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      There will be no civil war over Trump. Here’s why | Robert Reich

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      The former president of the United States, now running for re-election, assails “the ‘thugs’ from the Department of Injustice”, calls Special Counsel Jack Smith a “deranged lunatic” and casts his prosecutions and his bid for the White House as part of a “final battle” for America.In a Saturday speech to the Georgia Republican party, Trump characterized the entire American justice system as deployed to prevent him from winning the 2024 election.“These people don’t stop and they’re bad and we have to get rid of them. These criminals cannot be rewarded. They must be defeated.”Once again, Trump is demanding that Americans choose sides. But in his deranged mind, this “final battle” is not just against his normal cast of ill-defined villains. It is between those who glorify him and those who detest him.It will be a final battle over … himself.“SEE YOU IN MIAMI ON TUESDAY!!!” he told his followers on Friday night in a Truth Social post, referring to his Tuesday arraignment.It was chilling reminder of his 19 December 2020, tweet, “Be there, will be wild!” – which inspired extremist groups to disrupt the January 6 certification.At the Georgia Republican party convention on Friday night, the Arizona Republican Kari Lake – who will go to Miami to “support” Trump – suggested violence.“If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me and you’re going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me,” Lake exclaimed to roaring cheers and a standing ovation. “Most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA,” the National Rifle Association gun lobby. “That’s not a threat, that’s a public service announcement.”Most Republicans in Congress are once again siding with Trump rather than standing for the rule of law.A few are openly fomenting violence. The Louisiana representative Clay Higgins suggested guerrilla warfare: “This is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. Hold. rPOTUS [a reference to the real president of the United States] has this. Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm.”Most other prominent Republicans – even those seeking the Republican presidential nomination – are criticizing Biden, Merrick Garland and the special counsel Jack Smith for “weaponizing” the justice department.All this advances Trump’s goal of forcing Americans to choose sides over him.Violence is possible, but there will be no civil war.Nations don’t go to war over whether they like or hate specific leaders. They go to war over the ideologies, religions, racism, social classes or economic policies these leaders represent.But Trump represents nothing other than his own grievance with a system that refused him a second term and is now beginning to hold him accountable for violating the law.In addition, the guardrails that protected American democracy after the 2020 election – the courts, state election officials, the military, and the justice department – are stronger than before Trump tested them the first time.Many of those who stormed the Capitol have been tried and convicted. Election-denying candidates were largely defeated in the 2022 midterms. The courts have adamantly backed federal prosecutors.Third, Trump’s advocates are having difficulty defending the charges in the unsealed indictment – that Trump threatened America’s security by illegally holding (and in some cases sharing) documents concerning “United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack”, and then shared a “plan of attack” against Iran.Republicans consider national security the highest and most sacred goal of the republic. A large number have served in the armed forces.Trump’s own attorney general, Bill Barr, said on Fox News Sunday that he was “shocked by the degree of sensitivity of these documents and how many there were, frankly … If even half of it is true, then he’s toast. I mean, it’s a very detailed indictment, and it’s very, very damning. And this idea of presenting Trump as a victim here, a victim of a witch-hunt, is ridiculous.”None of this is cause for complacency. Trump is as loony and dangerous as ever. He has inspired violence before, and he could do it again.But I believe that many who supported him in 2020 are catching on to his lunacy.Trump wants Americans to engage in a “final battle” over his own narcissistic cravings. Instead, he will get a squalid and humiliating last act.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      George Soros hands control of multi-billion foundation to son

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      The financier George Soros, the billionaire investor and liberal donor, has handed control of his multi-billion-dollar foundation to his son, Alexander.The 92-year-old, who memorably made $1bn betting against the British pound and “breaking the Bank of England” in a catastrophic financial event in 1992 that became known as Black Wednesday, had said previously that he did not want his Open Society Foundations (OSF) to be taken over by any of his five children.However, Soros has now named his son Alexander as chairman of one of the wealthiest global philanthropic foundations. “He’s earned it,” said Soros, whose personal fortune is valued at $6.7bn.The 37-year-old, who was quietly appointed in December, said he was “more political” than his father and that he planned to continue donating family money to left-leaning US political candidates, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Sunday.His father has been one of the biggest donors to Democratic candidates in US politics.“We are going to double down on defending voting rights and personal freedom at home and supporting the cause of democracy abroad,” said Alexander. “As much as I would love to get money out of politics, as long as the other side is doing it, we will have to do it too.”Alexander, who earlier this week tweeted a picture of himself posing with the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, now directs political activity as president of his father’s political action committee.The foundation, of which Alexander has been deputy chair since 2017, directs about $1.5bn a year to groups such as those backing human rights and helping to build democracies.Alexander, who studied history at New York University and earned a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, has pursued his own initiatives including backing progressive Jewish organisations, environmental causes and workers’ rights in the US.He also sits on the investment committee of the foundation that oversees Soros Fund Management (OSF), with the vast majority of the $25bn in assets under management belonging to the OSF. The OSF received $18bn from his father in 2018.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“With my background, there are a lot of ways I could have gone astray,” said Alexander. “Instead I became a workaholic, and my life is my work.”George Soros has married three times and has five children: Alexander, Andrea, Gregory, Robert and Jonathan. More

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      Republican red meat: Ron DeSantis bids to outflank Trump on the right

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      Donald Trump is not the most rightwing candidate running for the White House. That is a statement few would have thought possible after the former president’s brand of nativist-populism reshaped the Republican party.But as the Republican primary election for 2024 gathers pace, Trump finds himself eclipsed on the right by Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who is betting that the party’s voters are spoiling for an even more extreme agenda.From Covid to crime, from immigration to cultural issues, DeSantis is staking out territory that leaves the 76-year-old frontrunner fending off a once unthinkable criticism: he might be a bit too liberal.“DeSantis’s strategy for now is that he is going to try to outflank Trump to the right and there’s opportunity there,” said Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution thinktank at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. “He can go after Trump’s record as president on spending. He can go after Trump on refusing to address entitlement reform, which Republicans seemed to abandon writ large.”This week, Trump was indicted on charges of mishandling classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. DeSantis did not attempt to capitalise but rather condemned the “weaponization of federal law enforcement”. He has been dubbed a “mini-Trump” who seeks to emulate the former president. But in his first 10 days on the campaign trail, DeSantis has assailed Trump from the right.He told a conservative radio host “this is a different guy than 2015, 2016,” before deriding bipartisan criminal justice reform legislation that Trump championed as “basically a jailbreak bill” letting dangerous people out of prison.On immigration, DeSantis has played to the base by flying migrants from Florida to Massachusetts and California while arguing that Trump “endorsed and tried to ram” an “amnesty” bill through Congress. The governor even claimed Trump’s signature issue for himself by asserting that he would finish building a wall on the US-Mexico border.DeSantis can point to a hard-right record in Florida and suggest that he gets the job done in contrast to Trump’s unfulfilled promises at the White House. He has accused Trump of “turning the reins over” to Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert, during the Covid pandemic while he says he kept Florida open for business. “We chose freedom over Faucism,” DeSantis told voters last week.Whalen, who served as a speechwriter for the Bush-Quayle re-election campaign, said: “What DeSantis is going to attack him on is that Donald Trump turned loose Anthony Fauci. Trump at no point fired anybody. Trump let Fauci drive children’s healthcare policy. If Trump wants to engage with this on a conversation over who handled Covid better, boy, if I’m Ron DeSantis, bring it on.”Extraordinarily, Trump finds himself on the defensive over what many neutral observers and critics regard as one his few positive achievements: the development of coronavirus vaccines in less than a year.Campaigning in Grimes, Iowa, he received a pointed question from a woman who claimed that “we have lost people because you supported the jab,” a reference to conspiracy theories about mRNA vaccines, which have been credited with saving millions of lives.While Trump did not dismiss her suggestion – and stressed that he was never in favour of mandates – he explained that “there’s a big portion of the country that thinks that was a great thing, you understand that. Not a lot of the people in this room, but there is a big portion.”DeSantis has also taken a swipe at Trump for saying he did not like the term “woke” because people struggle to define it. The governor retorted: “Woke is an existential threat to our society. To say it’s not a big deal, that just shows you don’t understand what a lot of these issues are right now.”The skirmishes imply that DeSantis and Trump are running separate races. While the governor is aiming to woo Republican primary voters who have spent years embracing extremism, Trump is already looking ahead to a general election against Joe Biden where moderate swing state voters are critical.Trump has repeatedly hit DeSantis from the left, arguing that his votes to cut social security and Medicare in Congress will make him unelectable in a general election – even though Trump’s proposed budgets also repeatedly called for major entitlement cuts.Although Trump is quick to remind voters that he appointed three supreme court justices who, last year, helped end the constitutional right to abortion, he has also suggested that Florida’s new six-week abortion ban is “too harsh”.In a Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity, he urged pragmatism with an eye on the general election: “I happen to be of the Ronald Reagan school in terms of exemptions, where you have the life of the mother, rape and incest. For me, that’s something that works very well and for probably 80, 85%, because don’t forget, we do have to win elections.”Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “Trump’s current campaign strategists know that abortion is a huge weakness for the Republicans on a national stage going into 2024, evidenced by what happened in the midterms with the issue of abortion.“Trump is trying to thread the needle and sound more pragmatic on that because he’s actually thinking about the general at this point for that specific issue. There’s a good chunk of Republican voters who are not happy with the extreme abortion bans that are being pushed by the party.”DeSantis’s even-harder right approach could backfire in a national race against Biden, according to Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill.“It’s a risky proposition by the DeSantis camp to try to run to the right of Trump at this point because it feels as though it’s a very myopic strategy to just get out of the primary. Given how extreme his policies have been in Florida and what he’s advocated for, if by some miracle he did defeat Trump in the primaries, how does he walk all of that back to appeal to a general election electorate in this country?“This idea that he wants to scale up Florida is anathema to what the majority of the American people across the country actually want policy-wise. It’s not out of the ordinary that candidates tack more to the middle once they get into a general but we have never seen this level of extreme policy positions in a primary translate to a general election and be successful.”Trump is not willing to be entirely out-Trumped.He has pushed the death penalty for drug dealers and renewed his pledge to use the US military to attack foreign drug cartels. He also revived his pledge to end birthright citizenship, saying he would sign an executive order on the first day of his second term to change the long-settled interpretation of the 14th amendment.The posturing from both men might come to nought. History suggests that policy can be less important to voters than personality. Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “DeSantis is running to the right of Trump on policy. The particular niche of Trump is that his rhetoric and his populism remains further right than DeSantis.“DeSantis has been a governor, a member of Congress. For all of his rhetorical policy stances and the policies he’s signed into law, he’s still part of the government. Sure, Trump was president, but he has carved a place for himself as a demagogue, as someone who is running both for and against the political and economic system in America.”Jacobs added: “DeSantis would like him to run on policy and then DeSantis can run on his record of what he’s accomplished and try to win over Trump’s rightwing base.“But I don’t think Trump is going to let him do that. He’s going to continue to mock and portray DeSantis as part of the problem, someone who’s feeble and lacks the grit and the guts of a strong leader.”Trump allies dismiss DeSantis as an imitator who rings hollow. Roger Stone, a political consultant and self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” based in Florida, said: “He can try to sound like Trump, he can try to position himself like Trump, but I don’t think those are his real politics. He’s an establishment Republican. If you have a choice of seeing the Beatles or seeing a Beatles tribute band, which one are you going to go see?” More

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      in US Politics

      Donald Trump kept boxes with US nuclear program documents and foreign weapons details, indictment says – live

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      From 4h agoThe indictment reads that Trump stored in his boxes “information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack, and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack”.It goes on:
      The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.
      A lawyer for the Republican congressman and serial fabulist, George Santos, has said that the co-signers on a $500,000 bail package connected to Santos’ federal indictment are members of his family.In a letter to a New York judge, attorney Joseph Murray appealed an order this week to reveal the identities of three people who guaranteed Santos’ $500,000 bond on fraud charges.Murray wrote:
      Defendant has essentially publicly revealed that the suretors are family members and not lobbyists, donors or others seeking to exert influence over the defendant.
      At his arraignment in Long Island last month, Santos, 34, pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and making false statements.The New York Times sought the identification of Santos’s bail guarantors, arguing they should be identified as they had a chance to exert political influence over a congressman. Other news outlets joined the Times in its effort.In news not related to Donald Trump but involving one of his supporters, Markus Maly of Virginia received a six-year prison sentence for his role in the January 6 attack on Congress, federal prosecutors announced Friday.A grand jury had previously found Maly, 49, guilty of interfering with police during a civil disorder, resisting or impeding officers using a dangerous weapon as well as entering and remaining in a restricted building while armed, among other charges, prosecutors said.Authorities established that Maly joined a mob of Trump supporters who rioted at the Capitol on the day Congress convened to certify the former president’s defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.He was convicted of spraying a chemical irritant at a line of police officers who were defending the Capitol’s lower west terrace. In addition to serving time in prison, Maly must also spend three years under supervision after his release, prosecutors said.His co-defendants Jeffrey Scott Brown and Peter Schwartz were also found guilty of roles in the case. Schwartz later received a 14-year prison sentence. And Brown was given a prison sentence of four years.Maly raised more than $16,000 in funds for his defense from an online campaign that described him as a January 6 prisoner of war, the Associated Press had reported earlier. Prosecutors sought to take that money back in the form of a fine, arguing that Maly had a public defender and did not owe any legal fees.But neither court records nor prosecutors’ announcement about Maly’s sentence mentioned a fine for him as part of his sentence.Maly is among more than 1,000 people to be charged in connection with the January 6 attack, according to prosecutors. Numerous defendants have been convicted and sentenced to prison.Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, the two top Democrats in the Congress, have released a joint statement calling for the indictment to “play out through the legal process, without any outside political or ideological interference”.The statement reads:
      No one is above the law – including Donald Trump.
      It goes on to say:
      We encourage Mr Trump’s supporters and critics alike to let this case proceed peacefully in court.
      The US secret service is preparing for Donald Trump’s appearance at a federal court in Miami on Tuesday, but the agency “will not seek any special accommodations outside of what would be required to ensure the former Presidents continued safety”, according to spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi.A statement by Guglielmi reads:
      As with any site visited by a protectee, the Secret Service is in constant coordination with the necessary entities to ensure protective requirements are met,
      He added:
      We have the utmost confidence in the professionalism and commitment to security shared by our law enforcement partners in Florida.
      Trump is expected to surrender himself to authorities in Miami on Tuesday at 3pm ET.Donald Trump took classified documents including information on nuclear weapons in the US and secret plans to attack a foreign country, according to a 49-page federal indictment unsealed Friday afternoon.The former US president, alongside a military valet, now faces a sweeping 37-count felony indictment related to the mishandling of classified documents.Here are five of the most shocking revelations in the indictment, according to my colleague Maya Yang.We have a clip of the statement by Jack Smith, the US justice department special counsel who filed charges against Donald Trump.In a short address earlier today, Smith said his team would seek “a speedy trial” after the department unsealed a 37-count indictment against the former president.Donald Trump ally, Republican Arizona representative Andy Biggs responded to Trump’s indictment from the justice department by saying that “we have no reached a war phase.”Biggs, who previously spoke out against Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg over Trump’s indictment in March, went on to add:
      Eye for an eye.
      John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, has reacted to his former boss’s indictment, calling for his immediate withdrawal as a presidential candidate.With Donald Trump being the first US president to be federally indicted, what will come next? Will he go to prison? What are other Republicans, including his presidential contenders such as Florida governor Ron DeSantis, saying?The Guardian’s David Smith reports:It is often tempting to hype every Trump drama out of proportion and then lose sight of when something genuinely monumental has happened. Thursday night’s action by the justice department was genuinely monumental.First, it raises the question: what was Trump doing with government secrets? It was reported last month that prosecutors obtained an audio recording in which Trump talks about holding on to a classified Pentagon document related to a potential attack on Iran.Second, Trump could soon join a notorious club that includes Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac of France and Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak of South Korea. All have been prosecuted and convicted of corruption in the past 15 years.It’s Trump’s latest stress test for American democracy: can the state hold a former president accountable and apply the rule of law? There was a near miss for Richard Nixon, who could have faced federal charges over Watergate but was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford.The White House knows it cannot afford to put a foot wrong. Joe Biden tries to avoid commenting on Trump’s myriad legal troubles. The attorney general, Merrick Garland, has also kept them at arm’s length by appointing Jack Smith as special counsel. It is Smith who investigated the Mar-a-Lago documents case.Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, says: “I don’t think he’s an overreaching prosecutor. He’s very rigorous and vigorous and independent and that’s what you want here and that’s what’s needed. I don’t think Merrick Garland had anything to do with it except appointing him.”For the full story, click here:Here are some of the images coming out Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort where he has been accused of possessing classified documents: More

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      in US Politics

      After the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, another threat lies on Ukraine’s horizon: Donald Trump | Jonathan Freedland

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      The war for Ukraine gets darker and more terrifying, and now a new front has opened up many miles away – in a US Republican party whose biggest players are itching to abandon Ukraine to its fate.Proof of the conflict’s deepening horror came this week, with the destruction on Tuesday of the Kakhovka dam in Russian-controlled Ukraine, releasing a body of water so massive it’s best imagined not as a reservoir but as a great lake. The result has been the flooding of a vast swath of terrain, forcing thousands to abandon their homes and flee for their lives. But the menaces unleashed by this act go further than the immediate and devastating effect on the people who live close by.For one thing, this calamity has hit a region of rich and fertile farmland, the same soil that long made Ukraine a breadbasket for the world: the fifth-largest exporter of wheat on the planet, the food source on which much of Africa and the Middle East has relied. Now there are warnings that the fields of southern Ukraine could “turn into deserts” by next year, because the water held back by the dam and needed to irrigate those fields is draining away. That will have an impact on food supplies and food prices, with an effect in turn on inflation and the global economy.Not that the international impact can be measured in dollars and cents alone. Volodymyr Zelenskiy has warned that contaminated floodwaters now carry with them sewage, oil, chemicals and even anthrax from animal burial sites. That toxic material will, said the Ukrainian president, poison rivers and, before long, the water basin of the Black Sea. “So it’s not happening somewhere else. It is all interrelated in the world.”Meanwhile, the Red Cross has sounded an alarm of its own: the bursting of the dam does grievous damage to its ongoing effort to locate and clear landmines in the area. “We knew where the hazards were,” the organisation lamented. “Now we don’t know. All we know is that they are somewhere downstream.” Dislodged by the racing waters, those devices are now floating mines. And that’s before you reckon with the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the biggest in Europe, which relies on water from the now-draining reservoir for the essential process of cooling.Small wonder that Zelenskiy speaks of “an environmental bomb of mass destruction,” while others now mention Kakhovka in the same breath as Chornobyl. Except few believe this was an accident.Naturally, Moscow insists that this was not a Russian act: it says the Ukrainians did this to themselves. Still, and even though investigations are ongoing, it’s worth heeding the advice of the specialist in Ukrainian history Timothy Snyder, and remembering the fundamentals of detective work. “Russia had the means,” Snyder notes, in that Russia was in control of the relevant part of the dam when it appeared to explode. Russia had the motive, in that it fears a Ukrainian counteroffensive aimed at taking back territory – and flooded ground is ground over which tanks cannot advance.And there is the pattern of behaviour, the record of past crimes. Russia has scarcely restrained itself from targeting Ukraine’s civil infrastructure over the last 15 months: Kakhovka would just be the latest and most wanton example. Indeed, the destruction of dams to trigger mass flooding is no more than Russia’s ultra-nationalist talking heads and TV pundit class have been demanding for a while. This week one such voice suggested Moscow give the Kyiv dam the Kakhovka treatment and that it “raze the city to the ground”. As if weighing up the moral implications, he asked, “Why should we be holier than the pope?”The official denials should not be taken too seriously, given the Kremlin’s history of disinformation and outright lies. Better to judge Russia by its deeds than its words. So what did Russia do to help those made desperate by the floods? The answer was swift and it came from Russian artillery units, seemingly firing on Ukrainian rescue workers and evacuees as they tried to flee to safety. It’s a strategy familiar from Moscow’s war in Syria: pile pain upon pain, misery upon misery.Supporters of Ukraine say that this is a sign of Russian weakness, that it is resorting to barbaric methods because it knows that, in key respects, Ukraine has the upper hand – not least because it enjoys the support of a united west. That is true, for now. But there is a threat from within the alliance’s most powerful member.Freshly indicted though he is, Donald Trump remains the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president. And Trump is a well-documented friend of Vladimir Putin and a sceptic on the merits of continued US support for Kyiv. When asked on CNN last month, the former president couldn’t say who he wants to prevail in the contest between Russia and Ukraine, between invader and invaded. Nor would he commit to supplying aid to Kyiv: “We don’t have ammunition for ourselves, we’re giving away so much.” Asked about war crimes charges against Putin – centred on the alleged mass abduction of Ukrainian children and their transfer across the border to be “re-educated” as Russians – Trump again refused to condemn the “smart guy” in the Kremlin.Because Trump has remade the Republican party in his own image, this is not a danger confined to him alone. His nearest current rival, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, echoed Moscow talking points in March when he referred to the war as a “territorial dispute”, a remark he later sought to undo. But the window into his thinking had been opened.Most Republicans in Congress still back Ukraine, but the right of the party has moved into a different place, one illuminated by Tucker Carlson’s debut Twitter show this week, his first since his firing by Fox News. There he described Zelenskiy, who is Jewish, as “sweaty and rat-like … a persecutor of Christians … shifty, dead-eyed”, suggesting without evidence, and in a perfect echo of Moscow, that the hand of Kyiv lay behind the destruction of the Kakhovka dam.We already knew that much is at stake in the November 2024 presidential election, not least the life expectancy of US democracy. But there is something else, too. Ukraine is engaged in a profound battle for its own survival as an independent nation, and for larger principles essential to the whole world: that freedom must prevail, and that aggression must not. Ukraine cannot win that fight alone. It cannot win only with the backing of its European neighbours, which, though necessary, is not sufficient. It requires the United States, its muscle and its money. The plight of Kherson and the indictment in Miami are linked: the world desperately needs the defeat of Donald Trump.
      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

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      in US Politics

      The charges mount, but Trump’s not worried. He’s just the guy to make jail great again | Marina Hyde

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      Donald Trump announced his latest indictment last night in front of a painting of a guy literally twirling his moustache. “I am an innocent man,” the former president insisted, next to this cartoon shorthand for villainy. The oil painting in question is not so much an artwork as a lift-music version of an artwork, and seems to hang at Trump’s Bedminster golf club in New Jersey – which is the same place he buried his former wife Ivana, as all admirers of both exquisite taste and private-cemetery tax breaks may already know. Either way, Ivana’s there, right near the first tee. It’s what she would have wanted.As for her surviving ex-husband, it’s fashionable to say that anything that would represent a catastrophic setback for any other human being is exactly what Trump would have wanted. By this metric, his indictment on federal charges for the first time, including under the Espionage Act, is an absolute gift and a triumph. He’ll use it to pull in fundraising, it’ll rally his base, it’ll make every Republican beta – which is to say, every Republican – feel they have to swear loyalty to him. Furthermore, it’s already got him right where he most loves to be: with everyone talking about him. And these are all reasonable points – or at least reasonable in a through-the-looking-glass way, given that to many outside observers the United States passed reason two or three election cycles ago. If only they could invade themselves to bring democracy.Even so, it must be said the Espionage Act is one of the not-great laws to allegedly break, rather like obstruction of justice, of which Trump also stands accused. Individuals convicted of those felonies can face long stretches in facilities that are often entirely oil painting-free, and have never even been offered the chance to host a golf major. They do, however, have “lively” canteens and communal areas, which could make Mr Clubhouse feel at home.As always with this defendant, however, let’s not run ahead of ourselves. Trump has been indicted by the justice department on seven counts that are still under seal, but relate to his mishandling and retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. He is due in court on Tuesday in Miami. Following an incomplete search of his Palm Beach estate and club last year by members of his own legal team, then an FBI raid some months later, the documents saga constitutes something Trump keeps calling the “boxes hoax”. Quick note on vocab: down the rabbit hole we all descended some years ago now, “hoax” is the antidote to “-gate”: a sort of all-purpose bolt-on Trump can use to dismiss any scandal. Once he’s called it a hoax, the true scandal becomes the fact that anyone is trying to tar him with scandal. Trump himself becomes the poor local innocent who is being persecuted on account of his being mildly unconventional. See also: “witch-hunt”.To Mar-a-Lago, then, where someone saw Goody Trump with a classified document about Iran’s missile programme. And another about US intelligence work in China. And at least a hundred other mildly unconventional classified souvenirs of his time in office. Clearly, these are the sorts of keepsakes that any of us, had we ascended to the presidency, may afterwards wish to retain and transport to our home, which is also a members’ club thronging with hundreds of terrible people at any given time.Anyone now taking the opportunity to chant “Lock him up!” is indulging in pure McCarthyism.Unfortunately, that is not how Jack Smith, special counsel for the documents investigation, seems to have seen it. I am also confused that Mr Smith has not accepted Trump’s earlier suggestion that he could declassify documents merely by thinking about it. Last September, the former president told Fox News: “There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it.” Yet according to that old spoilsport “the law”, there apparently does. So here we are.In terms of where Trump himself is, it’s complicated. He’s the hot favourite for the Republican nomination, and also the defendant or potential defendant in a number of ongoing legal actions. There simply isn’t the space to recap all of them, but the standouts are the charges of hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, on which he has already been indicted by Manhattan state prosecutors, and the federal criminal investigation into his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, which remains in train and for which Smith is also the special counsel.Speaking of McCarthys, finally, the house speaker, Kevin McCarthy, reacted to news of the Trump indictment in that hyper-partisan, truth-free way that has become so commonplace that it should surely redefine “McCarthyism” for our own era. Having begun with a false claim (that Joe Biden indicted Trump), Kevin sought to delegitimise a legitimate process before kowtowing to Trump in entirely abject style. Even Trump’s not-very-arch rival for the Republican nomination, Ron DeSantis, was too weak to do anything other than obediently defend Trump – while elsewhere, a new poll found that 43% of Republicans believed Trump should be allowed to serve again even if he were convicted of a felony. However positive some may feel about the charges, the whole picture is – how to put this? – no oil painting. Ultimately, Trump will be easier to deal with than the culture he has created.
      Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
      On Tuesday 13 June, Marina Hyde will join Gary Younge at a Guardian Live event in Brighton. Readers can join this event in person
      What Just Happened?! by Marina Hyde (Guardian Faber, £9.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      in Elections

      12m Americans believe violence is justified to restore Trump to power

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      Two and a half years after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, an estimated 12 million American adults, or 4.4% of the adult population, believe violence is justified to restore Donald Trump to the White House.Though the number of adults who believe this has declined since the insurrection, recent survey data from the University of Chicago reveal alarming and dangerous levels of support for political violence and conspiracy theories across the United States.The university’s Chicago Project on Security & Threats (CPOST) research center has been conducting Dangers to Democracy surveys of American adults on political violence and attitudes towards democracy since shortly after the January 6 attacks. In new data from April shared exclusively with the Guardian, researchers found a continued support for violence to achieve various political goals on both sides of the aisle, and a general distrust for democracy.The results are particularly alarming as the 2024 election approaches without essential safeguards that some lawmakers say could help prevent another violent attack on US democracy.For the next year and a half through the 2024 election, CPOST will be releasing new survey data tracking continued dangers to democracy every three months. The data will be published first with the Guardian. This data will be critical at a time when efforts to erode democracy feel increasingly prevalent in the United States, from candidates who deny the results of their elections to governmental taskforces attempting to prosecute people who unintentionally violate voting laws.“We’re heading into an extremely tumultuous election season,” said Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago who directs CPOST. “What’s happening in the United States is political violence is going from the fringe to the mainstream.”The most recent survey from April 2023 found that an estimated 142 million Americans believe that elections won’t solve America’s most fundamental problems – up from 111 million last September. And one in five American adults still believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, representing very little change from 2021.“What you’re seeing is really disturbing levels of distrust in American democracy, support for dangerous conspiracy theories, and support for political violence itself,” Pape said.Pape said it was important to track sentiments about political violence, comparing it to the kindling for a wildfire. Though many were unaware that the events on January 6 would turn violent, research shows that public support for violence was widespread, so the attacks themselves should not have come as a surprise.“Once you have support for violence in the mainstream, those are the raw ingredients or the raw combustible material and then speeches, typically by politicians, can set them off,” he said. “Or if they get going, speeches can encourage them to go further.”Before the January 6 insurrection, there was chatter on online forums and among far-right groups about potential political violence when Congress met to count electoral votes and certify Joe Biden the winner of the presidential election. But it was Trump’s speech at the White House Ellipse that day that touched off the actual violence, Pape said.That’s why it’s important to track public sentiment about political violence regularly. The instigating event, usually a speech or comment by a person in power, is unpredictable and can set people off at any moment, but the underlying support for violence is more predictable and trackable.The survey found that almost 14% – a minority of Americans, but still a significant number – believe the use of force is justified to “achieve political goals that I support”. More specifically, 12.4% believe it’s justified to restore the federal right to abortion, 8.4% believe it’s justified to ensure members of Congress and other government officials do the right thing, 6.3% think it’s justified to preserve the rights of white Americans, and 6.1% believe it’s justified to prevent the prosecution of Trump.Peter Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University and the author of a forthcoming book on public trust in the military, said that while public support for political violence might seem extreme, a confluence of factors is necessary for actual violence to occur – which is still rare. On January 6, there was a time-sensitive action, an already existing rally, and inciters including Trump who encouraged others to commit violence.“You needed all of that at the same time to turn what would have been latent sentiment of the sort that this survey captures into actual violence,” he said.In addition to wide support for Trump’s big lie about the 2020 election, the survey also found that significant numbers of American adults believe conspiracy theories about the US government, and the number of believers has remained steady over almost two years. For example, 10% of American adults in April said they believe the government is run by Satan-worshipping pedophiles.“The survey confirms what we already knew, which is that rhetoric is really hyperbolic in American political life,” Feaver said. “You can get folks to express support for pretty extreme statements.”An even greater percentage of American adults said they believe in the “great replacement” theory, a white nationalist conspiracy theory that holds there is an active effort to replace white people with non-white populations, including immigrants and other people of color, in white-majority countries.While much of the survey reveals an alarming level of political polarization in the United States, there are areas where the majority of people do agree. Almost 55% of American adults feel like elections won’t solve our most fundamental political and social problems, and close to 50% believe political elites on both sides of the aisle are the most corrupt people in America.Perhaps more optimistically, the largest share of Americans believe in a potential solution to political violence. More than 77% think Republicans and Democrats in Congress should make a joint statement condemning any political violence.“There’s a tremendous amount of opposition to political violence in the United States, but it is not mobilized,” Pape said.CPOST’s research is supported by the University of Chicago, the Pritzker Military Foundation, the Hopewell Fund, and Anti-Defamation League and contributions from the CPOST board of advisers More

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      in US Politics

      Donald Trump attempts to cut sexual abuse damages for E Jean Carroll to $1m – as it happened

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      From 2h agoDonald Trump has asked a federal court in New York to slash the $5m penalty awarded against him in the sexual assault and defamation civil case won by writer E Jean Carroll down to just $1m – or grant him a new trial.The case went in Carroll’s favor last month when a jury decided that Trump had sexually abused and defamed her.Trump’s legal team has argued to the court that the damages awarded against him are excessive and the court should either slash them or allow a new trial.Reuters adds:
      The lawyers noted in a written submission that a Manhattan federal court jury last month rejected a rape claim made by the writer, E. Jean Carroll, concluding instead that she had been sexually abused in spring 1996 in the store’s dressing room.
      “Such abuse could have included groping of Plaintiff’s breasts through clothing, or similar conduct, which is a far cry from rape,” the lawyers wrote.
      They said the $2 million granted by the jury on a sexual abuse claim was “grossly excessive” and another $2.7 million issued for compensatory defamation damages was “based upon pure speculation.”
      The award should consist of no more than $400,000 for sex abuse, no more than $100,000 for defamation and $368,000 or less for the cost of a campaign to repair Carroll‘s reputation, the lawyers wrote.
      If a judge does not grant the suggested reduction in the award, then he should permit a new trial on damages, they said.
      Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, said in an emailed statement that the arguments by Trump’s lawyers were frivolous.
      She said the unanimous jury had concluded that Trump sexually assaulted Carroll and then defamed her “by lying about her with hatred, ill-will, or spite.”
      “This time, Trump will not be able to escape the consequences of his actions,” Kaplan said.
      Trump may still face a second defamation trial resulting from another lawsuit Carroll filed against him. That case has been delayed with appeals as the U.S. Justice Department sought to substitute the United States as the defendant in place of Trump. Government lawyers say Trump can’t be held liable for the comments he made as president.
      Hello US politics blog readers, it’s been an eventful day in US political news. We’re closing this blog now and will start afresh on Friday. We have stand alone stories on some of the biggest news of the day, links in the bullet points below.Here’s where things stand:
      Donald Trump has asked a federal court in New York to slash the $5m penalty awarded against him in the sexual assault and defamation civil case won by writer E Jean Carroll down to just $1m – or grant him a new trial.
      The White House has had to postpone a party due for this evening, where thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer-plus (LGBTQ+) people were invited to a celebration and, essentially, a political defiance event. Reuters further reports that Biden said violence against LGBTQ+ people in the United States is on the rise and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric is an appeal to fear that is “unjustified” and “ugly.”
      Hardline Republicans have effectively paralyzed the chamber because they’re unhappy at speaker Kevin McCarthy over the deal with Democrats that resolved the problem with the US debt ceiling. The spat appears to have widened to envelop No 2 House Republican Steve Scalise, who appears unhappy with the speaker.
      The US supreme court ruled that Alabama discriminated against Black voters when it drew its seven congressional districts last year. The ruling in Allen v Milligan means that Alabama will have to draw its congressional map afresh to include a second majority-Black district.
      Donald Trump has asked a federal court in New York to slash the $5m penalty awarded against him in the sexual assault and defamation civil case won by writer E Jean Carroll down to just $1m – or grant him a new trial.The case went in Carroll’s favor last month when a jury decided that Trump had sexually abused and defamed her.Trump’s legal team has argued to the court that the damages awarded against him are excessive and the court should either slash them or allow a new trial.Reuters adds:
      The lawyers noted in a written submission that a Manhattan federal court jury last month rejected a rape claim made by the writer, E. Jean Carroll, concluding instead that she had been sexually abused in spring 1996 in the store’s dressing room.
      “Such abuse could have included groping of Plaintiff’s breasts through clothing, or similar conduct, which is a far cry from rape,” the lawyers wrote.
      They said the $2 million granted by the jury on a sexual abuse claim was “grossly excessive” and another $2.7 million issued for compensatory defamation damages was “based upon pure speculation.”
      The award should consist of no more than $400,000 for sex abuse, no more than $100,000 for defamation and $368,000 or less for the cost of a campaign to repair Carroll‘s reputation, the lawyers wrote.
      If a judge does not grant the suggested reduction in the award, then he should permit a new trial on damages, they said.
      Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, said in an emailed statement that the arguments by Trump’s lawyers were frivolous.
      She said the unanimous jury had concluded that Trump sexually assaulted Carroll and then defamed her “by lying about her with hatred, ill-will, or spite.”
      “This time, Trump will not be able to escape the consequences of his actions,” Kaplan said.
      Trump may still face a second defamation trial resulting from another lawsuit Carroll filed against him. That case has been delayed with appeals as the U.S. Justice Department sought to substitute the United States as the defendant in place of Trump. Government lawyers say Trump can’t be held liable for the comments he made as president.
      Here’s New York civil rights campaigner and politician Al Sharpton on the supreme court decision.
      This was an unexpected decision that hopefully means the Supreme Court’s era of disenfranchising voters is coming to an end.
      Alabama’s gerrymandering policies were quintessential, modern-day Jim Crow tactics to suppress Black voters in the state. That you had two conservative-leaning judges rule against the state all but confirms that.
      This is a major step forward in the fight to protect voting rights. Let’s not forget that we’re in this mess because the Supreme Court took a sledgehammer to the Voting Rights Act a decade ago when it ruled on Shelby v. Holder.
      States essentially got the green light to recut lines, purge voter rolls, and take any other steps to keep Black and Brown Americans from showing up at the polls. Today’s ruling only goes to show why Congress has a moral imperative to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act this year.
      We have been promised since we lost John Lewis three years ago, amid historic protests against racial injustice, and we will not wait until next year when lawmakers need our vote again. On August 26th, we will gather for the 60th Anniversary of the March on Washington to send a clear message that this legislation must pass now.”
      US attorney general Merrick Garland has issued a response to the supreme court’s decision on Alabama and also a fresh call to the US Congress to pass some of the voting rights legislation that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris campaigned on in 2020 but is growing mildew on Capitol Hill.Garland said:
      Today’s decision rejects efforts to further erode fundamental voting rights protections, and preserves the principle that in the United States, all eligible voters must be able to exercise their constitutional right to vote free from discrimination based on their race.
      The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, the right from which all other rights ultimately flow.
      Over the past two years, the Justice Department has rededicated its resources to enforcing federal voting rights protections. We will continue to use every authority we have left to defend voting rights. But that is not enough. We urge Congress to act to provide the Department with important authorities it needs to protect the voting rights of every American.”
      Here’s Janai Nelson, president and director- counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), on the Scotus decision.There is praise to go around.On Deuel Ross, racial justice attorney at the Legal Defense Fund:More reaction now to the surprise decision by the US supreme court earlier to defend the Voting Rights Act in a case involving Alabama’s electoral map.The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has released a statement thus, which includes some useful background:
      The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled in Allen v. Milligan in favor of Black voters who challenged Alabama’s 2021-enacted congressional map for violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for diluting Black political power, affirming the district court’s order that Alabama redraw its congressional map.
      By packing and cracking the historic Black Belt community, the map passed by the state legislature allowed Black voters an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice in only one of seven districts even though they make up 27 percent percent of the voting-age population. In its decision, the court also affirmed that under Section 2 of the VRA, race can be used in the redistricting process to provide equal opportunities to communities of color and ensure they are not packed and cracked in a way that impermissibly weakens their voting strength.
      The case was brought in November 2021 on behalf of Evan Milligan, Khadidah Stone, Letetia Jackson, Shalela Dowdy, Greater Birmingham Ministries, and the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP who are represented by the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Alabama, Hogan Lovells LLP, and Wiggins, Childs, Pantazis, Fisher & Goldfarb. It was argued before the court on Oct. 4, 2022.
      “This decision is a crucial win against the continued onslaught of attacks on voting rights,” said LDF senior counsel Deuel Ross, who argued the case before the court in October. “Alabama attempted to rewrite federal law by saying race had no place in redistricting. But because of the state’s sordid and well-documented history of racial discrimination, race must be used to remedy that past and ensure communities of color are not boxed out of the electoral process. While the Voting Rights Act and other key protections against discriminatory voting laws have been weakened in recent years and states continue to pass provisions to disenfranchise Black voters, today’s decision is a recognition of Section 2’s purpose to prevent voting discrimination and the very basic right to a fair shot.”
      Davin Rosborough, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said, “The Supreme Court rejected the Orwellian idea that it’s inappropriate to consider race in determining whether racial discrimination led to the creation of illegal maps. This ruling is a huge victory for Black Alabamians.”
      It’s been a busy morning in US politics and there will be plenty more developments on subjects ranging from Trump and E Jean Carroll to the supreme court’s surprise ruling on Alabama’s biased voting maps.Here’s where things stand:
      Donald Trump has asked for a new trial in the civil case brought by author E Jean Carroll, in which a Manhattan jury last month found the former US president liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer and awarded her $5m in damages.
      The White House has had to postpone a party due for this evening, where thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer-plus (LGBTQ+) people were invited to a celebration and, essentially, a political defiance event.
      Hardline Republicans have effectively paralyzed the chamber because they’re unhappy at speaker Kevin McCarthy over the deal with Democrats that resolved the problem with the US debt ceiling. The spat appears to have widened to envelop No 2 House Republican Steve Scalise, who appears unhappy with the speaker.
      The US supreme court ruled that Alabama discriminated against Black voters when it drew its seven congressional districts last year. The ruling in Allen v Milligan means that Alabama will have to draw its congressional map afresh to include a second majority-Black district.
      Another quick reminder that British prime minister Rishi Sunak and US president Joe Biden are about to hold a press conference at the White House.It’s beginning any moment and our London colleagues are glued to it. There’s a live feed and all the developments as they happen, via the UK politics blog, here.No sooner had a New York jury found for E Jean Carroll than Donald Trump verbally attacked her during a live town hall-style interview on CNN (the broadcast which was probably the penultimate nail in the coffin for departing CNN chair Chris Licht before the crushing Atlantic article).Carroll promptly went back to court to to demand “very substantial” additional damages from Trump for the disparaging remarks, filing an amended lawsuit seeking an additional $10m in compensatory damages – and more in punitive damages.During the town hall in New Hampshire the day after the 9 May verdict, Trump further and repeatedly demeaned Carroll and her experiences.Trump said her account of a sexual assault, in the case which he is appealing, was “fake” and a “made-up story” and referred to it as “hanky-panky”. He repeated past claims that he’d never met Carroll and considered her a “whack job”.The filing by Carroll the following week claimed Trump’s statements at the televised town hall “show the depth of his malice toward Carroll, since it is hard to imagine defamatory conduct that could possibly be more motivated by hatred, ill will or spite”.Now Trump wants a new trial.Last month a New York jury found that Donald Trump sexually abused the former advice columnist, E Jean Carroll, in one of New York City’s most upscale stores, in the changing room at Bergdorf Goodman on Fifth Avenue, 27 years ago.The verdict on 9 May, for the first time, essentially legally branded a former US president as a sexual predator. It was the result of a civil not criminal case, and the only legal sanction Trump faced was financial.At the time, my colleagues Chris McGreal and Martin Pengelly noted that: In explaining a finding of sexual abuse to the jury, the judge said it had two elements: that Trump subjected Carroll to sexual contact without consent by use of force, and that it was for the purpose of sexual gratification.The jury deliberated for less than three hours. It did not find Trump raped Carroll, but did find him liable for sexual abuse.It awarded about $5m in compensatory and punitive damages: about $2m on the sexual abuse count and close to $3m for defamation, for branding her a liar.In an interview the following day, Carroll said she was “overwhelmed with joy for the women in this country”.It would be staggering if Donald Trump succeeded in getting a new civil trial in the issues brought against him by E Jean Carroll, after she sued him for defamation and sexual abuse and won hands down after a brisk jury decision.But the former US president is having a go.Donald Trump has asked for a new trial in the civil case brought by author E Jean Carroll, in which a Manhattan jury last month found the former US president liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer and awarded her $5m in damages, Reuters reports.This according to a new court filing. More on this asap.Smoke gets in your eyes. Sadly, the White House has had to postpone a party due for this evening at the White House, where thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer-plus (LGBTQ+) people were invited to a celebration and, essentially, a political defiance event at the White House.The smoky air drifting south from the Canadian wildfires that’s been causing havoc on the eastern seaboard and further inland has put paid to tonight’s party.BUT in better news, it is currently rescheduled for Saturday.NBC reports that the event was/is designed as:
      A high-profile show of support at a time when the community feels under attack like never before and the White House has little recourse to beat back a flood of state-level legislation against them.
      Biden is also announcing new initiatives to protect LGBTQ+ communities from attacks, help youth with mental health resources and homelessness and counter book bans, White House officials said.
      The event is a:
      Picnic featuring food, games, face painting and photos. Queen HD the DJ was handling the music; singer Betty Who was on tap to perform.
      Karine Jean-Pierre, the first openly gay White House press secretary, said Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and their spouses are strong supporters of the LGBTQ+ community and think that having a celebration is an important way to “lift up” their accomplishments and contributions.
      She said LGBTQ+ people need to know that Biden “has their back” and “will continue to fight for them. And that’s the message that we want to make sure that gets out there.”
      FYI Harris is in the Bahamas today on business and is expected back in DC tonight. Biden’s meeting Rishi Sunak at the White House and holding a presser soon.You can follow all the latest developments on the Canadian wildfires and the smoke impact on the US in our dedicated live blog:There’s some context on the relationship between House speaker Kevin McCarthy and his chamber GOP No. 2, Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, from the Punchbowl report, prior to the hardliners’ spat now rippling out on Capitol Hill.The outlet points out that a captain having friction with his supposed wingman “is a tale as old as time in House leadership” and these two have known each other for decades.Punchbowl reports:
      The pair met as young College Republicans and their interactions have always been professional. But there’s no doubt some bad blood between the two men.
      Scalise considered running against McCarthy for Republican leader in 2019, but ultimately decided against it — something we cataloged at length in a book we wrote. And again, McCarthy tapped [Louisiana congressman Garrett] Graves and [North Carolina congressman Patrick] McHenry for the most sensitive negotiations of the last few months, leaving Scalise aside.
      Scalise said in the interview that McCarthy is still viable as speaker of the House. But the House majority leader noted repeatedly that there is “a lot of anger on a lot of sides of our conference.”
      An old article from Politico notes that McCarthy and Scalise’s “parallel rise” dates to the late 1990s. McCarthy was national chairman of the Young Republicans and Scalise was an up and coming Louisiana politician and their friendship developed from that time.British prime minister Rishi Sunak, from the Conservative Party, is in Washington DC, this week and is meeting right now with Joe Biden at the White House.The premier and the US president are due to hold a press conference at 1.30pm US east coast time. Our colleagues in London are focusing on this and will be covering it as it happens via the UK politics blog, with a live stream of the event.You can keep up with that blog here.Selma native and Alabama congresswoman Terri Sewell just hopped on the phone for a live interview with CNN on air to express her relief and delight about the supreme court decision on voting rights and the relevant district maps in her state.“This is so exciting, it’s really amazing … it’s an amazing victory for Alabama Black voters, for the Voting Rights Act, for democracy,” she said.She tweeted about a “historic victory”.Sewell said the ruling reflected the legacy of the long legacy of fighting for civil rights for Black voters in Alabama and elsewhere and she was “reeling” from the good surprise.“And to have the supreme court give us this huge win, it’s historic,” she told CNN.She noted this would have implications more widely and was a closely watched case by legislatures creating voting maps, especially in states such as North Carolina and Ohio. “Everyone is looking at this decision,” she said, adding “it will have a positive ripple effect.”She noted that the late civil rights activist, champion and congressman John Lewis “must be smiling” and that those who challenged Alabama’s discriminatory voting rights did was Lewis always encouraged people do to: “we got into some good trouble.”This is Sewell’s pinned tweet: More