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      US courts hear efforts to remove Trump from 2024 ballot – will they work?

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      When Scott Gessler stepped up to the lectern in a Denver courtroom on Monday, he opened with a full-throated defense of American democracy.“When it comes to decide who should lead our nation, it’s the people of the United States of America who should make those decisions,” he said. “This court should not interfere with that fundamental value – that rule of democracy.”It wasn’t so much the argument that was significant as much as who Gessler was representing: Donald Trump. The same Donald Trump who fought doggedly to have courts, state legislators, his vice-president and members of Congress throw out valid electoral slates from several states and declare him the winner of the 2020 presidential election.Gessler is defending the former president in a novel case in Colorado seeking to block him from appearing on the state’s ballot – a case that centers around whether Trump is disqualified from running for president under section 3 of the 14th amendment. The Reconstruction-era provision disqualifies anyone from holding office if they have taken an oath to the United States and subsequently “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same” unless Congress votes to remove that disqualification by two-thirds vote.It is not the only one of its kind: the Minnesota supreme court heard a similar case this week and there is also a similar case already pending in Michigan, a key battleground state. States are tasked with ensuring that candidates for office meet the qualifications so the challenges to Trump’s candidacy are bubbling up through state court.The 14th amendment cases are part of a mosaic of legal efforts that seek to hold Trump and his allies accountable for overturning the 2020 election, but they are among the most important. While the cases are dry – steeped in legalese and historical understanding of constitutional text – they get at Trump in a way that none of the other suits can: blocking his return to political life.While the other cases could require Trump and his allies to face jail time, lose their law licenses, and pay damages for defamatory lies, none of them would block Trump from returning to the White House in 2024 (a criminal conviction does not disqualify someone from running or serving as president). If he wins the election, he could theoretically pardon himself in the federal cases against him or dismiss the prosecutions. And while no pardon would be available in the Georgia criminal case, it’s untested whether the constitution would allow a state to incarcerate a serving, elected president.Simply put, winning the election is widely seen as Trump’s best chance at escaping the criminal charges against him. Losing the 14th amendment cases would cut off that possibility.“Let me be clear. The purpose of our actions is to obtain rulings that Trump is disqualified from the ballot, not merely to have a political debate. Not at all to have a political debate. Not merely to air issues,” said Ron Fein, the legal director for Free Speech for People, a left-leaning group that filed the challenge in Minnesota.“The dangers of Trump ever being allowed back into public office are exactly those foreseen by the framers of section 3. Which is that they knew that if an oath-taking insurrectionist were allowed back into power they would do the same if not worse.”The 14th amendment measure was passed after the civil war and has never been used to block a presidential candidate from the ballot. It picked up steam this summer after a pair of conservative scholars authored a law review article saying that it applied to Trump.Trump’s lawyers have defended him by arguing that his conduct on January 6 did not amount to an insurrection, that Congress needs to pass a law to enforce the 14th amendment, and that its language does not apply to the president.But expert witnesses for the challengers in the Colorado case offered a wealth of historical and other evidence this week suggesting that what Trump did on January 6 was an insurrection as the framers of the 14th amendment would have understood it.Legal observers almost universally agree that the US supreme court, where Trump appointed three of the six members of the court’s conservative super-majority, will ultimately decide the issue and whether Trump is eligible to run for re-election. There is not a clear legal consensus and since the law is so untested, it’s not clear what the court will do.Outside of the courtroom, the biggest challenge may be getting a wide swath of Americans to accept the idea that someone they support may not be eligible to run for president. In a democracy, there is something viscerally distasteful about not being able to vote for the person we support, Ned Foley, a law professor at the Ohio State University, noted earlier this year.It’s a question the supreme court justices in Minnesota seemed to be wrestling with as well, acknowledging the case was coming up on a line between politics and the law.“Let’s say we agree with you that section 3 is self-executing, and that we do have the authority under the relevant statute to keep Mr Trump’s name off the ballot. Should we – is the question that concerns me the most,” Natalie Hudson, the chief justice of Minnesota’s supreme court said on Thursday during oral argument.But the challengers in the cases, which are supported by left-leaning groups, argue that disqualifying Trump based on the 14th amendment is no different than disqualifying someone because they are under the age of 35, a naturalized citizen, or because they have served two terms as president.“In many ways, section 3 sets forth a qualification for president that is far more important than the other constitutional criteria,” Fein said. “Most Americans are not too worried about whatever dangers might have once been posed by somebody who was not a natural born US citizen.“But someone who broke an oath to the constitution and then engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the constitution poses a real danger if they’re ever allowed back into power.”Rachel Leingang contributed reporting from Minneapolis More

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      What’s Left Unsaid review: Andrew Cuomo and the case for his defense

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      Andrew Cuomo resigned as governor of New York in August 2021, amid a blizzard of sexual harassment allegations. None were prosecuted. Against this backdrop, he smolders. Once a giant figure in the Democratic ranks, he is out of a job. He “died as he lived”, Lis Smith, a former adviser, wrote in Any Given Tuesday, her memoir published last year. Cuomo had “zero regard for the people around him and the impact his actions would have on them”.Enter Melissa DeRosa with What’s Left Unsaid, a full-throated defense of her own former boss. On the page and while promoting her book, Cuomo’s chief adviser and most senior aide generally wields a sledgehammer. Except when she doesn’t.“I don’t want to comment on Lis’s book,” De Rosa said, when asked by Vanity Fair. “We all lived through this in our own ways. We all had to cope with the fallout of it.”Subtitled My Life at the Center of Power, Politics and Crisis, DeRosa’s memoir is pocked with scenes of a marriage gone south, of trying to cope with Covid-19 and of general governmental strife. She punches hard. Her anger is white hot. Her book is deliberate and focused.She slams Cuomo’s accusers. Letitia James, the New York attorney general, and Kathy Hochul, Cuomo’s successor as governor, get it in the neck. Aides to James had sexual harassment-related problems of their own, DeRosa charges. She also calls out CNN and the New York Times for their own alleged deficits on that score.DeRosa has connections. She interned in Hillary Clinton’s office, when Clinton was a New York senator. She thanks Clinton for helping put steel in her spine. She gives a shoutout to Huma Abedin, Clinton’s close aide. DeRosa led New York operations for Barack Obama’s political action committee. She rose through the ranks of state government and Cuomo’s office. She charges Hochul with administrative and political ineptitude, echoing criticism, leveled by Nancy Pelosi, that Hochul cost the Democrats control of the US House by screwing up the New York redistricting process, handing Republicans seats.“The governor didn’t realize soon enough where the trouble was,” Pelosi told Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. But here, DeRosa can be myopic. According to Bill de Blasio, the former New York mayor, Cuomo was also at fault in the process that most observers say facilitated Republican gains. If a mere 89 more New Yorkers had been counted, the size of the state’s congressional delegation would have suffered no loss in size.“For God’s sake, if the state had invested in the census, could you have found 89 more people to count? Sure, easily,” De Blasio has said. “This was a lost opportunity by the state government to get the count right.”DeRosa acknowledges tensions between mayor and governor but takes De Blasio to task for his embrace of leftwing politics.“That meant staking out a position that actively opposed police presence,” she writes, blaming De Blasio for problems related to crime. She also calls him out for sidling up to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive star in Congress, and mocks his presidential run to nowhere.DeRosa also deals with the fractious relationship between Cuomo and the White House of Donald Trump, for so long a New York fixture and a former client of the Cuomo family law firm, Blutrich, Falcone & Miller.In 2020, under Covid, New York lockdown policy put it at odds with the administration.“We’ve done polling, and you guys are in the wrong place on this,” a “smug” Jared Kushner is quoted as telling DeRosa, saying New York was out of sync with Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Florida.“We were in the middle of a pandemic, one that had already killed tens of thousands of people, and I was talking with President Trump’s top adviser … about polling in swing states,” DeRosa writes.In fall 2021, Ron DeSantis actively discouraged vaccination. The grim reaper had a field day on the governor’s front lawn. Florida came to surpass New York in fatalities, in absolute and relative numbers. According to the Lancet, Florida’s unadjusted death rate (per 100,000) was 416, for New York 384.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDeRosa also attacks Trump for reneging on federal assistance to infrastructure projects. Why? Cuomo publicly criticized Trump. To quote DeRosa, “the president of the United States had lost his mind over four sentences in a convention speech.”Yet Cuomo has more in common with Trump than DeRosa acknowledges. It went beyond being “two tough guys from Queens, raised by larger-than-life fathers”, as the author puts it. Confronted with pushback over his decision in 2014 to disband an anti-corruption commission which he himself appointed, Cuomo bellowed: “It’s my commission. I can appoint it, I can disband it. I appoint you, I can un-appoint.”L’état, c’est moi.DeRosa pays tribute to family. In summer 2021, as Cuomo was brought crashing down, she repaired to her sister’s in-law’s place on Cape Cod, away from prying eyes.She also deals with friends – some of them now former. Elise Stefanik, the New York Republican congresswoman who become a top Trump toady, was a buddy and classmate. DeRosa “knew her as ‘Little Elise’”. Stefanik landed at Harvard, DeRosa at Cornell. DeRosa reports a heated discussion over same-sex marriage that left Stefanik shaken. DeRosa compared her to a segregationist.The fact that Stefanik called for Cuomo and his senior staff to resign probably triggered this trip down memory lane. Left unmentioned: Stefanik was one of 39 Republicans, and the sole member of House GOP leadership, to vote in favor of federal protection for same-sex and interracial marriage.Promoting her book, DeRosa was asked by Vanity Fair about Cuomo, karma and payback. She said: “I don’t like to think that we live in a world where the answer is, ‘Well, you got it because you deserved it.’”Vanity Fair’s headline? “Melissa DeRosa Isn’t Done Defending Andrew Cuomo”. She and her boss are not about to disappear.
      What’s Left Unsaid is published in the US by Sterling Publishing More

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      Leftist Democrats invoke human rights law in scrutiny of Israel military aid

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      Leftwing Democrats in Congress have invoked a landmark law barring assistance to security forces of governments deemed guilty of human rights abuses to challenge the Biden administration’s emergency military aid program for Israel.Members of the Democratic party’s progressive wing say the $14.3bn package pledged by the White House after the 7 October attack by Hamas that killed more than 1,400 Israelis breaches the Leahy Act because Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza has overwhelmingly harmed civilians. An estimated 9,000 people have been killed in Gaza so far, among them 3,700 children, according to the Gaza health ministry, run by Hamas.The act, sponsored by the former Democratic senator Patrick Leahy and passed in 1997, prohibits the US defence and state departments from rendering security assistance to foreign governments facing credible accusations of rights abuses. The law was originally designed only to refer to narcotics assistance, but was later expanded, with amendments covering assistance from both state department and Pentagon budgetsSeveral governments, some of them key US allies, are believed to have been denied assistance under the law, including Turkey, Colombia and Mexico.Proponents of applying the act to Israel point to the rising death toll in Gaza from military strikes on the territory, the displacement of more than 1 million people from their homes and a surging humanitarian crisis after Israeli authorities cut water, food, fuel and electricity supplies.“I am very concerned that our taxpayer dollars may be used for violations of human rights,” said the congressman Andre Carson of Indiana in an email to the Guardian, in which he accused Israel of “war crimes”, citing this week’s deadly bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp and the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) alleged use of white phosphorus.“Last year, I voted to provide $3 billion dollars of strategic and security assistance to Israel. But we must absolutely make sure that none of those funds are used inappropriately, in violation of US law like the Leahy Act, or in violation of international law.”But earlier this week, the Biden administration said it was not placing any limits on how Israel uses the weapons provided to it by the US. “That is really up to the Israel Defense Force to use in how they are going to conduct their operations,” a Pentagon spokesperson, Sabrina Singh, said on Monday. “But we’re not putting any constraints on that.”The Israeli government and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have so far not responded to calls for a humanitarian pause and have rejected calls for a ceasefire, as demanded by some progressive Democrats.Joe Biden promised a lavish military aid package to Israel in an Oval Office speech after visiting the country following the Hamas attack. US commandos are currently in Israel helping to locate an estimated 240 hostages, the number given by IDF, including American citizens, seized in the assault, the Pentagon has confirmed.Carson, one of three Muslims in Congress, said he previously raised concerns about possible Leahy Act violations last year after the shooting death of the US-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank. An Israeli investigation subsequently admitted there was a “high probability” that she had been killed by Israeli gunfire, after initially blaming Palestinians.Usamah Andrabi, the communications director for Justice Democrats – a political action committee that helped elect leftwing House members nicknamed “the Squad”, which include some of Congress’s most vocal advocates for Palestinian rights – also invoked the Leahy legislation.“I think the Leahy Act should absolutely be looked into right now, when we are seeing gross violations of human rights,” he said. “[The Israelis] are targeting refugee camps, hospitals, mosques all under the guise of self-defense or that one or other member of Hamas is hiding there. It doesn’t matter whether Hamas is there or not, because you are targeting civilians. No amount of tax dollars should be justified for that.”Like Carson, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most high-profile members of “the Squad”, specifically identified the supposed use of white phosphorus – as claimed by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International – as a transgression that should disqualify Israel from receiving US assistance. The IDF had said it does not use white phosphorus against civilians, but didn’t clarify whether it was used at the time.“Deployment of white phosphorus near populated civilian areas is a war crime,” she said. “The United States must adhere to our own laws and policies, which prohibit US aid from assisting forces engaged in gross violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.”Congressional calls for scrutiny over US funding for Israel predate the current war in Gaza.Last May, Betty McCollum, a Democrat from Minnesota, introduced the Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation bill, designed to prohibit US funds from being used to enforce Israeli occupation policies in the West Bank.“Not $1 of US aid should be used to commit human rights violations, demolish families’ homes, or permanently annex Palestinian lands,” McCollum said at the time. “The United States provides billions in assistance for Israel’s government each year – and those dollars should go toward Israel’s security, not toward actions that violate international law and cause harm.”The bill, which has not passed, was co-sponsored by 16 other House Democrats – including some who have not supported the current calls for a ceasefire – and endorsed by 75 civil society groups, including Amnesty, HRW and J Street.McCollum’s office did not respond to questions over whether she now supported extending her bill to Gaza or using the Leahy Act to block Biden’s emergency fund package.In a speech on the Senate floor this week, the senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont called Israel’s Gaza campaign “morally unacceptable and a violation of international law” but stopped short of opposing Biden’s assistance program.Instead, he demanded a “clear promise” from Israel that displaced Palestinians will be allowed to return to their homes after fighting stops and for the abandonment of efforts to annex the West Bank, a territory claimed by Palestinians as part of a future state.“The United States must make it clear that these are the conditions for our solidarity,” he said.In a letter to the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the minority leader, Mitch McConnell, Sanders and five other Democratic senators – Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley, Ed Markey, Peter Welch and Mazie Hirono – said they supported approving Biden’s proposed overall $106bn aid package to Israel, Ukraine and other foreign crisis areas “without delay”.But they demanded that an equal sum be allocated to “domestic emergencies”, including childcare, primary health care and the opioid epidemic.A separate letter the six sent to Biden asks a series of searching questions about Israel’s invasion of Gaza.“We have serious concerns about what this invasion and potential occupation of Gaza will mean, both in terms of the long-term security of Israel and the well-being of the Palestinian residents of Gaza,” it says. “Congress needs more information about Israel’s long-term plans and goals, as well as the United States Government’s assessments of those prospects.” More

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      Democrats grow nervous over Israel’s conduct in Gaza as Senate leader vows not to consider House security bill – as it happened

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      Yesterday evening, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed a bill to provide Israel with security assistance as it presses on with its invasion of Gaza and conflict with Hamas. But the measure is not expected to be considered by the Senate, and has attracted a veto threat from Joe Biden over provisions rescinding money from the IRS tax authority and driving up the US budget deficit.Democrats are instead holding out for a larger package that would, as Biden has requested, pay for more military aid to Ukraine and improved border security in addition to aiding Israel, while also avoiding cuts to White House priorities like improving the IRS’s ability to crack down on tax cheats. Such a measure is expected to attract some support from Senate Republicans, most notably Mitch McConnell, who has remained a champion of Ukraine even as polls show many other Republicans are growing wary of paying for the country’s defense against Russia.Back to the House vote, it was 226 to 196 in favor of passage, with all but two Republicans present voting yes and all but 12 Democrats in attendance voting against it. Several of the Democrats who voted for the bill had previously attacked it as inappropriately partisan, including Florida’s Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who said she nonetheless decided to support it due to her connection to Israel:There appears to be a shift in sentiment towards Israel’s invasion of Gaza in Washington DC, particularly among Senate Democrats. A group of 13 lawmakers has signed on to a joint statement calling for a humanitarian pause in Israel’s campaign to root out Hamas, and in a visit to Tel Aviv, secretary of state Antony Blinken made a similar request. The Senate now seems to be on a collision course with the House, which last night passed a bill to send Israel military assistance while also slashing funding to the IRS tax authority. That’s a nonstarter for Democrats, and their Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, says the measure won’t be considered in the chamber, while minority leader Mitch McConnell also seems uncomfortable with it.Here’s what else happened today:
      Next Tuesday is election day for off-year contests, including in Ohio, where voters will be asked to protect abortion access in the state constitution, and Virginia, where Democrats hope to defang Republican governor Glenn Youngkin.
      House Democrats are also expressing concerns publicly over the number of civilians killed in Israel’s invasion of Gaza, including California progressive Ro Khanna.
      George Santos will run for re-election next year, even if he is expelled from the House, he told CNN.
      Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary and first openly gay person to serve in a president’s cabinet, condemned Republican House speaker Mike Johnson’s history of anti-LGBTQ+ statements.
      Got questions about Israel and Palestine? The Guardian has answers.
      It’s not just Senate Democrats who are questioning Israel’s handling of its invasion of Gaza.House Democrats are also publicly worrying over the mounting civilian death toll. Here’s California progressive Ro Khanna telling CNN that while he supports Israel’s right to defend itself, he believes too many civilians are dying in its invasion:Joe Biden has arrived in Lewiston, Maine, site of a mass shooting last week that left 18 people dead.He is currently visiting Schemengees Bar and Grille, one of two locations where army reservist Robert Card opened fire:Biden is expected to meet with first responders in Lewiston, as well as survivors of the attack and family members of the victims, before heading to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware for the weekend.In the weeks since the killings, reports have emerged that people who knew Card tried to sound the alarm about his behavior. Here’s more on that:Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay man to serve in a US president’s cabinet, condemned Republican House speaker Mike Johnson for his history of making anti-LGBTQ+ statements.In an interview with CNN, Buttigieg said, “I will admit it’s a little bit difficult driving the family minivan to drop our kids off at daycare, passing the dome of the Capitol knowing the speaker of the House, sitting under that dome, doesn’t even think our family ought to exist.”Here’s more from Buttigieg:Johnson has a long history of disparaging same-sex couples, including in 2004, when he wrote a newspaper op-ed saying homosexuality was “inherently unnatural”. Since being elected speaker last month, he has avoided making similar statements, telling Fox News commentator Sean Hannity in an interview that he “genuinely love[d] all people regardless of their lifestyle choices.”“Go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it – that’s my worldview”, he added. Here’s some further reading on that:With Chuck Schumer saying he will ignore a House Republican bill to give Israel military assistance while cutting funding to the IRS, it seems likely Senate Democrats will soon propose a measure that lines up with Joe Biden’s demands.The president last month asked lawmakers to approve aid to both Israel and Ukraine, and money for border security. At a press conference earlier today, the Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said that proposal would be welcomed by his lawmakers:The bigger question is what Republican House speaker Mike Johnson will do with it, and whether it would have the votes to pass Congress’s lower chamber, where a growing faction of GOP members are opposed to aiding Ukraine.There appears to be a shift in sentiment towards Israel’s invasion of Gaza in Washington DC, particularly among Senate Democrats. A group of 13 lawmakers has signed on to a joint statement calling for a humanitarian pause in Israel’s ongoing invasion to root out Hamas, and in a visit to Tel Aviv, secretary of state Antony Blinken made a similar request. The Senate now seems to be on a collision course with the House, which last night passed a bill to send Israel military assistance while also slashing funding to the IRS tax authority. That’s a nonstarter for Democrats, and their Senate leader Chuck Schumer says the measure won’t be considered in the chamber, while minority leader Mitch McConnell also seems uncomfortable with it.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Next Tuesday is election day for off-year contests, including in Ohio, where voters will be asked to protect abortion access in the state constitution, and Virginia, where Democrats hope to defang Republican governor Glenn Youngkin.
      George Santos will run for re-election next year, even if he is expelled from the House, he told CNN.
      Got questions about Israel and Palestine? The Guardian has answers.
      Proceedings are done for the day in the Trump Organization civil fraud trial in New York, where Eric Trump testified again.Here’s a taste of Lauren Aratani’s report:
      Eric Trump, one of the two sons trusted to run Donald Trump’s real estate empire, testified on Friday that he was not involved with the financial documents a judge has ruled to be fraudulent, in a trial that threatens to hobble his family’s business.
      In a second day on the witness stand, the former US president’s second son said he relied on outside accountants and lawyers to check financial documents. His older brother Donald Trump Jr made the same argument in his testimony earlier this week.
      Prosecutors presented evidence that showed Eric Trump had signed off on documents that estimated the value of trophy properties such as the Trump Seven Springs estate north of New York City and the Trump National Doral golf club in Florida.
      That undercut his testimony on Thursday that he knew nothing about those estimates, which Judge Arthur Engoron found were fraudulently inflated to win favorable terms from lenders and insurers.
      And here’s Lauren’s report in full.And here’s some further reading, by me, about the Trump boys’ tactics in court:Thirty-one Democrats voted not to expel the Republican lawmaker George Santos from the US House of Representatives because he has not been convicted of any crime and to eject him would set a dangerous precedent for Republicans to expel their ideological opponents, a leading congressman said.“For me this was an easy call,” said Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a law professor and influential progressive who sat on the January 6 committee and was lead manager in Donald Trump’s impeachment for inciting the attack on Congress.Santos “hasn’t been convicted of anything yet, and he has not been convicted of anything in our ethics process”, Raskin told Mother Jones.“The history is very telling. We’ve expelled five people in the history of the US House of Representatives. Three of them were Confederate traitors and the other two had other federal criminal convictions.”James A Traficant, an Ohio Democrat, was the last House member to be expelled, in 2002 and after being convicted of crimes including conspiracy to commit bribery, obstruction of justice and racketeering. After seven years in jail, he attempted to run for re-election.Raskin continued: “For us to take the step of expelling someone who had not been convicted of anything would be a really dangerous manoeuvre, especially with the Republicans in control of the House.”Read on:And also, as a footnote, some recommended reading, in the form of the great David Grann on the curious case of James A Traficant, for the New Yorker. This is just a taste – you really owe it to yourself to buy Grann’s book of New Yorker pieces, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness and Obsession, before today is through…George Santos, the New York fabulist, part-time drag enthusiast, accused fraudster and congressman, told CNN earlier he would “absolutely” run for re-election next year even if he is expelled from Congress over his criminal charges.Santos survived an expulsion vote, over 23 federal criminal charges to which he pleaded not guilty, on a motion brought by members of his own party this week. He could face another such vote after a House ethics committee investigation concludes later this month.Here’s his conversation with the great corridor-haunter himself, Manu Raju, CNN chief congressional correspondent:Raju: “So, if they expel you, and then they put someone else in the seat, you’re going to run in 2024?Santos: “Absolutely.”Raju: “Uh-huh. Can you win a primary, given of all these things that are lined up against you…”Santos: “Yes. Yes.”Raju: “… and the general election?”Santos: “Well…”Raju: This is a Biden-leaning district. And you have all these issues against you.Santos: “Could I have won the general election last time? Nobody said I could. But I survived.”Raju: “It was a different situation.”Santos: “No, I understand. But elections are tricky. There’s no predetermined outcome.Raju: “Your voters thought they were electing one person.”Santos: “Manu, nobody elected me…”Raju: “And that wasn’t true.”Santos: “Nobody elected me because I played volleyball or not. Nobody elected me because I graduated college or not.“People elected me because I said I’d come here to fight the swamp, I’d come here to lower inflation, create more jobs, make life more affordable, and the commitment to America. That’s why people voted for anybody. To say that they voted based on anybody’s biography, I can beg you this. Nobody knew my biography. Nobody opened my biography who voted for me in the campaign.”Unfortunately for Santos, once he got to Congress, lots of reporters did open his biography. And, explaining the volleyball reference, a lot of it turned out not to be true.And that was before the criminal charges.Shifting back to Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza, here’s Connecticut’s Democratic senator Chris Murphy on why he is now calling for a temporary pause in the fighting.Murphy and 12 other Democratic senators signed onto a statement advocating for a “short-term cessation of hostilities” to get hostages out of Gaza and humanitarian aid in. He elaborates on the call, in an interview with MSNBC:Also happening next Tuesday are legislative elections in Virginia, where Republicans hope to take full control of Senate and empower GOP governor Glenn Youngkin to enact his agenda unimpeded. The Guardian’s Joan E Greve reports on how a Democratic congresswoman who conquered new territory for the party five years ago is working to help state-level candidates do the same:As two dozen volunteers prepared to knock doors on an unseasonably warm afternoon in late October, Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger reminded them that their work helped flip her battleground House seat in 2018. She predicted it would pay off again for Virginia Democrats this year.“It is how we have won in hard races across Virginia and across the country, and it is certainly why I feel confident that we are on the right path headed towards November 7,” Spanberger said, speaking to campaign volunteers in a sunny parking lot in Manassas.Spanberger has played an active role in boosting Virginia Democrats’ hopes for election day, as the party looks to flip control of the house of delegates and maintain their majority in the state senate. The stakes are high: Republicans would achieve a legislative trifecta in Richmond if they take control of the state senate, allowing them to enact controversial policies like banning abortion after 15 weeks and limiting access to the ballot box.With her carefully crafted political persona as a centrist Democrat, Spanberger may be the right person to deliver her party’s closing message in the final stretch of the campaign. In Manassas, Spanberger laid out her vision for how Virginia Democrats would succeed on 7 November, saying: “There is nothing more important than helping people believe that the policies and the government – whether it be in Richmond or on Capitol Hill – that they want is possible.”The results on Tuesday could affect Spanberger’s own future as well; the congresswoman has reportedly told multiple people that she intends to run for governor in the battleground state. If she is successful, her victory would allow Democrats to take back the Virginia governorship, which is now held by Republican Glenn Youngkin, in 2025.It’s not 2024 yet, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any important elections happening this year. Indeed, next Tuesday is election day in several states nationwide for off-year contests over ballot initiatives, governor’s mansions and other key questions. Here’s the Guardian’s Alice Herman with some troubling news out of Ohio, where voters will decide on whether to protect abortion access in the state constitution:Ohio’s Republican secretary of state quietly canceled the voter registrations of more than 26,000 voters in late September, less than two weeks before the deadline to register to vote in next week’s hotly contested abortion referendum in the state.Voting rights advocates say the process lacked transparency and departed from Frank LaRose’s usual practice of alerting groups before removing registrations from the rolls. And it comes as LaRose campaigns hard against the 7 November constitutional amendment vote – when Ohio voters will decide whether to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution – as well as a vote on a separate measure to legalize marijuana.“We are disappointed in the secretary of state’s office’s authorization of the voter purge while voting for the November election was already (and still is) under way,” Kayla Griffin, of the voting rights group All Voting is Local, said.Voter list maintenance is a standard, legally required part of the election process, and many if not most of these registrations are for people who have moved away, died or long since stopped voting. The state issues alerts by mail to voters whose registration is flagged for removal, leaving the chance to update or confirm their registration before being kicked off the rolls.But it’s unusual to remove voter registrations this close to an election given the risk of disenfranchising people who intend to vote but simply missed the memo that they had been flagged for removal. In fact, if this was a national election rather than a state-level contest, what LaRose’s office has done would have been illegal. The National Voter Registration Act prohibits elections offices from systematically removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election. More

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      Ring any bells? Trump boys show less than total recall at family fraud trial

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      In 1990, Ronald Reagan testified at the trial of John Poindexter, his former national security adviser caught up in the Iran-Contra affair. Two years out of office, questioned for eight hours, the former US president memorably said “I don’t recall” or “I can’t remember” no less than 88 times.This week, the two adult sons of one of Reagan’s Republican successors took the stand in New York, for testimony in a $250m civil fraud trial in which the judge has already determined the family’s guilt and now seeks to determine their penalty.On the campaign trail, Donald Trump often pays tribute to Reagan. In the courtroom, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump tipped the hat to the master of repetitive deflection under legal examination.On Wednesday, Trump Jr answered several questions in the Reagan manner. Asked, for example, about the Donald J Trump Revocable Trust, and if his father was still one of its trustees, he simply said: “I don’t recall.”On Thursday, Trump Jr was asked about a $2m severance package given earlier this year to Allen Weisselberg, the longtime Trump Organization chief financial officer who went to jail for tax fraud. He could not recall much, he said.Eric Trump followed his older brother on to the stand. Asked if he remembered a 2013 phone call about a statement of financial condition – documents at the heart of the case against the Trumps, prosecutors alleging they routinely made inaccurate statements in search of financial advantage – his answer was longer than his brother’s. But it still contained the magic words.“I don’t believe I ever saw or worked on the statement of financial condition,” Eric Trump said. “I don’t believe I had any knowledge of it. I think I was 26 years old. I don’t recall – I was not aware of it, I never worked on it, and I didn’t know about it until this case came into fruition.”He was asked about an email in which a now former Trump lawyer said she spoke to him about an appraisal for Seven Springs, a family estate in New York that has been at the heart of reporting about Trump’s tax affairs.The appraiser valued the estate at $50m. Eric Trump said he did not share that valuation with Jeff McConney, controller of the Trump Organization and a co-defendant, because “I would have never thought to because I didn’t work on this document”.Eventually, the Trumps valued Seven Springs at $291m.Regarding Briarcliff Manor, a New York golf course, an email was read out in which a Trump Organization lawyer said: “I spoke to Eric and he is aware that the more supportable value at this point is around $45m.” In Trump Organization financial statements from 2013 to 2018, the course was valued $58m higher.In court, Eric Trump said: “I really hadn’t been involved in the appraisal of the property … I don’t recall [the appraiser] at all. I don’t think I was the main person involved. I don’t focus on appraisals, that’s not the focus of my day.”Even when confronted with evidence of his involvement in such matters, Trump would only concede: “It appears that way.”Observers were not impressed. Andrew Weissmann, a former federal prosecutor who worked for the special counsel Robert Mueller on the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow, said: “Don Jr and Eric Trump’s ‘defense’ … appears so far to be that they were derelict in their duties as executives and trustees.”The main show is yet to come. Donald Trump and his oldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, are due to testify next. But even if the Trump boys were just a warm-up, they put on a masterclass of reliably unreliable recall.Asked if he had been involved in preparing an allegedly manipulated statement about a golf course deal, Eric said: “Not that I recall.”Then, he produced the mot juste: “I don’t know what I knew at the time.” More

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      US House passes $14.3bn aid package for Israel despite Democratic opposition

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      The US House of Representatives on Thursday passed a Republican plan to provide $14.3bn in aid to Israel as it fights Hamas, despite Democrats’ insistence it has no future in the Senate and the White House’s promise of a veto.The measure passed 226-196, largely along party lines, with most Republicans supporting the bill and most Democrats objecting.The bill’s introduction was the first major legislative action under the new Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson. President Joe Biden has threatened a veto, and Chuck Schumer, the majority leader of the Democrat-controlled Senate, said he would not bring it up for a vote.Biden has asked Congress to approve a broader $106bn emergency spending package including funding for Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine, as well as humanitarian aid. Schumer said the Senate would consider a bipartisan bill addressing the broader priorities.The House bill would provide billions for Israel’s military, including $4bn for Israel’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling defense systems to be able to counter short-range rocket threats, as well as some transfers of equipment from US stocks.“This is the first step in the process and I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the bill so we can get funds to Israel as soon as possible,” said the representative Kay Granger, who chairs the House appropriations committee, during debate on the legislation.Republicans have a 221-212 majority in the House, but Biden’s fellow Democrats control the Senate 51-49. To become law, the bill would have to pass both the House and Senate and be signed by Biden.House Republican leaders said they would cover the cost of the aid to Israel by cutting some funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that Democrats included in Biden’s signature 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.Republicans objected to the increased IRS funding from the beginning, and said cutting the agency’s budget was essential to offset the cost of military aid to Israel, whose tanks and troops took on Hamas on the outskirts of Gaza City on Thursday.Democrats objected to cutting money for the IRS, calling it a politically motivated “poison pill” that would increase the country’s budget deficit by cutting back on tax collection. They also said it was essential to continue to support Ukraine as it fights against a Russian invasion that began in February 2022.The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday said the IRS cuts and Israel aid in the standalone bill would add nearly $30bn to the US budget deficit, currently estimated at $1.7tn.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe representative Rosa DeLauro, the ranking Democratic on the appropriations committee, accused Republicans of delaying aid by backing a partisan bill that does not include Ukraine or humanitarian aid for civilians. “This bill abandons Ukraine. We will not abandon Israel and we will not abandon Ukraine. But their fortunes are linked,” she said.While Democrats and many Republicans still strongly support Ukraine, a small but vocal group of Republicans question sending more money to the government in Kyiv at a time of steep budget deficits.Johnson, who voted against Ukraine aid repeatedly before he became speaker last month, plans to introduce a bill combining assistance for Ukraine with money to increase security at the US border with Mexico.“Ukraine will come in short order. It will come next,” Johnson said at a news conference on Thursday. “We want to pair border security with Ukraine, because I think we can get bipartisan agreement on both of those matters.”Congress has approved $113bn for Ukraine since the invasion began. More

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      Speaker Johnson says decision coming ‘very soon’ on Biden impeachment – as it happened

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      The Republican speaker of the House Mike Johnson said a decision will be made “very soon” on whether to push forward with the effort to impeach Joe Biden.His predecessor Kevin McCarthy announced the inquiry into the president’s conduct in September, weeks before rightwing Republicans and Democrats removed him from the speaker’s post. The investigation centers on allegations of corruption surrounding the president and his family, particularly his son Hunter Biden.Republicans held a single committee hearing into the matter, which was widely seen as a flop after their witnesses said the investigation had merit but there was still no evidence the president broke the law. Another blow to the effort came when Ken Buck, a conservative Republican who yesterday announced he would not seek re-election in 2024, wrote a column in the Washington Post to argue that impeaching Biden was a bad idea.The investigation was put on pause for weeks while the House grappled with McCarthy’s ouster, and whether and how to continue it is one of the major issues Johnson has to decide. Here’s what the speaker had to say when asked about it at a press conference today:The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, says the party will soon decide on whether to continue its impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, but all indications point to the GOP pressing on. Republicans have been showing off evidence they say proves the president received money from a Chinese company, but the White House says Biden merely received a loan repayment from his brother during the period when he was out of office. Elsewhere in the House, George Santos survived a removal attempt, while Marjorie Taylor Greene is furious at some of her Republican colleagues for refusing to support her resolution to censure progressive Democrat Rashida Tlaib, which died on the House floor last night.Here’s what else happened:
      The White House said Biden would veto the House GOP’s proposal to send Israel security assistances while slashing funding to the IRS, and Senate leader Chuck Schumer said he would not bring the bill up for a vote anyway.
      Jamie Raskin, a Democrat who voted against expelling Santos, said he did so over concerns for due process.
      Biden appeared to endorse “a pause” in Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
      The Minnesota supreme court began hearing a case in which voters want to keep Donald Trump off the ballot for his involvement in an insurrection.
      Indiana’s supreme court found that the state’s Republican attorney general, Todd Rokita, “engaged in attorney misconduct” for comments he made about an obstetrician-gynecologist who performed an abortion for a 10-year-old rape survivor.
      Indiana’s supreme court has found that the state’s Republican attorney general, Todd Rokita, “engaged in attorney misconduct” for comments he made to Fox News about a doctor in the state who performed an abortion on a 10-year-old girl who had traveled from Ohio, the Indianapolis Star reports.The incident was one of the first high-profile examples of the fallout from the supreme court decision in June 2022 to overturn Roe v Wade and allow states to ban abortion entirely. In Ohio, a state law immediately went into effect that cut off access to the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy, but it was later halted by a court ruling.The Indiana supreme court took issue with Rokita’s description of Caitlin Bernard, an obstetrician-gynecologist, as an “abortion activist acting as a doctor – with a history of failing to report” in a Fox News interview in July 2022. In September, the supreme court’s disciplinary commission filed charges against Rokita, saying he violated professional conduct rules, and three of the state’s five supreme court justices agreed in today’s ruling. The court has ordered that Rokita receive a public reprimand and pay a $250 fine, though the two justices who dissented said the punishment was too lenient.Ohio voters will next week decide on a ballot measure to enshrine abortion access in the state’s constitution. Here’s the latest on that, from the Guardian’s Carter Sherman:The Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, now says the House GOP’s Israel aid proposal will not be put up for a vote in his chamber:That means that even if the House approves the bill, the Senate will not send it to Joe Biden’s desk – whose administration said he will veto it anyway.Joe Biden would veto a proposal by House Republicans to send military aid to Israel while slashing funding for the IRS tax authority, White House national security council spokesman John Kirby told reporters at today’s briefing.“The president would veto an only Israel bill. I think we’ve made that clear,” Kirby said.Biden last month requested a $106b security measure to help Israel respond to Hamas’s terrorist attack, shore up Ukraine’s defenses against Russia’s invasion and improve border security. Led by speaker Mike Johnson, House Republicans responded by offering to approve Israeli security assistance, while considering funding for Ukraine and the southern border at a later date. Johnson has billed cutting the IRS as a way to pay for the cost of the foreign assistance, but an analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office yesterday found it would actually cost the government money because it would lower tax revenues.The White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said that a call by Joe Biden on Wednesday evening for a pause in fire by both Israel and Hamas in Gaza “does not mean we are calling for a general ceasefire”.At the daily press briefing from the west wing, Kirby asked rhetorically whether the White House thought a strategic and temporary “pause by both sides” was a good idea to help facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza and the evacuation of foreign citizens and hostages taken by Hamas from southern Israel on 7 October. Kirby answered himself: “You betcha we do.”He went on to explain why the US is willing to accept Qatar’s assistance with the passage of Americans and hostages out of Gaza, despite the small Arab country’s harboring of Hamas members, including the leader Ismail Haniyeh. Reporters questioned Kirby about this at the daily briefing at the White House moments ago.“Qatar has lines of communication with Hamas that almost no-one else has,” Kirby said.A reporter asked why the US was not asking Qatar to hand over the Hamas chief. Kirby said the US was busy working with Qatar on evacuations “and we are also helping Israel go after Hamas”.Kirby also said the US supports pauses in hostilities, not just a single pause. This is a point he’s made before.Kirby said the White House “has not seen evidence that Hezbollah is ready to go full force”. Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militant group, said it had attacked 19 positions in Israel on Thursday evening in the latest escalation on Israel’s northern border. The Guardian’s report is here.The Guardian’s global live blog with all the details on the crisis in Gaza and the Israel-Hamas war is here.Antony Blinken has urged Russia to hold to its commitment not to resume nuclear weapons testing, Reuters reports.The secretary of state said the US is deeply concerned by Moscow’s planned action to withdraw its ratification of the comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT).“Unfortunately, it represents a significant step in the wrong direction,” Blinken said in a statement released by the state department.The latest development happened this last month, when, the Guardian’s Julian Borger reported, a senior Russian diplomat said that Moscow will revoke its ratification of the CTBT, in a move Washington denounced as jeopardising the “global norm” against nuclear test blasts.Mikhail Ulyanov, the Russian representative to the international nuclear agencies in Vienna, was speaking after Vladimir Putin suggested Moscow might resuming testing for the first time in 33 years, signalling another downward turn in relations between the world’s two biggest nuclear powers.Ulyanov said on X, formerly known as Twitter: “Russia plans to revoke ratification (which took place in the year 2000) of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.“The aim is to be on equal footing with the #US who signed the Treaty, but didn’t ratify it. Revocation doesn’t mean the intention to resume nuclear tests.”The US signed the CTBT in 1996 but the Senate did not ratify the treaty. Successive US administrations however have observed a moratorium on testing nuclear weapons.Any Russian nuclear test would be the first since 1990, the last conducted by the Soviet Union. Renewed testing by a nuclear superpower would undo one of the principal advances in non-proliferation since the cold war.Since the all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin and other Russian officials have frequently drawn attention to the country’s nuclear arsenal, the biggest in the world, in an attempt to deter other countries from helping Ukraine resist the invasion.The US has been able to get 74 Americans with dual citizenship out of Gaza, Joe Biden said at the White House a little earlier, one day after evacuees began crossing into Egypt, Reuters reported.Meanwhile the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, talked to reporters before leaving Washington for a flight to Israel and said the US is determined to prevent escalation of the war there on all fronts, including southern Lebanon, the West Bank or elsewhere in the region.He will be talking to the Israeli government “and partners” in the region, he said.You can follow more details on all the developments in the crisis in Gaza and the Israel-Hamas war in our global live blog, here.This post was updated at 2.56pm ET to reflect a clarifying detail in a later wire piece by Reuters to specify that the 74 dual citizens Biden referred to were Americans with dual citizenship.The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, says the party will soon decide on whether to continue their impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, but all indications point to them pressing on. The GOP has been showing off evidence it says proves the president received money from a Chinese company, but the White House says the president merely received a loan repayment from his brother during the period when he was out of office. Elsewhere in the House, George Santos survived a removal attempt, while Marjorie Taylor Greene is furious at some of her Republican colleagues for refusing to support her resolution to censure progressive Democrat Rashida Tlaib, which died on the House floor last night.Here’s what else is going on:
      Jamie Raskin, a Democrat who voted against expelling Santos, said he did so over concerns for due process.
      Biden appeared to endorse “a pause” in Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
      The Minnesota supreme court began hearing a case in which voters want to keep Donald Trump off the ballot for his involvement in an insurrection.
      All signs point to the House GOP continuing its impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.Yesterday, the oversight committee, one of three bodies tasked with handling the effort, published an infographic purporting to show how the president received money from a Chinese company that was funneled through his family members:They even have an image of the check:The White House replied by saying that the money was a loan repayment to Biden from his brother, James, and it all took place in the period after Biden concluded his term as vice-president, and before he returned to the White House in 2021.As Ian Sams, the Biden administration spokesman handling the GOP’s inquiries, put it:This post has been corrected to say Biden received the loan repayment from his brother James.The Republican speaker of the House Mike Johnson said a decision will be made “very soon” on whether to push forward with the effort to impeach Joe Biden.His predecessor Kevin McCarthy announced the inquiry into the president’s conduct in September, weeks before rightwing Republicans and Democrats removed him from the speaker’s post. The investigation centers on allegations of corruption surrounding the president and his family, particularly his son Hunter Biden.Republicans held a single committee hearing into the matter, which was widely seen as a flop after their witnesses said the investigation had merit but there was still no evidence the president broke the law. Another blow to the effort came when Ken Buck, a conservative Republican who yesterday announced he would not seek re-election in 2024, wrote a column in the Washington Post to argue that impeaching Biden was a bad idea.The investigation was put on pause for weeks while the House grappled with McCarthy’s ouster, and whether and how to continue it is one of the major issues Johnson has to decide. Here’s what the speaker had to say when asked about it at a press conference today: More

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      Bannon used Confederate code words to describe Trump speech, book says

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      The far-right Donald Trump ally and adviser Steve Bannon used Confederate code words linked to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln to describe a speech by the former US president before his historic first criminal indictment, a new book says.On 6 March this year, addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, Trump took aim at Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney then widely expected to bring charges over hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels, thereby making Trump the first former president ever criminally indicted.Trump told his audience: “I am your warrior; I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution.”In a forthcoming book, Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party, Jonathan Karl, chief Washington correspondent for ABC News, writes: “When I spoke with Bannon a few days later, he wouldn’t stop touting Trump’s performance, referring to it as his ‘Come Retribution’ speech.“What I didn’t realise was that ‘Come Retribution’, according to some civil war historians, served as the code words for the Confederate Secret Service’s plot to take hostage – and eventually assassinate – President Abraham Lincoln.”Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on 14 April 1865, by John Wilkes Booth, an actor. The president died the following day.Karl is the author of two bestsellers – Front Row at the Trump Show and Betrayal – about Trump’s rise to the presidency, time in the White House and defeat by Joe Biden.In his third Trump book, excerpted in the Atlantic on Thursday, Karl quotes from a 1988 book, Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and Assassination of Lincoln.“The use of the key phrase ‘Come Retribution’ suggests that the Confederate government had made a bitter decision to repay some of the misery that had been inflicted on the south,” the authors write. “Bitterness may well have been directed toward persons held to be particularly responsible for that misery, and Abraham Lincoln certainly headed the list.”Bannon, Karl writes, “actually recommended that I read that book, erasing any doubt that he was intentionally using the Confederate code words to describe Trump’s speech.“Trump’s speech was not an overt call for the assassination of his political opponents, but it did advocate their destruction by other means. Success ‘is within our reach, but only if we have the courage to complete the job, gut the deep state, reclaim our democracy, and banish the tyrants and Marxists into political exile forever,’ Trump said. ‘This is the turning point.’”In Karl’s estimation, the “Come Retribution” speech “was a turning point for Trump’s campaign” for re-election.Trump began his 2024 campaign sluggishly but then surged to huge leads over his Republican party rivals in national and key-state polling, despite a charge sheet now totaling 91 criminal counts and two civil trials, one over his business practices and one concerning a defamation claim arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKarl writes: “The [federal] trial date for the charge of interfering in the 2020 election has been set for 4 March [2024]; for the hush-money case, it’s 25 March; for the classified-documents case, it’s 20 May.“As election day approaches and [Trump] faces down these many days in court, he will be waging a campaign of vengeance and martyrdom. He will continue to talk about what is at stake in the election in apocalyptic terms – ‘the final battle’ – knowing how high the stakes are for him personally. He can win and retake the White House. Or he can lose and go to prison.”Bannon is quoted as saying: “Trump’s on offense and talking about real things. The ‘Come Retribution’ speech had 10 or 12 major policies.”But, Karl writes, “Bannon knew that the speech wasn’t about policies in a traditional sense. Trump spoke about whom he would target once he returned to power.“‘We will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers,’ Trump said. ‘We will drive out the globalists; we will cast out the communists. We will throw off the political class that hates our country … We will beat the Democrats. We will rout the fake news media. We will expose and appropriately deal with the RINOs. We will evict Joe Biden from the White House.“‘And we will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all.’” More