Trump news – live: Ex-president ‘to endorse’ JD Vance as ally loses case against CNN

A 38-year-old Ohio man whom a judge blasted as weak-minded from the bench was convicted by a jury of several charges related to participating in the Capitol riot after he told the court that he was “following presidential orders”.

Dustin Thompson admitted to entering the building after Donald Trump’s speech telling his supporters to “fight” outside the White House on January, as well as stealing some items from inside.

Joe Biden hasn’t made up his mind yet regarding whether he will send a top US official to Ukraine following UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s tour of Kyiv with Ukrianian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Mr Biden told reporters on Thursday that he and his team “haven’t made that decision yet,” but added that they were deliberating on that issue currently.

Read more from The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg:

A Trump-appointed panel of appeals court judges on Thursday upheld a ruling in favour of CNN against former California congressman Devin Nunes.

The case stemmed from the network’s characterisation of Mr Nunes as involved in efforts related to “digging up dirt” on Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Mr Nunes previously was a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

The former congressman now works for one of Mr Trump’s media ventures. He was found to have failed to demand a retraction from the network over the claims that he opposed.

Right-wing protesters descended upon Disneyland on Wednesday as the culture war against children’s media that acknowledges the existence of LGBT persons continues.

Furious demonstrators harassed parkgoers on the street outside of the California theme park and vowed to encourage others to harass them online after taking their photos and promising to spread their identities publicly.

The scene was captured by NBC News’s Ben Collins in a Twitter thread. The rhetoric and actions of the demonstrators have been encouraged on right-wing media, which has turned to a full-throated embrace of QAnon conspiracies and begun labeling Democrats and even Republicans who work with them, as was the case with Sen Mitt Romney, as “pro-pedophile”.

Read more from Mr Collins’s Twitter thread here:

A report detailing concerns of colleagues that Sen Diane Feinstein is mentally unfit to serve in the Senate needs to be discussed seriously by the US national media, The Independent’s Eric Garcia.

“[S]hying away from doing so would be an unforgiveable error,” he writes.

Read more from Eric about the senior California senator:

A Republican candidate for governor in Nebraska endorsed by Donald Trump was accused by multiple women of unwanted groping in an article published on Thursday in a local newspaper.

Charles Herbster, a frontrunner in the Republican primary for governor, has denied the allegations from eight women in the Nebraska Examiner.

Women said the incidents occurred while Mr Herbster was a beauty padgeant judge as well as during his campaign for governor.

One of the Senate’s oldest members, Diane Feinstein, was the subject of debate on Twitter on Thursday as users discussed a San Francisco Chronicle article that cited the senior state senator’s own Democratic colleagues questioning whether her mental faculties were slipping.

A Demcoratic member of the House from her home state even described having to reintroduce himself to the senator multiple times in one conversation.

“She was an intellectual and political force not that long ago, and that’s why my encounter with her was so jarring. Because there was just no trace of that,” they said.

NBC News reported on Thursday citing multiple Republican sources close to Donald Trump that the former president plans to endorse author JD Vance in Ohio’s tight Senate race.

Polls have shown Mr Vance trailing others in the race including Josh Mandel, another right-wing conservative who has vied for Mr Trump’s blessing. And Mr Mandel’s campaign reportedly did not take the news well, according to NBC.

“The Mandel people hit the roof,” one Republican source told the network.

Veteran pollster Frank Luntz said in an interview with The Daily Beast that New Hampshire Gov Chris Sununu’s roast of Donald Trump at the DC-based Gridiron Dinner was a symptom of a larger phenomenon within the GOP: the tendency of its members to privately mock the bombastic Trump behind the scenes.

“They won’t say it [in public], but behind his back they think he’s a child. They’re laughing at him. That’s what made [Sununu’s comments] significant,” he said.

Read more from The Independent’s Graeme Massie:

A Tennessee state legislator justified his support for a bill targeting homeless camps on public property by citing the example of the genocidal dictator Adolf Hitler.

In a shocking set of remarks to his fellow lawmakers on the state Senate floor, he justified his support for a bill meant to drive homeless encampments away from highways and other state property by decribing the suppsedly inspiring tale of the German Nazi dictator who was responsible for the murder of millions.

“For two years, Hitler lived on the streets and practiced his oratory and his body language and how to connect with the masses, and then went on to lead a life that got him in the history books,” Senator Frank Nicely exclaimed.

Read more in The Independent from Andrew Feinberg: