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.

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

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:

Continue reading...

Trump legal team admits possibility that ex-president could be charged

Lawyers tell special master reviewing Mar-a-Lago case he should not have to say which documents he may have declassified

Donald Trump’s legal team has acknowledged the possibility that the former president could be indicted amid the investigation into his retention of government secrets at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Despite claiming days earlier that Trump couldn’t imagine being charged, his lawyers made the stark admission in a court filing on Monday proposing how to conduct an outside review of documents that were seized by the FBI in August.

Continue reading...

Trump embraces QAnon at rally by playing music similar to its anthem

Ex-president’s team insists it is a royalty-free tune but to many it is nearly identical to the extremist conspiracy group’s adopted song

Donald Trump made one of his highest-profile embraces to date of the extremist conspiracy group QAnon at a political rally in Ohio on Saturday, making the apparently deliberate choice to play music that is virtually indistinguishable from the cult organization’s adopted anthem.

Dozens of the former president’s supporters in Youngstown engaged in raised-arm salutes as Trump delivered a fiery address to the background of a song his team insisted was a royalty-free tune from the internet, but to many ears it was nearly identical to the 2020 instrumental track Wwg1wga.

Continue reading...

Iran president rules out meeting with Biden, saying it won’t be beneficial

Ebrahim Raisi says he sees no ‘changes in reality’ from Trump administration as hopes to revive nuclear talks dampen

Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, has ruled out a meeting with Joe Biden on the margins of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) this week, saying he saw no “changes in reality” from the Trump administration.

Raisi underlined the firm position of his government and dampened hopes that a week of summitry at UNGA in New York might yield any progress in negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. Washington has rejected the latest Iranian bargaining positive as “not constructive”, and most observers believe there will be no breakthroughs at least until after the US congressional elections in November.

Continue reading...

‘I can’t stay silent’: Roe reversal powers new generation to sign up and vote

Huge bloc of women expected to turn out in November midterms to protect abortion rights – could it alter the election outcome?

Sonya Koenig is scared. A 19-year-old student from Kalamazoo, Michigan, Koenig often stays up until 2am thinking. Sometimes she paces up and down the hall, or speaks to her roommate about nightmare scenarios in which she ends up pregnant and in need of an abortion.

“Being in college, I hear stories all the time of women getting drugged at parties, or just walking down the street, and something unfortunate can happen,” says Koenig, a freshman at Michigan State University. “A guy can walk away, but [these abortion bans] mean the woman has to choose: ‘Do I want to give this baby up … or raise this child with no help from anybody?’ That’s a really hard decision.”

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

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:

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...

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.

Continue reading...