On a day off from his criminal trial, the ex-president hit the campaign trail – and ran through his familiar litany of falsehoods and complaints

At a remote rural airport in Michigan, an outsized plane touched down as music from Tom Cruise’s film Top Gun boomed from loudspeakers. Late afternoon sunshine gleamed off five giant golden letters on the plane’s side – “TRUMP” – and its Rolls Royce engines. A crowd bedecked in red roared as the plane rolled to a standstill behind a blue “TRUMP” lectern.

A door opened and men in dark glasses and dark suits from what Donald Trump would call “central casting” made their way down the stairs. “Trump! Trump!” the audience chanted, raising hundreds of camera phones in eager anticipation. Great Balls of Fire, Macho Man and YMCA blared. Finally, the former and would-be future president emerged, clapping and fist pumping to the sound of whoops and cheers and Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA.

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Years after the emergency, the Michigan city is yet to replace all lead pipes and affected families are still awaiting justice

Earlier this month, Brittany Thomas received a call that her 11-year-old daughter Janiyah had experienced a seizure at school.

“She’d been seizure-free for about two years now,” said Thomas, a resident of Flint, Michigan. “And they just came back.”

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Jennifer and James Crumbley first parents convicted in US mass school shooting over ‘simple actions’ that could have stopped it

The parents of a Michigan school shooter have each been sentenced to between 10 and 15 years in prison for their role in an attack that killed four students in 2021 in a case that has broken new ground as the US seeks to tackle its years-long epidemic of school shootings.

Jennifer and James Crumbley appeared in court Tuesday as the first parents convicted in an American mass school shooting. During their trials prosecutors said “tragically simple actions” by both parents could have stopped the catastrophe.

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Dog that had gone missing was discovered in Michigan clean and well-fed: ‘Whoever had her took good care of her’

Nearly nine months after his disappearance, a dog that had gone missing in California was discovered more than 2,000 miles away in Michigan.

A resident in Harper Woods, a Detroit suburb, contacted police in late March to report a stray dog in her neighborhood. Police collected the terrier mix, named Mishka, and brought her to an animal welfare group.

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Civil rights group denounces congressmember Tim Walberg’s calls to ‘get it over quick’ as a ‘clear call to genocide’

Rather than provide humanitarian aid in Gaza, the US should ensure it is subjected to atomic bombing the way that “Nagasaki and Hiroshima” were at the end of the second world war, a Republican congressman said in shocking remarks that by all indications were recorded recently at a gathering with a relatively small group of his constituents.

The comments by US House representative Tim Walberg of Michigan drew condemnation from progressive political quarters, including from some who expressed disbelief that a former Christian pastor would advocate for what they called the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

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Stefanie Lambert released on bond after being apprehended by US marshals during Washington court hearing in separate Dominion case

Stefanie Lambert, a lawyer who has crusaded to try to prove Trump’s claims of voter fraud in Michigan, was arrested in federal court and released on bond after refusing to comply with court orders in a separate Michigan case alleging she tampered with voting machines after the 2020 election.

During her arraignment on Tuesday, a judge released her on a $10,000 unsecured bond. Lambert has refused to submit fingerprints in the Michigan case accusing her and two other state Republicans of illegally breaching Michigan voting machines.

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In the vital swing state of Michigan, growing fractures among the Democratic base could spell trouble for Joe Biden in the November election. As party loyalists canvas in the run up to a primary vote, a protest movement against the president’s support for the war in Gaza gains momentum. Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone visit the state.

• Why are Republicans still supporting Donald Trump? - video

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The success of this agile grassroots group underlines the discontent over the war – and represents a warning for Democrats

People in Michigan, and across the country, had been protesting for months over the Gaza war and the US government’s role in it, marching in the streets, showing up at the president’s public events, and pressuring their elected officials to support a ceasefire.

But it didn’t seem as though Joe Biden was listening to a groundswell of Democrats who opposed the war and US media coverage of the protests, and of the war itself, seems to be waning, too.

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Groundbreaking verdict holds James Crumbley, father of teen who killed four students, criminally responsible for actions of his child

The father of a school shooter in Michigan has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in a case that created headlines across the United States for seeking to find a parent criminally responsible for the actions of their child.

James Crumbley, 47, is the father of Ethan Crumbley, a 15-year-old boy who took a gun from home and killed four students at Oxford high school on 30 November 2021.

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