Evelyn Reynolds

More stories

  • 250 Shares179 Views

    in US Politics

    Kamala Harris to hold town hall with undecided voters after Donald Trump rejects second debate offer – US politics live

    US vice-president Kamala Harris will hold a town hall with undecided voters on CNN on Wednesday, after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump rejected an offer to debate the Democratic nominee for a second time, reports Reuters.Trump will headline a rally Wednesday in Duluth, Georgia with guests Tucker Carlson and Robert F Kennedy Jr, as the race for the White House counts down to less than two weeks.Pennsylvania and Georgia are among seven battleground states that will decide who wins the presidency. Both candidates are likely to spend much of the rest of their campaigns in those states, trying to persuade the small sliver of voters who are still undecided to back them in the 5 November election.Harris tried and failed to push Trump to agree to a second presidential debate on CNN after she was considered to have won the first and only presidential debate between the two candidates, which took place in September on ABC News.Reuters reports that Hariss’s televised town hall will take place before a live audience of undecided voters from Pennsylvania in Delaware County, outside Philadelphia.Harris held a marginal 46% to 43% lead over the former president, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.More on this story in a moment, but first, here are the latest updates:

    Surrogates campaigning for Trump and Harris are fanning out across the US this week. Harris’s vice-presidential pick, Tim Walz, will travel to North Carolina and Pennsylvania, while Trump’s running mate JD Vance will head to Reno, Nevada on Wednesday.

    UK prime minister Keir Starmer has insisted he can maintain a “good relationship” with Donald Trump after the Republican candidate’s campaign accused Labour of “blatant foreign interference” in the US election. The Trump campaign filed a legal complaint overnight against Labour officials travelling to US battleground states to volunteer for his Democrat rival Kamala Harris.

    Harris herself said she has no doubt that the US was ready for a female president, in an interview with NBC News’s Hallie Jackson. “I’m clearly a woman. I don’t need to point that out to anyone,” Harris said with a laugh. “The point that most people really care about is: can you do the job and, do you have a plan to actually focus on them?”.

    Harris courted Hispanic voters promoting small business loans for Latino men, in an interview with Noticias Telemundo’s Julio Vaqueiro. Harris pledged to drive more funds to community banks to help Latino men access small business loans. “Hispanic men often have more difficulty securing loans from banks because of their connections and the fact that things aren’t necessarily set up so that they will qualify,” she said.

    Trump also pitched to Hispanic voters, holding a morning round table with Latino leaders at his golf resort in Doral, Florida. Trump hit familiar talking points but took his time in getting to issues of importance to the voting bloc. The event concluded with a group of prominent evangelists praying as they stood around Trump with their hands on his shoulders, while he sat with his eyes closed.

    At the same event, the former president hurled a series of personal attacks at his opponent, calling Harris “lazy as hell” and “low IQ”. He was referring to Harris holding no public campaign events on Tuesday, instead recording the two interviews after a busy day of campaigning with Liz Cheney on Monday. At a later rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, Trump continued the invective: “Does she drink? Is she on drugs?”

    Vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz held a rally with former president Barack Obama in Madison, Wisconsin, where he slammed Trump’s staged campaign event at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s as a “stunt” and mocked Elon Musk for “jumping around, skipping like a dipshit” before holding another rally in Wisconsin that evening.

    Obama, meanwhile, ridiculed Trump’s boasts on the economy and cast his rambling speeches as a sign of mental deterioration. “You’d be worried if Grandpa was acting like this,” said Obama. “But this is coming from someone who wants unchecked power.”

    JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, dodged a question about whether he would strip immigrants with legal authorisation of their status while campaigning in Peoria, outside Phoenix, Arizona. Vance urged supporters to “work our rear ends off for the next two weeks” to turn the swing state red.

    Despite some setbacks, Republicans vowed to press ahead in bids to block some overseas ballots. Court rulings rejected Republic National Committee efforts to block some Americans living abroad from voting in North Carolina and Michigan but the party will keep up its aggressive legal campaign.

    Arab Americans slightly favour Trump over Harris, according to a new poll. The survey, conducted by the Arab News Research and Studies Unit along with YouGov, shows a deadlock in Michigan, a key battleground state with a large Arab American population.
    Barack Obama rapped Eminem’s signature hit Lose Yourself to a crowd in Detroit during a campaign rally for Kamala Harris.He was preceded by Eminem himself, who told the crowd in his home city:
    It’s important to use your voice, I’m encouraging everyone to get out and vote, please … I don’t think anyone wants an America where people are worried about retribution of what people will do if you make your opinion known. I think vice-president Harris supports a future for this country where these freedoms and many others will be protected and upheld.”
    Obama opened his ensuing speech by saying: “I gotta say, I have done a lot of rallies, so I don’t usually get nervous, but I was feeling some kind of way following Eminem,” before segueing into Lose Yourself’s opening lines: “I notice my palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, vomit on my sweater already, mom’s spaghetti, I’m nervous but on the surface I look calm and ready to drop bombs but I keep on forgetting …”He joked that he thought Eminem would be performing and he would be a guest star, adding: “Love me some Eminem.”The former president is an avowed music fan, sharing his favourite songs twice a year in official posts on his social media. Summer 2024’s selections included songs by contemporary pop names such as Beyoncé, Tyla and Rema alongside older tracks by Nick Drake, the Supremes and cosmic jazz musician Pharoah Sanders.Obama went on to excoriate Donald Trump in his speech, recalling how Trump expressed doubt about the election results in 2020:
    Because Donald Trump was willing to spread lies about voter fraud in Michigan, protesters came down, banged on the windows, shouting, ‘Let us in. Stop the count.’ Poll workers inside being intimidated … all because Donald Trump couldn’t accept losing … there is absolutely no evidence that this man thinks about anybody but himself.”
    He questioned Trump’s mental fitness for the role of president, saying:
    You’d be worried if Grandpa was acting like this. But this is coming from someone who wants unchecked power.”
    Keir Starmer has insisted he can maintain a “good relationship” with Donald Trump after the Republican candidate’s campaign accused Labour of “blatant foreign interference” in the US election.The Trump campaign filed a legal complaint overnight against Labour officials travelling to US battleground states to volunteer for his Democrat rival Kamala Harris.The letter, which was sent to the US Federal Election Commission, said that these volunteering efforts and reports of contact between Labour and the Harris campaign amounted to “illegal foreign national contributions”.A statement on DonaldJTrump.com on Tuesday night claimed that the “far-left” Labour party has “inspired Kamala’s dangerously liberal policies and rhetoric”.In response Starmer insisted he had a “good relationship” with Trump which would not be jeopardised by the complaint.The prime minister said that party officials volunteering for Harris ahead of the US presidential election on 5 November were “doing it in their spare time” rather than in their capacity working for Labour.Speaking to reporters travelling with him to the Commonwealth summit in Samoa, Starmer said:
    The Labour party … volunteers, have gone over pretty much every election. They’re doing it in their spare time, they’re doing it as volunteers, they’re staying I think with other volunteers over there.
    That’s what they’ve done in previous elections, that’s what they’re doing in this election and that’s really straightforward.”
    Asked if the complaint risked jeopardising his relationship with Trump if he becomes president again, the UK prime minister said:
    No. I spent time in New York with President Trump, had dinner with him and my purpose in doing that was to make sure that between the two of us we established a good relationship, which we did, and we’re grateful for him for making the time.”
    We had a good, constructive discussion and, of course as prime minister of the United Kingdom I will work with whoever the American people return as their president in their elections which are very close now.”
    US vice-president Kamala Harris will hold a town hall with undecided voters on CNN on Wednesday, after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump rejected an offer to debate the Democratic nominee for a second time, reports Reuters.Trump will headline a rally Wednesday in Duluth, Georgia with guests Tucker Carlson and Robert F Kennedy Jr, as the race for the White House counts down to less than two weeks.Pennsylvania and Georgia are among seven battleground states that will decide who wins the presidency. Both candidates are likely to spend much of the rest of their campaigns in those states, trying to persuade the small sliver of voters who are still undecided to back them in the 5 November election.Harris tried and failed to push Trump to agree to a second presidential debate on CNN after she was considered to have won the first and only presidential debate between the two candidates, which took place in September on ABC News.Reuters reports that Hariss’s televised town hall will take place before a live audience of undecided voters from Pennsylvania in Delaware County, outside Philadelphia.Harris held a marginal 46% to 43% lead over the former president, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.More on this story in a moment, but first, here are the latest updates:

    Surrogates campaigning for Trump and Harris are fanning out across the US this week. Harris’s vice-presidential pick, Tim Walz, will travel to North Carolina and Pennsylvania, while Trump’s running mate JD Vance will head to Reno, Nevada on Wednesday.

    UK prime minister Keir Starmer has insisted he can maintain a “good relationship” with Donald Trump after the Republican candidate’s campaign accused Labour of “blatant foreign interference” in the US election. The Trump campaign filed a legal complaint overnight against Labour officials travelling to US battleground states to volunteer for his Democrat rival Kamala Harris.

    Harris herself said she has no doubt that the US was ready for a female president, in an interview with NBC News’s Hallie Jackson. “I’m clearly a woman. I don’t need to point that out to anyone,” Harris said with a laugh. “The point that most people really care about is: can you do the job and, do you have a plan to actually focus on them?”.

    Harris courted Hispanic voters promoting small business loans for Latino men, in an interview with Noticias Telemundo’s Julio Vaqueiro. Harris pledged to drive more funds to community banks to help Latino men access small business loans. “Hispanic men often have more difficulty securing loans from banks because of their connections and the fact that things aren’t necessarily set up so that they will qualify,” she said.

    Trump also pitched to Hispanic voters, holding a morning round table with Latino leaders at his golf resort in Doral, Florida. Trump hit familiar talking points but took his time in getting to issues of importance to the voting bloc. The event concluded with a group of prominent evangelists praying as they stood around Trump with their hands on his shoulders, while he sat with his eyes closed.

    At the same event, the former president hurled a series of personal attacks at his opponent, calling Harris “lazy as hell” and “low IQ”. He was referring to Harris holding no public campaign events on Tuesday, instead recording the two interviews after a busy day of campaigning with Liz Cheney on Monday. At a later rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, Trump continued the invective: “Does she drink? Is she on drugs?”

    Vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz held a rally with former president Barack Obama in Madison, Wisconsin, where he slammed Trump’s staged campaign event at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s as a “stunt” and mocked Elon Musk for “jumping around, skipping like a dipshit” before holding another rally in Wisconsin that evening.

    Obama, meanwhile, ridiculed Trump’s boasts on the economy and cast his rambling speeches as a sign of mental deterioration. “You’d be worried if Grandpa was acting like this,” said Obama. “But this is coming from someone who wants unchecked power.”

    JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, dodged a question about whether he would strip immigrants with legal authorisation of their status while campaigning in Peoria, outside Phoenix, Arizona. Vance urged supporters to “work our rear ends off for the next two weeks” to turn the swing state red.

    Despite some setbacks, Republicans vowed to press ahead in bids to block some overseas ballots. Court rulings rejected Republic National Committee efforts to block some Americans living abroad from voting in North Carolina and Michigan but the party will keep up its aggressive legal campaign.

    Arab Americans slightly favour Trump over Harris, according to a new poll. The survey, conducted by the Arab News Research and Studies Unit along with YouGov, shows a deadlock in Michigan, a key battleground state with a large Arab American population. More

  • 188 Shares149 Views

    in US Politics

    ‘There’s vomit on my sweater already!’ Barack Obama raps Eminem’s Lose Yourself at Detroit rally

    Barack Obama rapped Eminem’s signature hit Lose Yourself to a crowd in Detroit during a campaign rally for Kamala Harris.He was preceded by Eminem himself, who told the crowd in his home city: “It’s important to use your voice, I’m encouraging everyone to get out and vote, please … I don’t think anyone wants an America where people are worried about retribution of what people will do if you make your opinion known. I think vice-president Harris supports a future for this country where these freedoms and many others will be protected and upheld.”Obama opened his ensuing speech by saying: “I gotta say, I have done a lot of rallies, so I don’t usually get nervous, but I was feeling some kind of way following Eminem,” before segueing into Lose Yourself’s opening lines: “I notice my palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, vomit on my sweater already, mom’s spaghetti, I’m nervous but on the surface I look calm and ready to drop bombs but I keep on forgetting …”He joked that he thought Eminem would be performing and he would be a guest star, adding: “Love me some Eminem.”The former president is an avowed music fan, sharing his favourite songs twice a year in official posts on his social media. Summer 2024’s selections included songs by contemporary pop names such as Beyoncé, Tyla and Rema alongside older tracks by Nick Drake, the Supremes and cosmic jazz musician Pharoah Sanders.Obama went on to excoriate Donald Trump in his speech, recalling how Trump expressed doubt about the election results in 2020. “Because Donald Trump was willing to spread lies about voter fraud in Michigan, protesters came down, banged on the windows, shouting, ‘Let us in. Stop the count.’ Poll workers inside being intimidated … all because Donald Trump couldn’t accept losing … there is absolutely no evidence that this man thinks about anybody but himself.”He questioned Trump’s mental fitness for the role of president, saying: “You’d be worried if Grandpa was acting like this. But this is coming from someone who wants unchecked power.”He also made reference to Trump’s stunt earlier this week, where he worked in a McDonald’s kitchen and drive-thru counter that was closed to the public. Harris, he said, “worked at McDonald’s when in college to pay her expenses. She did not pretend to work at McDonald’s when it was closed.”Tim Walz, also speaking at the rally, decried the stunt as “cosplaying … Fake orders for fake customers”. He also appealed to freedom of speech, saying Trump was “talking about sending the military against people who don’t support him. He’s naming names.” More

  • 175 Shares99 Views

    in US Politics

    Starmer insists he can have a ‘good relationship’ with Trump despite election ‘interference’ claim

    Keir Starmer has insisted he can maintain a “good relationship” with Donald Trump after the Republican candidate’s campaign accused Labour of “blatant foreign interference” in the US election.The Trump campaign filed a legal complaint overnight against Labour officials travelling to US battleground states to volunteer for his Democrat rival Kamala Harris.The letter, which was sent to the US Federal Election Commission, said that these volunteering efforts and reports of contact between Labour and the Harris campaign amounted to “illegal foreign national contributions”.A statement on DonaldJTrump.com on Tuesday night claimed that the “far-left” Labour party has “inspired Kamala’s dangerously liberal policies and rhetoric”.In response Starmer insisted he had a “good relationship” with Trump which would not be jeopardised by the complaint.The prime minister said that party officials volunteering for Harris ahead of the US presidential election on 5 November were “doing it in their spare time” rather than in their capacity working for Labour.Speaking to reporters travelling with him to the Commonwealth summit in Samoa, Starmer said: “The Labour party … volunteers, have gone over pretty much every election. They’re doing it in their spare time, they’re doing it as volunteers, they’re staying I think with other volunteers over there.“That’s what they’ve done in previous elections, that’s what they’re doing in this election and that’s really straightforward.”Asked if the complaint risked jeopardising his relationship with Trump if he becomes president again, the prime minister said: “No. I spent time in New York with President Trump, had dinner with him and my purpose in doing that was to make sure that between the two of us we established a good relationship, which we did, and we’re grateful for him for making the time.”“We had a good, constructive discussion and, of course as prime minister of the United Kingdom I will work with whoever the American people return as their president in their elections which are very close now.”The complaint cited a now-deleted LinkedIn post by Labour’s head of operations, which said almost 100 current and former party officials were travelling to the US to campaign for the Democrats in swing states including North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia. The post added that there were 10 spots still available and promised that “we will sort your housing”.The letter, sent by Trump campaign lawyer Gary Lawkowski, mentioned newspaper reports of contact between senior Labour advisers and the Harris campaign and called for an immediate investigation.It drew a comparison to a programme in 2016 in which the Australian Labor party (ALP) sent delegates to help Bernie Sanders’ campaign. In that instance the US Federal Election Commission fined the ALP, which paid for its delegates’ flights and gave them daily stipends, and the Sanders campaign $14,500 each.Labour has said that activists’ trips are not organised or funded by the party and that any officials who campaign in the US election are volunteers who do so in their own time.Starmer met Trump during a trip to New York in September and visited Trump Tower for talks ahead of the US election. Trump heaped praise on Starmer ahead of their meeting, saying he was a “very nice” man who “ran a great race” in the UK election and was “very popular”.The Trump campaign’s complaint said: “When representatives of the British government previously sought to go door-to-door in America, it did not end well for them. This past week marked the 243 anniversary of the surrender of British forces at the Battle of Yorktown, a military victory that ensured that the United States would be politically independent of Great Britian [sic].”“It appears that the Labour party and the Harris for President campaign have forgotten the message.” More

  • 213 Shares99 Views

    in US Politics

    US presidential election briefing: Trump fits the ‘definition of fascist’, says former chief of staff John Kelly

    Two weeks out from election day, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff has claimed his one-time boss “falls into the general definition of fascist”.John Kelly, a former Marine general and presidential aide from 2017 to 2019, made the extraordinary intervention on Tuesday in a series of coordinated interviews. Speaking to the New York Times, he said the former Republican president “prefers the dictator approach to government” and is the “only president that has all but rejected what America is all about”. Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump’s campaign, told the Times that Kelly’s accounts were “debunked stories” and that Kelly had “beclowned” himself.Speaking to the Atlantic, Kelly recounted Trump saying he wished his military personnel showed him the same deference Nazi generals showed Adolf Hitler. Trump’s campaign denied the exchange, with an adviser telling CNN: “This is absolutely false. President Trump never said this.”Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz said the reported comments about Hitler’s generals “makes me sick as hell”. “Folks, the guardrails are gone,” Walz told a rally in Wisconsin on Tuesday. “Trump is descending into this madness.”Here’s what else happened on Tuesday:Kamala Harris campaign updates

    Vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz held a rally with former president Barack Obama in Madison, Wisconsin, where he slammed Trump’s staged campaign event at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s as a “stunt” and mocked Elon Musk for “jumping around, skipping like a dipshit” before holding another rally in Wisconsin that evening.

    Obama, meanwhile, ridiculed Trump’s boasts on the economy and cast his rambling speeches as a sign of mental deterioration. “You’d be worried if Grandpa was acting like this,” said Obama. “But this is coming from someone who wants unchecked power.”

    Eminem introduced Obama at a rally in Detroit later on Tuesday, where the Democratic powerhouse began his remarks with the opening lines of the rapper’s hit track Lose Yourself. Bruce Springsteen will headline two concerts as part of a series that will hit every swing state, the Harris campaign confirmed.

    Harris herself said she has no doubt that the US was ready for a female president, in an interview with NBC News’s Hallie Jackson. “I’m clearly a woman. I don’t need to point that out to anyone,” Harris said with a laugh. “The point that most people really care about is: can you do the job and, do you have a plan to actually focus on them?”.

    Harris courted Hispanic voters promoting small business loans for Latino men, in an interview with Noticias Telemundo’s Julio Vaqueiro. Harris pledged to drive more funds to community banks to help Latino men access small business loans. “Hispanic men often have more difficulty securing loans from banks because of their connections and the fact that things aren’t necessarily set up so that they will qualify,” she said.
    Donald Trump campaign updates

    Trump also pitched to Hispanic voters, holding a morning round table with Latino leaders at his golf resort in Doral, Florida. Trump hit familiar talking points but took his time in getting to issues of importance to the voting bloc. The event concluded with a group of prominent evangelists praying as they stood around Trump with their hands on his shoulders, while he sat with his eyes closed.

    At the same event, the former president hurled a series of personal attacks at his opponent, calling Harris “lazy as hell” and “low IQ”. He was referring to Harris holding no public campaign events on Tuesday, instead recording the two interviews after a busy day of campaigning with Liz Cheney on Monday. At a later rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, Trump continued the invective: “Does she drink? Is she on drugs?”

    JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, dodged a question about whether he would strip immigrants with legal authorisation of their status while campaigning in Peoria, outside Phoenix, Arizona. Vance urged supporters to “work our rear ends off for the next two weeks” to turn the swing state red.

    The Republican campaign filed an extraordinary complaint claiming the UK Labour party is interfering in the presidential election by recruiting and sending party members to campaign for Harris. It is understood that volunteers are campaigning in the US in their own personal time, rather in their capacity working for the Labour party.
    Elsewhere on the campaign trail

    Despite some setbacks, Republicans vowed to press ahead in bids to block some overseas ballots. Court rulings rejected Republic National Committee efforts to block some Americans living abroad from voting in North Carolina and Michigan but the party will keep up its aggressive legal campaign.

    The US economy is poised for stronger growth than many wealthy nations, the International Monetary Fund said in forecast. While not mentioning Trump by name, the IMF estimates that a shift towards “undesirable” industrial and trade policies could reduce global GDP by 0.5 percentage points in 2026.

    Arab Americans slightly favour Trump over Harris, according to a new poll. The survey, conducted by the Arab News Research and Studies Unit along with YouGov, shows a deadlock in Michigan, a key battleground state with a large Arab American population.
    Read more about the 2024 US election:

    Presidential poll tracker

    Harris and Trump policies

    What to know about early voting More

  • 150 Shares99 Views

    in US Politics

    Obama and Walz excoriate Trump at Wisconsin rally in early voting push

    On the first day of early voting in Wisconsin, Tim Walz called Elon Musk a “dipshit” while Barack Obama said of Donald Trump: “You’d be worried if Grandpa was acting like this.”Both were speaking at a rally in Madison, a growing Democratic party stronghold, to encourage early voting and warn of the perils of a second Trump presidency. Obama went on to campaign for Kamala Harris in Detroit on Tuesday evening, alongside rapper Eminem, in an effort to drum up support in Michigan where polls suggest Harris and Trump are in a virtual deadlock.The Democratic vice-presidential candidate ripped into Trump ally and Silicon Valley billionaire Musk, warning that he could be charged with regulating his own businesses if Trump were elected. Musk has also promised the chance to win $1m to voters in swing states who sign a petition linked to efforts to return Trump to power.Walz also slammed Trump, who this week served meals at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania, accusing him of “cosplaying” as a working-class person and noting that the restaurant had closed to accommodate the presidential candidate. “It was a stunt,” said Walz. “Fake orders for fake customers.”“He is not the 2016 Donald Trump,” said Walz, describing Trump’s promise to prosecute his political enemies. “He’s talking about sending the military against people who don’t support him. He’s naming names.”Obama, who won in Wisconsin in 2008 and 2012, urged his Madison audience to get to the polls and spent much of his speech attacking Trump.“I wouldn’t be offended if you just walk out right now and go vote,” he said.“When he’s not complaining, he’s trying to sell you stuff,” he added, referring to Trump, who has raised funds by selling gold-colored sneakers, bibles and $100,000 watches. “Who does that? You’re running for president, and you’re hawking merchandise.”He compared Trump’s meandering rhetorical style with that of Fidel Castro, the former Cuban head of state who was known to deliver hours-long speeches.“He calls himself the father of IVF. I have no idea what that means – you don’t either,” said Obama, casting Trump’s rambling speeches and sometimes confounding remarks as a sign of mental deterioration.“You’d be worried if Grandpa was acting like this,” said Obama. “But this is coming from someone who wants unchecked power.”Obama also acknowledged that while his signature healthcare bill, the Affordable Care Act, did not fix American healthcare, its passage meant people with pre-existing conditions are more able to access health insurance.He spoke about efforts by his administration to implement a pandemic-preparedness plan and accused Trump of abandoning the effort, resulting in more Covid-19 deaths.“Most of you know somebody whose life was touched,” said Obama, urging voters who are fed up with politics to participate in the November election anyway.Before Walz and Obama spoke, Madison mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, Representative Mark Pocan, Governor Tony Evers and Senator Tammy Baldwin – herself up for re-election on 5 November – encouraged voters to return their absentee ballots or vote absentee in person.“Don’t take the risk of forgetting to vote– vote early,” said Pocan. “With the Packers game on the Sunday afternoon before the election, you can have a two-day hangover and not worry about missing the vote.”More than 18 million people in the US have voted early so far in the 2024 election, with a little more than 326,000 of those coming from Wisconsin as of 21 October, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab. Those numbers will increase dramatically now that Wisconsin’s early voting period has begun.Since the 2020 election, when Trump cast doubts on the integrity of absentee voting amid the Covid-19 pandemic, early voting has been a source of consternation in the Republican party. After Trump lost the 2020 election and Republicans failed to generate a red wave during the 2022 midterm elections, GOP leaders have sought to encourage their base to cast ballots before election day.Trump, who discouraged absentee voting before the 2020 election, has struggled to stay on message about early voting, alternately urging supporters to vote early and casting aspersions on the voting method – sometimes during the same speech.With polls showing Harris and Trump in a dead heat across the swing states, including Wisconsin, the last-minute push to turn out voters could determine the outcome of the election. In 2020, Joe Biden won in Wisconsin by about 20,000 votes; in 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin with a similarly slim majority. With 10 votes in the electoral college, Wisconsin will play a critical role in determining the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.Deb and Rod Merritt, a retired couple from Sauk county, Wisconsin, who attended the rally on Tuesday, said the pressure of Wisconsin’s close margins and the extra time afforded by retirement drove them to volunteer for the Harris campaign.“I’m definitely nervous,” said Deb Merritt, who said knocking on doors in the bellwether county – Sauk county voters have aligned with the winner repeatedly in presidential elections – was gratifying.“We saw a few [undecided voters], mostly leaning Democrat,” said Rod Merritt. “Some people would say: ‘I’m voting for Kamala and my husband was for Trump, but he’s not going to vote.”In both 2016 and 2020, Trump performed better in Wisconsin than polling suggested.“We don’t know if that’s going to happen again this time, or which direction it’ll be or how big the error will be, but we have to expect that we need to overshoot to be able to win by a hair,” Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic party chair, told the Guardian. “For anyone who’s knocking on doors, if you think for a second you’ve got it in the bag, then go and sign up for another volunteer shift to drive it even higher.”In Detroit, an energetic Obama performed part of an Eminem rap when he took the stage and then praised Harris as “a leader who has spent her life fighting on behalf of people who need a voice, need a champion – somebody who was raised in the middle class”. Reviving earlier jabs against Trump, he noted Harris “did not pretend to work at McDonald’s when it was closed”, but actually held a fast-food job in college to help with her expenses.For his Michigan audience, Obama recounted the chaos Trump helped cause in the state after the 2020 election: “Because Donald Trump was willing to spread lies about voter fraud in Michigan, protesters came down, banged on the windows, shouting, ‘Let us in. Stop the count.’ Poll workers inside being intimidated … all because Donald Trump couldn’t accept losing.” More

  • 200 Shares109 Views

    in US Politics

    US elections live: Obama ridicules Trump’s boasts on economy as Walz dismisses Republican nominee’s McDonald’s ‘stunt’

    Barack Obama is hitting on a key issue for voters: the economy.“Don’t have nostalgia for what his economy was. Because it was mine,” Obama said.Polls show voters tend to favor Trump on the economy, yearning for the time, early in Trump’s presidency, pre-pandemic, when housing and grocery costs were lower.“I spent eight years cleaning up the mess that Republicans left,” Obama said.Scrutiny is growing about the Montana aerial firefighting company once led by Tim Sheehy, the former Navy Seal and Republican Senate candidate who could oust the Democrat incumbent Jon Tester in next month’s election.According to NBC News, Sheehy’s Bridger Aerospace, a company he founded in 2013, negotiated a deal with Gallatin county in eastern Montana to use its pristine credit rating to raise $160m in bonds. The county was meant to benefit from Bridger’s plans to hire more workers and build two new aircraft hangers.But the company used most of the money, or $134m, from the 2022 bond issue to pay back previous investment from Blackstone, a New York-based investment giant.Bridger’s finances have been complicated by the fact that there were fewer wildfires to fight this year and thus less revenue for Bridger. As of Tuesday, the National Interagency Fire Center reported 42,603 wildfires nationwide this year compared to the 10-year average of 48,689 for the same period.In financial filings for the quarterly period that ended 30 June 2024, Bridger said it had “a substantial amount of debt” and that failure to service that debt “could prolong the substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern”.A victory for Sheehy in November could hand Republicans control of the Senate, making his connections to Bridger a vital topic as voters head to the polls.Election day is exactly two weeks away. And today has been a frenzy of campaign activity.

    Eminem reportedly set to introduce Barack Obama when he appears in Detroit tonight, and Bruce Springsteen to headline two concerts as part of a series that will hit every swing state.

    Obama also campaign with Tim Walz in Wisconsin.

    JD Vance dodged a question about whether he would strip migrants with legal authorization of their status, at an event in Arizona.

    Donald Trump will be in in North Carolina, where Walz is holdind a second event this evening.

    Trump held a round table with Latino leaders but took his time in getting to issues of importance to the voting bloc.

    Harris will campaign in Houston on Friday, with an eye towards picking up Texas’s Senate seat and highlighting how abortion bans have affected women in the Republican bastion.

    The US economy is poised for stronger growth than many wealthy nations, the IMF said in forecasts released today.
    Meanwhile, in New Hampshire, Joe Biden appeared alongside Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. to discuss his administration’s work on lowering prescription drug prices.But the president also took a chance to issue a warning that Trump and Vance were extreme. “This is not your father’s Republican Party,” Biden said, referencing Strom Thurmond, the late senator from South Carolina who famously conducted the longest speaking filibuster in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957. But Thurmond later moderated his stance/“People change, but these guys just keep getting worse,” Biden of the party now. “Get to the vote. Because the nation’s democracy depends on it.”He shared an embrace with Sanders.At an early voting pop-up location at the University of Minnesota, hundreds of students waited in line to cast ballots on Tuesday – a sign of youth enthusiasm for the presidential election.The early voting location at the campus’ Weisman Art Museum, a one-day on-campus polling place for any Minneapolis voter, was a first-time occasion made possible by recent changes in state law to allow for pop-up polling places to help voters who can be harder to reach, like college students.“We brought the polls to them,” said Riley Hetland, a sophomore and undergraduate student government civic engagement director who helped plan the event. Hetland said the group has been going to classrooms and hosting tables around campus for weeks to get people registered to vote and help them make a plan to cast ballots. So far, they have gotten 12,000 voters to pledge to vote, double their goal of 6,000.Madelyn Ekstrand finished her class for the day and waited about an hour, all told, to cast her ballot. The 21-year-old senior said abortion access and climate change were important to her, so she was voting for Harris. She thought she’d vote early to get it done, but didn’t realize how popular the choice would be – she was glad it was so busy.“I’m happy to see people my age getting out and voting and being proactive and not waiting till the last second,” she said.The ruling upholds another order by a Fulton county judge, who invalidated last-minute rules made by Georgia’s state election board this year.The rules, which were approved by Trump-aligned members of the board, would have required all ballots to be counted by hand on election night – a feat that would probably yield results that are far less accurate than a count done by ballot scanners. The changes would also have allowed officials investigate discrepancies in vote totals and conduct “reasonable inquiries” into irregularities, without clarifying what such an inquiry entailed.The unanimous ruling by the conservative-majority supreme court did not touch on the legality of the seven rules – rather, it dismissed a request to hold a decision issued by a lower-court judge.It’s an arresting split screen: Barack Obama, in Madison, tells voters that when Trump and Vance are pressed to elaborate on their policies, “they’ll fall back on one answer: blame immigrants”.“He wants you to believe that if you let him round up whoever he wants and ships them out, all your problems will be solved,” Obama says.Meanwhile, in Arizona, JD Vance dodges a question about whether he would strip immigrants of their legal status.Barack Obama is hitting on a key issue for voters: the economy.“Don’t have nostalgia for what his economy was. Because it was mine,” Obama said.Polls show voters tend to favor Trump on the economy, yearning for the time, early in Trump’s presidency, pre-pandemic, when housing and grocery costs were lower.“I spent eight years cleaning up the mess that Republicans left,” Obama said.Tim Walz has wrapped up his speech, after introducing Barack Obama.The Democratic former president apologized for being late, saying he had an issue with his plane that forced him to drive to Madison from Chicago.“So we board the plane … and then the pilot comes in and says: ‘Sir, there’s a pile of oil leaking out of the back of the plane.’ Now, I do not know anything about planes, except for the fact that it should not leak oil. So we had a nice road trip instead, and I am glad I made it,” Obama said.Tim Walz encouraged the crowd not to grow sanguine about the possibility of a second Trump term, saying the Republican could retaliate against him if he returns to the White House.“Here’s another reason that the stakes are so high in this election, something that I don’t think many of us have seen. You hear some version of this from the people in your life, neighbors, relatives, brothers, in some cases, who said, look, we made it through the first Trump term, we’ll get through a second. This Donald Trump … is far more dangerous … He is not the 2016 Donald Trump. This is a brand-new version,” Walz said.He elaborated on why he believes that:
    As Kamala says, he is a very unserious person, but the consequences of putting him back in office are deadly serious. He’s talking about sending the military against people who don’t support him. He’s naming names. Look, I recognize I’m going to be at the top of that list. You think he’s stopping with me? He’s talking about you. He’s talking about using the United States military to go after people who disagree with his idiotic ideas, his unpatriotic ideas, his traitorous ideas. And he’s talking about using the military. He talks about the enemy from within.
    After Donald Trump recently called Kamala Harris a “shit vice-president”, Tim Walz just used similar language to describe Elon Musk’s enthusiastic campaigning for the former president.Musk bounded on stage and briefly got airborne at a Trump rally in the Pennsylvania town where the former president nearly lost his life in an assassination attempt in July.Here’s what Walz had to say about that:
    So look, Elon is on that stage, jumping around, skipping like a dipshit on these things. You know it. Think about it … that guy is literally the richest man in the world spending millions of dollars to help Donald Trump buy an election.
    Now, look, they’re saying the quiet parts out loud now, because Donald Trump has already promised that he would put Elon in charge of government regulations that oversee the businesses that Elon runs.
    That’s a hell of a buy. He could spend billions to make more than $10bn on the back end. So in other words, Donald Trump, in front of the eyes of the American public, is promising corruption. That’s what he’s promising you. And you know what? I don’t believe, I don’t believe he keeps many promises, but he’ll keep that one.
    Tim Walz then took Donald Trump to task for the staged campaign event he held at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s over the weekend, saying the appearance amounted to a “stunt”.“He went to a McDonald’s and dressed up as the drive-thru worker. They found him an apron his size and put it on him. And I was thinking, it is possible he mixed up his weekends and thought that it was Halloween already. He’s been forgetting things lately, as you might have noticed,” Walz said.Pressing the attack, the Minnesota governor continued:
    That restaurant, that restaurant wasn’t even open. It was a stunt – fake orders for fake customers. They even staged the drive thru. We know that they won’t let you walk through the damn drive thru. We knew that. They saw that happening.
    But look, everything about this guy is fake. Everything he does is fake. Next, he’s going to be telling you he’s a cop or a construction worker because he dances to the Village People, so he knows the YMCA. And I’ll tell you this: so that five minutes he stood next to the deep fryer, I’ll guarantee you that’s the hardest that guy’s ever worked in his life. And that’s not a joke.
    Tim Walz laid into Donald Trump for the meandering tone of his recent speeches and for declining to debate Kamala Harris for a second time.“It takes stamina to run for president. It takes stamina to be president, and Donald Trump does not have stamina,” Walz began. “He has been rambling more than the normal rambling.”Noting that Trump has lately taken to describing his speaking style as “the weave”, Walz said: “We know there’s only one weave that you know anything about, and it is not this. It is not this … He’s ducks debates, but you can’t blame him. When you get your ass whipped that hard, you don’t come back for seconds.”After the customary playing of Beyoncé’s Freedom – the song used at just about every Harris campaign event – Tim Walz strolled on stage.He shouted out all the Democrats who introduced him, as well as the rally attendees: “But each of you, huge thank-you. Took time out of your busy lives, you came here, you came here because you believe in the promise of America and you believe in the democracy. Thank you.”Next up was Tammy Baldwin, the state Democratic senator who is locked in an increasingly tight re-election battle against Republican Eric Hovde.Like Tony Evers before her on the lineup, Baldwin centered her appeal to voters on her support for abortion rights and the Affordable Care Act.“Just a little bragging here: I wrote the provision in the Affordable Care Act that allows young people to stay on their parents’ health insurance until they turn 26 and I will never stop fighting until all Americans have the quality, affordable healthcare that they need and deserve,” she said.Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, one of the early speakers at the Walz-Obama rally in Madison, didn’t hold back when describing what a second Donald Trump presidency would mean.“We know Trump and Vance will try to pass a national abortion ban, roll back access to birth control, emergency contraception and even fertility treatments. We know that they’re going to repeal the Affordable Care Act and deny coverage to folks like me and so many others here in the audience, and people you care about who have a pre-existing condition,” he said.The governor continued:
    What Trump said about that – he’s got the concept of a plan. Now you take that concept for a plan and go pay a bill, it ain’t going to work. And they’re going to give more tax breaks for the ultra-rich and the big corporations instead of helping working families get ahead. And we know that a second Trump term would mean unchecked power with no guardrails to hold them back. That’s just bullshit. More

  • 138 Shares119 Views

    in US Politics

    Scrutiny of Republican Tim Sheehy’s business grows amid US Senate race

    Scrutiny is growing about the Montana aerial firefighting company once led by Tim Sheehy, the former Navy Seal and Republican Senate candidate who could oust the Democrat incumbent Jon Tester in next month’s election.According to NBC News, Sheehy’s Bridger Aerospace, a company he founded in 2013, negotiated a deal with Gallatin county in eastern Montana to use its pristine credit rating to raise $160m in bonds. The county was meant to benefit from Bridger’s plans to hire more workers and build two new aircraft hangers.But the company used most of the money, or $134m, from the 2022 bond issue to pay back previous investment from Blackstone, a New York-based investment giant.Bridger’s finances have been complicated by the fact that there were fewer wildfires to fight this year and thus less revenue for Bridger. As of Tuesday, the National Interagency Fire Center reported 42,603 wildfires nationwide this year compared to the 10-year average of 48,689 for the same period.In financial filings for the quarterly period that ended 30 June 2024, Bridger said it had “a substantial amount of debt” and that failure to service that debt “could prolong the substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern”.A victory for Sheehy in November could hand Republicans control of the Senate, making his connections to Bridger a vital topic as voters head to the polls.Sheehy, 38, stepped down as the company’s CEO in July. He has run his campaign partly based on his business acumen.The questions around Gallatin county’s approval of Bridger’s bond deal revolve around whether the board was correctly informed of the company’s financial position – it has lost $150m since it was founded – and whether Gallatin’s credit rating could be affected.Marc Cohodes, a Wall Street investor who issued an early warning regarding FTX and its CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, as well as calling the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, is among the signatories on a letter to Gallatin county and the US Small Business Administration asking for an investigation into Bridger’s use of capital.The letter questioned why Bridger presented itself to the federal government as a “socially and economically disadvantaged business”.“Gallatin County had their name on the bonds and when they default, and they will, lawyers and lawsuits will come after Gallatin County,” Cohodes told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. “‘Read the fine print’ will not be a good defense on this.”But Sheehy’s campaign pushed back, saying the deal’s critics were Democratic supporters of Tester.“It is clear Tester’s supporters wrote this letter with one goal: to hurt Tim’s campaign, tear down a Montana company, and help Jon Tester,” a campaign spokesperson told the Chronicle.“Bridger Aerospace is a good company that protects public lands by fighting wildfires, and it is our hope that the authors of this letter cease their efforts to destroy a Montana business, put Montanans out of a job, and wipe out their retirement savings.”Zach Brown, a Gallatin county commissioner, told NBC he was not worried that the bond money had gone to pay Blackstone.“It isn’t our role to monitor the construction and operational decisions of a private company or communicate to the community the status report of how they’re doing,” Brown told NBC.“Our role is not to monitor whether they added jobs – it is to endorse the public interest of their project.”While Gallatin county is not on the hook for the bond repayments, the county could see its credit rating affected if Bridger went out of business. Since January last year, when Bridger went public, its stock is down 64%.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBridger reported losses of $77m in 2023 and was at risk of failing to meet its financial obligations.“The Company has suffered recurring losses from operations, operating cash flow deficits, debt covenant violations, and insufficient liquidity to fund its operations that raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern,” Bridger’s auditor said, according to the Montana Free Press.The company said in the report that it began cutting costs and had reduced its workforce to 148, down from 166 in 2022.A spokesperson for Bridger told NBC that the company has continued to pay interest on the bonds, which are backed by “robust collateral which has appreciated significantly in value since the bond was issued” and is working to repair its cash flow problems.Separately, Sam Davis, Bridger’s CEO, told the outlet that the company had battled more than 160 Montana wildfires since the bond issue.The county’s support for the company, Davis added, had been “tremendous” and allowed the firefighting company to “contract with multiple local businesses as we expand and operate our business, and provide a strong customer base to local hotels, restaurants, and transportation providers”.Questions around Bridger come as Sheehy’s service record also has come under scrutiny. The Trump-backed candidate has claimed he was shot in the arm during a firefight in Afghanistan.But a Montana park ranger has claimed that the gunshot wound was self-inflicted in Glacier national park in 2015. Nor do Sheehy’s fellow soldiers recall him mentioning a gunshot wound or seeing a wound at the time during his service in central Asia.Sheehy has insisted that he was shot in Afghanistan and that claims to the contrary are “tantamount to falsely accusing him of stolen valor”.Sheehy has also come under attack for allegedly characterizing Crow Native Americans as “drunk Indians”. He told Fox News last month they were old recordings, and suggested they were edited, reports the Daily Montanan. More