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      Special counsel appeals dismissal of Trump classified documents case; Harris endorsed by former Republican staffers – live

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      Special counsel Jack Smith, in a court filing on Monday, urged a federal appeals court to revive the criminal case accusing Donald Trump of retaining classified documents after it was dismissed by US district court judge Aileen Cannon last month.“Congress has bestowed on the Attorney General, like the heads of many Executive Departments, broad authority to structure the agency he leads to carry out the responsibilities imposed on him by law,” Smith’s team wrote.
      The district court’s contrary view conflicts with an otherwise unbroken course of decisions, including by the Supreme Court, that the Attorney General has such authority, and it is at odds with widespread and longstanding appointment practices in the Department of Justice and across the government.
      Rashida Tlaib, the Michigan congresswoman and leading progressive Democrat, criticized the Democratic national convention for denying a speaking slot for a Palestinian American on the main stage last week.Tlaib, who is the sole Palestinian American member of Congress, told Zeteo in a statement:
      It’s hard not to feel invisible as a Palestinian-American. Our trauma and pain feel unseen and ignored by both parties. One party uses our identity as a slur, and the other refuses to hear from us. Where is the shared humanity? Ignoring us won’t stop the genocide.
      The uncommitted national movement, who represent hundreds of thousands of anti-war protest votes from the primary season, staged a multi-day sit-in protest outside the United Center in Chicago where the Democratic convention was being held, after the DNC told the group it would not get a speaker on the main stage.The family of the Israeli American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October, spoke on the convention stage on Wednesday, which the uncommitted movement supported.Tlaib, who did not attend the convention, said the lineup showed that the DNC “made it clear with their speakers that they value Israeli children more than Palestinian children.”Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman who endorsed Donald Trump on Monday, served in the military in Iraq and ran for president in the Democratic primary in 2020.Gabbard quit the Democratic party two years later and has become a fixture at conservative conferences and in rightwing media.Addressing a National Guard Association conference in Detroit, Michigan, where the former president was speaking, Gabbard, who represented Hawaii in Congress and is a former vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee, accused Kamala Harris of retaliating against political opponents, undermining civil liberties and weaponising the US’s institutions against both Trump and herself.Recently Gabbard has been helping Trump prepare for next month’s televised presidential debate against Harris. In 2020 she took Harris to taskon the debate stage over her record as a prosecutor – a clip that still circulates in rightwing media.Her announcement comes a day after Robert F Kennedy Jr, scion of a Democratic dynasty, suspended his own White House bid and threw his weight behind Trump. Elon Musk, who describes himself as “historically a moderate Democrat”, is also backing Trump.The judge overseeing the Arizona “fake electors” case involving a scheme by Republican allies of Donald Trump to overturn his loss in the state during the 2020 presidential election has set a trial date of 5 January 2026.Trump allies including the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani will stand trial on charges they conspired to subvert Arizona’s presidential election results.If you type in NeverWalz.com in your browser, the page that appears probably doesn’t look like what you expected from a webpage donning a slogan against Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and the current vice-presidential candidate for the Democratic party.“Trump is a convicted felon. Let’s vote for adults,” the webpage reads. “Try being joyful instead of an asshole.”After just a few seconds on the webpage, users are automatically redirected to KamalaHarris.com, the official website for Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign.The slogan “Never Walz” is indeed anti-Walz, and was seen recently plastered on a booth set up by an group against Walzt, Action 4 Liberty, at the Minnesota state fair. The group was seen handing out fliers and selling merchandise that criticizes Walz.But, it appears that the group did not secure a website domain for the “Never Walz” slogan, leaving it available for someone else to buy and use.As of Monday, the website domain NeverWalz.com is being used to criticize Donald Trump and then quickly redirects viewers to the Harris campaign website.The Arizona Police Association (APA) announced its endorsement of Democrat Ruben Gallego in the state’s Senate race, despite backing Republican Kari Lake in her gubernatorial bid last cycle.Gallego “understands the complexities of modern policing in American society today”, the group’s president Justin Harris said in a statement posted to Twitter/X.
      The APA does not take our endorsements lightly; we recognize the importance of having a U.S. senator that can bring people together to improve society for all. We believe congressman Gallego will be that U.S. Senator.
      The group publicly threw its support behind Donald Trump just days ago during a rally in Glendale.A messy Michigan Republican party gathering this weekend to nominate candidates for office illustrated the diminished sway of two high-profile Michigan election deniers and highlighted longstanding divisions within the party.Matthew DePerno, who faces charges for allegedly assisting in a scheme to improperly access voting machines in the wake of the 2020 election, withdrew from the race for Michigan’s top court hours before the state party convention. In a statement, DePerno said that instead of running for state supreme court, he would “use my knowledge about how elections work to get Republicans elected”.DePerno, a rightwing attorney from Kalamazoo, Michigan, was a vocal proponent of Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election in Michigan after Trump lost in 2020 to Joe Biden, appearing on rightwing media to promote the claims of widespread fraud and helping fund Arizona’s sham election audit. DePerno ran for Michigan attorney general in 2022 but lost decisively to Dana Nessel – whose office has charged him for his role in allegedly tampering with voting machines.In 2023, he lost his bid to chair the state party to Kristina Karamo – an outspoken elections conspiracy theorist who was ousted from her role earlier this year amid accusations that she had mismanaged the party’s already dwindling finances.During the convention, Karamo faced a more dramatic setback of her own when she was escorted from the venue by police officers. Karamo reportedly entered with an all-access pass, which was revoked during the convention.The US district judge Aileen Cannon threw out the classified documents case against Donald Trump last month after concluding that Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional.Smith’s team appealed to the 11th US circuit court of appeals, arguing that Cannon’s decision was “at odds with widespread and longstanding appointment practices in the Department of Justice and across the government”.It is unclear how long the appeals court’s decision could take, but even if it overturns Cannon’s dismissal there is no chance of a trial before the November presidential election, according to AP.If elected, Trump could then appoint an attorney general who would dismiss the case.The special counsel Jack Smith has urged an appeals court to reinstate his office’s classified documents case against Donald Trump after it was dismissed by a judge last month.At least five Secret Service agents have been placed on leave after the failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump in July.The action is reportedly the latest consequence of the security failings surrounding the 13 July shooting, when a 20-year-old gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, opened fire on Trump as he spoke at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump was wounded after a bullet grazed his right ear. One rally-goer, Corey Comperatore, was killed in the shooting while two others were seriously injured. Crooks was later shot dead by a Secret Service sniper.The agents who were placed on leave work at the Secret Service’s Pittsburgh field office, which was responsible for coordinating security at the rally along with local law enforcement, according to Real Clear Politics, which broke the story. They include the head of the Pittsburgh office.The officers concerned are believed to have been put on administrative leave, which usually involves being taken off operational duties while still receiving a full salary. They are expected to report to the office and may be given paperwork duties.Donald Trump, in his remarks to the National Guard Association of the United States, made reference to “if there is a debate”.In a Truth Social post last night, Trump cast doubt on whether he would participate in a scheduled debate with Kamala Harris next month, claiming that the network that had agreed to host it was “biased” against him.Donald Trump, speaking to the National Guard Association of the United States, pledged to create a “Space National Guard” if he is elected back to the Oval Office.Trump said launching space force in 2019 was one of his proudest achievements in his first term, adding:
      The time has come to create a Space National Guard as the primary combat reserve of the US space force.
      More than 200 former Republican staffers who worked for former president George W Bush, and senators John McCain and Mitt Romney, have signed a letter endorsing vice-president Kamala Harris for president.The letter, obtained and published by USA Today reads in part:
      Of course, we have plenty of honest, ideological disagreements with Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz. That’s to be expected. The alternative, however, is simply untenable.
      At home, another four years of Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership, this time focused on advancing the dangerous goals of Project 2025, will hurt real, everyday people and weaken our sacred institutions.
      Abroad, democratic movements will be irreparably jeopardized as Trump and his acolyte JD Vance kowtow to dictators like Vladimir Putin while turning their backs on our allies.
      We can’t let that happen.
      When endorsing Donald Trump for president, Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic Hawaii congresswoman who is also an Iraq war veteran, told the crowd at the National Guard Association’s conference that she believes that Trump has a better understanding of the “grave responsibility” that a president bears “for every single one of our lives.”Gabbard praised the former president and said that during his first term, Trump “exercised the courage that we expect from our Commander in Chief,” and exhausted “all measures of diplomacy, having the courage to meet with adversaries, dictators, allies and partners alike in the pursuit of peace.”Tulsi Gabbard has just formally endorsed former president Donald Trump for president.Gabbard left the Democratic party in 2022, after her 2020 run for president and it was recently reported that she has been helping Trump prepare for next month’s presidential debate against Kamala Harris.Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic Hawaii congresswoman, has just been introduced on stage by former president Donald Trump at the National Guard Association of the United States Conference in Detroit, Michigan.“She’s a special person” Trump said of Gabbard. “She’s got great common sense, great spirit, she loves our country and she loves the people in this room.”Donald Trump is about to appear at the National Guard Association of the United States Conference in Detroit, Michigan.Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic Hawaii congresswoman, is expected to formally endorse Trump’s presidential bid at the event, CNN reported earlier today, citing a source.Donald Trump has appeared to undercut his campaign’s position on a scheduled televised debate with Kamala Harris by declaring he would prefer to have the microphones on when it was not their turn to speak.

      Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that he’d “rather have it probably on, but the agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time. In that case, it was muted” amid a reported impasse between the Kamala Harris and Trump campaigns over the conditions of next month’s debate.

      Trump, in a Truth Social post on Sunday, threatened to pull out of the 10 September debate with Harris, hurling a trademark “fake news” slur at ABC News.

      Kamala Harris’s campaign said it has now raised $540m for its election battle against Trump. The campaign said it saw a surge of donations during last week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago where Harris and her vice-presidential running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, accepted their nominations.

      Elizabeth Warren said on Sunday that “American women are not stupid” enough to believe JD Vance’s promise that Trump would veto any nationwide abortion ban passed by Congress if Trump is elected again to the Oval Office.

      Kerry Kennedy, the sister of Robert F Kennedy Jr, said on Sunday she was “disgusted” by his decision to drop out and endorse Trump’s presidential bid. Max Kennedy, her brother, also condemned his sibling’s endorsement of Trump.

      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris issued statements on Monday marking the third anniversary of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Donald Trump visited Arlington national cemetery in Virginia on Monday to take part in a wreath laying ceremony as he seeks to tie Harris to the chaotic US pullout and attack at Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate that killed 13 American soldiers.

      Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic Hawaii congresswoman, is expected to formally endorse Donald Trump’s presidential bid today at his event in Detroit, Michigan, according to a report.

      A judge in Arizona will hear arguments on Monday in the “fake electors” case involving a scheme by Republican allies of Trump to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the state during the 2020 presidential election. More

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      Ex-Democrat Tulsi Gabbard endorses Donald Trump in 2024 presidential race

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      Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, has endorsed the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, in the US presidential election.Gabbard, who served in the military in Iraq, ran for president in the Democratic primary in 2020. She quit the party two years later and has become a fixture at conservative conferences and in rightwing media.Addressing a National Guard Association conference in Detroit, Michigan, where Trump was speaking, Gabbard said: “This administration has us facing multiple wars on multiple fronts in regions around the world and closer to the brink of nuclear war than we ever have been before.“This is one of the main reasons why I’m committed to doing all that I can to send President Trump back to the White House, where he can once again serve us as our commander-in-chief. Because I am confident that his first task will be to do the work to walk us back from the brink of war.”Gabbard, who represented Hawaii in Congress and is a former vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee, accused the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, of retaliating against political opponents, undermining civil liberties and weaponising America’s institutions against both Trump and herself.“We as Americans must stand together to reject this anti-freedom culture of political retaliation and abuse of power,” she added.Gabbard’s announcement comes a day after Robert F Kennedy Jr, scion of a Democratic dynasty, suspended his own White House bid and threw his weight behind Trump. Elon Musk, who describes himself as “historically a moderate Democrat”, is also backing the former president.Trump, who has been portraying Harris as a leftwing extremist, told the gathering on Monday: “This fight is no longer between Democrats and Republicans. This is a fight between communism and freedom.“It’s a very serious fight. That’s why millions of traditional Democrats, including FDR Democrats, JFK Democrats, independents and old-fashioned liberals are joining our movement. Our poll numbers are great.”Trump admitted that he had not been aware that Gabbard served as a lieutenant-colonel in the army. “She’s a special person,” he added. “She’s got great common sense, great spirit. She loves our country and she loves the people in this room.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRecently Gabbard has been helping Trump prepare for next month’s televised presidential debate against Harris. In 2020 she took Harris to taskon the debate stage over her record as a prosecutor – a clip that still circulates in rightwing media.Trump, who earlier laid wreaths during a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, was marking the third anniversary of a suicide bombing that killed 13 US service members during the withdrawal from Afghanistan. “The humiliation in Afghanistan set off the collapse of American credibility and respect all around the world,” he said in Detroit, seeking to blame Harris and Joe Biden for the deaths.In her own statement marking the anniversary of the Kabul airport attack, Harris said she mourns the 13 service members who were killed. “My prayers are with their families and loved ones,” she added. “My heart breaks for their pain and their loss.” More

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      Anti-Walz slogan website used to troll Trump supporters: ‘Let’s vote for adults’

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      If you type in NeverWalz.com in your browser, the page that appears probably doesn’t look like what you expected from a webpage donning a slogan against Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and the current vice-presidential candidate for the Democratic party.“Trump is a convicted felon. Let’s vote for adults,” the webpage reads. “Try being joyful instead of an asshole.”After just a few seconds on the webpage, users are automatically redirected to KamalaHarris.com, the official website for Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign.The slogan “Never Walz” is indeed anti-Walz, and was seen recently plastered on a booth set up by an group against the vice-presidential nominee, Action 4 Liberty, at the Minnesota state fair. The group was seen handing out fliers and selling merchandise that criticizes Walz.But, it appears that the group did not secure a website domain for the “Never Walz” slogan, leaving it available for someone else to buy and use.As of Monday, the website domain NeverWalz.com is being used to criticize former president Donald Trump and then quickly redirects viewers to the Harris campaign website.The website is being shared on social media by supporters of Walz and Harris.“They forgot to buy the domain,” one X user said posting the link. “Click link for a good laugh.”Action 4 Liberty did not immediately return a request for comment. More

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      Michigan’s Republican convention removes chair amid party tensions

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      A messy Michigan Republican party gathering this weekend to nominate candidates for office illustrated the diminished sway of two high-profile Michigan election deniers and highlighted longstanding divisions within the party.Matthew DePerno, who faces charges for allegedly assisting in a scheme to improperly access voting machines in the wake of the 2020 election, withdrew from the race for Michigan’s top court hours before the state party convention. In a statement, DePerno said that instead of running for state supreme court, he would “use my knowledge about how elections work to get Republicans elected”.DePerno, a rightwing attorney from Kalamazoo, Michigan, was a vocal proponent of Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election in Michigan after Trump lost in 2020 to Joe Biden, appearing on rightwing media to promote the claims of widespread fraud and helping fund Arizona’s sham election audit. DePerno ran for Michigan attorney general in 2022 but lost decisively to Dana Nessel – whose office has charged him for his role in allegedly tampering with voting machines.In 2023, he lost his bid to chair the state party to Kristina Karamo – an outspoken elections conspiracy theorist who was ousted from her role earlier this year amid accusations that she had mismanaged the party’s already dwindling finances.View image in fullscreenDuring the convention, Karamo faced a more dramatic setback of her own when she was escorted from the venue by police officers. Karamo reportedly entered with an all-access pass, which was revoked during the convention. Pete Hoekstra, the party chair, told the Detroit Free Press it had been granted “in error”.The Michigan Republican party has for years been beset with chaos and divisions caused by the influence of Christian nationalism, election conspiracies and extremism. When a faction within the party moved to oust Karamo earlier this year, the longstanding intra-party brawl came into national focus. This weekend’s convention proved that those divisions remain as present as ever.“Look at the convention. People yelling, booing – why?” said Karamo, flanked by her supporters, as local police and event security guided her out of the building. “Because of corruption in the party.”During the convention, Republicans nominated six fake electors from 2020 to serve as presidential electors this year. After DePerno dropped out, they chose Patrick O’Grady, a circuit court judge, as their nominee for the state supreme court. More

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      Donald Trump threatens to pull out of 10 September presidential debate

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      Donald Trump has expressed doubt that he will participate in a scheduled televised debate with Kamala Harris next month, hurling a trademark “fake news” slur at the network that had agreed to host it.The former president and Republican nominee threatened to pull out of the 10 September meeting with Harris, the vice-president and Democratic nominee for November’s election, in a post on his Truth Social network on Sunday night.Referring to an interview on ABC’s This Week earlier in the day with the host Jonathan Karl and the Republican Arkansas US senator Tom Cotton, Trump questioned the network’s fairness for the only debate that both presidential candidates had already agreed on.“I watched ABC FAKE NEWS this morning, both lightweight reporter Jonathan Carl’s(K?) ridiculous and biased interview of Tom Cotton (who was fantastic!), and their so-called Panel of Trump Haters, and I ask, why would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network?” Trump wrote with his usual penchant for erroneous upper case letters.He also alluded to his ongoing defamation lawsuit against the This Week host George Stephanopoulos and the ABC network over comments the anchor made in March stating Trump had been found “liable for rape” instead of sexual abuse in a case brought by the New York writer E Jean Carroll.It is not the first time that Trump, who trails Harris by seven points nationally in a new Fairleigh Dickinson University poll published on Saturday, has sowed doubt over his debate appearance.“Right now I say, why should I do a debate? I’m leading in the polls. And, everybody knows her, everybody knows me,” he told Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business Network earlier this month after Harris replaced Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.He stated he had pledged instead to take part in a 4 September debate on Fox News, to which the Harris campaign did not agree, saying he would see Harris there “or not at all”, before changing his mind again.Harris, meanwhile, seized on Trump’s wavering commitment before a lively crowd at a rally in Atlanta, Georgia, last month. “If you got something to say, say it to my face,” she said.Trump’s latest hesitation comes amid a reported impasse between the two presidential campaigns over the conditions of next month’s debate. Politico cited four sources on Monday claiming that negotiations had broken down over the turning off of the participants’ microphones when it was not their turn to speak.According to the report, the Harris campaign is demanding that the microphones be left “hot” at all times, in the apparent belief that the vice-president can make Trump lose his cool under questioning and utter something damaging or inappropriate.Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, has been pressing for them to be turned off.“We have told ABC and other networks seeking to host a possible October debate that we believe both candidates’ mics should be live throughout the full broadcast,” Brian Fallon, senior adviser for communications for the Harris campaign, told Politico in a statement.“Our understanding is that Trump’s handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don’t think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own. We suspect Trump’s team has not even told their boss about this dispute because it would be too embarrassing to admit they don’t think he can handle himself … without the benefit of a mute button.”On Monday, Trump appeared to undercut his campaign’s position by declaring he would prefer to have the microphones on.“I’d rather have it probably on, but the agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time. In that case, it was muted. I didn’t like it the last time, but it worked out fine,” he told reporters.Trump’s campaign had insisted Harris was reneging on terms agreed for the debate by the Biden campaign when it accepted the 10 September date – and another meeting on CNN in June that never took place.Conditions for those debates included the turning off of microphones between exchanges, as was traditional in debates during previous presidential campaigns.“Enough with the games,” Jason Miller, a Trump senior adviser, told Politico in a statement on Sunday.“We accepted the ABC debate under the exact same terms as the CNN debate. The Harris camp, after having already agreed to the CNN rules, asked for a seated debate, with notes, and opening statements. We said no changes to the agreed upon rules.”The Harris campaign disputed the accuracy of Miller’s statement, as well as his assertion that it was Harris seeking to withdraw from the debate – and not Trump.“This seems to be a pattern for the Harris campaign. They won’t allow Harris to do interviews, they won’t allow her to do press conferences, and now they want to give her a cheat-sheet for the debate. My guess is that they’re looking for a way to get out of any debate with President Trump,” he said.The dispute comes as the Trump campaign seeks ways to blunt significant momentum built by Harris since she became the Democratic nominee, including a surge in both polling and donations.On Monday, the Guardian reported growing fears among the former president’s senior staff that “palace intrigue” over its leadership could distract from the urgency of regaining a solid footing in the race with little more than 10 weeks until the 5 November polling day. More

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      ‘Desperate’: Billy Baldwin denounces ex-friend RFK Jr for endorsing Trump

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      The actor Billy Baldwin has dismissed Robert F Kennedy Jr as a former friend while accusing him of betraying his values – as well as selling his political soul – after the erstwhile independent presidential candidate suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump.The rebuke from the 61-year-old Baldwin – the younger brother of fellow actor Alec Baldwin – added to the wave of blowback against Kennedy for his support of the former president. Kennedy himself acknowledged his wife – the actor Cheryl Hines – was “very uncomfortable” with his backing Trump. And his brother Max Kennedy published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times imploring the public to ignore Robert F Kennedy Jr’s maneuvering.Baldwin, in a lengthy post on X, explained that he has known Kennedy for decades.“We were friends,” Baldwin wrote. “I loved his politics. His speeches inspired me. We were neighbors. Our kids were friends. We carpooled the kids to school for a few years.”But now the actor said he has “completely” disavowed and dissociated from Kennedy.In the statement, Baldwin criticized Kennedy’s actions as the “desperate move of a man who had presidential ambitions but saw the door rapidly closing on the opportunity for him to hold any political office”. Baldwin added that the entire run “was a Hail Mary” – a phrase often used to describe a pass thrown in desperation but with little chance of success in the game of American football.Kennedy on Friday announced that he was suspending his independent White House campaign and then publicly endorsed Trump at a political rally alongside the Republican nominee in Arizona.Kennedy said that he and Trump had met several times and that they were “aligned on many key issues” – despite his reportedly having called him “a terrible human being”, “probably a sociopath” and the “[worst] president ever”.But, as Max Kennedy wrote, Robert F Kennedy Jr had also offered the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, his endorsement in exchange for a position in her administration if she won – though he received no response and then successfully offered the same deal to Trump.Baldwin described Kennedy’s endorsement of Trump as “not only a betrayal of the values and traditions of the Kennedy family” but also an act of “political cowardice”. Kennedy’s father was the former US senator and attorney general Robert F Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 as he pursued the Democratic presidential nomination. His uncle was John F Kennedy, the Democratic president assassinated in 1963.“He has sold his political soul and desecrated the historic work and legacy of his father … and his uncle,” Baldwin said.Baldwin’s remarks echo the sentiments of five of Kennedy’s siblings, who in a joint statement recently said his endorsement of Trump betrayed their father’s family values.Kennedy on Sunday appeared on Fox News and addressed his siblings’ anger, saying that the family was “able to disagree with each other and still love each other”.Over the weekend, Kennedy’s campaign told CBS News that he had lost his Secret Service protection after suspending his campaign. That protection had been afforded to Kennedy after the failed 13 July assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania. More

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      All politicians change their minds – and have been flip-flopping on positions for hundreds of years

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      People change their opinions. As my husband says, “I always reserve the right to get smarter,” paraphrasing Konrad Adenauer, the former chancellor of Germany.

      But when politicians reverse course and change their opinions, political pundits, critics and others often call them out for lack of consistency, and might label them a flip-flopper, U-turner or backflipper.

      Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been criticized for changing his mind on on everything from immigration policy to abortion, depending on who he is talking to and when.

      Likewise, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has been accused of reversing her stances on private health insurance, fracking and other issues in order to win new voters.

      Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, has drastically changed his mind over the past few years, as well. Before Trump was elected president in 2016, Vance publicly called him an “idiot” and privately compared him to Adolf Hitler – before going on to accept Trump’s offer to run for office together eight years later.

      At the start of Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s political career in 2007, he received an endorsement from the National Rifle Association for his support of gun rights. But Walz had what he called a “reckoning” after the 2018 Parkland high school shooting in Florida. He went on to support and approve gun safety measures as Minnesota governor.

      Some voters demand that politicans’ beliefs should be stagnant, as if they were preserved in amber.

      The reality is, as much as people sometimes forget, politicians are humans, too. They have all the same strengths and flaws as the rest of us. When I teach a course on the American presidency every fall, I often point out that perspective can change depending on which side of the desk someone is sitting on in the president’s office.

      Hundreds of years of flip-flopping

      Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. president from 1801 through 1809, was a huge advocate for limited government when he ran for office in 1800. Jefferson and his anti-federalist allies called sitting president John Adams at one point a “royalist.” Jefferson accused people in the Federalist Party, who wanted a strong national government, of trying to set up a monarchy in the United States.

      Before Jefferson became president, he embraced the idea of a very small national government with restricted powers. He emphasized the importance of strong state power and a very limited national budget.

      However, once he was elected president, he was given the opportunity to buy 530 million acres in North America from France, in what we now call the Louisiana Purchase. This doubled the size of the U.S. by adding land from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains.

      Jefferson bought this land without input from Congress, demonstrating a stark reversal of his previous policy that de-emphasized the federal government.

      Jefferson was aware of this conundrum and, in a letter to American politician Levi Lincoln in 1803, wrote, “The less is said about any constitutional difficulty, the better: and that it will be desirable for Congress to do what is necessary in silence.”

      Jefferson knew that he was flip-flopping, but he also believed the Louisiana Purchase was in the country’s best interest.

      George H.W. Bush delivers his State of the Union address in Washington in 1990.
      Mark Reinstein/Corbis via Getty Images

      To tax or not to tax?

      Nearly two centuries later, George H.W. Bush ran for president in 1988. During the Republican National Convention that year, Bush wanted to draw a clear line between himself and Michael Dukakis, his Democratic opponent.

      Dukakis had said he would raise federal taxes as a last resort. And Bush wanted to shore up conservative support. During his acceptance speech, Bush uttered the now famous phrase, “Read my lips: no new taxes.”

      Unfortunately for Bush, the economic climate was not on his side. A slowing economy meant that, as president, Bush was forced to raise taxes – or else enact massive budget cuts that would be unacceptable to the Democrats controlling the House and Senate.

      Still, some Republicans felt betrayed by Bush’s reversal.

      Bush’s flip-flop on taxes is considered a large contributing factor to his loss in 1992 when he ran for reelection.

      Donald Trump plays golf at a resort in Glasgow, Scotland, in July 2018.
      Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images

      I did, before I didn’t

      The term “flip-flopping” reached new heights of popularity during the 2004 presidential election. Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush – son of George H.W. Bush – and others pegged the Democratic rival, John Kerry, as a flip-flopper to help discredit him.

      “You get a little dizzy if you listen to John Kerry explain his recent position on any particular issue at the time,” said Jeb Bush, brother of George W. Bush, in 2004. “There really is a tale of two Kerrys.”

      Bush and other Republicans used the term to paint Kerry as a person who shifted positions with the wind for political gain. In March 2004, Kerry memorably said that,, with respect to his Senate votes on additional spending on the military, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”

      Kerry was attempting to explain that he voted for an earlier, Democratic-proposed version of a military appropriations bill that would have given money to U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, paid for by reducing tax cuts. But this measure was defeated, and so Kerry voted against a different, final version of the bill to demonstrate his opposition to then-president George W. Bush’s Iraq policy.

      This convoluted phrase became the defining moment of Kerry’s campaign, which ended in defeat.

      Flip-flopping today

      Trump has flip-flopped on issues, from the innocuous to the important, throughout his political career and it has done little to erode support from his most ardent followers.

      After years of declaring that mail-in ballots are crooked and fraudulent, Trump now embraces them as an electoral strategy in 2024. Trump also changed his political party affiliation multiple times, and has been a Republican, independent and Democrat before switching back to being a Republican a few years before his 2016 campaign.

      When Trump was running for president, he heavily criticized Barack Obama for playing golf as president. Obama ultimately played about 105 rounds of golf in his first term. Trump went to a golf club 285 times in the same period and played golf at least 142 times.

      And while in 2019 Harris, then running for president, said that she would support a ban on fracking, she now opposes doing so.

      She also then supported a broad government-run health insurance program and proposed having “Medicare for all.” Harris’ campaign has said in 2024 that she will not push for this kind of government health insurance.

      Kamala Harris speaks to the media after a Democratic primary debate in June 2019 in Miami.
      Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

      A political strategy

      Flip-flopping is an easy slur to hurl at an opponent.

      This can be a brilliant way to try to throw someone on the defensive while appearing to have clean hands yourself.

      People evolve. Information changes. Hard choices have to be made for the good of the country. I think that we should all reserve the right to get smarter and, hopefully, better. More

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      Are Trump’s campaign rallies energizing his base – or sowing doubt?

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      As Donald Trump emerged to a thunderous roar of approval in the heart of Pennsylvania’s Rust belt, he was back in his comfort zone among the people who once put him in power.But by the time he stepped off the stage nearly two hours later, even some of the former US president’s supporters were wondering whether his rallies are doing his re-election campaign more harm than good.Trump was on his seventh visit to Luzerne county since he first ran for president in 2016. From the stage of an indoor arena in Wilkes-Barre earlier this month, the former president looked out on thousands of the kind of blue-collar voters who helped put him into the White House by flipping the north-eastern Pennsylvania county after it twice voted for Barack Obama.Trump was back to fire them up once more as he again counts on Luzerne to help push him over the line in a swing state he almost certainly has to win if he is to be a two-term president. But much has changed in Luzerne since he first ran eight years ago.The local Republican party has been torn apart by infighting amid accusations of racism and “sledgehammer politics” over how to get Trump re-elected. Meanwhile, support for Democratic candidates in local and state elections has been steadily rising even as its own supporters describe the local party as a “a complete mess” and “useless”.As the election gets off the ground, political strategists on both sides say that the outcome in Luzerne county and much of the rest of north-eastern Pennsylvania is likely to be decided by turnout in a region where a lower proportion of people vote and so there is greater scope to boost support.Local Republican leaders saw the rally as an opportunity for Trump to take the initiative after evidently being thrown by suddenly facing Kamala Harris after months of leading Joe Biden in opinion polls. Harris has not only erased Trump’s lead in Pennsylvania, but recent polls put her three or more points ahead.Frank Scavo, a businessman and ardent Trump supporter who was part of a coup that took hold of the county Republican party earlier this year, was clear before the rally about what he wanted to hear from Trump.“These rallies fire up the base to go out there and knock on doors. His base will walk on fire for him, but plenty of other Republicans don’t vote. Are they demoralised? Do they think their vote doesn’t count? Most of it is apathy. But if we don’t get people out there knocking on doors, Trump’s not going to win Luzerne county,” he said.“But to do that, Trump’s got to focus on the message and not get distracted by personal attacks. Trump’s a good communicator. He’s got the issues, commonsense issues, most of them economic, not social. He should leave the attacks on Kamala to others, at least until the debate.”That’s not how things worked out.Trump repeatedly broke away from the prepared speech about economics to make rambling claims that Harris was both a fascist and a communist, to attack her laugh as that of “a crazy person” and a “lunatic”, and to claim he was more beautiful than the vice-president. He also spent time debating aloud with himself how to pronounce the name of the CNN anchor Dana Bash.By the time he stopped speaking 100 minutes later, a large number of the arena’s 8,000 seats had emptied.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenA hard core of local supporters, some wearing T-shirts proclaiming “I’m voting for a convicted felon”, remained alongside traveling groupies who follow Trump from rally to rally. But in rural cities such as Wilkes-Barre, there is also a contingent who go along to political rallies for the entertainment value, to see a former president on a Saturday afternoon when there is not much else going on, or to help weigh up how to vote. Some of them were not impressed.“He reminded me why I’m not going to vote for him this time,” said Jenny, a local businesswoman who did not want to give her full name because she didn’t want to alienate customers.“I voted for him in 2016 and had a Trump flag in the front yard. I voted for him again in 2020 but didn’t put the flag out that time. I’ve been thinking of voting for him again because Biden’s been so bad for the economy and Kamala won’t be any better. But after listening to that, I’m actually afraid of Trump being president again. I don’t know what he was talking about half the time. Perhaps he was always like that but he seems worse, more unstable.”The county Republican party split earlier this year over how to win back voters like Jenny and get others to the polls. More than half the leadership quit after a “grassroots” Trump-aligned faction set up a breakaway organisation, Luzerne County Republicans.The county chair, PJ Pribula, resigned in March along with other officials after losing the fight. In his resignation letter, Pribula accused the insurgent group of “sledgehammer politics and intolerance”.“For two years, myself and my executive board have spent 90% of our time and resources fighting the 10% because their twisted beliefs run contrary to what our Republican Party stands for,” he wrote.“They realize that if they are deceitful enough, loud enough, obnoxious enough and demanding enough, they will find a path to the inside. Over the past few weeks, I have seen this group and their candidates making in-roads I never would have believed possible and in seeing that, I realize that it is my time to go.”Pribula told the Scranton Times-Tribune that the new leadership was pushing a hate-filled agenda.“They’d put things on their sites being against gays, lesbians, African Americans, anybody who didn’t fit their cookie-cutter mold they are against and that’s not how I am and that’s not how the Republican party is,” he said.Scavo served as the treasurer of the insurgent group shortly after his release from 60 days in prison for illegally entering the Capitol building during the 6 January 2021 riot. He said he organised a trip of about 200 people to the Trump rally in Washington that day because he objected to the conduct of the vote count in Pennsylvania.In 2019, Scavo expressed regret for the wording of a series of anti-Muslim comments on social media, as well as falsely claiming Barack Obama is Muslim, when he unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the state legislature. Shortly afterwards, he was voted out as chair of a local school board.Scavo denies that the new Republican party leadership in Luzerne county is pushing a racist agenda. He said the ousted chair and his staff were going to cost Trump the election because they were elitist and unwilling to listen to voters.“The previous leadership didn’t want to have any resistance or turbulence so they didn’t engage with the grassroots,” he said.“There’s a lot of people that don’t vote, so our job is to find them and then say it’s time to vote. Simple. They didn’t seem to understand that.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRepublican twitchiness about the election in Luzerne county is in part driven by the success of Democratic activists in pulling back support that collapsed after Obama left office. However, Ed Mitchell, a veteran Democratic strategist in Wilkes-Barre who previously worked for one of Pennsylvania’s members of Congress, said little of that is down to the Democratic party itself.“I have a personal philosophy as a consultant that the parties don’t really matter anymore. At the national level, they can raise enormous amounts of money, but our state party isn’t very effective here in Pennsylvania and our local Democratic party in the county is a complete mess. They’re useless,” he said.Instead, Trump’s opponents in Luzerne county drew lessons from his defeat of Hillary Clinton and decided the Democratic party was a part of the problem.View image in fullscreenAlisha Hoffman-Mirilovich volunteered for Clinton in Pennsylvania but became frustrated with how Democratic campaign staff disdained local advice on the issues that mattered in Luzerne county.“It was mostly outside organisers telling locals what to do and not necessarily listening. I myself stopped volunteering because of the way that I was treated and some things that were happening at the time,” she said.“They all packed up and left within the week after the election. But this is my home and I decided we needed to do something.”Hoffman-Mirilovich launched Action Together NEPA, a non-partisan social welfare organisation permitted to campaign on issues but not directly in support of individual political candidates, to work on increasing voter turnout.The group did what the local Democratic party failed to do and banged on thousands of doors to talk policy not personalities.“Because of Trump, we now have something where if you just even mention Republican or Democrat it’s just very divisive in communities, which is much different when you are from a non-partisan organisation that’s issues-led. I have talked to candidates who go to knock on doors and get thrown off of porches even though they’re from the community. They are told to go,” she said.“But people are at least willing to talk to us and we find out what’s important to them, not what the party thinks is important. The largest issue in Luzerne county is corruption. It comes up over and over again.”Hoffman-Mirilovich traces that back to the “kids for cash” scandal in which two Luzerne county judges, elected to the positions as Democrats, sentenced hundreds of children to prison terms for petty offences in return for millions of dollars in bribes from the private company incarcerating them. Some of the children were as young as eight years old and sentenced for offences such as jaywalking and smoking on school premises.Other corruption scandals since then have kept the issue alive. Hoffman-Mirilovich said that has fed into a distrust of the system that extends from suspicion about corporate greed driving inflation to the loading of the US supreme court with conservatives to strip away democratic protections and the constitutional right to an abortion.The Democratic share of the vote in Luzerne county has risen with each election since Trump’s 2016 victory, including the race for Pennsylvania’s governor two years later and a seat in the US Senate. Biden narrowed the gap with Trump in 2020 and then the Democratic candidate, Josh Shapiro, won the county in his election for governor in 2022.Democrats have also made inroads into the county government in which Republicans previously held all but one of the 11 commissioner seats. At the last election, the Democrats picked up four seats.Mitchell credits Action Together, which said it knocked on 36,000 doors in Luzerne county to get Shapiro elected, and other activists, more than the local Democratic party.Some Republicans say, more in hope than expectation, that Biden quitting the presidential race will cost the Democrats voters who were loyal to the president because he makes much of having spent part of his childhood in Scranton, a city in the neighbouring county.But Hoffman-Mirilovich sees the opposite effect, saying Harris has opened up new possibilities. She said voter turnout in Wilkes-Barre is lower than in the rest of the county in part because it has a younger demographic that is less likely to vote.“We are finding talking to some of these voters that they are now energised with Kamala as the top of the ticket. They are excited about voting for the first time,” she said.“Some people, if not most of them, didn’t want to see the same matchup from 2020.”Scavo is not unaware of the success of the get-out-the-vote effort on behalf of Democrats and has been working to match it. The Republicans have driven up party registrations over the past couple of years to nearly match those of the Democrats.But Scavo said Trump then has to get those voters to turn out on election day. He agrees with Hoffman-Mirilovich that it will come down to turnout and thinks Trump needs to do more to make sure his supporters vote.“My father keeps saying: ‘If I vote for Trump, what’s Trump going to do?’ And I’m thinking, if you’re asking me that, then Trump isn’t getting the job done because you should know what he’s going to do on day one,” he said.“So how does Trump win? He stops with the personal narratives of ‘I was prosecuted, persecuted, tried’, and all the personal stuff against Kamala. He needs to start talking to the person that’s disengaged by saying: ‘We’re going to lower your cereal, egg and meat prices. We’re going to lower your energy cost, your gas. We’re going to re-establish the border and have mass deportations.’ That’s the message he’s got to focus on, and then people will come out and vote.” More