The former president struggled to meet the mood of a memorial service for Ineitha Lynnette Hardaway, better known as “Diamond” of the pro-Trump duo Diamond and Silk, The Independent;s John Bowden reports.

Speaking Saturday at the gathering in North Carolina, Trump sounded more like a candidate delivering a stump speech than an ex-president memorialising a valued friend or political ally.

At one point, he even quipped that the service had gone on much longer than the “15 minutes” he was promised to deliver his remarks and leave.

Following the “leak” of a draft of what became the US Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down Roe v Wade, Mr Trump has repeatedly demanded that the journalist and outlet that published the draft be thrown in jail if they don’t reveal their source, accelerating the former president’s public war on the media.

“It won’t take long before the name of this slime is revealed,” he said in a statement on his Truth Social account on 19 January.

It follows a pattern of attempts to undermine and vilify a press on which he once relied to develop his public persona as a self-made model of success that he used to propel himself to the White House.

Now facing a wave of criminal investigations, convictions against his company and credible accusations of misconduct in his second bid for the presidency, the former president is threatening to imprison journalists and using lawsuits to target First Amendment protections:

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy gave committee seats to far-right conspiracy theorists Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar after they were removed by House members in the formerly Democratic-led chamber.

Now the Republican leader has vowed to remove Democratic members Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from their seats on the House intelligence committee, escalating his clashes with Democrats as he clings to a slim GOP majority ceding authority to a far-right flank.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote a letter to Mr McCarthy arguing that he has no justifiable reason to block his appointments.

“It is my understanding that you intend to break with the longstanding House tradition of deference to the minority party Intelligence Committee recommendations and deny seats to Ranking Member Schiff and Representative Swalwell,” Mr Jeffries wrote in the letter obtained by The Washington Post. “The denial of seats to duly elected Members of the House Democratic Caucus runs counter to the serious and sober mission of the Intelligence Committee.”

Two weeks after the dissolve of a grand jury looking into whether Trump and his allies broke the law with his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, a judge will decide whether to release the panel’s final report.

The 23-member special grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia convened for eight months and heard from prominent Trumpworld figures, including Rudy Giuliani and Lindsey Graham, as well as Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and dozens of other witnesses, questioned aoubt the former president’s attempts to subvert the outcome of the election in the state.

The case has brought up the abuse and harassment of election workers in the state, the fake elector scheme, and Trump’s call to Georgia election officials to “find” enough votes for his victory in the state, which several audits have confirmed Joe Biden won.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis could file criminal charges following the report’s public release, which Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney will determine after a hearing in the case on Tuesday.

A federal judge has determined that Florida’s governor (and Donald Trump’s likely 2024 rival), Ron DeSantis, unconstitutionally suspended an elected state attorney who criticised the governor’s positions on abortion and transgender healthcare, but the judge said he did not have authority to return the prosecutor to office.

“10 dead in California shooting, horrible gun wielding ANTIFA protest against our great police in Atlanta – Nothing will happen to them despite night of rage and destruction,” the former president posted on Truth Social. “Yet our January 6th protestors, over a Rigged Election, have had their lives ruined despite nobody killed except true Patriot Ashli B. This situation will be fully rectified after 2024 Election. Thank you!”

Director Doug Liman claims his new documentary about US Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh “picks up where the FBI investigation fell short”.

In 2018, Kavanaugh faced accusations from at least three women that he sexually assaulted them, or that they witnessed him sexually assaulting others.

Peony Hirwani reports on Bourne Identity director’s latest project.

The White House has some bad news for Kevin McCarthy as the newly-elected Speaker of the House prepares for a showdown with Democrats over the debt limit in the hopes of appeasing his far-right caucus members.

Joe Biden’s team is signaling that they will not accept any demands for concessions from Republicans over the issue, potentially setting Mr McCarthy up for a showdown with his own party.

Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, is arguing that she should remain in her current role as she is best able to convince Donald Trump not to run a third-party candidacy in 2024 should he not get the party’s nomination.

A report published on Thursday in The Washington Postsays Ms McDaniel is attempting to thwart challenges to her leadership of the RNC by stirring up fears of a Trump third-party run splitting the GOP’s base.

Ms McDaniel has faced criticism from RNC members for presiding over the disappointing 2022 midterm election results which saw the party only narrowly win the House of Representatives and lose a seat in the Senate. Many had predicted a red wave sweeping the nation two years into the Biden presidency and propelling the GOP into full control of Congress.

With some party members blaming Mr Trump for the poor electoral performance many also appear to believe that Ms McDaniel is far too tied to him to continue to lead the party and that it is time to move on.

Steve Bannon asked Ms McDaniel about the criticism of her leadership on his show. Accusing her main challenger Harmeet Dhillon of lying about her, Mr Bannon asks her to be specific:

Donald Trump remains keen to remind his would-be 2024 rivals that he is still the Republican Party base’s top choice for their nominee, at least for now.

The ex-president “truthed” a graphic made by his team from a bimonthly tracking poll taken by Big Village polling; the survey shows Mr Trump supported by more than half of all GOP voters. Mr DeSantis was, once again, the only other Republican cracking double digits.

He has posted such data with more intensity in recent weeks following a dismal showing by many of his chosen candidates and the GOP as a whole in November’s midterms; many party elites have publicly signaled their growing disdain for the former president in the wake of those results.