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  • Biden unveils a new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention | CNN Politics

    Biden unveils a new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden on Friday unveiled a new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, a step he said was part of an effort “to send a clear message about how important this issue is to me and the country.

    In a speech in the White House Rose Garden, the president detailed his experience traveling to the sites of mass shootings across the country, including after the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012 as vice president.

    “Anyone who doesn’t think that these kinds of engagements have a permanent effect on young children … these were hardened, tough cops, asking me, could I get them psychiatric help?” he asked, raising his voice.

    An official told reporters on a call Thursday previewing the announcement that the office’s mandate will be twofold – it will be tasked with implementing and expediting last year’s Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the president’s signature gun legislation, and with finding additional actions within the president’s purview to stem the flow of gun violence.

    The announcement comes just days after a group of congressional Democrats in a letter called on Biden to leverage “the full power of the executive branch” to combat gun violence. In March, a day after a mass shooting left six dead in Nashville, Biden told reporters, “I have gone the full extent of my executive authority to do, on my own, anything about guns.”

    Biden on Friday took the opportunity to tout the steps his administration had taken to address the scourge of gun violence.

    “To date my administration has announced dozens of executive actions to reduce gun violence – more than any of my predecessors at this point in their presidencies, and they include everything from cracking down on ghost guns, breaking up gun trafficking, and so much more,” he said.

    “And last year with the help – with your help I signed into law the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the most significant gun safety law in almost 30 years. It expanded background checks, expands the use of red flag laws, improves access to mental health services and so much more. This historic law will save lives. It’s a really important first step.”

    Vice President Kamala Harris will head the new office, Biden said.

    Biden said Harris “understands this more than any vice president ever – no, really. That’s not hyperbole, that’s a fact. She’s been on the front lines of this her entire career as a prosecutor, as an attorney general and as a United States senator. Her deep experience will be invaluable for this office.”

    And he thanked the gun safety advocates assembled in the Rose Garden for their work.

    “We’re never going to forget your loved ones, we’re never going to get there unless we remember. You know, I know we will do this because I know you – heroes, heroes proving that even with heavy hearts, you have unbreakable spirits,” he said.

    CORRECTION: This headline and story have been updated to reflect the correct name of the office.

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  • Five Americans back on US soil after release from Iranian detention | CNN Politics

    Five Americans back on US soil after release from Iranian detention | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Five Americans freed from Iranian detention this week returned to US soil early Tuesday following an initial stop in Doha, Qatar, a US official tells CNN.

    Emad Shargi, Morad Tahbaz and Siamak Namazi, along with two Americans who have not been publicly named have arrived in the Washington, DC, area, after they were released Monday as part of a wider deal that includes the US unfreezing $6 billion in Iranian funds.

    The freed Americans will have the option to participate in a Department of Defense Program known as PISA (Post Isolation Support Activities) to help them acclimate back to normal life now that they are back in the United States.

    The return of the five Americans, all of whom had been designated as wrongfully detained, caps a significant diplomatic breakthrough after years of complicated indirect negotiations between the US and Iran, who do not have formal diplomatic ties.

    The group was flown out of Tehran on a Qatari government jet to Doha on Monday, before taking off for the Washington, DC, area to be reunited with their families, according to a senior administration official. Namazi’s mother, Effie Namazi, and Tahbaz’s wife, Vida Tahbaz, who had been previously unable to leave Iran, were also on the flight from Iran to Doha, the official said Monday.

    After a year of indirect negotiations, the deal began to broadly come together in Doha about seven months ago and the first tangible public steps took place about five weeks ago, when four of the Americans were transferred to house arrest. The fifth American was already under house arrest.

    President Joe Biden on Monday celebrated their release “after enduring years of agony, uncertainty, and suffering.” But while the release stood as the latest high-profile deal negotiated by his administration to secure the release of Americans deemed wrongly detained abroad, Biden drew criticism from some Republicans who likened the agreement to a “ransom payment.”

    A senior Biden administration official said Monday that the deal “has not changed our relationship with Iran in any way,” noting the US would still work to hold Iran accountable for its human rights abuses and to constrain its nuclear program.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • White House to send letter to news execs urging outlets to ‘ramp up’ scrutiny of GOP’s Biden impeachment inquiry ‘based on lies’ | CNN Business

    White House to send letter to news execs urging outlets to ‘ramp up’ scrutiny of GOP’s Biden impeachment inquiry ‘based on lies’ | CNN Business



    CNN
     — 

    The White House plans to send a letter to top US news executives on Wednesday, urging them to intensify their scrutiny of House Republicans after Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, despite having found no evidence of a crime.

    “It’s time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies,” Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, wrote in the letter, according to a draft copy obtained by CNN.

    The letter, which said an impeachment inquiry with no supporting evidence should “set off alarm bells for news organizations,” will be sent to executives helming the nation’s largest news organizations, including CNN, The New York Times, Fox News, the Associated Press, CBS News, and others, a White House official familiar with the matter said.

    The correspondence comes one day after McCarthy announced that he had directed three House committees to begin an impeachment inquiry into Biden. House Republicans, most of whom have denied that disgraced former President Donald Trump committed any wrongdoing, have long sought to baselessly portray Biden as a corrupt, crime-ridden politician engaged in sinister activities.

    While news organizations have published innumerable fact checks on the matter, they have also often failed to robustly call out the mis- and disinformation peddled by Republicans in their coverage, frustrating officials in the Biden White House who believe that the news media should be doing more to dispel lies that saturate the public discourse.

    In its letter Wednesday, the White House will ask news organizations to be more clear-eyed in their coverage of the impeachment inquiry, and not to fall prey to the traps of false equivalency in reporting.

    “Covering impeachment as a process story – Republicans say X, but the White House says Y – is a disservice to the American public who relies on the independent press to hold those in power accountable,” Sams wrote.

    “And in the modern media environment, where every day liars and hucksters peddle disinformation and lies everywhere from Facebook to Fox, process stories that fail to unpack the illegitimacy of the claims on which House Republicans are basing all their actions only serve to generate confusion, put false premises in people’s feeds, and obscure the truth,” Sams added.

    McCarthy launched the impeachment inquiry Tuesday without a formal House vote in a bid to appease Republicans on his far-right, including those who have threatened to oust the California Republican from his speakership if he does not move swiftly enough on such an investigation.

    The Republican House-led investigations into Biden have yet to provide any direct evidence that the president financially benefited from Hunter Biden’s career overseas.

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  • Kim Jong Un to visit Russia at Vladimir Putin’s invitation | CNN

    Kim Jong Un to visit Russia at Vladimir Putin’s invitation | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Kim Jong Un will travel to Russia at the invitation of his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, Pyongyang and Moscow said on Monday, amid warnings from the United States that the two leaders could strike an arms deal.

    The US government said last week that such a meeting could take place as part of Russia’s efforts to find new suppliers for weapons to use in its war against Ukraine.

    Neither country specified when or where the visit would take place, nor what would be on the agenda of any potential face-to-face. The Kremlin said in a statement Monday that Kim would pay an official visit to Russia “in the coming days,” while North Korean state media said they would “meet and have a talk.”

    However, it appears likely that the two leaders will see each other in the far eastern city of Vladivostok, where they met for the first time in April 2019. Putin reportedly arrived in Vladivostok on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to state TV Russia 24. Kim, meanwhile, appears to be on a train heading to Russia, a South Korean government official told CNN.

    The visit will be Kim’s first foreign trip since the Covid-19 pandemic. With its borders sealed because of that for much of the past three years, North Korea has only recently begun to relax travel restrictions.

    It will also be only Kim’s 10th trip since assuming power in 2011. All of those came in 2018 and 2019, as the North Korean leader engaged in negotiations over his nuclear weapons and missile programs in three meetings with then-US President Donald Trump – one in Singapore, one in Hanoi and one in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating North and South Korea.

    Kim also made four trips to China over those two years to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The remaining trip was to the DMZ in 2018 to meet with then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

    Vladivostok lies 130 km (80 miles) from the border with North Korea.

    The North Korea leader is said to prefer traveling in an upscale armored train – as did his father before him – but rail travel accounts for less than half of his foreign trips. Three of this nine trips have been made in planes and two, both to the DMZ, by car.

    Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu also visited Pyongyang in July in an attempt to convince it to sell artillery ammunition.

    Last Tuesday, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned that North Korea it will “pay a price” if it strikes an arms deal with Russia, though he did not elaborate on these potential repercussions.

    North Korea is already under United Nations and US sanctions imposed over Pyongyang’s weapons of mass destruction program.

    The potential Putin-Kim meeting could lead to Pyongyang getting its hands on the sort of weapons those sanctions have barred it from accessing for two decades, especially for its nuclear-capable ballistic missile program.

    It also comes after more than a year and a half of war in Ukraine has left the Russian military battered, depleted and in need of supplies.

    Following Monday’s announcement from both countries, the White House urged North Korea to “not provide or sell arms to Russia.

    “As we have warned publicly, arms discussions between Russia and the DPRK are expected to continue during Kim Jong-Un’s trip to Russia,” said National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson in response to Russia and North Korea’s announcement.

    The statement also urged the country to “abide by the public commitments that Pyongyang has made to not provide or sell arms to Russia.”

    After reports emerged of North Korean arms sales to Russia in September 2022, a North Korean Defense Ministry official said at the time that Pyongyang had “never exported weapons or ammunition to Russia before and we will not plan to export them.”

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  • How booming Vietnam offers the US an alternative to China | CNN Business

    How booming Vietnam offers the US an alternative to China | CNN Business


    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden is in Vietnam for a visit intended to deepen economic ties between Washington and Hanoi as part of efforts to reduce America’s reliance on China.

    The former foes have formally upgraded diplomatic ties to a “comprehensive strategic partnership,” a symbolic yet highly important move that experts say will solidify trust between the nations as America seeks an ally in Asia to counteract political tensions with China and advance its ambitions for key technologies, such as chipmaking.

    Companies from Apple (AAPL) to Intel (INTC) have already pushed deeper into the country to diversify their supply chains, maxing out many Vietnamese factories and helping fuel an economic expansion that continues to defy a global slowdown.

    On Monday, the White House announced a “landmark deal” between Boeing and Vietnam Airlines worth $7.8 billion, which is expected to support more than 30,000 jobs in the United States. Reuters has reported that the carrier will buy 50 Boeing 737 Max jets.

    Biden’s visit, which followed the G20 summit in India, is the first by a US president to Vietnam since Donald Trump’s 2019 trip. He has met with Vietnamese General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and other leaders to “promote the growth of a technology-focused” Vietnamese economy, as well as discuss ways to improve stability in the region, according to the White House.

    In recent years, their trade has already soared under an existing partnership agreed in 2013, so the elevation in relations is “just catching up with the reality that already exists,” Ted Osius, president of the US-ASEAN Business Council and a former US ambassador to Vietnam, told CNN.

    The United States imported nearly $127.5 billion in goods from Vietnam in 2022, compared with $101.9 billion in 2021 and $79.6 billion in 2020, according to US government data.

    Last year, Vietnam became America’s eighth largest trading partner, rising from 10th place two years earlier.

    The two sides have been moving closer as US officials, particularly Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, have repeatedly pointed to the importance of “friend-shoring.”

    The practice refers to the movement of supply chains toward allies in part to shield businesses from political friction.

    “Rather than being highly reliant on countries where we have geopolitical tensions and can’t count on ongoing, reliable supplies, we need to really diversify our group of suppliers,” she said in a speech last year at the Atlantic Council think tank.

    Those tensions add to a litany of pressures, including rising labor costs and an uncertain operating environment that have already made corporations think twice about how much business they do in China, which is still considered the factory of the world.

    But increasingly, it has competition. During the US-China trade war, which started in 2018, businesses of all sizes began moving manufacturing to emerging markets such as Vietnam and India over tariffs.

    After the pandemic broke out, corporations were increasingly forced to consider strategies known as “China plus one,” which meant spreading out production hubs as a way to reduce reliance on a sole manufacturing base.

    The latest exodus could cost China dearly: In a 2022 report, Rabobank estimated that as many as 28 million Chinese jobs directly relied on exports to the West and could leave the country as a result of “friend-shoring.”

    Some 300,000 of those jobs, focused on low-tech manufacturing, are expected to move to Vietnam from China, analysts wrote.

    From an industrial perspective, the country has been booming for years, said Michael Every, a Rabobank global strategist who authored the report. Relatively lower wages and a youthful population have provided Vietnam with a solid workforce and consumer base, bolstering the case to invest in the nation of 97 million people.

    A fruit vendor walking past an Apple store in Hanoi

    But companies hoping to make the switch may already be too late, as some factories are so stretched, customers must wait, he said.

    Alicia García-Herrero, chief economist at Natixis, pointed to what she called “overheating,” saying demand for manufacturing in Vietnam has outstripped supply in some cases.

    “Too many companies [are] going to Vietnam,” she told CNN.

    Vietnam enjoyed an advantage, as it was first in the region to build up supply chain capabilities “for many, many sectors” years ago, she explained.

    Shortly after Biden landed in Vietnam on Sunday, the White House announced a new semiconductor partnership.

    “The United States recognizes Vietnam’s potential to play a critical role in building resilient semiconductor supply chains, particularly to expand capacity in reliable partners where it cannot be re-shored to the United State,” it said in a statement.

    The semiconductor industry has emerged as a key source of tension in US-China relations. Beijing and Washington are both racing to boost their prowess in the sector, and each side has recently enacted export controls aimed at limiting the other’s capacity.

    The United States needs a trusted partner for its supply of chips, and Vietnam can do just that, Osius said.

    Intel sees it that way. The California-based chipmaker has committed $1.5 billion to a sprawling campus located just outside Ho Chi Minh City, which it says will be its largest single assembly and test facility in the world.

    Osius expects more investments in the field to follow as Washington shores up ties with Hanoi.

    “The significance of Vietnam in that supply chain will increase,” he predicted. “We’re going to see an acceleration when it comes to collaboration in tech.”

    The International Monetary Fund projects Vietnam’s growth will slow to 5.8% from 8% last year as it copes with less overseas demand for its exports.

    But that compares favorably with a global growth forecast of 3%, and is noticeably faster many of the world’s major economies, such as the United States, China and the eurozone.

    “As the rest of Asia underwhelms, Vietnam will still be one of the fastest growing economies,” Natixis said in a recent research note.

    That’s compelling for corporations looking for bright spots in an otherwise gloomy environment.

    Such interest was noted in March, when the US-ASEAN Business Council led its biggest-ever business mission to Vietnam. The delegation consisted of 52 American firms, including corporate heavyweights such as Netflix (NFLX) and Boeing (BA).

    Of course, companies still have reservations over factors such as Vietnamese tech regulations, which they fear could include limits on the “transfer of data across borders, or too many rules requiring data localization,” according to Osius.

    In some cases, businesses are also concerned by how the country’s infrastructure still pales in comparison to a longtime trade powerhouse like China’s.

    For example, “there isn’t a sufficient port capacity for some of the goods to be exported as quickly as companies want them to be moved,” Osius said.

    Politically, Vietnam shares many similarities to China in that it is an authoritarian one-party state that tolerates little dissent.

    But overall, businesses simply want an easy way to hedge their bets.

    Vietnam is an obvious choice, because it’s a cheap alternative to manufacturing in China, said García-Herrero.

    For various sectors, transitioning isn’t difficult, because many Chinese suppliers also moved there because of US tariffs, she explained. “It’s the most similar because you have the same providers as in China.”

    The Biden administration, too, will likely be keen to secure that alternative.

    “It’s quite clear that they’re trying to set up a series of foreign policy victories ahead of 2024 [by] signing a strategic comprehensive partnership with Vietnam,” said Every, the Rabobank analyst.

    — CNN’s Kyle Feldscher, Jeremy Diamond and Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.

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  • Biden heads to Vietnam in latest attempt to draw one of China’s neighbors closer to the US | CNN Politics

    Biden heads to Vietnam in latest attempt to draw one of China’s neighbors closer to the US | CNN Politics


    Hanoi, Vietnam
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden will arrive at Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s doorstep on Sunday with a deal in hand to draw yet another one of China’s neighbors closer to the United States.

    In just the last five months, Biden has hosted the Philippines’ president at the White House for the first time in over a decade; he has fêted the Indian prime minister with a lavish state dinner; and he has hosted his Japanese and South Korean counterparts for a summit ripe with symbolism at the storied Camp David presidential retreat.

    At each turn, Biden’s courtship and his team’s steadfast diplomacy have secured stronger diplomatic, military and economic ties with a network of allies and partners joined if not by an outright sense of alarm at China’s increasingly aggressive military and economic posture, then at least by a growing sense of caution and concern.

    The latest page in the US’s Indo-Pacific playbook will come via the establishment of a “comprehensive strategic partnership” that will put the US on par with Vietnam’s highest tier of partners, including China, according to US officials familiar with the matter.

    “It marks a new period of fundamental reorientation between the United States and Vietnam,” a senior administration official said ahead of Biden’s arrival in Hanoi, saying it would expand a range of issues between the two countries.

    “It’s not going to be easy for Vietnam, because they’re under enormous pressure from China,” the official went on. “We realize the stakes and the President is going to be very careful how he engages with Vietnamese friends.”

    The US’ increasingly tight-knit web of partnerships in the region is just one side of the US’s diplomatic strategy vis-à-vis China. On a separate track, the Biden administration has also pursued more stable ties and improved communication with Beijing over the last year, with a series of top Cabinet secretaries making the trip to the Chinese capital in just the last few months.

    The latter part of that playbook has delivered fewer results thus far than Biden’s entreaties to China’s wary neighbors, a dichotomy that was on stark display as Biden attended the G20 in New Delhi, while Chinese leader Xi Jinping did not.

    The president did not appear overly concerned when questioned Saturday about his Chinese counterpart’s absence at the summit.

    “It would be nice to have him here,” Biden said, with Modi and a handful of other world leaders by his side. “But, no, the summit is going well.”

    As Biden and Xi jockey for influence in Asia and beyond, merely showing up can be seen as a power play and Biden sought to make the most of Xi’s absence, seizing the opening to pitch the United States’ sustained commitment both to the region and to developing nations around the world.

    In Vietnam, it’s not only China whose influence Biden is competing with. As he arrived, reports suggested Hanoi was preparing a secret purchase of weapons from Russia, its longtime arms supplier.

    On Monday, Biden plans to announce steps to help Vietnam diversify away from an over-reliance on Russian arms, a senior administration official said.

    As China’s economy slows down and its leader ratchets up military aggressions, Biden hopes to make the United States appear a more attractive and reliable partner. In New Delhi, he did so by wielding proposals to boost global infrastructure and development programs as a counterweight to China.

    Beijing and Moscow have both condemned a so-called “Cold War mentality” that divides the world into blocks. The White House insists it is seeking only competition, not conflict.

    Still, the desire to pull nations into the fold has been evident.

    Traffic whizzes through Hanoi's old quarter

    On Saturday, Biden held a photo op with the leaders of India, Brazil and South Africa – three members of the BRICS grouping that Xi has sought to elevate as a rival to US-dominated summits like the G20.

    If there is a risk in that approach, it is leaving nations feeling squeezed by rival giants. For Biden, however, there is an imperative in at least offering poorer nations an alternative to China when it comes to investments and development.

    But increasingly, China’s neighbors – like Vietnam – are seeking a counterweight to Beijing’s muscular and often unforgiving presence in the region, even if they are not prepared to entirely abandon China’s sphere of influence in favor of the US’.

    “We’re not asking or expecting the Vietnamese to make a choice,” the senior administration official said. “We understand and know clearly that they need and want a strategic partnership with China. That’s just the nature of the beast.”

    Days before Biden’s visit and the expected strategic partnership announcement, China sent a senior Communist Party official to Vietnam to enhance “political mutual trust” between the two communist neighbors, the official Chinese Xinhua news agency reported.

    Asked about Biden’s upcoming visit to Vietnam, China’s Foreign Ministry on Monday warned the US against using its relations with individual Asian countries to target a “third party.”

    “The United States should abandon Cold War zero-sum game mentality, abide by the basic norms of international relations, not target a third party, and not undermine regional peace, stability, development and prosperity,” ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a daily briefing.

    Vietnam has also sought to maintain good ties with China. Its Communist Party chief was the first foreign leader to call on Xi in Beijing after the Chinese leader secured an unprecedented third term last October. In June, Vietnam’s prime minister met Xi during a state visit to China.

    Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken meets with Chairman of the Communist Party of Vietnam's Commission for External Relations Le Hoai Trung at the Department of State.

    But even as it seeks to avoid China’s wrath, Vietnam is increasingly pulled toward the US out of economic self-interest – its trade with the US has ballooned in recent years and it is eager to benefit from American efforts to diversify supply chains outside of China – as well as concern over China’s military build-up in the South China Sea.

    Experts say those tightened partnerships are as much a credit to the Biden administration’s comprehensive China strategy as it is a consequence of the way China has increasingly aggressively wielded its military and economic might in the region.

    “China has long complained about the US alliance network in its backyard. It has said that these are vestiges of the Cold War, that the US needs to stop encircling China, but it’s really China’s own behavior and its choices that have driven these countries together,” said Patricia Kim, a China expert at the Brookings Institution.

    “So in many ways, China’s foreign policy has backfired.”

    The upgrading of the US-Vietnam relationship carries huge significance given Washington’s complicated history with Hanoi.

    The two countries have gone from mortal enemies that fought a devastating war to increasingly close partners, even with Vietnam still run by the same Communist forces that ultimately prevailed and sent the US military packing.

    While the upgrading of that relationship has been a decade in the making, US officials say a concerted drive to take the relationship to new heights carried that years-long momentum over the line.

    A late June visit to Washington by Vietnam’s top diplomat, Chairman Le Hoai Trung, crystallized that possibility. During a meeting with national security adviser Jake Sullivan, the two first discussed the possibility of upgrading the relationship, according to a Biden administration official.

    As he walked back to his office, Sullivan wondered whether the US could be more ambitious than a one-step upgrade in the relationship – to “strategic partner” – and directed his team to travel to the region and deliver a letter to Trung proposing a two-step upgrade that would take the relations to their highest-possible level, putting the US on par with Vietnam’s other “comprehensive strategic partners”: China, Russia, India and South Korea.

    Sullivan would speak again with Trung on July 13 while traveling with Biden to a NATO summit in Helsinki.

    The conversation pushed the possibility of a two-step upgrade in a positive direction, but it wasn’t until a mid-August visit to the White House by Vietnam’s ambassador to Washington that an agreement was in hand. Inside Sullivan’s West Wing office, the two finalized plans to take the US-Vietnam relationship to new heights and for Biden and Vietnam’s leader, General Secreatary Nguyen Phu Trong, to shake hands in Hanoi.

    The trip was still being finalized when Biden revealed during an off-camera fundraiser that he was planning to visit. The remark sent the planning into overdrive.

    Still, US officials are careful not to characterize the rapprochement with Vietnam – or with the Philippines, India, Japan and Korea, or its AUKUS security partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom – as part of a comprehensive strategy to counter China’s military and economic heft in the Indo-Pacific.

    “I think that’s a deliberate design by the Biden administration,” said Yun Sun, the China program director at the Stimson Center. “You don’t want countries in the region or African countries to feel that the US cares about them only because of China because that shows a lack of commitment. That shows that, ‘Well, we care about you only because we don’t want you to go to the Chinese.’”

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  • Rhode Island and Utah hold special election primaries for House seats | CNN Politics

    Rhode Island and Utah hold special election primaries for House seats | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Rhode Island and Utah voters are choosing party nominees for US House seats on Tuesday with the two states each holding a special primary election.

    In Rhode Island, a crowded Democratic field will be narrowed down to one in the race to succeed Democrat David Cicilline in the state’s 1st Congressional District. Cicilline resigned in May to lead the Rhode Island Foundation.

    In Utah, Republicans will decide their nominee in the state’s 2nd Congressional District, which GOP Rep. Chris Stewart is expected to vacate on September 15. Stewart announced in June that he would be departing Congress, citing his wife’s health concerns.

    Both seats are not expected to change party hands in November, given the partisan leans of each district, so the outcome of Tuesday’s primaries will be critical to determining who their next members of Congress will be.

    Rhode Island’s general election is set for November 7, while the general election in Utah will take place on November 21.

    Rhode Island

    Rhode Island’s 1st District covers the eastern part of the state, including East and North Providence, Pawtucket and Portsmouth. Eleven Democrats are vying for the chance to succeed Cicilline.

    The district is a Democratic stronghold – Cicilline won a seventh term by 28 points last fall, and President Joe Biden would have carried the district by a similar margin in 2020 under its present lines. A Republican hasn’t held the seat since 1995.

    Former state Rep. Aaron Regunberg has raised the most funds of the Democrats currently in the race, bringing in $630,000 through August 16. Former White House official Gabe Amo and Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos trailed with $604,000 and $579,000, respectively.

    Regunberg is running on a progressive platform, focused on issues such as fighting climate change and housing insecurity. He has the backing of multiple prominent progressives, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, and the endorsement of the campaign arm of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He has faced criticism over support he’s received from a super PAC primarily funded by his father-in-law. After an unsuccessful bid for Rhode Island lieutenant governor in 2018, he earned a law degree from Harvard and worked as a judicial law clerk.

    Amo, the son of Ghanaian and Liberian immigrants, has worked in both the Obama and Biden administrations. He has received endorsements from high-profile Democrats such as former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, who represented the 1st District for eight terms before Cicilline, and former White House chief of staff Ron Klain. He also has the backing of the campaign arm of the Congressional Black Caucus and Democrats Serve, which supports candidates with public service backgrounds.

    Amo, a former deputy director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, has made preventing gun violence a top priority, noting that during his White House tenure, he “was often the first call to a mayor following a mass shooting.”

    Matos, who emigrated to the US from the Dominican Republic at the age of 20, could make history as the first Afro-Latina in Congress. She has the backing of the campaign arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and EMILY’s List, which backs Democratic women who support abortion rights.

    Matos’ campaign endured controversy this summer following allegations her campaign had submitted falsified nominating signatures. Hundreds of signatures were thrown out, but her campaign submitted enough valid signatures to make the ballot. The incident is being investigated by the state attorney general. Matos has blamed an outside vendor for submitting the alleged false signatures.

    In another controversy leading up to the primary, businessman Don Carlson, who had loaned his campaign $600,000, ended his bid a little over a week ago following allegations of an inappropriate interaction he had with a college student in 2019. While his name remains on the ballot, the state Board of Elections ordered local boards to post a notice that he’d withdrawn, Chris Hunter, a spokesman for the state board told CNN. Carlson has endorsed state Sen. Sandra Cano, a Colombian immigrant who has made education a top priority in her campaign and has labor support.

    Marine veteran Gerry Leonard Jr., who had the endorsement of the state GOP, will win the party nomination, CNN projected Tuesday evening.

    Utah’s 2nd District covers the western portion of the state, stretching from the Salt Lake City area to St. George. Republicans are heavily favored to hold the seat – Stewart won a sixth term last fall by 26 points, while former President Donald Trump would have carried it under its current lines by 17 points in 2020.

    Three Republicans are looking to succeed Stewart: Former Utah GOP Chairman Bruce Hough, former Stewart aide Celeste Maloy and former state Rep. Becky Edwards.

    Maloy, who has Stewart’s backing, earned her spot on the ballot by winning a nominating convention in July, while Hough and Edwards qualified by collecting sufficient signatures.

    Edwards and Hough, boosted by significant self-funding, both outraised Maloy through August 16.

    Edwards raised $679,000 – $300,000 of which she loaned to her campaign – while Hough raised nearly $539,000, including $334,000 of his own money. Maloy had brought in $307,000 through August 16.

    Maloy, who worked as a counsel in Stewart’s Washington office, has faced questions over her eligibility for the special election primary ballot over voter registration issues. She was marked inactive in the state’s voter database because she did not cast a ballot in 2020 and 2022, according to The Salt Lake Tribune, after she relocated to Virginia to work for Stewart. But the state GOP submitted her name for the ballot, noting that no objections to her candidacy were filed before the convention.

    On the campaign trail, Maloy said she’s been focusing on government overreach. She has proposed defunding federal agencies to eliminate “anything they’re doing that Congress hasn’t authorized.”

    Voters are “worried that these executive branch agencies have too much power, they’re not checked and they’re too involved in our lives,” Maloy told CNN affiliate KUTV in an interview. “And I happen to agree.”

    Maloy’s campaign has received financial support from VIEW PAC, which is dedicated to recruiting and electing Republican women to Congress.

    Hough – the father of professional dancers Julianne and Derek Hough, who rose to fame on “Dancing with the Stars” – is focusing on debt reduction and deficit control, citing his family as one of the reasons why he’s running.

    “With 22 grandkids, 10 kids and a $32 trillion (US) debt, I’m very anxious about their future and about the future of all Americans and all Utahns,” Hough told ABC4 in a video posted in June. “It’s time that we actually do something about it.”

    Hough, who until recently had been Utah’s Republican national committeeman, has positioned himself as the candidate most supportive of Trump.

    Edwards, meanwhile, challenged GOP Sen. Mike Lee in a primary last year as a moderate opposed to Trump and took 30% of the vote. On the trail, she has touted her experience as a state lawmaker, focusing on priorities such as health care, education and fiscal responsibility.

    Edwards, who backed Biden in 2020, expressed “regret” for that support at a debate in June, saying she had been “extremely disappointed” with his administration, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

    The winner of Tuesday’s GOP primary will face Democratic state Sen. Kathleen Riebe in November. Riebe won her party’s nomination at a June convention.

    This story has been updated with a CNN projection.

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  • Biden heads to Florida to tour Idalia damage as presidential politics swirl | CNN Politics

    Biden heads to Florida to tour Idalia damage as presidential politics swirl | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden is set to travel to storm-ravaged Florida on Saturday, where he will meet with Floridians impacted by Hurricane Idalia, tour damage and thank emergency responders.

    But in a stark departure from his previous visits to the Sunshine State in the wake of major disasters, Biden apparently won’t be joined by the state’s firebrand governor and GOP presidential candidate, Ron DeSantis. The moment represents one of the first times the two men have showed signs of their political rivalry while responding to a disaster. Biden and DeSantis have previously met under challenging circumstances – the two convened in response to the 2021 Surfside building collapse and again in 2022 following Hurricane Ian’s damage in southwestern Florida.

    On the visit, the president and first lady Dr. Jill Biden will receive an aerial tour of impacted areas, participate in a response and recovery briefing with federal personnel, local officials, and first responders, then tour an impacted community before delivering remarks in Live Oak, Florida, a White House official said. Sen. Rick Scott, a Republican, and other local officials will participate in parts of the visit, the official added.

    On Saturday, FEMA administrator Deanna Criswell said that Biden had contacted DeSantis to inform him of the visit.

    “When the president contacted the governor to let him know he was going to be visiting … the governor’s team and my team, mutually agreed on a place that would have minimal impact into operations,” Criswell said on CNN This Morning. “Live Oak, you know, the power is being restored. The roads aren’t blocked, but there’s families that are hurting there,” she said.

    It’s the latest in a back and forth between DeSantis and the administration, after the governor’s spokesperson Friday night said he had no plans to meet with Biden Saturday, contradicting Biden telling CNN that he would meet with his political rival.

    “I would have to defer you to the governor on what his schedule is going to be,” Criswell said to CNN’s Amara Walker.

    On Friday afternoon, Biden told CNN that “yes,” he’d be meeting with DeSantis. But by the evening, a spokesperson for DeSantis said there are no plans for two to meet, eschewing an opportunity to once again put their differences aside to navigate a response to a disaster as the governor appeared to pull the rug out on the plans.

    “We don’t have any plans for the governor to meet with the president tomorrow,” DeSantis spokesperson Jeremy Redfern told CNN Friday evening. “In these rural communities, and so soon after impact, the security preparations alone that would go into setting up such a meeting would shut down ongoing recovery efforts.”

    White House spokesperson Emilie Simons said that Biden’s visit was being planned to minimize disruption to storm recovery efforts.

    “President Biden and the first lady look forward to meeting members of the community impacted by Hurricane Idalia and surveying impacts of the storm,” Simons said. “They will be joined by Administrator Criswell who is overseeing the federal response. Their visit to Florida has been planned in close coordination with FEMA as well as state and local leaders to ensure there is no impact on response operations.”

    A presidential visit anywhere requires a significant security footprint, and DeSantis suggested to reporters earlier Friday that he had raised concerns about that level of disruption as response efforts continue.

    But a White House official said that DeSantis did not raise those concerns about the visit with Biden when the two spoke by phone ahead of Biden’s visit to Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters Thursday, during which Biden announced the trip. Biden’s upcoming travel schedule also presented logistical challenges to setting a date – he celebrates Labor Day with workers in Philadelphia Monday, awards the Medal of Honor at the White House on Tuesday and is headed to the G20 Summit in India next Thursday.

    For DeSantis, who catapulted to GOP mega-stardom in recent years in part by taking aim at the Biden White House, staying away from Saturday’s visit will eliminate the possibility of any collegiality between the two being caught on camera during a tense Republican primary.

    The White House had earlier attempted to downplay any rivalry between the two when it comes to responding to a natural disaster.

    “They are very collegial when we have the work to do together of helping Americans in need, citizens of Florida in need,” deputy national security adviser Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall told reporters Thursday when pressed on the dynamic.

    The Democratic president and the Republican governor have been in close touch leading up to, during and after the hurricane, which made landfall Wednesday in the coastal Big Bend region as a powerful Category 3 storm. Biden joked that he had DeSantis “on direct dial” given their frequent communication this week. But while the president has offered direct praise to DeSantis’ handling of the response, the Florida Republican largely stuck to assuring the public the two can work together.

    Asked whether he sensed any politics in their conversations, Biden told reporters during the visit to FEMA headquarters that he didn’t – and acknowledged that it was “strange” given the polarized political climate.

    “No. Believe it or not. I know that sounds strange, especially how – looking at the nature of politics today,” he said.

    Biden continued, “I think he trusts my judgment and my desire to help, and I trust him to be able to suggest that this is not about politics, it’s about taking care of the people of the state. This is about taking care of the people of his state.”

    Still, DeSantis hasn’t shied away from his criticism of the president and his handling of disasters outside his state. During a GOP presidential debate last week, days before the storm made landfall, DeSantis took aim at Biden’s response to the wildfires in Maui.

    “Biden was on the beach while those people were suffering. He was asked about it and he said, ‘No comment.’ Are you kidding me? As somebody that’s handled disasters in Florida, you’ve got to be activated. You’ve got to be there. You’ve got to be present. You’ve got to be helping people who are doing this,” he said.

    There was a similar dynamic surrounding their work together on Hurricane Ian last year. Weeks before the storm touched down, DeSantis had flown migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, and made a national tour spotlightling the move. Biden accused DeSantis at the time for “playing politics with human beings” and called the stunt “unAmerican.”

    There have also been back-and-forth tensions between the White House and the governor on support for LGBTQ kids and book bans in public schools.

    Still, they set their differences aside as DeSantis welcomed Biden to the Sunshine State to tour damage from the hurricane.

    “I’m just thankful everyone has banded together,” DeSantis said, before adding: “Mr. President, welcome to Florida. We appreciate working together across various levels of government.”

    That appearance together was rather deflating for Democrats who had hoped to raise concerns about DeSantis’ handling of the storm, particularly the seeming lack of urgency in local evacuation orders. But when Biden called DeSantis’ response to Ian “pretty remarkable,” it closed the door on that.

    Both leaders also poured on the niceties in the wake of the deadly condo collapse in Surfside, Florida, a year earlier.

    “You recognized the severity of this tragedy from day one and you’ve been very supportive,” DeSantis said during a briefing in Miami Beach.

    Biden added, “You know what’s good about this? We live in a nation where we can cooperate. And it’s really important.”

    That dynamic will not be on display Saturday.

    Biden formally approved a major disaster declaration for Florida on Thursday, making federal funding available to those in affected counties. As of Friday evening, power restoration remained the top response priority as over 70,000 Floridians remain without power amid high temperatures.

    Approximately 1,500 federal responders are on the ground in Florida, including search and rescue personnel and members of the Army Corps of Engineers.

    As the state seeks to recover from the storm’s devastation, the Biden administration asked Congress on Friday for an additional $4 billion for FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund, pointing to Hurricane Idalia and a brutal stretch of natural disasters across the country in recent weeks. That is in addition to a request for $12 billion last month.

    As the White House pushes Congress to pass a short-term spending bill to avoid a shutdown and ensure continuity of government services, the president has signaled that he’s ready to blame Republicans if there isn’t enough funding to respond to disasters.

    For his part, DeSantis has lobbied unapologetically for the kind of disaster aid that as a congressman he voted against as wasteful spending.

    Asked about the $4 billion request Friday, DeSantis told reporters, “How Washington handles all this stuff, I don’t quite understand. … They just did a big budget deal and did not include that. They included a lot of money for a lot of other stuff.”

    He continued, “I trust our senators and congressmen hopefully to be able to be able to work it out in a good way. You know, as governor, I’m gonna be pulling whatever levers I can to be able to help folks. And so, if that’s the state, we’re mobilizing all of our state assets. Private sector, we’re leveraging that. And we will apply for whatever federal money is available.”

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  • DeSantis said he would send Special Forces after the cartels in Mexico as president. Can he do that? | CNN Politics

    DeSantis said he would send Special Forces after the cartels in Mexico as president. Can he do that? | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Saturday reiterated his pledge to send US Special Forces into Mexico to confront drug cartels if he is elected president, saying, “We are going to act.”

    Speaking to reporters at Saturday’s first stop of the “Never Back Down” bus tour through Iowa, the Republican presidential hopeful said, “It’s humiliating to see the cartels have that type of control. They are effectively invading our country and killing our people.”

    The Florida governor first addressed the issue Wednesday night at the GOP presidential debate. When asked whether he would support sending Special Forces into Mexico, DeSantis answered clearly: “Yes, and I will do it on day one.”

    “The president of the United States has got to use all available powers as commander in chief to protect our country and to protect the people. So when they’re coming across, yes we’re going to use lethal force, yes we reserve the right to operate,” he said Wednesday. He later repeated that pledge in a tweet.

    DeSantis spokesperson Bryan Griffin told CNN, “Ron DeSantis will declare a national emergency on day one, mobilize all military resources, declare the cartels to be narco-terrorists, and change the rules of engagement on the border. The full force of the federal government will be utilized to ensure that illegal drug flow is stopped, and he will bring to bear every tool he has to this end.”

    DeSantis is not the only Republican to call for military action against drug cartels. But while experts said frustration over the cartels in Mexico and their impact on Americans is valid, they warned that taking military action on the soil of the US’ southern neighbor could trigger a diplomatic crisis.

    Pressed about taking such action on another country’s soil, DeSantis on Saturday defended the idea, arguing that the cartels are bringing “death and destruction” to America.

    Vanda Felbab-Brown, director of the Brookings Institution’s Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors, explained that designating the cartels as a foreign terrorist organization would allow “for lethal action,” though that “doesn’t eliminate the diplomatic controversy and outrage in Mexico that any Mexican government would have.”

    Such a designation could have “major implications for trade,” Felbab-Brown said.

    “We can say what we want on our side – from the perspective of the Mexican government and Mexican military, that would be very much seen as a massive violation of sovereignty,” she said.

    Earl Anthony Wayne, a career diplomat who was the US ambassador to Mexico from 2011 to 2015, echoed that sentiment, saying US military action in Mexico has been “an extremely sensitive issue” for years.

    “Doing this in the way that he sounded like he was going to do it would create a massive crisis with Mexico,” Wayne said of DeSantis’ comments. “Whoever’s in charge” of Mexico, even if it were someone with a good relationship with the US, “would be forced to take drastic action and close the borders or do other things.”

    As for the authority to deploy US forces in that way, Wayne said it would fall “under the same rubric of launching a military operation in any other country around the world.” And while presidents don’t always get approval from Congress before taking military action, they do have to contend with Congress afterward.

    “There would have to be a justification,” he said. “And Congress would raise questions – why didn’t you seek authority for this, what’s the emergency that set this off? I mean, if you wanted to do it without telling anybody and without working anything out with the government of Mexico, it would create a lot of uproar in the United States, as well as with Mexico.”

    Ezra Cohen, a fellow with the Hudson Institute who was an acting assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict in the Trump administration, said a president would “almost certainly” need to notify Congress after taking such an action.

    “Congress could pass a law prohibiting funding for such operations, but it would be hard for Congress to prevent this sort of activity,” he said.

    Cohen added, however, that the US is “out of options” in how to deal with the cartels because the Mexican government has proven to be “too corrupt and not strong enough to deal with this.”

    Both Wayne and Felbab-Brown agreed that the situation is dire but said the best path forward would be to find a way to work with the Mexican government. They acknowledged, however, that it has become increasingly difficult to do so.

    Felbab-Brown said that right now, “there is no cooperation” with the government, but there “are still officers, law enforcement officials, government officials who understand the narcos are taking over Mexico.” Taking military action, she said, would narrow options for future cooperation “tremendously.”

    “It’s not just that they are not cooperating with us; they are letting Mexico be eaten alive by the cartels,” Felbab-Brown said. “But, you know, lethal military action, certainly involving US soldiers … would be enormously challenging in terms of the optics and the bilateral relationship, and it would just sour even people who want to cooperate with the US. It would make it very difficult for them.”

    And military action, Wayne said, is not a serious idea to deal with what has become a “massive problem.”

    “These groups have grown and become powerful; they’re all mixed with the civilian population,” he said. “Give me a serious solution here. Don’t just make us all feel happy because you say you’re going to send the Special Forces in. … The point is to cut the flows off, it’s not just to kill a couple of cartel members in a small place where they put fentanyl together in a warehouse.”

    This story has been updated with new reporting.

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  • Fact check: The first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 election | CNN Politics

    Fact check: The first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 election | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Republican presidential candidates delivered a smattering of false and misleading claims at the first debate of the 2024 election – though none of the eight candidates on stage in Milwaukee delivered anything close to the bombardment of false statements that typically characterized the debate performances of former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner who skipped the Wednesday event.

    Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina inaccurately described the state of the economy in early 2021 and repeated a long-ago-debunked false claim about the Biden-era Justice Department. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie misstated the sentence attached to a gun law relevant to the investigation into the president’s son Hunter Biden. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis misled about his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, omitting mention of his early pandemic restrictions.

    Below is a fact check of those claims and various others from the debate, some of which left out key context. In addition, below is a brief fact check of some of Trump’s claims from a pre-taped interview he did with Tucker Carlson, which was posted online shortly before the debate aired. Trump made a variety of statements that were not true.

    DeSantis and the pandemic

    DeSantis criticized the federal government for its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, claiming it had locked down the economy, and then said: “In Florida, we led the country out of lockdown, and we kept our state free and open.”

    Facts First: DeSantis’s claim is misleading at best. Before he became a vocal opponent of pandemic restrictions, DeSantis imposed significant restrictions on individuals, businesses and other entities in Florida in March 2020 and April 2020; some of them extended months later into 2020. He did then open up the state, with a gradual phased approach, but he did not keep it open from the start.

    DeSantis received criticism in March 2020 for what some critics perceived as a lax approach to the pandemic, which intensified as Florida beaches were packed during Spring Break. But that month and the month following, DeSantis issued a series of major restrictions. For example, DeSantis:

    • Closed Florida’s schools, first with a short-term closure in March 2020 and then, in April 2020, with a shutdown through the end of the school year. (In June 2020, he announced a plan for schools to reopen for the next school year that began in August. By October 2020, he was publicly denouncing school closures, calling them a major mistake and saying all the information hadn’t been available that March.)
    • On March 14, 2020, announced a ban on most visits to nursing homes. (He lifted the ban in September 2020.)
    • On March 17, 2020, ordered bars and nightclubs to close for 30 days and restaurants to operate at half-capacity. (He later approved a phased reopening plan that took effect in May 2020, then issued an order in September 2020 allowing these establishments to operate at full capacity.)
    • On March 17, 2020, ordered gatherings on public beaches to be limited to a maximum of 10 people staying at least six feet apart, then, three days later, ordered a shutdown of public beaches in two populous counties, Broward and Palm Beach. (He permitted those counties’ beaches to reopen by the last half of May.)
    • On March 20, 2020, prohibited “any medically unnecessary, non-urgent or non-emergency” medical procedures. (The prohibition was lifted in early May 2020.)
    • On March 23, 2020, ordered that anyone flying to Florida from an area with “substantial community spread” of the virus, “to include the New York Tri-State Area (Connecticut, New Jersey and New York),” isolate or quarantine for 14 days or the duration of their stay in Florida, whichever was shorter, or face possible jail time or a fine. Later that week, he added Louisiana to the list. (He lifted the Louisiana restriction in June 2020 and the rest in August 2020.)
    • On April 3, 2020, imposed a statewide stay-home order that temporarily required people in Florida to “limit their movements and personal interactions outside of their home to only those necessary to obtain or provide essential services or conduct essential activities.” (Beginning in May 2020, the state switched to a phased reopening plan that, for months, included major restrictions on the operations of businesses and other entities; DeSantis described it at the time as a “very slow and methodical approach” to reopening.)

    -From CNN’s Daniel Dale

    Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the United Nations, said: “Donald Trump added $8 trillion to our debt, and our kids are never going to forgive us for this.”

    Facts First: Haley’s figure is accurate. The total public debt stood at about $19.9 trillion on the day Trump took office in 2017 and then increased by about $7.8 trillion over Trump’s four years, to about $27.8 trillion on the day he left office in 2021.

    It’s worth noting, however, that the increase in the debt during any president’s tenure is not the fault of that president alone. A significant amount of spending under any president is the result of decisions made by their predecessors – such as the creation of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid decades ago – and by circumstances out of a president’s control, notably including the global Covid-19 pandemic under Trump; the debt spiked in 2020 after Trump approved trillions in emergency pandemic relief spending that Congress had passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.

    Still, Trump did choose to approve that spending. And his 2017 tax cuts, unanimously opposed by congressional Democrats, were another major contributor to the debt spike.

    -From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Katie Lobosco

    North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum claimed that Biden’s signature climate bill costs $1.2 trillion dollars and is “just subsidizing China.”

    Facts First: This claim needs context. The clean energy pieces of the Inflation Reduction Act – Democrats’ climate bill – passed with an initial price tag of nearly $370 billion. However, since that bill is made up of tax incentives, that price tag could go up depending on how many consumers take advantage of tax credits to buy electric vehicles and put solar panels on their homes, and how many businesses use the subsidies to install new utility scale wind and solar in the United States.

    Burgum’s figure comes from a Goldman Sachs report, which estimated the IRA could provide $1.2 trillion in clean energy tax incentives by 2032 – about a decade from now.

    On Burgum’s claim that Biden’s clean energy agenda will be a boon to China, the IRA was specifically written to move the manufacturing supply chain for clean energy technology like solar panels and EV batteries away from China and to the United States.

    In the year since it was passed, the IRA has spurred 83 new or expanded manufacturing facilities in the US, and close to 30,000 new clean energy manufacturing jobs, according to a tally from trade group American Clean Power.

    -From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

    With the economy as one of the main topics on the forefront of voters’ minds, Scott aimed to make a case for Republican policies, misleadingly suggesting they left the US economy in record shape before Biden took office.

    “There is no doubt that during the Trump administration, when we were dealing with the COVID virus, we spent more money,” Scott said. “But here’s what happened at the end of our time in the majority: we had low unemployment, record low unemployment, 3.5% for the majority of the population, and a 70-year low for women. African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians had an all-time low.”

    Facts First: This is false. Scott’s claims don’t accurately reflect the state of the US economy at the end of the Republican majority in the Senate. And in some cases, his exaggerations echo what Trump himself frequently touted about the economy under his leadership.

    By the time Trump left office and the Republicans lost the Senate majority in January 2021, US unemployment was not at a record low. The US unemployment rate dropped to a seasonally adjusted rate of 3.5% in September 2019, the country’s lowest in 50 years. While it hovered around that level for five months, Scott’s assertion ignores the coronavirus pandemic-induced economic destruction that followed. In April 2020, the unemployment rate spiked to 14.7% — the highest level since monthly records began in 1948. As of December 2020, the unemployment rate was at 6.7%.

    Nor was the unemployment rate for women at a 70-year low by the end of Trump’s time in office. It reached a 66-year low during certain months of 2019, at 3.4% in April and 3.6% in August, but by December 2020, unemployment for women was at 6.7%.

    The unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians were also not at all-time lows at the end of 2020, but they did reach record lows during Trump’s tenure as president.

    -From CNN’s Tara Subramaniam

    Scott said that the Justice Department under President Joe Biden is targeting “parents that show up at school board meetings. They are called, under this DOJ, they’re called domestic terrorists.”

    Facts First: It is false that the Justice Department referred to parents as domestic terrorists. The claim has been debunked several times – during the uproar at school boards over Covid-19 restrictions and anti-racism curriculums; after Kevin McCarthy claimed Republicans would investigate Merrick Garland with a majority in the House; and even by a federal judge. The Justice Department never called parents terrorists for attending or wanting to attend school board meetings.

    The claim stems from a 2021 letter from The National School Boards Associations asking the Justice Department to “deal with” the uptick in threats against education officials and saying that “acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials” could be classified as “the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” In response, Garland released a memo encouraging federal and local authorities to work together against the harassment campaigns levied at schools, but never endorsed the “domestic terrorism” notion.

    A federal judge even threw out a lawsuit over the accusation, ruling that Garland’s memo did little more than announce a “series of measures” that directed federal authorities to address increasing threats targeting school board members, teachers and other school employees.

    -From CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz

    Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations and governor of South Carolina, said the US is spending “less than three and a half percent of our defense budget” on Ukraine aid, and that in terms of financial aid relative to GDP, “11 of the European countries have given more than the US.”

    Facts First: This is partly true. Haley’s claim regarding the US aid to Ukraine compared to the total defense budget is slightly under the actual percentage, but it is accurate that 11 European countries have given more aid to Ukraine as a percentage of their total GDP than the US.

    As of August 14, the US has committed more than $43 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, according to the Defense Department. In comparison, the Fiscal Year 2023 defense budget was $858 billion – making aid to Ukraine just over 5% of the total US defense budget.

    As of May 2023, according to a Council of Foreign Relations tracker, 11 countries were providing a higher share in aid to Ukraine relative to their GDP than the US – led by Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.

    -From CNN’s Haley Britzky

    Former Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday that the Trump administration “spent funding to backfill on the military cuts of the Obama administration.”

    Facts First: This is misleading. While military spending decreased under the Obama administration, it was largely due to the 2011 Budget Control Act, which received Republican support and resulted in automatic spending cuts to the defense budget.

    Mike Pence, a senator at the time, voted in favor of the Budget Control Act.

    -From CNN’s Haley Britzky

    Christie said President Biden’s son Hunter Biden was “facing a 10-year mandatory minimum” for lying on a federal form when he purchased a gun in 2018.

    Facts First: Christie, a former federal prosecutor, clearly misstated the law. This crime can lead to a maximum prison sentence of 10 years, but it doesn’t have a 10-year mandatory minimum.

    These comments are related to the highly scrutinized Justice Department investigation into Hunter Biden, which is currently ongoing after a plea deal fell apart earlier this summer.

    As part of the now-defunct deal, Hunter Biden agreed to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and enter into a “diversion agreement” with prosecutors, who would drop the gun possession charge in two years if he consistently stayed out of legal trouble and passed drug tests.

    The law in question makes it a crime to purchase a firearm while using or addicted to illegal drugs. Hunter Biden has acknowledged struggling with crack cocaine addiction at the time, and admitted at a court hearing and in court papers that he violated this law by signing the form.

    The US Sentencing Commission says, “The statutory maximum penalty for the offense is ten years of imprisonment.” There isn’t a mandatory 10-year punishment, as Christie claimed.

    During his answer, Christie also criticized the Justice Department for agreeing to a deal in June where Hunter Biden could avoid prosecution on the felony gun offense. That deal was negotiated by special counsel David Weiss, who was first appointed to the Justice Department by former President Donald Trump.

    -From CNN’s Marshall Cohen

    Burgum and Scott got into a back and forth over IRS staffing with Burgum saying that the “Biden administration wanted to put 87,000 people in the IRS,” and Scott suggesting they “fire the 87,000 IRS agents.”

    Facts First: This figure needs context.

    The Inflation Reduction Act, which passed last year without any Republican votes, authorized $80 billion in new funding for the IRS to be delivered over the course of a decade.

    The 87,000 figure comes from a 2021 Treasury report that estimated the IRS could hire 86,852 full-time employees with a nearly $80 billion investment over 10 years.

    While the funding may well allow for the hiring of tens of thousands of IRS employees over time, far from all of these employees will be IRS agents conducting audits and investigations.

    Many other employees will be hired for the non-agent roles, from customer service to information technology, that make up most of the IRS workforce. And a significant number of the hires are expected to fill the vacant posts left by retirements and other attrition, not take newly created positions.

    The IRS has not said precisely how many new “agents” will be hired with the funding. But it is already clear that the total won’t approach 87,000. And it’s worth noting that the IRS may not receive all of the $80 billion after Republicans were able to claw back $20 billion of the new funding as part of a deal to address the debt ceiling made earlier this year.

    -From CNN’s Katie Lobosco

    Trump repeated a frequent claim during his interview with Carlson that streamed during the GOP debate that his retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House was “covered” under the Presidential Records Act and that he is “allowed to do exactly that.”

    Facts First: This is false. The Presidential Records Act says the exact opposite – that the moment presidents leave office, all presidential records are to be turned over to the federal government. Keeping documents at Mar-a-Lago after his presidency concluded was in clear contravention of that law.

    According to the Presidential Records Act, “upon the conclusion of a President’s term of office, or if a President serves consecutive terms upon the conclusion of the last term, the Archivist of the United States shall assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records of that President.”

    The sentence makes clear that a president has no authority to keep documents after leaving the White House.

    The National Archives even released a statement refuting the notion that Trump’s retention of documents was covered by the Presidential Records Act, writing in a June news release that “the PRA requires that all records created by Presidents (and Vice-Presidents) be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at the end of their administrations.”

    -From CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz

    While discussing electric vehicles, Trump claimed that California “is in a big brownout because their grid is a disaster,” adding that the state’s ambitious electric vehicle goals won’t work with the grid in such shape.

    Facts First: Trump’s claim that California’s grid is currently in a “big brownout” and is a “disaster” isn’t true. California’s grid suffered rolling blackouts in 2020, but it has performed quite well in the face of extreme heat this summer, owing in large part to a massive influx of renewable energy including battery storage. These big batteries keep energy from wind and solar running when the wind isn’t blowing and sun isn’t shining. (Batteries are also being deployed at a rapid rate in Texas, a red state.)

    Another reason California’s grid has stayed stable this year even during extreme temperature spikes is the fact that a deluge of snow and rain this winter and spring has refilled reservoirs that generate electricity using hydropower.

    As Trump insinuated, there are real questions about how well the state’s grid will hold up as California’s drivers shift to electric vehicles by the millions by 2035 – the same year it will phase out selling new gas-powered cars. California state officials say they are preparing by adding new capacity to the grid and urging more people to charge their vehicles overnight and during times of the day when fewer people are using energy. But independent experts say the state needs to exponentially increase its clean energy while also building out huge amounts of new EV chargers to achieve its goals.

    -From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

    Trump and the border wall

    Trump claimed to Carlson, “I had the strongest border in the history of our country, and I built almost 500 miles of wall. You know, they’d like to say, ‘Oh, was it less?’ No, I built 500 miles. In fact, if you check with the authorities on the border, we built almost 500 miles of wall.”

    Facts First: This needs context. Trump and his critics are talking about different things when they use different figures for how much border wall was built during his presidency. Trump is referring to all of the wall built on the southern border during his administration, even in areas that already had some sort of barrier before. His critics are only counting the Trump-era wall that was built in parts of the border that did not have any previous barrier.

    A total of 458 miles of southern border wall was built under Trump, according to a federal report written two days after Trump left office and obtained by CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez. That is 52 miles of “primary” wall built where no barriers previously existed, plus 33 miles of “secondary” wall that was built in spots where no barriers previously existed, plus another 373 miles of primary and secondary wall that was built to replace previous barriers the federal government says had become “dilapidated and/or outdated.”

    Some of Trump’s rival candidates, such DeSantis and Christie, have used figures around 50 miles while criticizing Trump for failing to finish the wall – counting only the primary wall built where no barriers previously existed.

    While some Trump critics have scoffed at the replacement wall, the Trump-era construction was generally much more formidable than the older barriers it replaced, which were often designed to deter vehicles rather than people on foot. Washington Post reporter Nick Miroff tweeted in 2020: “As someone who has spent a lot of time lately in the shadow of the border wall, I need to puncture this notion that ‘replacement’ sections are ‘not new.’ There is really no comparison between vehicle barriers made from old rail ties and 30-foot bollards.”

    Ideally, both Trump and his opponents would be clearer about what they are talking about: Trump that he is including replacement barriers, his opponents that they are excluding those barriers.

    -From CNN’s Daniel Dale

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  • Biden urges UAW and Big Three automakers to reach deal to avoid strike | CNN Business

    Biden urges UAW and Big Three automakers to reach deal to avoid strike | CNN Business


    Washington DC
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden sought to ramp up pressure on the United Auto Workers union and the nation’s three unionized automakers – Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, known as the “Big Three” – one month ahead of a critical deadline for labor talks.

    “As the Big Three auto companies and the United Auto Workers come together — one month before the expiration of their contract — to negotiate a new agreement, I want to be clear about where I stand. I’m asking all sides to work together to forge a fair agreement,” Biden said in a new statement Monday.

    The White House has been closely monitoring the talks as the two sides appear far apart. The union is demanding significant pay raises of 40% or more for members to match increases in CEO pay at the companies over the last four years and a reversal of past concessions by the union.

    Negotiations could put the White House at odds with the union. While the AFL-CIO, which is made up of multiple independent unions, has already endorsed Biden’s reelection bid, calling him the “most pro-union president in our lifetimes,” the UAW itself has yet to join in that endorsement. A strike could have massive economic – and political – consequences. Biden and UAW President Shawn Fain met briefly in the West Wing last month while UAW leadership was at the White House briefing senior staff on their positions.

    The three contracts between the UAW and General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, which sells cars and trucks under the Dodge, Ram and Chrysler brands, are due to expire September 14. Fain last week denounced the most recent offer from Stellantis, throwing a copy of the offer in the trash during a video for members. Plans for strike authorization votes at all three companies is expected to be announced soon, the union said Monday.

    Traditionally the UAW will select one of the three companies to go first and have the other two put on hold while it concentrates on reaching a deal, then the union will push for similar from the other two automakers as part of a “pattern.”

    The UAW is pushing for an aggressive set of demands at the negotiating table, and has been critical of the Biden administration’s financial support for the transition to electric vehicles, arguing that the Biden administration has been overly supportive of automakers’ plans for EV battery plants that are expected to pay far less than union wages. Fain has publicly warned that UAW is prepared to strike, saying nearly 150,000 members will strike if the three automakers do not meet their demands.

    CNN has previously reported that while Biden enjoys hefty support from leadership of many unions, he has also faced lingering mistrust and concern among some of the rank-and-file of the UAW, according to people familiar with the dynamics, a perception fueled in part by the president’s intervention to avert a freight rail strike in December.

    In a nod to the UAW’s demands, Biden used the union’s “fair transition” to clean energy language.

    “I support a fair transition to a clean energy future. That means ensuring that Big Three auto jobs are good jobs that can support a family; that auto companies should honor the right to organize; take every possible step to avoid painful plant closings; and ensure that when transitions are needed, the transitions are fair and look to retool, reboot, and rehire in the same factories and communities at comparable wages, while giving existing workers the first shot to fill those jobs,” Biden said in the statement.

    The UAW said it saw the White House statement as an endorsement of it bargaining position.

    “We appreciate President Biden’s support for strong contracts that ensure good paying union jobs now and pave the way for a just transition to an EV future,” Fain said in a statement. “We agree with the president that the Big Three’s joint venture battery plants should have the same strong pay and safety standards that generations of UAW members have fought for.”

    The three automakers said they, too, want to reach deals that would avoid a strike.

    Ford pointed out that it employs more UAW members and builds more cars and trucks at US plants than any other automaker.

    “We look forward to working with the UAW on creative solutions during this time when our dramatically changing industry needs a skilled and competitive workforce more than ever,” it said.

    “Stellantis remains committed to working constructively and collaboratively with the UAW to negotiate a new agreement that balances the concerns of our 43,000 employees with our vision for the future,” said that company.

    “We will continue to bargain in good faith with the UAW to maintain our momentum and to provide opportunities for all in our EV future,” GM said in a statement.

    The union is concerned about the plans by all three automakers to convert from traditional gasoline powered vehicles to EVs in the coming decades. it takes an estimated one third less hours of work to assemble an EV than a car with an internal combustion engine, since that engine and the transmission that goes with it has so many moving parts missing from an EV.

    The Biden administration has been active in supporting the switch to EVs, providing tax credits for EV buyers and loans to build plants necessary for EVs, such as those that make batteries.

    There are about a dozen EV battery plants now under construction nationwide. For the most part, those plants are joint ventures between automakers and battery makers, and thus will not be covered under the UAW contracts with the Big Three. Workers at the one battery plant for one of the Big Three to open so far, a Warren, Ohio, plant for the joint venture between GM and LG, voted 98% in favor of joining the UAW. But the union has yet to reach a deal with plant management on a contract, and workers there are paid about half of what UAW members are paid at the Big Three.

    – CNN’s Vanessa Yurkevich contributed to this story

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  • Exclusive: Georgia prosecutors have messages showing Trump’s team is behind voting system breach | CNN Politics

    Exclusive: Georgia prosecutors have messages showing Trump’s team is behind voting system breach | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Atlanta-area prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia are in possession of text messages and emails directly connecting members of Donald Trump’s legal team to the early January 2021 voting system breach in Coffee County, sources tell CNN.

    Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to seek charges against more than a dozen individuals when her team presents its case before a grand jury next week. Several individuals involved in the voting systems breach in Coffee County are among those who may face charges in the sprawling criminal probe.

    Investigators in the Georgia criminal probe have long suspected the breach was not an organic effort sprung from sympathetic Trump supporters in rural and heavily Republican Coffee County – a county Trump won by nearly 70% of the vote. They have gathered evidence indicating it was a top-down push by Trump’s team to access sensitive voting software, according to people familiar with the situation.

    Trump allies attempted to access voting systems after the 2020 election as part of the broader push to produce evidence that could back up the former president’s baseless claims of widespread fraud.

    While Trump’s January 2021 call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and effort to put forward fake slates of electors have long been considered key pillars of Willis’ criminal probe, the voting system breach in Coffee County quietly emerged as an area of focus for investigators roughly one year ago. Since then, new evidence has slowly been uncovered about the role of Trump’s attorneys, the operatives they hired and how the breach, as well as others like it in other key states, factored into broader plans for overturning the election.

    Together, the text messages and other court documents show how Trump lawyers and a group of hired operatives sought to access Coffee County’s voting systems in the days before January 6, 2021, as the former president’s allies continued a desperate hunt for any evidence of widespread fraud they could use to delay certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

     Last year, a former Trump official testified under oath to the House January 6 select committee that plans to access voting systems in Georgia were discussed in meetings at the White House, including during an Oval Office meeting on December 18, 2020,  that included Trump. 

    Six days before pro-Trump operatives gained unauthorized access to voting systems, the local elections official who allegedly helped facilitate the breach sent a “written invitation” to attorneys working for Trump, according to text messages obtained by CNN.

    Investigators have scrutinized the actions of various individuals who were involved, including Misty Hampton, a former Coffee County elections official who authored the letter of invitation referenced in text messages and other documents that have been turned over to prosecutors, multiple sources told CNN.

    They have also examined the involvement of Trump’s then attorney Rudy Giuliani – who was informed last year he was a target in the Fulton County investigation – and fellow Trump lawyer Sidney Powell as part of their probe, according to people familiar with the matter.

    A spokesperson for Willis’ office declined to comment.

    The letter of invitation was shared with attorneys and an investigator working with Giuliani at the time, the text messages obtained by CNN show.

    On January 1, 2021 – days ahead of the January 7 voting systems breach – Katherine Friess – an attorney working with Giuliani, Sidney Powell and other Trump allies shared a “written invitation” to examine voting systems in Coffee County with a group of Trump allies.

    That group included members of Sullivan Strickler, a firm hired by Trump’s attorneys to examine voting systems in the small, heavily Republican Georgia county, according to text messages obtained by CNN.

    That same day, Friess sent a “Letter of invitation to Coffee County, Georgia” to former NYPD Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, who was working with Giuliani to find evidence that would back up their baseless claims of potential widespread voter fraud, according to court documents filed as part of an ongoing civil case.

    Friess then notified operatives who carried out the Coffee County breach and others working directly with Giuliani that Trump’s team had secured written permission, the texts show.

    CNN has not reviewed the substance of the invitation letter itself, only communications that confirm it was provided to Friess, Kerik and Sullivan Strickler employees.

    Friess could not be reached for comment.

    The messages and documents appear to link Giuliani to the Coffee County breach, while shedding light on another channel of communication between pro-Trump attorneys and the battleground state operatives who worked together to provide unauthorized individuals access to sensitive voting equipment.

    “Rudy Giuliani had nothing to do with this,” said Robert Costello, Giuliani’s attorney. “You can’t attach Rudy Giuliani to Sidney Powell’s crackpot idea.”

    “Just landed back in DC with the Mayor huge things starting to come together!” an employee from the firm Sullivan Strickler, which was hired by Sidney Powell to examine voting systems in Coffee County, wrote in a group chat with other colleagues on January 1.

    Former New York Mayor Giuliani was consistently referred to as “the Mayor,” in other texts sent by the same individual and others at the time.

    “Most immediately, we were just granted access – by written invitation! – to Coffee County’s systems. Yay!” the text reads.

    Shortly after Election Day, Hampton – still serving as the top election official for Coffee County – warned during a state election board meeting that Dominion voting machines could “very easily” be manipulated to flip votes from one candidate to another. It’s a claim that has been repeatedly debunked.

    But the Trump campaign officials took notice and reached out to Hampton that same day. “I would like to obtain as much information as possible,” a Trump campaign staffer emailed Hampton at the time, according to documents released as part of a public records request and first reported by the Washington Post.

    In early December, Hampton then delayed certification of Joe Biden’s win in Georgia by refusing to validate the recount results by a key deadline. Coffee County was the only county in Georgia that failed to certify its election results due to issues raised by Hampton at the time.

    Hampton also posted a video online claiming to expose problems with the county’s Dominion voting system. That video was used by Trump’s lawyers, including Giuliani, as part of their push to convince legislators from multiple states that there was evidence the 2020 election results were tainted by voting system issues.

    Text messages and other documents obtained by CNN show Trump allies were seeking access to Coffee County’s voting system by mid-December amid increasing demands for proof of widespread election fraud.

    Coffee County was specifically cited in draft executive orders for seizing voting machines that were presented to Trump on December 18, 2020, during a chaotic Oval Office meeting, CNN has reported. During that same meeting, Giuliani alluded to a plan to gain “voluntary access” to machines in Georgia, according to testimony from him and others before the House January 6 committee.

    Days later, Hampton shared the written invitation to access the county’s election office with a Trump lawyer, text messages obtained by CNN show. She and another location elections official, Cathy Latham, allegedly helped Trump operatives gain access to the county’s voting systems, according to documents, testimony and surveillance video produced as part of a long-running civil lawsuit focused on election security in Georgia.

    Latham, who also served as a fake elector from Georgia after the 2020 election, has come under scrutiny for her role in the Coffee County breach after surveillance video showed she allowed unauthorized outsiders to spend hours examining voting systems there.

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  • NYT: Architect of Trump fake electors plot thought SCOTUS would ‘likely’ reject plan, but pushed ahead anyway | CNN Politics

    NYT: Architect of Trump fake electors plot thought SCOTUS would ‘likely’ reject plan, but pushed ahead anyway | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    An internal Trump campaign memo from December 2020, made public Tuesday by The New York Times, reveals new details about how the campaign initiated its plan to subvert the Electoral College process and install fake GOP electors in multiple states after losing the 2020 presidential election.

    In the December 6, 2020, memo, pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro laid out the plan to put forth slates of Republican electors in seven key swing states that then-President Donald Trump lost. The memo then outlines how then-Vice President Mike Pence, while presiding over the Electoral College certification on January 6, 2021, should declare “that it is his constitutional power and duty, alone, as President of the Senate, to both open and count the votes” from the GOP electors.

    Chesebro conceded in the memo that this idea was a “controversial” long shot that would “likely” be rejected by the Supreme Court – but nonetheless promoted the strategy. He wrote that despite the legal dubiousness, “letting matters play out this way would guarantee that public attention would be riveted on the evidence of electoral abuses by the Democrats and would also buy the Trump campaign more time to win litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or add to Trump’s column.”

    The fake electors scheme has become an integral part of the recent federal indictment against Trump, which alleges the plot took shape after it became clear that efforts to convince state officials to not certify Joe Biden’s victories would be unsuccessful.

    CNN previously reported that the scheme was overseen by Trump campaign officials and led by Rudy Giuliani. Chesebro, who authored the newly released memo, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Trump indictment and was described by prosecutors as “an attorney who assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.” He has not been charged with any crimes.

    According to Trump’s January 6-related indictment and previous CNN reporting, there were multiple planning calls between Trump campaign officials and GOP state operatives, and Giuliani participated in at least one call. The Trump campaign lined up supporters to fill elector slots, secured meeting rooms for the fake electors to meet on December 14, 2020, and circulated drafts of fake certificates that they later signed.

    At the time, their actions were largely dismissed as an elaborate political cosplay. But it eventually became clear that this was part of an orchestrated plan.

    “Under the plan, the submission of these fraudulent slates would create a fake controversy at the certification proceeding and position the Vice President-presiding on January 6 as President of the Senate to supplant legitimate electors with the Defendant’s fake electors and certify the Defendant as president,” the indictment states.

    Prosecutors say Chesebro told Guiliani – both identified in the indictment only as co-conspirator 5 and co-conspirator 1, respectively – that he had been told by state-level operatives that “it could appear treasonous for the AZ electors to vote on Monday if there is no pending court proceeding.”

    “I recognize that what I suggest is a bold, controversial strategy, and that there are many reasons why it might not end up being executed on Jan. 6,” Chesebro wrote in the December 6 memo, despite pushing the idea and outlining a plan in the days to come. “But as long as it is one possible option, to preserve it as a possibility it is important that the Trump-Pence electors cast their electoral votes on Dec. 14.”

    That is ultimately what ended up happening on December 14, 2020.

    Many of the fake GOP electors who signed the phony certificates that day have since come under legal scrutiny: The fake electors from Michigan are facing state-level felony charges for forgery and publishing a counterfeit record, and many of the fake electors from Georgia are targets of the 2020-related criminal probe in Fulton County.

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  • Pence campaign meets donor threshold to make first primary debate | CNN Politics

    Pence campaign meets donor threshold to make first primary debate | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Former Vice President Mike Pence has reached the donor threshold to qualify for the first GOP presidential debate later this month in Milwaukee, an aide told CNN on Monday.

    The Republican National Committee set a requirement of 40,000 unique donors minimum to qualify for the first debate, in addition to polling requirements and a commitment to support the eventual GOP nominee. Pence had already met the polling criteria to make the stage.

    Fox News first reported on Pence reaching the threshold.

    As CNN has reported, seven other candidates have met the polling threshold and say they’ve also reached the fundraising requirements for the August debate: Former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson also meets the polling threshold for inclusion in the debate following the release of a new national poll from Morning Consult on Tuesday, though his campaign has not yet said that it has met the fundraising requirement.

    While some candidates offered gift cards or a percentage of the money raised to appeal for donations, Pence and his team relied on direct mail and asking for just $1.

    Trump, the current front-runner who was federally indicted in the special counsel’s 2020 election interference probe last week, has not yet committed to participating in the debate. If Trump attends, Pence would be sharing a debate stage with his former running mate and boss.

    “Sometimes people ask me what it would be like to debate Donald Trump and I tell people I’ve debated Donald Trump a thousand times. Never with cameras on,” Pence told reporters last week in New Hampshire.

    Pence – who often says he’s “well-known” but not “known well” – added that being on the debate stage will allow voters to “take a fresh look” at him.

    The former vice president jumped into the race in June and has cast himself as a Reagan conservative. He has called for cuts to government spending, the tax cuts enacted under the Trump administration to be made permanent, increased military spending and domestic energy production, and continued US support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. He’s also been outspoken against abortion and gender-affirming treatment for minors.

    Pence’s path to the nomination, however, is complicated by how voters in his party view his handling of January 6, 2021. While some Republicans have thanked Pence for his actions that day, many Trump supporters remain convinced that Pence could have stopped Congress’ certification of the election results.

    In a recent interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Pence said Trump “was wrong then, and he’s wrong now” that he – then the vice president presiding over Congress’ count of the Electoral College vote – had a right to reject the election result.

    “The American people deserve to know that President Trump asked me to put him over my oath to the Constitution, but I kept my oath and I always will. And I’m running for president in part because I think anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be President of the United States,” he said.

    Pence received more than 7,200 donations last Wednesday, the day after Trump was indicted on federal charges, according to his campaign.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • A day of legal action in Trump imbroglio previews a chaotic 2024 election year | CNN Politics

    A day of legal action in Trump imbroglio previews a chaotic 2024 election year | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    A whirl of developments in a quartet of cases in four separate cities encapsulate the vast legal quagmire swamping Donald Trump and threatening to overwhelm the entire 2024 presidential campaign.

    But Monday’s hectic lawyering was just a tame preview of next year when the ex-president and current Republican front-runner may be constantly shuttling between courtroom criminal trials and the campaign trail.

    A day of legal intrigue brought revelations, judgments, disputes and filings in cases related to Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election, the classified documents case, efforts to thwart Joe Biden’s win in Georgia, and even in a defamation case dating back to Trump’s personal behavior toward women in the 1990s.

    It’s already almost impossible for voters who may be asked to decide whether Trump is fit for a return to the Oval Office – or at least to carry the GOP banner into the election – to keep pace with all the competing legal twists and the scale of his plight.

    A confusing fog in which all the cases blend together could work to the former president’s advantage as he seeks a White House comeback while proclaiming he’s a victim of political persecution by the Biden administration.

    But the deeper his legal mire gets, Trump’s rivals for the GOP nomination are getting braver in suggesting that his fight against becoming a convicted felon could be a general election liability. Trump’s dominance in the GOP primary has been boosted from his criminal indictments to date. But the sheer volume of cases unfolding alongside his campaign is increasingly daunting.

    In Washington, Trump’s lawyers just beat a deadline to file a brief in a dispute over the handling of evidence ahead of a trial in the election subversion case, and accused the government of seeking to muzzle his voice as he runs for a new White House term.

    In another glimpse into the breadth of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation that could prove troubling to the ex-president, CNN exclusively reported that Trump ally Bernie Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, met Smith’s investigators for an interview on Monday. The discussion focused on what Trump’s former attorney and Kerik’s associate, Rudy Giuliani – otherwise known as Co-Conspirator 1 – did to try to convince the former president he actually won the 2020 election. The question will be a key one when the case finally comes to trial.

    Trump’s tough day in the courts had opened with a judge in Manhattan throwing out his defamation counter suit against E. Jean Carroll, which he did in stark language that recalled the ex-president’s loss in an earlier civil trial in which the jury found he sexually abused the writer.

    Then, in a surprise move in West Palm Beach, Florida, the Trump-appointed judge who will oversee his classified documents trial asked lawyers for co-defendant Walt Nauta to comment on the legality of prosecutors using a Washington grand jury to keep investigating. The fact the probe is still active despite several indictments is hardly a good sign for Trump. And Judge Aileen Cannon’s move revived debate over whether she was favoring the ex-president’s team following criticism of her earlier handling of a dispute over documents taken from Trump’s home in an FBI search.

    There were also new signs in Atlanta that indictments could be imminent in a probe into efforts to steal Biden’s election win in the key state, as it emerged that ex-Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican and CNN political contributor, has been subpoenaed to testify to a grand jury.

    All of this frenzied activity unfolding on one day represents just a snapshot of the complex legal morass now surrounding Trump. It’s just a taste of the enormous strain the ex-president is about to feel as he campaigns for a return to the Oval Office. The crush of cases will also impose increasing financial demands. Already, Trump’s leadership PAC has been diverting cash raised from small-dollar donors to pay legal fees for the former president and associates that might instead have gone toward the 2024 campaign.

    In several of the cases on Monday, there were signs of the extraordinary complications inherent in prosecuting a former president and the front-runner for the Republican nomination. Judges, for instance, are faced with decisions that would normally go unnoticed by the public in the court system but that will now attract a glaring media and political spotlight.

    And while Monday was notable for a head-spinning sequence of legal maneuvering, it did not even encompass all of the pending cases against Trump. He is also due to go on trial in March – in the middle of the GOP primary season – in a case arising from a hush money payment to an adult film star. As with his other indictments, Trump has pleaded not guilty.

    For all his capacity to operate in the eye of converging storms of scandal and controversy, Trump’s mood is becoming increasingly agitated. In recent days he has attacked Smith, the Justice Department, the judge in the election subversion case, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, and even the US national women’s soccer team after they crashed out of the World Cup on penalties.

    One of Trump’s most incendiary posts on his Truth Social network was at the center of one of Monday’s legal dramas – wrangling between Smith’s prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers over the handling of evidence at the center of the forthcoming trial.

    Prosecutors cited Trump writing on his Truth Social network on Friday, “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!” in a filing that requested strict rules on how he could use evidence that will be turned over to the defense as part of the pre-trial discovery process. Trump’s lawyers had asked for an extension to Monday’s deadline, but Judge Tanya Chutkan refused, in a fresh sign of her possible willingness to schedule a swift trial, which the ex-president wants to delay until after the 2024 election.

    In its brief, the defense proposed narrower rules than those sought by prosecutors. Spats over discovery aren’t unusual early in a trial process. But Trump’s filing added insight into how his team will approach a case in which he has pleaded not guilty.

    “In a trial about First Amendment rights, the government seeks to restrict First Amendment rights,” the attorneys said in the court filing.

    When it comes to Smith’s indictment, Trump’s lawyers are arguing that he was within his rights to claim the election was stolen. Smith’s strategy is, however, apparently designed to avoid a First Amendment trap, and alleges that the criminal activity occurred not in what Trump said, but in actions like the ex-president’s pressure on local officials over the election and on former Vice President Mike Pence to delay its certification.

    The Trump team’s filing went on to claim that the case was in itself an example of political victimization of their client, underscoring the fusion between his courtroom defense and his presidential campaign.

    “Worse, it does so against its administration’s primary political opponent, during an election season in which the administration, prominent party members, and media allies have campaigned on the indictment and proliferated its false allegations,” the filing said.

    In a Monday night order, Chutkan signaled she would hold a hearing this week on the dispute and told the parties to come up with, by 3 p.m. Tuesday, two options for when such a hearing could be held this week.

    Any prolonged debate over the terms of the pre-discovery process – let alone the many other expected pre-trial motions – will play into the hands of the defense. Trump is showing every sign that part of his motivation in running for a second White House term is to reacquire executive powers that could lead to federal cases against him being frozen. The timing of the January 6, 2021, case, and any potential conviction, is therefore hugely significant with a general election looming in November 2024.

    Trump has called for the recusal of Chutkan, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama. His legal team has called for a shift of trial venue away from the diverse US capital, potentially to West Virginia, one of the Whitest and most pro-Trump states in the nation. These pre-trial gambits are unlikely to succeed. But they help to create extreme pressure on the judge and to build a case for Trump supporters that the legal process is biased against him – a narrative that could provide especially inflammatory if he is eventually convicted.

    Trump’s rhetoric about the case has raised some concerns about the possibility of witness intimidation – especially as some of his supporters who were tried for their part in the mob attack on the US Capitol on January 6, have testified that they were spurred to action by his rhetoric.

    CNN observed increased security around Chutkan on Monday. Security is also increased around the Superior Court in Fulton County, Georgia, where a decision is expected in days on whether to hit Trump with a fourth criminal indictment.

    Any normal political candidate would have seen their political ambitions crushed by even one of the cases in Trump’s bulging portfolio of legal jeopardy. It is, however, a sign of the ex-president’s extraordinary and unbroken hold on the Republican Party and its voters that he is still the runaway front-runner in the primary.

    But one of his top rivals, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is slowly becoming more willing to criticize Trump publicly, after being cautious about alienating Trump supporters who feel the ex-president is the victim of a political witch hunt. DeSantis told NBC that “of course” Trump lost the 2024 election, as he blitzes early voting states New Hampshire and Iowa and makes the case that the ex-president’s legal exposure is a distraction the GOP cannot afford if it is to oust Biden from the White House after a single term. It may seem absurd that DeSantis is risking his political career by stating the obvious truth about the 2020 election, but Trump has made signing up to his false reality a test of loyalty among base voters.

    And Pence, who rejected Trump’s public pressure to thwart the certification of Biden’s election – a scheme at the center of Smith’s case – indicated over the weekend that he may testify in Trump’s trial if required to do so by law.

    The spectacle of a former vice presidential running mate testifying against the man who picked him for his ticket would be an extreme twist even in the Trump era of shattered political conventions.

    Thanks to Trump’s unfathomable and widening legal nightmare, nothing about the 2024 election is going to be anywhere near normal.

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  • Trump argues against more restrictive rules over evidence in 2020 election interference case | CNN Politics

    Trump argues against more restrictive rules over evidence in 2020 election interference case | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump’s legal team has proposed narrower rules than those sought by prosecutors over what he can do with evidence he is provided in the criminal election interference case.

    In a new court filing on Monday, Trump’s lawyers leaned heavily into claims that special counsel prosecutors are on a politically motivated campaign to restrict his First Amendment rights.

    “In a trial about First Amendment rights, the government seeks to restrict First Amendment rights,” the attorneys said in the court filing. “Worse, it does so against its administration’s primary political opponent, during an election season in which the administration, prominent party members, and media allies have campaigned on the indictment and proliferated its false allegations.”

    Prosecutors have proposed a more restrictive protective order over evidence in the case, pointing to Trump’s public statements that they say could have a “harmful chilling effect on witnesses or adversely affect the fair administration of justice in this case.”

    The latest filing shows that prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers are in disagreement over the most granular details of the so-called protective order, a type of order that can usually be issued in a case without much drama.

    The Justice Department previously hasn’t asked for any special protections over records Trump’s team already has that may relate to the case, or information that’s already publicly available.

    Smith’s and Trump’s teams have also fought bitterly in court filings over the schedule for resolving the dispute over the rules.

    Trump’s new submission to US District Judge Tanya Chutkan – who rejected his weekend bid to push back the deadline for his response to the prosecutors’ proposal – pointed to comments from President Joe Biden and even a meme posted on his Twitter account that Trump’s lawyers claim show how Biden has “capitalized on the indictment.”

    Trump’s lawyers acknowledged in the filing that there was a need to keep private certain classes of evidence handed over to him in the case, suggesting that – despite the tone of their submission – their position was not actually that far apart from what prosecutors recommended.

    “However, the need to protect that information does not require a blanket gag order over all documents produced by the government,” the Trump filing said. “Rather, the Court can, and should, limit its protective order to genuinely sensitive materials – a less restrictive alternative that would satisfy any government interest in confidentiality while preserving the First Amendment rights of President Trump and the public.”

    Among the changes to the Smith team proposal that Trump is asking for is a narrowing of what would be considered “sensitive” discovery materials in the case – a subset of documents for which prosecutors are seeking stricter disclosure rules. The former president also wants to expand who can access certain evidentiary materials, so to include people not being employed to work on Trump’s case, such as volunteers.

    Trump’s lawyers also recommended changes to procedures for establishing how non-public evidence will be dealt with during pre-trial proceedings, as well as in trial.

    Prosecutors in a criminal case can seek a protective order from a court to prevent defendants from speaking publicly about sensitive and confidential information produced during discovery in the case.

    The government usually asks for such orders to ensure other individuals involved in a case – like witnesses – won’t be potentially subjected to undue pressure by defendants in a case. Such orders also often hew to federal rules that limit what can be made public from a grand jury proceeding and under what circumstances that information can be disclosed. Requests for the orders are routine, and judges typically issue them in both criminal and civil cases.

    Unlike protective orders, which tend to be narrow in scope, a gag order prevents a defendant from talking publicly about a pending case. These orders are seen more often in high-profile cases but are still less common than protective orders due to the constitutional concerns surrounding them.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Trump heads to South Carolina after a week filled with his legal drama | CNN Politics

    Trump heads to South Carolina after a week filled with his legal drama | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump is set to visit South Carolina on Saturday, wrapping up a week that has been defined by his historic third indictment.

    Trump’s Saturday trip to the early-primary state – he’ll visit Columbia, South Carolina, for the state GOP’s Silver Elephant Dinner – follows a Friday night stop in Alabama. The two were his first campaign events after his arraignment Thursday in Washington,DC, in special prosecutor Jack Smith’s investigation into his efforts to remain in the White House despite losing the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.

    In Montgomery on Friday night, Trump conflated his actions in seeking to overturn the 2020 election with those of Democrats, including Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Stacey Abrams after the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election, in the wake of their losses. He said he faces “bogus charges.”

    He also said if he is elected in 2024, he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden’s family.

    “When they indicted their political opponent and they did that, I said, well, now the gloves are off,” Trump said of Biden. “The Republicans better get tough, and they better get smart, because most of them look like a bunch of weak jerks right now. … You have to fight fire with fire. You can’t allow this to go on.”

    Trump’s campaign on Friday went on the attack against the prosecutors who have brought cases against or are investigating the former president. It released a video attacking those prosecutors one day after Trump was arrested and arraigned for a third time.

    The video attacks Smith, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis, dubbing the group the “Fraud Squad.”

    “Meet the cast of unscrupulous accomplices he’s assembled to get Trump,” the narrator says in the video of Biden.

    The video also uses footage of Biden falling off his bike and tripping up the stairs to Air Force One.

    Lashing out over the costs of defending himself and his allies in myriad legal battles, Trump also called for the Supreme Court to “intercede.”

    “CRAZY! My political opponent has hit me with a barrage of weak lawsuits, including D.A., A.G., and others, which require massive amounts of my time & money to adjudicate,” Trump complained on Truth Social. “Resources that would have gone into Ads and Rallies, will now have to be spent fighting these Radical Left Thugs in numerous courts throughout the Country. I am leading in all Polls, including against Crooked Joe, but this is not a level playing field. It is Election Interference, & the Supreme Court must intercede.”

    His campaign has used the legal proceedings as a fundraising tool, hauling in small-dollar donations.

    “Trump is in THE AIR!” his campaign said in an email to supporters Thursday. “Before he arrives at the courthouse for his hearing, can 10,000 pro-Trump patriots sign on to defend him & end the witch hunt?”

    A handful of GOP presidential candidates, including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Texas Rep. Will Hurd and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, have criticized Trump’s actions.

    Hurd, on Fox News on Thursday, said that Trump’s court appearance was the “third time in four months in courts. It’s unacceptable, we didn’t have to be here.”

    Former Vice President Mike Pence’s campaign is selling T-shirts and hats branded with the phrase “Too Honest,” referencing a phrase Trump allegedly uttered to Pence when he refused to go along with the then-president’s request to reject electoral votes and change the outcome of the 2020 election.

    According to the federal indictment, in one conversation on January 1, 2021, Trump told Pence he was “too honest” when the then-vice president said that he lacked the authority to change the results.

    After Trump was indicted earlier this week, Pence said that “anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president” and added that Trump “was surrounded by a group of crackpot lawyers who kept telling him what his itching ears wanted to hear.”

    However, much of the Republican field has so far refused to take aim at Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which are at the heart of the federal charges he faces in Washington.

    Trump’s top-polling rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, on Friday said he would pardon Trump if he is elected in 2024. He also defended the former president, arguing that the laws federal prosecutors say Trump broke were “never intended to apply to this type of situation.”

    The Florida governor, who was campaigning in Iowa, told reporters his candidacy for president would be focused on the future and starting to heal “divisions in this country.”

    DeSantis indicated that he would pardon Trump if he were convicted, echoing comments he recently made on “Outkick” with Clay Travis.

    “I’ve said for many weeks now, I don’t think it’s in the best interest of the country to have a former president – that’s almost 80 years old – go to prison. Just like Nixon or Ford pardoned Nixon, you know, sometimes you got to put this stuff behind you,” he said.

    DeSantis’ comments underscored the reality that most of Trump’s 2024 GOP rivals see little to gain by angering a base that is still largely supportive of the former president.

    South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott on Friday criticized the Justice Department for the “weaponization of their power” in his first on-camera reaction to the third indictment and arraignment of Trump.

    Scott told reporters following an immigration roundtable event in Yuma, Arizona, he believes DOJ spends “a lot of time hunting Republicans” while protecting Democrats, specifically referencing the president’s son Hunter Biden.

    “My perspective is that the DOJ continues to weaponize their power against political opponents. It seems like they spend a lot of time protecting Hunter Biden and Democrats and a lot of time hunting Republicans,” Scott said.

    The most recent polls show that Trump remains the clear front-runner in the 2024 GOP primary. A poll of likely Republican caucusgoers in Iowa from The New York Times/Siena College released Friday showed Trump with 44% support, compared to DeSantis’ 20% and Scott’s 9%, with no other candidate topping 5%.

    His lead is even wider nationally. Trump holds the support of 54% of likely GOP primary voters, a New York Times/Siena College poll released earlier this week found, while DeSantis has 17% support and no other candidate exceeds 3%.

    Just 17% of likely Republican primary voters think that Trump has “committed any serious federal crimes,” and only 10% more say that although they don’t think he committed a serious crime, he “did something wrong in his handling of classified documents.” Three-quarters (75%) say that after the 2020 elections, Trump “was just exercising his right to contest the election,” while only 19% believe he “went so far that he threatened American democracy.” And 71% say that regarding the investigations Trump is facing, Republicans “need to stand behind Trump.”

    The Republican base could be at odds with the broader electorate: Two-thirds of Americans (65%) say that the charges Trump faces over efforts to overturn the 2020 elections are serious, according to a new poll from ABC News and Ipsos conducted after Trump’s latest indictment.

    There are broad partisan gaps in views of the seriousness of the new charges, with 91% of Democrats calling them serious along with 67% of independents, though just 38% of Republicans agree. The gap between Democrats and Republicans widens to 65 points when looking at those who call the charges “very serious” (84% of Democrats feel that way vs. 19% of Republicans; 53% of independents say the same).

    While many of Trump’s rivals are carefully avoiding direct confrontation with the former president, Trump is taking direct aim at DeSantis.

    Top Trump advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita sent an open memo on Thursday attacking DeSantis’ efforts to reboot his campaign.

    “DeSantis’s campaign is marred by idiocy,” the memo reads, as it touts Trump’s lead in polls over his GOP rivals.

    The memo compared DeSantis’ campaign to Sen. John McCain’s 2008 bid and argued both campaigns overspent and didn’t fundraise enough. The late McCain and Trump had a bitter feud for years.

    “John McCain did not spend the opening week of his reboot explaining why his staff produced a video with Nazi imagery, and defending his comments that slavery provided ‘some benefit’ to enslaved Americans – while attacking black Republicans publicly in the process,” the memo reads, referencing several recent missteps DeSantis and his campaign have made.

    Developments on Capitol Hill also underscored that most of the GOP has not abandoned Trump.

    North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, a member of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Republican leadership team, on Thursday called on Congress to scrutinize the federal investigation into Trump’s actions.

    Tillis said in a statement that the new indictment carries “a heavy burden” to show that “criminal conduct actually occurred.”

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  • Takeaways from the arraignment of Donald Trump in the special counsel’s election subversion case | CNN Politics

    Takeaways from the arraignment of Donald Trump in the special counsel’s election subversion case | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty in a Washington, DC, federal courthouse Thursday to federal criminal charges stemming from his plots to overturn the 2020 election, in a 27-minute proceeding where the first flashes of the defense’s tactics emerged.

    It was the third occasion that Trump was arraigned on criminal charges this year, and the hearing marked the public debut of the team of lawyers in special counsel Jack Smith’s office who will be leading the prosecution.

    Here are takeaways from the hearing:

    In the classified documents case that Smith has also brought against the former president in June, the Trump team has sought to slow-walk the schedule for the proceedings. There were hints of a similar strategy in the first hearing in the election subversion case.

    Much of Thursday’s hearing was staid and to-script. But the tone sharpened when the judge said the prosecutors should file recommendations for the trial date and length in seven days, and that the Trump team should respond within seven days after that.

    Trump attorney John Lauro told the judge that they would need to look at the amount of evidence they’ll be receiving from the government – which he said could be “massive” — before they could address that question.

    “There is no question in our mind, your honor, that Mr. Trump is entitled to a fair and just trial,” Lauro said, nodding both to Trump’s right to a speedy trial as well as his right to due process.

    Prosecutor Thomas Windom previewed that the special counsel would propose this case unfolding under a normal timeline under the Speedy Trial Act, which sets a time limit – unless certain exemptions are sought – for criminal cases to go to trial.

    Judge Tanya Chutkan intends to schedule a trial date at an August 28 hearing, a magistrate judge said Thursday. Before the trial, Chutkan may need to preside over disputes over whether the case should be dismissed to do legal flaws, when the trial should start and what evidence can be presented to a jury.

    Trump may argue that a trial should wait until after the 2024 election, an argument his legal team made unsuccessfully in the classified documents case, and his lawyers have also previewed efforts to seek a change of venue for the case, with claims that the DC jury pool is politically biased against the former president and 2024 Republican front-runner.

    There’s likely to be more added to the pile of legal problems on the former president’s plate.

    In Georgia, in the coming weeks, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to bring charges in her election subversion probe and it’s possible that Trump will be indicted in that.

    And then there’s the other case from Smith alleging Trump mishandled classified documents from his White House and then obstructed the probe into the materials. That case is currently scheduled to go trial next May, and there will be regular pre-trial proceedings (at which, Trump is not required to appear) before that. There’s also the criminal case that Manhattan prosecutors brought against Trump for a 2016 campaign hush money scheme, currently slated for trial in March.

    Additionally there’s number of civil lawsuits he faces, including a second defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll, well as the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case against his family and businesses.

    This court calendar is overlaid against his 2024 campaign schedule as well. The first Republican presidential debate, for instance, is on August 23.

    Though Trump will not be required to appear in court for hearings on pre-trial matters, he may seek to do so, if he embraces a strategy of making a spectacle out of the election subversion case. Speaking on the airport tarmac, Trump made brief remarks that the prosecution was political after Thursday’s hearing, and he routinely fundraises off of every new development putting him in deeper legal trouble.

    Thursday marked the public debut of the Smith team that will handle the election subversion prosecution. (Some of the special counsel lawyers who are leading the classified documents case were previously involved in the public proceedings stemming from the lawsuit Trump filed last year challenging the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago).

    Smith himself attended the hearing, as he did for Trump’s first appearance in the classified documents case in Florida earlier this year. As the courtroom waited for the hearing to start, Smith and Trump occasionally looked over at one another – Smith looking towards Trump more often than Trump looked over to him.

    Windom – who moved from the US attorney’s office in Maryland to play a central role in the federal election subversion investigation, spoke on behalf of the government Thursday. Also at the prosecutors’ table was Molly Gaston, an alum of the DC US attorney’s public integrity section, which handles some of the most politically sensitive cases for the Justice Department.

    Gaston was a lead prosecutor on last year’s contempt of Congress case against ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon, and also worked on the prosecutions of Rick Gates – a former Trump campaign aide – and Paul Manafort, Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman. Gaston was also present in the courtroom Tuesday when the foreperson of the grand jury for the 2020 election probe returned the indictment against Trump.

    Trump was represented by Lauro and Todd Blanche at Thursday’s hearing. Lauro is a relatively recent addition to the Trump legal team and is handling the 2020-election related matters.

    Blanche, meanwhile, has been across several Trump cases. He is representing Trump in Smith’s classified documents prosecution as well is in the 2016 campaign hush money case brought by Manhattan’s district attorney.

    Evan Corcoran, who has not formally entered an appearance in the case, attended the hearing, sitting on the row in the courtroom well behind the defense table.

    Lauro did the talking for the defense at Thursday’s hearing. He’s also made himself a prominent defender of the former president in the public arena, with multiple appearance in recent days on CNN and other networks.

    While the defense lawyers were mostly there Thursday to walk Trump through the steps of a first appearance and arraignment, Lauro had the opportunity to show the vigor with which he’ll argue on behalf of his client. He didn’t get into the substantive defense arguments that he has previewed in TV hits, but his insistence that the Trump team may need more time before nailing down a trial schedule was emphatic.

    “All that we would ask, your honor, is the time to fairly defend our client. And to do that we need a little time,” he said.

    While Trump’s hearing Thursday largely followed the script of the arraignments he’s had in the classified documents and the 2016 hush money criminal cases against him. But it was happening in a courthouse that has had to constantly had to process and re-process the violence of January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol that his election lies helped provoke.

    For the last two-and-a-half years since the attack, the former president has been a stalking horse in the DC courthouse, which has hosted the proceedings for more than 1,000 Trump supporters who have been have been charged for the riot.

    Judges have obliquely acknowledged the role the former president played in egging on the mob, while recounting the direct view they had to the violence that day. Defense attorneys and prosecutors have argued over how much of the blame should be placed on him. Metropolitan and Capitol police officers are frequently seen in the courthouse to testify about the physical and psychological trauma they suffered from the riot. And defendants and their families, in their pleas for mercy, have invoked Trump as well.

    In the election subversion case, Trump’s attorneys have previewed arguments that the case should be moved elsewhere, given the city’s political bent. But the DC federal courthouse is where hundreds of his supporters have received fair trials, with some securing acquittals, in the Capitol mob cases.

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  • Deadly communal violence flares in India a month before world leader summit | CNN

    Deadly communal violence flares in India a month before world leader summit | CNN


    Gurugram and New Delhi
    CNN
     — 

    Separate outbreaks of violence this week, including the alleged shooting of three Muslim men by a police officer on a train, have exposed the deep communal fissures in India weeks before it welcomes Group of 20 (G20) leaders to the capital.

    Violence erupted in the northern state of Harayana state on Monday after a right-wing Hindu organization led a religious procession in the city of Nuh.

    Clashes spread to several districts of the finance and tech hub, Gurugram, also known as Gurgaon, home to more than 1.5 million people and hundreds of global firms, where violent mobs predominantly targeted Muslim-owned properties, setting buildings ablaze and smashing shops and restaurants.

    At least six people died, including a cleric who was inside a mosque that was set alight, and more than 110 people have been arrested, authorities said.

    Gurugram’s district counselor urged residents to remain home and ordered the closure of some private education institutes and government offices.

    As the violence unfolded, about 1,300 kilometers (807 miles) south in Maharashtra on a train traveling to Mumbai, another deadly attack demonstrated the depth of the country’s sectarian divide.

    Haryana Police conduct checks near Nuh Chowk on August 1, 2023 in Gurugram, India.

    A police officer opened fire on a moving train, killing four people, including a senior constable and three Muslim passengers, according to local reports and some family members CNN has spoken with.

    In a video that has emerged of the aftermath and quickly gone viral, the officer can be seen standing over a lifeless body, rifle in arm, as terrified travelers huddle at the end the coach.

    The officer glances at the body, then scans the carriage before saying: “If you want to vote, if you want to live in Hindustan (India), then there’s only (Narendra) Modi and Yogi (Adityanath).”

    Referencing the country’s leader, and the Hindu monk turned chief minister of India’s most populous state, he appeared to be advocating for their popular, but deeply divisive policies.

    One of the victims, Asgar Ali, was a bangle seller on his way to take a new job in Mumbai when the fatal attack took place, his cousin Mohammed told CNN, adding that Ali is survived by a wife and four children.

    “We haven’t heard a lot from the authorities,” he added. “But I believe this happened because we are Muslim.”

    Police have arrested the officer and a motive is yet to be determined, authorities have said. However, opposition politicians and activists have called the attack a “hate crime” that targeted India’s Muslim minority population.

    Police haven’t released the names of the passengers. CNN has contacted the Maharashtra police but is yet to receive a response.

    Asaduddin Owaisi, a member of parliament and leader of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen political party called it a “terror attack that specifically targeted Muslims.”

    Another lawmaker and member of India’s main opposition Congress party, Jairam Ramesh, said it was a “cold-blooded murder” that was the result of a polarized media and political landscape.

    The image of India that Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) want to project is one of a confident, vibrant, and modern superpower – and it will be one they want on display in India when G20 leaders meet in New Delhi next month.

    But analysts say these scenes of violence underscore an uncomfortable reality as the BJP’s Hindu nationalist policies gain momentum in the world’s largest democracy after nearly a decade of Modi’s rule.

    On Wednesday, hundreds of members from the Hindu extremist right-wing Bajrang Dal group took to the streets in several cities, including Delhi, burning effigies and chanting slogans against Muslims in protest against what they called “Islamic jihad and terrorism.”

    Asim Ali, a political researcher based in New Delhi and no relation to Asgar Ali, said that official silence over sectarian assaults and rhetoric is encouraging for the radical groups and such attacks have become “more brazen” since BJP ascended to power nearly a decade ago.

    “When you don’t take action against these elements, the message that gets sent is that it’s okay,” he told CNN. “If the government spoke (against it), it would help.”

    Ethnic violence has been raging in the northeastern state of Manipur for the last two months, a topic that has received little public comment from Modi.

    Ali fears sectarian tensions may only worsen next year as India heads into a bitterly fought election with Modi seeking a third term and an opposition building a coalition to unseat him.

    The latest communal violence come against a broader rise in hate crimes against minority groups.

    A study by economist Deepankar Basu noted a 786% increase in hate crimes against all minorities between 2014 and 2018, following the BJP’s election victory.

    The BJP, however, says it does not discriminate against minorities and “treats all its citizens with equality.”

    But Basu’s study shows – and news reports indicate – the brunt of these hate crimes targeted Muslims. And activists point to a host of recent incidents that they say contribute to India’s sharp communal divide.

    Last month, the BJP chief minister of the state of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, blamed Muslims for the soaring prices of tomatoes. His accusation came weeks after he lashed out at former US President Barack Obama, saying Indian police should “take care of” the many “Hussain Obama” in the country, referring to the country’s Muslims.

    Former US President Obama is not a Muslim.

    Meanwhile Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh who was referenced by the police officer allegedly involved in the train shooting, is among the most divisive of the BJP politicians.

    Since he took office, the state has already passed legislation that, critics say, is rooted in “Hindutva” – the ideological bedrock of Hindu nationalism.

    It has protected cows, an animal considered sacred to Hindus, from slaughter, and made it increasingly difficult to transport cattle. It also introduced a controversial anti-conversion bill, which makes it difficult for interfaith couples to marry or for people to convert to Islam or Christianity. Some cities named after historic Muslim figures have also been renamed to reflect India’s Hindu history.

    Adityanath is also known for his provocative rhetoric against Muslims.

    He once praised former US President Donald Trump’s travel ban barring citizens of several Muslim-majority countries and called for India to take similar measures, according to local channel NDTV.

    India has one of the largest Muslim populations in the world with an estimated 170 million adherents, roughly 15 percent of its 1.4 billion population.

    Adityanath’s cabinet members have previously denied allegations they are promoting Hindu nationalism.

    But prominent Muslim author and journalist, Rana Ayyub, who has written extensively about India’s sectarian shift, says the current political rhetoric “emboldens” radical right wing groups who feel increasingly protected and untouchable in today’s India.

    “It feels like an Orwellian novel playing out in front of you,” she said, adding she fears for the safety of her Muslim friends and family. “I think the silence of the country is a tacit approval for these hate politics.”

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  • Biden administration defends communications with social media companies in high-stakes court fight | CNN Business

    Biden administration defends communications with social media companies in high-stakes court fight | CNN Business


    Washington, DC
    CNN
     — 

    The Biden administration on Thursday defended its communications with social media giants in court, arguing those channels must stay open so that the federal government can help protect the public from threats to election security, Covid-19 misinformation and other dangers.

    The closely watched court fight reflects how social media has become an informational battleground for major social issues. It has revealed the messy challenges for social media companies as they try to manage the massive amounts of information on their platforms.

    And it has highlighted warnings by independent researchers, watchdog groups and government officials that malicious actors will continue to try to disrupt the country’s democracy by flooding the internet with bogus and divisive material ahead of the 2024 elections.

    In oral arguments before a New Orleans-based federal appeals court, the US government challenged a July injunction that blocked several federal agencies from discussing certain social media posts and sharing other information with online platforms, amid allegations by state governments that those communications amounted to a form of unconstitutional censorship.

    The appeals court last month temporarily blocked the injunction from taking effect. But the outcome of Thursday’s arguments will determine the ultimate fate of the order, which placed new limits on the Departments of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services and other federal agencies’ ability to coordinate with tech companies and civil society groups.

    If upheld by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the injunction would suppress a broad range of public-private partnerships and undermine the US government’s mission to protect the public, the Biden administration argued.

    “For example, if there were a natural disaster, and there were untrue statements circulating on social media that were damaging to the public interest, the government would be powerless under the injunction to discourage social media companies from further disseminating those incorrect statements,” said Daniel Tenny, a Justice Department lawyer.

    Now, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit is set to decide how executive agencies may respond to those threats.

    At issue is whether the US government unconstitutionally pressured social media platforms into censoring users’ speech, particularly when the government flagged posts to the platforms that it believed violated the companies’ own terms of service.

    During more than an hour of oral arguments Thursday, the three judges handling the appeal gave little indication of how they would rule in the case, with one judge asking just a couple of questions during the hearing. The other two spent much of the time pressing attorneys for the Biden administration and the plaintiffs in the case on issues concerning the scope of the injunction and whether the states even had the legal right – or standing – to bring the lawsuit.

    Before them is not only the request to reverse the lower court injunction, but also one from the administration to issue a more lasting pause on that injunction while the judges weigh the challenge to it.

    In briefs submitted to the court ahead of Thursday’s hearing, the Biden administration argued that a lower court judge was wrong to have identified the government communications with social media companies as potentially, in his words, “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ [sic] history.”

    “There is a categorical, well-settled distinction between persuasion and coercion,” the administration’s lawyers wrote, adding that the lower court “equated legitimate efforts at persuasion with illicit efforts to coerce.”

    The administration’s opponents in the case, which include the states of Missouri and Louisiana, have argued that the federal government’s communications with social media companies are a violation of the First Amendment because even “‘encouragement short of compulsion’ can transform private conduct [by social media companies] into government action” that infringes on users’ speech rights.

    “Every one of these federal agencies has insinuated themselves into the content moderation decisions of major social media platforms,” D. John Sauer, an attorney representing the state of Louisiana, told the judges on Thursday. Hypothetically speaking, he added: “The Surgeon General can say, ‘All this speech is terrible, it’s awful.’ …. But what he can’t do is pick up the phone and say, ‘Take it down.’”

    In addition to the states, five individuals are also plaintiffs in the suit. They include three doctors who have been critical of state and federal pandemic-era restrictions, a Louisiana woman who claims she was censored by social media companies for her online criticisms of Covid health measures and a man who runs a far-right website known for pushing conspiracy theories.

    Much of Thursday’s oral arguments hinged on the definition of coercive communication and how courts have analyzed government pressure against private parties in past cases.

    But the states also claimed that there could be a pathway to finding a constitutional violation if the court agreed that social media companies, in heeding the administration’s calls to action, had been effectively turned into agents of the US government.

    In the past month, after District Judge Terry Doughty issued his injunction, current and former US officials, along with outside researchers and academics, have worried that the order could lead to a chilling effect for efforts to protect US elections.

    “There is no serious dispute that foreign adversaries have and continue to attempt to interfere in our elections and that they use social media to do it,” FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to the House Judiciary Committee in July. “President Trump himself in 2018 declared a national emergency to that very effect, and the Senate Intelligence Committee — in a bipartisan, overwhelmingly bipartisan way — not only found the same thing but called for more information-sharing between us and the social media.”

    Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, the panel’s chair, remains unconvinced. Earlier this week, he and other Republican lawmakers filed their own brief to the appeals court, accusing the Biden administration of a campaign to stifle speech.

    “On issue after issue, the Biden Administration has distorted the free marketplace of ideas promised by the First Amendment, bringing the weight of federal authority to bear on any speech it dislikes—including memes and jokes,” Jordan and the other lawmakers wrote. “Of course, Big Tech companies often required little coercion to do the Administration’s bidding on some issues. Generally eager to please their ideological allies and overseers in the federal government, these companies and other private entities have repeatedly censored accurate speech on important public issues.”

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