Mike Davis, California’s ‘prophet of doom’, on activism in a dying world: ‘Despair is useless’

 

Mike Davis, California’s ‘prophet of doom’, on activism in a dying world: ‘Despair is useless’

 

His warnings of ecological and social breakdown have proved accurate. But with months to live, Davis is anything but defeated

 

Lois Beckett

Lois Beckett in San Diego

@loisbeckett

Wed 31 Aug 2022 06.00 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/30/mike-davis-california-writer-interview-activism

 

For decades, the southern California writer Mike Davis has obsessively documented the dark side of the Golden state – its wildfires, earthquakes, megalomaniac real estate developers and violent police departments.

 

In essays like The Case for Letting Malibu Burn, Davis has argued that California’s natural disasters are not really natural at all, but the result of greed, racism and lack of foresight from the region’s power brokers. In City of Quartz – published in 1990, two years before the Rodney King uprising – he depicted Los Angeles as a white supremacist police state that had successfully marketed itself as paradise.

 

He was branded “the prophet of doom” and some called him too critical, a delusional lefty. But in recent years, Davis’s warnings of ecological and social destruction have begun to sound increasingly prophetic. As California struggles with soaring wealth inequality and homelessness, new protests over police violence erupt, and the mansions of Malibu burn again and again, his writing has only become more relevant.

 

All this comes as Mike Davis is dying. This summer, the 76-year-old stopped treatment for esophageal cancer and began palliative care, giving him an estimated six to nine months to live.

 

What keeps us going, ultimately, is our love for each other, and our refusal to bow our heads, to accept the verdict

 

I interviewed Davis at his San Diego home in early August, alongside his wife, Alessandra Moctezuma, an art curator and professor. Over the course of more than eight hours, he regaled me with tales from his childhood as a working-class kid growing up in El Cajon; his decades of activism in the civil rights and labor movements; how his work as a truck driver and Los Angeles bus tour operator influenced his late-in-life writing career; and his thoughts on youth activism, the climate crisis, and what it feels like for your life to end at a grim moment in history.

 

 

Davis was wary of being too grandiose about his own death – “People don’t write their own legacy, for chrissakes” – and feared the morphine he takes for pain might dull his encyclopedic memory or oratorical flair. But he needn’t have worried. The sun set. My laptop battery reached 0%. But Davis wasn’t done telling stories.

 

You’ve made your reputation as a historian with an uncanny knack for seeing what’s next. In 2005, you wrote a book, Monster at the Door, about the threat of a flu pandemic. Just a few months before January 6, you warned that the American left was unprepared for the country’s “increasing levels of social violence”. What do you see coming now?

 

What I think about more often than anything else these days is the death of California. The death of its iconic landscapes. I wrote a piece in the Nation on why these changes are irreversible. How much of the beauty of the state might disappear for ever. No more Joshua trees. No more sequoias.

 

I’ve exalted in the beauty of California my entire life. Hiking, mountain running, traveling all over the state. There’s so much I wish my kids could see, could have seen, that they’ll not see. And that, of course, is happening everywhere in the world.

 

What do you think about California’s responses to this destruction?

 

[California’s Governor Gavin] Newsom is going to run for president, partly on his achievements in fighting global warming in California. Every time there’s a fire, he’s out there saying, ‘This is global warning, and we’re ahead of the pack on this, we’re setting the best example.’

 

But we’ve passed the tipping points in so many ways, and we’re doing so many of the wrong things. It’s not just global warming, and drought, it’s the fact that two-thirds of the new homes built in the American west are in high fire-hazard areas, and the Democrats refuse to talk about a moratorium on construction or even rolling back construction in the urban-wildlife interface. It’s easier for politicians to say they’re supporting electric vehicles. Greenwashing has reached a disgusting extent. Our ruling classes everywhere have no rational analysis or explanation for the immediate future. A small group of people have more concentrated power over the human future than ever before in human history, and they have no vision, no strategy, no plan.

 

The climate crisis, migration crisis and pandemic have shown us the truth about how supposedly democratic states react to globally threatening events: they pull up the drawbridge.

 

You’ve been organizing for social change your whole life. How do you deal with a future that feels so bleak?

 

For someone my age who was in the civil rights movement, and in other struggles of the 1960s, I’ve seen miracles happen. I’ve seen ordinary people do the most heroic things. When you’ve had the privilege of knowing so many great fighters and resisters, you can’t lay down the sword, even if things seem objectively hopeless.

 

I’ve always been influenced by the poems Brecht wrote in the late 30s, during the second world war, after everything had been incinerated, all the dreams and values of an entire generation destroyed, and Brecht said, well, it’s a new dark ages … how do people resist in the dark ages?

 

What keeps us going, ultimately, is our love for each other, and our refusal to bow our heads, to accept the verdict, however all-powerful it seems. It’s what ordinary people have to do. You have to love each other. You have to defend each other. You have to fight.

 

Republicans are doing a splendid job of combining protest movements with electoral politics

What do you think Americans should be doing right now?

 

Organize as massively as possible: non-violent civil disobedience. Instead of just fighting over environmental legislation in Congress, ending up in a bill that’s as much a subsidy to the auto industry and to fossil fuel as anything else: start sitting-in in the board rooms and offices of the big polluters, all these meetings where the Kochs and other oil producers sit down with Republican politicians.

 

In 2020, there were massive street protests all over the US, and the world, after the police killed George Floyd. Yet you’ve argued the left in America has surrendered the streets to the far right. Why?

 

Republicans are doing a splendid job of combining protest movements with electoral politics. It’s not only that Republicans have mastered low-intensity street-fighting, it’s that they’ve also been able to sustain a dialectic between the outside and the inside in a way that progressive Democrats haven’t been able to do.

 

Both of our kids [the couple’s now 18-year-old twins], all their friends turned out for Black Lives Matter. So much attention was given to the participation of whites in the protests, but I think the most exciting part was the number of new immigrant kids, Latinos, who were in the thick of it. After summer 2020, they kind of became orphans. What to do, where to protest, what to join, how to conceive of the possibility of a life dedicated to struggling for social change – all of that went unanswered.

 

The base for a more activist, more aggressive, but also more strategic left politics exists. Students in inner-city high schools in California are a sleeping dragon. If you measure things by opinion polls, this generation is more leftwing than the 1930s. A huge number of people under 30 say they’re in favor of socialism or they’re prepared to listen to arguments for socialism. That’s astonishing.

 

I was surprised to hear that it was in London, oddly enough, where you first conceived of the project that would become City of Quartz, the book that made your reputation.

 

I had a really hard time in London, and in my homesickness, I started thinking: how would I explain southern California in radical terms?

 

The book is one of the first people recommend to anyone moving to Los Angeles. What do you think of some of the other iconic LA writers?

 

Some favorites of mine are long forgotten. One is Myron Brinig, who wrote this funny takedown of LA bohemian circles circa 1930 called Flutter of an Eyelid. A New England novelist is sent by his agent to recuperate in the sunshine of California. He’s at a cocktail party, and this beautiful woman walks up, and he says, “What do you do, ma’am?” and she says, “I deliver and accept pain.” It doesn’t stop from there.

 

I’ve never been a fan of Joan Didion since I read Salvador, an awful book, with El Salvador as a country of dead bodies, not a people, not a culture.

 

I hate Raymond Chandler, yet I’ve read him and reread him so many times. He’s a fascist, and I mean this in a precise sense. He represents the small businessman being trampled by outside forces. Each of his novels has an openly racist section. But of course, you care about the writing, and you end up forgiving things that really aren’t forgivable. Chandler was a strange guy. He’s buried a mile from here.

 

Have you been to Chandler’s grave?

 

Yeah. It’s right next to our Home Depot.

 

Earlier this summer, news about your decision to stop cancer treatment was shared, without permission, on Twitter. This prompted an outpouring of tributes to your life and work. What has it been like reading those?

 

I have pretty old-fashioned values – you don’t hide terminal illness, but you don’t broadcast it either. I’ve been bombarded with love and deeply moving messages, but at the same time, there seems to be some competition of who can write the best obituary. Then I get this stuff: ‘Can I bring my girlfriend down next week? She wants to meet you before you die.’ There’s somebody who wanted to bring their students on a trip and have me tell them about my legacy. It’s a very strange situation.

 

Can you share some of the messages you’ve received? [Davis picks up one stack of papers from his printer, and opens a drawer and pulls out another stack, and begins to read passages aloud.]

 

“We’ve never met but like many people out there I’ve been changed by your work. I’m a brown kid from Orange county who spent many years trying to understand and articulate the complex but unshakable love I have for our home, its haunted uncanniness, its beauty, its cruelty …”

 

“I hear you are in the final stretch of, well, all of this. I write to you from Paris a few hours before I fly back home to LA, and I know that when we make the final descent into the LA basin this afternoon, I will cry softly, as I always do, so in love with the place I call home …”

 

“You came on my podcast back in late 2020 and we talked a lot about rural America. Right now my community is in shambles, because last week eastern Kentucky was hit really bad by a one-in-a-thousand-year flood. I’m having a real hard time time finding any hope anywhere. But I read this interview you did, and it made me feel, not necessarily more hopeful, but more at peace ...”

 

“It is pretty common for people to underestimate their own legacy. So allow me just to say that I’m glad that you did not die on the barricades too soon, before we had your wonderful books. After all, aren’t they a kind of barricade for the ages?”

 

There is so much unmobilized love out there. It’s really moving to see how much.

 

What are you and your family doing with the time you have left?

 

Avoiding this trap where writers feel they must weigh in with famous last words or a long essay on dying. We’re watching a lot of Scandinavian noir on HBO. In the last month, I’ve started consuming immense amounts of military history, an infantile throwback. I find the counterfactuals – this battle, what did it decide, what was the alternative – deeply fascinating.

 

You can’t expect to die at a very heroic moment. It’d be nice to die in 1968, or with the liberation of Europe in 1945. You’re on the barricades in 1917, 1919. Go out of life with the red flags flying. But despair is useless.

Brutal heatwave scorches US west, sparking fires and health warnings

 

Brutal heatwave scorches US west, sparking fires and health warnings

 

Several California cities broke heat records, rising as high as 112F, and blazes erupted as residents were forced to flee

 

Maanvi Singh and Gabrielle Canon

Wed 31 Aug 2022 19.41 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/31/us-heatwave-west-california-pacific-north-west-nevada-idaho-montana

 

A record-breaking heatwave has scorched the US west, the latest in a string of extreme temperature events putting communities on high alert for heat-related illness and death as temperatures are expected to spike higher through the holiday weekend.

 

More than 50 million Americans live in areas now under excessive heat watches, warnings and advisories. Temperatures are expected to hit 115F (46C) in the coming days across parts of southern California, Sacramento and the San Joaquin Valley, according to the National Weather Service. In Death Valley, temperatures were forecast to reach more than 120F (49C) – and perhaps match the highest temperature observed globally in the month of September.

 

On Wednesday afternoon, heat records for this time of year broke in several California communities, including those near Los Angeles and San Diego. In Burbank and Woodland Hills, a suburb north of Los Angeles, temperatures rose to an alarming 112F (44C) smashing previous August records.

 

The extreme heat also helped spur new wildfires across the state. The Route fire, which erupted in the triple-digit heat and prompted closures of Interstate 5 as residents in the area were forced to flee. The fire spread quickly, consuming thousands of acres in mere hours. Seven firefighters battling the blaze suffered heat-related injuries according to the Los Angeles county fire department, which added five of them were taken to hospitals for care.

 

The California department of emergency services said additional fire resources had been prepositioned in high-risk areas across the state as officials prepare for conditions to intensify through the weekend.

 

 

“The National Weather Service is forecasting widespread extreme fire weather over parts of the central coast and southern California through the weekend and into next week,” officials said in an update on Wednesday, noting that both essential equipment and additional personnel were made ready in Orange and Santa Barbara counties “The public is urged to remain aware of their surrounding conditions and to avoid outdoor activities that can cause a spark near dry vegetation,” they added, urging residents to have emergency plans in place and load their vehicles with fuel to prepare for a fast evacuation.

 

Temperatures are expected to build throughout the week, with northern and southern California bracing for the highest temperatures during the long weekend. Extreme heat warnings have been triggered up and down the state, including in the San Francisco Bay area.

 

Parts of the Pacific north-west, Nevada, Idaho and Montana will also face dangerous temperatures. Boise, Idaho, is expected to finish August with an average temperature of 80F (27C) – the highest since record keeping began in 1875. Temperatures are expected to be eight to 12 degrees above normal in north-west Arizona, south-east California and southern Nevada.

 

Across many of these areas, temperatures are expected to cool only slightly overnight – elevating the risk for heatstroke and deaths, especially for vulnerable populations who lack air conditioning.

 

The extreme temperatures are a result of a “heat dome” bearing over the region – a ridge of high atmospheric pressure that acts as a lid, trapping in heat. Although climate crisis doesn’t cause heat domes, scientists expect it to drive more extreme weather.

 

The heatwave is just the latest of several to hit the US this summer. As they grow more frequent and intense, California has debated naming and ranking them – similarly to hurricanes – to underscore their significance. Extreme heat kills more people in the US than any other weather event, according to the National Weather Service. In interior northern California, the service has warned that “the entire population is at risk” of deadly heat.

 

California officials have warned that the heat could strain the state’s energy resources as demand for air conditioners and other appliances surge. The strain could be especially acute in a year that has already seen hydropower disrupted due to drought. With the heatwave just beginning, officials have called for residents to conserve energy where possible to avoid outages, describing the coming days as “the most extensive heatwave in the west so far this year” in a news release.

 

Additional “FlexAlerts”, a warning to conserve energy “are also possible through the Labor Day weekend as record setting temperatures are forecast across much of the west”, the state’s grid operator said.

 

High temperatures are also expected to accelerate the formation of ground-level ozone, or smog, which exacerbates respiratory issues. In southern California, officials have issued an ozone advisory due to the heatwave, advising people to stay indoors and avoid physical exertion.

 

Officials also warn that the high temperatures could further prime the parched, drought-addled west for wildfires. Parts of the west have already seen an explosive spring and summer, with major fires in the south-west and Alaska.

 

On Sunday, Oregon governor, Kate Brown, declared a state of emergency due to the “imminent” threat of wildfire. “It is imperative that we act now to prevent further loss – of life, property, business, and our natural resources,” she said.

 

In California, which has seen a relatively quiet fire season compared with recent years, officials advise that the heat will not only further dry and prime the landscape for explosive fire, but also increase the risk of ignitions. “With the warming and drying trend this week and over the weekend, we will see very dangerous heat risk and increased fire weather concerns over portions of interior northern California,” advised the National Weather Service in Sacramento.

 

The National Interagency Fire Center has warned of high fire risk in much of northern California, due to “warm temps, gusty winds”, low humidity, and “flammable fuels”.

 

Guardian reporter Gabrielle Canon contributed to this report.

Scorching heat wave in the forecast for western U.S. this Labor Day weekend

Will Trump be president again?

Brexit is the monster under the bed Liz Truss is desperately trying to ignore

 

Brexit is the monster under the bed Liz Truss is desperately trying to ignore

Rafael Behr

The likely winner of the leadership contest insists Brexit was the right path to take with the vehemence of a zealous convert

‘Liz Truss claims that backing the wrong horse in the Brexit referendum taught her to discard orthodox economic thinking.’

 

Wed 31 Aug 2022 06.00 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/31/brexit-monster-under-bed-liz-truss-ignore

 

There is a book that foresaw with precision this summer’s Conservative leadership contest, although it was first published in 1980. It is a thin volume about denial and negligence, making its point with few words and colourful illustrations. It is called Not now, Bernard by David McKee.

 

The titular hero is a boy who tries to alert his parents to the presence of a child-eating monster in the garden. They are busy with other things. “Not now, Bernard,” says the father, striking his own hand with a hammer. “Not now, Bernard,” says the mother, watering a plant.

 

The monster eats the boy.

 

The next resident of 10 Downing Street will find the garden crawling with monstrous economic and political menaces. A chorus of Bernards is raising the alarm. Economists, MPs, former Tory ministers, charities, trade unions, businesses, local councils – all can hear rustling in the bushes where a beastly crisis lurks, ready to savage the new prime minister.

 

Anyone who pays an energy bill and does a weekly shop can feel the claws of a budget squeeze closing around the nation’s windpipe. There’s an ogre in the health service. “Not now, Bernard,” says Rishi Sunak. There’s a fiend in the financial outlook. “Not now, Bernard,” says Liz Truss. There are devils in your policy details. “Not now, Bernard!”

 

Then there is that other monster, the one that has become such a fixture in the garden that even the opposition seems not to notice it any more. Can we talk about Brexit? Not now, Bernard!

 

Britain’s self-exclusion from continental markets is not the biggest cause of present economic pain but it will be hard to imagine remedies in the absence of any rational audit of that decision or any reexamination of the ideological fixations that provoked it. But for Brexit believers, it is always too soon and too late to pass judgment.

 

Too soon, because the benefits of freedom lie unclaimed under the pyre of “retained” EU regulations that both Truss and Sunak promise to incinerate. And too late, because Brexit is the settled will of the people and any hint of a downside is sedition.

 

The Tory party recognises only two possible positions on Britain’s relationship with the EU – heroic insistence on further severance and cowardly plotting to rejoin. Labour, unwilling to adopt the former stance and afraid of being cast in the latter one, says nothing meaningful on the subject.

 

Meanwhile, the erection of pointless customs barriers between Britain and its nearest markets has obstructed trade, imposed costs on business, snarled up supply chains and stoked inflation. The end of free movement has caused labour shortages for food producers, care homes and a gamut of services in between.

 

Free trade deals with non-European states that were meant to compensate for the loss of continental custom have had negligible impact. (Most are copy-and-paste jobs from arrangements Britain had as an EU member.)

 

Sterling has depreciated, but without the compensating boost to export competitiveness that might be expected from a currency devaluation. Business investment has been flat since the referendum, in large part because the political climate has been so unpredictable. That volatility – two general elections and three changes of prime minister in six years – is a function of the struggle to turn an ideal Brexit, nurtured in the parochial Eurosceptic imagination, into a reality-based Brexit involving other countries and real people’s jobs.

 

It can’t be done. Opinion polls suggest a majority of voters think the whole thing was a mistake. Liz Truss, the likely winner of the leadership contest, insists otherwise with the vehemence of a zealous convert.

 

Truss was a remainer in 2016 because she was an acolyte of George Osborne. The then chancellor convinced his disciple that Britain would not be foolish enough to jettison EU membership. The campaign would be fought on the economy and the smart thing for an ambitious young minister to do was back the winning side. She promptly did just that once the results were in.

 

Truss now claims that backing the wrong horse in the referendum taught her to discard orthodox economic thinking. That created a mental vacancy, which she filled with hardline Brexit dogmas. By 2019, she was arguing in private that Britain could safely walk away from the EU without a comprehensive deal. Brussels, she said, would immediately be cowed into “side deals” to mitigate any possible harm, the threat of which was, in any case, vastly exaggerated by lily-livered remoaners.

 

Having learned to despise received Treasury wisdom, Truss has graduated on to scorn for diplomacy as traditionally practised at the Foreign Office. Reports of her encounters with overseas counterparts suggest she stumbles at the subtle boundary between direct and brusque; candid and crass.

 

That tendency was on display at the hustings event last week, where Truss was asked whether the French president, Emmanuel Macron, is friend or foe. “The jury’s out,” she said. It was meant in a mischievous spirit, with an eye only for the Tory activists in the room. Foreign secretaries and wannabe prime ministers used to avoid imbecilities of that kind before Boris Johnson contaminated both offices with his marauding insouciance. And even he doesn’t hesitate to call France an ally.

 

Tories now speak increasingly fondly of the outgoing prime minister, not because they remember him as a skilled leader, but because his unique skill is mesmerising them into forgetting what good government is meant to look like. Truss doesn’t have that magic touch. The Brexit booster wand sits awkwardly in her hand.

 

Conservative readiness to indulge Johnson is no measure of his reputation in the country, but the leadership contest is not a national election. For at least one more week, British politics is contained in that sealed chamber where there is a Boris legacy to celebrate, where the solution to poverty is corporate tax cuts, where the solution to everything is tax cuts, where tax cuts have no impact on public service budgets, where life outside the EU is all upside and can only get better.

 

But there’s a monster in the garden.

 

McKee’s story doesn’t end when Bernard is eaten. In a brilliant twist, the monster then enters the house and moves into the boy’s room, breaking his toys and eating his dinner. Still the parents don’t notice. “But I’m a monster,” the monster is finally moved to inform them. “Not now, Bernard,” they say.

 

This is the next chapter for Britain. The monster is here, announcing itself with roars and snarls. The crisis is upon us, demanding capable, serious government. When will that cry be heard? Not now, Britain. Not now.

 

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

See how Republicans are responding to DOJ's Trump filing

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Documents at Mar-a-Lago Were Moved and Hidden as U.S. Sought Them, Filing Suggests

 

Documents at Mar-a-Lago Were Moved and Hidden as U.S. Sought Them, Filing Suggests

 

The filing by the Justice Department paints the clearest picture to date of its efforts to retrieve documents from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

 

By Glenn Thrush, Charlie Savage, Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman

Aug. 31, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/31/us/politics/trump-mar-a-lago-documents.html

Updated 9:29 a.m. ET

 

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department sought a search warrant for former President Donald J. Trump’s residence in Florida after obtaining evidence that highly classified documents were likely concealed and that Mr. Trump’s representatives had falsely claimed all sensitive material had been returned, according to a court filing by the department on Tuesday.

 

The filing came in response to Mr. Trump’s request for an independent review of materials seized from his home, Mar-a-Lago. But it went far beyond that, painting the clearest picture yet of the department’s efforts to retrieve the documents before taking the extraordinary step of searching a former president’s private property on Aug. 8.

 

Among the new disclosures in the 36-page filing were that the search yielded three classified documents in desks inside Mr. Trump’s office, with more than 100 documents in 13 boxes or containers with classification markings in the residence, including some at the most restrictive levels.

 

That was twice the number of classified documents the former president’s lawyers turned over voluntarily while swearing an oath that they had returned all the material demanded by the government.

 

The investigation into Mr. Trump’s retention of government documents began as a relatively straightforward attempt to recover materials that officials with the National Archives had spent much of 2021 trying to retrieve. The filing on Tuesday made clear that prosecutors are now unmistakably focused on the possibility that Mr. Trump and those around him took criminal steps to obstruct their investigation.

 

Investigators developed evidence that “government records were likely concealed and removed” from the storage room at Mar-a-Lago after the Justice Department sent Mr. Trump’s office a subpoena for any remaining documents with classified markings. That led prosecutors to conclude that “efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation,” the government filing said.

 

The filing included one striking visual aid — a photograph of at least five yellow folders recovered from Mr. Trump’s resort and residence marked “Top Secret” and another red one labeled “Secret.”

 

But department officials are not expected to file charges imminently, if they ever do. And the specific contents of the materials the government recovered in the search remain unclear — as does what risk to national security Mr. Trump’s decision to retain the materials posed.

 

While the filing provided important new information about the timeline of the investigation, much of the information was mentioned, in less detail, in the affidavit used to obtain the warrant, which a federal magistrate judge unsealed last week.

 

Among the most crucial disclosures were those concerning the actions of Mr. Trump’s legal team and whether they had misled Justice Department officials and the F.B.I.

 

The Justice Department effort began in May, after the F.B.I. examined 15 boxes of documents the National Archives had previously retrieved from Mar-a-Lago after months of asking Mr. Trump’s representatives to return missing records. The bureau found 184 classified documents in that initial batch.

 

On May 11, department lawyers obtained a subpoena to retrieve all materials marked as classified that were not turned over by the former president.

 

On June 3, his team presented F.B.I. agents with 38 additional documents with classified markings, including 17 labeled top secret.

 

But one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers present during that visit “explicitly prohibited government personnel from opening or looking inside any of the boxes that remained in the storage room, giving no opportunity for the government to confirm that no documents with classification markings remained,” the filing said.

 

Mr. Trump’s team also provided the department’s national security division with a written statement on behalf of his office by one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers who was serving as the formal “custodian” of the files. While that person’s name has been redacted in government filings, multiple people have identified her as Christina Bobb.

 

Ms. Bobb’s statement was attached to the department’s filing on Tuesday. In it, the lawyer wrote that “based upon the information that has been provided to me,” there had been a “diligent” search and all documents responsive to the subpoena were being returned.

 

But law enforcement officials soon developed evidence that statement was untrue.

 

The F.B.I. “uncovered multiple sources of evidence indicating that the response to the May 11 grand jury subpoena was incomplete and that classified documents remained at the premises, notwithstanding the sworn certification made to the government on June 3,” the Justice Department filing said. “In particular, the government developed evidence that a search limited to the storage room would not have uncovered all the classified documents at the premises.”

 

The Justice Department obtained at least one more subpoena, for security camera footage from inside Mar-a-Lago, and the search warrant affidavit revealed that it had been working with multiple civilian witnesses. The result was the search warrant carried out on Aug. 8.

 

The filing noted that “the F.B.I., in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the ‘diligent search’ that the former president’s counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform,” a fact that it said “calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter.”

 

Since the search of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump has claimed he had declassified all of the documents there, and his request for the appointment of an independent arbiter known as a special master to review the trove of materials seized by the F.B.I. centered on a claim that some of the documents were protected by executive privilege. But prosecutors rejected that argument and said Mr. Trump’s lawyers “never asserted that the former president had declassified the documents or asserted any claim of executive privilege.”

 

Tuesday’s filing, which was released minutes before a midnight deadline imposed by a federal judge, accompanied a sealed list of the documents, many of them highly classified, that Mr. Trump retained at Mar-a-Lago. That inventory, filed earlier in the day, is likely to be far more detailed than the brief list included in the search warrant unsealed at the request of Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.

 

The department, inundated by a torrent of misinformation and vitriol unleashed on federal law enforcement officials by Mr. Trump and his supporters, has been using legal filings, rather than social media or public comments, to disclose the evidence and legal reasoning behind its actions. On Monday, prosecutors sought permission to extend the length of their response beyond the limit normally set by the federal court, a request that was quickly granted.

 

Mr. Trump’s legal team, which has at times been slow to respond to the government’s actions since the search, waited weeks to even file its request for a special master, which was intended to halt the examination of the documents. The delay allowed the government to complete its initial assessment of the material — potentially rendering the request moot.

 

On Tuesday, the Justice Department argued that a special master was “unnecessary and would significantly harm important governmental interests, including national security interests.”

 

It also argued that the judge lacked jurisdiction over the matter and that Mr. Trump “lacks standing to seek judicial relief or oversight as to presidential records because those records do not belong to him.”

 

Over the years, Mr. Trump has frequently taken legal steps simply to delay and disrupt efforts by opponents. If the court in this case were to temporarily block investigators’ access to the evidence taken in the search, it could hinder the separate effort to determine the national security risks posed by his possession of the documents, though it would not affect the assessment of the documents that Mr. Trump turned over in January and June.

 

The Trump appointee hearing the request, Judge Aileen M. Cannon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, has signaled that she was inclined to appoint a special master but wanted to first hear from the Justice Department.

 

On Monday, the government said it had set aside materials that could potentially be covered by attorney-client privilege, although Mr. Trump’s lawsuit had raised executive privilege, a different issue. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for Thursday in West Palm Beach, Fla.

 

The department’s decision to use a court filing as a vehicle to provide a more extensive explanation of the government’s actions — and to counter Mr. Trump’s legal claims — evolved over the last few days, and lawyers wrangled over small details until moments before it was filed, according to people familiar with the situation.

 

Mr. Garland, they said, remains deeply wary of speaking too much, cautioned by the example of James B. Comey, the former director of the F.B.I. whose high-profile pronouncements during investigations into Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton were regarded as an egregious violation of departmental policy norms.

 

But after the Mar-a-Lago search, the department’s senior leaders quickly realized that Mr. Trump would otherwise seize on their silence with distorted claims.

 

So they have chosen the traditional path, using public filings to make their case — leavening the dense legal passages with explanations aimed at being more accessible to the public, officials said.

 

On Tuesday, Mr. Garland took another step geared at emphasizing his impartiality and fairness, imposing new restrictions on partisan activity by political appointees at the Justice Department, a policy change that comes before the midterm elections. The new rules prohibit employees who are appointed to serve for the duration of a presidential administration from attending rallies for candidates or fund-raising events, even as passive observers.

 

Mr. Trump, for his part, has dismissed concerns about the performance of his legal team, and told associates that he will ultimately prevail, just as he “won” by avoiding conviction in his two impeachment trials and in avoiding being charged in the investigation into his ties with Russia conducted by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

 

On Tuesday, hours before the government filed its paperwork, Mr. Trump added a member to his legal team to focus on the trouble brewing in Florida, Christopher M. Kise, the state’s former solicitor general and an associate of Gov. Ron DeSantis, according to two people familiar with the situation.

 

Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice. He joined The Times in 2017 after working for Politico, Newsday, Bloomberg News, the New York Daily News, the Birmingham Post-Herald and City Limits. @GlennThrush

 

Charlie Savage is a Washington-based national security and legal policy correspondent. A recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, he previously worked at The Boston Globe and The Miami Herald. His most recent book is “Power Wars: The Relentless Rise of Presidential Authority and Secrecy.” @charlie_savage • Facebook

 

Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence. He joined The Times in 1999. @alanfeuer

 

Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent. She joined The Times in 2015 as a campaign correspondent and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. @maggieNYT

Heilemann: Trump Is Panicked And Can See He's Headed For An Indictment

Reaction to the justice department’s filing over Donald Trump’s retention of classified documents came swiftly, and brutally, on Wednesday.

 

From 3h ago

15.02

Reaction to the justice department’s filing over Donald Trump’s retention of classified documents came swiftly, and brutally, on Wednesday.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2022/aug/31/trump-documents-move-hide-fbi-biden-politics-latest-updates

 

Conservative commentator George Conway, husband of Trump’s former senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, said it was “insanity” that the ex-president’s legal team had gone to a court seeking the appointment of a “special master” to oversee the inquiry, knowing it would likely reveal publicly much of what investigators knew.

 

“Basically they asked for the justice department to punch them in the face. And that’s what the justice department did in this in this brief,” he told CNN.

 

“They talk about obstruction... these documents were moved around from room to room. And they actually show us the certification. I don’t think we’ve seen that before, the certification from Trump’s lawyers that said ‘hey, there were no more documents, no more classified documents’ last year in response to a subpoena.

 

“They certified that’s it: ‘There’s all the responsive documents we have, and it turned out there were no documents anywhere other than in storage rooms.’

 

“It turned out there were documents at his office. They were documents all over the place, and tons of them. This factual recitation has him dead to rights. There’s just no question about it, and it explains a lot today about why we’re seeing Donald Trump ‘truthing out’ on his social media platform that’s failing. He was basically just freaking out all day and the reason is this.”

New Russia gas halt tightens energy screws on Europe • FRANCE 24 English

Europe's Energy Crisis May Last For 'Many Winters' / European gas shortages likely to last several winters, says Shell chief

European gas shortages likely to last several winters, says Shell chief

 

Warning raises prospect of continued rationing, as Total boss says Europe has to plan for future without Russian supplies

 

Gwyn Topham

@GwynTopham

Mon 29 Aug 2022 18.47 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/29/european-gas-shortages-likely-to-last-several-winters-shell-chief-rationing-europe-russia

 

Gas shortages across Europe are likely to last for several winters to come, the chief executive of Shell has said, raising the prospect of continued energy rationing as governments across the continent push to develop alternative supplies.

 

Cuts to the supply of Russian gas since the invasion of Ukraine have plunged European countries into a devastating energy crisis, driving up wholesale prices to leave consumers facing huge bills and the highest rates of inflation since the 1980s.

 

Speaking at a press conference in Norway on Monday, Ben van Beurden said the situation could persist for several years. “It may well be that we will have a number of winters where we have to somehow find solutions,” he said.

 

Van Beurden said solutions to the energy crisis would have to found through “efficiency savings, through rationing and a very, very quick buildout of alternatives”.

 

“That this is going to be somehow easy, or over, I think is a fantasy that we should put aside,” he added.

 

His comments come as Europe’s biggest economies brace for a tough winter of soaring inflation and the threat of recession, as record increases in gas and electricity bills pile pressure on households and businesses across the continent.

 

Russia, the major supplier of gas to most of the EU before the war in Ukraine, has throttled exports in response to western sanctions imposed since Vladimir Putin’s invasion six months ago. While not all EU countries are directly reliant on Russian supplies, competition for scarce resources has pushed wholesale European gas prices up by a factor of 12 compared with a year ago.

 

Britain sources little of its gas directly from Russia, although is exposed to soaring prices on the wholesale market. Liz Truss, who is likely to be the next British prime minister, has so far refused to spell out what help she would give to households as the price cap on energy bills jumps 80% to £3,549 a year from October.

 

Speaking on Monday, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said a package of emergency measures would be unveiled soon. Speaking in Slovenia as EU officials work on a plan, which could be announced as early as this week, Von der Leyen said “emergency interventions” would be introduced in addition to longer-term energy market reforms.

 

“Skyrocketing electricity prices are now exposing, for different reasons, the limitations of our current electricity market design,” she said.

 

The French prime minister, Elizabeth Borne, warned companies that energy could be rationed this winter, while Belgium’s energy minister said the next five to 10 years could be difficult.

 

Speaking alongside the Shell chief executive in Norway, the head of another energy company, TotalEnergies’s Patrick Pouyanné, said Europe’s governments and policymakers would have to plan for a future without Russian gas.

 

The comments were made at a ceremony to mark a carbon capture and storage deal between the two firms, the Financial Times reported. “If you think without it [Russian gas], we will manage. There is enough energy in this planet to do without it,” Pouyanné added.

 

European gas prices have soared in recent weeks, reaching almost €350 (£299) a megawatt hour last week as countries rushed to build up supplies before the winter. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Monday accused Russia of “economic terror” by trying to cut gas supplies to Europe.

 

“It is exerting pressure with price crisis, with poverty, to weaken Europe,” he said.

 

Maintenance work is expected to take place this week by Russian state-owned company Gazprom on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline that links Russia and Germany via the Baltic Sea, complicating efforts to fill up gas storage sites.

 

Wholesale gas prices fell back on Monday after Germany’s economy minister said he expected the country’s storage to be 85% full next month. However, prices still remain more than triple the level at the start of this year.

 

Soaring energy prices have helped oil and gas companies to record bumper profits, prompting demands for windfall taxes to help finance emergency support for struggling households and businesses. Shell made record profits of nearly £10bn between April and June and promised to give shareholders dividends worth £6.5bn.

Nord Stream 1: Russia cuts Europe gas supply for second time - BBC News

Queen will break with tradition and appoint new Prime Minister at Balmoral

Brexit Explains 80% of U.K. Inflation, Former BOE Official Says

 

Brexit Explains 80% of U.K. Inflation, Former BOE Official Says

Adam Posen says he’d back a half-point rate hike in May

Economist says there’s no chance of a U.S.-U.K. trade deal

 

Adam Posen

By Lizzy Burden

27 April 2022 at 14:14 CEST

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-27/brexit-explains-80-of-u-k-inflation-former-boe-official-says

 

Adam Posen, a former Bank of England policy maker, said most of Britain’s inflation problem stems from Brexit and that he’d vote for a half-point interest rate increase to curb an upward surge in prices.

 

The economist who heads the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, a prominent research group, said that 80% of the reason why the International Monetary Fund expects Britain’s inflation to remain elevated for longer than its Group of Seven peers is the impact of its departure from the European Union on immigration.

 

“We see a very large gap between the inflation rate in the U.S. and the inflation rate in Europe -- the U.K. ends up in between,” Posen said at a conference hosted by the U.K. in a Changing Europe research group. “You’ve seen a huge drop in migrant labor. When you look at the macro factors, it’s very difficult to see anything other than the labor market issues. It really seems like Brexit has to bear a disproportionate role in explaining the inflation.”

 

In an interview with Bloomberg, Posen said he’d back quicker interest rate increases than the BOE has pushed through so far. Posen was a dovish member of the bank’s Monetary Policy Committee during his three-year term, which concluded in 2012 and covered the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

 

Most economists expect only a quarter-point rise when policy makers meet again next week, moving the key rate to 1%, the highest since 2009.

 

Posen supported the calls of some in the U.K. government to cut tariffs on food imports in order to ease the cost-of-living squeeze. He cited Peterson Institute research on the U.S. showing that reducing tariffs Donald Trump brought in as president would cut inflation about 1.3%.

 

Brexit has added border frictions, increased transport costs and left Britain to negotiate its own trade deals independently of the EU.

 

“You run a trade war against yourself, bad things happen,” he said about the situation in the U.K. “Better to retreat.”

 

Posen also cited foreign direct investment, or FDI, as a weakness for the U.K. He noted the IMF’s diagnosis that part of why Britain will lag its G-7 peers on growth in 2023 is reduced FDI and said Britain is unlikely to ever return to levels reached in the 1990s and 2000s. Those, Posen said, were “thrown away in large part by Brexit and the corroding of the global economy.”

 

He added that there’s no chance the U.K. and U.S. will reach a trade deal. That’s down to the political mood in Washington as well as concerns in the U.S. that the peace deal in Northern Ireland is fraying.

 

“The U.S. Congress … doesn’t want to approve any trade deals of any kind with anybody,” Posen said. “Then you throw in Northern Ireland. This is not going to happen, 100%.”

Is Brexit to Blame for Inflation? - TLDR News

London Playbook: London calling — Brace, brace — Liz vs. the Libs

 

London Playbook: London calling — Brace, brace — Liz vs. the Libs

BY ESTHER WEBBER

AUGUST 31, 2022 8:02 AM

 

POLITICO London Playbook

By ESTHER WEBBER

https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/london-playbook/london-calling-brace-brace-liz-vs-the-libs/

 

PRESENTED BY

UK Fisheries

 

IN MEMORIAM: The world today remembers the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, who died yesterday at the age of 91. As the man who effectively allowed the Cold War to come to a peaceful end there are plenty of weighty obituaries around — read POLITICO’s here, where David Cohen writes that Gorbachev “shook up a nation that had never fulfilled most of its promises to its people and created a seismic shift in international relations, altering a world that been locked in a nuclear stare-down for four decades.”

 

Paying tribute: Boris Johnson compared Gorbachev’s record of peace to Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, tweeting that “his tireless commitment to opening up Soviet society remains an example to us all.” Liz Truss added that his “legacy of cooperation and peace must prevail.”

 

But there’s also a dark side to Gorbachev’s legacy. As my Brussels Playbook colleagues write this morning, on Gorbachev’s watch, Soviet troops brutally massacred 22 protestors in Tbilisi in April 1989; in Azerbaijan, the military killed 150 people in the Black January massacre in 1990. Gorbachev is also often reviled in Lithuania for the January 1991 massacre in which 14 civilians were killed by the Soviet army — and in Latvia, for the killing of five people, also in January of that year.

 

Good morning. This is Esther Webber with you for the rest of the week.

 

**A message from UK Fisheries: For decades, British fishers have plied their trade in bountiful Greenlandic waters, but despite the Government’s pledges of new post-2019 ‘Seas of Opportunity’ our distant waters fleet is now completely shut out while others fish on. We can and must do better – and here you can read how.**

 

DRIVING THE DAY

LONDON CALLING: All good things come to an end, and so does the Conservative Party leadership contest. It’s the last hustings tonight in London, in what seems likely to be a valedictory outing for Rishi Sunak and a victory lap for Liz Truss. While Team Sunak stresses his work ethic to the last, Truss’ attention is firmly on two tasks ahead: the cost-of-living juggernaut and preparing for the next election as the Liberal Democrats begin to peer over the blue wall.

 

Reminder: The ballot of party members closes at 5 p.m. on Friday and the winner will be announced Monday. This time next week, they will have their feet firmly under the desk.

 

Party atmosphere: We’re not sure whether it’s completely tone-deaf or a good distraction from everything else, but Playbook hears there will be a DJ set for half an hour before the hustings kick off in London. “They’re just playing music. It’s not like Tiësto or anything,” a Conservative Party official commented when asked for the setlist.

 

Liz’s summer of love: Ahead of the final bid for votes, a member of Team Truss said: “Liz has loved traveling around the country to take part in the hustings, meeting members and answering their questions about her plan for the future. She’s really looking forward to the final one tonight and the chance to explain how she will make sure London thrives.”

 

The harder they come: A Sunak campaign member said: “If Rishi wins it will be what they call a ‘hard win’ — he’s done 130 events plus the official hustings. We think he’s met 30,000 members over the last six weeks.” They estimated Truss has done less than half of Sunak’s member events.

 

Last pitch effort: Sunak himself put out some words, sticking to his tough-on-inflation message. He said: “I have been consistent, clear and honest throughout this contest that we must fix inflation first. Only by supporting people through this winter and gripping inflation can we lay the foundations for growth and prosperity — for lower taxes, a better NHS and a healthy economy making full use of our Brexit freedoms.”

 

BRACE, BRACE: The pressure awaiting the next prime minister is being ratcheted up yet again with a series of stories laying bare the dilemmas they will face. There’s a twin-pack of bracing dispatches from Bloomberg, with David Goodman reporting on a prediction from Goldman Sachs that inflation could top 22 percent next year, while Alex Wickham and Todd Gillespie have got hold of some jaw-dropping Treasury documents suggesting gas and electricity companies could make excess profits of up to £170 billion pounds over the next two years.

 

A cold wind bloweth: The Treasury said it did not recognize the analysis, but regardless of precise figures the story highlights how tough Truss will have to stand in order to resist demands for a new windfall tax. Any fresh levy on profits is something she has set her face very heavily against, as has Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary and chancellor presumptive.

 

Small businesses’ big problem: Smaller companies are looking at a rise of around 400 percent in their energy costs, industry heads warn the i’s Richard Vaughan, Chloe Chaplain and Ben Gartside. Business owners are calling on the government to spell out how it will support them while Truss remains tight-lipped on the specifics. A business rate rebate similar to the council tax version for households is one of the most likely options, the i team hears.

 

Pubs call time: The problem is only going to be thrown into sharper relief in the coming weeks as an increasing number of pubs and hotels announce they are being forced to close. In the Mirror, Lizzy Buchan has spoken to head teachers and NHS bosses who fear they will have to cut staff to pay school and hospital energy bills.

 

And there’s more: Grim reading in the Guardian, which splashes on Josh Halliday’s report that food banks across the U.K. have warned of a “completely unsustainable” surge in demand that will prevent them from feeding the hungriest families this winter. Not to mention Andrew Gregory’s detailed read on the NHS, which sums up the situation thus: “The overriding problem for the new Downing Street incumbent is that, while in previous years problems in the NHS centered on specific areas, today the entire house is on fire.”

 

Tough sell: Things are looking so bleak even the prime minister has admitted it. Boris Johnson was in Dorset yesterday pointing at a big hole (insert your own jokes), where he told reporters: “It is going to be tough in the months to come. It’s going to be tough through to next year. And that’s because of Putin’s war in Ukraine. Be in absolutely no doubt, the gas prices [are] being driven by what Putin did in Ukraine. But we are going to get through this.”

 

The message: Johnson is obviously anxious about the impact which the strictures of the coming months will have on public support for helping Ukraine through sanctions and military cooperation, and wants to underline that to his successor. In case that all seems a tad doomster-y, the PM has given an interview to the Express’ Sam Lister and Gary Jones in which he says the British people are “heroic” and will get through the winter before the country bounces back “strongly.” More on that later.

 

Coming storm: Playbook was chatting recently to a Conservative strategist about the scale of the challenge facing the new PM. Their topline warning was blunt: “This makes COVID look relatively straightforward.” They noted there was a certain irony in Truss triumphing on the back of her free-marketeer credentials when “initially it’s just got to be, let’s bail everybody out … there will be a near-nationalization of energy companies. I would be shocked if we didn’t see BEIS officials on the boards for six months or something like that.”

 

Competence wanted: The same strategist observed: “In the early stages of the race it was all about criticizing gender identity and engaging in conversations about free speech. Why is anybody talking about this when people are looking at October thinking ‘I’m going to be wiped out’?” It is a time, they added, for “competent government” and “MPs can’t say they don’t know Rishi and they don’t know Liz, and nor can members. You might not think Rishi is a great retail politician but he’s basically got his act together. Liz hasn’t demonstrated that.”

 

Mark my words: On the front of the FT, Sunak tells George Parker and Sebastian Payne it would be “complacent and irresponsible” to ignore the risk of markets losing confidence in the British economy. He accuses his rival of making unfunded spending commitments that could force up inflation and interest rates and increase U.K. borrowing costs, and says he “struggles to see” how Truss’ promises “add up.” No offense to our pals at the FT, but the choice of outlet reads a bit like preaching to the choir at this stage.

 

Repair Kit: While the PM talks up his achievements and the chancellor pays a visit to the U.S., Kit Malthouse has been busy with cross-departmental planning. The chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster held a meeting yesterday with ministers and officials across the big departments to discuss “priority risk areas,” such as health, energy supply, cost of living, supply chain disruption, labor market shortages and industrial action — all of which are set to collide over the next 18 months.

 

Coming up Malthouse: A Cabinet Office official said Malthouse “is continuing to drive forward planning for this winter” and “identifying the key operational decisions that can be taken quickly once a new administration is in place to reduce the impact on the public of the global rise in energy prices.” Malthouse has told colleagues it is essential for departments to “maintain pace and grip on this essential work” and that tackling these challenges will be “a marathon not a sprint.” We can’t help wondering which job he’s eyeing up.

 

Fantasy Cabinet latest: The Express’ David Maddox reckons Jacob Rees-Mogg is in line for promotion to business secretary in a Truss administration. As Maddox points out, this would cast some doubt on the future of net zero, with Rees-Mogg said to be keen on ending the embargo on fracking and new oil exploration.

 

PROTOCOL BILL BATTLE: My POLITICO colleague Cristina Gallardo has a great preview of the first major parliamentary battle awaiting Truss, as peers prepare a full-frontal attack on the government’s plans to rewrite the Northern Ireland protocol when parliament returns from its summer break.

 

Getting ready: At a crunch meeting behind closed doors next week, senior peers — including leading ex-judges and barristers — will agree their strategy to try to take down the bill, with peers divided between voting it down completely at its second reading, and amending it heavily and sending it back to the House of Commons with a stark message of disapproval.

 

Timeline: As Cristina outlines, the protocol bill sailed through the Commons this summer with no amendments, and is due to arrive in the U.K. parliament’s upper chamber for its first debates after the political party conference season in early October. Assuming peers settle on amending the bill rather than trying to block it, it could take 11 days to get to third reading. Ping-pong, the process by which the bill is sent back and forth between the two houses as they try to resolve disagreements, could then take several more weeks, potentially delaying the bill’s passage until the end of the year.

 

The targets: Two aspects of the bill are driving their concerns: the U.K.’s plan to use the legislation to switch off parts of the Northern Ireland protocol — which many observers believe would amount to a breach of international law — and the significant delegated powers ministers would gain under its provisions.

 

All eyes on Labour: The bill’s ultimate fate could depend on the Labour Party, which has been cautious under Keir Starmer’s leadership not to take up positions which could be portrayed as siding with the EU against Britain. For more of the nitty-gritty, sign up to Cristina’s weekly email on EU-U.K. relations.

 

**What does the Tory leadership race mean for your industry? Our POLITICO Pro experts offer you granular insights into what the future legislature will look like and how it will impact your business. Learn more on POLITICO Pro here.**

 

LIZ VS. THE LIBS

SURREY NOT SURREY: The cat was set loose among the pigeons yesterday with the news that the Lib Dems are preparing for a possible by-election in Michael Gove’s Surrey Heath seat, as sniffed out by the News Agents’ Lewis Goodall. A Conservative source told the Guardian’s Peter Walker and Pippa Crerar in no uncertain terms that he is not intending to step aside. But Gove, who has made his feelings about Truss clear, is unlikely to get another big job under her leadership, and might just fancy a return to journalism.

 

SCOOP — WATCH LIST: That’s not all. A senior Lib Dem official confirmed to Playbook that the party is undertaking similar preparations in five other seats they have identified as potential by-election territory. These are: Tamworth, where Chris Pincher is the MP; Johnson’s Uxbridge seat; North East Somerset, where there has been some (wild) speculation over a peerage for Rees-Mogg; Nadine Dorries’ Mid Beds, also the center of peerage rumors; and Selby and Ainsty, where Nigel Adams has confirmed he will stand down in 2024 but could head for the Lords sooner. The Lib Dem source said hopefuls in these places would be subject to the more rigorous checks and media prep that come with the spotlight of a by-election compared with a general election.

 

Raab rumors: No such measures are necessary in top Lib Dem target Esher and Walton, where they are sticking with candidate Monica Harding, who cut Justice Secretary Dominic Raab’s majority to 2,743 in 2019. The rumor mill is in overdrive there, too, where the chat from local Tory activists is that Raab could be in line for a peerage since he is out of favor with Truss and facing an uphill battle to hang on to his seat. One Conservative councilor even posted on TikTok about wanting to be the next candidate before hastily deleting it. A source close to Raab gave the gossip short shrift, saying he was “certainly” going to stay and defend his seat.

 

Tricky customers: The Tory source who spoke to the Guardian called the Lib Dems’ maneuvers “yet another example of [their] dirty tricks.” A Lib Dem official responded this was “an odd way to talk about selecting candidates.”

 

SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT: Some argue that Truss needs to do more to shore up her rep in the south than in the north — a point she appears to accept with a piece for ConHome promising more money for the Lib Dem unit in CCHQ. She has made much of her inside knowledge of the Lib Dems’ tactics on the campaign trail, but further work may be needed. A Lib Dem official pointed to the number of blue-yellow marginals where the sitting MP had endorsed Sunak, saying that “because Truss is seen as the continuity Johnson candidate, she’s probably got to do more to reassure blue wall MPs.” A Tory MP in one such constituency said: “I think Liz has a lot of work to do to prove she can win socially liberal, fiscally conservative seats.”

 

Red and blue Cabinet: The i’s Arj Singh reports Truss wants to assemble a “Cabinet of all the talents” that will help her win in red wall towns in the north as well as traditional and rural Tory seats in the south, in a potential departure from Johnson’s right-wing Brexiteer-heavy team. There’s more in that vein from the Express’ David Maddox, who says influential Northern Research Group leader Jake Berry is being lined up for party chairman.

 

Good luck with that: The truth is Truss has strengths and weaknesses on both fronts, and it is maintaining the coalition forged in 2019 which is going to prove difficult. As outlined in this POLITICO piece last week, delivering tax cuts for wealthier traditional Tories and major rail infrastructure in the north is going to be a tall order, to say the least.

 

 

BEYOND THE LEADERSHIP RACE

PARLIAMENT: Still in recess.

 

THIN BLUE LINE: The prime minister is scrambling to demonstrate he has delivered on key manifesto promises as he puts in an appearance with new police officers today. He is expected to speak to officers from one of the 20 Violence Reduction Units set up by his government, saying: “We are cracking down on vile gangs and putting dangerous offenders behind bars for longer — and at the heart of these efforts are the 20,000 new officers who will be out on the streets providing the firepower for years to come in the fight against crime.”

 

Unfortunately for him: The front of the Daily Mail has other ideas, where David Barrett writes up a warning from a former senior officer that British policing has “lost its way’” and the public feels forces have all but given up on crimes such as burglary. Confidence in the police is being damaged by “woefully low” clear-up rates for house-breaking and robbery, according to David Spencer, who has written a damning report on the subject for Policy Exchange.

 

Is this helping? The Johnson interview with the Express mentioned above is headlined, tantalizingly, with an assurance that he won’t be popping up in government again. However his words further down are a lot more ambiguous, declaring: “I’m going to be there to help them, to support in any way I can and I mean that — it’s open support … I will basically be supporting the new administration but I think the new administration … my clear impression is that whatever happens the new administration will be delivering on the agenda — that’s the key thing.” Got that? Good.

 

One last thing: The PM is expected to make an intervention on energy security later in the week, with all eyes on Sizewell C. The Times’ Chris Smyth and Emily Gosden report Johnson is likely to approve the nuclear power station, which could cost up to £30 billion, imminently. The Telegraph’s Daniel Martin has heard nuclear power stations could be fast-tracked under new planning rules in an effort to help solve the energy crisis.

 

LABOUR LAND: The opposition will be cheered by a Deltapoll survey splashed on the front of the Mirror, which finds 82 percent of people want the government to freeze the energy price cap at its current £1,971 average a year. One in four people told the survey they will “definitely” not be able to afford the rise and another 40 percent said they would “probably” not be able to find the extra money, Graham Hiscott reports.

 

Starmer on the pitch: Keir Starmer will be on the Jeremy Vine Show on Channel 5 this morning taking listeners’ calls — a different type of contact sport after showing up for a LOTO five-a-side football game last night.

 

SCOOPLET — Starmer hire: Peter Hyman is joining the Labour leader’s office in September as the party gears up to fight the next general election. A senior Labour Party official said: “Peter has experience both of being part of the team that won the landslide victories of 1997 and 2001 and working at No. 10. In recent years he has been a teacher, headteacher and social entrepreneur in education, setting up two schools and a charity developing speaking skills in young people.”

 

ICYMI: Ben Nunn, Starmer’s former chief of staff, wrote for the Guardian on how Starmer should handle Truss. Spoiler alert: It’s all about the economy.

 

Feel the Bern: Former U.S. presidential hopeful and father of a thousand memes Bernie Sanders will join the RMT’s Mick Lynch for a rally at the TUC’s headquarters in London tonight. Ahead of his appearance he spoke to the Guardian’s Owen Jones, saying that Lynch’s efforts have been “hitting a nerve, because people are tired of being ignored while the rich get richer.” Postal workers are on strike again today after walking out on Friday. Royal Mail said the CWU had rejected a pay rise offer “worth up to 5.5 percent” after three months of talks.

 

IDEAS FOR RENT: The Department for Leveling Up has launched a consultation on proposals for a rent cap for social tenants. Under the plans, a cap on social housing rent increases would be implemented for the next financial year, at either 3, 5 or 7 percent. Housing Secretary Greg Clark said: “We know many people are worried about the months ahead. We want to hear from landlords and social tenants on how we can make this work and support the people that need it most.” Inside Housing’s Stephen Delahunty has a write-up.

 

There’s an app for that: The Times’ Chris Smyth has got hold of ministers’ latest plans to cut backlogs for routine care by enabling patients to use the NHS app to shop around for hospitals with the shortest waiting lists. Health Secretary Steve Barclay wants to give patients “real-time data” on their phones so they can decide whether to travel further to get quicker treatment for non-urgent procedures, Smyth hears.

 

Keeping the lights on: Councils are facing massive increases in costs due to spiraling inflation and the increase in energy costs, the Local Government Association is warning today. New analysis by the LGA and the Association for Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport found that the costs of street lighting, filling potholes and building new roads have soared, causing pressure on stretched council budgets and delaying works.

 

AUKUS TALKS: Britain’s Defense Secretary Ben Wallace will host his Aussie counterpart Richard Marles, who is also the new deputy PM, in the North West of England today, as part of his first visit to the U.K. since the new Labor government took office in Canberra at the end of May. Cristina Gallardo texts in to say the pair will discuss boosting defense capabilities, including through the AUKUS alliance also involving the U.S. and through a U.K.-Australia collaborative effort to build Type 26 and Hunter Class warships aimed at tackling security threats in the Indo-Pacific. The two ministers will attend together the commissioning ceremony for the submarine HMS Anson in Barrow-in-Furness, and give a joint press conference around 4.45 p.m. U.K. time. Marles will also be on Times Radio at 8.35 a.m.

 

FLOOD OF CRITICISM: Sarah Champion, Labour chairwoman of the international development committee, has written to the foreign secretary over what she calls an “embarrassing” response to the catastrophic floods in Pakistan. “The government’s risible response to this humanitarian disaster arguably amounts to nothing,” she says.

 

FAMINE WARNING: There was an arresting report from Channel 4 News’ Jamal Osman last night on the Horn of Africa, which is currently suffering its worst drought in 40 years. More than 20 million people are at risk of starvation, according to the U.N.’s World Food Program, with Somalia the worst-affected country.

 

BEGUM PLOT THICKENS: Probably the wildest story in today’s papers comes via the Times’ Fiona Hamilton and Dominic Kennedy, who relate claims that a spy working for Canadian intelligence smuggled Shamima Begum and her two friends from Bethnal Green into Syria, and Britain later conspired with Canada to cover up its role. There are now calls for an inquiry, after it emerged that Canada knew about the teenagers’ fate but kept silent while the Metropolitan Police ran an international search for them.

 

ROAD RAGE: The backlash has begun after the Sun revealed yesterday that senior Cabinet ministers who have armed protection will lose their bulletproof Jaguars next year and see them swapped for German-produced Audis. Labour MP John Spellar, who represents Jaguar Land Rover workers in the Black Country seat of Warley, told Harry Cole the decision risks U.K. jobs.

 

UKRAINE UPDATE: Fighting in Ukraine is newly focused in Kherson, where Ukrainian troops are attempting to retake the Russian-occupied region. Kyiv’s much-anticipated counteroffensive launched yesterday and led to street fighting in the southern city, which was the first to fall when Russia began its assault in February. The Times’ Marc Bennetts has the details.

 

NEWS AGENTS OPEN: Ex-BBC stars Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall returned to the airwaves with the first episode of their News Agents podcast yesterday, which focused on the FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion. The episode features the always-mouthy former White House spinner Anthony Scaramucci, plus Trump’s former chief of staff Mick Mulvaney as the trio of presenters deliver a refresher on America’s latest drama — listen here.

 

**A message from UK Fisheries: The seas off Greenland have long offered plentiful cod and haddock to the UK’s distant waters fleet – in 2020 we caught almost 1,700 tonnes in Greenlandic waters. After Brexit we were promised as good or better fishing opportunities as an independent coastal state. However, while competitor nations – including Russia – continue to catch whitefish in these waters, the UK fleet now has no quota at all. We have failed to negotiate a fair deal even though the Greenlandic shellfish industry is heavily dependent on the UK market for its exports. Greenland has said that it is willing to give continued UK fishing access in return for a good trade deal, so at a time when we need to prioritise food security, it’s incredible that the Government does not instruct its negotiators to strike a fair deal for Britain. Click here to see what it must do NOW.**