Evelyn Reynolds

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    A day in Elon Musk’s mind: 145 tweets with election conspiracies and emojis

    It’s just after midnight mountain standard time in the US on 13 August when Elon Musk makes his first post of the day on X, the platform he bought for $44bn when it was known as Twitter. Musk has been tweeting for hours about his interview with Donald Trump, and he will continue into the night before taking a few hours’ break – presumably to sleep – and then logging back on to tweet dozens more times.Over the next 24 hours, Musk will post over 145 times about a range of obsessions, projects and grievances to his 195 million followers. He will share anti-immigrant content, election conspiracies and attacks against the media. He will exchange tweets with far-right politicians, conservative media influencers and sycophantic admirers. He will send a litany of one-word replies that say “yeah”, “interesting” or simply feature a cry-laughing emoji.As a means of showing what Musk promotes online and who he interacts with, the Guardian has taken a granular look at one day of the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s posts on X. Musk posted a photo of himself at a “friend’s ranch in Wyoming” on the day in question, and as a result all timestamps of his tweets are assumed to have taken place in that state’s timezone, mountain standard time.The 24-hour snapshot of Musk’s posts, which are largely representative of his average daily output, are a revealing look into how the world’s richest man spends a large part of his day, almost every day. Though Musk receives huge amounts of media coverage for his various legal battles and business ventures, it can be easy for people who are not constantly online to miss just how prolific his output is on X and how extreme the content is that he promotes there. He tweets so often that his own bot scanners have flagged his account in the past. He has replaced Donald Trump as the tweeter-in-chief.If billionaires of the past like Richard Branson and Steve Jobs have projected images of yachting in the Caribbean or standing on stage brandishing their latest tech creation, a review of Musk’s tweets paints a contrasting picture: his default status is staring at a screen, posting. Much as Trump’s vindictive speeches must be heard in full to be believed, Musk’s whiplashing mix of aggrieved political trolling, memes and company hype must be read in sequence to understand the world’s most privileged tweeter.Midnight to 1.18am: Friends of ElonMusk’s first post on 13 August is a 12.14am reply to the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative group Turning Point USA, who opposes trans rights and advocates for Christian nationalism. Musk wants to clarify a point from the previous day’s interview with Trump, whom he is backing for president, and tells Kirk that he believes the climate crisis is real but that sustainable energy technology is on pace to solve it.The exchange is one of multiple times during the day that Musk will have cozy, public exchanges with Kirk and other figures of the international right wing. The billionaire has in recent years formed a sort of symbiotic relationship with conservative media influencers, basking in their praise and in turn amplifying their talking points. Within 30 minutes of Musk’s first post of the day, he will have replied to three separate posts from Kirk with claims suggesting the media is rewriting Kamala Harris’s political history, the government should deregulate industries and that street crime in the US is out of control.By 1am, Musk will have already tweeted 14 times, mostly in exchanges with these kinds of rightwing activists or deferential media influencers like Mario Nawfal – a serial entrepreneur who left behind a series of aggrieved business associates to gain a following hosting live streams on X. Before apparently logging off at around 1.18am, Musk will also respond to the all-beef diet advocate and anti-trans ex-psychology professor Jordan Peterson, who claimed that the initial streaming failure of Musk’s interview with Trump was the result of “traitors at work”. Musk’s response is that, given the prominence of the interview, there was a “100% probability” of an attack.Though Musk has claimed that X is a place for all politics and viewpoints, the Tesla CEO has little to no interaction with leftwing activists or critical journalists. His replies and reposts reflect both his own personal echo chamber on the platform, as well as the broader rightwing ecosystem that he has cultivated as owner of X.Since Musk took over the company in late 2022, far-right and conservative voices have grown on the platform while advertisers and more mainstream A-list users have fled. Republicans are now far more likely to believe that their views are welcomed on the platform and that it has a positive impact on democracy than Democrats, according to a Pew Research Center study from earlier this year, while Democratic voters report far higher levels of harassment.8am to noon: Attacks on the media and far-right anti-immigration postsMusk is tweeting again by 8am, this time thanking the former UK prime minister Liz Truss for her support. Truss, after being memorably ousted from power in less than the time it took for a head of lettuce to go bad, has recently embarked on the rightwing speaking circuit as a Trump supporter, also aligning with Musk. The X owner has established a history of courting rightwing leaders, and later in the day will reply “Grazie!” to the far-right Italian deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini’s praise of Musk’s opposition to European Union regulations.As the morning begins, it becomes clear that Musk has discovered that news outlets’ coverage of his interview with Trump the night before is largely critical – focusing on the live stream’s technical issues, Trump’s falsehoods and Musk’s generally fawning approach toward the former president. Musk’s reaction throughout the day will be to claim that legacy media outlets are liars and financial failures, referring to them as unthinking “nonplayer characters” – a longstanding meme that grew out of 4chan before becoming mainstream among conservatives.“A wall of negative headlines was so predictable. They’re such NPCs 🤣🤣,” Musk says at 8.36am while quote-tweeting the crypto influencer and political shitpost account “Autism Capital”. Three minutes later he will respond to Autism Capital again, claiming that Google only shows leftwing press in its search results.One particular fixation of Musk’s is promoting misleading claims and conspiracies about election fraud, a common conservative talking point in the Trump era. At 9.26am, Musk makes a demand for paper ballots instead of electronic voting machines, echoing a popular rightwing narrative that such machines are used to perpetrate voting fraud. Musk has made dozens of misleading or debunked claims about voting, which have been viewed hundreds of millions of times on the platform and election officials say have begun to spill over into the real world.Musk will continue tweeting at a rapid rate throughout the morning – 19 times over the next 30 minutes alone. These will include separate attacks on CNBC, CNN and other legacy media outlets he accuses of spreading lies. Musk will meanwhile reply with an exclamation mark to a tweet featuring a blogpost called “Did women in academia cause wokeness?”. The blog’s author is a former professor who was ousted from Cambridge University in 2019 after more than 500 academics signed an open letter condemning his work as “racist pseudoscience” and a university investigation found he collaborated with far-right extremists.Musk has long described himself as politically independent, but in 2022 announced that he would no longer support the Democratic party. He has framed his conservative shift as the result of Democrats becoming too far left while his positions remain centrist, but his social media feed instead shows that he frequently promotes and interacts with members of the extreme right.At 9.47am and 10.27am, Musk sends replies to Peter Imanuelsen, a far-right influencer whom the Anti-Defamation League has previously described as being “notorious for his extreme racist, anti-Semitic, Christian fundamentalist, homophobic, Islamophobic, anti-feminist and conspiracist commentary”. Although Imanuelsen has in recent years disavowed Holocaust denial, he continues to promote far-right, anti-immigrant views.Musk replied “madness” to both of Imanuelsen’s tweets, which were about two British citizens jailed for violating UK laws against posting offensive or menacing material online. The arrests targeted people posting anti-migrant invectives during Britain’s far-right riots, in which masked rioters tried to set fire to a hotel housing asylum seekers.Sometimes Musk’s interactions with rightwing influencers are banal, but they also have the effect of amplifying their accounts to the billionaire’s nearly 200 million followers. Musk will reply at 9.08am to a post about how Europe doesn’t use air conditioning from Richard Hanania, a conservative thinker popular among tech moguls who wrote for white supremacist publications in the early 2010s under a pseudonym to argue in support of eugenics and the forced sterilization of “low IQ” people.Musk also replies with a cry-laughing emoji to a tweet criticizing the media from the early alt-right influencer Lauren Southern. A Canadian activist who has promoted the “great replacement” white nationalist conspiracy theory, Southern was a member of the “talent team” for Tenet Media until early September. A Department of Justice investigation unsealed around the same time as her exit accused Tenet Media of being a Russian-backed propaganda operation that used $10m in foreign money to bankroll rightwing media influencers. Southern and others on the talent team deny having any knowledge that the money was coming from Russia.All of this is before 1pm, by which time Musk will have tweeted about 89 times.While these interactions represent some of the most extreme people that Musk exchanges tweets with, they are by no means aberrations. His most mainstream interaction of the morning comes in a reply to the author Stephen King, in which Musk claims the Guardian can’t be considered objective because it is “utterly incapable of writing anything positive”. He will attack the Guardian at least two other times in the day, telling the rightwing commentator Ian Miles Cheong that it is a “mouthpiece for the state”.One of the reasons that Musk may gravitate towards the crypto influencers, rightwing activists and Tesla fan accounts that fill his feed is that they are some of the few users who can match his prolific output and time spent on the platform. Most people do not have the desire or time to be extremely online, and those that do are often there to pursue some political or financial gain. Almost everyone that Musk interacts with falls into one of those categories, and their accounts function like remoras on the side of Musk’s 195 million-follower shark.Musk will continue tweeting every few minutes until taking a two-hour break between around noon and 2pm. Then he’s back at it, sending a few more sporadic tweets at Nawfal about his Neuralink plans and responding to a thread from the Utah Republican senator Mike Lee. Two o’clock to 4pm is his least prolific time period for posting.4pm to 10pm: Election conspiracies and cries of ‘censorship’It’s 4.12pm, and Musk has tweeted over 100 times since midnight. His latest is a quote tweet of the cryptocurrency account “Doge Designer”, who claims that “the entire media is running a misinformation campaign against Elon Musk”. Musk replies “It’s wild,” adding a cry-laughing face that has become his go-to emoji.Musk’s content production slows somewhat in the evening, but he is still posting multiple times an hour. His attention turns to Brazil, where he has found a nemesis in a supreme court judge who is threatening to block access to X in the country if the platform does not appoint a local legal representative to deal with disinformation takedown requests. Musk describes the judge’s ruling as an act of censorship in a tweet at 6.17pm, and will call the judge an “evil dictator” in weeks to come. Brazil’s supreme court will uphold a ban on X in early September, blocking access to the platform for millions in the country.The Brazil saga reflects a central part of Musk’s online persona, in which he has cast himself as a warrior for free speech against liberal censorship. While this framing ignores that Musk has suspended journalists who criticized him from the platform, complied with censorship requests from governments such as India and throttled traffic to websites he dislikes, Musk’s narrative pervades his Twitter feed. Throughout the day he will attack regulators and anti-disinformation efforts in Brazil, the UK and the European Union.Interspersed among Musk’s various political posts are retweets of people offering support for his business ventures, like @TeslaBoomerMama, whose profile describes herself as a “fierce Tesla retail shareholder advocate” and “fangirl of Elon”. These retweets and interactions with his fans have the effect of a commercial break, and are some of the only posts that don’t have an explicit political message.10pm to midnight: 😂As Musk begins to wind down his day, the frequency of his posts goes back up and he returns to some of the subjects he tweeted about in the morning. He responds with cry-laughing emojis to online influencers, replies to multiple posts about a Haitian migrant accused of rape and sends more anti-media tweets.Musk revisits not only the same themes, but some of the exact same posts and news items that he tweeted about earlier. At 11.12pm he responds with another cry-laughing emoji to the same picture of negative headlines about his Trump interview that he sent a cry-laughing emoji about at 8.36am.Before the day ends, X debuts a beta version of its new AI image generator. Almost immediately, people begin to discover that it will generate images of public figures or sexualized content, unlike other popular image generators. Musk begins using cry-laughing emojis to egg on supporters creating images using the tool – in one case an image with the prompt “make an image of a half cat half woman with boobs”.Over the next few days Grok will be used to generate a range of political content, sexualized depictions of celebrities and violent images. After rightwing influencer accounts use the tool to create images of Taylor Swift and her fans supporting Trump’s candidacy, Trump will cause a wave of controversy by posting the AI images on his Truth Social account. Swift will later cite the incident in an Instagram post throwing her support behind the Harris presidential campaign.Musk’s last post before midnight is celebrating his new image generator, tweeting “Rate of progress of Grok is 🚀 🚀🚀”. He will continue to post into the night, sending almost 50 more tweets over the next three hours.At 3.11am, Musk responds with heart-eyes emoji to an image of him and a shiba inu dog dressed as ancient Roman soldiers generated by Grok. The flurry of replies and posts then goes silent. At 8.01am, he starts posting again. More

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    Blinken accuses RT of being worldwide Kremlin intelligence network

    The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has announced new sanctions against the Russian state-backed media company RT, formerly known as Russia Today, after new information gleaned from the outfit’s employees showed it was “functioning like a de facto arm of Russia’s intelligence apparatus”.The Russian government in 2023 established a new unit in RT with “cyber operational capabilities and ties to Russian intelligence”, Blinken claimed, with the goal of spreading Russian influence in countries around the world through information operations, covert influence and military procurement.“Today, we’re exposing how Russia deploys similar tactics around the world,” Blinken said. “Russian weaponization of disinformation to subvert and polarize free and open societies extends to every part of the world.”The US treasury would sanction three entities and two individuals tied to Rossiya Segodnya, the Russian state media company, Blinken said. The decision came after the announcement earlier this month that RT had funneled nearly $10m to conservative US influencers through a local company to produce videos meant to influence the outcome of the American presidential election in November.Speaking to reporters from the state department on Friday, Blinken accused RT of crowdfunding weapons and equipment for Russian soldiers in Ukraine, including sniper rifles, weapon sights, body armor, night-vision equipment, drones, radio equipment and diesel generators. Some of the equipment, including the recon drones, could be sourced from China, he said.“While the crowdfunding campaign is out in the open, what’s hidden is that this program is administered by the leaders of RT,” Blinken said. They included the RT head, Margarita Simonyan, who was among nine employees of the company targeted with a visa ban earlier this month.Blinken also detailed how the organisation had targeted countries in Europe, Africa and North and South America. In particular, he said that RT leadership had coordinated directly with the Kremlin to target the October 2024 elections in Moldova, a former-Soviet state in Europe where Russia has been accused of waging a hybrid war to exert greater influence. In particular, he said, RT’s leadership had “attempted to foment unrest in Moldova, likely with the specific aim of causing protests to turn violent”.“RT is aware of and prepared to assist Russia’s plans to incite protests should the election not result in a Russia-preferred candidate winning the presidency,” Blinken said.As a result of RT’s efforts to “weaponise disinformation”, Blinken said, the US, UK and Canada would launch a “joint diplomatic campaign … to rally allies and partners around the world to join us in addressing the threat posed by RT and other machinery of Russian disinformation and covert influence”. More

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    Trump repeats false claims about Ohio cities after Biden says ‘no place in America’ for attacks on Haitian immigrants – as it happened

    Donald Trump went on to threaten “large deportations” in Springfield, Ohio, which is home to a large Haitian community that he and his allies have vilified in recent days.“I can say this: we will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio, large deportations. We’re going to get these people out,” Trump said.Haitians are currently shielded from deportation under the homeland security department’s Temporary Protected Status through 3 February 2026, due to their home country’s troubles.

    Joe Biden said the hostile attacks on Haitian immigrants in the US “[have] to stop” after Donald Trump repeated a false and derogatory claim about a Haitian community in Ohio.

    Donald Trump repeated racist claims about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, on Friday, doubling down on anti-immigrant rhetoric as residents in the town have faced bomb threats and have detailed their fears amid harassment.

    Some schools in Springfield were reportedly closed by administrators for a second day in a row as Trump and his allies spread unproven stories of pet-eating by Haitian migrants.

    Haitians have reportedly been intimidated and had their cars vandalized in Springfield since the campaign against them began. People chanted “we’re not eating cats” at a rally held by Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, in Michigan yesterday.

    Trump also defended his association with Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist whose penchant for public displays of racism has unnerved even some of his most extreme allies.

    Kamala Harris is participating in a taped interview with a local station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to air later on Friday. Harris will also host a virtual livestream rally together with Oprah Winfrey next week.

    Pope Francis criticized Donald Trump over his plan to deport millions of immigrants and Kamala Harris over her stance supporting abortion rights.

    Kamala Harris’s campaign stepped up its mockery of “chicken” Donald Trump for ducking out of another presidential debate, with the Democratic nominee telling her Republican rival he owes it to voters to face her again.

    Joe Biden and Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, are meeting at the White House where they are expected to discuss a loosening of restrictions on Ukraine to launch long-range strikes into Russia.

    Joe Biden is planning a trip to Angola in the coming weeks. This would make Biden the first US head of state to visit sub-Saharan Africa since then president Barack Obama in 2015, according to Reuters.
    Joe Biden is meeting with the UK’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, at the White House.The pair are expected to discuss – though not necessarily announce – a loosening of restrictions on Ukraine to launch long-range strikes into Russia.Biden and Starmer took photos inside the Oval Office before sitting down for talks in the Blue Room alongside UK and US officials, per pool report.Before talks began, Biden said the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, will not prevail in the war with Ukraine. He said he and Starmer would talk about Ukraine, the Middle East and the need for a hostage and ceasefire deal, as well as the Indo-Pacific region.The White House’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said political leaders should not be “attacking vulnerable communities” as she criticized Donald Trump for spreading false and racist theories targeting Haitians in Springfield, Ohio.The Washington Post reported Jean-Pierre, whose parents immigrated from Haiti to New York, telling reporters today:
    Political leaders should not be attacking vulnerable communities. That’s not who we should be. And if they’re going to fall for conspiracy theories online, maybe they shouldn’t be our leaders.
    Pope Francis has criticized both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump for their policies on abortion and immigration, claiming both candidates are “against life”.The pope was speaking to journalists on Friday when he was asked about the US presidential election. He replied:
    Both are against life, be it the one who kicks out migrants, or be it the one who kills babies.
    He went on to say that not welcoming migrants is a “grave” sin and compared undergoing an abortion to an assassination, Reuters reported.Catholics would have to “choose the lesser evil” when they vote in November, he said, without elaborating.
    Who is the lesser evil? That lady, or that gentleman? I don’t know. Everyone, in conscience, (has to) think and do this.
    “Not voting is ugly,” he added. “It is not good. You must vote.”Kamala Harris is participating in a taped interview with Brian Taff for Action News 6 ABC, a local station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.The interview will air on the station’s 6pm broadcast.Oprah Winfrey and Kamala Harris will host a virtual livestream rally together next week.The event, titled Unite for America, will take place on Thursday 19 September, at 8pm ET.This comes as Winfrey, who said she was a registered independent, made a surprise appearance at the Democratic national convention last month and endorsed Harris for president.President Joe Biden is planning a trip to Angola in the coming weeks, Reuters is reporting, citing several sources familiar with the plans.The trip, Reuters reports, is likely to occur after the UN general assembly meeting in September and before the presidential election in November, according to a source.This would make Biden the first US head of state to visit sub-Saharan Africa since then president Barack Obama in 2015, according to Reuters.Biden had previously said he would visit Africa during his presidency.MoveOn, a progressive public policy advocacy group, is partnering with ice-cream company Ben & Jerry’s to create a special limited edition Kamala Harris-inspired ice-cream flavor, titled Kamala’s Coconut Jubilee, as part of a get-out-the-vote initiative.MoveOn announced on Friday that it will also be traveling to battleground states with an ice-cream truck, where it will hand out free ice-cream, and raffle off free, limited-edition, autographed pints of Kamala’s Coconut Jubilee – which is described as a coconut ice-cream with a caramel ripple and confetti stars.The Scoop the Vote tour begins on 16 September in Philadelphia with the founders of Ben & Jerry’s, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the organization said.In addition to free ice-cream and other goodies, the tour will feature elected officials, activists and other special guests, MoveOn said.And on top of the coconut ice-cream, MoveOn will also serve a variety of electorally themed ice-cream flavors, they said, that include: Unburdened by What Has Vanilla Bean, Inauguration Celebration Birthday Cake, Fight for Our Rights Sorbet and MoveOn Mobilizer Milk Chocolate.Despite the efforts of local leaders, Donald Trump has continued to demonize the Haitian community of Springfield, Ohio, vowing at a press conference to carry out “large deportations” in the town if returned to the White House. He also defended his association with Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist whose penchant for public displays of racism has unnerved even some of his most extreme allies. At a White House event celebrating Black excellence, Joe Biden said the attacks on Haitians have “no place in America”, and Kamala Harris was on her way to Pennsylvania for more campaign events this evening.Here’s what else has happened so far today:

    Some schools in Springfield were reportedly closed by administrators for a second day in a row as Trump and his allies spread unproven stories of pet-eating by Haitian migrants.

    People chanted “we’re not eating cats” at a rally held by Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, in Michigan yesterday.

    Haitians have reportedly been intimidated and had their cars vandalized in Springfield since the campaign against them began.
    Donald Trump’s press conference has concluded, but before he wrapped up, the former president was prompted to talk about what he might do for California if he wins the election.Trump turned it into a campaign pitch to Golden State voters, who haven’t backed a Republican presidential candidate since George HW Bush was on the ballot in 1988:
    Vote for me, California. I’m going to give you safety. I’m going to give you a great border, and I’m going to give you more water than almost anybody has.
    Notice the reference to water, an all-important issue in the western state, which is also the nation’s most populous:Trump was asked again about his association with Laura Loomer, and what he thinks she brings to his campaign.Loomer has pedaled conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks, and made racist posts on social media. Nonetheless, Trump said:
    She brings a spirit to us that a lot of people have. We have very spirited people. And, in all fairness to her, she hates seeing what’s happened to the country. More

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    Georgia lieutenant governor avoids criminal charges over fake elector plot

    Burt Jones, Georgia’s lieutenant governor, will not face criminal charges over his involvement in Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, a special prosecutor announced on Friday.Jones, a Republican state senator in 2020, served as one of the 16 fake electors for Trump – all of whom signed a document, submitted to the National Archives, claiming Trump won Georgia. Trump lost the state to Joe Biden by 11,779 votes.Jones was elected Georgia’s lieutenant governor in 2022.Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, had originally investigated Jones as part of her broader inquiry into Trump’s effort that ultimately resulted in criminal charges against Trump, some of the electors and other allies. But a Fulton county judge removed Willis in 2022 from investigating Jones specifically after she appeared at a fundraiser for Jones’s opponent. Robert CI McBurney, the judge overseeing the case at the time, called Willis’s decision a “‘what are you thinking’ moment”,at the time.Peter Skandalakis, the head of the prosecuting attorneys’ council in Georgia, took over the investigation in April after other local prosecutors in the state were reluctant to take it on. On Friday, he said that he had concluded that Jones’s conduct did not merit “further investigation or further actions” and considered the case closed.“I find the conduct and involvement of Senator Jones as an elected representative to be reasonable and not criminal in nature,” he wrote in a statement announcing his decision. “Senator Jones’s involvement and actions during the times in question to be within the scope of his duties as a Senator to address the concerns of constituents and that his participation in voting as an alternate elector on Dec 14th, 2020, was a result of relying upon the advice of attorneys and legal scholars.”In Georgia, only some of the fake electors have faced criminal charges from Willis over their actions in 2020. Several reportedly accepted immunity deals and assisted in the investigation.Skandalakis’s decision comes as the criminal case against Trump and allies has been stalled over an effort to remove Willis from the case because of her romantic relationship with the former lead prosecutor in the case. An appeals court in the state is set to hear argument on the matter in December.The judge overseeing the case also threw out some of the criminal charges against Trump on Friday, but the bulk of the case remains intact. More

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    ‘They’ve destroyed the place’: Trump repeats racist, anti-immigrant lies

    Donald Trump repeated racist claims about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, on Friday, doubling down on anti-immigrant rhetoric as residents in the town have faced bomb threats and have detailed their fears amid harassment.“In Springfield, Ohio, 20,000 illegal migrant Haitians have descended upon a town of 58,000 people, destroying their way of life. They’ve destroyed the place,” Trump said during a rambling press conference at his golf course in Los Angeles. “People don’t like to talk about it. Even the town doesn’t like to talk about it, because it sounds so bad for the town. They live there … for years it was a great place. Safe. Nice. Now they have 20,000 and I actually heard today it’s 32,000.”He later added: “We will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio, large deportations. We’re gonna get these people out. We’re bringing them back to Venezuela,” stating the incorrect country where most of the immigrants are from.Haiti is one of 16 countries the US government has granted temporary protective status (TPS) to because of ongoing conflict, making it easier for immigrants to get authorization to work in the United States. As president, Trump tried to end TPS for Haiti and referred to the country as a “shithole”.Trump’s comments come after Tuesday’s presidential debate in which he first repeated the false claim that migrants in Springfield are stealing and eating people’s dogs and cats. The claim has been repeatedly debunked.Springfield has received several bomb threats this week, prompting it to close its government buildings and evacuate its schools. Haitian residents in the town have reported receiving severe threats and harassment, according to the Haitian Times.JD Vance, who represents the residents of Springfield as Ohio’s US senator, continued to attack the town on Friday, leaning into racist tropes that immigrants were responsible for bringing disease and crime to the community.Just before Trump spoke in California, Joe Biden condemned his attacks on Haitians in Springfield.“A community that’s under attack in our country right now. It’s simply wrong. There’s no place in America. This has to stop – what he’s doing. It has to stop,” Biden said at the White House. More

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    Pope criticizes Harris and Trump and tells US Catholics to choose ‘lesser evil’

    Pope Francis on Friday criticized Donald Trump over his plan to deport millions of immigrants and Kamala Harris over her stance supporting abortion rights.Asked about the US presidential election on his flight back to Rome from Singapore, the pope said not welcoming migrants is a “grave” sin, and likened having an abortion to an “assassination“.He said US Catholics would have to “choose the lesser evil” when they vote in November, without elaborating.Francis was speaking in a press conference with journalists after a 12-day tour across south-east Asia and Oceania. Although the pope did not use Trump and Harris’s names, he referred specifically to their policies and their genders. Despite criticizing both candidates, he said Catholics should vote.“Not voting is ugly,” the 87-year-old pontiff said. “It is not good. You must vote.“You must choose the lesser evil,” he continued. “Who is the lesser evil? That lady, or that gentleman? I don’t know. Everyone, in conscience, [has to] think and do this.”American Catholics, numbering roughly 52 million nationwide, are often seen as crucial swing voters. In some battleground states, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, more than 20% of adults are Catholic.Francis, leader of about 1.4 billion Catholics globally, is usually careful about weighing in on national political elections. But he frequently criticizes abortion, which is forbidden by Catholic teaching, in sharp terms. He has also previously criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. During the 2016 election, he said Trump was “not Christian” in his views. On Friday, Francis said both candidates’ policies were “against life”.“Whether it is the one who is chasing away migrants, or the one that kills children,” said the pope. “Both are against life.”Trump has promised to crack down on illegal immigration and deport millions of immigrants already in the US if elected to a second term as president. He has also refused to rule out building detention camps for undocumented immigrants.Harris has promised to sign any legislation passed by Congress to restore national protections for abortion access, which were struck down by the US supreme court in its 2022 Dobbs decision.The two candidates sparred over both issues on Wednesday in their first debate together. Most polls show a tight race, with Harris leading slightly.The pope called immigration “a right”, citing Bible passages that call orphans, widows and foreigners three kinds of people that society must care for. “Not giving welcome to migrants is a sin,” said the pope. “It is grave.”Francis said abortion “is killing a human being”. He said there could be no excuses for an abortion. “It is an assassination,” he said. “On these things we must speak clearly. No ‘but’ or ‘however’.” More

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    ‘This has to stop’: Biden condemns attacks on Haitian US immigrants

    Joe Biden on Friday said the hostile attacks on Haitian immigrants in the US “[have] to stop” after Donald Trump repeated a false and derogatory claim about a Haitian community in Ohio.“It is simply wrong that the proud Haitian community is under attack right now in this country,” Biden said. “There’s no place in America. This has to stop – what he’s doing. It has to stop,” the US president said at a White House event marking Black excellence.The mayor of Springfield, Ohio, earlier on Friday said that the bomb threat made on Thursday that forced the evacuation of the city hall, two schools and other buildings was explicitly anti-immigrant and hostile to the city’s Haitian community, following Donald Trump’s stoking of a rightwing conspiracy theory that some residents’ pets are being eaten.Rob Rue, the mayor, accused national Republicans who are amplifying wild rumors from a far-right provocateur that Haitian immigrants in Springfield are hunting and eating other people’s pets of “hurting our city”.The threat “used hateful language towards immigrants and Haitians in our community”, Rue told the Washington Post, and added that Springfield “is a community that needs help”.No bomb was found after the threat was made. But Rue told the local Fox outlet that, in the threat, “there was enough negative language toward immigrants, towards Haitian folks that would bring enough concern. And then when it followed up with … at the end, of a bomb threat … It was pretty much just the beginning of the conclusion that they’re going to threaten to harm people.”Springfield has been the subject of national attention in recent days after the false social media rumor about the Haitian community.Trump even referenced the conspiracy theory in Tuesday night’s debate with opponent Kamala Harris. Trump repeated the inflammatory falsehood, saying: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats … They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” His move triggered a wave of anger and ridicule.That same day, JD Vance mentioned the rumor on X (formerly Twitter), which has also been flooded with AI-generated images of Trump surrounded by dogs, cats and ducks.Rue on Tuesday condemned the rumors as totally false, with “zero” verified reports of such disparaging claims. ABC’s debate moderator David Muir made the same factcheck live on Tuesday night after Trump’s remarks.Rue told the Springfield News-Sun: “Rumors like this are taking away from the real issues such as issues involving our housing or school resources and our overwhelmed healthcare system.”Meanwhile, during a Springfield city commission forum, Nathan Clark, the father of an 11-year-old boy who was killed last year when a minivan driven by an immigrant from Haiti collided with his school bus, told Trump and Vance to stop using his son’s name for “political gain”.Reuters contributed reportingRead more about the 2024 US election:

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    The princess and the judge: Samuel Alito’s ties to a German aristocrat who defends the far right

    A German aristocrat who hosted Samuel Alito at her castle in 2023 has revealed new details about her friendship with the rightwing supreme court justice, including that they share a mutual friend who played a key role in JD Vance’s conversion to Catholicism.Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, a onetime party girl turned traditionalist Catholic activist who has faced criticism for her defense of far-right politicians in Germany, told the Guardian that she first met Alito in Rome – she could not remember what year – and that both were friends of Dominic Legge, a priest and Yale Law graduate in Washington who Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, has often cited in discussions about his adult conversion to Catholicism.The relationship between the 64-year-old noblewoman and Alito sparked media interest after the supreme court justice revealed last week in a financial disclosure form that he had accepted concert tickets worth $900 from the billionaire, who refers to herself as a princess even though Germany’s aristocracy was officially disbanded after the first world war.She later told the German press that Alito had overestimated the cost of the tickets, but did not elaborate.View image in fullscreenThe supreme court justice has previously faced scrutiny for failing to report free travel on a private jet from a wealthy conservative billionaire who had business before the court, a story first reported by ProPublica that is a part of a broader ethics scandal that has engulfed the high court in recent years. Alito faced a separate controversy earlier this year after it was discovered that his household had flown an upside-down flag, a symbol of Stop the Steal campaigners who falsely claim the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, as well as a second flag at a beach property that was associated with the Christian nationalist movement.Alito’s disclosure about the free tickets are significant for another reason: they reveal new insights into Alito and his wife Martha-Ann’s apparent personal ties to a European aristocrat who is deeply entrenched in an international rightwing movement that is seeking to advance conservative Catholic policies.Allies in her fight include the rightwing nationalist Steve Bannon and the ultra conservative German cardinal Gerhard Müller, who she once called the “Donald Trump of the Catholic Church”. Her circle is known to be fiercely critical of Pope Francis – who is seen as too liberal by orthodox and traditionalist sects of the Catholic church.Legge, who leads the Thomistic Institute in Washington, is a prominent member of an elite circle of traditionalist Catholics in the US capital, and sits on the board of an organization – the Napa Legal Institute – alongside Leonard Leo, the powerbroker who is widely seen as having used his influence to install Republicans’ conservative supermajority on the supreme court and reportedly recently called for conservative activists to “crush liberal dominance at the choke points of influence and power in our society”.View image in fullscreenLegge is a priest at the Dominican House of Studies, which the New York Times reported was known for attracting “a conservative intellectual crowd and potential converts who hold high professional positions”, like Vance. Legge did not respond to a request for comment.In an email exchange, von Thurn und Taxis denied that she and Alito – who wrote the high court’s 2022 ruling that overturned the right to abortion and has claimed that religious freedom is under threat in the US – ever discussed politics, including his judicial opinions.“The encounters with Judge Alito and his wife have purely private character. We never speak about politics nor religion at the table, because we believe it limits the possibility to make friends,” she said, adding that it would “never occur to [her]” to speak about “touchy subjects” like abortion with someone she knows socially.Von Thurn und Taxis compared herself to the late British Queen Elizabeth – whose family she noted was of German descent – and said the role of the aristocracy in Germany was to unite people and “keep politics out of the salon”. She also claimed in an email not to know that the decision that overturned abortion rights is called the “Dobbs decision”.But an examination of von Thurn und Taxis’s own activities shows that the woman who was known during a punk phase – before her turn to conservative Catholicism – as Princess TNT, for her explosive personality – has deep political ties that have given her access not only to supreme court justices, but inside the Trump White House.View image in fullscreen“This is not just about the arrogance of a powerful man already embroiled in controversial ties to billionaires. It is also about the company he keeps: choosing to accept very expensive concert tickets from a woman who embraces far-right politicians who are aligned with her outspoken hostility toward abortion access and marriage equality,” said Lisa Graves, the managing director of Court Accountability and a former deputy assistant attorney general at the US Department of Justice.Graves added: “Their alliance is unsurprising though very troubling since Alito has been using his position on the supreme court to advance a parallel regressive agenda into law.”In October 2019, at a speech in Washington in which she effusively praised the Trump administration, von Thurn und Taxis personally thanked Leonard Leo for setting up meetings for Cardinal Müller, who she was traveling with, to visit the White House and meet with people who were directly advising Trump on religious liberty and free speech.She warned that, if Trump was not re-elected, “they will come after us” and that “nothing less” was at stake than the right to worship. Democrat Joe Biden, a devout Catholic, later won the 2020 election, but neither he nor Nancy Pelosi, another prominent Democratic Catholic politician, are seen as authentic Catholics by traditionalists.During that trip, von Thurn und Taxis also met and was photographed with Alito, Cardinal Müller, the supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Brian Brown, who was then the head of the anti-LGBTQ+ group National Organization for Marriage (NOM). According to reporting by the New Yorker, NOM was actively lobbying the court on cases involving gay rights at the time of the meeting.This year, in a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in Brussels in April called Threats to Faith and Family, von Thurn und Taxis served up a series of grievances about the state of the family in Europe, complained that “only homosexuals want to get married”, while unmarried heterosexual couples were opting for pets instead of children.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShe also criticized – in an apparent reference to the availability of reproductive rights in Europe – how leaders continued to “finance the killing of our offspring”, which she said would exacerbate future labor shortages on the continent.“Does this make any sense? Is there some kind of racism? Are we not supposed to reproduce?” she asked rhetorically, before launching into praise of Hungary, which she said was an outlier in supporting families with children. Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian autocratic leader, has been a guest at the noblewoman’s festival.View image in fullscreenShe has been known as the Princess of Thurn und Taxis since the 1980s when she married Johannes von Thurn und Taxis, whose wealth originated from the family’s role at the head of the Holy Roman empire’s postal service.When he died in 1990 she was saddled with much of his debt. Since his death she has managed the family’s assets, and is now estimated to be worth around €3bn.Her son, Albert, 12th Prince of Thurn and Taxis, has previously been listed on Forbes and other rich lists as the world’s youngest billionaire, initially appearing on the list when he was just eight years old.She is reportedly in possession of several private banks and various properties, including five castles and lives in the 500-room St Emmeram’s Palace in Regensburg, southern Germany, which dates back to the 1300s, where she hosts the annual summer music festival that Alito attended.While she has been referred to as a “networker of the far right” she denies the title applies to her.This summer she courted controversy after inviting the former far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) main candidate in the European parliamentary election, Maximilian Krah, to her festival, where he enjoyed the premiere of Carmen from the front row, and later dined with the “princess” and other guests. It was later reported that his presence caused a kerfuffle as some guests refused to sit at the same table as him.View image in fullscreenKrah, who describes himself as a traditionalist Catholic who is closely affiliated with the Society of Saint Pius X (having worked for it in his capacity as a lawyer in Europe), which rejects modern day Catholicism, had been forced to resign from the AfD leadership after giving an interview to la Repubblica, at the end of May, in which he claimed that not all members of the SS could be considered criminal.Within the AfD, Krah is considered to be a member of its most radical wing, which has officially been disbanded, and also has a close associate of the publicist Götz Kubitschek, whose Institute for State Policy is classified by Germany’s domestic intelligence services as “definitely rightwing extremist”.In a statement at the time of the controversy surrounding Krah’s invitation to the festival this summer, von Thurn und Taxis’s office said the two were “personal friends”. She has also rejected claims that Krah is a rightwing extremist, saying that the label trivializes actual rightwing extremists.She has sparked controversy for her racist – and in particular anti-African – outbursts, her belief that spanking children should be considered a “normal pedagogical measure”, and for blaming the devil for the coronavirus.In an interview with German media she rejected the claims she was close to the AfD and other far-right actors, claiming that the mainstream parties were “worried because the AfD appealed to so many people”. It’s why, she suggested, the party, which is currently riding high in the polls, was unfairly maligned as Nazi. More