Donald Trump bond: Trump claims bail is to stop him fleeing as he will surrender for arrest in Georgia Thursday

When Republican candidates for president gather for their first debate Wednesday in Milwaukee, the spotlight will not only be on them, but Wisconsin‘s role as one of a shrinking handful of genuine battleground states.

Republicans chose Milwaukee not just for the first debate but the national convention in just 11 months largely because of Wisconsin’s well-earned status as a swing state. Four of the past six presidential elections have been decided by less than a percentage point here, with Donald Trump winning narrowly in 2016 before losing by a similar margin in 2020.

A federal indictment and one in Georgia charging Donald Trump with lying about the 2020 election to overturn President Joe Biden’s win have done nothing to slow the geyser of election falsehoods flowing from the former president and his supporters.

Just two days after the Georgia indictment, one of Trump’s most enthusiastic backers took the stage at a conference in Missouri to again spread election misinformation. Mike Lindell, the owner of MyPillow who is a vocal promoter of the myth that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, kicked off an event on purported election crimes with a video about fraud.

One of the Republican senators who voted to convict Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 Capitol riot has described the criminal case regarding the former president’s handling of classified documents as a “slam dunk”.

Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) spoke to Kasie Hunt on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday where he said that Mr Trump should drop out of the 2024 presidential race.

Facing four criminal indictments as he seeks the Republican nomination for president, Donald Trump has repeatedly lashed out at the prosecutors and judges handling his cases, while his supporters spin volatile rhetoric into threats of political violence.

His inflammatory remarks, threats to political rivals and borderline incitement have galvanised his supporters, who echo and amplify his statements and hear his alleged dogwhistles loud and clear.

Mr Trump has repeatedly said he is the “least racist” person, but his statements surrounding the criminal cases against him are seen as some of his most explicit and most desperate racist attacks yet, following decades of bigoted statements.

Former president Donald Trump on Sunday said he doesn’t need to participate in any debates as he seeks his party’s nomination for next year’s presidential election, as nearly a dozen of his Republican primary rivals prepare to square off on Wednesday.

Writing on his own social media platform, Mr Trump said the US electorate “knows who I am & what a successful Presidency I had”.

He added: “I WILL THEREFORE NOT BE DOING THE DEBATES!”

Donald Trump already faces prison time for his latest criminal indictment stemming from the effort to overturn the 2020 election, but now a former US attorney general is arguing that he should face that same potential punishment at the federal level.

Alberto Gonzales, who served as US attorney general for two years under George W Bush, said this weekend that should Mr Trump be convicted on any of the four counts brought against him by special counsel Jack Smith over the campaign to alter the election results, the ex-president should be sent to prison.

Florida Gov Ron DeSantis is seeing his support in the Republican primary race crater as rivals gain ground against him while former President Donald Trump’s dominance over the party appears to be holding steady.

A new CBS News poll of likely Republican primary voters across the country shows Mr DeSantis trending downwards, currently at 16 per cent after dropping seven percentage points over a two-month span. In the time since CBS polled voters in June, the governor has slipped from 23 per cent while businessman Vivek Ramaswamy has surged into third place.

John Bowden has the details.

A British filmmaker who interviewed Donald Trump on the eve of the attack on the Capitol has opened up about the former president’s “unhinged” demeanour at the time.

Alex Holder documented the days leading up to January 6 and its fallout for Unprecedented, a movie about the last months of Mr Trump’s presidency. The film was released last summer, months before the Department of Justice subpoenaed Mr Holder for any raw footage related to the movie.

Former Vice President Mike Pence said on Sunday that he wasn’t aware of any effort by Donald Trump or White House staff to declassify documents in the final months of the Trump presidency, backing up a claim made by Mark Meadows and casting further doubt on Mr Trump’s defence ahead of the ex-president’s criminal trial.

A militia plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan, was foiled by the FBI, and the 14 men involved were arrested just weeks before the November 2020 election. Now, almost three years later, the last three members of the scheme to be tried will plead their cases in court.