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      Democrat Raphael Warnock holds narrow poll lead in crucial Georgia Senate runoff – as it happened

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      Two years ago, Georgia was the state that decided control of the Senate in Democrats’ favor. This year, its importance will be slightly diminished – but that doesn’t mean the results of Tuesday’s run-off election between Democratic senator Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker won’t be closely watched.Democrats won enough seats in last month’s midterm elections to control Congress’s upper chamber for another two years, but only by a margin so slim they’ll need vice-president Kamala Harris to cast tie-breaking votes on legislation Republicans don’t support. But if Warnock wins, the Democrats will control the chamber outright, and the influence of senators like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who repeatedly acted as spoilers for some of Joe Biden’s policy proposals over the past two years, will be lessened.A victory by Walker will put Republicans one seat away from retaking control of the chamber, and perhaps mark the unofficial start of the campaign to do so in 2024. In that election, Democrats will be defending Senate seats in a number of states that typically vote Republican, such as Montana, Ohio and West Virginia. They would only need to lose one for the GOP to return to the majority.Democratic senator Raphael Warnock and his Republican challenger Herschel Walker are in the home stretch of campaigning ahead of Tuesday’s run-off election for Georgia’s Senate seat. Polls indicate Warnock has the edge, while the weather may undercut Walker’s hopes that Republican voters will turn out massively for him tomorrow. Meanwhile, in New York, jurors are deliberating in the tax fraud trial of Donald Trump’s business.Here’s what else happened today:
      Former vice-president Mike Pence and Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski are among the few Republicans to condemn Trump’s call for the “termination” of the constitution.
      Kamala Harris will swear in Los Angeles’s new mayor Karen Bass next week. Bass will be the first Black woman to lead the city.
      Democrats have vastly outspent Republicans in the contest for Georgia’s Senate seat.
      The supreme court’s conservative majority appeared ready to side with a Christian graphic designer who refused to make a website for a same-sex couple in a case over Colorado’s anti-discrimination law. The arguments also featured some eyebrow-raising comments from conservative justice Samuel Alito.
      Manhattan’s district attorney has added a former justice department official with extensive Trump experience as he continues an inquiry into an alleged hush-money payment by the former president.
      Anyone who’s flown through an American airport recently has probably seen signs encouraging them to make sure their drivers license or identification card is compliant with the REAL ID Act.Passed in 2005 on the recommendation of the 9/11 commission, the law’s implementation has repeatedly been delayed, and the homeland security department today announced its effective date has been pushed back again, from 3 May, 2023 to 7 May, 2025 :NEWS: DHS announces extension of REAL ID full enforcement deadline. Learn more at: https://t.co/98wN1dMV4z pic.twitter.com/z7QwmXGpao— TSA (@TSA) December 5, 2022
      The department cited the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic as the latest hold up. States typically require applicants to present more stringent proofs of identity such as passports in order to obtain a REAL ID-compliant drivers license or identification card. Once the 2025 deadline passes, such documentation will be necessary to get through Transportation Security Administration checkpoints at airports, as well as to access other federal agencies, the homeland security department says.It appears the supreme court’s conservative majority is siding with a Christian graphic artist in a dispute over Colorado’s anti-discrimination law, the Associated Press reports.The justices are weighing whether the artist broke Colorado’s law by refusing to design a wedding website for a same-sex couple. While the court’s arguments are notoriously opaque, the balance of power is currently 6-3 in favor of the conservatives, and the AP says comments by Republican-appointed justices indicate they’re in favor of the artist.Here’s more from their story:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Justice Neil Gorsuch, one of three high court appointees of former President Donald Trump, described Lorie Smith, the website designer in the case, as “an individual who says she will sell and does sell to everyone, all manner of websites, (but) that she won’t sell a website that requires her to express a view about marriage that she finds offensive.”
      Where to draw the line for what a business might do without violating state anti-discrimination laws was a big question in Monday’s arguments at the high court.
      Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked whether a photography store in a shopping mall could refuse to take pictures of Black people on Santa’s lap.
      “Their policy is that only white children can be photographed with Santa in this way, because that’s how they view the scenes with Santa that they’re trying to depict,” Jackson said.
      Justice Sonia Sotomayor repeatedly pressed Kristen Waggoner, the lawyer for Smith, over other categories. “How about people who don’t believe in interracial marriage? Or about people who don’t believe that disabled people should get married? Where’s the line?” Sotomayor asked.
      But Justice Samuel Alito, who seemed to favor Smith, asked whether it’s “fair to equate opposition to same-sex marriage to opposition to interracial marriage?”Things got a little awkward today during the supreme court’s arguments in a case pitting a Christian graphic artist against Colorado’s anti-discrimination law.The justices are considering whether the graphic designer has the right to turn down designing a website for a same-sex couple, or whether the state’s law compels her to do so. As justices heard both sides in the case, they pondered how the law would handle hypothetical situations, and conservative justice Samuel Alito generated a few chuckles in the courtroom – and many raised eyebrows outside of it – with a quip about Black children and the Ku Klux Klan:Justice Alito jokes with Justice Kagan that, “You do see a lot of Black children in Ku Klux Klan outfits all the time,” during oral arguments in a free speech case. pic.twitter.com/QoCfDVhuEQ— The Recount (@therecount) December 5, 2022
      Alito, who was the author of this summer’s decision overturning Roe v Wade, also seemed to imply liberal justice Elana Kagan would know something about AshleyMadison.com – a dating site specializing in infidelity:Justice Alito: “[Jdate is] a dating service, I gather, for Jewish people.”Justice Kagan: “It is.”Alito: “Maybe Justice Kagan will also be familiar with the next website I’m gonna mention … https://t.co/1pzGIJ8Yqf” pic.twitter.com/lcQvBV38RG— The Recount (@therecount) December 5, 2022
      Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg is conducting one of the many investigations into Donald Trump’s conduct, and the New York Times reports he’s brought on to his team an attorney with a history of tangling with the former president.Matthew Colangelo will join Bragg’s team as a senior counsel, after serving as the number-three official in the justice department and, before that, a top lawyer for New York’s attorney general. The Manhattan prosecutor has long been investigating Trump’s business practices, and while at one point it looked like the inquiry was foundering, the Times reports it has recently shifted its focus towards a payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with Trump.As the Times reports, Colangelo challenged the Trump administration repeatedly during his time in the New York attorney general’s office:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Mr. Bragg and Mr. Colangelo overlapped while working at the New York attorney general’s office, where Mr. Bragg rose to become chief deputy attorney general and Mr. Colangelo was chief counsel for federal initiatives. In that role, Mr. Colangelo led dozens of lawsuits against the Trump administration, including a successful challenge to the inclusion of a question about citizenship to the census in 2020. He also oversaw an investigation into Mr. Trump’s charity, the Trump Foundation, that caused the organization to dissolve, and led that office’s civil inquiry into Mr. Trump’s financial practices.
      That inquiry led to a September lawsuit from the attorney general, Letitia James, that accused the president of overvaluing his assets by billions of dollars.
      By then, Mr. Colangelo was working at the Department of Justice, having been appointed as acting associate attorney general when President Biden took office. In that job, the third highest-ranking at the department, Mr. Colangelo helped oversee the Civil, Civil Rights, Antitrust and Tax divisions, among others.Donald Trump has reemerged on his Truth social network to refute that he ever called for the “termination” of the constitution – even though he definitely did.“The Fake News is actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution. This is simply more DISINFORMATION & LIES, just like RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, and all of their other HOAXES & SCAMS”, the ex-president wrote.But scroll a little further down his profile, and the “termination” comment sure doesn’t seem like disinformation or lies. Here’s what he wrote on Saturday, in the post that kicked off the latest firestorm: “So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”In today’s posts, he doubles down on his insistence that the 2020 election was stolen, even though there’s been no proof of that, despite repeated attempts by Trump’s lawyers to convince judges nationwide otherwise. “What I said was that when there is ‘MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION,’ as has been irrefutably proven in the 2020 Presidential Election, steps must be immediately taken to RIGHT THE WRONG”, Trump wrote. He followed that up with a second post: “SIMPLY PUT, IF AN ELECTION IS IRREFUTABLY FRAUDULENT, IT SHOULD GO TO THE RIGHTFUL WINNER OR, AT A MINIMUM, BE REDONE. WHERE OPEN AND BLATANT FRAUD IS INVOLVED, THERE SHOULD BE NO TIME LIMIT FOR CHANGE!”Democratic senator Raphael Warnock and his Republican challenger Herschel Walker are in the home stretch of campaigning ahead of Tuesday’s run-off election for Georgia’s Senate seat. Polls indicate Warnock has the edge, while the weather may undercut Walker’s hopes that Republican voters will turn out massively for him tomorrow. Meanwhile, in New York, jurors are deliberating in the tax fraud trial of Donald Trump’s business.Here’s what else has happened so far today:
      Former vice-president Mike Pence and Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski are among the few Republicans to condemn Trump’s call for the “termination” of the constitution.
      Kamala Harris will swear in Los Angeles’s new mayor Karen Bass next week. Bass will be the first Black woman to lead the city.
      Democrats have vastly outspent Republicans in the contest for Georgia’s Senate seat.
      Meanwhile, Democrats have settled on a new leader in the House of Representatives: Hakeem Jeffries, who is set to steer the party through two years in the minority beginning in 2023. The Guardian’s Edwin Rios has more about Jeffries, who could one day become the next House speaker:Democratic congressman Hakeem Jeffries first emerged in the mid-2000s as a former corporate lawyer homegrown from central Brooklyn. With his focus on criminal justice reform and housing affordability, he was seen as a progressive of the moment who took on the existing Democratic machine in New York.Now, as the newly-elected successor to House speaker Nancy Pelosi, Jeffries has graduated from state politics to the national stage with the opportunity to make an impression on American politics for years to come.Last week Jeffries, 52, became the first Black leader of either party in Congress. Under the incoming Congress, Jeffries will be House minority leader, making him the most powerful Democrat in the House. His ascension, paired with the departures of longtime and elderly Democratic leaders like Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn, signals a shift for Democrats toward a younger, more diverse generation of leaders that will undoubtedly face tension with a new Republican House majority on the horizon.Will the ‘cool, calm, collected’ Hakeem Jeffries change when in power?Read moreGeorgia’s Democratic senator Raphael Warnock continues to lead his challenger Herschel Walker ahead of tomorrow’s run-off election, a new poll has found.The University of Massachusetts Lowell’s Center for Public Opinion reports Warnock has 51% support among likely voters in the state against Walker’s 46%. The data was collected from 1,300 people from 18 through 28 November.Another conclusion of the poll: 54% disapprove of Joe Biden’s performance as president but would vote for him over Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election.Fresh off her re-election victory over a Trump-backed challenger, Alaska’s Republican senator Lisa Murkowski also condemned the former president’s call for the “termination” of the constitution:Suggesting the termination of the Constitution is not only a betrayal of our Oath of Office, it’s an affront to our Republic.— Sen. Lisa Murkowski (@lisamurkowski) December 5, 2022 More

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      Former girlfriend of Herschel Walker tells of violent apartment encounter

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      Former girlfriend of Herschel Walker tells of violent apartment encounterCheryl Parsa, 61, tells NBC News that Walker threw punch that missed and put hand on her throat and chest in Dallas in 2005 A former long-term girlfriend of Herschel Walker has spoken of the violence and abuse she says he subjected her to, a potentially devastating television interview airing just before the Republican candidate’s Senate runoff in Georgia on Tuesday.Cheryl Parsa, 61, told NBC News on Sunday night how the former football star, who has been accused by several girlfriends and his ex-wife of mistreating them, grabbed her throat and threw a punch at her when she found him with another woman at his apartment in Dallas.“He had his hand on my throat, my chest, and then he leaned back to throw a punch,” Parsa said of the 2005 encounter.“And luckily, I was able to avoid that. And the punch landed on the wall instead of me.”The Guardian has contacted Walker’s representatives for comment.‘Hatred has a great grip on the heart’: election denialism lives on in US battlegroundRead moreParsa’s claims, first reported by the Daily Beast last week, are the latest to roil the troubled campaign of Walker, who narrowly trails Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock ahead of Tuesday’s crucial Georgia election.A victory for Warnock would give his party a 51-49 majority in the Senate. The Democrats would control the chamber even if Warnock lost because vice-president Kamala Harris can cast tie-breaking votes.Walker – who is backed by former president Donald Trump and forced the runoff when neither he nor Warnock won 50% of the vote in last month’s midterms – has been accused of paying for abortions and abusing a number of women. Some observers say he could be the worst candidate Republicans have ever run.Yet he remains competitive in the Georgia race, leading Democrats to bring out big guns including Barack Obama as cheerleaders in order to help secure the Senate seat and full control of the chamber.Parsa claims the episode in Dallas was one of several during her five-year relationship with Walker, 61, who admits to having had mental illness, and who in 2013 said in an interview he had been a “messed-up” person with multiple personalities.In the NBC interview, she cast doubt on his assurances that his issues were behind him, given in his October debate with Warnock when he said: “I don’t need any help. I’m doing well.”Parsa said: “I believe the deception now is on the American people, and I have to say what I know. I have to tell the Herschel I know.”She then described the alleged episode in the Dallas condo, during which she said Walker grabbed her by the neck and held her head up against a wall, and was so close to her she could feel spittle on her face as he spoke.“He told me, ‘You want to see a man? I’ll show you a man’,” she said.“He was pressing his forehead against mine. My head was against the wall. He was speaking with such force his saliva was all over my face.”NBC said it had spoken with three women who confirmed Parsa had told them about Walker had allegedly done before he declared his Senate candidacy.Despite at least two allegations to the contrary, Walker has insisted he has never asked a woman to have an abortion nor paid for one.But he has admitted a turbulent past. In footage used in a political ad against Walker, his ex-wife Cindy Grossman recalled how in 2008 he allegedly held a gun to her temple and said: “I’m going to blow your effing brains out.”She made the claim after his autobiography, Breaking Free, was published the same year, in which Walker asserted he had dissociative identity disorder with several, distinct personalities.Publicity for the book by publishers Simon & Schuster said: “Herschel realized that his life, at times, was simply out of control. He often felt angry, self-destructive, and unable to connect meaningfully with friends and family.”In October, Walker’s son Christian called his father a violent liar and hypocrite, who left his wife and children on several occasions for other women.“How dare you lie and act as though you’re some moral, Christian, upright man. You’ve lived a life of destroying other people’s lives,” he wrote on Twitter.TopicsRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Republican moderate refuses to disown Trump over constitution threat

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      Republican moderate refuses to disown Trump over constitution threatDave Joyce of Ohio, chair of the Republican Governance Group, says he will vote for Trump if he is nominee in 2024 A leader of moderate Republicans in the US House repeatedly refused to condemn Donald Trump on Sunday, even after the former president, running for re-election in 2024, said the US constitution should be “terminated” to allow him to return to power.DeSantis and Pence lead Republican wave – of presidential campaign booksRead more“Whoever the Republicans end up picking, I’ll fall in behind” them, Dave Joyce of Ohio told ABC’s This Week, adding that he thought Americans did not want to look back to the 2020 election, the subject of Trump’s lies about electoral fraud and demand for extra-constitutional action.Joyce’s host, George Stephanopoulos, said: “I don’t see how you can move forward if your candidate is for suspending the constitution but thank you for your time.”Trump maintains the lie that the 2020 election, which Joe Biden won by more than 7m votes and a clear margin in the electoral college, was subject to widespread voter fraud. In messages on his Truth Social account on Saturday, Trump said the constitution should therefore be “terminated”.The former president was condemned by Biden, Democrats and political commentators. On CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday another Ohio Republican, Mike Turner, said he “absolutely” did so too.“There is a political process that has to go forward before anybody is a frontrunner or anybody is even the candidate for the party,” Turner said. “I believe people certainly are going to take into consideration a statement like this as they evaluate a candidate.”Like Turner, Joyce was not among the 147 Republicans who objected to results in key states in the 2020 election, even after Trump supporters mounted their deadly attack on the Capitol, seeking to stop certification. But Stephanopoulos could not persuade Joyce to say he would not vote for Trump four years later.Joyce said: “Well, you know, when President Trump was in office, I didn’t make a habit of speaking out on his tweet du jour.“I don’t know what came out on … whatever his new social platform is. But, you know, people were not interested in looking backwards. The people who gave us the majority [in the midterm elections last month] … they gave us an opportunity, and we need to perform.”Ohioans, Joyce said, were more concerned about household budgets in a time of steep inflation.Stephanopoulos said: “But Donald Trump was your nominee in 2016 and 2020. You voted for him in 2016 and 2020. Now he’s talking about suspending the constitution. Can you support a candidate in 2024 who’s for suspending the constitution?”Joyce said: “Well, again, it’s early. I think there’s going to be a lot of people in the primary. I think, at the end of the day, whoever the Republicans end up picking, I’ll fall in behind because that’s – ”Stephanopoulos said: “Even if it’s Donald Trump and he’s called for suspending the constitution?”Joyce said: “Well, again, I think it’s going to be a big field. I don’t think Donald Trump’s going to clear out the field like he did in ’16.”Stephanopoulos said: “That’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking you, ‘If he’s the nominee, will you support him?’”Joyce said: “I will support whoever the Republican nominee is. And I just don’t think that at this point [Trump] will be able to get there because I think there’s a lot of other good quality candidates out there.”To the host, that was “a remarkable statement. You’d support a candidate who’s come out for suspending the constitution?”Joyce said: “Well, you know, [Trump] says a lot of things. You have to take him in context. And right now I have to worry about making sure the Republican Governance Group and the Republican majority make things work for the American people. And I can’t be really chasing every one of these crazy statements that come out … from any of these candidates.”‘It’s on the tape’: Bob Woodward on Donald Trump’s ‘criminal behavior’Read moreStephanopoulos said: “But that’s an extraordinary statement. You can’t come out against someone who’s for suspending the constitution?”Joyce said: “Well, first off, he has no ability to suspend the constitution. Secondly, I don’t –”Stephanapolous pointed out that Trump said he wanted to take that step.Joyce said: “Well, you know, he says a lot of things but that doesn’t mean that it’s ever going to happen. So you’ve got to accept exact fact from fantasy. And fantasy is that we’re going to suspend the constitution and go backwards. We’re moving forward and we’re going to continue to move forward as a Republican majority and as a Republican conference.”With that, Stephanopoulos closed the interview.“Thank you for having me,” Joyce said.TopicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2024RepublicansUS CongressUS constitution and civil libertiesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Teenager canvassing for Warnock shot in Savannah ahead of Georgia runoff

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      Teenager canvassing for Warnock shot in Savannah ahead of Georgia runoffPolice say no indication shooting politically motivated as teen working for Democrat is treated for non-life threatening injuries A teenager was shot outside a home in Georgia while campaigning for Raphael Warnock, the incumbent Democratic senator who faces a runoff against the Republican Herschel Walker on Tuesday, police said.Georgia runoff: full steam ahead for Democrats as they aim to solidify Senate majorityRead moreThe Savannah police department said a 42-year-old man shot at the teenager through a closed door on Thursday, striking the teen in the leg.The 15-year-old victim was taken to Memorial Medical Center for treatment of non-life threatening injuries, police said. A suspect, Jimmy Paiz, was arrested on charges of aggravated assault and aggravated battery.“At this point, there is no indication the shooting was politically motivated,” Savannah police said in a statement.Warnock and Walker are locked in a tight race that was triggered when Warnock won the first vote on midterms polling day last month but did not pass 50%. Polling now shows Warnock with a slight lead over Walker, a Trump-endorsed former NFL star, ahead of the vote on Tuesday.“I am saddened to learn about this incident. I am praying for the victim and their family and wish them a full recovery,” Warnock told the Savannah Morning News.The shooting took place on Thursday evening, police said.“While at the front door of one of the residences on Hartridge Street,” the statement said, “the suspect fired a shot through the closed door, striking the teen.”A victory for Warnock in the runoff would secure a 51-49 majority for Democrats in the Senate. They currently control an evenly split chamber by virtue of Kamala Harris, the vice-president, holding a tie-breaking vote.Walker’s campaign has been marked by accusations that he has abused girlfriends and paid for abortions, despite his current anti-abortion stance.The former running back, who has never served in office, has also faced claims that he actually lives in Texas, not Georgia. Walker has denied all allegations against him.TopicsGeorgiaUS crimeUS midterm elections 2022US CongressUS SenateUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Netanyahu: Trump must ‘condemn’ antisemitism after Kanye and Fuentes dinner

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      Netanyahu: Trump must ‘condemn’ antisemitism after Kanye and Fuentes dinnerLikely future Israeli PM, who has repeatedly praised Trump, says dinner with rapper and white nationalist ‘unacceptable and wrong’ Donald Trump should be “condemning” antisemitism following his meeting with the rapper Ye and Nick Fuentes, Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.Trump had dinner with two avowed antisemites. Let’s call this what it is | Francine ProseRead moreThe former and likely future Israeli prime minister told NBC’s Meet the Press the former president’s recent dinner with the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who has repeatedly made antisemitic remarks, and Fuentes, a white nationalist and Holocaust denier, was “not merely unacceptable, it’s just wrong”.Netanyahu was prime minister of Israel during Trump’s time in power and is expected to return to power in the coming weeks. He has repeatedly praised Trump for his support of Israel, which included controversially recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Speaking to NBC, Netanyahu also praised Trump for formally recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a move global and regional leaders said could destroy the peace process and strengthen extremists.But he criticized Trump’s November dinner with Ye and Fuentes.“On this matter, on Kanye West and that other unacceptable guest, I think it’s not merely unacceptable it’s just wrong. And I hope he sees his way to staying out of it and condemning it,” Netanyahu said.Trump met with Ye and Fuentes on 22 November at Mar-a-Lago, the Florida resort where he now lives. The former president has said he did not know Fuentes was attending, but has not condemned either Ye or Fuentes’ antisemitic views and statements.Asked if Trump’s apparent embrace of antisemitism would “wipe away anything good he did for Israel”, Netanyahu said: “If it’s systemic and continues, and I doubt that it will because I think he probably understands that it crosses a line.”Netanyahu won a majority in November, aided by ultra-Orthodox parties and an alliance with the far right. He is in the process of forming a government. He was previously prime minister from 1996 to 1999 and again from 2009 to 2021.Trump and Netanyahu were close allies but the relationship – at least from Trump’s side – has soured since he left the White House.In 2021, Trump reportedly told a reporter that Netanyahu “made a terrible mistake” in congratulating Joe Biden on his election win.“I haven’t spoken to him since,” Trump said of Netanyahu, according to Axios. “Fuck him.”Last week Netanyahu said in an interview with journalist Bari Weiss: “I condemned Kanye West’s antisemitic statements. President Trump’s decision to dine with this person I think is wrong and misplaced. He shouldn’t do that. I think he made a mistake. I hope it’s not repeated.”TopicsBenjamin NetanyahuDonald TrumpThe far rightAntisemitismUS politicsKanye WestnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden rebukes Trump for saying constitution should be ‘terminated’

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      Biden rebukes Trump for saying constitution should be ‘terminated’Former president must be ‘universally condemned’ for comments, says White House The Biden White House rebuked Donald Trump after the former president said the US constitution should be “terminated” over his lie that the 2020 election was stolen.DeSantis and Pence lead Republican wave – of presidential campaign booksRead moreAndrew Bates, a White House spokesperson, said: “Attacking the constitution and all it stands for is anathema to the soul of our nation and should be universally condemned.”Bates called the constitution a “sacrosanct document”, saying: “You cannot only love America when you win.”Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020, by more than 7m votes and by 306-232 in the electoral college, a result he called a landslide when it was in his favour in 2016, against Hillary Clinton.Trump continues to claim that Biden won key states through electoral fraud, a lie that fuelled the deadly attack on the US Capitol by his supporters on 6 January 2021. Nine deaths have been linked to the riot, including suicides among law enforcement. More than 950 people have been charged. This week, two members of the far-right Oath Keepers militia were convicted of seditious conspiracy. Other members of far-right, pro-Trump groups face similar charges.Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter after the Capitol attack. He has not yet returned to the latter, despite its new owner, Elon Musk, saying he is free to do so. On Saturday, Trump used his own social media platform, Truth Social, to say of the 2020 election: “A massive fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the constitution.”Trump also said an “unprecedented fraud requires an unprecedented cure”.He was writing after Musk claimed he would show that Twitter was guilty of “free speech suppression” by releasing evidence of how the platform responded to requests from campaigns in the 2020 election.Trump is the only declared candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 but he has faced increased criticism from Republicans and Republican-supporting media since midterm elections in which many of his endorsed candidates were defeated, including election deniers running for governor and key elections roles in battleground states. Republicans took the House, but only by a narrow majority, and failed to retake the Senate.On Saturday, Trump also criticised the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, and “all of the weak Republicans who couldn’t get the presidential election of 2020 approved and out of the way fast enough”. Even after the Capitol riot, 147 Republicans in Congress objected to results in key states.Senior Republicans have recently criticised Trump over his decision to have dinner at his home in Florida with Nick Fuentes, a known white supremacist and antisemite. But though the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, has surged in polls regarding possible 2024 contenders, few in the party have broken decisively with Trump and those who have have largely been forced out.On Saturday, Brian Schatz, a Democratic US senator from Hawaii, pointed to such hard political reality, saying: “Trump just called for the suspension of the constitution and it is the final straw for zero Republicans, especially the ones who call themselves ‘constitutional conservatives’.”One such conservative is Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader battling to become House speaker. Not long before Trump said the constitution should be terminated, McCarthy said that when his party took control in January, it would demonstrate its constitutionalist bona fides by reading “every single word” of the hallowed document on the floor of the House.On Sunday, Hakeem Jeffries, the newly elected Democratic leader in the House, told ABC’s This Week Trump had made “a strange statement, but the Republicans are going to have to work out their issues with the former president and decide whether they’re going to break from him and return to some semblance of reasonableness or continue to lean in to the extremism, not just of Trump, but of Trumpism”.‘It’s on the tape’: Bob Woodward on Donald Trump’s ‘criminal behavior’Read moreTrump and Trumpism are becoming more and more of a headache for McCarthy, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and other senior Republicans.On Saturday, Mehdi Hasan, who hosts a show on the TV channel MSNBC, tweeted: “Do you support Donald Trump’s demand to ‘terminate’ the constitution? Doesn’t his demand disqualify him for running for the presidency? Two questions that every single Republican member of the House and Senate needs to be asked, again and again, in the coming days.”Hasan also pointed to Trump’s dinner at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, with Nick Fuentes, saying that in just two weeks the former president had “said or done things that would be lifelong scandals for other politicians … he truly knows how to flood the zone”. Trump critics on the political right did condemn the remark.John Bolton, George W Bush’s UN ambassador who became Trump’s third national security adviser, said: “No American conservative can agree with Donald Trump’s call to suspend the constitution because of the results of the 2020 election. And all real conservatives must oppose his 2024 campaign for president.”TopicsDonald TrumpJoe BidenUS politicsUS elections 2020US elections 2024RepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      DeSantis and Pence lead Republican wave – of presidential campaign books

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      DeSantis and Pence lead Republican wave – of presidential campaign books The GOP flopped in the midterms but its White House hopefuls still hope to find readers – and conservative group bulk-buyersIn one of the clearest signs that the 2024 Republican presidential primary will feature rivals to Donald Trump, a host of likely candidates have released or will soon release books purporting to outline their political visions.‘It’s on the tape’: Bob Woodward on Donald Trump’s ‘criminal behavior’Read moreSuch books often sell poorly, but that is rarely their point. They are markers of ambition. To judge from the political bookshelves, after midterm elections in which many Trump-endorsed candidates suffered humiliating losses, the former president will not be the only declared candidate for long.Among the first rank of likely challengers, Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, released a memoir last month and Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, will follow suit in February.Other possible candidates include the former secretary of state Mike Pompeo (book out next year); the Missouri senator Josh Hawley (one book done, another coming); the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley (two books out already); and the South Carolina senator Tim Scott (book published in August, including an inadvertent admission that he is going to run). Even Marco Rubio, the GOP’s great slight hope until Trump took him to the cleaners in 2016, has another book coming.Matt Dallek, a professor of political management at George Washington University, said: “These books serve as a way to generate free media and a way to put one’s name and platform, to an extent that it exists, in the eyes of voters you’re looking to reach.“It gives TV producers a hook. And so even though most of these books are, to be generous, pablum – filled with aphorisms and cliché – from the perspective of the candidate, it allows them to get their story out there, to put themselves before the public and to take a free media ride.”In short, these are not works of great literature, or even the sort of thing the great essayist Christopher Hitchens produced via “the junky energy that scotch can provide, and the intense short-term concentration that nicotine can help supply … crouched over a book or keyboard [in] mingled reverie and alertness”.It’s hard to picture evangelical hero Pence or culture warrior DeSantis like that, hunched over a desk, hammering out passages of memoir and policy to meet a publishing deadline. But perhaps their ghostwriters did.01:41The announcement this week of DeSantis’s book – The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Renewal – made the biggest splash. After all, the governor who won re-election in a landslide and declared his state “where woke goes to die” is Trump’s only serious polling rival.DeSantis has released a campaign book before, namely Dreams From Our Founding Fathers: First Principles in the Age of Obama, published in 2011 when he was aiming for Congress. According to his publisher, HarperCollins, the Ivy League-educated ex-navy lawyer will now offer “a first-hand account from the blue-collar boy who grew up to take on Disney and Dr Fauci”. True to DeSantis’s success in pursuing distinctly Trumpist policies, the announcement was replete with such culture-war themes.How to beat a book ban: students, parents and librarians fight backRead moreDaniel Uhlfelder, a former Democratic candidate for Florida attorney general, tweeted: “Ron DeSantis, who has led a statewide effort to ban books, is writing a book called The Courage to be Free. This is not a joke.”Trump books are a publishing phenomenon but books about what the agent Howard Yoon recently called the “milquetoast” Biden administration have not sold so well. Neither, it seems safe to say, will the flood of Republican books.Asked if she was eager to read DeSantis’s book, Molly Jong-Fast, host of the Fast Politics podcast, laughed and said, “Are you kidding me?” She also pointed to the common fate of such books: bulk sales to political groups rather than bookstore crowds.“The DeSantis book is something the Heritage Foundation gives people at a lunch, and then goes on a shelf. This is book that is swag. When the Kochs have their big shindig with donors, it’ll be given away. Of course, that means publishers at least know it will earn out the advance.”In sales terms, Pence has an advantage. His campaign book, So Help Me God, is also in large part a Trump book. Pence has refused to testify to the House January 6 committee but on the page he provides detailed if partial testimony, written from the rooms where it happened. The result was a New York Times bestseller.Jong-Fast said: “The reason to read his book is because he’s such a liar. I think if you went through with a fine-tooth comb, you could find a lot of inconsistencies. But … at least Pence is charismatic. The irony is he’s probably more charismatic than Ron DeSantis.”So Help Me God review: Mike Pence’s tortured bid for Republican relevanceRead moreIt is possible to write a good campaign book. Barack Obama wrote two. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance was published in 1995, as he set out for the Illinois senate. The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, came two years before the presidential run of 2008.“And he probably read them,” Jong-Fast said. “And also he knows good writing. So many people don’t. The constant problem with conservatives is that you’ve alienated most of the writers. Remember, Trumpworld didn’t have any intellectuals because they couldn’t find any. The thought leader was Newt Gingrich.”Asked what Guardian readers might glean from the new campaign books, and from DeSantis in particular, Dallek said: “If you know nothing or little about him, you could probably learn about the biggest political fights he’s had, you could get a sense of the soundbites he likes to use, you know, his war against so-called woke culture. Probably some sense of a why he thinks Florida is the greatest place on Earth, some of the attacks he’s going to use against Joe Biden, if he were to run.“But it will not be the most informative place to go if you want to learn about Ron DeSantis. There are many other places, including profiles in the Guardian, that would probably be much more fruitful.”TopicsBooksUS politicsUS elections 2024RepublicansRon DeSantisMike PenceMike PompeonewsReuse this content More

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