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      Ex-senator and university president’s spending is under state scrutiny

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      Increased spending by the recently resigned University of Florida president Ben Sasse is coming under scrutiny after a student-run newspaper found that he awarded secretive consulting contracts and gave high-paying jobs to former members of his US Senate staff and Republican allies – actions that he defended on Friday.Both Governor Ron DeSantis and Florida’s chief financial officer are calling on the state university system’s governing board to investigate after the Independent Florida Alligator reported this week that as school president, Sasse gave six former staffers and two ex-Republican officials jobs with salaries that outstripped comparable positions. Most did not move to Gainesville – but work remotely from hundreds of miles away.Sasse, a former Nebraska senator, became the school’s president in February 2023.Overall, Sasse’s office spent $17.3m during his first year compared with the $5.6m spent by his predecessor Kent Fuchs in his final year. The university has an overall budget of $9bn.DeSantis’s office issued a statement saying that the governor “take[s] the stewardship of state funds very seriously and [has] already been in discussions with leadership at the university and with the [governing] board to look into the matter”.The chief financial officer, Jimmy Patronis, wrote on the social media platform X that the Alligator’s report “is concerning” and that the governing board “should investigate this issue to ensure tuition and tax dollars are being properly used”.Sasse resigned on 31 July, citing his wife’s recent diagnosis with epilepsy after years of other health issues. His hiring by the governing board to head Florida’s flagship university (UF) had been controversial as his only previous experience was five years as president of Midland University in Fremont, Nebraska, which has just over 1,600 students. UF has 60,000 students and 6,600 faculty members and is one of the nation’s top research universities.In a lengthy statement posted to X on Friday, Sasse defended the hirings and consulting contracts, saying they were needed as UF launches new satellite campuses and K-12 charter schools around the state, increases its work with artificial intelligence and looks to improve in the fields of medicine, science and technology.He said all the hirings were approved in the normal budget process, that some got raises to secure their services amid “competing opportunities and offers”, and he welcomes an audit.“I am confident that the expenditures under discussion were proper and appropriate,” he said.According to documents obtained by the Alligator, Sasse hired Raymond Sass, his former Senate chief of staff, to be the university’s vice-president for innovation and partnerships, a new position. His pay is $396,000, more than double the $181,677 he made in Sasse’s Senate office. Sass still lives in the Washington DC area. He did not immediately respond on Friday to a phone message and email seeking comment.James Wegmann, Sasse’s former Senate communications director, became UF’s vice-president of communications, earning $432,000 annually. His predecessor had earned $270,000. He still lives in Washington. He did not immediately respond on Friday to an email seeking comment.Taylor Silva, Sasse’s former Senate press secretary, was given the new position of assistant vice-president of presidential communications and public affairs. The job has an annual salary of $232,000. Silva did move to Gainesville. No contact information for Silva could be located. Silva is not listed in the university directory.Three of Sasse’s other former Senate staffers also got jobs with UF.Besides his former staffers, Sasse hired two others with strong Republican party ties.He hired the former Tennessee commissioner of education Penny Schwinn as UF’s inaugural vice-president of pre-kindergarten to grade 12 and pre-bachelor’s programs at a salary of $367,500. She still lives in Tennessee. She did not immediately respond to an email on Friday seeking comment.He also hired Alice James Burns, former scheduler for South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, as director of presidential relations and major events at a salary of $205,000. She also did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.Because most of these appointees still live outside Florida, travel expenses for Sasse’s office ballooned to $633,000, more than 20 times the amount spent annually under Fuchs.Sasse also hired McKinsey & Company, where he once worked as an adviser, to a $4.7m contract. The secretive firm is one of the country’s most prominent management consulting firms. The university has declined to say what its work includes. The firm did not respond to a phone call and email seeking comment.He also awarded about $2.5m in other consulting contracts, the Alligator reported. More

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      Kamala Harris has made a dream start. But it’s too early to count out Donald Trump | Jonathan Freedland

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      Everything is going right for her and wrong for him. Kamala Harris has the encouraging poll numbers and, more precious still, the momentum. Donald Trump has the serial errors, the maudlin introspection and wobbling campaign team. In less than three weeks, the Democrats have pulled off one of the most extraordinary turnarounds in US political history, replacing a candidate who was shuffling towards near-certain defeat with one apparently soaring towards possible victory. And yet, even as Harris speaks of bringing the joy, contained within is a lurking danger – a peril that should be all too familiar.The sources of joy are not mysterious. Democrats are heading to Chicago for a convention that will feel like a party but was set to be a wake. Before 21 July, they were tied to Joe Biden, a man whose presidency has proved far more consequential than most predicted but who was on course to lose and lose badly in November. His passing of the baton to his number two has gone better than anyone had any right to expect.All but seamlessly, the campaign has switched over – equivalent to rebuilding a plane in mid-air, say seasoned election hands – and the candidate herself has taken to the task with unexpected ease. Twenty years younger and a whole lot more vigorous than her opponent, she has turned what had been Trump’s most potent weapon against Biden – age – against Trump himself. He is now the candidate of the past, she the face of the future. Never mind that Harris is a senior member of the present administration, she has shaken off the burden of incumbency – currently a negative in most democracies across the world – and cast herself as the turn-the-page option, aided by a powerful slogan: “We’re not going back.”The evidence that it’s working is in the headline poll numbers, which show her edging ahead in the very battleground states where Biden had been trailing. Almost overnight, she is winning back the voters who propelled Biden to victory in 2020 but were drifting away from him in 2024: young, Black and Hispanic Americans. Drawing big crowds, inspiring a thousand social-media memes, she is generating something Democrats have not seen since the first Barack Obama campaign of 2008: excitement.All this is having an equal and opposite effect on Trump. The better her numbers or crowds get, the more gloomy and rattled he becomes, consoling himself with the delusion that photos of Harris’s massive audiences are AI fakes. The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser depicts Trump as bereft, missing Biden as he pines for the return of the man he knew how to run against. That contest was simple: it was strong v weak, with Biden’s age doing the work.But now Trump faces Harris, and he can’t quite work out how to take her on. He can’t fix on a nickname, he can’t settle on a target. His team wants him to run on immigration and inflation – both Democratic vulnerabilities – but he keeps returning to the terrain he knows best: culture wars and race baiting. Just as he once falsely claimed that Obama was not born in the US, Trump initially offered his theory that only late in life did Harris happen “to turn Black”. He also regularly describes the vice-president as a “low IQ individual”, a phrase he has long applied to Black female politicians. His base may like this talk, but it repels everyone else.An illustration of the unsettling effect Harris is having on Trump came in the mutual back-scratch he conducted with X magnate Elon Musk this week. “She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live,” Trump said about a drawing of Harris on the cover of Time magazine. “She looked very much like our great first lady, Melania,” he added, referring to his wife. Along with any listener to that exchange, Trump doesn’t know where to put himself.Because he is knocked off balance, he keeps stumbling. The Musk encounter was a case in point. After the embarrassment of a tech breakdown that led to a start delayed by 40-plus minutes, Trump rambled for two hours, straying into baffling tangents and frankly weird claims. One example: “global warming” is no threat, because rising sea levels mean “more oceanfront property”. (The real danger, he said, is the warmth of nuclear weapons.) What’s more, Trump seemed to speak with a heavy lisp throughout. None of this might matter much in itself, but it shows that Trump is beginning to get some of the same scrutiny of his cognitive and physical capacities that drove Biden to step aside. Put simply, age is now his problem.So this race is going exactly the way Harris would want it to go. Trump is lashing out at allies and, always a sign of a troubled campaign, shaking up his team. He is saddled with a running mate whose back catalogue would make a Gilead commander blush, while he paints an ever-darkening picture of a US in decline, a nation riddled with crime and overrun by scary invaders. All the while, she is beaming about a brighter tomorrow. As the Republican sage Mike Murphy puts it, “He’s doing Voldemort and she’s doing Ted Lasso.”Where, then, is the danger? First, the polling is not quite as rosy as Democrats want it to be. Dig further into the numbers and you see that, despite everything, Donald Trump is more popular now than he was at this same, mid-August point in either 2020 or 2016. His approval rating currently stands at 44%. In August 2016, a paltry 33% of Americans had a positive view of him – but he went on to win.What’s more, in each of the three crucial battleground states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, Harris is ahead by only four points, according to the latest survey. That’s welcome progress, to be sure, but it’s not enough when you recall that Trump put on nine points between August and November in those states in 2016 and closed the gap to a photo-finish in 2020.Harris may be more charismatic than either of the Democratic standard-bearers in those earlier contests, but she has vulnerabilities of her own. She is clearly a figure of the “coastal elites”: a wealthy Californian, she has no equivalent of the Scranton Joe persona available to Biden. Both she and her running mate, the Minnesota governor Tim Walz, have a history of progressive positions that anyone with a memory knows Republicans can twist into a caricature of leftwing radicalism. True, Walz’s vibe is cuddly midwestern dad – and there’s good evidence that, these days, a politician’s vibe matters more than their record – but there’s still a job to do. It’s almost a universal truth of contemporary politics that any party not of the right has to go much further than it would like to reassure voters in the centre. (Just ask Keir Starmer.) By that measure, the Democratic nominee may still have some distance to travel.Above all, and paradoxically, it’s Harris’s astonishing early success that contains risk. It has encouraged Democrats to believe that, in ditching Biden, the hard work has already been done, that the menace of a second Trump presidency has been averted. But this remains a perilously close contest in a sharply divided nation. As we have seen twice in recent years, Republicans enjoy a structural advantage in the electoral college that means that a Democrat can win the popular vote by a resounding margin – and still lose.So, yes, Harris has made a dream start. Trump is flailing. But it is far, far too early to celebrate. In the autumn, Americans will take their traditional second look at the two candidates. There will be TV debates and the hard yards of getting voters not to share memes on TikTok but off the couch and to the polling booth. This race is far from over – and if the last, turbulent decade has taught us anything, it’s that it is always too soon to count out Donald Trump.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

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      Trump reveals he made $300,000 selling Bibles and has big cryptocurrency stash

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      Donald Trump made hundred of thousands from his branded Bible and millions from his properties – but also owes millions for defamation and fraud cases, according to his latest financial disclosures that shed little light on the perennial question of whether the Republican presidential nominee is, in fact, solvent.Voluminous disclosure documents to the US Office of Government Ethics to comply with election campaign laws show that, in addition to Trump’s US real estate holdings, he has global financial interests, including registered trademarks in China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ukraine and Israel.He also owns millions in cryptocurrency and has a six-figure investment in gold bars.But the disclosures also hint at Trump’s substantial personal outgoings, including more than $500m owed to both the writer E Jean Carroll and the New York attorney general resulting from civil judgments involving defamation and accounting fraud.Both judgments – $83m to Carroll and $454m to New York state – are subject to bonds while Trump appeals the decisions, a process that could take years.Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and private club in Florida, which formed part of a case against the Trump Organization involving inflated asset valuations, produced about $57m in income from the club, down about $8m from a previous disclosure.The disclosures are not a profit-and-loss balance sheet – they only give broad ranges of income and assets – so alone they cannot determine whether Trump is in the red or the black. He has consistently resisted efforts to force the release of his tax returns, although two years ago a Democrat-controlled Congress released six years of Trump’s tax returns, dating to 2015, the year he announced his presidential bid.Earlier this year, Trump joined Bloomberg Billionaires Index of 500 richest people, with a fortune of $6.5bn – a $4bn increase, resulting from a Spac merger of his social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, which operates the Truth Social site where the former president posts most of his public messages. But the value of the media group has declined significantly in recent months by as much as $1.3bn.The disclosure comes as US voters are asked to weigh the relative fortunes of candidates and their running partners ahead of November’s presidential vote. The Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, is estimated to be worth $8m, while her running mate and Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, made headlines for being worth a modest $330,000.The net worth of Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, who worked as a venture capitalist and wrote a successful memoir, is placed at $4m, including $250,000 in bitcoin. Joe Biden and Jill Biden’s wealth is placed at $10m, including the $400,000 annual salary he earns as president.The particularities of Trump’s financial disclosures show that he earned $12m through licensing and royalty deals. Those include about $7m he earned from a NFT licensing deal that sells digital “trading cards”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe former president also reported earning about $5m in royalties for his recent books Letters to Trump and Our Journey Together. A Bible, published in association with the country singer Lee Greenwood, earned $300,000.There was no income reported from his gold high-top sneaker line.Trump, who recently signaled his support for cryptocurrencies at a global crypto convention in Nashville, Tennessee, declares between $1 and $5m in Ethereum. His son Eric Trump, who currently runs the Trump Organization, recently posted on X that he had “truly fallen in love with Crypto” and alerted to an unspecified “big announcement”.Alongside the former president’s disclosures, the former first lady Melania Trump said she had earned $237,500 from a booking to speak to Republicans in Florida, and about $330,000 from NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, which have recently included digital portraits of her celebrating Women’s History Month.The documents also hint at changes in direction at Trump’s real estate empire. Three Chinese companies that may be related to real estate deals were dissolved, though he still owns trademarks in the country. He also paid off a Deutsche Bank mortgage of between $25m to $50m on his Chicago Trump International hotel. More

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      Harris has two paths to victory – Rust belt or Sun belt, polling analysts say

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      Kamala Harris’s surge in popularity since replacing Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee has opened up a surprise second path to victory in November, according to a fresh analysis of recent voter surveys.An aggregate of polls modelled by the Washington Post shows that the US vice-president has become newly competitive in four southern Sun belt states that were previously leaning heavily towards Donald Trump, the Republican nominee and former president.If the trend holds, it means Harris could eke out an electoral college victory either by winning those states – Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina – or, alternatively, by capturing three swing states in the midwestern Rust belt, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.Trump, by contrast, would need to capture both groups of states to earn the 270 electoral college votes necessary to secure victory, according to the model.The opening up of a potential second front in Harris’s pathway to victory may be the biggest boon yet from her elevation to the top of the Democratic ticket in place of Biden, whose only path to staying in office appeared to hinge on winning the three Rust belt states.Harris has gained an average of two percentage points nationally, and 2.1% in seven battleground states, since replacing Biden, who pulled out of the race on 21 July after weeks of intense pressure over a bad debate performance the previous month.The transformation in the party’s chances of retaining the White House amounts to a “reset” of the election race and might even make Harris a “slight favourite”, according to the analysis. It is largely due to renewed impetus in key swing states under the candidacy of Harris and Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor who she chose as her running mate.The outcome of US presidential elections is determined not by the popular vote, but by which candidate wins a majority of 538 electoral college votes, which are allotted state by state.Polls show many things, but in aggregate they appear to suggest that Harris now leads in the Rust belt states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and has closed the gap in another, Michigan, to within one point of Trump, the former president and Republican nominee. Biden won all three states, albeit by narrow margins, in 2020.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut she has also significantly improved on Biden’s post-debate standing – when the president’s poll position evaporated badly in all key states and even began to deteriorate in states previously considered safe – in three Sun belt states, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia, plus North Carolina, where she has pulled close enough to Trump to be within the polls’ margin of error.Biden won the first of those three states, again by narrow margins, in 2020 but lost North Carolina by less than two percentage points. Amid Harris’s recent surge, Democratic strategists have started to envision carrying the state, despite the party only having won it once in presidential elections since 1980.The uptick in support makes her competitive in more states than Trump that would enable her to reach the required 270 electoral college votes.However, Harris still trails Trump in the final tally, if the polls are accurate and the election were held now.Another boon to Harris is a Washington Post/Ipsos poll that shows her choice of Walz as running mate playing better with voters than Trump’s selection of JD Vance, who has seemed to hit trouble with female voters because of his hardline anti-abortion views and track record of misogynistic comments about childless women.The survey showed 39% of voters having a favourable view of Walz – who has been targeted by Republicans because of his left-leaning policies as Minnesota governor – and 30% unfavourable, giving him a positive rating of 9%. Vance, on the other hand, recorded a 32% favourable rating against 42% who saw him unfavourably, a negative rating that chimes with other polls, some of which have measured him as the most unpopular vice-presidential pick in history.Reflecting her campaign’s bullishness about its prospects in the state as it approaches next week’s Democratic national convention, Harris was due to make a keynote economic speech in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Friday where she was expected to set out policies on price gouging, rising food prices and high housing costs. All are areas that Republicans see as potential vulnerabilities for Harris.Vance, a senator for Ohio, was due to speak in the Wisconsin city of Milwaukee, following appearances in Pennsylvania and Michigan in recent days, mirroring the Trump campaign’s recognition of the need to win the states. More

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      Trump calls civilian presidential medal ‘much better’ than top military honor

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      Donald Trump has been criticized after he claimed that the civilian Presidential Medal of Freedom, which he bestowed on people including Republican supporters and donors during his time in office, is “much better” than the top military award for those killed or wounded in action: the Medal of Honor.Speaking at a campaign event on Thursday, Trump made the claim as he addressed Miriam Adelson, the widow of the Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson. Trump awarded Miriam Adelson the Medal of Freedom in 2018.“[The Medal of Freedom is] actually much better because everyone [who] gets the congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers,” Trump said.“They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead. She gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman. And they’re rated equal.”The Medal of Honor is the country’s highest military award. It is awarded to a military service member who “distinguishes himself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty”.The Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to civilians, is presented by the US president to those who “have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors”, according to the White House.“Donald Trump insulting Medal of Honor recipients is just a continued trend of his disrespect towards our men and women in the military,” Travis Akers, a navy veteran, wrote on X. “It’s disgusting. This is offensive on so many levels.”Trump has a long history of denigrating service members.In 2020 the Atlantic reported that Trump had canceled a planned visit in France to an American military cemetery near Paris because it was “filled with losers”. Trump also called the dead military members “suckers” for getting killed.During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump attacked the gold star family of Khizr and Ghazala Khan, whose son, Cpt Humayun Khan, was killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2004. And Trump also repeatedly criticized the late John McCain, the Republican senator who ran for president against Barack Obama in 2008.“He’s not a war hero. He is a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured,” Trump said in an interview.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKamala Harris’s election campaign posted a video of Trump’s remarks to X on Thursday, along with a paragraph which quoted the former president verbatim.Alexander Vindman, a retired lieutenant colonel in the US army who testified during Trump’s first impeachment investigation, quote-posted the Harris campaign on X, saying: “Trump dishonor[s] Medal of Honor recipients, our nation’s highest military award for distinguished acts of valor. He deserves nothing but disdain and disqualifies himself from public office.”Trump awarded the Medal of Freedom to Mariano Rivera, a former baseball player who hosted an exclusive fundraiser for him, and to Roger Penske, a billionaire businessman who has donated more than $1m to pro-Trump organizations. More

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      Five things we learned from our reporting on the US’s pro-Israel lobby

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      The progressive US representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota easily overcame a primary challenge on Tuesday, delivering a major victory for progressives after a primary season marked by mixed success amid an onslaught of spending from pro-Israel lobby groups.The progressive “Squad” in the House were early to embrace calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and criticize Israel’s offensive for its toll on civilians, drawing the ire of groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac). Omar and Summer Lee of Pennsylvania were still able to easily cruise to victory in their primaries, but pro-Israel groups successfully picked off its two biggest Squad targets of this primary season: Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri.The Guardian followed key congressional races affected by Aipac and similar groups for the past few months. With the primaries coming to a close, here’s what we learned about the pro-Israel lobby’s efforts this year.1Aipac is spending more as public opinion on Israel shiftsThe $23m Aipac pumped into defeating just two members of Congress can be seen as evidence of the depth of the pro-Israel lobby’s concern that public opinion is shifting away from decades of largely unquestioning support for Israel as the US’s “greatest ally”, particularly among young Americans. These shifts in public opinion threaten the claims of a bipartisan consensus on support for Israel in Congress.Aipac’s creation of the United Democracy Project (UDP) political action committee in 2021 to directly intervene in election campaigns for the first time was in part a response to opinion polls showing that even before the present war in Gaza, half of Democrats wanted the US to give more support to Palestinians.The group pledged to spend $100m this election year; it has so far spent more than $90m. Bowman and Bush’s races were the two most expensive House primaries in history, according to the firm AdImpact.Bowman and Bush were elected to Congress on the back of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has focused on reframing the Palestinian cause as a civil rights issue of resistance to Israeli domination. The shift in narrative alarms Aipac, as has the impact of international court rulings against Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories and a growing consensus within international human rights organisations that Israel imposes a form of apartheid on Palestinians.The war in Gaza, where Israel has killed at least 40,000 Palestinians, a majority of them civilians, has only added to the challenges now facing the pro-Israel lobby, with a third of Democrats saying Biden has not been “tough enough”with Israel.2Pro-Israel groups spent big to pick off vulnerable incumbentsAipac’s UDP spent $14.6m in its campaign to unseat Bowman. The group Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) spent another $1m to help George Latimer, the Westchester county executive, win the Democratic nomination.In Bush’s primary, UDP spent $8.6m to promote the campaign of Wesley Bell, a St Louis prosecutor, and DMFI contributed close to $500,000 to the effort.View image in fullscreenThe financial commitment paid off, as both Bowman and Bush went on to lose their primaries. But it’s worth noting that Bowman and Bush were already viewed as more vulnerable than some of their other Squad colleagues at the start of the primary season.Bowman had attracted negative headlines last year for pulling a fire alarm in the Capitol during a crucial vote, an incident that prompted a misdemeanor charge and a formal House censure. Bowman also had to apologize in January for writing some now-deleted blogposts promoting conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks, and Latimer was helped by redistricting, which brought more of the suburban voters inclined to support him to the district. Meanwhile, the justice department is investigating Bush’s spending on security services, after she married her security guard and kept him on her campaign payroll. View image in fullscreenGroups like UDP and DMFI chose to focus their attention on lawmakers who already had some kind of baggage heading into their primaries.3Pro-Israel groups stayed out of races they deemed unwinnableMany election watchers expected Lee’s primary in Pennsylvania to be the first test of the pro-Israel lobby’s strength against the Squad, but UDP and DMFI chose to stay out of the race.The decision came as somewhat of a surprise, as UDP and DMFI collectively spent nearly $4.4m against Lee when she first ran for Congress in 2022. But the groups opted out of the race this year after Lee spent her first term in Congress building goodwill with her constituents and delivering more than $1.2bn in funding for her district.View image in fullscreenThe Super Pac Moderate Pac, backed by the Republican mega-donor Jeffrey Yass, did get involved in Lee’s race, but it was not enough to prevent her victory. Lee ultimately defeated her opponent, local council member Bhavini Patel, by 21 points.A similar pattern played out with Omar. She beat Don Samuels, a former Minneapolis city council member, by 13 points on Tuesday after pro-Israel groups chose to stay out of the race. The progressive representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of the House and one of the most vocal ceasefire supporters, did not even draw a primary challenger.In races where they did not think they could win, pro-Israel groups simply opted out altogether.4The pro-Israel lobby’s messaging didn’t focus on the war in GazaAlthough pro-Israel groups targeted pro-ceasefire members, their attack ads generally did not focus on the war in Gaza. That choice was strategic, as polls show that an overwhelming majority of Democrats support calls for a ceasefire.Instead, ads from UDP tried to paint members like Bowman and Bush as uncooperative Democrats sowing discord within the party and more focused on their national profiles than their districts. One UDP attack ad against Bowman specifically called out his votes against the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the debt ceiling agreement, mirroring the group’s later attacks against Bush.View image in fullscreen“Jamaal Bowman has his own agenda and refuses to compromise, even with President Biden,” the ad’s narrator says. “Jamaal Bowman has his own agenda, and it’s hurting New York.”That strategy, powered by millions of dollars in ad spending, paid off.5Battle-tested progressives performed betterOmar knew to expect a significant primary challenge this year because she won her 2022 primary against Samuels by just 2 points. This time around, Omar was prepared. She raised roughly five times as much money as Samuels did, and she deployed ads early as a sort of prebuttal against potential attacks on her voting record.Lee similarly secured the narrowest possible victory in her 2022 primary, winning by less than 1 point. Two years later, her margin of victory in the primary had grown by 20 points.View image in fullscreenBowman and Bush were less tested, however. In 2022, Bowman won his primary by 29 points, although he tellingly secured only 54% of the total vote. Bush easily won her primary in 2022, beating her opponent by 43 points and securing 70% of the total vote.This year, it seems that progressives who experienced tougher primary fights in 2022 were better equipped to defend themselves when needed.But Aipac is not only taking aim at Israel’s most strident critics. The millions of dollars poured into defeating Bush and Bowman are a warning shot to other members of Congress and contenders that vocal criticism of Israel or support for Palestinians may come at a political price.Read more of our coverage:

      Pro-Israel money pours in to unseat progressives in congressional races

      Pro-Israel US groups plan $100m effort to unseat progressives over Gaza

      A progressive congresswoman made history in 2022. Can a billionaire stop
      her re-election?

      Pro-Israel groups target Republican House candidate they deem antisemitic

      Pro-Israel groups have set sights on unseating this progressive lawmaker. Will they succeed?

      Race to unseat New York progressive ‘most expensive House primary ever’

      Pro-Israel Pac pours millions into surprise candidate in Maryland primary

      Pro-Israel group pours millions into unseating New York progressive Jamaal Bowman More

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      Most young voters support Kamala Harris − but that doesn’t guarantee they will show up at the polls

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      Young people could decide the 2024 presidential election.

      It’s a tale as old as time – a story that pops up every election, almost like clockwork.

      The narrative is the same this election cycle. There is a palpable excitement about the possibility of young people making their voices heard in 2024.

      Young people, in particular, have broadly voiced their support for Vice President Kamala Harris, who will officially accept her party’s presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 22, 2024.

      Harris’ young supporters have created popular TikTok videos and widely-shared memes with coconut trees and ample allusions to the trendy term “brat.”

      Both former President Donald Trump and Harris are trying to build on young people’s excitement – through participating in livestreams with popular, young content creators and by copying some of the specific colors and themes that often come up in young people’s online content.

      The vibes suggest, perhaps, that a “youth wave” is coming.

      Donald Trump looks to young supporters as he holds a rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., on July 20, 2024.
      Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

      Young people mostly support Harris

      At present, Harris holds a commanding lead among young people.

      Depending on the poll that you look at, if the election were held today, Harris would probably command about 50% to 60% of the youth vote, meaning people ages 18 to 29, or in some cases 18 to 34.

      Trump would pull in only about 34% of young people.

      That’s a big difference. A person might see that difference and think that young people could, indeed, tip the scales at the ballot box in November.

      Knowing exactly how many young voters Harris needs to win over to carry the election is difficult, but many political pundits have argued that Harris needs to make sure that she secures a dominant majority of them.

      But regardless of whether they support Harris in preelection polling, my research finds that many young people aren’t likely to show up and actually cast their ballots.

      Young people often don’t vote

      Young citizens’ track record of participation in American elections is dismal. Although young people are the biggest group of citizens who are eligible to vote, they turn out at significantly lower rates than older Americans.

      In the November 2022 midterms, for instance, only 25.5% of 18- to 29-year-olds cast a ballot, whereas 63.1% of those age 60 or older voted.

      Though November 2020 set records for youth voter turnout, only 52.5% of 18- to 29-year-olds cast a ballot, compared with 78% of those 60 or older.

      While it’s hard to know how many young people will cast a ballot in November 2024, early indicators – such as the number of young people who say they plan to cast a ballot – suggest that this pattern of low youth voter turnout will continue.

      The United States has one of the lowest rates of youth voter turnout in the world. The gap between 18- to 29-year-olds and those over 60, a common measuring stick, is more than twice as large here than it is in other countries such as Canada or Germany.

      In our 2020 book, “Making Young Voters: Converting Civic Attitudes into Civic Action,” political scientist Sunshine Hillygus and I tried to better understand what stops young people from voting and what can be done to change this trend.

      Why more young people don’t vote

      Two main hurdles stand in the way of young people casting a ballot. One problem is that young people are not especially interested in voting. In recent polls, for example, about 77% of young people say that they plan on definitely voting in the upcoming November election.

      For older citizens, that number is 90%.

      However, a second – and a perhaps more consequential – problem is that young people who are interested in voting often don’t follow through on their intentions.

      By examining survey data and conducting interviews with dozens of young people in 2018, Hillygus and I found that many young people lack confidence in themselves and their ability to navigate the voting process for the first time.

      Many told us that in their busy, hectic and ever-changing schedules, voting often simply falls by the wayside.

      With school and work commitments, as well as a lack of experience filling out voter registration forms and casting a ballot, voting seems like an insurmountable burden for many young people.

      Supporters of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz look on during a campaign event at Temple University in Philadelphia on Aug. 6, 2024.
      Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

      What works to increase youth voter turnout

      A common assumption of many youth advocacy groups seems to be that more young people would vote if voting were considered cool. We’ve seen that approach again this cycle, with advocates clamoring, for example, for celebrity endorsements from the likes of singer Taylor Swift.

      The problem is that this approach doesn’t square with the fact that young people care about politics – they just struggle to follow through.

      The biggest hurdle for many young people, in particular, is voter registration. In 2022, data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that only 40% of young people said they were registered to vote in the midterm election.

      Programs that help young people register to vote can be particularly effective at getting them to cast a ballot.

      It has also become increasingly common for political campaigns to help young adults make a plan to vote – by outlining when and where they are going to vote, as well as how they will get to their polling location.

      Other methods, such as sending text message reminders, creating automated calendar reminders and offering transportation to the polls, are also effective at helping young people who want to vote actually do so. Though some of these strategies are being used in the 2024 election, many are not common.

      Government policies that make registering to vote and casting a ballot easier would also increase youth voter turnout.

      Same-day voter registration is particularly effective at encouraging young people to vote. Likewise, letting 16- and 17-year-olds preregister to vote before they turn 18 can also substantially increase the number of voters under 30. At present, 21 states, including California, Massachusetts, Florida and Louisiana, let 16- and 17-year-olds preregister to vote.

      Our research suggests that when states implement these types of reforms, they close the gap between older and younger voters by about a third.

      There is some evidence that Harris has reinvigorated the youth vote.

      Whether young citizens will show up and deliver the presidency to Harris or stay home and yield to Trump remains to be seen. More

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      in US Politics

      Extremist or mainstream: how do Tim Walz’s policies match up globally?

      by

      Within hours of Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, being chosen by Kamala Harris to be her Democratic presidential running mate, Donald Trump and team began attacking him as a “dangerously liberal extremist”.Trump surrogates seized on Walz’s record of expanding voting rights for former felons, combatting the climate crisis, and other measures as proof that Harris-Walz would be the “most radical ticket in American history”.If you step back from the melee, and look at his gubernatorial acts through a global lens, they appear anything but extreme. From the perspective of other industrialised nations, what Trump denounces as leftwing radicalism looks little more than basic public welfare provisions.Far from being militant and revolutionary, initiatives such as paid family leave, free college tuition and rudimentary gun controls – all championed by Walz in Minnesota – have long been regarded as middle-of-the-road and unremarkable in large swathes of the world. Through this frame, it is not Walz who is the outlier, but his Republican critics.Here are how some of Walz’s most impactful reforms compare with the rest of the world.Free school lunchesView image in fullscreenWalz’s record: “What a monster! Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn.” That was Walz’s sardonic reply to CNN when he was asked about having introduced free breakfast and lunch for all Minnesota schoolkids. The 2023 measure puts Minnesota among just eight US states that offer school meals at no cost to all children, no matter their family’s income.Around the world: Several countries provide free lunches for their children nationwide. Sweden, Finland and the three Baltic nations all provide meals at no cost for all schoolchildren irrespective of income, and many more European countries provide targeted or subsidised meals. Even a developing country such as India ensures access to lunch for more than 100 million kids daily.“The idea of offering free meals to all students during the school day is hardly new – many countries already do so,” said Alexis Bylander at the Food Research and Action Center, a US anti-hunger organisation. “Numerous studies show the benefits, including improving student attendance, behaviour and academic success.”Combatting the climate crisisView image in fullscreenWalz’s record: In February 2023 Walz signed legislation committing Minnesota to having all its electricity produced by wind, solar and other clean energy sources by 2040 – an even more ambitious timeframe than adopted by California, America’s sustainable energy leader. The legislature also passed more than 40 climate initiatives, including expanding charging infrastructure for electric vehicles and introducing a new code for commercial buildings to cut energy use by 80% by 2036.Around the world: By global standards, Minnesota’s ambitions do not stand out. Some 27 countries have written into law target dates by which they will become net zero – that is, stop loading additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In the developed world, Finland is leading the way, pledging to be net zero by 2035, and to begin absorbing more carbon dioxide than it produces by 2040. In December, almost 200 countries at the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai agreed to call on all countries to transition away from fossil fuels and for global renewable energy to be tripled by 2030.Child tax creditView image in fullscreenWalz’s record: Last year the governor signed into law a child tax credit program for low-income Minnesota families. The measure sought to fill the hole left by a federal scheme that expired in 2021 after Congress failed to extend it. The Minnesota plan is the most generous of its type in the US, offering $1,750 per child and reaching more than 400,000 children.Around the world: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the forum of high-income democracies, reported in 2018 that 34 of the 35 countries with available information provided their people with some form of family benefit including tax credits. The OECD compared the value of family benefits for two-child families, measured as a percentage of average earnings, across 41 countries and found that the US came in at No 40, with only Turkey being less generous in its support.Basic gun controlsView image in fullscreenWalz’s record: The governor identifies as a proud gun-owner and hunter, and he accepted Harris’s invitation to be her running mate wearing a camo hat. That didn’t stop him in May 2023 enacting a slew of gun safety measures, including requiring all private sales of handguns and semi-automatic rifles to go through an FBI background check that looks for evidence of criminal or mental health risks. The changes also introduced a “red flag law” that allows relatives and other interested parties to intervene when someone is in danger of injuring themselves or others with guns.Around the world: International comparisons show that Americans own vastly more guns than civilians in other rich countries – 121 guns per 100 Americans, compared with five guns per 100 people in the United Kingdom. The number of gun killings per 100,000 people is also vastly higher: 4.12 in the US, 0.04 in the UK.Other countries also have much tougher gun controls that make those introduced by Walz look weak by comparison. Canada requires gun buyers to have a licence to possess or acquire a firearm and first time applicants have to wait a mandatory 28 days; it also imposes mandatory safety training and a ban on military-style rifles that does not exist in the US. The UK also bans some semi-automatic rifles and most handguns. Japan tightly restricts gun ownership, banning most guns other than air guns and a few other special categories and even then requiring owners to submit to annual inspections.Paid family and medical leaveWalz’s record: House File 2, enacted by the governor last year, gave Minnesotans access to up to 20 weeks in every year of partial wages to cover medical leave after a life-changing diagnosis, mental health leave, or time off to care for a new baby. “Paid family and medical leave is about investing in the people that made our state and economy strong in the first place,” Walz said as he signed the bill.Around the world: The US is the only OECD member country without a national law giving all workers access to paid leave for new mothers. Thirty-seven out 38 OECD countries offer national paid maternity leave – the only exception being the US. France, which holds the top spot, allows mothers and fathers to take paid leave until their child is three years old.The US is also one of only six countries with no form of national paid leave covering either family or medical leave in the case of a health concern.Voting rights for former felonsWalz’s record: The governor signed a bill that restores the vote to more than 50,000 Minnesotans who have been convicted of a felony. The Trump campaign denounced the measure as evidence of Walz’s “dangerously liberal agenda”, which is ironic, given that Trump himself, as a convicted felon, will only be able to vote for himself in November thanks to a similar reform in New York.Around the world: A report released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) in June concluded that the US was an “outlier nation in that it strips voting rights from millions of citizens solely on the basis of a criminal conviction”. In 2022, more than 4 million people in the US were disenfranchised on those grounds. By contrast, when HRW surveyed 136 countries around the world, it found that the majority never or rarely deny the vote because of a criminal record, while those with restrictions tend to be much less draconian in their approach than US states. More