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Trump news – live: Ex-president makes last ditch effort to save Madison Cawthorn

As the US’s Covid-19 death toll officially hits 1 million, Dr Anthony Fauci, the senior public health adviser who became a national figure during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, has confirmed that he would not want to serve in another Trump administration.

“Would you have confidence in his ability to deal with a pandemic of this nature?” he was asked by CNN’s Jim Acosta yesterday. “Would you want to stay on at your post?”

“Well, no to the second question,” he laughed. “The first question... if you look at the history of what the response was during the administration, I think, you know, at best you could say it wasn't optimal. And I think just history will speak for itself.”

Pressed to say he would not serve with Mr Trump again, he was clearer: “Right. For sure.”

In a separate interview, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi mused on the perverse impact Mr Trump has had on the judiciary. “Who would have ever suspected that a creature like Donald Trump would become president of the United States,” she said.

Key points

  • Fauci wouldn’t serve Trump again

  • Pelosi mourns judicial impact of “a creature like Donald Trump”

  • Ex-president’s endorsee Dr Oz faces difficult Pennsylvania primary

US agrees to ease Trump-era sanctions on Cuba

06:13 , Maroosha Muzaffar

US has announced plans to ease sanctions imposed on Cuba by former President Donald Trump.

The restrictions on family remittances and travel to the island will be eased, it was reported.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said the move would allow Cuban citizens to pursue a life free from “government oppression.”

But US officials said that they will ensure such payments don’t reach “those who perpetrate human rights abuses” by using civilian “electronic payment processors.”

The processing of US visas for Cubans will also be speeded up.

ICYMI: Biden reverses Trump pullout of troops from Somalia

03:45 , John Bowden

Joe Biden has taken a step to reverse the withdrawal of hundreds of US troops from Somalia, where special ops forces were engaged in efforts to defeate Al Qaeda-aligned militants fighting for Al Shabab.

The move will mean the deployment of several hundred troops to the country where the US just withdrew the bulk of its forces in an effort that concluded three days before Mr Biden took office last year.

Read more in The Independent:

Biden approves ‘persistent’ US troop presence in Somalia after terrorist gains

Trump fan Ted Nugent tells people to go ‘berserk on the skulls of the Democrats’

02:45 , John Bowden

Musician Ted Nugent, an ardent Donald Trump supporter, is being accused of spreading hate speech after he told fans to go “berserk on the skulls of the Democrats” during an event in support of the former president in Texas just hours after the Buffalo shooting, a racist attack targeting a majority-Black neighborhood.

“So I love you people madly but I’d love you more if you went forward and just went berserk on the skulls of the Democrats and the Marxists and the communists,” he declared.

Read more from Phil Thomas in The Independent:

Ted Nugent tells Trump fans to go ‘berserk on the skulls of the Democrats’

Pennsylvania Senate candidate spotted marching with Proud Boys on 6 January, report says

01:45 , John Bowden

A candidate running for US Senate in Pennsylvania was in Washington DC to support the protests on January 6 that eventually led to a siege of the US Capitol.

Kathy Barnette does not have Donald Trump’s endorsement in the Pennsylvania Senate race but is surging behind frontrunner Dr Mehmet Oz in recent polling and is now within striking distance. Her campaign confirmed that she was in Washington DC on January 6, where she was seen marching alongside members of the far-right Proud Boys group, but denied that she had committed any illegal acts.

“Kathy was in DC to support President Trump and demand election accountability. Any assertion that she participated in or supported the destruction of property is intentionally false. She has no connection whatsoever to the proud boys,” her campaign said.

Read more from The Independent’s Eric Garcia:

Pennsylvania Senate candidate spotted marching with Proud Boys on 6 January

Elise Stefanik responds to criticism of her rhetoric

Tuesday 17 May 2022 00:45 , John Bowden

Blaming the media for spreading “dangerous” smears which she said amounted to blaming her for inspiring the racist mass shooting in her home state of New York over the weekend, Rep Elise Stefanik on Monday doubled down on her past comments about immigration policy and a supposed Democratic effort to bring “millions” of undocumented immigrants to America and grant them voting rights.

The congresswoman’s reelection campaign previously released an ad accusing Democrats of trying to “overthrow” the “current electorate”, which many critics said strongly resembled the racist beliefs of “replacement theory” adherents.

Video of Tucker Carlson promoting ‘Great Replacement’ resurfaces

Monday 16 May 2022 23:45 , John Bowden

As the fallout continues from the shocking racist attack in Buffalo, New York that left 10 people dead on Saturday furious critics of Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson are pointing out the moments when America’s most-watched cable news host expressed views that bear at a minimum similarities to the Buffalo suspect’s ideology.

"So I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term 'replacement', if you suggest the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the third world," Mr Carlson said in a clip from his show currently making the rounds. "But they become hysterical because that's that's what's happening actually. Let's just say it. That's true."

Read more from The Independent’s Greg Graziosi:

Video of Tucker Carlson promoting ‘Great Replacement’ theory surfaces again

Schumer accuses ‘MAGA Republicans and cable news pundits’ of spreading ‘echoes’ of Buffalo shooter’s ideology

Monday 16 May 2022 22:45 , John Bowden

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer joined the chorus of voices accusing the right of spreading the same ideology as the shooters in Buffalo, Christchurch, El Paso and other attacks motivated by the racist “White Replacement Theory” belief on Monday.

Speaking on the floor of the US Senate, Mr Schumer excoriated conservatives for spreading what he said were “echoes” of the same ravings that the suspect in the mass shooting that occurred over the weekend in Buffalo ranted about in a lengthy manifesto posted online before the attack.

“Unfortunately, with each passing year it seems harder and harder to ignore that the echoes of replacement theory and other racially-motivated views are increasingly coming out into the open, and given legitimacy by some MAGA Republicans and cable news pundits,” said the Democratic Senate leader.

Read more in The Independent:

Schumer says ‘MAGA Republicans’ spreading ‘echoes’ of Buffalo shooter’s ideology

Trump makes deal to stay exclusive on Truth Social

Monday 16 May 2022 21:45 , John Bowden

Donald Trump has signed a deal with the company looking to take Truth Social public,: Digital World Acquisition Corp, which will restrict him from making political statements on any rival social media platform in an attempt to boost his own site’s exclusivity.

The news amounts to a self-imposed Twitter ban, which would mean a victory for those who have said that the ex-president’s rantings about the 2020 election and other issues should continue to be kept off mainstream social media platforms following the January 6 siege of Congress.

Read more from The Independent’s Graeme Massie:

Trump has agreed to limit himself from Twitter, according to financial filings

Pompeo swipes at Biden’s Iran policy

Monday 16 May 2022 21:10 , John Bowden

Speaking with members of the Iranian resistance at Ashraf-3 in Albania, where Iranian members of the MEK live in exile and work to spread resistance against Iran’s government, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo swiped at the Biden administration’s foreign policy stance towards Iran.

Mr Biden’s administration has shifted away from the “maximum pressure” campaign that the Trump administration pursued against Tehran, which included exiting the Iran nuclear agreement signed by the Obama administration.

“A serious missing factor in U.S. policy towards Iran is has been the lack of political support for the organized opposition,” Mr Pompeo said on Monday.

Trump ‘re-truths’ image with ‘Q’ in corner that dubs him ‘The Great MAGA King'

Monday 16 May 2022 20:43 , John Bowden

Ex-President Donald Trump took to his Truth Social platform on Monday and retweeted an image showing him on the Iron Throne from Game of Thrones and dubbing him “The Great MAGA King”.

And in the corner of the image was the letter “Q”, a symbol for the far-right conspiracy theory that the former president has never disavowed or repudiated.

Read more at Raw Story:

ICYMI: Expert explains racist ‘white replacement theory’ has extended roots

Monday 16 May 2022 20:15 , John Bowden

A professor who lectures in anti-racism studies and Black identity spoke with The Independent about the racist “white replacement theory” that is finding more and more purchase on the far right and was cited as the motive for an attack in a manifesto purportedly belonging to the suspect accused of killing 10 people at a supermarket in a majority-Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York.

The theory’s central tenet, that Black people and other persons of colour are “replacing” whites in society, bears strong similarities to rhetoric used by conservative figures like Fox News’s Tucker Carlson and Congresswoman Elise Stefanik in recent months to contest the stance on immigration of the Democratic Party.

Dr Matthew Oware of the University of Richmond countered that the Anti-Defamation League and others calling for such rhetoric to be deplatformed were wrong, and that such views must instead be challenged in public.

Read more in The Independent:

Anti-racism experts condemn ‘great replacement’ conspiracy pushed by Tucker Carlson

Trump hammers Dr Oz’s rivals in Pennsylvania robocalls

Monday 16 May 2022 19:55 , John Bowden

Former President Donald Trump is pulling out all the stops for Dr Mehmet Oz ahead of Tuesday’s US Senate primaries in Pennsylvania, where the celebrity TV doctor is facing a handful of rival candidates.

Mr Trump hammered his favoured candidate’s two top rivals, Kathy Barnette and David McCormick, in a robocall that was going out to Republican voters in the state on Monday according to Politico:

GOP Senate candidate left scrambling to defend past comments about Barack Obama, Islam

Monday 16 May 2022 19:37 , John Bowden

Kathy Barnette, a far-right underdog candidate in the Pennsylvania GOP Senate primary who has surged in support in the primary’s final days was hard-pressed to defend her past statements about Barack Obama and Islam on Fox News Sunday this week.

She was grilled by the network’s Shannon Bream for her past claim that Mr Obama, a Christian, was secretly a “Muslim doing Muslim-like things”.

Ms Barnette wasn’t able to defend herself, and gave a meandering response that involved Syrian refugees and a number of other issues.

Read more from The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg:

GOP Senate candidate defends falsely claiming Obama was Muslim

Trump pleads for followers to ‘give Madison a second chance'

Monday 16 May 2022 19:00 , John Bowden

In his Truth Social statement calling for supporters to rally behind Madison Cawthorn on the eve of the North Carolina primary elections, Donald Trump implored his followers to give the embattled congressman a “second chance” and admitted that the 26-year-old had made “foolish” mistakes recently.

The tone of the statement suggested a desperation in the race that has grown more competitive in recent weeks amid a rash of scandals surrounding the youngest member of the House.

Read more in The Independent:

Trump pleads for voters to give Madison Cawthorn a ‘second chance’ in primary Tuesday

Biden reverses Trump’s Somalia withdrawal

Monday 16 May 2022 18:33 , John Bowden

President Joe Biden earlier this month signed an order redeploying hundreds of US ground forces to Somalia for efforts against Al Shabab, an Al Qaeda-aligned militant group based in the region.

His decision reverses a withdrawal of those forces ordered by former President Donald Trump and completed just three days before Mr Biden was sworn in last year.

Read more in The Independent:

Biden approves ‘persistent’ US troop presence in Somalia after terrorist gains

ICYMI: Donald Trump is developing a Netflix alternative

Monday 16 May 2022 18:05 , John Bowden

A media company started by former President Donald Trump is devloping a streaming service that it hopes will be able to challenge big services like Netflix and Hulu.

The Trump Media and Technology Group made the announcement in an advertisement on Wednesday, which stated that the streaming service currently titled “TMTG+” would “be the home for a wide variety of non-scripted, scripted, and original content” once it was up and running.

The company also runs Mr Trump’s fledgling social media venture, Truth Social, which struggled to clear a lengthy waitlist and get up and running earlier this year. The platform’s popularity has sank in recent weeks and last month ceased trending in the Apple app store.

Read more from The Independent’s Sravasti Dasgupta:

Trump media company hiring producers for ‘Maga version of Netflix’

Mike Pompeo visits Iranian resistance museum

Monday 16 May 2022 17:39 , John Bowden

Mike Pompeo was in Albania on Monday as the former secretary of State continues to establish his brand within the Republican Party and elevate his status as a potential 2024 candidate or even running mate for Donald Trump, his onetime boss.

A photo and video posted on the Twitter feed of Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, showed her meeting with Mr Pompeo at a museum dedicated to opposition efforts against Iran’s government. Mr Pompeo has long supported the NCRI and has previously spoken at the group’s events along with other hawkish Republican figures like Ted Cruz, Mike Pence, and others.

The image is a reminder that Mr Pompeo is maneuvering to launch a 2024 primary bid if his former boss does not run again, while a person close to Mr Trump told NBC News in late March that the former secretary was on a shortlist of potential running mates for the former president, who has fallen out with Mr Pence following the latter’s refusal to support his bid to overturn the 2020 election.

Ted Cruz scores a campaign finance win

Monday 16 May 2022 17:10 , Andrew Naughtie

The US Supreme Court has ruled in favour of Ted Cruz in a case focused on the amount political candidates can lend their campaigns, removing limits on how much a candidate can pay themselves back when they loan their campaigns money.

The ruling stems from Mr Cruz’s 2018 re-election effort, during which the Texas senator loaned his campaign a total of $260,000. The campaign began to pay him back after his victory, but the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act stipulates that campaigns can only pay a candidate back for contributions for more than $250,000 within 20 days after an election, and then the money is treated as a campaign contribution. That meant that Mr Cruz’s campaign could not refund him $10,000 of his own money.

In a dissent signed by the court’s three liberals, Elena Kagan criticised the implications of the ruling. “The politician is happy; the donors are happy. The only loser is the public. It inevitably suffers from government corruption.”

Eric Garcia has the story.

Supreme Court lifts limit of how much candidates can lend themselves in Ted Cruz case

Kathy Barnette won’t support other PA candidates if they beat her

Monday 16 May 2022 16:44 , Andrew Naughtie

Kathy Barnette, the “ultra-Maga” Republican making a last-minute surge toward victory in the Pennsylvania Senate primary, has struck a combative tone against critics pointing to her long history of open Islamophobia – and now, she’s insisted she won’t be backing either of her leading rivals if they beat her.

Until Ms Barnette’s rise – largely fuelled by a dramatic rise in coverage in the hardcore right-wing media ecosystem – Dr Mehmet Oz was the prohibitive favourite for the Republican nomination. However, despite getting Donald Trump’s coveted endorsement, he has proven unable to pull away from the field, and many conservatives find his record of liberal positions impossible to stomach.

Read more from Andrew Feinberg on Ms Barnette’s controversial comments.

GOP Senate candidate defends falsely claiming Obama was Muslim

Man who staged bomb threat near Capitol to appear in court

Monday 16 May 2022 16:13 , Andrew Naughtie

Floyd Roseberry, who last year parked a truck on Capitol Hill that he claimed was carrying an explosive device, is set to appear in court today to ask for release from jail.

While he was found psychologically fit to stand trial, Mr Roseberry’s mental health at the time of the incident is a key part of the case. Scott MacFarlane reports that Mr Roseberry is claiming he was on the wrong medication at the time of the incident.

Poll: Should Trump be allowed back on Twitter?

Monday 16 May 2022 15:43 , Andrew Naughtie

While there have been some hiccups in his Twitter takeover lately, Elon Musk has confirmed that in his view, Donald Trump should be allowed back on the platform.

At a recent event, Mr Musk called the move to ban the ex-president after the 6 January insurrection “a morally bad decision”, saying that £it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.”

The Independent is keen to find out readers’ views. To let us know, vote in the poll below and feel free to tell us what answer you chose and why in the comments.

Should Donald Trump be allowed back on Twitter? Have your say

Trump announces a 2020 election book

Monday 16 May 2022 15:15 , Andrew Naughtie

Speaking at an event in Austin, Texas this weekend, Donald Trump was as ever full of complaints about the supposed theft of the 2020 election – and even announced to his assembled supporters that he will be penning a book about it.

The volume will be imperiously titled The Crime of the Century, a phrase Mr Trump has used to describe multiple separate actions he feels targeted him unfairly.

Read more from Indy100 here.

Tom Cotton sells book with ominous martial imagery

Monday 16 May 2022 14:45 , Andrew Naughtie

Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, a hardline Republican who among other things called for troops to be sent into American cities to deal with Black Lives Matter protesters, is publishing a pre-presidential-run-style book railing against the left – and judging by the cover, its rhetoric will not exactly be conciliatory.

It comes at a time when concerns about the belligerence of right-wing rhetoric is increasingly viewed as a radicalisation threat, including among far-right-leaning former veterans who join groups such as the Oath Keepers.

Trump gets behind Madison Cawthorn

Monday 16 May 2022 14:15 , Andrew Naughtie

Posting on his bespoke platform Truth Social, Donald Trump has weighed in behalf of Madison Cawthorn, the embattled far-right congressman who faces a slew of Republican challengers in his primary tomorrow.

According to FiveThirtyEight, polling in the race has been scant, but Mr Cawthorn’s spending has topped $3m, giving him at least one edge. Depending on how he polls in the end, he may face a single Republican challenger in a July runoff.

The GOP’s illogical embrace of racist “replacement theory”

Monday 16 May 2022 13:51 , Andrew Naughtie

After this weekend’s Buffalo shooting, the pressure is on the Republican Party to explain its views on the racist “replacement theory” that the US is being deliberately “flooded” with non-white people to change the country’s demographic makeup – supposedly with a view to permanently installing the Democrats in power.

Eric Garcia has a rejoinder to this view:

Buffalo shooting: Liz Cheney blames House GOP for enabling racist extremism

Monday 16 May 2022 13:15 , Andrew Naughtie

The suspected shooter in this weekend’s massacre in Buffalo, New York is increasingly thought to have followed violent racist movements and subscribed to assorted conspiracy theories, raising the question of culpability for right-wing leaders and commentators who have increasingly trafficked in such notions in recent years.

Among those now calling out top Republicans for their alleged part in this is Liz Cheney, who has lit into her party’s congressional leadership for their record of overlooking and tolerating extremism on the right.

Far-right Pennsylvania candidate defends Islamophobic tweets

Monday 16 May 2022 12:55 , Andrew Naughtie

As she makes an unexpected late surge in Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate primary, far-right candidate Kathy Barnette is being forced to defend a rich archive of highly Islamophobic tweets sent over the course of her career.

Appearing on Fox News yesterday, Ms Barnette dismissed the tweets as relics from a “timeframe” when the US faced an influx of Syrian refugees and domestic terror attacks by Islamist extremists. She said that when she sent the tweets she was a radio host “leaning into helping the public begin to have those conversations”.

“The overwhelming majority of the tweets that are being presented are not even full thoughts, are not even full sentences.”

Among those criticising Ms Barnette for her past remarks is Fox News’s Sean Hannity, a supporter of both Donald Trump and Dr Oz – and himself a former proponent of the racist “birther” theory about Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

Mark Esper confirms story about Trump calling for 10,000 troops in DC

Monday 16 May 2022 12:25 , Andrew Naughtie

Mark Esper, the former defence secretary whose book about Donald Trump has generated myriad headlines the last two weeks, was asked yesterday to confirm once again that Mr Trump had called on the Pentagon deploying 10,000 troops to the streets of Washington, DC in the summer of 2020 to quell Black Lives Matter protests.

Shown a video of then-attorney general Bill Barr denying the story at the time, Mr Esper stuck to his guns – saying he is “110 per cent confident about what the president was seeking that morning”.

Jan 6 cases: Oath Keepers to face sedition trials in fall

Monday 16 May 2022 11:54 , Andrew Naughtie

Multiple members of the far-right Oath Keeepers militia group, including founder Stewart Rhodes, are facing trial for sedition – some of the most serious charges brought by federal prosecutors in the 800-plus cases involving alleged rioters. Now, the date of their trials has been set for the fall, with the first batch of defendants appearing in court not long before the midterm elections.

Nancy Pelosi calls Trump “creature"

Monday 16 May 2022 11:25 , Andrew Naughtie

Nancy Pelosi yesterday vented her disgust at the conservative Supreme Court justices who are poised to vote to overturn Roe v Wade, describing Donald Trump’s three appointees as “dangerous to the freedoms” of the US.

“Who would have ever suspected that a creature like Donald Trump would become president of the United States, waving a list of judges that he would appoint, therefore getting the support of the far-right and appointing those anti-freedom justices to the court,” she said in an interview on CNN’s State of the Union.

Read more from Sravasti Dasgupta:

Pelosi calls Trump a ‘creature’ as she dubs Supreme Court ‘dangerous to US freedoms’

Watch: Fauci confirms he wouldn’t serve Trump again

Monday 16 May 2022 11:02 , Andrew Naughtie

Dr Anthony Fauci appeared on CNN yesterday and confirmed he would not serve under another Trump administration should the ex-president be re-elected in 2024.

While Mr Trump did not fire Dr Fauci or fully exclude him from the administration’s Covid-19 response, he repeatedly undermined and contradicted him in public, and helped make him a hate figure among right-wing supporters who resented mask mandates, social distancing orders, and vaccine mandates.