Trump hit with new charges as aide becomes third person added to classified documents case – live updates

Seven Republican presidential candidates have met the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) new criteria to participate in the first GOP debate on 23 August.

As Republican-led states pass legislation to restrict or ban transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming healthcare, Republicans in Congress have held a series of hearings or steered discussion around implementing national bans while raising dubious claims and dismissing guidance from major medical groups.

On 27 July, Democratic members of a Republican-led House committee condemned the latest “cynical and dangerous attack” on trans children and their families during one of the first congressional hearings against affirming care and health providers.

The panel heard from a former college athlete who advocates against trans women and girls from participating in sports that match their gender, members of right-wing special interest groups that support legislation targeting LGBT+ people, and a person who formerly received affirming healthcare and now advocates against other receiving it.

The committee also heard from a Texas mother whose 18-year-old son is transgender, as well as the trangender legal director of a prominent LGBT+ legal advocacy group.

Alex Woodward has the story.

Rudy Giuliani will not contest claims from two Georgia election workers who have accused the former attorney to Donald Trump of smearing them with false and defamatory statements surrounding the 2020 presidential election.

Donald Trump has responded to the latest round of charges against him from the special counsel’s office.

Here’s what his campaign told The Independent:

This is nothing more than a continued desperate and flailing attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their Department of Justice to harass President Trump and those around him.

Deranged Jack Smith knows that they have no case and is casting about for any way to salvage their illegal witch hunt and to get someone other than Donald Trump to run against Crooked Joe Biden.

Federal prosecutors have added more charges against former president Donald Trump for allegedly obstructing the investigation into whether he unlawfully retained national defence information at his Palm Beach, Florida property.

In a superceding indictment filed late Thursday, prosecutors alleged that Mr Trump called a worker at his Mar-a-Lago club, Carlos De Oliveira, to order the deletion of security camera footage after the Trump Organisation was served with a subpoena as part of the probe into Mr Trump’s possession of documents with classification markings after the end of his presidency.

Mr De Oliveira, who has also been charged with conspiracy and obstruction of justice, subsequently told another Mar-a-Lago employee that “the boss” wanted the footage deleted.

Andrew Feinberg has the details for The Independent.

The big January 6 indictment of Trump did not materialise today, as some thought it would, but there still were some major announcements.

A third person has been charged as part of the federal case against Donald Trump and his associates over allegedly mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House.

Did he believe the “truth” of his claims? And how often was he told, by both his advisers and White House officials, that he was wrong?

Federal prosecutors want to know, as Alex Woodward reports.

Civil rights activists cheered when Ron DeSantis pardoned four Black men wrongfully convicted of rape as one of his first actions as Florida’s governor. But four years later, as DeSantis eyes the presidency, their hope that the Republican would be an ally on racial justice has long faded.

Instead, African American leaders decry what they call a pattern of “policy violence” against people of color executed by the DeSantis administration that reached a low point after the recent release of an “anti-woke” public school curriculum on Black history.

Specifically, Florida’s teachers are now required to instruct middle-school students that enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”