Biden tells Democrats to revise primary calendar to boost Black voters’ voices

Predominantly white New Hampshire reportedly could be scheduled later with South Carolina tipped to move up to first

Democrats are poised to shake up the way in which they nominate presidential candidates, after Joe Biden said the primary process should better represent the party’s non-white voters.

Biden has reportedly told Democrats that Iowa, the state that has led off the Democratic voting calendar since 1976, should be moved down the calendar, with South Carolina instead going first.

Continue reading...

Ron DeSantis book announcement a clear sign of presidential ambition

Florida governor expected to challenge Trump for Republican nod in 2024 will publish The Courage to Be Free in February

In the clearest signal yet that Ron DeSantis is preparing a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, it was announced on Wednesday that the rightwing governor of Florida will publish a campaign-style book, mixing memoir with policy proposals.

The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Renewal, will be published by Broadside Books, a conservative imprint of HarperCollins, on 28 February.

Continue reading...

Pence says FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago ‘sent the wrong message’

Ex-vice-president hopes prosecutors ‘give careful consideration before taking more steps’ in investigating Trump over January 6

Though he believes “no one is above the law,” former US vice-president Mike Pence says he hopes federal prosecutors “give careful consideration before they take any additional steps” in investigating Donald Trump’s role in inciting the rioters who staged the January 6 Capitol attack and tried to hang him.

Pence made those remarks Sunday in an interview with the host of NBC’s Meet the Press, Chuck Todd, in which he also said that the FBI “sent the wrong message” with its search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in August to retake government secrets that were stored there without authorization.

Continue reading...

Trump plays the ousted autocrat struggling to recapture past glory

Ex-president appears over the hill at 2024 announcement to an enthusiastic – but dwindling – group of loyalists

From plastering his name on buildings to hiring his own children, from salivating over military parades to savaging the media, from befriending fellow strongmen to defying the will of the people, Donald Trump has done much to invite comparisons with autocrats.

On Tuesday he continued to play that role to perfection. Only now he was the ousted dictator, drained of power and surrounded by a dwindling band of loyalists in his last redoubt, the opulent Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. As a rule, the grander the palace, the weaker the man.

Continue reading...

Donald Trump announces 2024 run for president nearly two years after inspiring deadly Capitol riot

Twice-impeached ex-president makes expected election announcement despite shaky midterms and surge from rival Ron DeSantis

Donald Trump on Tuesday night announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, likely sparking another period of tumult in US politics and especially his own political party.

“In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” Trump said from ballroom of his private Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, where he stood on a stage crowded with American flags and Make America Great Again banners.

Continue reading...

Ivanka Trump says she will not be part of Donald’s 2024 campaign

Trump skips father’s announcement and says she is prioritizing her family after serving as adviser during his presidency

Ivanka Trump has decided to bow out of US politics and not actively join her father’s bid to retake the White House in 2024, saying she has chosen “to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family”.

Donald Trump launched his 2024 bid for the Republican nomination on Tuesday night at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Members of his family, including his wife, Melania, and son Eric were present. Even Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner, was in attendance. But Ivanka was not.

Continue reading...

Trump v DeSantis: Republicans split over 2024 run and predict ‘blood on the floor’

County leaders say they fear ex-president is even more divisive than he was two years ago and is therefore unelectable

Terri Burl was an early member of Women for Trump. As chair of her local Republican party branch in northern Wisconsin, she twice campaigned vigorously for his election in the key swing state. By the time Trump left office, Burl rated him the greatest president since Ronald Reagan. Maybe even better.

But now Burl has had enough.

Continue reading...

‘It’s time to move on’: have the US midterms finally loosened Trump’s grip on the Republican party?

After the party came up short in another election, Ron DeSantis may be poised to become its new leader

Sitting at the head table in a white and gold ballroom, beneath glistening chandeliers and an ornately corniced ceiling, Donald Trump looked sullen as midterm election results flashed up on a giant TV screen.

Across Florida, 200 miles from his opulent Mar-a-Lago estate, the mood was quite different. In Tampa, Governor Ron DeSantis was celebrating his landslide re-election by repurposing lines from Winston Churchill.

Continue reading...

‘Get ready’: Trump’s third White House run appears a matter of when not if

Flurry of reports suggests former president will move swiftly after midterms, as soon as 14 November – but who will challenge him?

As the midterm elections loom and Republican hopes of retaking Congress rise, it appears to be a matter of when, not if, Donald Trump will announce his third White House run.

The former president has trailed another campaign ever since his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, a contest Trump refused to concede, pursuing the lie about electoral fraud which fueled the deadly attack on Congress and his second impeachment.

Continue reading...

Senator Tom Cotton brags about ignoring Trump impeachment evidence

New book by Arkansas senator, a Republican presidential hopeful, also suggests president did not understand military procedures

In January 2020, the rightwing Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton said he would vote to acquit Donald Trump in his first impeachment trial because despite senators having “heard from 17 witnesses … and received more than 28,000 pages of documents”, Democrats had not presented their case correctly.

According to Cotton, the senators who sat through so much evidence would “perform the role intended for us by the founders, of providing the ‘cool and deliberate sense of the community’, as it says in Federalist 63”.

Continue reading...

Two Chinese spies charged with trying to obstruct US Huawei investigation, Garland says – as it happened

Republican senator Ted Cruz was a vociferous objector to the 2020 election, but ended up hiding in a supply closet when insurrectionists stormed the Capitol on January 6, as Ramon Antonio Vargas reports:

As a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol during the January 6 attack in a desperate attempt to keep him in the Oval Office, Ted Cruz hid in a closet next to a stack of chairs, but he never thought twice about continuing to sow doubt about the former president’s electoral defeat, the Republican senator from Texas has revealed.

Tight Senate margins and a Democratic president would make it impossible for GOP leaders to deliver on the party’s most hardline fiscal wishes, at least with President Joe Biden still in office. The disappointment would surely prompt blowback from right-leaning Republicans already known as the sharpest thorns in the party’s side.

“Spare me if you’re a Republican who puts on your frigging campaign website, ‘Trust me, I will vote for a balanced budget amendment, and I believe we should balance the budget like every family in America.’ No shit,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a member of the pro-Trump Freedom Caucus, said in an interview.

Continue reading...

Mike Pence condemns Republicans’ attacks on FBI over Trump search

Search of Mar-a-Lago came as part of an investigation into Trump’s handling of classified material during his presidency

Former vice-president Mike Pence condemned attacks against the FBI by Republicans after federal authorities searched former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property.

Republicans have been reacting with outrage over the FBI’s 8 August search of Trump’s Florida home which came as part of an investigation into his handling of classified material during his presidency.

Continue reading...

Liz Cheney considers run for president after Republican primary defeat

Wyoming congresswoman says ‘It’s something I’m thinking about’ after losing to Trump-backed challenger

Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney has announced she is considering her own run for the White House in an all-out effort to prevent Donald Trump from winning another term as US president.

Cheney decisively lost her Republican primary race on Tuesday night and will lose her seat in the US Congress.

Continue reading...

Trump, battered by January 6 testimony, mulls 2024 run – and not all Republicans are happy

Republicans are odds-on to take back the House and Senate in November, and the last thing the party needs, experts say, is a Trump distraction

On Thursday the Trump campaign sent out a begging-bowl email to hundreds of thousands of supporters, previewing the former president’s rally in Arizona this weekend and teasing the recipients with a portent of momentous things to come.

Donald Trump “wants to make sure it’s one of his best rallies yet”, his loyal followers were told. “He is preparing the speech that he will give in front of the American people.”

Continue reading...

Republicans block bill on right to travel across state lines for abortions – as it happened

Republican senator claims Democrats’ proposal would encourage ‘abortion tourism’

Republican-led states are moving swiftly to ban abortion outright or retaliate against patients seeking the care and the doctors providing it to them. But the message of a new Morning Consult/Politico poll of voters gauging support for these policies might be: not so fast.

The survey found that of 13 state-level proposals, only two weren’t opposed by a majority of voters. Banning all abortions without exception is the most disliked, with 73 percent opposing it, while criminalizing abortion seekers and people who travel out of state for care both came in with 70-percent disapproval. Proposals to fine or criminalize abortion providers also polled poorly, as did the idea to allow people to sue anyone involved in abortions.

Continue reading...

AOC refuses to endorse Biden for 2024 as Democrats doubt his ability to win

Congresswoman says she’s focused on trying to preserve Democrats’ congressional majority in November’s midterms

Left-wing congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday refused to endorse Joe Biden for another run at the White House, adding to growing anxiety in Democratic circles over the president’s ability to run in and win the 2024 election.

The powerful progressive New Yorker said she could not commit to supporting Biden during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, saying she was more focused on trying to preserve Democrats’ congressional majority in November’s midterms.

Continue reading...

Shapiro: ‘Dangerous’ Republican rival Mastriano could override will of voters

Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania governor says if Mastriano wins he could wield power to choose his own slate of electors and overturn presidential election results

Josh Shapiro, who was nominated this week as the Democrats’ candidate for governor in the electorally critical state of Pennsylvania, has accused his Republican rival of intending to override the democratic will of voters and pick his own winners in future elections.

Shapiro launched his attack on Doug Mastriano in an interview on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. He called Mastriano, a far-right state senator, “dangerous and divisive” and warned that were he to become Pennsylvania’s governor he could wield power to choose his own slate of presidential electors as a means of overturning the results of the 2024 presidential election.

Continue reading...

Texas attorney general says state bar suing him over bid to overturn 2020 election – live

Here are more pictures from Jill Biden’s trip to Romania and Slovakia, where she will visit with Ukraine refugees over Mother’s Day weekend.

In addition to serving food, Biden also brought ketchup for personnel stationed overseas, as many have run out of different comforts from home like the condiment.

Continue reading...

Trump or no Trump: Asa Hutchinson mulls run for president in 2024

Republican Arkansas governor says he would not be deterred by former president in party in wrong over January 6 insurrection

The Arkansas governor, Asa Hutchinson, is considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 and would not be deterred if Donald Trump made an expected bid to return to the White House.

“No, it won’t [deter me],” Hutchinson told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.

Continue reading...

What does Republicans’ break from the presidential debate commission mean?

The US presidential debate has been thrown into doubt – and the move is proof of the RNC’s eagerness to do Trump’s bidding

One of the marquee moments of any US presidential election – the televised debate – has been thrown into doubt by the Republican party’s decision on Thursday to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) grumbled that the group that has run the debates since 1988 is biased and refuses to enact reforms. It promised to “find newer, better debate platforms” in future.

Continue reading...