US intelligence resumes national security review of Mar-a-Lago documents – as it happened

Joe Biden says attacks Republicans’ midterms agenda, saying real goal is to ban abortion nationwide

The Trump-appointed World Bank president David Malpass is under fire for deflecting on the question of humans causing climate change, and Axios reports the Biden administration is mulling an effort to remove him.

Appointed in 2019, Malpass, a Republican, worked in the Treasury under Trump and also at global financial crisis-casualty Bear Stearns. While Axios reports Biden officials have long been suspicious of him, the uproar began when Malpass replied, “I don’t even know -- I’m not a scientist and that is not a question,” when asked at an event on Tuesday if he believed climate change is manmade.

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Republicans unveil 90s-throwback midterm election agenda

The House minority leader introduced the Republicans’ ‘Commitment to America’, focusing on Biden and not on Trump

Republicans have unveiled a midterm election agenda heavy on critiques of Joe Biden but light on specific policies – and with a throwback theme to the mid-1990s.

After a primary season dominated by extremist “Make America great again” (Maga) candidates and deniers of the 2020 election result, Friday’s launch also represented an effort to tone down rhetoric and win back independent voters.

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Special master asks Trump team for proof of claims that FBI planted evidence – as it happened

Special master also gives series of deadlines after judges overturn ruling that temporarily blocked DoJ from the material

The judge who had initially blocked the justice department from reviewing the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago and ordered a special master to weed out privileged materials has revised her ruling, Politico reports.

Federal judge Aileen Cannon’s changes come after an appeals court overturned the part of her opinion that had halted the government’s review of the documents taken from Donald Trump’s resort, hampering the investigation into whether the former president took government secrets with him when he left the White House.

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Mitch McConnell called Trump ‘crazy’ after Capitol attack, new book says

Rachael Bade and Karoun Demirjian’s Unchecked reports the Senate Republican leader vowed never to speak to Trump again

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said Donald Trump was “crazy” and vowed never to speak to him again after the Capitol attack – then voted both to call Trump’s impeachment unconstitutional and to acquit the former president in his second Senate trial.

McConnell’s deliberations are reported in a forthcoming book, Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump, by Rachael Bade of Politico and Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post. An extract was published on Wednesday.

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Fox News anchor Bret Baier wanted Arizona ‘put back’ in Trump’s column, book says

News of ‘stunning’ attempt to rescind dramatic election night call contained in The Divider, by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser

Fox News anchor Bret Baier wanted the network to withdraw its famous call of Arizona for Joe Biden on election night in 2020, citing pressure from Donald Trump’s campaign and saying the swing state should be “put back in his column”, a new book says.

News of Baier’s email is contained in The Divider: Trump in the White House 2017-2021, published in the US on Tuesday.

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White House rejects ‘sham referendums’ in occupied Ukraine – as it happened

National security adviser makes remark while Biden will ‘rebuke Russia’ at UN summit

Joined by his fellow New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, majority leader Chuck Schumer is continuing to call for aid to Puerto Rico at a press conference outside the Capitol.

Here’s the latest from Nexstar media:

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Judge blocks justice department from Trump documents as legal fight continues – live

Judge appoints special master to weed out documents under legal privilege rules but DoJ is expected to appeal the decision

Speaking of conservative media, Ramon Antonio Vargas tuned into conservative stalwart Fox News to see what their political coverage looks like ahead of the midterms:

With most US voters indicating that the preservation of abortion rights is their chief focus as midterm elections loom, the face of Fox News and Republican politicians appear to be trying to shift attention to crime, a progressive media watchdog has warned.

As a kid, he always knew he wanted to be a doctor (“Fisher Price play kit,” he muses). But it wasn’t until he was an undergraduate at Columbia University that he experienced an epiphany.

He was working on a big display of the AIDS memorial quilt, he says, and was tasked with flying to San Francisco to bring back a “roll of carpet that looked like a body in a shroud.” On the day the exhibit opened for the finished quilt, he watched as men his age — people who should have been enjoying their 20s — walked in, coughing and raging with a disease very likely to kill them.

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Near-total abortion ban with narrow exceptions takes effect in Indiana

Law effectively wipes out abortion access for 1.5m people in the state, which was a safe haven for those seeking the procedure

A sweeping abortion ban went into effect in Indiana on Thursday, containing only extremely narrow exceptions for medical emergencies, rape and incest and making it the latest state to largely outlaw the procedure in the US.

The ban is being challenged in court by the ACLU and several abortion care providers, with hearings set to start on 19 September.

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Biden touts efforts to boost electric vehicles at Detroit auto show – as it happened

President is in Detroit to promote the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes incentives for buying electric cars

A presidential run may be Mike Pence’s best hope of getting back into the White House. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports that Donald Trump has thoroughly disavowed his former vice president:

Donald Trump will not pick Mike Pence as his running mate if he runs for the presidency again, according to an interview with the authors of a new book on his time in the White House.

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Democrats condemn Lindsey Graham’s nationwide abortion ban proposal – live

Indiana to ban abortion on Thursday

As the news cycle today has focused on senator Lindsey Graham’s proposals for a national abortion ban from 15 weeks, its worth remembering that Republican-controlled Indiana will bring in its almost total ban on Thursday.

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Republican Lindsey Graham proposes nationwide 15-week abortion ban

Hardline South Carolina senator plans for new bill on national abortion restrictions, with fewer than 60 days until midterms

Senator Lindsey Graham was proposing legislation on Tuesday for a nationwide 15-week abortion ban, a politically risky strategy as a backlash grows to the supreme court ruling earlier this summer overturning federal protections for the procedure.

Polling shows that 57% of Americans disapproved of the court’s June reversal of the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling guaranteeing access to abortion, and 62% say the procedure should be legal in all or most cases.

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Hillary Clinton laments US extremism and calls for unity on 9/11 anniversary

Former US secretary of state makes an impassioned attack on turn towards extremism and divisiveness in American politics

Hillary Clinton seized the opportunity presented by Sunday’s 21st anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington to make a thinly-veiled attack on the extremism and divisiveness stoked by Donald Trump, as she called for a return to national unity.

The former US secretary of state and first lady invoked the bipartisan mood of the country in the wake of the 9/11 attack in which almost 3,000 people were killed.

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Two Trump officials subpoenaed for fundraising to undermine elections

Stephen Miller and Brian Jack were summoned as authorities investigate funds related to the Save America Pac, currently sitting at $100m

Two of Donald Trump’s top officials are facing subpoenas for an investigation against him regarding fund-raisers following the 2020 elections that aimed to undermine the results of the election.

Stephen Miller, once one of the former US president’s most senior aides, and Brian Jack, his former director of political affairs at the White House, were part of a large group of Trump’s officials and allies who were subpoenaed by the grand jury this week, the New York Times reported.

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Bannon is not finished: his ‘precinct strategy’ could alter US elections for years

One longtime Bannon watcher says it’s too early to count him out – even a prison term could enhance his status among the Maga crowd

When Steve Bannon heard that he was, after all, going to face charges last week for allegedly ripping off contributors to a multimillion-dollar fund to build a wall on the Mexican border, he claimed it was a sign of his success.

Donald Trump’s former strategist said his arrest on Thursday was an attempt to shut down his War Room pod and video cast because it is driving grassroots support for the former president’s Make America Great Again (Maga) movement and reshaping the Republican party ahead of the midterm elections.

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Trump backed failed campaign coup against Kushner, Navarro book says

Ex-adviser says president in 2020 agreed that his son-in-law had to be replaced by Steve Bannon but did not dare try to fire him

In June 2020, less than five months before polling day, Donald Trump agreed to a “coup d’état” to remove his son-in-law Jared Kushner from control of his presidential re-election campaign and replace him with the far-right provocateur Steve Bannon.

The coup had support from Donald Trump Jr but according to a new book by the former Trump aide Peter Navarro it did not work, after Trump refused to give Kushner the bad news himself.

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Doug Mastriano prayed for Trump to ‘seize the power’ before Capitol attack

The Republican candidate for Pennsylvania’s governor spoke during a video call hosted by a Christian nationalist group member

A week before the Capitol attack, on a video call organised by a member of a Christian nationalist group, a Pennsylvania state senator who is the Republican candidate for governor in the battleground state prayed that supporters of Donald Trump would “seize the power” on 6 January 2021.

Doug Mastriano attended the pro-Trump rally in Washington that day, after which supporters, told by Trump to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat, stormed Congress in an attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

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Republicans help Democratic minority block near-total abortion ban in South Carolina

Opposition by quintet means Republicans lack votes in upper chamber to end filibuster, with bill heading back to state house

Five Republicans in South Carolina’s state senate have joined the Democratic minority to reject a near-total abortion ban, thwarting the controlling party’s intention to capitalize on the supreme court’s decision to overturn federal protections for the procedure.

Their opposition at a special session called on Thursday to approve a restrictive bill passed earlier in the South Carolina House meant Republicans lacked enough votes in the upper chamber, which they control 30-16, to end a filibuster.

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‘You have to run’: Romney urged Biden to take down Trump, book says

Gabriel Debenedetti, author of book on Biden’s relationship with Obama, reports call on night of 2018 midterms

On the night of the 2018 midterm elections, as a wave of anti-Trump sentiment swept Democrats to take control of the House, top Republican Mitt Romney urged Joe Biden to run for president.

“You have to run,” said Romney, the Republican presidential nominee Biden and Barack Obama defeated in 2012, speaking to the former vice-president by phone.

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Steve Bannon ‘stole millions of dollars to line his own pocket,’ New York attorney general says – as it happened

Steve Bannon has now been formally indicted, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports.

Bannon was charged with money laundering and conspiracy in connection with his role in a fundraising effort to privately underwrite the construction of the US-Mexico border wall, according to the indictment unsealed on Thursday.

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‘Unhinged’ Rudy Giuliani drank and ranted about Islam, new book claims

Ex-mayor derailed ‘train wreck’ dinner with clients and colleagues, then was later considered for secretary of state

At a law firm dinner in New York in May 2016, an “unhinged” Rudy Giuliani, then Donald Trump’s suggested pick to head a commission on “radical Islamic terrorism”, behaved in a drunken and Islamophobic manner, horrifying clients and attorneys alike.

According to a new book by Geoffrey Berman, a former US attorney for the southern district of New York (SDNY), at one point Giuliani turned to a Jewish man “wearing a yarmulke [who] had ordered a kosher meal” and, under the impression the man was a Muslim, said: “I’m sorry to have tell you this, but the founder of your religion is a murderer.”

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