Judge tosses Trump countersuit against E Jean Carroll A judge has thrown out Donald Trump’s countersuit against advice columnist E Jean Carroll, who earlier this year won a $5m defamation judgment against the former president after a jury found he sexually abused her: Trump responded by filing a counterclaim against Carroll, arguing she defamed him by saying he raped her. That claim was rejected by judge Lewis Kaplan, who said the former president’s contention did not add up. Attorneys for Donald Trump have filed a response to a protective order requested by federal prosecutors in the former president’s indictment for allegedly attempting to overturn the 2020 election. The requested order is based on a a statement Trump made Friday: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” Trump, however, argued he was just exercising his right to free speech. Trump’s lawyers argue that the former president’s first amendment right is at risk of being restricted by the US government and the Biden administration during the election season, the response reads. Trump’s legal team wants US district court judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing Trump’s election conspiracy case, to reject the order, describing it as “overly broad”. Protective orders are common in criminal cases, but federal prosecutors said it is “particularly important in this case” because Trump has posted on social media about “witnesses, judges, attorneys, and others associated with legal matters pending against him”, the Associated Press reported. Hello, I am Abené Clayton, a west coast reporter taking over the blog from my colleague Chris. I’ll be keeping an eye on the clock as Trump’s attorneys the 5pm eastern time deadline for Donald Trump’s attorneys response to a request for a protective order in the January 6 case from special counsel Jack Smith, over a statement Trump made Friday: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” Trump, however, argued he was just exercising his right to free speech. There’s no telling when it might happen, but Donald Trump could very well soon be indicted by a grand jury in Georgia’s Fulton county for his campaign’s attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state three years ago. All signs point to Trump being among those targeted by Fani Willis, the Atlanta-area district attorney investigating the election subversion effort by the former president and his allies. She has said a decision on who to bring charges against will be made before September. CNN reported today that the street outside the Fulton county courthouse has been closed to the public in advance of the expected indictment: A battle is brewing between the Biden administration and America’s electrical utilities, the Guardian’s Dharna Noor and Floodlight’s Kristi Swartz report. At issue are policies intended to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, but which the utilities argue are too strict and complicated to carry out: The main lobbying group for US electric utilities plans to oppose a Biden administration proposal to curb greenhouse gas emissions from existing gas power plants, raising questions about the industry’s commitment to reducing planet-heating pollution. The pushback will put the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) out of step with many of its members’ stated commitments to cut emissions, critics say. It also runs counters to the US voters’ political views based on new polling shared exclusively with the Guardian and Floodlight. The power plant rules, first proposed in May, would force power providers to clean up certain large coal- and gas-fired plants, either by installing new greener technologies or shutting the projects down. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is asking states and utilities to submit plans on how they choose to limit those emissions within 24 months of the rules’ final approval. The Guardian’s Chris McGreal has taken a closer look at the argument, made by many Republicans, of a link between asylum seekers and America’s struggles with fentanyl, and finds that the rhetoric does not match the facts: Republican politicians have been accused of exploiting the tragedy of America’s fentanyl crisis by blaming Joe Biden for the rising death toll, and linking it to his immigration policies and populist anger over the US’s troubled southern border. Critics say Republican leaders are guilty of a cynical political ploy by misrepresenting an increase in asylum seekers as a cause of the serious problem of cross-border drug smuggling driving a huge US public health crisis. Fentanyl kills about 70,000 Americans a year. It is the leading cause of record drug overdose deaths in the US and the primary cause of death among adults under the age of 45. The synthetic opioid, usually made from chemicals manufactured in China and put together in Mexico, is popular with drug cartels because it is many times more powerful than other narcotics and so requires smaller quantities, which are easier to smuggle than heroin or cocaine. It is then laced into other drugs to boost their power and value. But because small amounts of the narcotic as so strong, fentanyl has driven up the number of accidental overdoses and deaths. The Republicans’ push to blame the Biden administration follows record seizures of fentanyl at the US’s south-western frontier. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has discovered three times as much of the drug so far this year as during the same period in 2022. If seizures continue at that rate, CBP is on course to confiscate enough fentanyl in 2023 to kill close to a billion people – and that is almost certainly only a fraction of the drug smuggled into the US. The Republican party claims this is evidence that “cartels have operational control of the border”. The speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, tied the sharp increase in fentanyl seizures and deaths to the record number of undocumented migrants entering the US last year, and blamed the White House for letting them in. So did Congresswoman Mary Miller when she claimed that Biden and the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, “opened our borders and flooded our streets with fentanyl”. When Ron DeSantis was looking for someone to blame for the escalating death toll from the supercharged opioid his eye naturally fell on Biden. When special counsel Jack Smith indicted Donald Trump last week over the failed plot to overturn the 2020 election, he referenced the actions of six co-conspirators, but did not name them. However, one of them is believed to be John Eastman, who served as Trump’s attorney and was an architect of the legal strategy intended to stop Joe Biden from entering the White House. He’s in the midst of defending his law license in California, where legal authorities have accused him of violating a number of ethics rules by participating in the election subversion attempt. Politico reports today that Eastman is seeking to have the disbarment proceedings postponed, because he is worried he may soon face criminal charges: “[R]ecent developments in the investigation have renewed and intensified [Eastman’s] concerns that the federal government might bring charges against him,” his attorneys Randall Miller and Zachary Mayer wrote in an Aug. 4 filing posted to the court’s public docket on Monday. Miller said the growing concern about criminal charges might prompt Eastman to assert his Fifth Amendment rights during disbarment proceedings. The Fifth Amendment generally allows people to refuse to provide testimony that could be used against them. But invoking the Fifth Amendment in the disbarment proceedings would jeopardize Eastman’s ability to defend his law license, his lawyers wrote. “[Eastman] requests that the Court exercise its discretion to stay the State Bar’s disciplinary proceeding against him pending resolution of a parallel criminal investigation being conducted by Special Counsel Jack Smith and any trial or other proceedings that may result from that investigation,” Miller and Mayer wrote. Bar discipline authorities have charged Eastman with multiple violations of professional rules and ethics — as well as the law — in his effort to upend the certified results of the 2020 election. Eastman’s bar discipline trial began in June — and he had even testified for several hours without asserting his Fifth Amendment rights. But it was postponed to late August after the proceedings ran longer than the initially anticipated two weeks. Eastman is asking that the proceedings be postponed yet again until the resolution of Smith’s newly filed criminal case — in which Trump is, at least so far, the only defendant. If the disciplinary judge, Yvette Roland, denies that request, Eastman is asking her for a three-month delay to see whether he has been charged by then. In recent months, several supreme court justices have been the subject of media reports outlining ties between them and parties with interests in their cases. And while most of the justices scrutinized have belonged to the court’s six-member conservative majority, the Associated Press last month reported that liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor’s staff have prodded institutions where she appears to buy her book. In an opinion article published today in the Washington Post, Margaret McMullan, an organizer of the Mississippi Book Festival, published her account of inviting Sotomayor to speak in 2019 – noting that the justice turned down a modest stipend and didn’t seem that interested in selling her book: Subsequent emails and phone conversations were similar. No, Le said, the justice did not need us to provide lunch or dinner. No, she could not accept the $250 stipend. Did Le urge me to buy more books? No. She did ask whether we wanted any of the copies of “My Beloved World” to be in Spanish. In fact, we did, and I hadn’t thought to order them. When Sotomayor came to Jackson, we had her speaking in the sanctuary at Galloway Memorial United Methodist Church, the church where Eudora Welty once worshiped. Backstage, Sotomayor smiled when she saw my clipboard of questions. She helped me with my tote bag full of books. She then clapped her hands together and said something like, “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do.” In addition to our planned onstage interview, she said, she wanted the freedom to go off-script. “They’re children,” I recall her saying. “I want to be sure I get to their questions.” “Perfect,” I said. She concludes: There very well might be a culture of poor ethical conduct in the Supreme Court, but there is no moral equivalency between justices accepting rides on private jets to vacation with friends who had cases before the court and Sotomayor talking about her books and her life to a crowd of mesmerized young readers. The standard royalty rate for authors is less than 10 percent of the sales price. I don’t know anything about Sotomayor’s deal with her publishers, but 10 percent would make her cut of the 1,500 books our foundation purchased approximately $2,250 — for which she had to fly to Mississippi and give two presentations. During the hottest month of the year. Was that a bribe? You be the judge. It’s not the first time someone who knows the justices has spoken out to defend their ethics. Harlan Crow, the billionaire and Republican donor who was reported to have taken conservative justice Clarence Thomas on luxury trips, has given multiple interviews in which he denied there being anything improper about their relationship. There have been reports of long lines in Ohio as early voting has surged ahead of a closely watched special election on Tuesday that could make it harder to amend the state constitution: Ohioans are voting on Issue 1, a proposal that would require signatures in all 88 counties as well as a 60% supermajority to amend the state constitution. Currently, voters need to collect 5% of the gubernatorial vote in all 44 counties to send a constitutional amendment to the ballot, which must win a simple statewide majority to pass. Republicans are seeking to change the rules ahead of a referendum to protect abortion rights this fall. Republicans placed the special election on the ballot in August, hoping it would be a low-turnout affair. But turnout has been extremely strong – nearly 600,000 people have cast ballots so far. For more than a decade, Ohio Republicans have only allowed counties to have one in-person early voting site. That restriction can create a bottleneck in the more populous counties in the state, which tend to be Democratic-leaning. A new law enacted by Republicans this year also imposes additional hurdles to voting early. The measure eliminated early voting on the Monday before election day, typically one of the busiest days, instead extending the hours on other available days. It also gave voters less time to request a mail-in ballot and only allows counties to offer a single ballot drop box, which must be available in front of the boards of elections. Robert Reich: Will Trump be jailed before trial? Our columnist Robert Reich considers Donald Trump’s characteristic disregard for the instructions of a judge, in the aftermath of his arraignment on charges related to his attempted election subversion, and whether federal authorities will take the logical next step… At Donald Trump’s arraignment for trying to overturn the result of the 2020 election, magistrate judge Moxila A Upadhyaya warned him he could be taken into custody if he violated the conditions of his release, including attempting to influence jurors or intimidate future witnesses. The judge said: “You have heard your conditions of release. It is important you comply. You may be held pending trial in this case if you violate the conditions of release.” She asked: “Do you understand these warnings and consequence, sir? Are you prepared to comply?” Trump responded: “Yes.” But not 24 hours later, Trump posted on social media a message that could be understood as an attempt to influence potential jurors or retaliate against any witness prepared to testify against him. He wrote: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” On Friday evening, prosecutors from the office of special counsel Jack Smith asked the court for a protective order to stop Trump from making public any of the information they were about to deliver to his lawyers under the discovery phase of the upcoming criminal trial, such as the names of witnesses who will testify against him. On Saturday, the presiding judge in the case, Tanya Chutkan, ordered that Trump’s lawyers respond to the prosecutor’s request by 5pm Monday. All through the weekend, Trump continued to threaten potential witnesses. On Sunday he called Jack Smith “deranged”, and accused the special counsel of waiting to bring the case until “right in the middle” of his election campaign. In another post he asserted that he would never get a “fair trial” with Chutkan and jurors from Washington DC. These statements directly violate the conditions of Trump’s release pending trial. They also could inflame Trump supporters, thereby endangering those who are trying to administer justice, such as Smith and Chutkan, as well as potential witnesses. It’s going to get a lot worse unless Chutkan – on her own initiative or at the urging of prosecutors – orders Trump’s lawyers to show cause why his release pending trial should not be revoked, in light of his repeated violation of the conditions of his release. Joe Biden has completed one of the less onerous presidential duties: welcoming to the White House a champion team from major league sports. It was the Houston Astros’ turn today, having won the World Series last year. The pool reporter, Sabrina Siddiqui (of the Wall Street Journal but formerly of this parish), informs us that a collection of Texas notables also attended, among them Lena Hidalgo, the judge of Harris county, and David Martin, mayor pro-tem of Houston. No word yet if Biden mentioned the impending Rugby World Cup, and how he thinks his beloved Ireland might do. Of course, he in all likelihood did not. But rest assured, this reporter – if perhaps no one else in the entire Washington or even global press corps – will continue to try to find out. Indictments of Donald Trump regarding his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and his retention of classified information are “exquisite … beautiful and intricate”, the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said. “The indictments against the president are exquisite,” Pelosi, 83 and a regular antagonist of the 77-year-old former president, told New York magazine in an interview published today. “They’re beautiful and intricate, and they probably have a better chance of conviction than anything that I would come up with.” Pelosi’s words to New York magazine seemed likely to prompt a response from Trump, with whom she frequently clashed when she was speaker and he was in the Oval Office. In one high-profile incident, in February 2020, Pelosi famously tore up a Trump speech, after his State of the Union address. Pelosi also told the magazine that if Trump were to win the Republican nomination and the 2024 election against Joe Biden, “it would be a criminal enterprise in the White House”. “Don’t even think of that,” she said. “Don’t think of the world being on fire. It cannot happen, or we will not be the United States of America.” Trump has – unsurprisingly – been in a somewhat combative mood. Last week, Pelosi told MSNBC Trump looked like a “scared puppy” when he arrived in court in Washington to face four charges related to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Trump, who has previously called Pelosi “crazy” and an “animal”, denied being scared. He also called the former speaker “really quite vicious … a Wicked Witch … a sick and demented psycho who will someday live in HELL!” The day so far Donald Trump’s attempt to countersue E Jean Carroll, the advice columnist who won a $5m civil judgment earlier this year after a jury found he sexually abused her, was rejected by a judge. But the former president’s lawyers are no doubt keeping busy ahead of a 5pm eastern time deadline to respond to a request for a protective order in the January 6 case from special counsel Jack Smith, over a statement Trump made Friday: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” Trump, however, argued he was just exercising his right to free speech. Here’s what else has happened today so far: Ron DeSantis again rejected Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election in an interview, drawing insults from a spokeswoman for the former president. Aileen Cannon, the federal judge overseeing Trump’s trial over the Mar-a-Lago documents, appeared to disclose an ongoing grand jury investigation in a court filing. Ohio will tomorrow vote on whether to raise the bar to amend the state constitution, part of a GOP-backed attempt to undermine a forthcoming ballot initiative to protect abortion access. Donald Trump’s legal troubles have made plenty of news, but are they causing his supporters to change their minds? The Guardian’s Chris McGreal has a reality check from Iowa, the first state to vote in the GOP primary process: From his corner of rural Iowa, Neil Shaffer did more than his fair share to put Donald Trump in the White House and to try to keep him there. Shaffer oversaw the biggest swing of any county in the US from Barack Obama to Trump in 2016, and increased the then president’s share of the vote four years later. But the chair of the Howard county Republican party is not enthusiastic at the prospect of yet another Trump presidential campaign, and he blames the Democrats for driving it. “Honestly, the Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot with these prosecutions,” he said. “Why is Trump doing so well? Because people feel like they are piling on him. If this is the Democrats’ effort to make him look bad, it hasn’t. It’s probably going to make him the [Republican] nominee and, honestly, he may win the general election again. And then whose fault would it be?” After pleading not guilty on Thursday to federal charges over his attempts to steal the 2020 presidential election, Trump denounced the indictment as “a persecution of a political opponent”. “If you can’t beat him, you persecute him or you prosecute him,” he said. Judge tosses Trump countersuit against E Jean Carroll A judge has thrown out Donald Trump’s countersuit against advice columnist E Jean Carroll, who earlier this year won a $5m defamation judgment against the former president after a jury found he sexually abused her: Trump responded by filing a counterclaim against Carroll, arguing she defamed him by saying he raped her. That claim was rejected by judge Lewis Kaplan, who said the former president’s contention did not add up.