Trump news today: Ex-president rejoins Truth Social app as fate of his Twitter comeback

Donald Trump has finally posted on his Truth Social app, the struggling Twitter rival he launched earlier this year.

“I’M BACK! #COVFEFE,” read the post, which included a photo of Mr Trump on the phone at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

Read the full story here:

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene fired back at Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, who said she “slandered the church” by suggesting that “Satan is controlling the Church.”

Ms Greene claimed that Catholic groups aiding migrants and refugees were evidence of Satan’s influence in the church.

She replied to the rebuke from Mr Donohue by claiming she was a “cradle Catholic” who left the church because she could not trust the Church leadership to protect my children from pedophiles, and that they harbored monsters even in their own ranks.”

Read more about the exchange in Graig Graziosi’s report for The Independent.

A man who helped federal authorities with their investigation into Donald Trump’s dealings with Deutsche Bank, one of his main creditors, has been found dead on the campus of a Los Angeles high school.

Val Broeksmit, who was 46, had been missing for more than a year, though his Twitter account remained active until just weeks ago. The police say foul play is not suspected, and friends of Mr Broeksmit’s say he had long struggled with drugs.

Maroosha Muzaffar has the story.

Fox News pundit Mark Levin has broken with former President Donald Trump over the latter’s endorsement of Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance for Ohio’s Senate seat.

Mr Levin prefers Mr Vance’s primary opponent Josh Mandel, whose politics are much more in line with the MAGA movement.

Former President Donald Trump’s endorsement comes at a cost.

The Independent has compiled data analysing the amount of money Republcian lawmakers hoping to land Mr Trump’s endorsement spent at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

Read about the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent by Republicans to earn Mr Trump’s favour in Eric Garcia’s story at The Independent.

House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, defending his private conversations, has assured his colleagues that he never asked former president Donald Trump to resign over the 6 January Capitol riots.

It was Mr McCarthy’s first face-to-face meeting with House Republicans amid the fallout from his criticisms of the former president and the party’s most far-right members.

One Republican in the room said the meeting was “cathartic” for lawmakers, while another voiced confidence that McCarthy would be the “next speaker”, according to the Associated Press.

“He’s got the support of the conference and then some,” Rep Dan Meuser said as he left the private session at GOP headquarters.“You guys obsess over 6 January. Nobody cares,” Rep Glenn Grothman told reporters, adding that “it is history”.

The Donald Trump supporting television network OAN accused Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of working with Democrats to rig the 2022 midterm elections.

Correspondent Pearson Sharp claimed that Mr Raffensperger’s use of the company Salesforce to handle voter registration in the state was evidence of the secretary of state’s intention to interfere with the 2022 election, according to Media Matters.

“So, to summarize, the same secretary of state who served up Georgia’s elections to Beijing Biden in 2020 has now selected a new company based in India with no history of managing elections to transition the state’s voter registration database to another company based in California, also with no experience handling elections, and which works with organizations that have actually been caught engaging in voter fraud and is also run by a radical leftist with close ties to the most extreme left-wing activists in the world,” he said.

There is no evidence Mr Raffensperger or Salesforce has any intention of trying to rig the 2022 midterm elections.

Oklahoma lawmakers passed a bill restricting abortions after six weeks of pregnancy on Thursday. The bill was modeled after Texas’ version of the abortion ban, and includes its utlisation of civilian enforcement of the ban.

The bill bans doctors from carrying out abortions once any cardiac activity is detected, and allows private citizens to file civil lawsuits against anyone who performs or induces an abortion, as well as those who intent to perform an abortion or who assists in an abortion.

Planned Parenthood announced it would challenge the bill in court.

Roger Stone, a political strategist allied with former President Donald Trump, briefly returned to Twitter Thursday using a different handle before he was axed again for evading his ban.

“I’m back b******… testing 1… 2… 3…,” he wrote. He was banned a short time later.

Mr Stone told The Daily Mail that he wanted Mr Musk to reinstate the former president’s account, which was banned on 8 January 2021 in response to the Capitol riot, as well as the accounts of QAnon promoter General Mike Flynn and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

“[Mr Stone’s second ban] didn’t surprise me at all. But I’m hopeful that Elon Musk is true to his word and that this will really be a platform in which free speech and free expression are honored,” he said. “‘I think he should reinstate Donald Trump. I think he should reinstate Alex Jones. I think he should reinstate General Mike Flynn.”

A powerful figure in Michigan politics resigned after the state’s GOP backed Donald Trump-endorsed candidates for attorney general and secretary of state positions.

The New York Times reports that Tony Daunt, who sat on the party’s state committee and is close with major donors like the DeVos family, resigned his position after the endorsmeents and sent a blistering letter in which he called Mr Trump a “deranged narcissist.” Major donors suggested they would pour their money into other races.

“Rather than distancing themselves from this undisciplined loser,” Mr Daunt wrote in his resignation letter, “far too many Republican ‘leaders’ have decided that encouraging his delusional lies — and, even worse — cynically appeasing him despite knowing they are lies, is the easiest path to ensuring their continued hold on power, general election consequences be damned.”