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      ‘It’s such a dramatic contrast’: Harris turns North Carolina into a toss-up

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      Landon Simonini found himself standing in the middle of a Charlotte highway lane at 2.30 in the afternoon, stuck in an artificial traffic jam while drivers waited for Kamala Harris’s plane to land and the motorcade to clear for the rally later that day.He was out of his car, because why not? He wasn’t going anywhere soon. His red Make America great again cap stood out among others cursing the traffic gods.Simonini, born and bred in Charlotte, builds houses. His livelihood depends to some degree on Charlotte’s tremendous growth. But not all growth is great, he said.“This is a traditionally southern state,” Simonini said. “Over 100 people move to Charlotte a day. That is changing the election map. I am born and raised in Charlotte, for 33 years. I have lived here my entire life. I went to school at UNC Charlotte. This is my city. It is a conservative city and I want to keep it that way.”But in America’s nail-biting 2024 presidential election, North Carolina is now in play. It rejoins a select list of crucial swing states whose voters will decide if Harris becomes America’s first woman of color to win the White House or if Donald Trump returns to the Oval Office from which he wreaked political chaos for four years.Up until about two months ago, the odds didn’t look like this.Though the margins in North Carolina have been close for decades in presidential races, Obama in 2008 was the last Democrat since 1976 to win the state, eking out a win by three-tenths of a percentage point. Biden’s weakness earlier this year threatened to turn North Carolina into an also-ran contest. Every poll through June had Trump beating the president by at least two points, with an average around six.Party affiliation can only tell so much in a state with a storied history of split-ticket voting. Almost four in 10 of North Carolina’s 7.6 million registered voters choose not to affiliate with a political party. But between August 2020 and August 2024, Republicans added about 161,000 new registered voters in North Carolina while Democrats lost about 135,000 registered voters.Trump won the state by about 75,000 votes in 2020, a margin of about 1.3 percentage points, his closest winning state, before losing the election. Biden won the four states with closer margins – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia.Biden’s withdrawal and Harris’s ascent scrambled the math. North Carolina’s secretary of state, Elaine Marshall, described the reaction as euphoric.“It’s such a dramatic contrast from that venom, that poison, that hatred that’s coming from Republican events,” she said. “That contrasts so strongly with the hope and the expectations of the future from Democratic party events.”The Trump campaign reportedly abandoned its efforts to mount a serious contest in New Hampshire, Minnesota and Virginia recently. That leaves seven states in the political battleground – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and now North Carolina.Counting electors aside from the remaining non-battleground states, Harris starts with 226 and Trump with 219. North Carolina can deliver 16 electoral votes to the victor. A candidate must have 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. Only Pennsylvania has more electors among the remaining battleground states.A re-energized Democratic electorate has been visible in polling data, which now shows the state as tied. Part of that is the roughly 20% of North Carolinians who are Black; increased African American voter turnout helped Obama win the state in 2008.But the enthusiasm is far more widespread, and was visible this week, when Harris drew 25,000 people to two rallies this week, one in Charlotte and another a few hours later in Greensboro. It was the vice-president’s 17th trip to North Carolina and her ninth just this year.If Harris wins North Carolina and holds in Michigan and Wisconsin, she need only win one of the four other swing states to clinch the presidency. But if Trump wins North Carolina, he can win the presidency with Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin even while losing elector-rich Pennsylvania and Michigan.Melissa Benton waited on one foot for traffic to clear on Tuesday night outside the Greensboro coliseum. Her right knee rested on a scooter, keeping her broken ankle off the ground. She came up from Charlotte for the event, she said.Benton is an Atlanta-area transplant. She left Georgia out of frustration with how her community had changed with growth. The irony is not lost on her.Locals complain about the rising cost of living, and soaring housing costs are first on the list. Even people who have weathered the slow-motion collapse of the furniture industry over the last 30 years are being saddled with property tax increases as their homes rise in value.“Every time I meet a native Charlottean, I’m always like, ‘Listen, I’ve been where you are right now,” Benton said. “I swear I’ll be a great citizen, because I understand what it’s like for new people to come in.” She has a keen eye on municipal problems, services and infrastructure. “But it’s also keeping Charlotte Charlotte, and we’ve lost sight of that in some big cities.”Affordable housing is a crisis in Charlotte, much like it is in Atlanta and Greensboro and most large cities in the US. But in North Carolina, it’s not just an urban problem. Lenoir – pronounced “len-OR” – up at the edge of the Brushy mountain range of the Appalachians, is in one of 73 rural counties in the state, and it has a problem with market rate housing too. About a third of North Carolina’s voters live in rural counties.The Democratic party has a field office in Lenoir. The lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, held a campaign event there on Wednesday for his gubernatorial run. Marshall, the secretary of state, held a discussion there last week. No part of the state can escape battleground politics today.View image in fullscreenDemocrats have long expected a brutal fight in North Carolina, and have been investing time, money and personnel into the state for the last year.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The Democratic party is certainly trying to reach young people,” Marshall said. It’s also trying hard to connect with young women who may have abortion politics on their mind. “They’ve got Sunday school, and they’ve got work, getting the kids fed and kind of stuff. So suburban mom, working professional women, you know.”Harris’s visit to North Carolina for her first rallies since the debate is no accident. North Carolina is that important. Trump has planned a rally in Wilmington on North Carolina’s coast next week. JD Vance, his running mate, will be in Raleigh next week as well. The Republican campaign has been sending surrogates to local events regularly. Two weeks from now, the former housing secretary Ben Carson will speak at the Salt and Light conference of the North Carolina Faith and Freedom Coalition.The Democratic party has 26 field offices in North Carolina with 240 paid staff, according to the campaign. The choices of placement for some of the offices, such as rural Wilson county in the state’s “Black belt” and Lenoir in western mountain country, speak to movement away from a focus on high-density urban territory that’s friendly to Democrats.Democrats are also using their significant financial advantages in fundraising to swaddle broadcast and social media in a blanket of Harris advertising. Organizers say they have been on the air with ads for a year. The ad tracking firm AdImpact notes that Democrats have reserved about $50m in ad buys through the end of the cycle, with particular attention paid to Black and Spanish-language media outlets. Trump only began advertising in earnest in August.But Republican campaign leaders view much of that effort as artificial.“We feel like, from our standpoint, that the race is a toss-up, but we feel like we still have an advantage,” said Matt Mercer, director of communications for the North Carolina GOP. “One of the big reasons is our leadership. You know, we didn’t abandon a ground game at any level in 2020. What you’re seeing from Democrats is an effort to catch up.”The Republican campaign is decentralized, Mercer said, accommodating far-flung efforts in a state that’s 560 miles wide from Manteo in the east to Murphy in the west. “You win statewide by going across the entire state, and that means going west of I-77 and east of I-95.”“For every person that’s moving to Charlotte or Raleigh, you’ve also got retired couples moving to the coast, or you’ve got military deciding to stay in the state,” Mercer said. “You know, I think Democrats kind of fall into this trap where they think growth is all going to benefit them, and they’re just missing it.”The GOP dominates North Carolina’s legislative branch, which has enough Republicans to override a gubernatorial veto. But North Carolina’s governor, Roy Cooper, is a Democrat and the state has elected a Democratic governor for most of the last 30 years, even as it has delivered wins to Republican presidents.Josh Stein, North Carolina’s attorney general and the Democratic nominee to succeed Cooper, has maintained a consistent lead over Robinson throughout the year. Robinson is an unusually controversial candidate even by standards set in the Trump era, with a litany of offensive and antisemitic attacks made on social media or in public statements.View image in fullscreenRobinson has tried to keep a low profile over the last few months, even as Stein has used his financial edge to batter Robinson with ads drawing primarily on the lieutenant governor’s own words. In recent weeks, Robinson has taken to the campaign trail, meeting with small groups in small towns far away from urban centers, haranguing the media and calling Stein’s ads deceptive. “Josh Stein is a liar,” he said, demanding that a news reporter convey that message to his opponent, along with a demand for a debate.Stein has, so far, declined.James Adamakis watched a Robinson speech, from a seat at Countryside BBQ in the small town of Marion, North Carolina, on Tuesday. It’s a popular stop for politicians in North Carolina’s rural mountains. A picture of Barack Obama’s visit in 2011 hangs proudly on the wall next to the cash register.Adamakis works in juvenile justice. The military veteran supports Republicans because they’re tougher on crime he said. But he acknowledges that even people who share his political values may vote in peculiar ways in North Carolina.He described the conversion of one of his friends into a Republican. “It was the economics, where he just kept seeing the inflation and buying groceries and everything,” Adamakis said. “He was like, why is the media and Biden saying that it’s good when it’s not? I think that the economy cuts across lines.“Everybody you meet in western North Carolina still may vote Democrat, but they still don’t like that.”But political diversity is about more than race in North Carolina. The economy of a place like Research Triangle Park near Durham is fundamentally different from the banking sector in Charlotte, or the tourism of the southern coast, or mountain towns struggling to reinvent themselves.“It might be easier in my job if there were just one [swing voter], but there’s not,” Mercer said. “And I think that dynamism is what makes the state so interesting and so hard to win, and why you truly need to understand the entire state.” More

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      Real v fake: how the Harris-Trump debate laid out different takes on AI

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      In their first, and likely only debate, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump argued about artificial intelligence. They spoke of China, chips and “domestic innovation”. The country learned how Harris, Trump and their allies would – or intentionally wouldn’t – use artificial intelligence for their own ends.But the real lessons were in the aftermath. The online furor over the IRL confrontation revealed that Republicans use AI to illustrate their political points. Democrats do not.View image in fullscreenThe RepublicansRepublicans’ excitement over AI focused on a debunked claim by their nominee. During the debate, Trump said that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were “eating the dogs – the people that came in, they’re eating the cats”. The statement was not true. ABC’s moderators fact-checked him in real time with information from the city’s animal control commissioner, who has not received any calls about such grisly crimes. Immigrants in the city are now facing real violence over the false statement.Absent real images of such bestial violence, Trump and company have turned to images created by artificial intelligence. Before the debate had even begun, Donald Trump Jr tweeted images of his father astride a giant cat and holding a gun. The ex-president’s son wrote: “Save our pets!!!” A post made by Trump Jr during the debate reads: “They know who they’re rooting for tonight” and shows three cats and a duck or a goose watching the candidates face off on TV.The images bear the hallmark sheen of AI-generated material, a sign Republicans may be using Elon Musk’s AI image generator Grok. Midjourney and OpenAI’s Dall-E have advanced beyond that telltale uncanny lighting, but both also limit the manipulation of public figures’ images to tamp down misinformation. Grok has few such safeguards.Two days after the debate, Trump jumped on the same train as his son. The former president posted an image of himself on a plane surrounded by cats and geese, a picture of a cat holding a sign reading “Kamala hates me” and a depiction of him speaking at a “Cats for Trump” rally, all on Truth Social and Facebook, where AI-generated images are extremely popular.The Republican members of the House judiciary committee have tweeted an image of Trump cuddling animals in water captioned: “Protect our ducks and kittens in Ohio!” One bizarre image posted by the committee stitches ducks and cats together into hybrid beasts as they float on a pond under a red, white and blue flag that might fly over the island of Dr Moreau. “Save them!” the committee cries. Elon Musk joined in by tweeting screenshots of Trump’s posts on Truth Social accompanied by a crying-laughing emoji, the billionaire’s favorite. The CEO of X has endorsed Trump for president and hosted an online event with him.The DemocratsIn the hours after the debate ended, it was not Kamala Harris who struck back at the Republicans’ use of AI; it was the most famous woman on the planet. Taylor Swift endorsed Harris and took explicit aim at AI-made images of her boosting Trump. Swift wrote on Instagram: “Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter.”Swift has been the victim of sexualized deepfakes of her that have been seen by millions. In response, US lawmakers have proposed new legislation that would empower people who have their own likenesses weaponized against them.Trump has posted faked images of Swift’s endorsement on “his site”, Truth Social. He disclaimed responsibility for what may have been an enormous political mistake: “I don’t know anything about them, other than somebody else generated them. I didn’t generate them.” The images originated from a small Texas foundation that aims to bankroll rightwing tweeters.Harris herself has not posted any images made by AI, debate-related or otherwise. Instead, in the days following the debate, her campaign has posted childhood photos of her visiting her grandparents in India and happily posing on a stoop. The choice is notable because AI has difficulty replicating the balance between fuzziness and detail that imbues old photos with authenticity and charm. Harris’s images stand in deliberate contrast with the synthetic glow of Trump’s.Harris boasts extensive familial and professional ties to Silicon Valley from her time as a senator and the state’s attorney general, but as a candidate, she projects an image of low tech. One of the most famous videos of her – “We did it, Joe” – shows her talking to the president via wired Apple headphones. She has been seen using them many times since. She believes Bluetooth to be a security risk. (Trump, by contrast, uses an Android device that experts have deemed extremely vulnerable to foreign incursion.)Her campaign may boast about its TikTok operation staffed by extremely online members of gen Z, but the technology she carries on her person connotes an attitude of wait and see, not early adoption. She loves to be filmed making calls with the phone to her ear, the original use of the device. During her vice-presidency, Harris didn’t spend much time showcasing who she was. The choices she’s made in the crafting of her image as a candidate demonstrate an emphasis on realness.Trump has made himself into the candidate of generative artificial intelligence. Whether he is allied with AI companies is a separate question. He has adopted the aesthetic of AI as his own, perhaps because he has seen how popular AI-generated images are on Facebook, where older people hang out online. Harris has eschewed AI image generation, and by doing so made a powerful ally in Taylor Swift.She wants voters to see her as authentic, so she’s making all her images the old-fashioned way. More

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      Trump ‘likelier winner’ unless Harris tackles two failings, says ex-ambassador

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      Donald Trump will remain the “likelier winner” of the US presidential election on 5 November unless the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, addresses key failings in her campaign, a former British ambassador to Washington says on Sunday.Kim Darroch says that despite clearly getting the better of Trump in last week’s televised head-to-head debate, Harris risks making two crucial mistakes in the final weeks of campaigning, which mean the former Republican president is still the favourite.View image in fullscreenWith a Trump return to the White House on the cards, Lord Darroch says it is important that the prime minister, Keir Starmer, who met US president Joe Biden and other leading Democrats in Washington on Thursday, should also now be seeking a meeting with Trump and his team before polling day, so he has built links with both sides.“It is important that if Starmer meets one, he meets both,” Darroch says in an article for the Observer. “It will be noticed and resented by the Trump team if he doesn’t.”Darroch was UK ambassador to the US from 2016 to 2019, when he resigned in a row over leaked confidential emails in which he criticised Trump’s administration as “clumsy and inept”. Darroch’s position became untenable after Boris Johnson, then involved in the Tory leadership contest to succeed Theresa May, failed to give the ambassador his unequivocal backing.Darroch, who remains a respected figure in diplomatic circles on both sides of the Atlantic, says Trump is now “a less formidable campaigner” than in 2016, “down on energy, more liable to become confused, with a mind cluttered with grievances. And he remains a policy-free zone.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“But,” he adds, “he is still capable of connecting with the ‘left behind’ to a level few others can match, a talent which ensures a devoted and enduring support base in a country where one in three workers say they live paycheck to paycheck.”Darroch argues that the Democratic campaign is at risk of making two hugely important errors. Urging Harris to be “laser-focused” on voters in the key swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin won by Biden in 2020, Darroch warns that they may drift back to Trump unless Harris is able to offer “some crisply worded, specific, targeted policies to bring jobs and hope back to these blighted neighbourhoods”.The second error is that Harris appears to be hiding from the media, repeating a mistake made by Hillary Clinton. “Back in 2016, Trump was ever-present. He would accept any and every invitation. He would even, unbidden, phone the morning news shows to offer his views on the day’s issues. By contrast, Hillary Clinton locked the media out – and lost.”Harris, he claims “seems to have adopted the Clinton playbook”.View image in fullscreenDarroch says the UK embassy in Washington will no doubt be advising Starmer to try to meet Trump, perhaps taking time out from a meeting of the UN general assembly this week to do so.“There is a lot to discuss with him, starting with his views on Ukraine. And however badly Trump performed in the debate, however visible his personal decline, he remains for many of us the likelier winner.” Last week, Starmer’s former pollster Deborah Mattinson met Harris’s campaign team in Washington to share details of how Labour pulled off its stunning election win by targeting key groups of “squeezed working-class voters who wanted change”, further strengthening contacts with the Democratic side. More

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      Biden, Harris address Congressional Black Caucus: ‘The baton is in our hands’

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      President Joe Biden and vice-president Kamala Harris spoke on Saturday at the Congressional Black Caucus’s Phoenix Awards dinner, bringing a message that its members were in a “battle for the soul of the nation”.Biden highlighted his relationship with the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), and Black voters.“In 2020, I ran for president to redeem the soul of America, to restore decency and dignity to the office of the president,” he said. “I ran to rebuild the backbone of America, the middle class. And I ran to unite the country and remind ourselves when we’re together there’s not a damn thing we can’t do.”The spectre of Trump, Maga Republicans and the threat Democrats say they pose to the country loomed over Biden’s remarks, and his call to action for those CBC members gathered.“The old ghosts in new garments [are] trying to seize your power and extremists coming for your freedom making it harder for you to vote and have your vote counted, closing doors of opportunity, attacking affirmative action,” he said. “My predecessor calls the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6 ‘patriots’, but when peaceful protesters marched for justice for George Floyd, Trump wanted to send in the military, but they wouldn’t go.”Biden continued by pointing to the juxtaposition between his and Harris’s tenure in the White House and that of their predecessor’s. On the theme of unity, Biden once again condemned Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, who, in recent weeks, has led a rallying cry of baseless, racist accusations toward Haitian-American immigrants in Ohio.“It’s wrong. It’s got to stop,” he said. “Any president should reject hate in America and not incite it. Folks, to win this battle for the soul of the nation, we have to preserve our democracy and speak out against lies and hate.”Towards the end of his remarks, Biden spoke about his time in Congress, during which he served with Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to run for president.CBC attenders were jubilant when Harris, also the Democratic candidate for president, walked on to the stage to Beyoncé’s Freedom after the president introduced her as “Kamala Harris, for the people”.Members of Harris’s sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha gleefully greeted her with their trademarked “Skee-Wee” call.Harris began by highlighting the importance of the caucus. For a November win, she said, the support of the CBC was necessary.“The Congressional Black Caucus has served as the conscience of the Congress and of our nation, and as a proud former CBC member, I know first-hand America relies on the leaders in this room, not only for a conscience, but for a vision,” Harris said.Harris said the CBC’s vision for the future was under “profound threat” and went on to point out the differences between her and Trump while also reiterating her platform, including reproductive rights, building an “opportunity economy”, healthcare and “not going back”.“We actually have a plan for healthcare, not just ‘concepts of a plan,’” she said, referencing Trump’s comments during Tuesday night’s debate.Towards the end of her speech, Harris returned to “joy” and hard work, two of her campaign themes.“Now the baton is in our hands,” she said. “I truly believe that America is ready to turn the page on the politics of division and hate, and to do it, our nation is counting on the leadership in this room.”Harris called on and thanked members of the CBC for their work registering voters and mobilising people to vote. She and Biden spoke during the 53rd Annual Legislative Conference (ALC) or, “CBC week” in Washington, during which Black political and social leaders convene on public policy. The Harris campaign has been working to increase the enthusiasm of Black voters, particularly in key battleground states.“We know what we stand for, and that’s why we know what we fight for,” Harris said. “And when the CBC fights, we win.” More

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      More bomb threats hit Springfield, Ohio, after Trump elevates false claims about Haitians

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      Two hospitals in Springfield, Ohio, were sent into lockdown after bomb threats, police said Saturday, marking the fourth such case in as many days that appears linked to false claims circulating among the far right that Haitian immigrants there are eating domestic pets and wildlife.Saturday’s threats came even after the woman who started the rumors acknowledged to NBC News that they were unfounded and publicly apologized.Kettering Health Springfield was one of the medical facilities targeted, with officials later saying they found nothing suspicious during a search. Another hospital, Mercy Health’s Springfield regional medical center, received a similar threat.A spokesperson with Mercy Health said the hospital has continued to operate and thanked Springfield police as well as hospital staff “for their swift, efficient and caring response”.The bomb threats Saturday came after others had been called in to government buildings Thursday, forcing their closure and causing local schools to be evacuated.“We recognize that the past few days have been particularly challenging for everyone in our community,” Springfield police said in a statement. Police added “we remain fully committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of each and every person”.On Friday, a Springfield woman, Erika Lee, apologized for rumors about Haitian immigrants eating pets that resulted from a post she wrote on Facebook claiming that the friend of a neighbor’s daughter lost her cat – and then found the animal strung up outside the home of a Haitian family.Lee now says she had no firsthand knowledge of the claim. The neighbor referenced in the post, Kimberly Newton, revealed that she also had heard the story from an acquaintance and not her daughter.Lee said she was filled with regret and insists she never intended to put a target on the backs of the Haitian community.“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Leetold NBC News on Friday.Local authorities in Springfield had already debunked the lies even before Donald Trump made the allegation that Haitian immigrants were eating pets during the debate with Kamala Harris on Tuesday. Lee told the outlet she never imagined her social media post would become fodder for conspiracy theories and hate aimed at the Haitian community in Springfield.“I’m not a racist,” Lee said, adding that her daughter is half-Black and she herself is mixed race as well as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. “Everybody seems to be turning it into that – and that was not my intent.”The city of Springfield believes the rumors may also have arisen from a case in Canton, Ohio, where an American with no known connection to Haiti was arrested in August for allegedly stomping a cat to death and eating the animal.Separately, an explanation for a viral photo of a man carrying two geese in Columbus, Ohio, has been made, although it also helped set off the now-discredited rumors about pet-eating in nearby Springfield.The Ohio state division of wildlife told TMZ that the man had been picking up the two geese that had been hit by a car. The agency also reported that there is no evidence that the man is Haitian, an immigrant or that he intended to eat the geese.About 15,000 Haitian immigrants began trickling into Springfield – a city of 60,000 – to work in local produce packaging and machining factories in 2017. They have been in demand at Springfield’s Dole Fresh Vegetables and at automotive machining plants whose owners grappled with a labor shortage in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. More

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      Alarm in UK and US over possible Iran-Russia nuclear deal

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      Britain and the US have raised fears that Russia has shared nuclear secrets with Iran in return for Tehran supplying Moscow with ballistic missiles to bomb Ukraine.During their summit in Washington DC on Friday, Keir Starmer and US president Joe Biden acknowledged that the two countries were tightening military cooperation at a time when Iran is in the process of enriching enough uranium to complete its long-held goal to build a nuclear bomb.British sources indicated that concerns were aired about Iran’s trade for nuclear technology, part of a deepening alliance between Tehran and Moscow.On Tuesday last week, Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, made a similar warning on a visit to London for a summit with his British counterpart, David Lammy, though it received little attention, as the focus then was the US announcement of Iran’s missile supply to Moscow.“For its part, Russia is sharing technology that Iran seeks – this is a two-way street – including on nuclear issues as well as some space information,” Blinken said, accusing the two countries of engaging in destabilising activities that sow “even greater insecurity” around the world.Britain, France and Germany jointly warned last week that Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium had “continued to grow significantly, without any credible civilian justification” and that it had accumulated four “significant quantities” that each could be used to make a nuclear bomb.But it is not clear how much technical knowhow Tehran has to build a nuclear weapon at this stage, or how quickly it could do so. Working with experienced Russian specialists or using Russian knowledge would help speed up the manufacturing process, however – though Iran denies that it is trying to make a nuclear bomb.Iran had struck a deal in 2015 to halt making nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief with the US and other western nations – only for the agreement to be abandoned in 2018 by then US president and current Republican nominee Donald Trump.Iran responded by breaching agreed limits on the quantity of enriched uranium it could hold.Western concern that Iran is close to being able to make a nuclear weapon has been circulating for months, contributing to tensions in the Middle East, already at a high pitch because of Israel’s continuing assault on Hamas and Gaza.Iran and its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, are supporters of Hamas – and Tehran’s nuclear development is therefore viewed as a direct threat by Jerusalem.Soon after Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Iran began supplying Shahed delta winged drones to Moscow and helped Russia build a factory to make more to bomb targets across Ukraine. In April this year, Iran launched a Russian-style missile and drone attack aimed at Israel, though it was essentially prevented and stopped with the help of the US and UK.Russia and Iran, though not historically allies, have become increasingly united in their opposition to the west, part of a wider “axis of upheaval” that also includes to varying degrees China and North Korea, reflecting a return to an era of state competition reminiscent of the cold war.Last week in London, Blinken said that US intelligence had concluded that the first batch of high-speed Iranian Fath-360 ballistic missiles, with a range of up to 75 miles (120km), had been delivered to Russia.Able to strike already bombarded frontline Ukrainian cities, the missiles prompted a dramatic reassessment in western thinking as well as fresh economic sanctions.Starmer flew to Washington late on Thursday to hold a special foreign policy summit with Biden at the White House on Friday, beginning with a short one on one in the outgoing president’s Oval Office followed by a 70-minute-long meeting with both sides’ top foreign policy teams in the residence’s Blue Room.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenThe leaders and their aides discussed the war in Ukraine, the crisis in the Middle East, Iran and the emerging competition with China.Starmer brought along with him Lammy, Downing Street’s chief of staff, Sue Gray, and the UK’s national security adviser, Tim Barrow, , while Biden was accompanied by Blinken and Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, among others.Prior to the meeting, UK sources indicated that the two countries had agreed in principle to allow Ukraine to fire long-range Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles into Russia for the first time. But Biden appeared to suggest the topic was one of the reasons for the face-to-face, saying to reporters: “We’re going to discuss that now,” as the meeting began.There was no update after the meeting, partly to keep the Kremlin guessing. Any use of the missiles is expected to be part of a wider war plan on the part of Ukraine aimed at using them to target airbases, missile launch sites and other locations used by Russia to bomb Ukraine.Britain needs the White House’s permission to allow Ukraine to use the missiles in Russia because they use components manufactured in the US.Protocol dictated that Biden and Starmer – the only two present without printed-out name cards – did most of the talking, while the other politicians and officials present only spoke when introduced by the president or the prime minister.Lammy was asked by Starmer to update those present on his and Blinken’s trip to Kyiv on Thursday to meet Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.Shortly after the meeting, Starmer said the two sides had had “a wide ranging discussion about strategy”. More

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      Inquiry finds communications breakdowns before Trump assassination attempt

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      An internal Secret Service investigation has confirmed that multiple, substantial communication breakdowns preceded the 13 July attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.The Washington Post, citing unnamed officials, reported on Saturday that the former president’s security detail failed to direct local police to secure the roof of the building used by the gunman.The Secret Service had discussed placing heavy equipment and flags between the stage and what would become Thomas Matthew Crooks’ perch
      atop a glass factory 300ft away to block the clear sight lines from the roof.But supervisors who arrived at Butler for the rally found cranes, trucks and flags were not placed in a way that blocked the line of sight.Crook was later able to climb on to the roof and fire a rifle seven times, killing one spectator, wounding Trump in the ear and injuring two others, before being shot dead by Secret Service snipers.The internal probe, known as a mission assurance investigation, found that unlike security details guarding a sitting president and vice-president that have military support, the Secret Service uses a command post separate from local police to protect political figures who are not serving in office.But in Butler, Trump’s security detail had no way of communicating with local police guarding the perimeter of the fairground.The astonishing lack of communication led to Crooks being able to get on the roof despite reports of a suspicious person carrying a rangefinder an hour before Trump was due to speak that were not relayed to the Secret Service. It took rally-goers to alert local police to a man “bear-crawling” on the roof before he loosed off shots at the former president, with one clipping Trump’s ear.Instead, local countersnipers were instructed to text a photo of Crooks to just one Secret Service agent, and agents never heard local police radio traffic about trying to track him down. Butler county police also reportedly warned the Secret Service that they would not be able to post a patrol car next to the building but received no further instruction.Kimberly Cheatle resigned as director of the agency days after the shooting after saying the roof’s slope was too steep for agents to manage. Acting agency director Ronald Rowe said in a statement to the outlet that “the Secret Service cannot operate under the paradox of ‘zero fail mission’ while also making our special agents and uniformed division officers execute a very critical national security mission by doing more with less”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe report also found that the Secret Service had been slow to beef up Trump’s security even after it received reports of an Iranian plot to kill political candidates. Rowe testified to Congress later in July that he was “embarrassed” by security lapses and vowed to reform the agency’s practices. Two separate congressional investigations are also looking at security lapses.The Trump campaign has said it has sometimes been forced to cancel or postpone events over concerns that security is insufficient and followed years of requests from Trump aides for greater security. Both the first lady, Jill Biden, and the vice-president, Kamala Harris, were in Pennsylvania that day, lending credence to claims that the Secret Service was stretched too thin.“I think the American people are going to be shocked, astonished and appalled by what we will report to them about the failures by the Secret Service in this assassination attempt on the former president,” Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal told Fox News after being briefed on the internal review. More

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      Trump ally Laura Loomer called herself ‘white advocate’, audio reveals

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      Close Donald Trump ally Laura Loomer told a white nationalist conference in 2022 that she considered herself a “white advocate”, according to a recording of the speech obtained by the Guardian.Loomer has come under scrutiny in recent days after being seen accompanying Trump on a flight to the presidential debate on Tuesday, and a subsequent string of racist tweets aimed at Kamala Harris.That caused a political firestorm after Trump’s disastrous debate performance, with Harris emerging the clear winner. In particular, Trump’s raising of false claims around Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pets triggered outrage and mockery of him.Some observers have placed the blame on Trump’s performance partly due to his recent closeness to Loomer, including being pictured standing with him in his entourage at this week’s 9/11 commemorations.The revelation of Loomer’s comments about being an advocate for white people is likely to further fuel the controversy around Trump’s relationship with Loomer, not least because they are just the latest in a long line of extremist remarks by the podcaster and self-described journalist.Her attendance at the American Renaissance conference was reported at the time by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), but the contents of her speech have not been scrutinized until now.The American Renaissance conference, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is a venue where “racist ‘intellectuals’ rub shoulders with Klansmen, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists”.Loomer spoke to the conference in November 2022, after losing a Republican primary in Florida’s conservative 11th district that August. To the applause of the audience, Loomer said: “I consider myself to be a white advocate and I openly campaigned for the United States Congress as a white advocate.”Apart from her claim to be a “white advocate”, Loomer’s speech was focused on her grievances with traditional and social media companies and the Republican party, all of whom she blamed for her loss.She claimed that during her campaign, “local TV stations would actually not allow me to have a congressional debate even though every other congressional candidate was able to have a televised debate in their district, because they called me a white supremacist”.Loomer continued: “And they said that I was, you know, too much of a nationalist and too far right, because I openly ran my campaign to the right of the GOP.”She said: “I have been a Republican my entire life, but unfortunately we live in a two-party system, which really just feels like a uniparty, but I’m here to tell you today that the Republican party is no longer rightwing enough for me.”She then struck a hopeful note about a third party. “So perhaps they’re going to be an alternative in the future some day.”Loomer then turned her sights on “Kevin McCarthy and the Congressional Leadership Fund and the Republican party”, saying they had “made such an effort this year to spend hundreds of millions of dollars … to get the Hispanic vote pushing to get the Black vote” while they also “used millions of dollars, by their own admission, to campaign against America First nationalist candidates”.Loomer told the gathered white nationalists that “the top three issues I focused on in my campaign were election integrity, combating big tech social media censorship and election interference, and a 10-year minimum immigration moratorium”.She said: “I was one of the first candidates to campaign in favor of mass deportations in an immigration moratorium and I was the first candidate to campaign on breaking up big tech.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLoomer’s anti-immigrant rhetoric to the conference echoes Trump’s policy positions. In recent days the former president has repeated his promises to carry out mass deportations, and during the debate he falsely accused Haitian immigrants of eating pets.Loomer told the conference crowd that her positions had “demonized – as I mentioned – as an extremist by even my own Republican party”.But the remarks at the conference hardly stand alone.Weeks earlier, in a podcast recording before the conference, Loomer thanked Jared Taylor, the podcast’s host and conference organizer, for his “white advocacy and being a white advocate and pioneering the intellectual discussion, right around race and demographics in this country”.In March, in her podcast appearance before the primary, Loomer told Taylor that “my district is also the whitest district in the entire state of Florida”, and that she was pursuing “issues of [critical race theory] and anti-white racism and anti-white hatred”, and opposing the “anti-white Christian mentality the Democrats are pushing”.Loomer asserted to Taylor that Democrats were “trying to persecute white people. They’re trying to persecute Christians, the most persecuted people in the world.”Loomer added: “I look forward to being their advocate when I win my race and, you know, get elected as their next congresswoman.”Loomer subsequently lost to Congressman Daniel Webster.Loomer emerged as an anti-Muslim, pro-Trump activist during Trump’s first run at the White House in 2016. She has a long history of controversies, including protesting against a performance of Julius Caesar she saw as anti-Trump, handcuffing herself to Twitter’s headquarters to protest her deplatforming there, and now attacking migrants and Kamala Harris in the wake of Trump’s debate performance, which has been widely portrayed as disastrous for his campaign.The Guardian has contacted Loomer for comment. More