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      Hungary’s far-right PM Viktor Orbán speaks at CPAC summit – as it happened

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      Orban has opened his speech in Texas by saying that “Hungary is the Lone Star state of Europe”.He described Hungary as “under the siege of progressives, liberals day by day”, and noted that he was “the only anti-migration political leader on our continent”, which was greeted with applause.The Senate will meet this weekend to begin considering Democrats’ marquee spending plan to fight climate change and lower healthcare costs, which is the culmination of more than a year of fitful negotiations. Meanwhile in Texas, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban pitched his far-right vision of America and Europe’s future to an audience of conservatives.Here’s a rundown of what else happened today:
      The justice department has filed charges against four current and former Louisville police officers over the death of Breonna Taylor.
      A court in Russia sentenced American women’s basketball star Brittney Griner to nine years in prison after finding her guilty of drug smuggling. President Joe Biden said Griner is “wrongfully detained”.
      Alex Jones’s defamation trial continued after yesterday’s shock revelation that his attorneys shared Jones’ phone data with lawyers for the people suing him.
      The White House declared monkeypox a public health emergency as the virus spread across the United States.
      House speaker Nancy Pelosi visited South Korea, as China expressed its rage at her stop in Taiwan by launching military exercises.
      New York Democratic House representative Carolyn Maloney continues to do damage control after suggesting Biden won’t stand for a second term, although she apparently hasn’t completely backed down from the comment.
      It looks like the Senate will convene this weekend to vote on Democrats’ plan to fight climate change, lower healthcare costs and tweak the tax code, CNN reports:Schumer says the Senate will vote on the motion to proceed to the reconciliation bill on Saturday afternoon— Manu Raju (@mkraju) August 4, 2022
      After that, 20 hours of debate. After debate time or if time is yielded back, it’s vote-a-rama time. Then final passage. All at simple majority— Manu Raju (@mkraju) August 4, 2022
      The bill, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, has no support from Republicans, and will require the votes of every Democrat to pass the evenly divided Senate. The House of Representatives, where the party has a slim majority, will then need to approve it before it goes to Joe Biden for his signature.Orban wrapped up his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference by declaring, “We must take back the institutions in Washington and in Brussels”, and saying the two capitals “will define the two fronts in the battle being fought for Western civilization”.After defeating Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, “Now the West is at war with itself,” Orban said. “We have seen what kind of future the globalist ruling class has to offer. But we have a different future in mind. The globalists can all go to hell, I have come to Texas.”A who’s who of American conservatives will appear at CPAC over the next two days, before Donald Trump makes the event’s closing remarks on Saturday evening.Orban didn’t mention Joe Biden directly, but appealed to the audience of conservatives for “strong leaders” – by which he presumably was not referring to the Democrats in control of the White House and Congress.He cited the impacts of the war in Ukraine on Hungary, which he notes has received one million refugees.“In my view, the globalist leaders’ strategy escalates and prolongs war and decreases the chance of peace. Without American-Russian talks there will never be peace in Ukraine. More and more people will die and suffer and our economies will come to the brink of collapse,” Orban said.“We in the neighborhood of Ukraine are desperately in need of strong leaders who are capable of negotiating a peace deal. Mayday, mayday, please help us. We need a strong America, with a strong leader.”Texas is a major crossing point for undocumented immigrants entering the United States, which Republicans have said is a “crisis” that president Joe Biden deserves blame for.Orban must realize this. He’s giving examples of “how to fight back by our own rules” and detailing to the conservative audience his own hardline policies against migrants, particularly from Syria.“We were the first ones in Europe who said no illegal migration and stop the invasion of illegal migrants,” he said. “We believe that stopping illegal migration is necessary to protect our nation.”Orban went on to attack American liberals, saying they tried to stop his speech and calling for unity between conservatives in the United States and in Hungary.“They hate me and slandered me and my country as they hate you and slander you and America’s transformation. We all know how this works. Progressive liberals didn’t want me to be here because they knew what I will tell you,” Orban said. “I’m here to tell you that we should unite our forces… because we Hungarians know how to defeat the enemies of freedom on the political battlefield.”Orban appears to be responding to the recent news of a top adviser resigning and accusing him of using “pure Nazi” rhetoric by arguing that his administration is misunderstood.Hungary “introduced a zero-tolerance policy on racism and antisemitism. So accusing us is fake news, and those who make these claims are certainly idiots. They are the industrial fake news corporation,” Orban said. Orban has opened his speech in Texas by saying that “Hungary is the Lone Star state of Europe”.He described Hungary as “under the siege of progressives, liberals day by day”, and noted that he was “the only anti-migration political leader on our continent”, which was greeted with applause.Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán is minutes away from starting his speech to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, held this year in Texas.According to its agenda, Orbán will give a talk titled “How We Fight”. The leader has faced intensifying criticism for his far-right rhetoric, and last month, one of his longtime advisers resigned in protest over what she called his “pure Nazi” speech. Alarm grows as Orban prepares to take ‘pure Nazi’ rhetoric to USRead moreArizona Republican Rusty Bowers has lost his primary and won’t return to his post as speaker of Arizona’s House of Representatives after defying Donald Trump’s efforts to meddle in the state’s election results. As Martin Pengelly reports, Bowers has no regrets about how it ended:Rusty Bowers, the Arizona Republican who defied Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat in the state then testified to the House January 6 committee, has no regrets despite losing his bid for a state senate seat.“I would do it again in a heartbeat,” he told the Associated Press. “I’d do it 50 times in a row.”Term limits meant Bowers could not mount another house run. On Tuesday he was trounced in a primary by David Farnsworth, a Trump-endorsed former state senator.Trump was the first Republican to lose a presidential race in Arizona since Bill Clinton won there in 1996. Clinton was re-elected anyway. Trump wasn’t.Arizona Republican who defied Trump and lost primary: ‘I’d do it again in a heartbeat’Read moreAfter departing Taiwan following a visit that enraged China, House speaker Nancy Pelosi went to South Korea, where she visited the demilitarized zone separating it from North Korea.It was a special honor to engage with General LaCamera and other @USForcesKorea servicemembers on the ground at the DMZ/JSA and Osan Air Base. pic.twitter.com/Yi2u8YMXyS— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) August 4, 2022
      We conveyed the gratitude of the Congress and the Country for the patriotic service of our servicemembers, who stand as sentinels of Democracy on the Korean Peninsula. pic.twitter.com/SIz284fSWh— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) August 4, 2022
      Beijing has meanwhile started a series of live-fire drills in the waters around Taiwan, underscoring its fury over Pelosi’s trip to an island it considers a breakaway province. The Guardian has is keeping a live blog covering the ongoing spike in tensions:US watching Chinese military drills ‘very closely’ as ballistic missiles fired into Taiwan strait – liveRead more More

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      House January 6 panel asks lawyer for Alex Jones’s accidentally leaked texts

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      House January 6 panel asks lawyer for Alex Jones’s accidentally leaked textsTwo years of messages were inadvertently sent by Infowars host’s attorney to lawyer for Sandy Hook victim’s family The House January 6 committee has asked the attorney for a family suing Alex Jones for defamation to turn over up to two years’ worth of text messages from the far-right conspiracy theorist’s phone that he inadvertently received from the defense ahead of the trial.The request from the select committee – and another from federal law enforcement – was confirmed in an Austin, Texas, courtroom on Thursday by Mark Bankston, the lawyer for the parents of a child killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, which Jones has falsely claimed was a hoax.Damaging Alex Jones texts mistakenly sent to Sandy Hook family’s lawyersRead moreNotably, Bankston said he had identified texts between Jones and Roger Stone, a far-right political operative and adviser to former president Donald Trump thought to be connected to the Capitol attack. He also said he intended to comply with the requests unless a court order instructed him not to.The inadvertent transfer of the texts to Bankston, as well as his readiness to turn them over, could mark an extraordinary stroke of luck for the January 6 panel after Jones invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination in a deposition earlier in the committee’s investigation.Bankston has said in court that Jones’s texts cover a roughly two-year period dating back to 2019, which if true would include his communications from the weeks after the 2020 election that Trump lost to Joe Biden and leading up to the Capitol attack the defeated president’s supporters carried out in early 2021.But the Infowars host disputed that the texts to which Bankston has referred would contain anything of interest to the January 6 committee, saying on his show on Thursday that they actually covered a six-month period from 2019 to early 2020.The texts are potentially significant because Jones has claimed that on 3 January 2020 he was asked by the Trump White House and the Secret Service to lead a march from the Ellipse to the Capitol three days later. Just such an action by Trump supporters on 6 January disrupted the congressional certification of Biden’s presidential victory. The texts could shed light on the extent – if any – of that coordination.Jones’s claim that he was asked asked to lead that march is striking because the panel has heard that Trump later told an adviser he was unaware about such plans, according to a source familiar with the matter.Details about that supposed request from the Trump White House have been scarce. The committee has struggled to verify the Infowars host’s claims through records from the Secret Service after agents’ texts from January 6 were unlawfully erased.A committee spokesperson declined to comment on Jones’s texts.The confirmation from Bankston on Thursday that he was prepared to turn over the text messages was the latest twist in a bizarre saga that could have far-reaching consequences for Jones, particularly as the justice department steps up its criminal investigation into January 6.Bankston revealed he was in possession of the texts a day earlier, when he told Jones – while he was on the witness stand – that his legal team had “messed up” and provided “an entire digital copy of your entire cellphone with every text message” from the past two years.Those messages included texts that contradicted claims made under oath that Jones had nothing on his phone pertaining to the Sandy Hook shooting.Bankston said he immediately alerted Jones’s attorneys to the apparent error but they never took steps to keep the communications out of court by labeling them as privileged.Jones’s attorney, Andino Reynal, requested a mistrial on Thursday, over the purportedly accidental leak. The attorney argued that he feared the text message leak was introduced in court simply to create more press coverage, the Associated Press earlier reported.The emergency motion from Reynal sought the return and destruction of the documents, saying the defence had told Bankston to disregard the link to the files with the text messages, which also included messages from Robert Barnes, Jones’s other lawyer with ties to Stone.But the trial judge, Maya Guerra Gamble of Travis county, denied the motion.Reynal also asked Guerra Gamble to block the release of materials on Jones’s phone to anyone, including the January 6 committee. Guerra Gamble said she would let Reynal indicate what he wants to keep confidential, and then she would review that request, adding that she wasn’t sure she could block a subpoena, according to the Austin American-Statesman newspaper.Jurors in the defamation case brought against Jones by Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis – the father and mother of Jesse Lewis, a six-year-old murdered in the Sandy Hook shooting – began deliberations late on Wednesday afternoon.They resumed on Thursday, the ninth day of a trial which saw Jones apologize and admit that the 2012 shooting at the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, was “100% real”.Jones previously spent years claiming that the 20 children and six adults murdered at Sandy Hook were not killed and instead – along with their grieving loved ones – were “crisis actors” carrying out an elaborate ruse to force gun control reform.Heslin and Lewis sued Jones for defamation and inflicting emotional stress, saying they suffered mental distress, death threats and harassment. They have demanded at least $150m, saying an apology would not be enough.Jones lost on the merits of the case by default, because he failed to provide any documents in response to the lawsuit. The jury is deciding how much he owes Lewis and Heslin in compensation. In a later phase, it will determine whether he should pay punitive damages.TopicsUS newsUS politicsUS Capitol attackNewtown shootingnewsReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      Arizona Republican who defied Trump and lost primary: ‘I’d do it again in a heartbeat’

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      Arizona Republican who defied Trump and lost primary: ‘I’d do it again in a heartbeat’Rusty Bowers, who refused to help overturn Trump election loss, says he has no regrets despite losing bid for state senate seat Rusty Bowers, the Arizona Republican who defied Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat in the state then testified to the House January 6 committee, has no regrets despite losing his bid for a state senate seat.“I would do it again in a heartbeat,” he told the Associated Press. “I’d do it 50 times in a row.”On the chopping block? Ron Johnson denies threatening social securityRead moreTerm limits meant Bowers could not mount another house run. On Tuesday he was trounced in a primary by David Farnsworth, a Trump-endorsed former state senator.Trump was the first Republican to lose a presidential race in Arizona since Bill Clinton won there in 1996. Clinton was re-elected anyway. Trump wasn’t.Bowers refused to help efforts to overturn Trump’s defeat in Arizona – including a partisan audit which ended with Joe Biden’s margin of victory slightly increased.Bowers also angered Trump and his supporters by testifying in June before the US House committee investigating the deadly attack on Congress.Bowers told the panel how his faith motivated his defiance of the attempt to subvert democracy, and described threats from Trump supporters while his daughter lay mortally ill.Censured by the state party, Bowers was given a Profile in Courage award by the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.He initially said he would vote for Trump if he ran for president in 2024.“If he is the nominee,” Bowers told the Associated Press, “if he was up against Biden, I’d vote for him again. Simply because what he did the first time, before Covid, was so good for the country. In my view it was great.”But Bowers seemed to change his mind, telling the Deseret News: “I don’t want the choice of having to look at [Trump] again. And if it comes, I’ll be hard pressed. I don’t know what I’ll do.“But I’m not inclined to support him. Because he doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the morals and the platform of my party … That guy is just – he’s his own party. It’s a party of intimidation and I don’t like it.”He also told Business Insider: “Much of what [Trump] has done has been tyrannical, especially of late.”After his own defeat, Bowers said Trump had soiled the Republican party.“President Trump is a dividing force that has thrashed our party,” he told the AP. “And it’s not enough to disagree. You have to disagree and then stomp on people and ruin their reputations and chase them down and thrash them and you just keep beating them up. That’s the Trump model.”He said the Arizona Republican party now had a similar “bully mentality … and I think you’re going to find out as all these people leave this party, that someday there’s going to be a hard reckoning. And I have a feeling it can be later this year.”Farnsworth won the state senate seat, since no Democrats entered the primary.Trump backers did very well up and down the Arizona ballot, with his candidate for governor leading and endorsees for US Senate, attorney general and secretary of state winning. Trump-backed candidates succeeded in several other Arizona races.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      On the chopping block? Ron Johnson denies threatening social security

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      On the chopping block? Ron Johnson denies threatening social securitySpokesman for Wisconsin senator targeted by Democrats in midterms says he is not trying to end spending on key programs A swing-state Republican senator denied threatening social security and Medicare, after Democrats accused him of putting them “on the chopping block”.‘I can’t live on $709 a month’: Americans on social security push for its expansionRead moreRon Johnson, who entered Congress on the Tea Party wave of 2010, is up for re-election in Wisconsin. As they attempt to keep hold of the Senate, Democrats think they have a chance of winning the seat.In an interview with The Regular Joe Show podcast, Johnson said social security and Medicare, crucial support programs for millions of older and disabled Americans and their dependents, should no longer be considered mandatory spending.“If you qualify for the entitlement, you just get it no matter what the cost,” Johnson said. “And our problem in this country is that more than 70% of our federal budget, of our federal spending, is all mandatory spending. It’s on automatic pilot … you just don’t do proper oversight. You don’t get in there and fix the programs going bankrupt.”He added: “What we ought to be doing is we ought to turn everything into discretionary spending so it’s all evaluated so that we can fix problems or fix programs that are broken, that are going to be going bankrupt. As long as things are on automatic pilot, we just continue to pile up debt.”Democrats pounced. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate majority leader, referred to Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan when he said: “They’re saying the quiet part out loud. Maga Republicans want to put social security and Medicare on the chopping block.”A Johnson spokesperson said Schumer was “lying”.The spokesperson said Johnson’s “point was that without fiscal discipline and oversight typically found with discretionary spending, Congress has allowed the guaranteed benefits for programs like social security and Medicare to be threatened.“This must be addressed by Congress taking its responsibilities seriously to ensure that seniors don’t need to question whether the programs they depend on remain solvent.”Social security payments average just over $1,600 a month.Last year, Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, told the Guardian: “The nation is really facing a retirement income crisis, where too many people aren’t going to be able to retire and maintain savings to live on. It’s a very strong system, but its benefits are extremely low by virtually any way you measure them.”Democrats see Republican threats to so-called “entitlements” – programs paid for by taxes and relied upon by vulnerable people – as a potent electoral issue. Polls show strong bipartisan support.From Joe Biden to leaders in Congress, Democrats have seized on a plan published by Rick Scott of Florida, the chair of the Republican Senate campaign committee.Scott proposed that all Americans should pay some income tax and that all federal laws should expire after five years if Congress does not renew them.The senator insisted he was “not going to raise anybody’s taxes” – despite saying more people should pay tax. He also said Congress “needs to start being honest with the American public and tell them exactly what we’re going to do to make sure they continue to get their Medicare and their social security”.But his own leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said: “We will not have, as part of our agenda, a bill that raises taxes on half the American people and sunsets social security and Medicare within five years.”Wisconsin will hold its primaries on Tuesday. Johnson is being challenged by the current lieutenant governor, Mandela Barnes.Jessica Taylor of the Cook Political Report told Wisconsin Public Radio Johnson was national Democrats’ “No 1 incumbent … that they are targeting”.TopicsRepublicansWisconsinUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      MyPillow chief spends tens of millions in fresh crusade to push Trump’s big lie

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      MyPillow chief spends tens of millions in fresh crusade to push Trump’s big lie Mike Lindell says he has poured up to $40m into wave of lawsuits and a new movie as US experts warn of threat to democracyMyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, a fervent Donald Trump ally, says he has poured $35-40m into a wide crusade – a wave of lawsuits to get rid of voting machines that he faults for Trump’s defeat, a new movie about voting fraud, and a hefty legal stable – to promote charges that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud, despite a flood of contrary evidence.In his frenetic quest to dispense with electronic voting equipment that he has often charged are defective, Lindell is hosting a two-day “Moment of Truth” summit on 20 and 21 August in Missouri, that he expects will draw 200 federal and state officials and staff, as well as hundreds of representatives from groups nationwide who have investigated election fraud this year and in 2020.Trump lawyers feel heat as legal net tightens on plot to overturn electionRead moreOn a related front to boost his cause, a small segment of the summit will feature 10 conservative sheriffs who have become increasingly active in fighting purported election fraud, who Lindell told the Guardian he invited so they would have “a platform to get their voices heard”.One leading voice is slated to be former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack, who runs the rightwing Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA). The organization hosted a July meeting in Las Vegas that Lindell attended and publicized via a TV operation he owns, and has taken the unorthodox step of making monitoring election fraud its top priority, which Mack has dubbed a “holy cause”.The upcoming Lindell summit underscores the growing roles of him and his allies in a sprawling network waging a multi-front war to push Trump’s “big lie” about the 2020 elections, and mobilize activists to ramp up their scrutiny of the fall elections as poll workers and poll watchers. These moves could curb voting rights and intimidate voters, say election watchdogs.The “big lie” network has been bolstered by other multimillionaires including Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock, and at least $1m from a Donald Trump political action committee.Byrne co-founded the America Project with retired army Lt Gen Michael Flynn just a few months after they attended a meeting with Trump in December 2020, where wild schemes to overturn Joe Biden’s win were discussed. He has boasted of pouring $3m into a self -styled “election integrity” drive to hunt for potential fraud by training activists in poll watching and canvassing.Non-partisan election spending analysts warn of threats to democracy in the new voting blitzes that mega-donors who promote Trump’s “big lie” are underwriting.“Mega-donor spending, long associated with Super Pacs and non-profits, is now also aimed at shaping even how our elections are administered,” said Sheila Krumholz, who leads OpenSecrets, which tracks campaign money. “Election administration is critical infrastructure in a democracy and should not be determined by partisan power-brokers.”However, the burgeoning “big lie” ecosystem seems to have other priorities: it includes nonprofits such as the Texas-based True the Vote, which co-sponsored the CSPOA Las Vegas summit in July, and has teamed up with another sheriffs’ group, Protect America Now, run by Arizona sheriff Mark Lamb, to form an alliance to police this year’s voting for fraud.Another influential activist with strong fundraising ties on the right is Cleta Mitchell, a former Trump campaign lawyer who has spearheaded numerous “election integrity” summits in key swing states and is a leading figure at the Conservative Partnership Institute, to which Trump’s leadership Pac last year gave $1m.Mitchell participated in Trump’s infamous call on 2 January 2021 with the Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, where Trump urged him to “find” 11,870 votes to block Biden’s win there. Mitchell was subpoenaed last month by a special grand jury in Georgia investigating whether Trump’s call and other related efforts broke state laws.The “big lie” advocates have spent tens of millions of dollars pushing baseless claims of widespread election fraud in 2020 as they have built an infrastructure of loyalists in swing states to be poll watchers and poll workers, and helped enact new laws in 18 states since 2021 that include new limits on absentee voting and other measures to make voting more difficult.Despite powerful evidence presented to the House panel investigating the January 6 Capitol attack, including former attorney general Bill Barr’s comments that he told Trump there was no evidence of significant fraud in 2020, and numerous studies showing that voting fraud is historically small, the pro-Trump network seems to be growing.“It is troubling to see conspiracy theorists investing money in a network designed to spread their lies about the 2020 election,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, the acting director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “They are using those conspiracies in an attempt to cause real harm to voters, and to our democracy. In the search for non-existent fraud, they are turning American citizens against their neighbors, who seek only to exercise their fundamental right to vote.”Morales-Doyle added: “Now, it seems that election deniers have begun recruiting law enforcement to their cause. At a time when both voters and election workers have cause to fear intimidation and harassment, it is shameful that law enforcement officers would compound that fear rather than offering them protection.”Some police chiefs too are very troubled by law enforcement officials getting involved in elections.“There’s no place for politics in policing,” Paul Penzone, the police chief of Arizona’s Maricopa county, told the Guardian. “We are seeing a radical movement, including some local law enforcement, of people who are committed to destroying trust in our system for their own selfish gain.“We must fight against it, or our nation will no longer be the democratic standard.”Critics notwithstanding, “big lie” advocacy looks to be broadening.For instance, Lindell’s efforts to wage war on alleged voting fraud have expanded in recent months as he has financed lawsuits to ditch voting machines in numerous states including Arizona, which Biden won. He also plowed about $1m into a new film on voting fraud by former Fox News reporter Lara Logan, which is slated to debut at his summit.Lindell predicts the film will have a “huge” impact. Logan, who was ousted from Fox after making an incendiary comparison between Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the president, and the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, told Lindell she could “[not] find any place where there wasn’t fraud.”The summit, which will be broadcast on Lindell TV and streamed on Lindell’s FrankSpeech.com, is also scheduled to include several of the lawyers Lindell has tapped for his litigation, plus a team of cyber specialists who have done research on election fraud, Lindell said.The upcoming summit seems to underscore other ties that Lindell has been forging with Mack, the former sheriff, and his association. Mack’s Las Vegas meeting was live-streamed on Lindell’s eponymous Lindell TV, and Lindell interviewed Mack, a former board member of the far-right Oath Keepers, on his own show, The Lindell Report, on 13 July. Lindell and Mack also held a joint press event in Las Vegas where they touted how sheriffs could play key roles in fighting alleged voting fraud.Mack’s Las Vegas event also garnered more exposure due to True the Vote’s co-sponsoring, a move that reflects the Texas group’s aggressive drive to mobilize sheriffs to monitor elections.True the Vote’s recent launch of ProtectAmerica.Vote, in tandem with Arizona sheriff Mark Lamb, highlights a burgeoning alliance between the group and some sheriffs.The website for ProtectAmerica.Vote offers a sweeping mission statement that includes efforts to “empower sheriffs” and “connect citizens and sheriffs” as part of a wide-ranging drive to ferret out potential voting fraud.Other drives to promote Trump’s big lie have witnessed more fundraising and alliances to help beef up voting scrutiny for the fall elections.Mitchell’s summits, for instance, have benefited from strong links to well-heeled conservative groups who have been co-sponsors, including Tea Party Patriots Action and FreedomWorks. As senior legal fellow at CPI, Mitchell has led the summits in swing states such as Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, and boasted of creating a “movement” to fight alleged voting fraud by recruiting poll watchers and poll workers.To that end, Mitchell and CPI have helped set up local and state taskforces, and supplied a 19-page “Citizens’ Guide to Building an Election Integrity Infrastructure”. The CPI manual suggests traditional poll monitoring methods, plus, ominously, urging its activists to be “ever-present” inside election offices and to follow “every step” of vote-by-mail operations.Further, CPI has witnessed a big jump in its overall revenues, which benefit a variety of the group’s conservative programs, including its election integrity initiative, since last year, when it recruited Mitchell and Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows as senior partner. Founded by former South Carolina senator Jim DeMint in 2017, CPI raked in $19.7m in 2021, up from $7.3m in 2020, according to its latest annual report.Besides hauling in $1m from Trump’s leadership Pac, the group seems to have gotten a boost from a letter Trump wrote, praising its role “helping to build out the vital infrastructure we need to lead the America First movement to new heights”.Meanwhile, when Byrne unveiled the America Project’s “election integrity” drive, dubbed Operation Eagles Wings, that he ponied up $3m to launch this year, he named Flynn and longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone as special advisers. The move set off alarm bells with voting watchdogs such as Morales-Doyle, who deemed it a “sham”, in part because of the duo’s ties to several Oath Keepers and Proud Boys charged in the Capitol attack.Byrne, like Stone and Flynn, is known for conspiratorial and debunked efforts to prove the 2020 election was rigged. With Operation Eagles Wings he has boasted of plans to educate “election reform activists” to handle election canvassing, grassroots work and fundraising “to expose shenanigans at the ballot box.”Byrne has described the operation’s mission as ensuring “there are no repeats of the errors that happened in the 2020 election”, and stressed the “need to protect the voting process from election meddlers who care only about serving crooked special-interest groups that neither respect nor value the rule of law”.Looking ahead, Morales -Doyle stressed that the Trump-allied election denialist movement poses multiple threats to democracy.“The ramifications of the lie that the 2020 election was rigged reach far beyond the events of January 6. This lie has fueled a variety of new threats to our democracy, including changes to state law, harassment of election workers, and the recruitment of poll watchers, poll workers, and vigilante canvassers.”Still, he added: “We must keep in mind that our democracy is resilient, and that there are federal and state laws in place to protect voters and others from those that seek to undermine it.”TopicsUS newsDonald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

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      China to begin series of unprecedented live-fire drills off Taiwan coast

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      China to begin series of unprecedented live-fire drills off Taiwan coastIsland accuses Beijing of planning to breach sovereign territory in wake of controversial visit by Nancy Pelosi China is to begin a series of unprecedented live-fire drills that would effectively blockade the island of Taiwan, just hours after the departure of US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, whose controversial visit this week has sparked fears of a crisis in the Taiwan strait.Taiwan has characterised the drills, which will last until Sunday afternoon – and will include missile tests and other “military operations” as close as nine miles to Taiwan’s coastline – as a violation of international law.Ahead of the drill, it said 27 Chinese warplanes had entered its air defence zone.Pelosi arrived in Taipei on Tuesday night under intense global scrutiny, and was met by the foreign minister Joseph Wu and the US representative in Taiwan, Sandra Oudkirk.She addressed Taiwan’s parliament on Wednesday before having public and private meetings with the president, Tsai Ing-wen.“Our delegation came to Taiwan to make unequivocally clear we will not abandon Taiwan, and we are proud of our enduring friendship,” Pelosi said on Wednesday, when she was given Taiwan’s highest civilian order by Tsai.She said US solidarity with Taiwan was “crucial” in facing an increasingly authoritarian China.In a later statement, she said China could not prevent world leaders from travelling to Taiwan “to pay respect to its flourishing democracy”.Planned live fire military drillsAs Pelosi’s plane took off from Songshan airport on Wednesday evening, Wu waved goodbye from the tarmac. But as the American left, Taiwan was facing days of military activity which threaten to escalate into a fourth Taiwan strait crisis.Taiwan’s defence ministry accused Beijing of planning to violate the international convention on the law of sea, by breaching Taiwan’s sovereign territory.While China’s military often holds live-fire exercises in the strait and surrounding seas, those planned for this week encircle Taiwan’s main island and target areas within its territorial sea.Veerle Nouwens, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based thinktank, said the location of the six exclusion zones was noteworthy.“In particular, the exclusion zones appear to no longer be focused on China’s coastline, but rather encircle Taiwan,” she said, adding that China has a different interpretation as to which laws apply to what it considers its own maritime zones.Taiwanese authorities have said the proximity to some major ports combined with orders for all aircraft and sea vessels to steer clear of the area amount to a blockade.China on Wednesday also expanded its trade suspensions on Taiwan to include additional agriculture products, following a ban on imports earlier in the week from more than 100 Taiwanese food companies. China is Taiwan’s largest trading partner.Taipei has remained defiant in its rhetoric. Tsai said on Wednesday that Taiwan “will not back down” in the face of heightened military threats, and would “do whatever it takes to maintain Taiwan’s peace and stability”. Beijing said its drills were “necessary and just”.Beijing’s latest drills are being closely followed by Taiwan, the US and other regional powers, said Nouwens.“The US will be looking for the PLA’s [People’s Liberation Army’s] use of conventional missiles in their inventory – eg, will China conduct anti-ship ballistic missile tests or use air-launched and ship-launched variants of ASBMs?“They will also be paying attention to the types of exercises – eg, whether, how often and how far the PLA cross over the median line, which they did today … crossing well over the median line.“Finally, they’ll also be seeking to get a better sense of the PLA’s coordination between air and maritime forces, particularly given the various scenarios that they’ve highlighted they will be exercising for.”Across the region, there is a growing sense of uncertainty, with the exercises having also upset regional neighbours. Japanese analysts said the northern drills were also a clear warning to their government about islands over which Tokyo and Beijing both claim ownership.“Those plans show that the Sakishima Islands, including Yonaguni, Ishigaki, and Miyako, could be affected by People’s Liberation Army operations as they assume the PLA is operating to the east of Taiwan,” Tetsuo Kotani, a professor of global studies at Meikai University, told the Japan Times.China’s ruling Communist party government, which regards Taiwan as its territory despite it having never ruled the island, has repeatedly warned of retaliation for the visit.On Tuesday night, China’s vice-foreign minister, Xie Feng, “urgently summoned” the US ambassador, Nicholas Burns, to lodge stern representations. China’s ambassador to the UK, Zheng Zeguang, also warned that “those who play with fire will get burned”.The Guardian view on Taiwan diplomacy: a delicate balance | EditorialRead morePelosi’s flight took a non-direct path from Kuala Lumpur, with a detour over Indonesia and the Philippines, avoiding the South China Sea, to fly into Taiwan. There had been concerns that China might send PLA aircraft to intercept or tail her plane into Taiwanese airspace.There are also fears of an escalation in cyberwarfare and disinformation. In 7-Eleven stores across Taiwan on Wednesday, the message “Warmonger Pelosi get out of Taiwan” flashed across in-store TV screens.According to local reports, some customers thought the message was a statement of the views of the 7-Eleven franchise owner. But Uni-president, the parent company, told local media it suspected it had been hacked.Sign up to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every weekday morning at 7am BSTShortly before Pelosi’s arrival, Chinese state media reported that Beijing’s Su-35 fighter jets were flying across the Taiwan strait. Taipei subsequently dismissed the announcement as “fake news”.Pelosi earlier said China was making “a big fuss” about this visit because of her status as speaker of the US House of Representatives. “I don’t know if that’s a reason or an excuse,” she said, adding: “Whatever China will do, they will do in their own good time.”Additional reporting by Chi Hui LinTopicsTaiwanAsia PacificChinaNancy PelosiUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      ‘We could feel it’: Kansans celebrate upset abortion rights victory

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      ‘We could feel it’: Kansans celebrate upset abortion rights victoryOrganizers said treating reproductive rights as a non-partisan issue was key to success in a Republican-leaning state In a conference room at the Sheraton in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park, people screamed, whooped, cheered and cried as a vote to protect abortion rights in Kansas’s state constitution came down late on Tuesday night.And it wasn’t just Democrats.James Quigley, 72, a retired doctor and a Republican from Johnson county, sat on his own drinking a glass of white wine after hearing the news. “Abortion is a much more nuanced issue than anti-choice individuals would have you think,” he told the Guardian. “It is deeply personal, sometimes tragic, but also sometimes a liberating decision – and we should trust women, their physicians, and their God on that,” he said.“We could feel it – we’ve been feeling it for weeks,” said Marcia Corbett, 71, a swing voter and local business owner, before the vote came in.The result had been eagerly awaited, as Kansas was the first state in the country to put abortion rights on the ballot since Roe v Wade, which federally guaranteed them, was overturned by the supreme court. It came after weeks of uncertainty, in a race in which misinformation abounded and tactics got ugly.01:01The victory – and its sheer scale in a usually reliably Republican and socially conservative state like Kansas – has sent shockwaves through the United States and provided a shot in the arm for efforts to protect abortion rights under siege across America.In Kansas, that fight had gotten dirty. On Tuesday, a former Republican congressman was linked to messages targeting voters with an anonymous, misleading text encouraging people to vote yes to protect abortion – when in fact a yes vote would have overturned a constitutional right to abortion. Vandals also spray-painted the walls of a Catholic church weeks earlier, with the phrase, “My body, my choice.”Nor had victory seemed certain on the day of the vote.On Tuesday, as voting began, the mood seemed amicable in Douglas county on a hot, sticky day, where temperatures consistently threatened to hit the hundreds. Polling booths in Lawrence and Eudora saw a steady drip of voters, even in the middle of the day, with dozens of voters lining up to vote at any given time. Many were unaffiliated, but turned up just to vote in the referendum.At the Eudora community center in Douglas county, Patrick Perry, 43, a mechanic and registered Republican, said he was voting no. A veteran who had fought in Iraq, he said he was voting due to his own “personal circumstances” – his wife needed an abortion in a medical emergency during their marriage, in a pregnancy that would have otherwise taken her life. But he didn’t expect Kansas to side with him. “We’re a Republican state,” he said. “And we don’t generally vote that way.”But on a night of huge turnout, Kansas voted to protect abortion in the state’s constitution, with the no vote securing a whopping 59% to 41% of the anti-abortion movement.At the beginning of the night, the mood had been cautiously hopeful at the Kansas for Constitutional Freedom event in Overland Park, with the no vote ahead from the start. “We’re in the lead, and no is better than yes!” a young girl said to her mother, from next-door Missouri. The two had been canvassing together for weeks.The Democratic congresswoman Sharice Davids stood up to speak early in the night, telling the audience of about 100 people: “The [supreme court] decision definitely felt like a gut punch to a lot of people in our community … But we stood up and got to work.”Following speeches, all eyes in the room were on a television projection blaring MSNBC’s elections statistics guru Steve Kornacki, whose voice was barely audible over the sounds of people chattering, drinking and bursting into cheers whenever a county’s no vote was called.“Imagine how good we are going to feel when we beat the anti-abortion movement and the Republicans, who lied at every turn,” state congresswoman Stephanie Clayton said.“I feel really good right now,” said Leslie Butsch, who had tears in her eyes by 8.30pm. She was watching as the vote in Johnson county first showed signs of leaning heavily towards no, after weeks of spending her evenings knocking on doors there. An hour later, when the result came through, she was one of the few people without a celebratory drink in her hand – she’d just spent all her cash tipping the bar staff in a flurry of happiness.“I feel overwhelmed with gratitude. Today we learned that organizers are more powerful than ever. We did the impossible,” she said.State senator Dinah Sykes burst into tears when the vote was called, covering her mouth and showing friends goosebumps on her arms. “It’s just amazing. It’s breathtaking that women’s voices were heard and [that] we care about women’s health,” she said.She knew that the vote would be close in a state that gave Trump a 15 percentage point lead over Biden in the 2020 election. “But we were close in a lot of rural areas and that really made the difference – I’m just so grateful,” she said.Ashley All, the spokesperson for KCF, said the success of their campaign was testament to non-partisanship – and other states should take heed. “It will be interesting for other states to watch this, and see this is not a partisan issue,” she said.Joe Biden made a statement on the result late on Tuesday. “Voters in Kansas turned out in record numbers to reject extreme efforts to amend the state constitution to take away a woman’s right to choose and open the door for a statewide ban,” the president said.“This vote makes clear what we know: the majority of Americans agree that women should have access to abortion and should have the right to make their own healthcare decisions.”Meanwhile, the defeated anti-abortion group Kansans for Life sent out an email to supporters following the vote, sharing their dismay. For a movement that has been on the rise in America – since before Roe was overturned, and after – it was clear they had suffered a powerful blow.“The mainstream media propelled the left’s false narrative, contributing to the confusion that misled Kansans about the amendment,” it said, and vowed to fight on. “Our movement and campaign have proven our resolve and commitment. We will not abandon women and babies.”TopicsKansasAbortionUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Pelosi's Taiwan visit sparks furious reaction from China – video report

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      Nancy Pelosi concluded her controversial trip to Taiwan on Wednesday. The US House speaker arrived in Taipei late on Tuesday on an unannounced but closely watched trip, which has drawn condemnation and vows of retaliation from China, which claims Taiwan as its province. Beijing demonstrated its anger by launching live fire ‘targeted military operations’ in six locations surrounding the self-ruled island, while the Chinese foreign minister called the visit ‘an outright farce’

      Nancy Pelosi pledges US solidarity with Taiwan amid alarm at China military drills
      China-Taiwan relations: what’s behind the tensions – in 30 seconds More