Judge finds Donald Trump committed fraud in New York civil case A New York state judge has granted partial summary judgment to the New York attorney general, Letitia James, in the civil case against Donald Trump. Judge Arthur F Engoron found that Trump committed fraud for years while building his real estate empire, and that the former president and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing financing, AP reports: Beyond mere bragging about his riches, Trump, his company and key executives repeatedly lied about them on his annual financial statements, reaping rewards such as favorable loan terms and lower insurance premiums, Engoron found. Those tactics crossed a line and violated the law, the judge said in his ruling on Tuesday. The decision by Judge Engoron precedes a trial that is scheduled to begin on Monday. James, a Democrat, sued Trump and his adult sons last year, alleging widespread fraud connected to the Trump Organization and seeking $250m and professional sanctions. Ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general Letitia James, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered that some of Donald Trump’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment after finding the former president committed fraud by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth. The judge also said he would continue to have an independent monitor oversee the Trump Organization’s operations. James sued Trump and his adult sons last year, alleging widespread fraud connected to the Trump Organization and seeking $250m and professional sanctions. She has said Trump inflated his net worth by as much as $2.23bn, and by one measure as much as $3.6bn, on annual financial statements given to banks and insurers. Assets whose values were inflated included Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, his penthouse apartment in Manhattan’s Trump Tower, and various office buildings and golf courses, she said. In his ruling, Judge Engoron said James had established liability for false valuations of several properties, Mar-a-Lago and the penthouse. He wrote: In defendants’ world: rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies. That is a is a fantasy world, not the real world. Judge Arthur F Engoron’s ruling marks a major victory for New York attorney general Letitia James’s civil case against Donald Trump. In the civil fraud suit, James is suing Trump, his adult sons, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization for $250m. Today’s ruling, in a phase of the case known as summary judgment, resolves the key claim in James’s lawsuit, but six others remain. Trump has repeatedly sought to delay or throw out the case, and has repeatedly been rejected. He has also sued the judge, with an appeals court expected to rule this week on his lawsuit. Judge finds Donald Trump committed fraud in New York civil case A New York state judge has granted partial summary judgment to the New York attorney general, Letitia James, in the civil case against Donald Trump. Judge Arthur F Engoron found that Trump committed fraud for years while building his real estate empire, and that the former president and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing financing, AP reports: Beyond mere bragging about his riches, Trump, his company and key executives repeatedly lied about them on his annual financial statements, reaping rewards such as favorable loan terms and lower insurance premiums, Engoron found. Those tactics crossed a line and violated the law, the judge said in his ruling on Tuesday. The decision by Judge Engoron precedes a trial that is scheduled to begin on Monday. James, a Democrat, sued Trump and his adult sons last year, alleging widespread fraud connected to the Trump Organization and seeking $250m and professional sanctions. Joe Biden has warned that Americans could be “forced to pay the price” because House Republicans “refuse to stand up to the extremists in their party”. As the House standoff stretches on, the White House has accused Republicans of playing politics at the expense of the American people. For an idea of the state of play in the House, consider what Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy said to CNN when asked how he would pass a short-term funding measure through the chamber, despite opposition from his own party. McCarthy has not said if he will put the bill expected to pass the Senate today up for a vote in the House, but if he does, it’s possible it won’t win enough votes from Republicans to pass, assuming Democrats also vote against it. Asked to comment on how he’d get around this opposition, McCarthy deflected, and accused Republican detractors of, bizarrely, aligning themselves with Joe Biden. Here’s more from CNN, on why he said that: In a marked contrast to the rancor and dysfunction gripping the House, the Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, also endorsed the short-term government funding bill up for a vote today, Politico reports: McConnell’s comments are yet another positive sign it’ll pass the chamber, and head to an uncertain fate in the House. The Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, says he expects a short-term government funding measure to pass his chamber with bipartisan support, Politico reports: The question is: what reception will it get in the House? If speaker Kevin McCarthy puts the bill up for a vote, it may attract enough Democratic votes to offset any defections from rightwing Republicans. But those insurgents have made clear that any collaboration between McCarthy and Democrats will result in them holding a vote to remove him as speaker. House and Senate plan late afternoon votes to head off shutdown The House and Senate will in a few hours hold votes that will be crucial to the broader effort to stop the government from shutting down at the end of the week. The federal fiscal year ends on 30 September, after which many federal agencies will have exhausted their funding and have to curtail services or shut down entirely until Congress reauthorizes their spending. But lawmakers have failed to pass bills authorizing the government’s spending into October due to a range of disagreements between them, with the most pronounced split being between House Republicans who back speaker Kevin McCarthy and a small group of rightwing insurgents who have blocked the chamber from considering a measure to fund the government for a short period beyond the end of the month. At 5.30pm, the Democratic-dominated Senate will vote on a bill that extends funding for a short period of time, but lacks any new money for Ukraine or disaster relief that Joe Biden’s allies have requested. Those exclusions are seen as a bid to win support in the Republican-led House. The House is meanwhile taking procedural votes on four long-term spending bills. If the votes succeed, it could be a sign that McCarthy has won over some of his detractors – but that alone won’t be enough to keep the government open. As GOP House speaker Kevin McCarthy mulls a meeting with Joe Biden to resolve the possibility that the federal government will shut down at the end of this week, here’s the Guardian’s Joan E Greve with the latest on the chaotic negotiations between Republicans and Democrats in both chambers of Congress on preventing it: With just five days left to avert a federal shutdown, the House and the Senate return on Tuesday to resume their tense budget negotiations in the hope of cobbling together a last-minute agreement to keep the government open. The House will take action on four appropriations bills, which would address longer-term government funding needs but would not specifically help avoid a shutdown on 1 October. The four bills include further funding cuts demanded by the hard-right House members who have refused to back a stopgap spending bill, known as a continuing resolution, that would prevent a shutdown. The House is expected to take a procedural vote on those four bills on Tuesday. If that vote is successful, the House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, may attempt to use the victory as leverage with the hard-right members of his conference to convince them to back a continuing resolution. But it remains unclear whether those four appropriations bills can win enough support to clear the procedural vote, given that one of the holdout Republicans, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, has said she will not back the spending package because it includes funding for Ukraine. Donald Trump has launched a lengthy and largely baseless attack on wind turbines for causing large numbers of whales to die, claiming that “windmills” are making the cetaceans “crazy” and “a little batty”. Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, used a rally in South Carolina to assert that while there was only a small chance of killing a whale by hitting it with a boat, “their windmills are causing whales to die in numbers never seen before. No one does anything about that.” “They are washing up ashore,” said Trump, the twice-impeached former US president and gameshow host who is facing multiple criminal indictments. You wouldn’t see that once a year – now they are coming up on a weekly basis. The windmills are driving them crazy. They are driving the whales, I think, a little batty. Trump has a history of making false or exaggerated claims about renewable energy, previously asserting that the noise from wind turbines can cause cancer, and that the structures “kill all the birds”. In that case, experts say there is no proven link to ill health from wind turbines, and that there are far greater causes of avian deaths, such as cats or fossil fuel infrastructure. There is also little to support Trump’s foray into whale science. McCarthy says it would be "very important" to meet with Biden on averting shutdown The House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, said it would be “very important” to meet with Joe Biden to avert a government shutdown, and suggested the president could solve the crisis at the southern border unilaterally. Asked why he was not willing to strike a deal with congressional Democrats on a short-term funding bill to keep the government open, NBC reports that McCarthy replied: Why don’t we just cut a deal with the president? He added: The president, all he has to do … it’s only actions that he has to take. He can do it like that. He changed all the policies on the border. He can change those. We can keep government open and finish out the work that we have done. Asked if he was requesting a meeting with Biden, McCarthy said: I think it would be very important to have a meeting with the president to solve that issue. Here’s a clip of Joe Biden’s remarks as he joined striking United Auto Workers members (UAW) outside a plant in Michigan. Addressing the picketing workers, the president said they had made a lot of sacrifices when their companies were in trouble. He added: Now they’re doing incredibly well. And guess what? You should be doing incredibly well, too. Asked if the UAW should get a 40% increase, Biden said yes. The day so far Joe Biden became the first sitting US president in modern memory to visit a union picket line, traveling to Van Buren township, Michigan, to address United Auto Workers members who have walked off the job at the big three automakers. The president argued that the workers deserve higher wages, and appeared alongside the union’s leader, Shawn Fain – who has yet to endorse Biden’s re-election bid. Back in Washington DC, Congress is as troubled as ever. The leaders of the House and Senate are trying to avoid a government shutdown, but there’s no telling if their plans will work. Meanwhile, more and more Democratic senators say Bob Menendez should resign his seat after being indicted on corruption charges, including his fellow Jerseyman, Cory Booker. Here’s what else is going on: Hunter Biden’s latest salvo in his campaign of lawsuits is against Rudy Giuliani and another lawyer, whom he accuses of violating his privacy by going through his digital devices. The supreme court told Alabama’s Republican leaders that they have to draw another majority-Black congressional district. They tried very hard to get out of doing so. Here’s everything you need to know about the UAW’s leader, Shawn Fain. Here was the scene in Van Buren township, Michigan, as Joe Biden visited striking United Auto Workers members, in the first visit to a picket line by a US president: