Of that total, Byrne has chipped in $280,000, while the America Project has given $120,000.Joe Flynn, Mike Flynn’s brother, who was president of the group for most of 2022, told the Guardian that the project tapped Busch as its Arizona “coordinator” for its 2022 poll-watching training, canvassing and “election integrity” program, dubbed Operation Eagles Wings.Unveiled in early 2022, Operation Eagles Wings was touted as an effort to “expose shenanigans at the ballot box” and to ensure “there are no repeats of the errors that happened in the 2020 election”. Byrne indicated early on that he was backing the operation with $3m.Campaign finance watchdogs raised red flags about Byrne’s and the project’s hefty funding of Busch’s operation.“This group has been bankrolled by deep-pocketed donors who are obsessed with fringe theories about election administration,” said Michael Beckel, Issue One’s research director.Citing Byrne and the MyPillow chief Mike Lindell as key funders of Busch’s group, Beckel added: “At a time when people across the political spectrum should be standing up to defend the integrity of our safe and secure elections, election deniers have used the We the People AZ Alliance to further erode trust in elections.”Neither Flynn is affiliated with the America Project any longer. Byrne did not return a phone call seeking comment.Elsewhere, Byrne and the America Project have donated more than $1.1m to a law firm and a group tied to the election conspiracist and attorney Stefanie Lambert. Lambert has notably defended Byrne in a $1.6bn lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems, who charged him with defamation for his claim the company helped rig the 2020 election.The America Project’s largest single donation in 2022, $700,000, went to the Michigan-based United States Election Investigation and Lawsuits Inc, a group that Lambert co-founded, as Detroit News first reported. Another $430,000 went to Lambert’s Michigan law firm, according to 2022 tax records.Lambert was a central figure in the post-2020 election scramble by Trump allies to find non-existent fraud. Last August, she was indicted in Michigan for her alleged role in a scheme in 2021 to illegally access and tamper with voting machines.In a timing twist, Lambert was arrested in March on the Michigan charges after she appeared in court to defend Byrne against the Dominion charges.Other America Project largesse has gone to various groups and individuals who have track records for pushing voting conspiracies. In 2022 and 2021, for instance, the project paid $200,000 to 423 Catkins Maize LLC, which is tied to Jovan Pulitzer, known for his election denialist claims.Likewise in 2022 and 2021 together, the project doled out about $330,000 to Pennsylvania-based OGC Law LLC, which employs lawyer Gregory Teufel – who has tried without success to overturn a state law that permitted all residents to ask for no-excuse mail-in ballots.On a different Maga front, the America Project also gave $150,000 in 2022 to Brian Della Rocca, a Maryland-based lawyer who has done legal work for the owner of a Delaware computer repair shop at the center of the controversy about Hunter Biden’s laptop.To expand the project’s mission and muscle, Byrne in 2023 tapped Trump’s acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Tom Homan, to be its CEO; a hardliner on border policies Trump has said Homan will have a key post if he wins againAt the Republican convention in Milwaukee, Homan on Wednesday gave a fiery talk blasting Biden border and immigration policies, charging darkly that “this isn’t mismanagement, this isn’t incompetence, this is by design – it is a choice”.Besides his big checks to the America Project and allied groups, Byrne has tried to flex his muscles in other Maga efforts with election deniers.In a tweet last month, for instance, Byrne touted that Michael Flynn, who now leads the Maga-allied America’s Future, should be Trump’s vice-president – and painted a conspiratorial scenario.“FLYNN knows how to spring Trump from prison. The world is at war and we need a general,” Byrne tweeted.Flynn’s ties to Byrne were cemented at a rowdy White House meeting with Trump and other key election deniers on 18 December 2020, where Flynn and Byrne floated the idea of using the national guard to seize voting machines to help overturn Trump’s loss.When Byrne and Flynn, who Trump pardoned after he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts he had with the Russian ambassador in 2016, launched the America Project, an early priority was seeking ways to block Joe Biden’s win in Arizona by promoting falsehoods about fraud.To that end, Byrne provided about $3.25m of $5.7m in funding raised by Cyber Ninjas, an obscure Florida firm with no experience in election audits that was tapped by Arizona’s Republican-led senate to review the Maricopa county election results. The firm’s final report found Biden actually got 99 more votes and Trump 261 fewer than originally counted. More

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      Man accused of Nazi salute during US Capitol attack jailed for nearly five years

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      A Marine who stormed the US Capitol and apparently flashed a Nazi salute in front of the building was sentenced on Friday to nearly five years in prison.Tyler Bradley Dykes, of South Carolina, was an active-duty US marine when he grabbed a police riot shield from the hands of two police officers and used it to push his way through police lines during the attack by a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters on 6 January 2021.Dykes, who pleaded guilty in April to assault charges, was previously convicted of a crime stemming from the 2017 white nationalist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Dykes was transferred to federal custody in 2023 after he served a six-month sentence in a state prison.US district judge Beryl Howell sentenced Dykes, 26, to four years and nine months of imprisonment, the justice department said.Federal prosecutors had recommended a prison sentence of five years and three months for Dykes.“He directly contributed to some of the most extreme violence on the Capitol’s east front,” prosecutors wrote.Dykes’ attorneys requested a two-year prison sentence. They said Dykes knows his actions on January 6 were “illegal, indefensible and intolerable”.During the sentencing hearing, Dykes said that he still stood with Trump and that he supports him “to be the next president of our country”.“Tyler hates his involvement in the Capitol riot,” his lawyers wrote. “He takes complete responsibility for his actions. Tyler apologizes for those actions.”Dykes, then 22, traveled to Washington to attend the Republican Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally with two friends from his hometown of Bluffton, South Carolina. After parting ways with his friends, Dykes ripped snow fencing out of the ground and pulled aside bicycle rack barricades as he approached the Capitol.Later, Dykes joined other rioters in breaking through a line of police officers who were defending the stairs leading to the Capitol’s East Rotunda doors.“After reaching the top of the stairs, Dykes celebrated his accomplishment, performing what appears to be the ‘Sieg Heil’ salute,” prosecutors wrote.After stealing the riot shield from the two officers, Dykes entered the Capitol and held it in one hand while he raised his other hand in celebration. He also used the shield to assault police officers inside the building, forcing them to retreat down a hallway, prosecutors said.Dykes gave the shield to an officer after he left the Capitol.Dykes denied that he performed a Nazi salute on 6 January, but prosecutors say his open-handed gesture was captured on video.In August 2017, photos captured Dykes joining tiki torch-toting white supremacists on a march through the University of Virginia’s campus on the eve of the Unite the Right rally. A photo shows him extending his right arm in a Nazi salute and carrying a lit torch in his left hand.In March 2023, Dykes was arrested on charges related to the march. He pleaded guilty to a felony charge of burning an object with intent to intimidate.Dykes briefly attended Cornell University in the fall of 2017 before he joined the US Marine Corps. In May 2023, he was discharged from the military under “other than honorable” conditions.“Rather than honor his oath to protect and defend the constitution, Dykes’s criminal activity on January 6 shows he was instead choosing to violate it,” prosecutors wrote.More than 1,400 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot.More than 900 of them have been sentenced, with roughly two-thirds receiving terms of imprisonment ranging from a few days to 22 years. More

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      Donald Trump’s run of good luck could end this weekend – if Joe Biden does the right thing | Jonathan Freedland

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      You can see why they think he’s God’s anointed one. You can understand why Republicans cheered when Donald Trump repeatedly claimed the divine as his number one supporter, declaring with certainty that he had God on his side. To the faithful gathered at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee on Thursday night, none of that would have sounded like exaggeration – and not only because their nominee for the US presidency had survived an assassin’s bullet. It’s also because Trump has been on a run of extraordinary good fortune – one that might be just about to end.Of course, it was that brush with death at a rally in Pennsylvania last weekend that the former and would-be future president had in mind when he spoke of “a providential moment”. The shooting, and Trump’s ability to shrug off injury, raising his fist in bloodied defiance, has prompted his most fervent believers to cast him as a living martyr to their cause. The Republican party had already transformed itself into a cult of personality. But to see delegates wearing bandages on their right ears as a mark of love for, and identification with, their leader is to realise that that cult has become messianic.Still, even the most godless Republican may have found themselves wondering if Trump does indeed have a friend upstairs. For three straight weeks, everything has gone his way.Trump’s hot streak began with the TV debate against Joe Biden at the end of June – a debate that, it’s worth remembering, would typically have taken place in the autumn had not the Biden team insisted it must happen sooner. That was a 90-minute disaster for the president who, when he wasn’t struggling to complete sentences, stared vacantly into space, looking every one of his 81 years.That triggered a panic among Democrats, three long weeks of internal agonising as elders and bigwigs sought to navigate between the pride, and stubbornness, of a president who they believe deserves respect for a consequential term in office, and a party ever-more convinced that he will not only lose the White House, but will take Democratic candidates for the House and Senate down with him. That process may reach its climax this weekend, but not before it has handed Trump a delicious contrast: Democrats divided and distracted, Republicans unified and focused.Meanwhile, the courts have been smiling on Trump, whether it’s six judges of the supreme court, three of whom were appointed by him, granting presidents near total immunity for their official acts, or a Trump-appointed judge throwing out what most agreed was the strongest of all the legal cases against him, relating to his alleged retention of classified documents.That’s allowed him to sit back and enjoy the show. He’s watched as, to take one example, Biden gave a decent performance at a post-Nato summit press conference, giving detailed answers on foreign policy – while all anyone remembers is that he introduced Volodymyr Zelenskiy as “President Putin” and referred to Kamala Harris as “Vice-President Trump”.View image in fullscreenBut it’s the assassination attempt and the TV debate that are the bookend events of these remarkable few weeks, reinforcing what was already Trump’s chosen frame for the campaign: strong v weak. As one senior Democrat put it to me: “The Republicans have a guy who bullets bounce off of. We have a guy who can’t handle a flight of stairs.” The polls are bleakness itself for Democrats, with Trump leading Biden not only in all the key swing states, but even in once solidly Democratic terrain – with Virginia and even, incredibly, New York now deemed “battleground” states. No wonder Republicans were talking this week of a November landslide.Then, just in case any part of the narrative was insufficiently vivid, while Trump was being hailed as a messiah in Milwaukee, Biden contracted Covid. Now he is isolated, in every possible sense.Except maybe it’s possible to be too lucky. Trump is so far ahead, his numbers so strong, that Democrats have stepped up their post-debate push to get Biden to withdraw from the race. Privately at first and then, when Biden refused to budge, publicly via well-placed leaks, congressional leaders, big league donors and arguably the party’s sharpest political brain, the former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have spelled it out for the president, telling him he cannot win. “It’s over,” one party veteran tells me. “He’ll be gone by Monday.”If that’s right, then Trump’s lucky streak will surely be at an end. His entire campaign has been predicated on Biden being his opponent. Facing someone else means three fundamentals of the race would be altered. First, media attention will shift away from him to the shiny object of a new Democratic nominee. Second, he, not his opponent, will be the oldest person in the race. And third, Trump should no longer have the “change” message – so potent in this age of anti-incumbency – all to himself.That last element depends on whom Democrats choose and how they do it. If Biden stands aside and there is a quick coronation of his deputy, Harris, then Trump will cast her as the status quo. There will be a cacophony of racist and misogynist dog whistles, along with a related effort to present her as lacking a democratic mandate and dangerously leftwing.But there is another way to do it. Even some of Harris’s backers favour a mini-primary, which could amount to a fortnight or so of TV debates before the 4,000 or so Democratic delegates cast their votes. Not enough, to be sure, but that would bestow some democratic legitimacy on the eventual winner and offer at least a glimpse of who flourishes and who wilts under national scrutiny. The ballot itself should happen before the party convention in Chicago on 19 August, so that that gathering can be a showcase rather than a floor fight.I know – we’re getting ahead of ourselves. But as Democrats head into a fateful weekend, they should know they have little to fear from what may lie ahead. A contest could demonstrate the party’s energy and vigour, its deep bench of new talent, drawing the contrast with the creepy cult it opposes. Given the number of Americans who have been saying for a year or more that they want a choice other than Trump v Biden, there is every chance the election could be upended, with the polls looking radically different almost straight away.And Trump showed again on Thursday night how eminently beatable he is. His speechwriters wanted him to adopt a kinder, gentler tone – a man chastened by his brush with death, bent on healing and national unity. He managed it for a while. But soon he was veering away from the teleprompter, with rambling diversions into all the old, dark greatest hits: “crazy” Pelosi, migrants as an “invasion” of killers and criminals, the election that was stolen from him.The stakes are too high, for the US and the world, to let Democrats cede the 2024 contest to Trump, which is what a continued Biden candidacy would do. The hope is that Biden himself reaches that conclusion in the next day or two, and performs what will be his last great act of public service. Because whatever the Republican faithful may say, this decision is not in the hands of the Almighty – it is in the hands of human beings who, whatever their fears and frailties, need to act and act now.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More