Trump news today: Donald to share stage with election deniers at Arizona rally

America’s biggest satellite television provider has said it will cut the pro-Trump news channel One America News Network from its service, dealing a severe blow to one of the former president’s most stalwart cheerleaders.

DirecTV, a distributor with about 15 million subscribers that is 70 per cent owned by the US telecoms giant AT&T, announced on Friday that it would not renew its contract with OANN when the current one expires. following “a routine internal review”.

The former president will hold his first rally of 2022 in Florence, Arizona, a state that has become a hotbed of election fraud conspiracy theories with a host of candidates for several public offices vying for his endorsement, as midterm campaigns are well underway.

8chan administrator Jim Watkins and QAnon influencer Michael Protzman – who has amplified the conspiracy theory that the resurrection of JFK Jr is instrumental to Trump’s return to office – are attending Trump’s rally in Arizona on Saturday night, where a crowd started lining up overnight.

Other familiar Trump rally faces are documenting their visit, which is being broadcast by far-right media networks like One America News Network and Right Side Broadcasting Network.

In his proclamation recognising 2022’s Martin Luther King Jr Day, the president told Americans to reflect on the achievements of the civil rights movement and “continue his unfinished struggle.”

“That is why the Congress must pass federal legislation to protect the right to vote – a right that is under attack by a sinister combination of voter suppression and election subversion,” the president wrote, echoing his remarks against the wave of restrictive legislation passed by GOP state legislators in 2021.

“Just as in Dr King’s time, there are those who now say that change would be too disruptive and that these urgent needs can wait,” Mr Biden wrote. “But we must resist complacency, summon new resolve to advance the cause of freedom and opportunity, and do our part to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice. This is the cause of our time. … We all must find the courage to keep pushing forward in our struggle to realize Dr King’s dream for a freer, fairer, and more just society.”

As a host of election deniers and conspiracy theorists prepare to take the stage in rural Florence, Arizona, voting rights advocates are rallying about 70 miles away in Phoenix to push the state’s Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema to adopt filibuster reform to pass federal legislation to protect the right to vote.

Activists also led a march and heard from Martin Luther King III, the oldest son of the late civil rights leader.

The march demands Arizona residents “call on Senator Sinema to urgently pass federal voting rights legislation and ensure that the Jim Crow filibuster does not stand in the way,” Mr King said in a statement.

The US recognises Martin Luther King Jr Day on Monday.

The day before his appearance in the state, Trump hit out at Arizona Governor Doug Doucey, a frequent target of the former president after he signed off on the results of the 2020 presidential election, while Trump allies continue to baselessly insist the results were fraudulent.

“Rumors are that Doug Ducey, the weak RINO Governor from Arizona, is being pushed by Old Crow Mitch McConnell to run for the U.S. Senate,” Trump said in a statement. “He will never have my endorsement or the support of MAGA Nation!”

Doucey has not indicated whether he plans to run for a Senate seat. He has no plans to attend Trump’s event.

In an op-ed in The Washington Post, former VP Mike Pence condemned the mob that “ransacked the Capitol, largely to try to get Congress and me, as the president of the Senate, to use federal authority to overturn results of the presidential election that had been certified by all 50 states.”

He then characterised Republican attempts to restrict ballot access and consolidate electoral oversight into the hands of GOP-dominated legislatures as “measures to try to restore confidence in the integrity of our elections” in the wake of the attack.

He then accused Biden and congressional Democrats of leading “another power grab” with federal voting rights legislation, by using the “memory of Jan 6” to defend breaking up the filibuster.

That federal legislation would create national framework for voter registration, mail-in ballots, early voting and voter ID laws. It would also make Election Day a holiday, combat attempts to strip oversight from nonpartisan election authorities, and protect election workers from harassment and violence.

He compared such efforts to an attack on the Capitol that sought to stop the certification of votes representing millions of Americans, as a mob chanted that they were there to “hang” him.

He also falsely claimed that “the notion that Congress would break the filibuster rule to pass a law equaling a wholesale takeover of elections by the federal government is inconsistent with our nation’s history and an affront to our constitution’s structure.”

The US constitution gives Congress the ability to set rules for federal elections.

Trump is heading to Arizona, a hotbed of GOP-led conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, where a figure central to the QAnon movement is running for Congress, election deniers are vying for major government posts that play critical roles in electoral oversight, and a far-right congressman accused of fantasizing about murdering Democrats has not faced any repurcussions in office.

The former president has made clear that fealty to his baseless narrative that the election was rigged against him is critical to earning his endorsement.

On the guest list at his rally on Saturday night: Kari Lake, a candidate for Arizona governor; US Reps Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs and Debbie Lesko; and Mike Lindell, among the most notorious election fraud conspiracy theorists who spent millions on a spurious campaign to overturn the results.

The US Justice Department’s efforts to hold those responsible for the 6 January insurrection shifted into a higher gear this week with the unsealing of a 48-page indictment against Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes and 10 other members of his right-wing militia group.

All but Mr Rhodes and another defendant – Edward Vallejo of Phoenix – had previously been charged with crimes for their roles in the worst attack on the Capitol since British troops commanded by Major General Robert Ross set it ablaze in 1814.

Prosecutors have filed criminal charges against more than 730 people over the year that has passed since the attack, but the indictment of Mr Rhodes and his alleged co-conspirators stands out because it charges them under a rarely used provision of law that can be found in the chapter of…