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      RFK Jr voters on ‘frustrating’ suspension of campaign: ‘He’s playing politics’

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr, the arguable black sheep of one of America’s biggest families in politics, has suspended his campaign for president and endorsed Donald Trump – and it has rocked some of his supporters.On Facebook, where Kennedy groups have amassed thousands of members across the country, some expressed bitter disappointment. In their view, Kennedy was a way to buck, and even break, the two-party system in the US – and while the end of his campaign hurt, backing one of the major party candidates was seen as far worse.Just before his formal announcement, Jenn Morgan said that if Kennedy “drops out and endorses Trump, then I will not be voting at all”. using an emoji with its tongue out on her post, meant to display the emotion “feeling disgusted”.“If he becomes part of the cabinet with him, that’s great and I hope he’s able to do good things but he would not have any integrity in my eyes,” she wrote.“He gave into the pressure just like they all do. If he drops out of the race, he has let us down about everything he said he stands for and what he said he was going to do for us. He will be no different than the rest of the politicians.”In an interview, Ray Orta, a 23-year navy veteran from the Bronx, New York, who has lived in Nevada for 28 years, said he didn’t feel “betrayed” by Kennedy but he did feel “frustrated”.In his view, the only way for this decision to make sense to his supporters, would be for Trump to name Kennedy as his attorney general, or a similar major role in his cabinet should he win in November.“He has to get Trump to give [him] something or else it’s all talk, talk, talk – Kennedy goes to the abyss, and then we’re back to the two-party system,” he said.Kennedy’s stance on Trump – and earlier in the race, Joe Biden – has previously been a bit all over the place. In a March episode of the New York Times podcast The Run Up, the independent said the Covid pandemic represented a break with the Democratic party. He cited the lockdowns as being the “driver” behind censoring people like him who dissent from government policies. Asked if he was worried about being a spoiler in the election, helping either Biden or Trump win, he responded: “I have a fear of both of them winning the election.”Still, his endorsement of Trump is not wholly surprising when one remembers that a video of Kennedy speaking to the former president about working together emerged just last month after Trump’s assassination attempt.In his speech on Friday, Kennedy thanked his supporters, attacked Democrats, and embraced Trump, but avoided the crux of why his supporters had been drawn to him in the first place: an alternative to the two-party system.“What’s this about??? Did you actually endorse this buffoon?” wrote Marcia Horn Kayhanfar in a top Kennedy Facebook group. “What a let down.”“I thought he was wanting to heal the divide, not make it deeper,” added Joey Martin, in the group “Robert F Kennedy Jr. America’s Best Hope”, which has 22,000 members. “I thought he wanted to give those who don’t want to vote out of fear an option. Is he now being divisive and saying that we should vote against what we fear? Did he give up on the dream and hope?”Some supporters were moved by Kennedy’s calls to back Trump, but others rejected the endorsement from a candidate they had backed for months.Told that not voting would be a vote for Harris, Marianne Moad responded: “No, actually it will be a vote for myself and all women.“[Trump] is responsible for the rights being suppressed from 50% of the population. I don’t want my daughter or granddaughters to die because they can’t terminate a bad pregnancy. It is happening already,” she wrote, sharing a link to a BBC article on Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who almost died after being denied an abortion.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNow, as Kennedy suspends his campaign and lines up behind Trump just one day after Kamala Harris’s successful convention, attention turns to how his exit could affect the race.Pew Research Center polling from July – when Biden was still in the race – shows that Harris’s entry halved Kennedy’s support, according to its new August poll, while a Washington Post analysis suggests more of what’s left of Kennedy’s support could tilt towards Trump.But a Washington Post poll with ABC News and Ipsos from this past weekend found that Harris had a three-point edge against Trump with Kennedy in the race, and a four-point lead ahead of just Trump. That, the poll found, is because Kennedy supporters are more likely to view Harris favorably than Trump.After initial rumors of Kennedy’s withdrawal broke in the Facebook group Robert F Kennedy Jr. for President 2024, Alex Arey, 35, wrote to its 15,000 members: “I feel betrayed. Yeah, I despise the Dems, but not enough to vote Trump.”Arey, a special education teacher in Shenandoah county, Virginia, said he was a Kennedy true believer, having listened to about 100 hours of his interviews over the years. He has voted Democratic in the past, but chose to vote for the Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen in 2020. He called a Trump endorsement by Kennedy “disappointing”, because it represents him “just falling into the two-party duopoly”.“‘Declare your independence’ was one of his slogans, but now he’s joining up with the lesser of two evils, that’s something you don’t like to see,” he said. “He’s just playing politics.”Gabriela Morbitzer, 34, a retail manager from Tennessee, said she was disengaged during the 2020 election and not proud of it, but found both options poor and a “leadership gap” for president. After a friend told her to give a two-hour podcast with Kennedy a “real listen”, she was onboard believing he listened to people and filled that gap.Now, she said she feels “immediate disappointment” because Trump has “never been” a viable candidate.“What I don’t appreciate is I feel Donald Trump brings out the worst in us, the collective us,” she said. “He’s very divisive and feeds into that desire for people to behave in ways that are absolutely ridiculous.” More

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      Harris’s convention speech sparks live rant from outraged Trump

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      Kamala Harris’s Democratic national convention speech provoked a torrent of outrage from Donald Trump as the former US president fired off a volley of ripostes, rebuttals and angry calls to TV stations.Trump posted 48 times on his Truth Social network during Harris’s 37-minute presidential acceptance speech, which was nearly an hour shorter than his own effort at the Republican convention last month.Immediately afterwards, he called Fox News to deliver a rambling, live on-air tirade that was eventually cut off by the network’s hosts.“Where’s Hunter,” Trump posted in all-capitals at the beginning of the speech in reference to Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, whose business affairs and legal troubles were a favourite target of Republicans before the president withdrew from the race last month.As Harris paid tribute to those who nominated her, Trump wrote: “Too many thank yous too rapidly said. What’s going on with her?”Later, as the vice-president went on the offensive against her opponent, Trump raised one of his favourite topics – himself. “Is she talking about me?” he wrote, again in block capitals.Mostly, his focus was on Harris, repeatedly calling her a “Marxist” and writing: “Why doesn’t she do something about the things she complains about.”“There will be no future under Comrade Kamala Harris, because she will take us into a Nuclear World War III,” he wrote. “She will never be respected by the Tyrants of the World!”After Harris accused him of pressuring congressional Republicans to kill a bipartisan bill that would have cracked down on migrants at the southern border, Trump posted one of his longest screeds of the night.“The Border Bill is one of the worst ever written, would have allowed millions of people into our Country, and it’s only a political ploy by her!,” he wrote. “It legalizes Illegal Immigration, and is a TOTAL DISASTER, WEAK AND INEFFECTIVE!”At other times, his concerns seemed trite, such as when he targeted Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee who has been given the moniker “Coach Walz” over his high school football coaching activities. “Walz was an assistant coach, not a coach,” Trump wrote.He also hit back angrily when Harris linked him to Project 2025, a far-right governing manifesto and blueprint for the next Republican presidency drawn up by some of Trump’s closest supporters and former officials, by claiming he had “absolutely nothing to do with” it, despite giving the keynote address to the annual conference of the group who created it.Trump’s angry and often incoherent responses prompted the Washington Post commentator Dan Balz to observe that Harris’s rise to the top of the Democratic ticket in place of Joe Biden had left Trump “in a box” and unsure what to do after Harris outperformed him in the category about which he cares most – ratings.“Harris has countered him, even bested him, at his own game,” Balz wrote. “Her crowds now match or exceed his. Her followers now are as enthusiastic as his … her convention’s ratings were better than his … He says he misses Biden, and it shows.”Harris’s speech largely attracted positive reaction, even from some conservative corners. Scott Jennings, a former White House aide to George W Bush, told CNN her speech displayed presidential “plausibility”.“She looks young, she looks coherent … so she’s the anti-Biden,” he said. “The Republican pushback … is that some of this is just substance-less patent, that there’s really no specificity in it, and that they ultimately think they are going to be able to fire her as the incumbent.“The question we are going to be asking over the next couple of months is how far did she run away from Joe Biden to prevent the Republicans from portraying her as the incumbent? People are so upset with Biden-Harris on the economy, [that] if the Republicans tie her to it, all of the other stuff falls away.”Even some of Trump’s supporters on the Maga right grudgingly conceded that Harris’s convention messaging represented a dire threat to his prospects.In a video posted on X, the conservative commentator and former Fox News and Newsmax host Eric Bolling, said the Harris campaign was dominating the media landscape and blamed Trump for ceding the initiative while failing to come up with new ideas.“We’re losing, losing the race,” he said in a tone of clear frustration. “The enthusiasm level on the left right now is overwhelming … They’re trying to redefine the Democrat party. They’re trying to say that the Democrats are the patriots, the party that’s worried about the country.“They’re wearing camo hats with Kamala Harris’s name on it. Camouflage – that’s ours! She was flanked in her speech last night with two American flags. There were no Pride flags there. They’re redefining it, they’re going after our independent voters. What’s going on with Fox News, by the way? … It’s Democrat, Democrat, Democrat … The media are kicking our ass, on the right.”But with Republicans such as the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham urging Trump to focus on policy rather than attack Harris personally,Trump’s reaction to her speech confirms the trouble he has in maintaining discipline on the campaign trail. During his call with Fox News he became irked by the presenter Martha MacCallum’s suggestion that Harris was having success in the polls, particularly with certain voting groups.“She’s not having success; I’m having success,” he said. “I’m doing great with the Hispanic voters, doing great with Black men, I’m doing great with women.“It’s only in your eyes that they have that, Martha. We are doing very well.”Eventually he was cut off in mid-sentence by MacCallum’s co-host, Bret Baier, who told him: “We appreciate that live feedback.” More

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      RFK Jr’s wildest campaign moments – from brain worms to barbecue dogs

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      The decision by Robert F Kennedy Jr to suspend his presidential campaign brings to an end one of the most bizarre campaigns of recent times.Kennedy, who introduced the general public to the concept of “leaky brain” and the idea that chemicals in water were making children transgender, initially ran for the Democratic nomination but launched an independent campaign in October 2023.His efforts failed to gain traction but left the public with some unusual, and some unsavory, memories.1. The bear cubIn early August, Kennedy had a problem. The New Yorker magazine had got hold of a story about his exploits with a dead bear cub 10 years earlier. Kennedy decided to get ahead of the New Yorker’s scoop, and tell the story himself in a video posted on Twitter.And what a story it was. It emerged that Kennedy had found a dead bear cub on the side of the road, loaded it in the back of his car, taken a photo with the corpse, left to do some falconing, had a steak dinner, then staged the decomposing bear’s death to look like a bicycle hit-and-run incident in a local park before heading to the airport.2. The sexual assault allegationsEliza Cooney, who worked for Kennedy and his then wife as a live-in nanny at the family’s home in Mount Kisco, New York, told Vanity Fair in July that Kennedy sexually assaulted her at the home in 1998. Cooney alleged that Kennedy touched her leg at a business meeting and later appeared shirtless in her bedroom before asking her to rub lotion on his back.A few months later, Kennedy “began groping” Cooney in the kitchen, Vanity Fair reported. Kennedy’s response was hardly an apology. Asked about the sexual assault allegation, Kennedy described the Vanity Fair article as “a lot of garbage”, before adding: “I am not a church boy.” Kennedy later said that he had texted Cooney to apologize.3. The brain wormIt emerged in April that Kennedy believed part of his brain had been eaten by a worm. The New York Times reported that Kennedy had made the claim during a deposition for his divorce in 2012. In the deposition Kennedy told lawyers: “I have cognitive problems, clearly. I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”Kennedy underwent brain scans of his head and subsequently discovered that the health issue “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died”.4. The dogAnother animal-related controversy. In July, Vanity Fair reported that in 2023 Kennedy sent a photograph of him “with the barbecued remains of what he suggested to the friend was a dog”. The picture showed an animal carcass, which had apparently been cooked on a spit. Kennedy said the carcass in the picture was a goat.The friend who received the text told Vanity Fair that Kennedy “sent me the picture with a recommendation to visit the best dog restaurant in Seoul, so he was certainly representing that this was a dog and not a goat. In any case, it’s grotesque.”5. The dubious claimsIn 2023, while still running as a Democrat, Kennedy appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast. There, Kennedy announced that wifi radiation caused something called “leaky brain”, which in turn causes cancer. Politifact spoke to scientific experts who disagreed, one of whom said there was no “clear evidence” for Kennedy’s claims.Another claim from Kennedy, in June 2023, that chemicals in drinking water were causing children to become transgender, appears to come from a study which showed certain chemicals could cause some male frogs to become female. CNN’s KFile spoke to an expert who pointed out that sex in frogs is based on environmental factors, including temperature, whereas the sex of humans is not. More

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      The Guardian view on Kamala Harris’s speech: the Democrats have liftoff | Editorial

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      Little more than a month ago, what the Democratic party has achieved in Chicago this week would have seemed unthinkable. Yet, in a few short weeks, the party has dumped a stumbling Joe Biden as its nominee, seamlessly installed Kamala Harris as his unchallenged replacement, acclaimed Tim Walz as her running mate, reinvigorated its campaign and its finances, and made itself competitive against Donald Trump again. If that was not enough, Ms Harris’s acceptance speech on Thursday topped off a convention week that at times brimmed with commitment and enthusiasm.It all adds up to a textbook political transformation. It has had many in the party pinching themselves in disbelief. Though they all left it dangerously late, those who made this happen deserve the gratitude of millions, and not just in the US. The campaign has now achieved as powerful a liftoff as could have been hoped in the circumstances. Yet this is only the start. There is still an election to win, an election that will shape America and the world. The feelgood mood in Chicago will turn to ashes if Mr Trump is elected.Ms Harris had two particular tasks this week. The easier one, as it has turned out, was to unite the party and send it out into the campaign in an energised and winning mood. This was never really in doubt during the week, although it came at the price of a ruthless marginalisation of the party’s most pro‑Palestinian supporters. The harder task was for the vice‑president to use her primetime speech to demonstrate a personal evolution into someone whom Americans can see and hear as a potential president and commander in chief.She succeeded in this too, and with something to spare. There were obvious nerves at times, a useful reminder of the vertiginous remaking of her life that has taken place so suddenly, and which may make her the most powerful woman on the planet in a few months’ time. Nevertheless, by opting for seriousness, rather than rhetoric or knockabout, Ms Harris showed that she measures up to what matters most about the presidency. It also established one of many contrasts with Mr Trump – “an unserious man”, she called him.She described herself as realistic and practical, and she made a practical speech, not a dazzler. She focused on working- and middle-class voters, but without extolling trade unions, as Mr Biden would have done. She ticked boxes – the cost of living, housing, foreign policy (including Palestinian statehood) among them – rather than trying to touch the oratorical stars. Though she reflected on her own life story and her “unlikely journeys”, Ms Harris did not major on issues of identity. In its most powerful section the speech focused on the Republican threat to women’s reproductive rights. But the overriding tone was inclusive and unifying, another dramatic contrast with Mr Trump.Now, though, the Democrats must put the balloons and the Kamala merchandise aside, and kick on. Ms Harris must kick on too. This is her party now, not Mr Biden’s, the Obamas’ or the Clintons’. There has been an uptick in the polls, and the convention may generate another. The Democrats have had an often spectacular week. But there are another 10 weeks in the campaign to go, they face a brutal, unprincipled foe, and things could get tougher. So far, so good. But this is a very tight presidential contest indeed, and it is nowhere near over yet. More

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      Kamala Harris and her fellow Democrats used ancient Greek rhetorical tricks to keep their audiences spellbound

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      The Democratic Party has had a good week. I’ll start that again – the Democratic Party has had an amazingly good week.

      Not so long ago, the Democrats seemed down, if not actually out. Now, they’re not merely pulling ahead in the polls – they seem to have recaptured that vital but elusive thing: hope.

      Those inside the hall in Chicago for the Democratic National Convention were treated to a series of impressive and moving speeches from, among others, Barack and Michelle Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton, Tim Walz and – yes – Joe Biden. The man so recently written off by many as a doddering geriatric was the star on the first night, as he passed on the flame to his vice-president, Kamala Harris.

      The secret to these rhetorical triumphs lies in three words with origins in ancient Greece: ethos, pathos and logos. The meanings are simple but crucial to successful oratory – as the famed Greek philosopher Aristotle first pointed out in The Art Of Rhetoric.

      As deployed by Aristotle, ethos refers to character – both the moral character of the speaker and, as we develop the idea further, the aspersions cast on the character of his or her opponent.

      We saw this in the homely presentation of vice-presidential candidate “Coach” Walz, who presented himself as a father, a neighbour, and the giver of pre-match pep talks. And we saw it in Michelle Obama’s attacks on Donald Trump, whom she portrayed as a purveyor of misogynistic, racist lies. She argued that Trump’s narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard-working, highly educated, successful people who happen to be black. She at once exposed Trump’s character while building up her and her husband’s success – without appearing too boastful.

      Pathos signifies emotion – anything that makes your audience feel good about themselves or generates negative emotions about people outside the group. Pete Buttigieg, the transport secretary, demonstrated mastery of this technique when he attacked Trump’s deputy, J.D. Vance, for suggesting that political leaders without children (such as Harris) lack a physical stake in the country’s future.

      Buttigieg, a former naval officer, pointed out that when he deployed to Afghanistan, he didn’t have kids. “Some of the men and women who went outside the wire with me did not have kids,” he continued, “but let me tell you, our commitment to the future of this country was nothing if not physical.”

      This was a powerful way of generating feelings of patriotism, and linking them to personal sacrifice.

      Last but not least is logos, which signifies reason. This doesn’t necessarily mean arguments that are well-founded in logic, but rather an appeal to a sense of fact-based argumentation. Here, Bill Clinton won the prize, showing (as he has so often done before) that figures and statistics don’t have to be dry.

      Bill Clinton addresses the Democratic National Convention, August 21 2024.

      Quoting US employment numbers, Clinton quipped that he had to check them three times. Since the end of the cold war in 1989, he said, the US has created about 51 million new jobs: “Even I couldn’t believe it. What’s the score? Democrats: 50, Republicans: one.”

      This statistic is indeed correct – even if it would have benefitted from more context to explain what at first sight look like improbable numbers.

      American dream

      In all, it’s been a series of remarkable performances – and I haven’t even mentioned Oprah Winfrey, Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, or the presidential nominee herself.

      Presenting herself as “no stranger to unlikely journeys”, Harris said her path from being the daughter of immigrant students to becoming vice-president was a tale that “could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth”. It was a classic example of linking plucky underdog personal storytelling to the broader narrative of American exceptionalism.

      Kamala Harris addresses the Democratic National Convention, August 22 2024.

      Collectively, the convention speakers, while making it look effortless, succeeded in achieving a very difficult balance – that is, the balance between hope and fear.

      For a long time, Democrats have, with justification, focused on the threat that Trump poses to the future of democracy. Yet, as the experience of the Remain side in the 2016 Brexit referendum showed, a rational case highlighting the dangers posed by the other side is not in itself enough to mobilise popular enthusiasm. It has to be matched with optimism and a credible-sounding plan to build a better future for the country.

      Democrats haven’t given up on warning about Trump, but they are doing this more effectively than before, by labelling him as “weird”. At the same time, they are offering a positive message of progress, as well as appearing energised and, frankly, a lot more fun to be with than the increasingly dark-seeming GOP.

      However, it shouldn’t be imagined that the political party’s fortunes can be transformed merely by skilful manipulation of some classical rhetorical terms. The Democrats wouldn’t be in their current happy situation were it not for Biden’s bold, if belated, decision not to run for a second term.

      So, if Harris wins in November, she may have reason to credit another ancient Greek concept: kairos. This is the thing that every politician wants to arrive for them, and then to exploit – it means “the opportune moment”. More

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      Harris wants to bring ‘joy, joy, joy’ to Americans. What about Palestinians? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Muslim Women for Harris is disbandingGot any spare brooms to hand? I think the folk at the Democratic national convention may need a few extra because they’ve been very busy this week trying to sweep the carnage in Gaza under the rug.Hope and joy have been the big themes of the convention. On Wednesday, Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, told the crowd that working to get Kamala Harris elected would mean “joy, joy, joy comes in the morning”. It is wonderful to see all this exuberance, all this optimism for a brighter future. But it is also impossible not to contrast the revelry in Chicago with the Biden administration-sponsored suffering coming out of Gaza.Well, it’s impossible for some of us, anyway. For plenty of delegates at the convention, the suffering of Palestinians, the harrowing images on social media of charred babies and toddlers in Gaza whose heads have been caved in from US-manufactured bombs, seem to be nothing more than an annoying distraction. Pro-Palestinian protesters at the convention haven’t just been met with stony faces, they’ve been met with jeers and violence. One delegate inside the convention was caught on camera repeatedly hitting a Muslim woman in the head with a “We Love Joe” sign. The woman’s crime was that she had peacefully unfurled a banner saying “Stop Arming Israel”. It’s not clear who the man assaulting this woman was but one imagines he will not face any consequences.To be fair, Gaza hasn’t been completely ignored. On Monday, there was a panel centered on Palestinian human rights, in which Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric doctor who treated patients in Gaza, talked about the horrors she had witnessed. But the panel, while important, wasn’t on the main stage. It wasn’t given star billing like the parents of the Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who gave an emotional speech on Wednesday. It felt a lot like pro-Palestinian activists had just been tossed a few crumbs.For a brief moment, it did seem like a Palestinian might get a proper chance to speak. The Uncommitted National Movement, which launched an anti-war protest vote during the primaries, had been urging convention officials to include two Palestinian American speakers on the convention’s main stage. “We are learning that Israeli hostages’ families will be speaking from the main stage. We strongly support that decision and also strongly hope that we will also be hearing from Palestinians who’ve endured the largest civilian death toll since 1948,” the movement’s statement released on Tuesday read.By Wednesday evening, however, it seemed clear that the convention had rejected these requests. In response, a group of uncommitted delegates staged a sit-in in front of Chicago’s United Center. Ilhan Omar joined the demonstration, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called in via FaceTime.In light of the convention’s refusal to have a Palestinian American speaker, the group Muslim Women for Harris made the decision to disband and withdraw support for Harris. “The family of the Israeli hostage that was on the stage tonight, has shown more empathy towards Palestinian Americans and Palestinians, than our candidate or the DNC has,” Muslim Women for Harris’s statement read.For those of us who have been cautiously optimistic that Harris might break from Joe Biden’s disastrous policy of unconditional support for Israel, this week has been bitterly disappointing. Whoever wins this election, it seems clear joy, joy, joy will not be coming to Gaza anytime soon. Just more bombs, bombs, bombs.Dismiss ‘grannies’ as frail old biddies at your perilWhether it’s “Nans against Nazis” protesting in Liverpool or the Raging Nannies getting arrested at US army recruitment centers, older women are some of the toughest activists out there, writes Sally Feldman.Woman, 75, uses gardening tools to fill in potholes outside home in Scottish villageArmed with a bucket and spade, Jenny Paterson undertook the resurfacing work against her doctor’s orders. She’d had surgery and wasn’t supposed to lift things but said: “I’m fine and I’m not a person to sit around and do nothing anyway.” Which has given me some inspiration to pick up a rake and go tackle the raggedy roads of Philadelphia.The late Queen Elizabeth II thought Donald Trump was ‘very rude’Apparently, she also “believed Trump ‘must have some sort of arrangement’ with his wife, Melania, or else why would she have remained married to him?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHow Tanya Smith stole $40m, evaded the FBI and broke out of prisonThe Guardian has a fascinating profile of Smith that touches on how the FBI couldn’t catch her for so long because they didn’t think a Black woman was capable of orchestrating her crimes. In Smith’s memoir, she recounts how one officer told her that “neeee-grroes murder, steal and rob, but they don’t have the brains to commit sophisticated crimes like this”.A clueless Alicia Silverstone eats poisonous fruit off a bushIf you’re wandering the streets of London and see a bush in someone’s front garden with mysterious fruit on it, should you a) admire it and move on? Or b) reach through the fence and film a TikTok of yourself munching the lil street snack while asking whether anyone knows what the heck it is? This week, Silverstone chose option b. The woman thinks vaccines are dodgy and yet she has no problem sticking an unknown fruit into her mouth. Turns out it was toxic but Silverstone has confirmed she’s OK, which means we can all laugh at her without feeling too bad about it.Women use ChatGPT 16%-20% less than their male peersThat’s according to two recent studies examined by the Economist. One explanation for this was that high-achieving women appeared to impose an AI ban on themselves. “It’s the ‘good girl’ thing,” one researcher said. “It’s this idea that ‘I have to go through this pain, I have to do it on my own and I shouldn’t cheat and take short-cuts.’” Very demure, very mindful.Patriarchal law cuts some South African women off from owning their homesBack in the 1990s, South Africa introduced a new land law (the Upgrading of Land Tenure Rights Act) that was supposed to fix the injustices of apartheid. It upgraded the property rights of Black long-term leaseholders so they could own their homes. But only a man could hold the property permit, effectively pushing women out of inheriting. Since the 1990s, there have been challenges and changes to the Upgrading Act, but experts say that women’s property rights are still not sufficiently recognized and “customary law has placed women outside the law”.The week in pawtriarchyThey stared into the void of an arcade game, and the void stared back. Punters at a Pennsylvania custard shop were startled when they realized that the cute little groundhog nestled among the stuffed animals in a mechanical-claw game was a real creature. Nobody knows exactly how he got into the game but he has since been rescued and named Colonel Custard. “It’s a good story that ended well,” the custard shop manager said. “He got set free. No one got bit.” More

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      Kamala Harris’s speech was the test of her political life. She passed, but there will be others – not least Gaza | Arwa Mahdawi

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      On 22 August 1964, a Black activist called Fannie Lou Hamer gave an iconic speech at the Democratic national convention (DNC), taking the party to task for its failure to support equal voting rights. Hamer did not get what she wanted that particular night in Atlantic City, but she helped pave the way for a new generation of American leaders.On the 60th anniversary of that historic address, Kamala Harris stood centre stage at the DNC in Chicago as the Democratic party’s candidate for president and gave the most important speech of her life. The buildup to Thursday night was intense; Harris had been prepping furiously for this pivotal moment, reportedly workshopping her speech “nearly line by line”.If the weight of history, and the pressure of the present, hung heavy on Harris’s shoulders she did not let it show. Ever since Joe Biden passed her the baton a month ago Harris has been a changed woman. Gone is the uncertain vice-president who didn’t seem quite at ease in her role. Gone is the often-awkward orator. Harris is in her element now and it shows. She’s spent the last month radiating joy. Electric and effervescent, she did not so much speak last night as sing.While joy has been a major theme of the DNC, Harris’s speech made clear she wasn’t just about good vibes, she was ready to get to work. “OK, let’s get to business,” she said repeatedly as an exuberant crowd greeted her entrance with seemingly endless applause and chants of “USA”.A key point of business? Unity. “I know there are people of various political views watching tonight,” she said looking directly at the camera. “And I want you to know: I promise to be a president for all Americans.”To underscore this promise, Harris presented herself as a regular American whose modest upbringing, unlike Donald-silver-spoon-Trump, many could relate to. She started by speaking about her early life and her brilliant, trailblazing, immigrant mother, who “taught us to never complain about injustice, but do something about it”. She talked about growing up in the Bay Area of California in a “a beautiful working-class neighbourhood of firefighters, nurses, and construction workers”. And she spoke about how she decided to become a prosecutor to fight for the vulnerable after a high-school friend told her she was being sexually abused by her stepfather.These stories weren’t just supposed to make Harris seem relatable, they were there to help her seem authentic. One of Harris’s biggest weaknesses when she unsuccessfully ran for the 2020 nomination was her inability to really define herself. Some critics called her a “cop” and a “bully”, others called her dangerously liberal. Back then, Harris didn’t seem entirely sure of what she stood for. Standing on the stage in Chicago on Thursday, however, Harris opened herself up. She owned her story.While Harris may have begun by speaking about her past, the real focus of her acceptance speech was the US’s future. She thanked Biden gracefully but also signalled that he was now in the rear-view mirror. “We are not going back, and we are charting a new way forward, forward to a future with a strong and growing middle class … building that middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency,” she said.Harris’s campaign hasn’t been very heavy on policy so far and this speech also stayed fairly surface-level. However this focus on the middle class echoed the populist economic policy agenda she previewed at a speech in North Carolina last week. In that speech she talked about bringing down the price of groceries, prescription drugs, and housing. Whether a Harris administration would actually be able to do all of this is up for debate, but it is certainly a message that resonates across all party lines.The substance of Harris’s vision for the future, however, wasn’t so much about a cheaper loaf of bread as a safer democracy. The vice-president spoke bluntly about the threat a second Trump term holds. “In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man. But the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious,” she said. “Consider the power he will have, especially after the United States supreme court just ruled that he would be immune from criminal prosecution.”It was difficult not to consider, also, how much closer the US was to that terrifying possibility a month ago. With Biden at the helm, the Democratic party seemed on a course towards almost certain defeat. Now, while the race is still excruciatingly tight, the polls have turned in Harris’s favour. She has incredible momentum and, as her speech made very clear, she has what Biden sorely lacked: the energy to fight.Nowhere was the contrast with Biden more apparent than when Harris spoke about reproductive rights. The nominee spoke stirringly about how she’d travelled across the US and heard stories of “women miscarrying in a parking lot, developing sepsis, losing the ability to ever again have children, all because doctors are afraid they may go to jail for caring for their patients”. God was it refreshing to hear her talk about abortion like she really cares. One of Biden’s many weaknesses was that he could never seem to stop his personal distaste for abortion from coming to the fore; he always seemed half-hearted. He could not channel the visceral anger emanating from American women.“We’re not going back! We’re not going back!” That phrase, spoken by Harris, chanted by the crowd, rang through her speech. But despite the joy and the optimism it was difficult not to think back to Hamer’s speech. The activist, who was name-checked by the likes of Maxine Waters, member of the US House of Representatives for California, at the DNC, is celebrated by the establishment now, but when she was fighting for equality, she was reviled. During her testimony in 1964, then-president Lyndon B Johnson even called a news conference to try to divert attention from her; he was worried her speech would alienate white voters in the south from voting for Democrats. Today it’s clear that Palestinian-Americans, and people fighting for Palestinian rights, are similarly inconvenient to the Democratic party and its message of unity.While Harris paid lip service to the crisis in Gaza and called for a ceasefire, what she said about the issue in her speech wasn’t as important as who was not given a speaking slot at the DNC. Despite pleas from pro-Palestinian members of the party, the Democrats failed to give a Palestinian-American a slot on the main stage. “No one should be made to fight alone,” Harris said in her speech. “We are all in this together.” They were stirring words – but it is hard to feel that we really are all in this together. Harris has laid out an invigorating vision for America’s future. It is a shame the DNC chose to leave Palestinian-Americans behind.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More