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      Lawsuit seeking power to not certify Georgia elections is dismissed

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      A lawsuit arguing that county election board members in Georgia have the discretion to refuse to certify election results has been dismissed on a technicality, but the judge noted it could be refiled.Fulton county election board member Julie Adams filed a lawsuit in May asking a judge to declare that the county election board members’ duties “are discretionary, not ministerial, in nature”. At issue is a Georgia law that says the county officials “shall” certify results after engaging in a process to make sure they are accurate.Superior court judge Robert McBurney on Monday dismissed Adams’ lawsuit, saying that she had failed to name the correct party as a defendant. The Associated Press has reached out to Adams’ lawyers seeking comment on the ruling and asking if they intend to file a new complaint.Under Georgia law, the principle of sovereign immunity protects state and local governments from being sued unless they agree to it. But voters in 2020 approved an amendment to the state constitution to provide a limited waiver for claims where a party is asking a judge to make a declaration on the meaning of a law.That is what Adams was trying to do when she filed her suit against the board she sits on and the county elections director. But McBurney noted in his ruling that the requirements very plainly state that any such complaint must be brought against the state or local government.McBurney noted that Adams had amended her complaint and tried to recast her claims as being brought against Fulton county alone. But, he concluded, “that was too little, too late; the fatal pleading flaw cannot be undone.”However, McBurney noted, that does not mean this fight is necessarily over.“This action is done, but there can be another,” he wrote. Adams “can refile, name the correct party and we will pick up where we left off, likely with all the same lawyers and certainly with the same substantive arguments”. More

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      Melania Trump boosts conspiracy theory online about rally shooting

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      Former first lady Melania Trump has raised questions around the law enforcement response to the attempted assassination of her husband, in a video she published on Tuesday to promote her new book.In the 34-second video posted to her X account, Melania begins by describing the attempted assassination on her husband as a “horrible, distressing experience”. And now, she says in the video, which is overlayed with dramatic instrumental music, “the silence around it feels heavy”.“I can’t help but wonder why didn’t law enforcement officials arrest the shooter before the speech?” she asks in the video. “There is definitely more to this story and we need to uncover the truth.”The video then cuts to black and then ends with an image of the cover to her new memoir, Melania, and a link to buy copies.Donald Trump himself has recently, without any evidence, blamed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for the assassination attempt and accused them of making it difficult for the Secret Service to have the staffing to protect him. Conspiracy theories around the shooting have spread in some Republican and rightwing circles.There has been no evidence that the US president or vice-president were directly involved in or interfered with the Secret Service’s arrangements, or that there was any wider plot to attack Trump beyond the lone shooter, who was killed moments after opening fire.On Melania’s website, it states her memoir, which she describes as “the powerful and inspiring story of a woman who has defined personal excellence, overcome adversity, and carved her own path” is available to pre-order for $40.A signed edition is also available for $75, and a collector’s edition, which includes a signature, bonus photographs and a “digital collectable”, is on sale for $250.Since the assassination attempt on the former president on 13 July in Pennsylvania, where 20-year-old Thomas Crooks opened fire on Trump as he spoke at a campaign rally, the FBI and Secret Service have come under intense scrutiny and criticism over security issues at the event.Trump survived the shooting but sustained an injury to his ear, and one rally attendee was killed in the attack and two others were injured. The gunman was shot dead by a Secret Service officer at the scene.The remarks by the former first lady on Tuesday come as investigations are under way looking into what happened that day, as well as the decisions and actions of personnel leading up to the event.New details have emerged in the last two months regarding the lead-up to 13 July, apparent security and communication failings by and between law enforcement agencies, as well as new details on the shooter himself, such as his search history and preparations for the attack, but FBI officials have not yet uncovered a motive for the attack.In late July, the director of the Secret Service resigned after a hearing where she was criticized by lawmakers over the apparent security failures around the shooting, and of failing to answer some specific questions about what went wrong. A day later, the House voted to form a taskforce to investigate the failings around the rally security and in late August, at least five US Secret Service agents were placed on leave in relation to the 13 July rally. More

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      Project 2025 ex-director accuses Trump campaign advisers of ‘malpractice’

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      The former head of Project 2025, a rightwing blueprint for remaking the US government that was created by many of Donald Trump’s former officials, has urged the former president to replace his two campaign managers if he wants to win November’s presidential election.Paul Dans, who stepped down as the project’s director in July after Trump dissociated himself from it, turned his fire on Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, blaming the advisers for a series of errors that he claims have jeopardised the Republican nominee’s chances of beating Kamala Harris.Dans accused them of being guilty of overconfidence and of failing to adequately prepare Trump for the possibility that Harris would replace Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee. That development changed the race, which polls suggested Trump had previously been leading.“Trump should be running like Secretariat at the Belmont, but instead it’s a race to the wire,” Dans told the New York Times.He also accused Trump’s campaign advisers of “malpractice”, and said their misjudgments led to an embarrassing public about-face, in which Trump finally claimed to disown the Project 2025 document.Rightwing criticism of Trump’s campaign staff has grown in recent weeks as the former president has sought to at least appear to moderate his position on some policy proposals and issues, including reproductive rights.While there has been little direct criticism of Trump himself, a #FireLaCivita hashtag trended briefly on social media.Dans, who served for two years in the White House under Trump, spearheaded work at the conservative Heritage Foundation thinktank that produced Project 2025. The 922-page tome proposes an array of radical plans to reshape government – such as replacing tens of thousands of career civil servants with Trump loyalists, abolishing the education department and drastically restricting abortion and contraception.The document has been described as a manifesto for Trump’s presidency, and Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, said in a podcast that the project would herald “a second revolution that would be bloodless if the left allows it to be”.As criticism grew, Trump eventually responded by claiming to disown the plan, falsely stating he did not know its architects – even though most used to work for him and he gave the keynote address to their annual conference – and calling its suggestions “ridiculous and abysmal”.LaCivita described the project as “a pain in the ass” at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee.A New York Times/CNN poll found 75% of American voters had heard of Project 2025, while 63% strongly opposed its contents.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhen Dans stepped down in July, LaCivita and Wiles issued a statement strongly denouncing the project and bluntly warning anyone associated with it against trying to advertise their supposed links to Trump.“Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or in any way,” they said.“Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign. It will not end well for you.”Responding on CNN on Tuesday, Dans said: “With apologies, Mark Twain, I’d say the reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.”Asked if he thought Trump’s campaign managers were doing a good job, he pointedly avoided referring to LaCivita and Wiles, but praised the recent return of Corey Lewandowski, the pugnacious former manager of the 2016 campaign, and the appointment of Robert F Kennedy Jr, who recently suspended his own independent campaign to endorse Trump.In a statement to the Times, responding to Dans’ comments, Trump said: “Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita are doing a great job. I could not be more happy with them.” More

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      Georgia governor Brian Kemp weighs options on state election board problem

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      As Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp wrestles with what to do with a seemingly wayward state board of elections that is drawing national criticism for last-hour changes to the state’s election practices born of stop-the-steal election activism, the state attorney general declined to make his job any easier.Kemp asked Republican attorney general, Chris Carr, to render a legal opinion about the governor’s legal obligation to hold a hearing and potentially remove board members, in light of two ethics complaints filed against the board since a raucous hearing in July raised questions about the legality of the board’s actions. Three board members – Rick Jeffares, Janice Johnston and Janelle King – have attempted to reopen investigation into the 2020 election, citing a finding of error in Fulton county and the continuation of lawsuits by election denialists.Repeated audits and investigations have found no error in tabulation large enough to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Nonetheless, the three board members have approved new rules giving local elections officials wider authority to make a “reasonable inquiry” into elections discrepancies. By leaving the term “reasonable” undefined, the change is setting off alarm bells among critics, who believe local elections officials with partisan intentions will cast doubt on the results if their candidate loses.Carr’s office earlier this year swatted back the board’s demand to reinvestigate the 2020 election in Fulton county. But it also declined last week to advise Kemp to convene a hearing under the state’s ethics law, because no “formal charges” had been filed for allegedly holding an illegal meeting in August to adopt new election rules.If the law required Kemp to remove board members, he could do so while claiming to Donald Trump-aligned partisans that his hands were tied. That’s no longer an option. If he does so now, voices on the hard right will rise to say that Kemp is, once again, facilitating victory for Democrats at their expense.In a state controlled by Republicans, Georgia’s elections board has become a contentious friction point between conventional conservatives like Kemp and Trump allies who continue to press claims of a stolen 2020 election.Trump praised the board members by name at a rally in Atlanta in August, while trashing Kemp for refraining to stop the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, from pursuing the election interference case against him.The board’s behavior puts Kemp in a political pickle. Trump and Kemp have made overtures in the past few weeks to mend the rift. Kemp endorsed Trump in a conversation with the Fox News host Sean Hannity last month, which Trump accepted graciously in a Truth Social posting. But Trump partisans remain deeply resentful of Kemp’s apparent inaction on Trump’s behalf.For Republicans, the conflict between Trump and Kemp is particularly toxic in an election year. But the board’s actions convey a plain impression of partisan interest, which is also toxic in an election year, as Democrats use the publicity around the election board’s plays to drive turnout.Even though a majority of Georgians are confident that the 2024 election will be held fairly, the partisan split is enormous. Only 9% of Republicans have confidence in a fair election, according to a poll administered by the University of Georgia in June.That has primary election implications for Kemp, who is widely expected to run for the US Senate against the Democrat Jon Ossoff in 2026. Kemp is the most popular Republican in the state – more so than Trump – but would face withering criticism for taking unilateral action against a Trump-oriented board.In the wake of the 2020 election, state lawmakers stripped the secretary of state and his office of some of their power over the state board of elections. The appointment of King, a conservative radio talkshow host, to the swing seat on the board earlier this year has given Trump partisans a 3-2 majority of the board.At its August meeting, the three members outside of Kemp’s orbit – King, Johnston and Jeffares – voted to demand that the state attorney general reinvestigate claims of irregularities in Fulton county’s election tabulation of 2020, threatening to hire outside counsel to investigate instead.Carr’s office responded, denying their demand and notifying them that the only lawyers the state board of elections has, by law, are at the attorney general’s office.Critics such as the Democratic party, who are filing complaints about the board’s actions, suggest that board’s goal is to delay certification in the event of an apparent Trump loss in order to bolster future claims of another stolen election.The complaint filed by the Democratic party of Georgia and Cathy Woolard, a former chairperson of the local Fulton county board of registration and elections, argues that the board “knowingly and willfully violated state law” by holding the August meeting without proper notice, “and have repeatedly disregarded the advice of the attorney general’s office, turning instead to outside parties for both legal counsel and the substance of proposed rules”.By doing so, the board had created an appearance of impropriety, the complaint alleges, noting how board members had received a standing ovation at a Trump rally and how Jeffares, had reportedly discussed a position in the Trump administration in public.The complaint invokes Georgia’s ethics law, which states that the governor is compelled to remove board members who violate the ethics code.The word “shall” limits the governor’s discretion. But Kemp wanted to know if the letter of complaint constituted “formal charges”.Staff attorneys from Carr’s office responded on Friday, telling Kemp that it did not.“‘Upon formal charges being filed’ does not mean that a citizen can simply submit information to the Governor and trigger the hearing process contemplated by the Code Section,” the legal memo says. “Had the General Assembly intended to create an informal process in O.C.G.A. § 45-10-4 that could be initiated by any member of the public, it would have done so as it has in other areas of the law discussed herein. Instead, it provided for a structured process that is only commenced ‘upon formal charges being filed’.” More

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      Is Taylor Swift a secret Trump supporter? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      It was the embrace that launched a thousand tweets: on Sunday, Taylor Swift hugged Brittany Mahomes – the wife of NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes – at the US Open. A photo of the hug immediately had tongues wagging.If you’re not Extremely Online, the only thing that might stand out from the innocuous-seeming hug photo is that Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce (also in the photo) has horrendous taste in hats. The broader context, however, is Mahomes’s link to Donald Trump. Last week the former president thanked Mahomes for “strongly defending me” after she liked one of his Instagram posts back in August. That post, titled “The 2024 GOP Platform”, outlined what a second Trump term would consist of – things such as “the largest deportation operation in American history”. Mahomes did not appreciate people criticising her for liking the post (which she seems to have later unliked), calling them “haters” with “deep-rooted issues … from childhood”.This drama matters because Swift is one of the most influential people on the planet. There has been intense speculation about whether the pop star will endorse a presidential candidate this election cycle. In the absence of any such endorsement, people have been scrutinising her actions for clues about her political leanings. Hugging Mahomes after her Trump controversy? Well, that’s been taken by some as a sign that Taylor is Team Trump.The Mahomes hug isn’t the only evidence people are citing to suggest Swift, who endorsed Democratic candidates in 2018 and Joe Biden in 2020, might be leaning to the right now. There’s also the fact she was tight-lipped when Trump recently shared a bunch of AI-generated images on his Truth Social platform that implied Swift and her fans were endorsing him. “The Swifties for Trump movement is real!” the post, originally created by a murky rightwing non-profit, read. “I accept!” Trump wrote above the fake photos.A presidential candidate using your image without your consent to claim you support his racist and regressive views is a big deal. If you think his views are abhorrent, you’d want to publicly distance yourself from him, right? There are scores of famous musicians, from Céline Dion to Beyoncé, who have made it very public that they don’t want Trump using their music at rallies. “Don’t even think about using my music, you fascists,” Jack White said last month, after a Trump aide used a White Stripes song in an online video. White added that he would sue the Trump campaign. If you’re angry a man like Trump is associating himself with you, then that’s how you act. Meanwhile, various media outlets reported that Swift’s “spokesperson did not return multiple messages seeking comment” after Trump posted the fake endorsement photos.To be clear: I don’t think Swift is a secret Trump supporter. She’s been critical of him in the past, after all. But it can’t be stressed enough that Swift isn’t a billionaire just because she sings catchy songs. She’s a billionaire because she is a brilliant businesswoman who exerts meticulous control over her personal brand. Everything she does is intentional, done with the knowledge that her fanbase will scrutinise and attempt to decode even the most banal action like it’s the Rosetta Stone. One imagines the reason her spokesperson didn’t comment about the fake Trump photos wasn’t that they were too busy, it was that they’d decided silence was the savviest choice.Swift may have endorsed Biden-Harris in 2020, but that was a very different time. After the George Floyd protests, “Brands, which often remain silent when it comes to social justice issues, began speaking out,” a 2021 AdAge article noted. They did so because they knew that being in tune with the zeitgeist was good for their business. Now companies are being targeted by the right with boycotts and harassment if they align with progressive causes. That bullying has worked: industry experts have warned of a worrying trend of brands taking significant steps back from diversity and sustainability initiatives. Swift is one of the biggest brands there is; it’s only natural she’s shying away from politics.That said, I hope Swift proves me wrong and speaks up this election cycle. We live in a world where everything is political. Swift isn’t avoiding politics by staying quiet: her silence speaks louder than words. More

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      Trump will not prepare for debating Kamala Harris. He believes he’s perfect | Sidney Blumenthal

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      In a debate or otherwise, hot mic or not, the “issues” are of concern to Donald Trump solely to incite his politics of paranoia. Facts, too, whatever they are, are contemptible; facts aren’t facts at all. They are opinions to be wielded in a contest of strength to intimidate and overwhelm the weaklings who claim there actually are independent facts. Those whose opinions prevail can triumphantly brandish them as symbols of power.In the unusual setting when Trump is awkwardly questioned outside of the protective sphere of rightwing media, he understands that his glib retailing of make-believe and outright lying will glide him past the hazard of facts. The less he cares about them, the better he will do. His lies are so frequent they become elevator music.Journalistic moderators exist simply to serve as his foils and straight-men. He attacks them, often personally, to elide and distract from topics he would rather avoid, if the moderators have the nerve to raise them – his felony convictions, business fraud, alleged and adjudicated acts of sexual assault, attempted coup of January 6, promise of a “bloody” round-up of “millions” of undocumented immigrants, stated desire to be a dictator, to imprison his opponents including Democratic donors, and “terminate” the constitution. The presence of journalists who correct his splotched record proves his victimization.Any so-called debate involving Trump has nothing to do with illuminating the “issues”. Part of the problem with the plea of anxious Republicans that Trump stick to the “issues”, rather than mentally deteriorate before our eyes, is that the “issues”, as they conceive them, aren’t supported by the facts.The facts are these: inflation has substantially cooled and continues to fall. The economy is disinflationary. The Federal Reserve will cut interest rates this month on the basis of the decline in inflation. Job growth under the Biden administration increased by July to 15.8m, while under Trump 2.7m jobs were lost. Trump has falsely stated that “100%” of all new jobs created under Biden “have gone to illegal immigrants”. In fact, the number of native-born Americans in the workforce increased by 6% under Biden. The crime rate is down precipitously, violent crime reduced by 15.2% in just the last year, according to the FBI.The entry of migrants at the southern border between December 2023 and January 2024 fell by 50% as a result of actions of the Mexican government in cooperation with the Biden administration, and crossings fell even more, by 40%, to their lowest level in four years, as a result of Biden’s executive order on asylum policy in June. Immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans. And of immigrants arriving between 2020 and 2022, nearly half, 48%, have at least a bachelor’s degree, while 38% of native-born Americans have attained that educational status. The rest is demagogy.The other part of the problem about the “issues” is that Trump’s underlying motive has nothing to do with them. He still feels the sting that he never really made it as a celebrity in Manhattan. Despite his constant efforts to elevate himself, even pretending to be his own public relations agent, John Barron, he understands that he was ridiculed and rejected by the genteel class whose acceptance he most sought. When he was cast as the star of The Apprentice, its crassness and phoniness failed to win him the respect let alone the adoration of the Hollywood community. He bears the grudge that he was spat out from coast to coast. Arousing the fears and prejudices of the outer-borough petit bourgeoisie in white flight farther into Long Island decades ago writ large, he is a tuning fork of resentments.Trump always has his own facts to depict “a failing nation”. Pessimism is his calling card. If America isn’t collapsing, how can it be great again? Even more important, how can he be great again? As Trump posted this May after he was found guilty of 34 felony counts of business fraud for hush-money payments to an adult film star to influence the 2016 election: “I AM THE POLITICAL PRISONER OF A FAILING NATION, BUT I WILL SOON BE FREE, NOVEMBER 5TH, AND MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”This election, like all elections for him, is a turnout base election. He must scrape up every possible low-information voter from every cave with an appeal to grievance. He will never reach the lofty level of a 50% majority. He will certainly lose the popular vote by millions as he did in 2016 and 2020. His fundraising is half that of Kamala Harris’s. He has outsourced his ground game to political action committees with no experience at getting out the vote, headed by the conspiracist chatterbox Charlie Kirk (who called George Floyd “a scumbag”) and the Nazi-fascinated space cadet Elon Musk. Trump’s advisers, meanwhile, are locked into their own version of The Hunger Games.The knife’s edge polling makes his imperative to inflame his base more desperate. In 1996, Bob Dole campaigned as the Republican candidate by saying he had “nowhere to go but the White House or home”. Trump campaigns knowing he has nowhere to go but the White House or the jailhouse.Trump’s preparation for his only encounter with Harris consists of not preparing. He’s already perfect. He must repeat himself. He must double down. Then he will be more perfect. The more vehemently he lashes out, the more his masses embrace him. His irrationality, irresponsibility and ignorance billow in their minds as a towering image of strength confirming their preconceived notions of his acumen and decisiveness. Yet he must hope that his blasts don’t blow him into a corner where he has to ring up Republican officials as he did in Georgia in 2020 and for which he has been indicted for voter fraud: “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”Trump didn’t want, much less imagine, a debate with Harris. Not so subconsciously he still thinks he’s facing Joe Biden. “I can’t imagine New Hampshire voting for him,” he told the Fox News anchor Sean Hannity on 5 September. “Anybody in New Hampshire, cause they’re watching right now, but anybody in New Hampshire that votes for Biden and Kamala.” Trump confuses the faded Biden with the looming Harris. Either he feels Biden is his real opponent or he must make her into Biden to return to the race he expected. His template can’t be altered. Make Harris Biden again.Trump has announced he wants a new clause for the 25th amendment to impeach and remove Harris for engaging in a “conspiracy to cover up the incapacity” of Biden. At the same time, Trump complains that Harris has already ousted Biden. “They deposed a president,” he told a rally on 19 August. “It was a coup of a president. This was a coup.” Trump doesn’t know how to quit Biden.In his debate with Biden, Trump’s outrageous falsehoods were overlooked in the light of Biden’s shattered performance. Trump charged that the president would “rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month and kill the baby”. He has since repeated his canard about post-abortion executions in a convoluted effort to wriggle out of stating his position on Florida’s proposition for reproductive rights, which he finally conceded he would vote against.In his Biden debate, Trump claimed that he had never called fallen soldiers “suckers” or “losers”, though his former chief of staff, Gen John Kelly, says he did. Had Trump been in office, he says, Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine and Hamas wouldn’t have massacred Israelis. Immigrants, he claimed, are released from prisons and insane asylums to steal “Black jobs” and Social Security funds, which, he says, proves the racist replacement theory: “They’re taking the place of our citizens.” And so on.Trump, according to Trump, was the truth-teller in that debate. Biden was the liar. “I’ve never seen anybody lie like this guy. He lies – I’ve never seen it.” If only Biden hadn’t existed, all would have been well, just as it was. “It was perfect. It was so good. All he had to do is leave it alone.” And, then, poof!, to Trump’s consternation, Biden disappeared.Trump’s charges and boastful lies in that debate are undoubtedly a preview of most of what he will charge against Harris and claim about himself. But he will also accuse her of being Biden in disguise so he can continue to run against Biden. Trump will run “the same tired old playbook”, as Harris remarked in refusing to answer a question in an interview about his race-baiting claim that she decided to “turn Black”.On 6 September, Trump’s disjointed pre-debate attack on Harris reached a crescendo in his conflation of her with E Jean Carroll, a woman he defamed, after sexually abusing her in the Bergdorf Goodman dressing room, according to the judge and jury, for which he was held liable twice, and owes a penalty of $83.5m. He appealed the verdict. Before entering the New York courthouse, he held what he called a “press conference”, at which he answered no questions and ranted for nearly an hour.His stream of consciousness unraveled into an accusation that seamlessly traveled from an apparent reference to Harris to an old photograph of Carroll. “I’m not going to have a Marxist president. The people are getting it,” Trump said. “So we go down to court today to talk about this case is a scam. And all I can say is that I never met the woman other than this picture, which could have been AI-generated.”The photo in question was published in a 2019 New York Magazine article captioned: “Carroll, Donald and Ivana Trump, and Carroll’s then-husband, television-news anchor John Johnson, at an NBC party around 1987.” Of course, artificial intelligence, whose technology did not then exist, could not generate that photo.Trump blathered on: “The other thing is I was very famous then. If I would have walked into Bergdorf Goodman, the department store that she said, everybody would have said, ‘Oh, there’s Trump.’ And it would have been at that time on Page Six. Page Six was the equivalent of today’s internet.”With his ruminations about Page Six, the page in the New York Post for gossip on which Trump planted items about himself and his sexual prowess for years, he inadvertently let slip his true motive to recapture past glory: “I was very famous then.”Trump is frantic not to be dismissed as a has-been. His restless exploitation of his tawdry image had gained him notoriety but disrespect. The more vulgar he was in pursuing his fantasy of himself, however, the more his acceptance into society receded. His wish to return to his youthful days of celebrity now leads him to surround himself with the appearance of celebrity, but he can only attract cartoon characters, the likes of Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock. If Trump can only regain the presidency, he can use it for a last chance to make himself a great celebrity again.At his “press conference”, Trump played the star beset by groupies. Time and again, he asserted he didn’t know Carroll. “I have no idea who she is. She wrote a book and she made a ridiculous story up.” At his first defamation trial, Trump claimed she was “totally lying” because “she’s not my type”.Then, Trump spontaneously brought up other cases in which he had been accused of sexual assault. “It’s all fabricated,” he said.He attacked Jessica Leeds, who as a witness in the Carroll trial testified that he molested her in the late 1970s when he sat next to her on an airplane. “She said I was making out with her. And then, after 15 minutes – and she changed her story a couple times, maybe it was quicker – then I grabbed her at a certain part and that’s when she had enough,” Trump said, explaining his technique. “Think of the practicality of this: I’m famous, I’m in a plane, people are coming into the plane. And I’m looking at a woman, and I grab her and start kissing her and making out with her. What are the chances of that happening?”He added: “And frankly – I know you’re going to say it’s a terrible thing to say – but it couldn’t have happened, it didn’t happen, and she would not have been the chosen one. She would not have been the chosen one.” Once again, she wasn’t Trump’s type.Trump then tore into yet another woman who had testified in the Carroll case. Natasha Stoynoff, a reporter for People magazine, came to Mar-a-Lago in 2005 to write a story about Trump and his wife Melania. According to her account, he drew her alone into a room, shoved her against a wall, stuck his tongue down her throat and groped her before she broke loose. Six other women corroborated her story as contemporaneous confidantes to whom she told her story. At a political rally in 2016, singling her out, he told a crowd: “Take a look. You look at her. Look at her words. You tell me what you think. I don’t think so. I don’t think so.”“Think of this,” Trump continued explaining at his press conference, “a woman comes into Mar-a-Lago, interviews me about a love story, a story about my wife and myself. And during that interview, I attacked her and pushed her up against the wall, violently. Okay? And then she leaves, and she writes a perfect story. A perfect story. She doesn’t mention the event … There was no witness. There was nothing … I could go through many other stories outside of this. You know, it’s very funny. When you’re rich and famous, you get a lot of people come up with a lot of stories.” When you’re a star, you’re always innocent.Trump made it clear this outburst was his debate prep. “I’m going into very hostile territory shortly on a debate with ABC, George Stephanopoulos and that group,” he said. “And ABC, I think, is the worst of everybody. I think they’re the worst. They’re the nastiest. They’re as bad as you can be. They’re worse than NBC, which is saying a lot.”Then, he added, “And we have something coming.” But instead of explaining what that might be, he veered to attack Hillary Clinton as unfair in her debate with him in 2016. Then, he attacked the Carroll case again as a “hoax” and “a scam”. And he blamed the reporters he had gathered and whose questions he was not taking. “It’s a political witch hunt. And some of you should be ashamed of yourselves. Thank you very much, everybody.”

      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Harris and Trump make final preparations ahead of crucial presidential debate in Philadelphia

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      It was the debate that was never meant to happen.Donald Trump will take the stage in Philadelphia on Tuesday night to face, not the familiar foe he expected when he agreed to the encounter in May, but an opponent he has never met and has struggled to define; Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, whose emergence as the Democratic nominee has changed the direction, and very nature, of the presidential election.The Republican nominee anticipated that he would be keeping a date in the City of Brotherly Love for a second engagement with Joe Biden, the US president with whom he had an acrimonious debating history from the 2020 election.Instead the unprecedented impact of June’s debate in Atlanta between the pair – in which Biden’s halting and incoherent performance led to him withdrawing his candidacy after mounting pressure from his own Democratic party – has left Trump confronting an opponent against whom he has still to decide a settled line of attack.Harris, for her part, goes into the event having been prepared by aides who have aped Trump’s often vicious and insulting debating technique – especially towards women – and bolstered by her experience from a previous career as a courtroom prosecutor. She is also buoyed by being up against an adversary who was recently convicted of 34 felony charges.The pair face-off in the midst of a race that multiple polls show is neck-and-neck – both nationally and in key swing states – none more than in Pennsylvania, the site of Tuesday’s debate, with more electoral votes up for grabs than any other battleground state.Tuesday’s event, hosted by ABC, will take place under the same rules that governed the Trump-Biden debate, with candidates’ microphones being muted when it is their opponent’s turn to speak. Harris’s campaign argued for mics to be kept live throughout – hoping to goad the former president into the undisciplined and unsavoury interruptions that have marred his previous performances.View image in fullscreenWhile Trump was ready to agree, his entourage – determined to keep him focused and on-message – insisted on keeping the original rules.But it is Trump’s difficulty in coming to terms with Biden’s departure from the race that could decide the contours of the debate, according to Steven Fein, a specialist in presidential debates and professor of psychology at Williams College in Massachusetts.“I think, maybe the most interesting and potentially explosive element of it is the fact that he clearly was very upset that Biden dropped out and has been replaced by Harris,” said Fein, who suggested the debate had greater potential for mind games and psychological drama than any he had previously studied.“It’s going to be a mighty task for him to control his tendencies. Whenever he’s baited … by a woman, he’s usually been very nasty. And a woman of colour is just like the nightmare scenario.“There’s going to have to be some give and take in a way that there didn’t have to be in the first debate, when he didn’t have to say much but just let Biden flail. So the potential for all kinds of drama is great.”The former president has been preparing for the debate with, among others, Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic member of Congress-turned Trump supporter who ran for the party’s presidential nomination in 2020 and memorably tangled with Harris in a primary debate.In an eve-of-debate call with journalists on Monday, Jason Miller, a Trump adviser, said that it would be Harris who would have difficulty preparing for Trump.“The fact that Trump is out there every day doing unscripted questions [means] you can’t prepare for him,” he said, comparing it with training to prepare to fight Muhammed Ali. “You don’t know what his style is going to be. He has an amazing mix of humour and charm, as well as hard hitting facts.”With Hugo Lowell More

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      US elections live: Harris and Trump deadlocked in polls on eve of debate, new report suggests

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      A new report published by Pew Research Center on Monday, shows the vice-president, Kamala Harris, and former president Donald Trump deadlocked.According to the Pew report, 49% of registered voters surveyed said that if the election were held today, they would vote for Harris and an identical share said they would vote for Trump.One takeaway from the new poll is that Pew states: “Trump’s advantage on ‘mental sharpness’ has disappeared.”In the survey, 61% of voters said the phrase “mentally sharp” described Harris “very or fairly well”, compared with 52% who described Trump this way.This is a decrease from an earlier Pew survey published in July, where 58% of voters said that they viewed Trump as “mentally sharp” compared with 24% who said that about president Joe Biden at the time.Amid efforts to purge voters in Republican-led states, the Department of Justice released a fact-sheet on Monday reminding states of the restrictions on removing voters ahead of the voter rolls on the eve of a federal election.The document essentially serves as a warning to states that systematically removing voters within 90 days of a federal election is illegal under the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). Any effort to remove voters, according to the law, must also be “uniform” and “non-discriminatory.”The document is notable because it comes as Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama, and Ohio have all touted efforts to remove people from the voter rolls in recent months. Many of those efforts have been misleading and have targeted people suspected of being non-citizens and have raised scrutiny from civil rights groups who are concerned the efforts may be unlawfully targeting naturalized citizens.“Examples of list maintenance activities that may violate the NVRA include comparing voter files to outdated or inaccurate records or databases, taking action that erroneously affects a particular class of voters (such as newly naturalized citizens), or matching records based solely on first name, last name, and date of birth,” the fact sheet says.There have also been reports of activists in Georgia and Florida using unreliable software to challenge the voting eligibility of people it believes may have moved. The DOJ guidance issued on Monday reminds states that those efforts are also illegal within 90 days of a federal election.The 90-day blackout period, the document says, “also applies to list maintenance programs based on third-party challenges derived from any large, computerized datamatching process.”Kristen Clarke, who heads the Justice Department’s civil rights division, released a video urging voters to contact DoJ if they believe they have been wrongfully removed from the rolls.“As we approach Election Day, it is important that states adhere to all aspects of federal law that safeguard the rights of eligible voters to remain on the active voter lists and to vote free from discrimination and intimidation,” she said in a statement.Speaking at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, a key swing state, Doug Emhoff, Kamala Harris’ husband, talked about the intense impact of the conservative Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade on all the women in his life, including Harris.He said he heard the news directly from Harris herself. “I had never actually heard her more upset. And she called to say, ‘Dougie, they actually did it, they actually did it.’”Emhoff said Harris had personally grilled Trump’s rightwing supreme court nominees, who had claimed in their confirmation hearings that they would respect precedent when it came to abortion.Emhoff’s remarks come as Democrats focus on abortion rights, which is seen as Harris’ strongest issue.Advocacy groups are continuing to weigh in on the outline of Kamala Harris’s policy priorities, posted on her website today.It’s no surprise that Giffords, a leading gun violence prevention group headed by former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who survived a mass shooting in 2011, praised Harris’s policy outline on gun violence prevention, which comes in the wake of two new high-profile mass shootings in Georgia and in Kentucky.Harris, a former prosecutor who secured the first-ever political endorsement from March for Our Lives, the youth gun violence prevention group formed in response to the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, has a long track record on responding to daily community gun violence, and she served as the head of the Biden administration’s newly created Office of Gun Violence Prevention, an office advocates had pushed for.The gun control measures Harris endorses are standard for Democratic politicians: she supports legislation banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, requiring universal background checks, and supporting red flag laws that keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people.Harris’ policy overview touts her record as a prosecutor “getting illegal guns and violent criminals off California streets,” but it also highlights the Biden administration’s big investment in community-based gun violence prevention efforts, which advocates called a significant improvement from the Obama administration. Harris’ platform notes that, after a big increase in gun violence in 2020, during the early pandemic, there appears to have been a historic drop in murders in 2023. (How much decisions at the White House level had to do with either the rise or the fall in murders is deeply unclear, but the decrease in violence that Harris is pointing to is real.)She also makes very clear that she does not support defunding the police, but instead “continue to invest in funding law enforcement, including the hiring and training of officers and people to support them.”This is Lois Beckett, picking up our US politics coverage from Los Angeles.Oprah Winfrey will host a digital rally for Kamala Harris next week, multiple news outlets reported.The event will bring together different affinity groups that have mobilized for the Harris campaign, Variety reported.United We Dream Action, the political and electoral arm of United We Dream, the largest immigrant rights group led by young activists in the US, has endorsed Kamala Harris for president, they announced on Monday.Bruna Sollod, the group’s senior political director, said in a statement:
      We choose to block the pain and violence Trump will carry out against our people. We choose Harris as our next organizing target and are ready to hold her accountable these next four years to meet the demands of our generation.
      The Michigan supreme court has ruled that Robert F Kennedy Jr’s name will appear on Michigan’s ballot this fall, the Detroit Free Press is reporting.Despite suspending his presidential campaign last month and endorsing the former president Donald Trump, the Michigan supreme court ruled on Monday that Kennedy’s name would remain on the state’s ballot.This comes just days after an appellate court in Michigan ruled that Kennedy’s name must be stricken from ballots.The Michigan secretary of state’s office said last week that it would appeal to the state supreme court. The new ruling from the state’s high court on Monday overturns the lower court’s decision, the Detroit Free Press reported.Ever since he dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump, Kennedy has been fighting to remove his name from ballots in swing states.A new report published by Pew Research Center on Monday, shows the vice-president, Kamala Harris, and former president Donald Trump deadlocked.According to the Pew report, 49% of registered voters surveyed said that if the election were held today, they would vote for Harris and an identical share said they would vote for Trump.One takeaway from the new poll is that Pew states: “Trump’s advantage on ‘mental sharpness’ has disappeared.”In the survey, 61% of voters said the phrase “mentally sharp” described Harris “very or fairly well”, compared with 52% who described Trump this way.This is a decrease from an earlier Pew survey published in July, where 58% of voters said that they viewed Trump as “mentally sharp” compared with 24% who said that about president Joe Biden at the time.On Monday, president Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate the several individuals to serve as “key leaders in his administration” in a news release.The nominees include Senator Ben Cardin and Senator Dan Sullivan to be Representatives of the US to the 79th session of the General Assembly of the UN, among others.The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, also told reporters on Monday that Joe Biden would be watching the Tuesday debate between the vice-president, Kamala Harris, and the former president Donald Trump.“The president is going to watch the debate, he’s looking forward to watching the debate” Jean-Pierre said. “The president is incredibly proud of the vice-president,” she added.The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, told reporters on Monday that president Joe Biden agreed with Kamala Harris’s leadership and policy decisions.During the White House press briefing on Monday, Jean-Pierre was asked by a reporter why Vice-President Harris was “spending so much time trying to define Trump and link him to Project 2025, rather than define herself?”Jean-Pierre responded and directed the question to the Harris campaign, but said that the contrast between Trump and Harris could not be “more clear” and said that Biden “agrees with her leadership, her policy decisions.”This comes as the Harris campaign released a list of her policy proposals on Sunday evening.In an interview with Fox & Friends on Monday, Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who dropped out of the Republican primary earlier this year, said that former president Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, need to change the way they speak about women, when asked why she thinks Kamala Harris has a 14-point lead among women.“Donald Trump and JD Vance need to change the way they speak about women,” Haley, who has previously said she would be voting for Trump in November, said on Monday. “You don’t need to call Kamala dumb. She didn’t get this far just by accident … she’s a prosecutor.”She continued:
      You don’t need to go and talk about intelligence or looks or anything else. Just focus on the policies. When you call even a Democrat woman dumb, Republican women get their backs up too. The bottom line is, we win on policies, stick to the policies, leave all the other stuff. That’s how he can win.
      Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign posted a list of her policy positions on its website this weekend, after critics have called her vague and thin on policy since the Democratic nominee launched her run for the White House in July.The list of policies on the Harris campaign website are organized into four main sections focused on the economy, “fundamental freedoms”, safety and crime, and national security.Among the proposals, Harris has said she would implement tax cuts for the middle class, reduce healthcare costs, increase the minimum wage, bring back the bipartisan border security bill and more.

      Kamala Harris warned that Donald Trump is “probably going to speak a lot of untruths” during their debate tomorrow night. “There’s no floor for him in terms of how low he will go,” Harris said in an interview with Rickey Smiley that aired on Monday.

      Ten retired top military officials announced their endorsement of Kamala Harris in a letter warning that Donald Trump is “a danger to our national security and democracy”. The letter by National Security Leaders for America also sought to defend Harris against Republican attacks over the Biden administration’s chaotic 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal.

      A 250-page Republican-led congressional report on Monday attempted to implicate Kamala Harris in the chaotic 2021 pullout of western forces from Afghanistan. Democrats accused Republicans of inflating Harris’s part in the incident simply because she had replaced Joe Biden as the party’s presidential nominee.

      Donald Trump threatened in a Truth Social post over the weekend that he would jail those “involved in unscrupulous behavior” during this year’s election. He indicated that lawyers, political operatives, donors, voters and election officials could all be targeted with prosecution.

      Donald Trump confirmed he will vote in support of a ballot measure in Florida that would legalize recreational marijuana. Trump’s support contrasts with Florida’s governor and fellow Republican, Ron DeSantis, who has been a vocal opponent of the ballot measure.

      Kamala Harris’s campaign will air a new TV ad featuring former officials in Donald’s Trump administration warning about the threat he poses to the country, in what looks like an attempt to goad the former president ahead of tomorrow’s debate.

      The Harris campaign also released three new TV ads targeting Donald Trump on abortion ahead of Tuesday’s debate that includes comments from the Republican nominee claiming credit for helping overturn Roe v Wade.

      The leaders of two major left-leaning women’s organizations said the issue of reproductive rights would offer the “starkest possible contrast” between Harris and Trump at Tuesday night’s debate.

      Republican officials are raising the alarm that Trump campaign has invested far fewer resources for its voter turnout operation in battleground states than previous presidential election races.

      Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, postponed a rally he was scheduled to speak on Monday evening in Reno, Nevada due to wildfires in the region, his campaign said.

      Liz Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman, called Donald Trump an “unrecoverable catastrophe” on Sunday and urged fellow Republicans to vote for Kamala Harris in November’s election.
      Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will arrive in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday for their first (and potentially only) presidential debate.The event will mark the first time that Harris and Trump have ever met face to face, and it comes less than two months after Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race following his own fateful debate performance in June.The change at the top of the Democratic ticket appears to have unnerved Trump and his campaign advisers, who have struggled to land attacks against Harris. The debate will present Trump with his most significant opportunity yet to negatively define Harris in voters’ minds, as polls show a neck-and-neck race in key battleground states.For Harris, the debate could allow her to deliver on her oft-repeated promise to voters: that she will prosecute the case against Trump. Her political history – both on the debate stage and in Senate hearings – suggest she is well-positioned to make that case. But Harris is not without her vulnerabilities either.Here are five key moments from Harris’s career that could offer a preview of her debate strategy. More