Victory for party comes despite unusual and aggressive efforts by Republicans to redraw congressional districts

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Democrats are winning competitive House races as well as ones in solid Republican districts and are expected to flip the US House of Representatives after two tumultuous years of Donald Trump’s second presidency. A change in House control would give Democrats a perch to conduct robust oversight of the administration for its final two years.

Republicans currently hold 218 seats in the House and Democrats have 214. (There is one vacancy in a Republican seat and one vacancy in a Democratic seat, and one Republican member switched his party affiliation to independent.) Democrats need to flip just three seats to gain control of the House.

Comey, an outspoken critic of Donald Trump, accused of leaking information related to US national defense

The justice department charged former FBI director James Comey on Monday with two counts of leaking information related to national defense, the third time the Trump administration has filed criminal charges against one of Donald Trump’s most despised foes.

The charges, filed in federal court in Washington DC, provide few details about what Comey is alleged to have leaked. The government alleges that the former FBI director leaked the information in 2016 and conspired with an unnamed person to give the information to a national news outlet.

Trump justice department claims there could be ‘confusion’ about two Republicans on the ballot named Dan Sullivan

Donald Trump said he ordered the justice department to file a lawsuit to block the certification of Alaska’s US Senate results if the Republican incumbent loses, a move that voting rights experts called an “unprecedented intervention” by the federal government with control of Congress in the balance.

“I’m the one that said do it,” the president told reporters as he landed in Florida for a campaign rally on Friday.

Cassidy Hutchinson told panel she had been told Trump lunged for wheel of SUV to try to join mob at Capitol

Prosecutors in the justice department’s civil rights division are seeking criminal charges against Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top Trump White House aide who gave explosive testimony to the committee that investigated the US attack on the Capitol, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The potential charges involve lying to Congress, the person said.

Election officials continue push to assure Americans mail ballots are safe after supreme court rules against president

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After the US supreme court halted Donald Trump’s efforts to make it significantly harder to vote by mail in the midterms, US election officials are redoubling their efforts to convince Americans it is safe to cast their ballots by mail.

The supreme court’s Monday ruling, which sent Trump into an angry froth on Truth Social, averted what election officials of both parties said would be an administrative disaster for this year’s elections. Trump’s order would have required states to comply with cumbersome new rules, including redesigning mail-in envelopes and uploading lists of voters to the USPS, that were not feasible to implement before ballots started going out. The effort was seen as a push by the government to change voting policy as well as one to weaken confidence in voting by mail.

Critics include Senator Chris van Hollen, ex-aide to Obama Tommy Vietor and ex-Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger

Democrats and other Donald Trump critics reacted incredulously to a New York Times report on Sunday that House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries met with Jared Kushner, the president’s influential son-in-law, to discuss possible areas of collaboration.

The reported meeting comes months ahead of the November midterm elections in which Democrats are favored to retake the US House, a development that would make Jeffries speaker. If they are in the majority, Democrats are expected to use their oversight power to aggressively investigate the Trump administration, including self-enrichment by the president and his family.

Exclusive: Rahil Prakash tells the Guardian: ‘I wanted to see if fake polls could penetrate the ecosystem that easily’

A 21-year-old recent college graduate was behind an anonymous website that put out widely shared fake election polling in Wisconsin, Nevada and California, the Guardian can reveal.

The website, Median Strategies, abruptly shut down and withdrew its polling earlier this week following questions from a reporter from the Los Angeles Times. In an unsigned statement, it described a “short-term social experiment” to examine how fake polling “could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification”.

Justice department is asked to weigh new charges against David Hearn after US attorney dropped vandalism charges

The White House has asked the Department of Justice to weigh new charges against a former Olympian accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, according to a person familiar with the matter, pushing to revive a case Donald Trump has fumed about ever since an ally dropped the case citing insufficient evidence.

Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, dropped the charges against the man, David Hearn, on 31 July, blaming a contractor for a flawed installation. In a 20-page filing dismissing the charges, Pirro’s office said it had received evidence that damage to the pool occurred before Hearn visited it, and that “it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt.” Hearn has maintained that he reached in the water to touch a piece of already detached lining while he was on a bike ride in June.

Major win for president as former personal lawyer wins approval despite outcry over $1.8bn slush fund

The US senate voted to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general in a major win for Donald Trump, who will now have his one-time personal attorney sitting atop the nation’s law enforcement apparatus.

Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana cast the deciding vote in Blanche’s favor after two other Republicans – Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – voted against him. Every Democrat rejected Blanche’s nomination.

Democrats say agreement – which clears way for Blanche’s confirmation – makes promises president can easily reverse

A compromise between Todd Blanche and two Republican senators that potentially cleared the way for Blanche’s confirmation as attorney general is weak, Democrats and several experts said, as it makes promises Donald Trump can easily reverse.

Blanche, the acting attorney general, posted two documents on Sunday evening showing he was withdrawing an 18 May order allowing for the creation of a $1.8bn weaponization fund and clarifying that broad tax immunity the justice department granted to Trump only applied retroactively to the president, his sons, and businesses.

Republican John Cornyn says he will not back nomination without written confirmation $1.8bn slush fund is dead

Todd Blanche’s hopes of becoming US attorney general seemed to be in jeopardy on Wednesday after the Department of Justice did not provide written assurances to a key Republican senator that a $1.8bn slush fund was dead.

The US Senate judiciary committee postponed a vote scheduled for Thursday on whether to advance Blanche’s nomination.

James Comey’s lawyers say Secret Service illegally tracked him to develop case around his ‘8647’ seashell post

Lawyers for former FBI director James Comey alleged on Tuesday that US Secret Service agents illegally surveilled Comey, Donald Trump requested regular updates into the investigation, and law enforcement turned to ChatGPT and a known mafia killer as they scrambled to find justification for criminally charging Comey for posting a picture of seashells that spelled out “8647”.

The claims were laid out in a motion to dismiss a criminal case the US Department of Justice filed against Comey in April, in which it said the post by Comey – whom Trump fired in his first term – was a threat on the US president’s life.

At confirmation hearing, Clayton sidestepped questions about 2020 election and declined to say Trump lost

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The US Senate voted to confirm Jay Clayton as the director of national intelligence on Tuesday, giving Trump another key ally directing the nation’s intelligence apparatus.

The tally, 51-47, fell along party lines, with all Republicans supporting his nomination and all Democrats opposing it.

Donald Trump delivered a primetime address to the country on Thursday, claiming that declassified intelligence showed Chinese interference in US elections. The US president revived long-running attacks on election security, despite a US intelligence assessment that found no evidence Beijing altered the 2020 vote, which he lost. The Guardian's voting rights reporter Sam Levine factchecks some of Trump's claims

US president using office and intelligence agencies to try to undermine confidence in elections before midterms

Donald Trump used the imprimatur of the presidency and United States intelligence agencies to try to undermine confidence in American elections in a presidential address on Thursday that seemed bluntly aimed at laying the groundwork for further destabilizing the electoral system before November’s midterm elections.

In his address from the East Room at the White House, Trump attempted to give the impression that his administration had uncovered new bombshell findings about vulnerabilities in the US’s election system. China, he claimed, had illicitly acquired voter information on 220 million Americans (many states allow anyone to buy voter roll information; Trump did not say the means by which the nation acquired the data). He claimed that China interfered in other ways to undermine his 2020 campaign and that the information had been suppressed by intelligence officials.

Kathleen Williams sanctions president’s lawyers and says $10bn suit against IRS was brought for ‘improper purpose’

A federal judge on Monday nullified an agreement the government reached with Donald Trump and his sons over the leak of his tax returns. The judge lambasted the government and president’s lawyers for using the judicial process to try to concoct a beneficial arrangement for the president.

The ruling from US district judge Kathleen Williams in the southern district of Florida blocks a widely criticized arrangement the government and the president’s attorneys reached earlier this year to resolve a $10bn lawsuit by Trump and his sons over the leak of the president’s tax returns. The government never responded to the lawsuit and then announced it was settling the suit by creating a $1.8bn slush fund to compensate victims of “government weaponization” and giving the president, his family, and related entities immunity from tax audits.

Activists accused of being part of antifa get long prison terms in case seen as test of Trump’s crackdown on dissent

A group of Texas protesters convicted of terrorism charges received unusually harsh sentences of at least 50 years in prison on Tuesday in a closely watched case that was widely seen as a test case of the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on dissent.

After a three-week jury trial, the nine activists were all found guilty of a slew of criminal charges in March, stemming from a Fourth of July protest at an immigrant detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, south of Fort Worth. The demonstrators arrived late at night with a plan to set off fireworks as part of a noise demonstration to show solidarity with those detained inside. A few of the protesters spontaneously broke off from the main group and vandalized cars in the parking lot, a guard shack, slashed the tires on a government van and broke a security camera. When a police officer arrived on the scene and drew his weapon, one of the activists fired an AR-15 from the woods, hitting the officer in the shoulder. The officer survived.

Guardian review finds group tied to Cleta Mitchell and Heather Honey funded misleading ads in swing states

As the 2024 election approached, advertisements began popping up in key swing states suggesting local officials had discretion not to certify elections.

The advertisements, reported at the time by ProPublica and Wisconsin Watch, were misleading. Certification is not optional, and officials are required to certify the vote once the proper process for any election challenges are complete and an official challenge is complete. The warnings, nonetheless, arrived at a moment when Donald Trump and allies seemed to be gearing up to contest the election results if he lost.

Court decision that represents win for Republicans comes after lengthy battle over state’s congressional map

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Alabama can use a redrawn congressional map that eliminates one of the state’s two majority-Black districts in this year’s midterm elections, the US supreme court ruled in a 6-3 decision on Tuesday, another major blow to Black voters and a win for Republicans.

The court’s emergency ruling is the most consequential decision it had issued since its landmark ruling in late April that struck down a critical provision of the Voting Rights Act. In that case, Louisiana v Callais, the court’s majority made it nearly impossible to win Voting Rights Act claims, saying that plaintiffs had to prove intentional discrimination. But on 26 May, a three-judge panel said the map Alabama wants to use for this year’s midterm was enacted with discriminatory intent.

However, Todd Blanche said the IRS will still be prohibited from auditing Donald Trump, his family and related entities

• ‘Outright theft’: legal experts decry $1.8bn Trump anti-weaponization fund

The federal government is abandoning an effort to create a $1.8bn secretive fund to compensate Donald Trump’s allies, but is maintaining an agreement that prohibits the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from auditing Trump, his family and related entities, the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, said on Tuesday.

“We are not moving forward with the fund, period,” Blanche said during a House appropriations committee hearing on Tuesday. “The reasons for the fund is something that President Trump talked about for a long time, which is the fact that there were a lot of people in this country who had their government weaponized against them. The reasons for the fund, I think, remain as important as they were before, but we are not moving forward with the fund.”