Trump warns Biden: ‘Be very careful what you wish for’: Live

Wednesday night’s showdown in Alabama touched on issues which previous debates skipped over — most glaringly, the GOP’s culture war against transgender Americans. But the main feature of the last meetup of the four underdog Republican candidates seems to have been the animosity which spilled out into view at multiple points.

Obviously, the frontrunner, Donald Trump, was once again absent. So none of this really mattered in the grand scheme of the 2024 Republican primary; he is the wide favourite to win the nomination, and remains so after tonight. But what tonight’s debate really did was illustrate the greater state of the modern Republican Party, and what kind of candidate everyone who is not Donald Trump, the Republican insiders, believe their party wants to see — if not now, then in 2028.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the last Republican debate of the year, and probably the election cycle, as we prepare for the Iowa caucuses next month:

The case in Colorado is among dozens of legal challenges across the country that throw Mr Trump’s eligibility into question, pointing to a constitutional amendment that prohibits anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding public office.

So far, no courts have found Mr Trump ineligible. But after a week-long trial last month, a state judge in Colorado ruled that while the former president supported the insurrection, a ban from office doesn’t apply to presidents.

An appeal to the state’s Supreme Court, where all seven justices are Democratic appointees, challenges not only whether the former president was responsible for provoking his supporters to riot at the US Capitol on January 6, but also whether that should make him ineligible for returning to the White House.

A group of 10 Republicans who acted as “fake electors” in the 2020 presidential election and signed official-looking paperwork claiming Donald Trump won Wisconsin have settled a lawsuit against them.

They have agreed to withdraw their inaccurate filings, acknowledge Joe Biden won the presidency and not serve as presidential electors in 2024 or in any election where Trump is on the ballot.

The 10 fake electors will send a statement to the government offices that received the Electoral College votes saying that their actions were “part of an attempt to improperly overturn the 2020 presidential election results”.

Donald Trump announced he is canceling plans for his return to the witness stand hours before he was due to testify for a second time at his fraud trial in Manhattan.

In two furious, all-caps posts on his Truth Social on Sunday, the former president revived his familiar false attacks directed at the judge overseeing the trial and the state attorney general suing him as Mr Trump maintained he did nothing wrong after he was found liable for defrauding banks and investors for over a decade.

Alex Woodward has the story.

Donald Trump says he will no longer testify at his civil fraud trial in New York on Monday.

In an all caps post on Truth Social on Sunday, the former president wrote that he “VERY SUCCESSFULLY & CONCLUSIVELY” testified last month and did not see any need to appear again.

Mr Trump had been expected to return to the witness stand on Monday as the defence brings its case to a close.

The former president could face the forced break up of his his real estate empire after a judge ruled he had inflated the value of his businesses and properties in return for tax breaks and favourable lending terms.

A grand jury in Nevada has voted to indict six Republicans, including the party’s state chair, after they falsely pledged the state’s electoral votes to Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

Nevada’s Democratic Attorney General Aaron Ford announced felony charges on Wednesday, marking another round of state-level criminal charges against participants of a so-called “fake elector” plot that sought to overturn Joe Biden’s victory, a scheme central to federal and state charges against the former president.

“When the efforts to undermine faith in our democracy began after the 2020 election, I made it clear that I would do everything in my power to defend the institutions of our nation and our state,” Mr Ford said in a statement.

“We cannot allow attacks on democracy to go unchallenged,” he added. “Today’s indictments are the product of a long and thorough investigation, and as we pursue this prosecution, I am confident that our judicial system will see justice done.”

During an event on Fox News billed as a town hall on Tuesday, host Sean Hannity gave him a chance to clarify that “under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody.”

His supporters and campaign have framed his comments as a joke to attack his critics, a defence that has tried to rewrite and undermine his own words and actions over the last several months, including his explicit promises of a campaign of retribution and political vengeance against his rivals.

Donald Trump doubled down on claims he would be a “dictator on day one” of a second term, and blamed Joe Biden for opening a “Pandora’s box” of tit-for-tat political retribution in a speech to party faithful in New York on Saturday night.

Speaking at the black tie dinner at Cipriano restaurant on Wall St, Mr Trump said the country would never be the same after he was indicted on 91 counts in four separate cases.

“I can only say to Joe: Be very careful what you wish for, but you have done is a terrible thing,” Mr Trump said to an audience of 1,000, according to the New York Post.

Mr Trump delivered the keynote address for the New York Young Republican Club’s 111th Annual Gala.

He also addressed his claims to a Fox News town hall during the week that he wanted to be a dictator on day one.

“I said I want to be a dictator for one day,” , Mr Trump said. “You know why I wanted to be a dictator? Because I want a wall, and I want to drill, drill, drill.”

During an 80-minute speech, the Republican frontrunner claimed that being labelled as a threat to democracy was the Democrats’ “newest hoax” against him.

More good economic news doesn’t appear to be getting through to young voters, The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg writes.

They’re not happy with President Biden and it’s unclear whether his campaign is ready to win them back.

The gag order put in place by US District Judge Tanya Chutkan prohibited the former president from launching a “pretrial smear campaign” as he seeks the 2024 Republican nomination for president, the judge wrote in October.

Federal appellate court judges in Washington DC on Friday agreed that some of Mr Trump’s public statements “pose a significant and imminent threat to the fair and orderly adjudication of the ongoing criminal proceeding, warranting a speech-constraining protective order,” but said that the initial order “sweeps in more protected speech than is necessary.”

Mr Trump’s attorneys argued that the order unconstitutionally interferes with his “core political speech” as he runs for president while defending himself from several lawsuits and four criminal prosecutions, including two cases surrounding his alleged attempts to unlawfully overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.