Trump: US justice department appeals judge’s Mar-a-Lago investigation hold

DoJ seeks to continue reviewing a batch of classified documents seized during an FBI search of Donald Trump’s Florida home

The justice department asked a federal appeals court on Friday to lift a judge’s order that temporarily barred it from reviewing a batch of classified documents seized during an FBI search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida home last month.

The department told the 11th circuit US court of appeals in Atlanta that the judge’s hold, imposed last week, had impeded the “government’s efforts to protect the nation’s security” and interfered with its investigation into the presence of top-secret information at Mar-a-Lago. It asked the court to remove that order so work could resume, and to halt a judge’s directive forcing the department to provide the seized classified documents to an independent arbiter for his review.

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Criticism intensifies after big oil admits ‘gaslighting’ public over green aims

Fury as ‘explosive’ files reveal largest oil companies contradicted public statements and wished bedbugs upon critical activists

Criticism in the US of the oil industry’s obfuscation over the climate crisis is intensifying after internal documents showed companies attempted to distance themselves from agreed climate goals, admitted “gaslighting” the public over purported efforts to go green, and even wished critical activists be infested by bedbugs.

The communications were unveiled as part of a congressional hearing held in Washington DC, where an investigation into the role of fossil fuels in driving the climate crisis produced documents obtained from the oil giants ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP.

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Sarah Huckabee Sanders ‘cancer-free’ after thyroid surgery

‘By the grace of God, I am now cancer-free’, Sanders, 42, formerly Trump’s press secretary, says after successful operation

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the former Donald Trump White House press secretary turned Republican candidate for Arkansas governor, said on Friday she was “cancer-free” after undergoing surgery for thyroid cancer.

In a statement, Sanders, aged 42, said the cancer was discovered during a check-up this month.

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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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Judge proposed by Trump named special master in Mar-a-Lago records case

Judge Cannon appointed Judge Raymond Dearie to vet documents and denied the DoJ’s plea to continue reviewing the seized records

A federal judge has named Raymond Dearie, a senior US district judge with experience handling US national security matters, as an independent arbiter to vet records seized by the FBI from Donald Trump’s Florida estate in an ongoing criminal investigation.

Florida-based US district judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday appointed Dearie to serve as a special master in the legal fight between Trump and the Department of Justice over government documents the former president kept at his Florida resort.

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Biden vows to combat ‘venom and violence’ of white supremacy

President also urges Congress to do more to force social media companies to address spread of hate through their platforms

Joe Biden vowed to combat the “venom and violence” of white supremacy in America and decried Donald Trump’s reluctance to condemn the rightwing racism on display in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, which spurred Biden to run against him for the presidency.

The US president also called afresh for Congress to do more to force social media companies to address the spread of hate through their platforms.

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Biden vows to tackle ‘venom and violence of white supremacy’ and decries Trump over Charlottesville – as it happened

Biden has begun speaking at the White House about the agreement reached to head off a rail workers strike.

You can watch it below:

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Trump chief of staff used book on president’s mental health as White House guide

John Kelly secretly consulted The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, according to new book by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser

Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff secretly bought a book in which 27 mental health professionals warned that the president was psychologically unfit for the job, then used it as a guide in his attempts to cope with Trump’s irrational behavior.

News of John Kelly’s surreptitious purchase comes in a new book from Peter Baker of the New York Times and Susan Glasser of the New Yorker. The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.

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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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Panel says Confederate memorial at Arlington cemetery should be dismantled

The commission presented its final report on Confederate-honoring military bases and assets that should be renamed

An independent commission is recommending that the Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery be dismantled and taken down, as part of its final report to Congress on the renaming of military bases and assets that commemorate the Confederacy.

Panel members on Tuesday rolled out the final list of ships, base roads, buildings and other items that they said should be renamed. But unlike the commission’s recommendations earlier this year laying out new names for nine Army bases, there were no suggested names for the roughly 1,100 assets across the military that bear Confederate names.

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Ken Starr, who investigated Bill Clinton over Monica Lewinsky affair, dies at 76

Starr’s Whitewater investigation, which uncovered Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky, led to US president’s impeachment in 1998

Ken Starr, the lawyer who relentlessly pursued Bill Clinton over his affair with Monica Lewinsky, has died at the age of 76, according to a statement issued by his family.

Starr was a prosecutor whose Whitewater investigation led to the impeachment of former Democratic president Clinton, in 1998. He died on Tuesday at Baylor St Luke’s medical center in Houston, of complications from surgery, the statement said.

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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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Covid caused huge shortages in US labor market, study shows

At least 500,000 people have permanently disappeared from the workforce, analysis says

Research into the lingering effects of Covid-19 on the US workforce has confirmed what anybody who has waited an extended time for a delivery – or been unable to get a restaurant table – already knows: the pandemic has caused massive shortages in the labor market.

On top of the quarter-million people of working age who have died from coronavirus, at least twice that number across all ages have permanently disappeared from the workforce, the analysis by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows.

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Trump threatened not to leave White House after election loss, book says

Defeated president told aide ‘we’re never leaving’ despite Biden’s win, according to new book Confidence Man

In the days after Joe Biden defeated him in the 2020 election, Donald Trump told an aide he was “just not going to leave” the White House, according to a new book on his presidency and its chaotic aftermath.

“We’re never leaving,” he vowed to another aide, says the book from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman titled Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. “How can you leave when you won an election?”

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Trump lawyers reject US government’s arguments against special master – as it happened

Democrats have grown increasingly upbeat about their prospects in the upcoming midterms, pointing to the outrage over the end of nationwide abortion rights, declining gas prices and the passage of major pieces of legislation intended to help Americans.

Indeed, polls in recent battleground states have shown Democratic Senate candidates ahead of their Republicans challengers, including in closely divided races such as those in Wisconsin, Nevada and Georgia.

The apparent Democratic edge in Senate races in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Ohio would evaporate. To take the chamber, Republicans would need any two of Georgia, Arizona, Nevada or Pennsylvania. With Democrats today well ahead in Pennsylvania and Arizona, the fight for control of the chamber would come down to very close races in Nevada and Georgia.

Regardless of who was favored, the race for Senate control would be extremely competitive. Republican control of the House would seem to be a foregone conclusion.

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NSA analyst jailed for life for selling US secrets to Soviets dies aged 80

Ronald Pelton, convicted of espionage in 1986, said he accepted money from America’s cold war enemy because he was desperate

A former National Security Agency analyst who was arguably its most damaging traitor and became famous for aiding the Soviets during the cold war died last week, according to an obituary posted on the website of a Maryland funeral home.

Ronald William Pelton was 80.

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Kamala Harris says ‘everything on the line’ in midterm elections

Vice-president warns that the elections will determine whether ‘age-old sanctity’ of right to vote would be protected

Kamala Harris warned on Sunday that the midterm elections in November would determine whether the “age-old sanctity” of the right to vote would be protected in the US or whether “so-called extremist leaders around the country” would continue to restrict access to the ballot box.

With just 56 days to go until the elections, and with the paper-thin Democratic majority in both chambers of Congress, the vice-president said that “everything is on the line in these elections”.

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Senate intelligence chair urges judge to allow briefing on Trump Mar-a-Lago search

Democrat says clarification from judge urgently needed and the mishandling of state secrets could have disastrous consequences

The Democratic chair of the US Senate intelligence committee has demanded that a federal judge allows the committee to be briefed on the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago and the potential damage caused by Donald Trump hoarding top secret documents at his private club.

Mark Warner, the US senator from Virginia, said that there was confusion over whether the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the FBI were allowed to brief the Senate committee on their review of classified documents held at the former president’s club-resort and residence in Palm Beach, Florida.

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