The New York Times reports: Former President Donald J. Trump had a lot to say on the first day of the fraud trial against him and his company. Speaking to reporters at a Manhattan courthouse on Monday, he dismissed the judge as a “rogue” justice and said he did not “think the people of this country are going to stand for it.” And he focused on the official who filed the lawsuit against him, New York’s attorney general, Letitia James….
CNN reports: John Kelly, the longest-serving White House chief of staff for Donald Trump, offered his harshest criticism yet of the former president in an exclusive statement to CNN. Kelly set the record straight with on-the-record confirmation of a number of damning stories about statements Trump made behind closed doors attacking US service members and veterans, listing a number of objectionable comments Kelly witnessed Trump make firsthand. “What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said,…
Ian Millhiser writes: Imagine that the Supreme Court of the United States spent an entire morning debating whether penguins are the primary cause of colon cancer or whether John F. Kennedy was assassinated by aliens from the planet Venus. That’s more or less the quality of arguments that former Trump Solicitor General Noel Francisco presented to the Court on Tuesday, as part of a quizzical effort to convince the justices to declare an entire federal agency unconstitutional. The good news…
Reuters reports: Drunk recruits. Insubordinate soldiers. Convicts. They’re among hundreds of military and civilian offenders who’ve been pressed into Russian penal units known as “Storm-Z” squads and sent to the frontlines in Ukraine this year, according to 13 people with knowledge of the matter, including five fighters in the units. Few live to tell their tale, the people said. “Storm fighters, they’re just meat,” said one regular soldier from army unit no. 40318 who was deployed near the fiercely contested…
David French writes: In the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, there was a tremendous surge of interest in Christian nationalism. Christian displays were common in the crowd at the Capitol. Rioters and protesters carried Christian flags, Christian banners and Bibles. They prayed openly, and a Dispatch reporter in the crowd told me that in the late afternoon Christian worship music was blaring from loudspeakers. I started to hear questions I’d never heard before: What is Christian nationalism and…
Politico reports: Donald Trump came face-to-face in a Manhattan court Monday with the attorney general who is suing him for massive business fraud and the judge who last week revoked his business licenses, as the former president attended the first day of a $250 million civil trial. A scowl on his face as he entered the courtroom, Trump showed up to see opening statements in the trial. New York Attorney General Tish James alleges that Trump, his adult sons,…
The New York Times reports: Russia’s strategy to win the war in Ukraine is to outlast the West. But how does Vladimir Putin plan to do that? American officials said they are convinced that Mr. Putin intends to try to end U.S. and European support for Ukraine by using his spy agencies to push propaganda supporting pro-Russian political parties and by stoking conspiracy theories with new technologies. The Russia disinformation aims to increase support for candidates opposing Ukraine aid with…
Politico reports: From Mitch McConnell on down, the Senate’s pro-Ukraine coalition is trying to reassure the U.S. ally that help will soon be on the way — even after a bruising GOP confrontation over keeping the government open snuffed out billions in immediate new aid. But for that bipartisan group — which has served as a bulwark against growing House Republican opposition to continued aid — the past week has been a rude awakening. Not until now has the depth…
Politico reports: Biden administration officials are far more worried about corruption in Ukraine than they publicly admit, a confidential U.S. strategy document obtained by POLITICO suggests. The “sensitive but unclassified” version of the long-term U.S. plan lays out numerous steps Washington is taking to help Kyiv root out malfeasance and otherwise reform an array of Ukrainian sectors. It stresses that corruption could cause Western allies to abandon Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion, and that Kyiv cannot put off the anti-graft…
HuffPost reports: Laphonza Butler, who California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) appointed Sunday to finish out the late Dianne Feinstein’s Senate term, will make history when she’s sworn in. She will be the first Black, openly LGBTQ+ woman to serve in either chamber of Congress. “Today she shatters a rainbow ceiling in becoming the first out Black LGBTQ+ U.S. senator and she will serve knowing her presence and impact will be felt in countless ways,” Annise Parker, the president and CEO…
Jason Wilson writes: In June, rightwing academic Kevin Slack published a book-length polemic claiming that ideas that had emerged from what he called the radical left were now so dominant that the US republic its founders envisioned was effectively at an end. Slack, a politics professor at the conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan, made conspiratorial and extreme arguments now common on the antidemocratic right, that “transgenderism, anti-white racism, censorship, cronyism … are now the policies of an entire cosmopolitan class…
Diane McWhorter writes: The bane of raw intelligence – and history – is that you can always look back and find the signs, but you can’t necessarily look ahead and see where they’re pointing. Many questions remain about the intelligence failures that enabled an insurrectionist mob to lay siege virtually unimpeded to the US Capitol. But here’s one sign that’s been flashing in my head since 6 January 2021. Four days before the 2020 election, a “Trump Train” of motorists…
Aaron Blake writes: The American right’s efforts to elevate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were as transparent as they were cynical. The idea, as advanced by Stephen K. Bannon and the like, was clearly to try to embarrass President Biden in the Democratic primary. So they used Kennedy’s inflated early poll standing as an excuse to treat the primary challenge from a fringe figure as something real and threatening. Fox News picked up the ball and ran with it, publishing many dozens of stories…
Patrick Wintour writes: “The EU has changed. There is no turning back. We have turned out the lights behind us and there is basically only one way.” The words of the Danish politician and EU commissioner Margrethe Vestager at a conference in May neatly reflect the mood among the Brussels elite, taken aback at their own ability to shed EU bureaucratic torpor, defend Ukraine, embrace enlargement and move closer to fulfilling Ursula von der Leyen’s ambition for the EU to…
The Daily Beast reports: [A] plea agreement puts [Scott] Hall [the former Fulton County Republican poll watcher and bail bondsman] on probation for five years in exchange for a guilty plea on the five misdemeanors. He will also pay a $5,000 fine, issue a letter of apology to Georgia voters, serve 200 hours of community service, and agree to avoid activities related to polling or administering elections. Perhaps most crucially for his 19 co-defendants, he also agreed to testify truthfully…
Politico reports: Special counsel Jack Smith’s office argued Friday that Donald Trump’s recent attacks on Gen. Mark Milley and one of their own newly appointed prosecutors bolster their case to put a gag order on the former president ahead of his trial in Washington, D.C. In a 22-page filing, senior assistant special counsel Molly Gaston said prosecutors rejected Trump’s claims that their proposed gag order was an attempt to silence him on the campaign trail. Rather, she said, it was…