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      Biden administration doubles down on asylum restrictions at southern border

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      The Biden administration said on Monday it was making asylum restrictions at the southern border even tougher, as it is increasingly eager to show voters uneasy over immigration that it is taking a hard stance on border security.The new rules, which toughen restrictions announced in June, bar people from being granted asylum when US officials deem that the southern border is overwhelmed.Under the previous rules, the US could restrict asylum access when the number of people trying to enter the country between the official border crossings hits 2,500 a day. The daily numbers had to average below 1,500 a day for a week in order for the restrictions to be lifted.The version rolled out on Monday says the daily numbers will have to be below 1,500 for nearly a month before the restrictions can be lifted. And the administration is now counting all children toward that number, whereas previously only migrant children from Mexico were counted.These changes, which go into effect on Tuesday, will make it much more difficult to lift the restrictions and allow people entering the country between the official border crossings eventually to apply for asylum in the US.But the restrictions implemented in June have never been lifted because the numbers of border encounters have never gotten low enough for long enough, raising the question of why the administration felt the need to make them even tougher now. The seven-day average has gotten down to about 1,800 migrant encounters a day, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said.A senior administration official said on Monday that the longer timeline was necessary to make sure that drops in immigration are sustained and not due to a one-time event. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to brief reporters about the tighter restrictions before they were made public.Immigration advocates already had harshly criticized the restrictions announced in June, saying the administration was slashing away at vital protections for people fleeing persecution. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU and other groups are challenging the restrictions in court, saying that they differs little from a similar move by the Trump administration that was blocked by the courts. They argue that by law people who cross the border with a credible fear of persecution or harm deserve due process.The ACLU posted on the social media platform X on Monday: “The asylum law Congress enacted recognizes that people fleeing danger should not be forced to wait and try to secure an appointment to seek asylum. This restrictive rule is not just immoral but illegal.”The administration has touted its asylum restrictions, saying they have led to serious drops in the number of people coming to the southern border. The DHS said on Monday that since the changes were announced in June, the daily number of people encountered by border patrol between the legal border crossings had fallen over 50%.In a statement announcing the new rules, the DHS called on Congress to do more to solve immigration problems.Border security and immigration are a key weakness for the Biden administration and Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.The Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, and others from his party have hammered away at the high numbers of people who have come to the southern border under the Biden administration, saying the White House and the vice-president have not done enough to restrict migration and secure the border.Harris visited a border region of Arizona on Friday, her first visit as the Democratic nominee. She walked alongside the tall metal fence separating the US from Mexico and called for a tightening of asylum rules while pushing for a better way to welcome immigrants legally.“I reject the false choice that suggests we must choose either between securing our border and creating a system that is orderly, safe and humane,” Harris said. “We can and we must do both.”The restrictions do allow some exceptions. Victims of a severe form of trafficking, for example, would still be allowed to apply for asylum.The administration also allows people using its CBP One appointment system to apply for asylum, but those people must schedule an appointment on the app to come to an official border crossing point.The administration has tried to encourage people to use that app instead of crossing the border illegally.But demand far exceeds the 1,450 appointments available daily, and the administration has not indicated that it will increase the number of appointments. More

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      Democrats sue Georgia election board over new ballot hand-count rule

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      Democrats sued the Georgia state election board on Monday over a new rule requiring officials to hand-count ballots cast on election day, asking a state court to declare it unlawful and block it from going into effect.The suit, filed in Fulton county superior court by both the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic party of Georgia, takes aim at a rule adopted in a 3-2 vote by the state election board on 20 September. The rule requires the poll manager and a team of two other workers in each voting precinct to separate ballots into stacks of 50 and hand-count them. They must all agree on the total count and ensure that it matches the totals from the machine tabulation. If there is an inconsistency, they are required to determine the reason and correct it, if possible.The rule has received widespread pushback from election officials in the state and voting rights groups, who are concerned the process could lead to delays and confusion after election night and cause chain-of-custody issues. Experts have long pointed out that hand-counts are less reliable than machine counts. The concern over post-election chaos is particularly acute in Georgia, a battleground state in this year’s presidential election.“To protect the sanctity of the state’s laws and to prevent election night chaos, this Court should declare that the Hand Count Rule exceeds [the state election board’s] statutory authority and enjoin that rule from going into effect,” the complaint says.The new rule is illegal for several reasons, the suit claims. First, there is no hand-count requirement outlined in Georgia law, and the state election board cannot enact requirements beyond what is written in state statute, lawyers wrote. Second, imposing a hand-count this close to an election would cause disorder, going against the board’s mandate to ensure orderly elections, the complaint says. Last, Democrats claim the board did not follow proper procedures to enact the measures.Even before the board passed the law, Chris Carr, the Georgia attorney general, advised the board that the new requirement was probably illegal. “The statutes upon which these rules rely do not reflect any provision enacted by the General Assembly for the hand-counting of ballots prior to tabulation,” he wrote in a memo.The rule is one of several that a new, pro-Trump majority on the state election board has enacted this year. Other rules allow local election officials to undertake an undefined “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results and require local officials to explain any inconsistencies between the total number of voters who check in and the number of ballots cast in a precinct. Trump publicly praised the three board members at a rally earlier this year, calling them “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory”.Quentin Fulks, principal deputy campaign manager for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, said in a statement that Democrats were stepping in to ensure a free and fair election.“As Donald Trump invents facts to try to sow doubt in our elections, his Maga allies in Georgia passed a new rule just weeks before election day that will obstruct the process of counting votes so they can complain when voters reject Trump at the polls,” Fulks said. “We agree with Georgia’s Republican attorney general and secretary of state: This rule is unproductive and unlawful, and we are fighting it.”In 2020, when two hand-counts of the vote reaffirmed Joe Biden’s win, Trump still sought to overturn the election results. He asked Brad Raffensperger, the state’s top election official, to find him 11,780 votes, enough to switch the results in the state.In addition to the Democratic party, the other plaintiffs in the suit are members of the local election boards in Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett and Forsyth counties – all hubs near the Atlanta area poised to play a major role in determining the winner of the election in Georgia this year. More

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      US looks unable to talk Netanyahu out of planned invasion of Lebanon

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      The Biden administration is losing influence over whether Benjamin Netanyahu launches a ground invasion into southern Lebanon or not.For more than a year, Joe Biden and his senior advisers have managed to forestall an Israeli ground incursion into Lebanon in fear of a larger war that could envelop the entire Middle East.In the days after the 7 October attack, Biden phoned Netanyahu to talk him out of a massive retaliation against Hezbollah, which had begun firing guided rockets against Israeli positions following the Hamas raid.In April this year, Biden also told Netanyahu that the US would not support Israel in an offensive war against Iran after Tehran launched dozens of loitering munitions, cruise missiles and drones toward Israel.But on Monday, US outlets reported that Netanyahu’s administration had told White House officials they were planning a limited ground incursion into Lebanon, essentially escalating a conflict with Hezbollah and its backer Iran to a level that Biden and his team have tried desperately to avoid.The Washington Post reported that Israel was planning a limited campaign – smaller than its 2006 war against Hezbollah – that nonetheless would mark a drastic escalation with Hezbollah and Iran. The New York Times suggested US officials believed they had talked Israel out of a full invasion of Lebanon, but that smaller incursions into southern Lebanon would continue.But Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defence minister, has briefed a meeting of local council heads in northern Israel on Monday, according to the Times of Israel. “The next stage in the war against Hezbollah will begin soon … We will do this. And as I said here a month ago [that] we will shift the center of gravity [to the north], this is what I say now: we will change the situation and return the residents home.”Earlier that day, he had told Israel Defense Forces soldiers that to return some 60,000 Israelis to their homes in the country’s north, we “will use all the means that may be required – your forces, other forces, from the air, from the sea, and on land”.The plan to attack comes at a unique moment – with war hawks dominating domestic Israeli politics at the same time as a lame duck Biden administration appears increasingly unable or unwilling to intervene in the conflict. And, according to analysts, Netanyahu believes he has a limited window around the US elections to attack Iranian proxies across the region.With just a month left until the US presidential elections, the Biden administration has launched a tepid effort at a ceasefire that Netanyahu appears to have chosen to ignore – or simply to wait out until US elections that could bring in a Trump administration that would do even less to restrain him than the current one has.“Netanyahu made a calculation, and the calculation was that there was no way that the Democrats between now and November 5th [election day] could do anything that would criticise, let alone restrain him from that,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who focuses on US foreign policy and the Middle East.“You saw [vice-president Kamala] Harris’s statement, you saw the White House statement, you saw the Democrat and Republican consensus on the killing of Nasrallah and what the Israelis have done there,” he said. “And since Iran is involved in this, unlike in Gaza, the toxicity of animus against Iran in this town is so intense that the Republican party, which is now the ‘Israel can do no wrong’ party, is just winging for the administration.”Until recently, prominent US officials have thought they still had a chance to conclude a ceasefire and prevent the war from escalating further. Last week, US and French officials along with dozens of other countries called for a ceasefire in Lebanon. US officials briefed on the matter said they believed the “time was right” and that Israel would sign up.A western official last week told the Guardian that the Israeli threat to invade northern Lebanon was probably “psyops” largely designed to force Hezbollah and Iran to the negotiating table.But, at the same time, the official said, the situation in the region was extremely volatile, and could be upset by as little as a single drone strike against a sensitive target.One day later, a massive airstrike launched by the Israeli air force killed the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, upending security calculations in the region and potentially emboldening Israeli officials to believe they could fundamentally change the security dynamics in the region.“I understand, and happen to be very understanding of the administration position, because I spent almost 30 years inside knowing full the constraints of how to get anything done in this region, which is very hard,” Miller said. “But the notion that a US-French proposal for a three-week ceasefire in the middle of all this could work, I mean, it was, it was simply not well thought out.” More

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      Memoir contradicts Republican Senate candidate’s ‘below the poverty line’ tale

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      At a recent campaign event in Whitehall, Montana, the Republican US Senate candidate Tim Sheehy told voters that a decade ago, when he set up the aerial firefighting company through which he made his fortune, he and his wife were living “below the poverty line”.“My wife and I homeschool our kids,” Sheehy said. “We made that decision several years ago. She’s a Marine, naval academy graduate, she could have a great job and even when our company was tiny, and we … were below the poverty line and making no money, we said: ‘No … the most important job in the world is being a mother.’ And she’s doing that every day.”A little more than a month from election day, in a race that could decide control of the Senate, such hardscrabble tales are helping Sheehy lead the Democratic incumbent, Jon Tester, a longtime Montana farmer. The two men are due to debate in Missoula on Monday night.But Sheehy’s claim about living in poverty while building his company, Bridger Aerospace, is contradicted by his own memoir.In that book, Mudslingers, published last year, the former navy Seal writes that when he and his wife contemplated leaving the military, in 2013, they “weren’t wealthy, but … did have resources”.This, he writes, was in part thanks to having “lived quite frugally during our time in the military, spending a lot of time deployed, accumulating savings, taking advantage of base housing and meals, and of course spending almost nothing while on deployment.“So, we had amassed a nest egg of close to $300,000. I also had some money that my parents had been putting away for me since I was a kid. All told, we had roughly $400,000 to allocate toward building a business and establishing a new life.”In 2014, as Sheehy got his company going, the US health department defined the poverty guideline for a family of three in Montana as $19,790. The poverty threshold, as defined by the US Census Bureau, was $19,055.By his own account, Sheehy set out to build Bridger Aerospace with 20 times that – a sum he calls “not exactly chump change”.Sheehy has also regularly claimed to have “bootstrapped” his company, a term the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines as “to promote or develop by initiative and effort with little or no assistance”.Yet in his book, Sheehy describes both receiving the $100,000 his parents had saved for him and asking his father and brother to help him pay $500,000 to buy necessary planes. His father, he writes, “backed me, financially and emotionally, without expecting anything in return”, while his brother was given an “equity stake in the business”.Sheehy also describes how in 2017 his brother helped secure investment from Blackstone Group, the New York private equity behemoth led by Stephen Schwartzman, a top Republican donor, in order to pull off a $200m aircraft order.Sheehy grew up in Minnesota and attended the US Naval Academy in Maryland. Describing his early days in Montana, he has often told of how he, his wife and their first child started out living in a tent. That might boost his claim of living below the poverty line, but Sheehy has also described how living under canvas was a choice.Having purchased “60 undeveloped acres”, Sheehy writes in his book, “the simple and probably sane thing to do would have been to rent an apartment in town while we got the business off the ground”. But they chose to build a house, and to camp while the structure went up.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSheehy’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. News of Sheehy’s book contradicting his own claim about living in poverty, however, follows similar reporting regarding his claims about his background.The Montana Free Press was among outlets to report that though Sheehy has said he grew up in “rural Minnesota … surrounded by farmland”, he in fact “grew up in a multimillion-dollar lake house, learned to fly under the tutelage of a neighbour, [and] attended a private high school”.In May, the Daily Beast reported that Sheehy’s campaign trail claims about how he left the US military do not match those in his book. Sheehy’s campaign responded angrily, claiming an attack on his patriotism and service. Then, this month, the Guardian reported documents seemingly showing Sheehy did not follow Department of Defense protocol for clearing sections of Mudslingers that deal with military subjects, including deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. The campaign did not respond.Regardless, Sheehy seems well-placed to secure a Senate seat, holding seven- and eight-point leads over Tester, a three-term moderate Democrat.Federal figures regarding poverty in Montana in 2014 do back up one claim in Sheehy’s book. Describing how he hired his first employees, he says he paid just $1,500 a month, amounting to $18,000 a year, to his first chief pilot, Tim Cherwin.Cherwin brought with him “the chain-smoking desert rat Steve Taylor, who would become our director of maintenance”. Sheehy, who says he started the business with $400,000, says both men were “earning wages below the poverty line”. More

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      Veep cast reunites, with special guests, to raise money for Harris

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      As soon as Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential election and threw his support behind Kamala Harris, people immediately started comparing the shocking turn of events to something that would unfold on HBO’s critically acclaimed political satire Veep. At the time, the US vice-president was seen as a Selina Meyers-esque figure, what with her penchant for public awkwardness, clunky turns of phrase and the perception of her as a perpetual also-ran.Since then, things have changed quite a bit, with Harris rising to the occasion and running a highly effective and exciting campaign that has seen her ascend to frontrunner in the race (even if her advantage remains razor-thin).Still, as I wrote in my article from July, her campaign and the Democrats as a whole would be wise to lean into comparisons to Veep. Despite how venal and vain the characters on the show were, the workplace comedy (which wrapped up in 2019) remains as popular and relevant as ever.When you consider this alongside the fact that the majority of the cast, including and especially its star, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, are outspoken liberals, it made all the sense in the world for some Democratic group to try to work with them to raise funds and awareness during this final leg of the campaign.That group ended up being the Wisconsin Democrats. A swing state that is likely to have a big hand in deciding not only who the next president is, but also which party controls the Senate, WisDems put together a live Zoom table read of a classic episode of Veep, featuring the majority of the cast, plus some big-name guest stars, to be livestreamed to the donors, with the money raised going towards presidential, congressional and assembly campaigns across the state.Fellow liberal comic and Veep super-fan Stephen Colbert took on hosting duties. Special guest stars included the Wisconsin senator Tammy Baldwin in her acting debut (not counting her childhood performance in a school production of Finian’s Rainbow), actor and comedian Kumail Nanjiani as a Syrian refugee (“I’m Pakistani, but I can play cat-eating immigrants from all over the world”), Seinfeld co-star Jason Alexander as a pompous feature writer, film-maker Kevin Smith as a reporter, and Larry David – who, in the most fitting turn of events imaginable, spent the first several minutes of the live stream trying to figure out how to work his Zoom – as Selina’s chief hatchet man, Ben Cafferty.View image in fullscreenReprising their roles from the show were actors Diedrich Bader, Nancy Lenehan, Gary Cole, Sam Richardson, Sufe Bradshaw, Timothy Simons, Reid Scott, Matt Walsh, Anna Chlumsky, Tony Hale and, of course, Louis-Dreyfus, while series regulars Clea DuVall and Sarah Sutherland took on other roles, since their characters don’t appear in this ep. (Patton Oswalt, who was also on the show, made a surprise appearance during the post-read Q&A.)The episode chosen was Crate, from season 3, which finds Selina and her cronies campaigning in New Hampshire ahead of the upcoming primaries. Various mishaps involving a pricey photo-op prop, an incriminating cellphone recording and the suicidal first lady, ensue. This episode is regarded as one of the very best in the show’s history, mostly due to one scene: Selina, having just learned that Potus will be resigning from office, effective immediately, shares a joyous freakout alongside her body man/closest confidant, Gary. It’s a bravura performance from both Louis-Dreyfus and Hale, one that probably secured them each an Emmy the following year.(It’s also fitting that this episode should be chosen, given that this intimate scene is immediately followed by Selina betraying Gary, a dynamic that repeats itself in the most devastating moment of the series finale.)For the read-through, the cast slipped back into their roles with ease. Everyone was on point, but Louis-Dreyfus and Hale were extra-dialed in, especially during their big scene. You got goosebumps watching them recreate it 10 years later, over Zoom, while still bringing all of the emotion they did during the actual filming.The guest stars all acquit themselves well, but it should come as no surprise that it was David who got the biggest laughs. While it’s impossible for him not to play himself, his singular delivery proved a perfect fit with Veep’s uber-cynical, profanity-laden screwball dialog.After the reading, we alternated between cast members interviewing a handful of state legislature candidates (with the major focus of the night revolving around abortion rights) and them fielding questions from viewers. Show creator Armando Iannucci joined in for this portion of the event.We got treated to a mini-Seinfeld reunion between Louis-Dreyfus, Alexander and David; Louis-Dreyfus sounded off on her hatred of AI; Smith talked about his favorite scene of the show (Selina accidentally getting high on St John’s wort, naturally); and David went off on a funny tangent about bald men looking better with beards (although he himself would never grow one because comedians can’t be stroking their beards).Someone asked the cast to give their favorite individual lines from the show. Louis-Dreyfus: “Jolly green jizz-face.” Simons: “[You’re] a meme, ma’am.” Walsh: “I’ve met [some] people … and a lot of them are fucking idiots.” Chlumsky: “[That’s] like [trying to use] a croissant [as] a [fucking] dildo. It doesn’t [do] the job and it [makes] a fucking mess!” Bradshaw: “[Get] the government out of my [fucking] snatch.” Colbert: “Danny Wah!”Iannucci seemed to confirm that Kent and Sue indeed hooked up at some point (“It probably involved algorithms”) and speculated on various characters’ outcomes (married politicos Amy and Bill are probably hosting a podcast with their dogs, while the “late” Andrew Meyer is living under a new identity on an island that he’s trying to buy with a view to it being recognized as its own country).When asked about the future of satire, Iannucci said it depended on who wins this election, as the entire premise of political comedy hinges on people holding politicians up to certain standards, standards Trump and his ilk have never shown the least bit of concern over.Colbert wrapped things up by having the cast read aloud their favorite insults of the show’s most despicable and hilarious character, noxious political aide and eventual veep, Jonah Ryan. These cruel gems include: “Childless cat-lady man”, “Disney plus extra chromosomes”, “Harry No-Styles”, “Rape-It Ralph”, “Moonsucker”, “Satellite licker”, “face-circumcised” and “stock photo for sperm-bank reject”.Right as Simons, the actor who played Ryan, broke the news that the fundraiser exceeded its stated goal of $600,000, Iannucci tossed out on final new Jonah barb that he’d come up with earlier in the day:“Jonah, even if you fell into the world’s most powerful castration machine, you’d still come out of it a dick.” More

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      We studied 19,898 Kickstarter campaigns − and discovered that talking politics hurts fundraising

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      Divisive political opinions are everywhere these days, but entrepreneurs might be wise to bite their tongues.

      In a recent analysis of 19,898 Kickstarter campaigns, we found that budding businesses that expressed political views attracted less funding than ones that stayed apolitical.

      As professors who study entrepreneurship, we wanted to understand the link between political expression and crowdfunding success. So we looked at thousands of campaigns launched over a two-year period.

      We searched the campaigns for subtle expressions of conservative values – “Still remembering that all lives matter, regardless of color or religion and hoping to have made my idea of sandwich shop clear,” to name one example – and more overt ones, like “Drain the Swamp and Defend MAGA Country.”

      We did the same thing with subtle liberal perspectives – like “I have become fed up and irritated by the lack of equality and diversity within media” – and overt ones, like “I believe that art matters + and the magic is real. Also: Black lives matter.”

      In the end, we found that every percentage-point increase in political speech was associated with a 9% decline in funds raised for conservatives and a 17% decline for liberals.

      Our theory, which our findings supported, is that people don’t expect to see anyone sharing political beliefs in a business context. When entrepreneurs violate this expectation, it leads people to view them as unprofessional and ultimately hurts their crowdfunding performance.

      The backlash against political speech doesn’t seem to affect everyone equally. Campaigns with third-party endorsements, such as Kickstarter’s “Project We Love” badge, were punished less, we found. Having photos or videos on a campaign page also seemed to reduce the negative effect. An entrepreneur’s prior successful experience was effective when leaning into a conservative, but not liberal, voice.

      Why it matters

      As entrepreneurs become increasingly vocal about politics, they should understand the potential costs of speaking authentically. Our study shows that funders expect entrepreneurs to be apolitical in crowdfunding and penalize those who express their political values. Although we looked specifically at Kickstarter campaigns, the implications for established businesses, which also seek investment, are obvious.

      To be fair, our work also finds evidence that entrepreneurs who come across as more credible – thanks to third-party endorsements, say, or their use of multimedia – are less penalized for political speech. But in general, entrepreneurs should at least consider keeping mum on politics in their funding pitches to ensure they don’t hurt their chances.

      What still isn’t known

      While we focused on the effect of entrepreneurs’ political speech, a natural follow-up question is whether funders’ political views affect whether they invest in a project. Researchers know that conservatives and liberals approach decision-making quite differently. So we think it’s crucial that researchers turn to this question next. These types of studies will start to provide a more holistic view of how political beliefs affect crowdfunding.

      The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work. More

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      Harris holds Las Vegas rally as Nevada becomes crucial swing state in election

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      Kamala Harris held a rally in Las Vegas on Sunday night as the state, with six electoral college votes, becomes increasingly important in a presidential race that polls show is barely moving to favour either candidate.Both the vice-president and Donald Trump have been making frequent trips to Nevada, but Harris’s rally takes place two days after she visited the US-Mexico border, a vulnerable issue for Democrats that Harris is looking to defuse.Before the raucous Las Vegas crowd estimated at 7,500, Harris renewed her jabs at Trump over refusing another debate, saying, “the American people have a right to hear us discuss the issues. And as you say here in Las Vegas, I’m all in. I’m all in.”Harris offered her condolences for those affected by Hurricane Helene, and her campaign said she would visit affected areas as soon as doing so would not disrupt the emergency response to the storm that has hit the country’s southeast.“We will stand with these communities for as long as it takes to make sure that they are able to recover and rebuild,” Harris said on Sunday.On Friday, Harris walked alongside a towering, rust-colored border wall fitted with barbed wire in Douglas, Arizona, and met with federal authorities to discuss illegal border crossing and fentanyl smuggling.At a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania on Sunday, the former president attempted to blame Harris for the opioid epidemic. “She even wants to legalize fentanyl,” he said.Six out of 10 Americans rate immigration as “very important”, according to the Pew Research Center, and other polling suggests voters trust Trump can handle the issue more effectively than Harris can.In contrast, fewer than half of voters (40%) said abortion, the key Republican vulnerability, was a very important issue to their vote.In a speech in San Francisco on Saturday, Harris said the “race is as close as it could possibly be” and described it “a margin-of-error race”. The Democrat candidate added that she felt she was running as the underdog.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocrats have also begun testing a new strategy to appeal to younger voters, including visitors to Las Vegas with its long-crafted reputation for inebriation, with posts about what it calls “Trump’s tequila tax” that its says could come as a result of proposed import tariffs.Harris’s campaign swing through Las Vegas comes as both candidates have said they plan to end taxes on tips. Trump presented his proposal in the city in June; Harris used her own rally in August to make the same pledge.The issue resonates in Las Vegas, where there are approximately 60,000 hospitality workers. Nevada’s Culinary Union has endorsed Harris.Ted Pappageorge, the culinary union’s secretary-treasurer, told the Associated Press that the union favored Harris’s proposal because she pledged to tackle what his union calls “sub-minimum wage”.“That shows us she’s serious,” Pappageorge said.Trump was at the same Las Vegas venue that Harris is speaking at earlier this month. In that address, he called his opponent the “would-be the president of invasion”. More

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      Trump and Harris speak in swing states as running mates prep ahead of VP debate – live

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      Kamala Harris is presenting herself as a change agent who will “turn the page” and offer “a new way forward,” a move far from embracing her role in Biden’s White House.Inflation has been tamed. Illegal immigration has stabalized. Violent crime is down. In theory it is a perfect recipe for electoral success. Yet it is a gift that the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, seems reluctant to accept.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “A new way? She’s been part of a very successful administration and she was chosen by Joe Biden as VP and then essentially chosen to be his successor.“But she has to pretend that she’s going to be forging a new path because she can’t afford to be too closely associated with Biden. I know one person on the inner campaign staff who cringes every time Harris and Biden have to appear together because the visual reinforces the tie they don’t want people to make. It’s nonsensical.”Harris, as the incumbent vice-president, will be hoping to avoid a repeat of the Republican president George HW Bush’s fate in 1992. Economic indicators improved over the spring and summer but too late to save him from defeat by Bill Clinton, whose lead strategist, James Carville, memorably summed up: “It’s the economy, stupid.”Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington DC, said: “When it comes to the economy people believe their own eyes and they will make their judgments on that basis. This is a lesson I have learned in the six presidential campaigns I’ve wandered in and out of: if you have statistics on the one hand and personal experience on the other, it’s no contest.”More on Harris distancing herself from Biden’s record:Donald Trump is slated to visit Valdosta, Georgia, on Monday, and receive a briefing on the damage caused by Hurricane Helene and “facilitate the distribution of relief supplies”, his campaign announced.The former president is expected to deliver his remarks at 2pm ET.During a speech in Erie County, Pennsylvania, Trump sent his condolences to the families affected by Helene, which killed at least 64 people.Robert F Kennedy Jr will participate in a “Make America Healthy Again” event with Dr Phil McGraw in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Monday, Trump’s campaign announced.Kennedy, who was staging an independent bid for the presidency, endorsed the former president after dropping out of the race in August.Kennedy has hopes of influencing federal health policy under a possible Trump administration. The former third-party candidate has questioned the safety of vaccinating children and promoted theories that suggest HIV is not the true cause of AIDS.Joseph Costello, a Kamala Harris campaign spokesperson, reacted to Donald Trump’s speech in Erie, Pennsylvania, picking on the former president’s comments about overtime pay.“As president, Trump took executive action to rip away overtime pay for *millions* of workers, including nearly 5 million workers without a college degree,” Costello said on Twitter/X.Costello attached a link to a paper by the Economic Policy Institute titled: More than eight million workers will be left behind by the Trump overtime proposal.Donald Trump wrapped up his speech in Erie, Pennsylvania, by summing up his proposals as a presidential candidate, pledging to end crime allegedly by migrants, strengthen the military, and “keep critical race theory and transgender insanity out of our schools”.Donald Trump repeated his plan to close the Department of Education if he’s elected as president in November.“Let the states run their own education,” he said.“We spend more money per pupil than any other nation in the world, by far, and yet we’re ranked at the bottom of every list,” Trump said. “So you know the expression: what the hell do you have to lose? Right?”Donald Trump claimed Butler, Pennsylvania, has become a tourist site after his attempted assassination in July.“Cars are riding by. They’re taking pictures. It’s become an amazing tourist site,”he said.Trump announced that the event in Butler will honor the firefighter who was shot and killed at the rally in July, Corey Comperator.During his speech, Donald Trump confirmed he will return to Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of the attempted assassination attempt in July. His visit is scheduled for 5 October.“We have a lot of people coming, and I really believe that will be the safest place on Earth,” said the former president.Donald Trump brought US Senate candidate David McCormick of Pennsylvania to the stage. McCormick, ex-CEO of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, is trying to unseat Democratic Senator Bob Casey, who is seeking his fourth term.“It’s a race between strength, a guy who says ‘fight’, and weakness,” McCormick said. “We need to bring law and order to secure that border and stop these illegal immigrants coming in and bringing crime and fentanyl into Pennsylvania.”Donald Trump reaffirmed his stance that workers’ tips should not be taxed.He was the first candidate to endorse this proposal during a rally in June. Months later, Kamala Harris also expressed support for the plan, prompting the former president to label her “Copy Cat Kamala” at other rallies.“We will have no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on social security benefits for seniors,” Trump said on Sunday.“When I win, we will get Pennsylvania energy workers, fracking, drilling, pumping and producing like they have never produced before,” Donald Trump said.“Kamala vowed to repeatedly ban fracking, and she imposed a natural gas export ban that was a killer, that is starving a state right now of your wealth and wealth that you deserve right now,” Trump said.Trump criticized Harris’s support for expanding access and manufacturing of electric vehicles in the US.“Her insane electric vehicle mandate will decimate Pennsylvania’s economy by abolishing gas-powered cars and trucks for American roads and destroying your fossil fuel industry,” he said. “And there are very few states that benefit like you do from fracking.”Donald Trump quoted the lyrics of a song supposedly warning against immigration during his speech in Erie, Pennsylvania.Trump read the lyrics of The Snake, which was written by civil rights activist Oscar Brown in 1963. The song was later a hit for soul singer Al Wilson five years later.In Trump’s interpretation, it serves as a cautionary tale about the alleged danger posed by immigrants. The former president recounted the allegorical tale of a woman who foolishly embraces a dangerous serpent.The former president once again called Kamala Harris “mentally impaired” during his speech in Pennsylvania on Sunday.“Joe Biden became mentally impaired,” Trump said, adding that Harris “was born that way”.“There’s something wrong with Kamala, and I just don’t know what it is, but there is definitely something missing. And you know what? Everybody knows it,” Trump said.He later played an ad against the vice-president, composed of a compilation of her comments regarding immigration.“Honestly, we could give you clips like that all day long. This is not your president. This president would destroy our country, worse than Biden. He’s the worst president in history,” the former president said. More