July 31:
The month ends with what seems to be an unprecedented use of the word “unprecedented”. But in politics – and among some media aiming to normalize what clearly isn’t – things are pretty much just as they’ve always been.
Meanwhile…
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July 29:
Despite his mounting legal woes, the former President is consolidating his grip on the Republican nomination as his potential challengers appear to fade away. For Florida Gov Ron DeSantis, a car crash is turning into a train wreck.
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July 27:
Prosecutors on Thursday night added additional charges to the former President’s Mar-a-Lago documents indictment, as well as a third defendant. It also emerged that the DOJ has possession of the classified document Trump is on tape as allegedly showing to people with no security clearance at his Bedminster golf club.
Earlier: Lawyers for former President Donald Trump have been told to expect an indictment, as the investigation into Jan 6th and attempts to overturn the 2020 election enters its denouement. This will be Trump’s second federal indictment and third – so far – in total.
Meanwhile, in Georgia…
Also, not that this probably even matters anymore, since it pales into insignificance compared with other sums and because no-one’s going to do anything about it, but… *WHILE PRESIDENT*
Well, who do you think?
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July 26:
Rudy Giuliani admitted that he made “false statements” about two Georgia poll workers who had sued him for accusing them of voter fraud. The former President had made similar statements as part of his efforts to overturn the results of the election, with little regard for any harm that would be caused to the two women. Giuliani and other Trump lawyers appear to be – finally – being held accountable for such statements; even if their client, so far, is not.
Confusion abounded today at the Delaware court hearing where Hunter Biden was expected to plead guilty on tax and firearms charges; but the Judge pushed back against the proposed deal.
Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell suffered some kind of episode on live TV and was ushered away, returning a short while later, but with as yet no explanation as to what happened.
Meanwhile, a former intelligence official told a congressional hearing that the US government has been covering up the reverse-engineering of UFOs, and has found “nonhuman biologics” at alleged crash sites.
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July 25:
On what would have been Emmett Till’s 82nd birthday, President Biden announced that a national monument to Till – a 14-year-old victim of lynching in 1955 – and his mother would be established in Illinois, where he was born, and Mississippi, where he was killed.
Till’s murder helped galvanize the Civil Rights movement.
Meanwhile, Texas Gov Greg Abbott insisted he would resist attempts by the DOJ to sue his state for placing floating barriers in the Rio Grande, aimed at deterring potential migrants attempting to cross from Mexico. The DOJ warned Abbott that the state’s actions “violate federal law, raise humanitarian concerns, present serious risks to public safety and the environment, and may interfere with the federal government’s ability to carry out its official duties.”
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July 24:
Amid yet another day of angry protests in the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Israel’s radical right-wing government passed a controversial judicial reform law, the first of its kind in the nation’s 75-year history, restricting the power of the Supreme Court. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government program of legislative reforms has polarized the country and threatens to incite further unrest.
Sound familiar?
Meanwhile, Elon Musk rebranded Twitter as ‘X’.
Not so fast…
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July 23:
The fallout continues from Florida’s move this week to rewrite the history of slavery.
The Miami Herald writes:
“The Florida Board of Education certified the new standards Wednesday, causing an uproar among many. Some of the more concerning changes included teachings about how enslaved people benefited from their bondage, an attempt to contextualize American slavery within the global history of slavery and the false equivalence of anti-Black violence with acts of Black resistance.“
But the reaction to the VP’s intervention shows how potentially effective the issue could be for a GOP already reaching for cultural tropes ahead of the upcoming campaign.
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July 22:
Thousands of people are being evacuated in Rhodes as wildfires continue to engulf much of the Greek island amid record-setting temperatures. In Italy, days after the hottest day of the year, rivers of ice are cascading through the streets. In Phoenix, Arizona, the temperature has broken 110 degrees for two weeks running, while in the Northeast of the US, floods have put towns underwater and erased entire roadways.
This is little short of a civilizational emergency.
But hey, nothing to see here, right?
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July 21:
The former President’s trial in the Mar-a-Lago documents case will begin on May 20, 2024, after Judge Aileen Cannon appeared to pick a date between the Special Counsel’s request for a December 11 start and the Trump team’s attempt to delay the trial until after the 2024 presidential election.
By the time of the trial, assuming no further delays, about half of the presidential primary contests will have taken place.
The desperation among Trump’s defenders is becoming more palpable as his legal troubles deepen. All politics are performative, but It’s genuinely hard to understand how potential Republican voters can believe these latest congressional antics are doing anything to benefit their day-to-day lives.
Charlie Sykes at The Bulwark summed it up as “A Cringeworthy Week in Congress”, calling it a “shitshow for the ages.”
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July 20:
While the former President insists his fresh impending indictment and legal situation “doesn’t frighten” him, the discourse surrounding him again becomes increasingly threatening as his legal team continues to pursue a delaying strategy.
But, of course, here’s what it’s really all about…
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July 18:
Sure enough, the former President says he is the subject of a target letter in the Special Counsel’s investigation into Jan 6th and attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. How another new looming indictment affects the other legal cases against him, as well as the GOP primary and Trump’s base, remains to be seen. But as the campaign develops, indications are still that the party will be reluctant to break with him, no matter what.
Meanwhile, the legal assault on the “fake electors” plot continues to ramp up.
The move comes the day after a piece in the New York Times laid out plans by Trump and his associates to expand presidential power over federal agencies were he to be elected again.
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July 16:
Speculation appears to be growing that the former President could soon be charged in relation to events on Jan 6th and attempts to overturn the 2020 election result.
Whatever the timing on Trump’s various legal scenarios, it now seems unlikely to work to the benefit the man who’s – for now – his nearest challenger for the nomination, Gov Ron DeSantis, whose campaign appears to be imploding as more people are exposed to his near-parody culture wars message. After the campaign laid off twelve staffers, Steve Schmidt wrote:
“Though there may be sadness around the bar in Tallahassee tonight soon the fired staffers, like the freezing passengers sailing away in lifeboats from Titanic, will realize that they were the lucky ones.”
Meanwhile, other candidates – on all sides and “none” – are trying to gain traction.
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July 15:
No news note today, since we spent the day trying to make news ourselves by joining a group of friends and family of Marc Fogel, the Pennsylvania teacher imprisoned in Russia, to rally outside the White House in support of his freedom.
Marc’s sister Anne read the crowd a letter from her brother:
“I want to thank you all for your love, prayers, and help through this calamity. It is a truly nourishment for mind, body, and soul. My gratitude to all of you will continue to the day my mind and body cease to function. Please remember to express your support and empathy to my amazing family. I pray, hope, and beg to keep the faith. Every day, sometimes all day, but sooner rather than later, I will be reunited with my family, friends, and country. I love each and every one of you, thank you from the bottom of my heart.“
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July 14:
His legal desperation apparently growing, the former President continues to set the bar for what ordinary Americans would never dream of trying to get away with. His entire defence strategy in every scenario now seems to be ‘run the clock down to the election and hope I can win and drop all the charges against myself.’
Who’s to say it won’t work? He doesn’t seem to have anything else.
Meanwhile as 2024 barrels towards us, with six GOP contenders in first-in-the-nation Iowa today as the state digests its new controversial abortion ruling, there’s yet more chatter about supposed “centrists” NoLabels…
President Biden responded to the Supreme Court’s decision to block his plan to relieve student debt.
In media, this decision seems insane, but…
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July 13:
Almost five years to the day since the former US President appeared with Vladimir Putin at a press conference in Helsinki and sided with Russia over his own intelligence advisers, the current incumbent will speak in the same city to welcome Finland as a member of Nato.
President Biden’s trip comes after he wrapped up the Nato summit with a powerful speech yesterday in Lithuania, promising an ongoing commitment to Ukraine, and offering the possibility of Nato membership after the current conflict is resolved.
But even as Biden was speaking, division over support for Ukraine was again evident among Republicans, with some threatening to push back on additional military spending.
Meanwhile, yesterday’s GOP House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on “weaponization” of the DOJ didn’t go as the majority members planned when they questioned FBI Director Christopher Wray.
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July 12:
With this week’s extreme weather in the US northeast set to continue, the relentless heatwaves in the south and midwest contributed to June being the world’s hottest month on record. July is set to be the hottest month in US history. The UN has already said that climate change is now “out of control”.
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July 11:
Perhaps unsurprisingly, lawyers for former President Donald Trump applied to have his trial in the Mar-a-Lago documents case delayed until after the 2024 election – indeed, they are seeking an “indefinite” delay, suggesting that if he were to win, he would have the power to dismantle the investigation and drop the charges.
The trial is set to begin on August 14, in Judge Aileen Cannon’s bright red district.
Elsewhere…
Meanwhile, the GOP’s missing “whistleblower” who was supposedly set to bring forward information about the Biden family, was revealed to have been charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent for China, trafficking in arms, violating US sanctions against Iran, and making false statements to federal agents.
And, as a Congressional hearing into the merger between the PGA and Saudi-backed LIV Golf, LIV announced it was moving a major tournament to Donald Trump’s Doral course.
In baseball’s All-Star Game in Seattle, the National League snapped the American League’s decade-long winning streak, taking a tight game 3-2 after a go-ahead home run in the 8th inning by Rockies’ catcher Elias Diaz.
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July 10:
President Biden is in Lithuania for an important Nato summit, which take place around the 500th day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Biden is set to meet with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy but has already said Ukraine’s application to join Nato is not happening anytime soon – 15 years after its first application. The US President, meanwhile, welcomed Turkish President Erdogan’s support for Sweden’s membership of the Alliance.
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July 8:
It feels like President Biden has opened a Pandora’s Box of moral criticism by authorising the transfer of cluster munitions to Ukraine. The administration will have to do a selling job on why the move is necessary – and why now, since the Russians have already been using the weapons since the invasion began. The weapons are banned by over 100 countries – including neither Russia or Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the first actual polling date in the 2024 election is set, with the Iowa GOP set to go forward on Jan 15 next year.
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July 7:
The social media wars heated up still further/continued their descent into lunacy with a wave of interest in Threads, the Twitter-rival service launched by Meta.
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July 5:
In Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Jan 6th and potential attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the focus has again turned to Arizona, where subpoenas are understood to have been issued related to sham lawsuits brought by the Trump campaign and the chair of the Arizona Republican Party, in which they falsely claimed that there had been errors in the 2020 results.
News of the subpoenas comes amid reporting this week about a call the former President made to then Arizona Gov Doug Ducey as he was certifying the state’s election results, as well as previous reporting on the role of the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Elsewhere, there’s a possible opening in the case of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter held in Russia, as his paper reports that there have been contacts about a potential prisoner exchange.
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July 4:
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July 3:
The State of Palestine called for urgent intervention by the UN and the international community after an attack by Israeli forces on the West Bank town of Jenin. The action was described as the “biggest incursion in twenty years” and has resulted in an as-yet uncertain number of deaths and injuries.
Meanwhile, anti-government protests continue over plans to overhaul Israel’s legal system.
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July 2:
Yet more confusion surrounds Elon Musk’s Twitter as daily viewing limits are imposed, then changed, then apparently disappear altogether, with no public word from the company’s newly-installed CEO Linda Yaccarino.
Read the Q&A with tech researcher Alina Utrata from last year, shortly after Musk bought the platform…
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July 1:
Unrest in Paris and other cities across France headed into a fifth night as the funeral took place of Nahel Merzouk, the French-Algerian teen shot and killed by police last week. More than a thousand people have been arrested, while President Emmanuel Macron postponed a trip to Germany to deal with the crisis.
States of Play 