Americans are deeply divided along party lines in their views of Donald Trump’s actions in the most recent criminal cases brought against him, according to a new poll.

Just over half of Americans – 53% – approve of the justice department indicting Trump over his efforts to remain in office after losing the 2020 election, the poll by the Associated Press-Norc center for public affairs research showed.

The poll, which was conducted 10-14 August before Monday’s charges in the Georgia case, showed 85% of Democrats approve of the criminal charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith, compared with 47% of independents and 16% of Republicans.

Overall, three in 10 Americans disapprove of the criminal charges brought against Trump over his alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. Over a third of Americans – 35% – have a favorable view of Trump. Among Republicans, seven in 10 view the former president favorably.

Former vice president Mike Pence said the Georgia election was not stolen in 2020 and that “no one is above the law” after Donald Trump was indicted in the state’s election subversion case.

Pence, at the National Conference of State Legislatures legislative summit in Indianapolis today, said:

Despite what the former president and his allies have said, for now more than two and a half years, and continue to insist to this very hour, the Georgia election was not stolen and I had no right to overturn the election on January 6.

Pence’s remarks were his first since the indictment was handed down on Monday, and mark a new full-court press in recent days surrounding his certification of the 2020 election results, Politico reported.

The former vice-president and 2024 Republican presidential candidate added:

No one is above law. And the president and all those implicated are entitled to the presumption of innocence.

Oliver Milman

If the future wasn’t renewables before the Inflation Reduction Act, it certainly is now – more than 80% of new electricity capacity this year will come from wind, solar and battery storage, according to federal government forecasts.

The framers of the legislation hoped it would create a sort of virtuous circle whereby more renewable capacity will push down the cost of already cheap clean energy sources, seeding yet further renewable deployment.

Solar panels may be dotting California and wind turbines sprouting off the east coast, but without the unglamorous build-out of transmission lines much of the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act may be lost.

Not only is there a lack of physical poles and wires to shift clean energy from one part of the country to another, many clean energy projects are facing interminable waits, lasting several years, to be connected to the grid at all. There is more than 1,250 gigawatts of solar and wind capacity actively seeking grid connection, which is about equal to the entire existing US power plant fleet.

Oliver Milman

No Republican voted for the Inflation Reduction Act but most of the investment that has been triggered by the bill has been funneled into projects in GOP-held congressional districts.

An emerging “battery belt” is forming in the US south, with battery and electric vehicle plants popping up in states such as Georgia, Tennessee and Texas.

“The IRA has been absolutely critical for us in terms of giving market certainties to go bold and big in our investment,” said a spokesperson for QCells, a solar manufacturer that has embarked upon a major expansion in Georgia.

Oliver Milman

The Inflation Reduction Act was a breakthrough moment following decades of obfuscation and delay by Congress despite increasingly frantic warnings by climate scientists over global heating, with the bill itself borne from months of torturous, comprise-laden negotiations with Joe Manchin, the coal baron senator from West Virginia who held a swing vote for its passage.

But the legislation has already faced the threat of repeal from Republicans, who universally voted against it, with the GOP’s first bill after gaining control of the House of Representatives this year gutting key elements of the Inflation Reduction Act. This is despite the majority of clean energy investments flowing to Republican-led districts.

Joe Biden has also faced the ire of climate progressives for somewhat undercutting his landmark moment with an aggressive giveaway of oil and gas drilling leases on public land, including the controversial Willow oil project in Alaska, and for incentivizing the use of technologies such as carbon capture that have been criticized as an unproven distraction at a time when the world is baking under record heatwaves.

“Biden has an atrocious track record on fossil fuels, and that needs to change,” said Jean Su, an attorney and climate campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity who called on Biden to declare a climate emergency. There needs to be a “sea-change in this administration’s approach” on the climate crisis, according to Jeff Merkley, a Democratic senator.

No more green lighting fossil gas projects. No more stalling on a climate emergency. Now is the time for us to live up to the full promise of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Polling shows the majority of American voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of the climate crisis and only three in 10 have heard that much about the Inflation Reduction Act at all. Such perceptions will need to be turned around if the US president is to help secure the legacy of the bill in next year’s election.

“We are going at a record clip to try to address this climate crisis,” said John Podesta, Biden’s chief clean energy advisor.

I know people want us to hurry up and I wish we could produce a net zero economy immediately but this is a global transition that’s never occurred in human history. We need to get this job done.

The IRA act has not pleased leaders in the EU who have attacked it for being “protectionist” though some have argued they should instead be investing along similar lines.

Oliver Milman

The US is the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases and the Inflation Reduction Act is widely forecast to slash these emissions, by as much as 48% by 2035, from 2005 levels, according to one analysis.

These forecasts have a relatively wide range of estimates due to uncertainties such as economic growth but even in the most optimistic scenario the US will require further measures if it is to get to net zero emissions by 2050, as scientists have said is imperative if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate impacts.

“Even though we passed the IRA you ain’t seen nothing yet,” said Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader, in promising a fresh climate bill recently. But given the riven nature of US politics, the prospects of such legislation is remote in the near term.

Oliver Milman

The Inflation Reduction Act includes rebates of up to $7,500 for buying an electric vehicle, and this incentive appears to be paying off – EV sales are set to top 1m in the US for the first time this year. Moreover, over half of US drivers are considering an EV for their next purchase, polling has shown.

This transition isn’t without its hurdles, however – there has been a shortage of key parts in the EV supply chain, many models still remain prohibitively expensive and unions have been unhappy at the lack of worker protections for many of the new plants that are popping up.

Climate advocates, meanwhile, have questioned why similarly strong support hasn’t been given to public transit or e-bikes to help get people out of cars altogether.

Oliver Milman

There has been around $278bn in new clean energy investments, creating more than 170,000 jobs, across the US in the first year of the Inflation Reduction Act, according to an estimate by the advocacy group Climate Power.

The White House claims that there will be twice as much wind, solar and battery storage deployment over the next seven years than if the bill was never enacted, with companies already spending twice as much on new manufacturing facilities as they were pre-IRA.

The US’ first serious legislative attempt to tackle the climate crisis, the Inflation Reduction Act, marks its first anniversary both lauded for turbocharging a seismic shift to clean energy while also weathering serious attack from Republicans.

Joe Biden hailed the bill, which despite its name is at heart a major shove towards a future dominated by renewable energy and electric vehicles, as “one of the most significant laws in our history” when signing it on 16 August last year.

And the White House is trying to use the first year marker to extol it as a pivotal moment in tackling the climate emergency.

“It’s the largest investment in clean energy in American history, and I would argue in world history, to tackle the climate crisis,” John Podesta, Biden’s chief clean energy advisor, told the Guardian.

With any legislation it takes time to get traction, but this is performing above expectations.

Podesta said there has been an “enormous response” in take-up for the tax credits that festoon the $369bn bill, directed at zero-carbon energy projects such as solar, wind and nuclear, grants for bring renewables manufacturing to the US and consumer incentives to purchase electric cars, heat pumps and electric stoves.

A cutting-edge energy storage company is building its main manufacturing plant where a once-thriving West Virginia steel mill once stood in the city of Weirton. According to lawmakers, the much-lauded project was made possible by incentives from 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed by President Biden one year ago this Wednesday.

For supporters, it’s a sign that climate policies can also breathe life back into deindustrialized coal and steel communities with green jobs. The symbolism is compelling but how much those communities benefit will depend on a wide array of factors.

Form Energy, a Massachusetts-based company helmed by a former Tesla vice-president, broke ground on its iron-air battery manufacturing plant this past May. Workers will produce batteries capable of storing electricity for 100 hours, which will run on iron, water and air instead of the more common but less-abundant metal lithium. The $760m project will create 750 well-paying permanent jobs, the company said.

The plant is being constructed on the ashes of the old Weirton steel mill, once the beating heart of the steel economy in the Ohio River valley. At its height in the 1940s, the mill was West Virginia’s number one taxpayer and its largest employer, boasting a 13,000-strong workforce.

“You could literally graduate one day from high school and be hired at the steel mill making very good money,” said Mark Glyptis, president of the United Steelworkers Local 2911 and a third-generation steelworker from Weirton.

But Weirton’s economy began to wither in the 1970s. Local industry slowly declined as the market began to prefer cheaper foreign steel – and, Glyptis said, stopped enforcing regulations on the material.

The company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2003. The fallout, said Glyptis, has been “heartbreaking”.

Read the full story here.

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will travel to Maui on Monday to survey damage from the deadly wildfires that ravaged the resort town of Lahaina last week.

The Bidens will meet with survivors of the fires, as well as first responders and other government officials, the White House said in a statement.

They will “see firsthand the impacts of the wildfires and the devastating loss of life and land that has occurred on the island, as well as discuss the next steps in the recovery effort”, it said.

The justice department filed a four-count grand jury indictment against Donald Trump on 1 August that charged him with mounting several illegal efforts to stay in office – with help from six unnamed co-conspirators who were not charged – despite his loss to Joe Biden by 7m votes and no evidence of massive fraud, as Trump has falsely and repeatedly claimed.

After pleading not guilty, Trump used one of his Truth Social posts on 3 August to charge that “the Radical Left wants to Criminalize Free Speech!” and cited comments from Republican allies echoing his claims. Trump’s lawyer John Lauro told CNN on 1 August that the charges against Trump are “an attack on free speech, and [on] political advocacy”.

Justice department veterans say such claims are factually wrong and threaten the integrity of the legal system. “Trump is deliberately distorting the critical difference between just saying things and actively doing things that have criminal consequences,” said Donald Ayer, a deputy attorney general during George HW Bush’s administration.

Obviously, he didn’t just talk about the idea that he won the election. The indictment lists several areas of conduct where he conspired and acted repeatedly to alter the outcome of the legitimate voting process that occurred. For Trump or others to now be claiming there is no difference between the two is to once again undermine the very idea that our society is governed by rules that people are required to follow.

Similarly, ex-federal prosecutors say Trump is playing fast and loose with the facts, and mounting a dangerous defense. “The indictment highlights how Trump and his co-conspirators relied on speech not just to speak their truth or rally their adherents, but to push hard, behind the scenes, to pressure others into assisting the charged fraud,” said Columbia law professor and former federal prosecutor Daniel Richman, adding:

Trump’s supporters likely know all this, but find it politically useful to wave the first amendment banner. It’s more for the crowds than for a courtroom. But the effect is simply to advance the theme of political victimhood, and undermine trust in the judicial process.

Donald Trump’s dubious defense that he was exercising his free-speech rights in response to a four-count federal criminal indictment charging him with pushing illegal schemes to overturn his 2020 election loss is prompting ex-Department of Justice officials and scholars to criticize such claims as bogus and as threats to the rule of law.

Despite special counsel Jack Smith’s detailed 45-page, four-count indictment of Trump for promoting several illegal schemes including organizing slates of fake electors in seven states to thwart Joe Biden’s victory, Trump and some top Republican allies have repeatedly portrayed his multi-pronged drive to stay in power as a free speech matter.

But former justice department officials, scholars and ex-Republican House members say Trump’s actions and schemes went far beyond free speech, and that Trump and his allies are weakening the justice system and could breed new conspiracy theories by making a first amendment defense.

Critics say Trump allies embracing his free-speech claims seem to be trying to cover themselves with the party’s base and to rationalize sticking with Trump, despite the indictment’s sizable body of damning evidence revealing Trump’s active role in unprecedented and illegal ploys to overturn the 2020 result.

Good morning, US politics blog readers. A year ago today, Joe Biden signed into law the most significant piece of climate policy in US history. And on Wednesday, the president will spend the day leading a campaign to better explain to Americans what, exactly, it does.

The Inflation Reduction Act, sometimes referred to as the IRA, directs hundreds of billions of dollars to speed the transition away from fossil fuels, helping to push consumers into buying electric vehicles and companies into producing renewable energy. But many Americans, even those who support Biden, don’t know much about it, according to Reuters.

The president is scheduled to deliver remarks at the White House this afternoon, but he will almost certainly maintain his silence about the latest indictment against his predecessor, Donald Trump, involving his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. Given that Trump is his chief rival in the 2024 presidential race, Biden has issued explicit orders to both administration and campaign officials not to discuss the criminal investigations into Trump.

Meanwhile, the first GOP primary debate is a week away and all eyes are on the four-time-indicted Republican frontrunner. The former president hasn’t committed to attending the 23 August debate in Milwaukee, but he hasn’t completely ruled it out either.

Here’s what else we’re watching today:

• 11am Eastern time: President Joe Biden will get his daily intelligence briefing.

• 12.15pm: White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, domestic policy adviser Neera Tanden, Biden’s clean energy adviser John Podesta and Fema administrator Deanne Criswell will brief reporters.

• 2.30pm: Biden will deliver remarks on the first anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act.

• The House and Senate are out.