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      Trump and his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month – podcast

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      Not so long ago, Donald Trump was riding high in the polls; the mood music was positive for his presidential campaign. Then Joe Biden dropped out of the race. After months of campaigning against his old foe, Trump now seems to be missing him and struggling to come up with a fresh attack against his new opponent, Kamala Harris.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Susan Glasser of the New Yorker about Trump’s challenges as he tries to turn things around after a less than stellar month on the campaign

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Trump repeats attacks and falsehoods in free-wheeling press conference at his golf club – live

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      Donald Trump spoke for more than 45 minutes – repeating many of the signature lies and falsehoods that draw cheers at his rallies – before taking any questions from the press.This is a well-worn tactic for Trump – a way to entice news networks to turn their cameras toward him for what is essentially free press. His press conference earlier this month – his first since Kamala Harris had entered the presidential race – ran on for about an hour and a half, during which Trump rambled about the crowd size at his January 6, 2021, rally and falsely claimed that no one died during the Capitol riot that day. When he finally took questions, he gave confusing and at times incoherent answers.Trump used the same approach to a press conference back when he was president as well. In an April 2020 news analysis by the Guardian’s David Smith – Briefing or rally? Trump shifts to campaign mode as he rails against the media – my colleague details the surreal experience of attending one of Trump’s coronavirus press briefings.
      I was among an unlucky 13 reporters sitting in that room on Saturday, along with one standing at the back from Trump’s beloved One America News Network which, having flouted reporters’ agreed physical distancing guidelines, is there at the invitation of the White House.
      Laptops on knees, with several seats between us to maintain physical distancing, we were hardly a typical Make America Great Again crowd. But tellingly, while there was no sign of Dr Anthony Fauci’s reassuring presence, the seats to Trump’s right included Mark Meadows, a vocal ally in Congress recently appointed White House chief of staff, and Kayleigh McEnany, the Trump 2020 campaign national spokesperson turned White House press secretary.
      Both gazed up at their boss reverently and smiled at his jokes. Meanwhile Dr Deborah Birx, response coordinator on the coronavirus taskforce, stood on the podium and spent long periods staring expressionless into the middle distance as Trump reeled off some golden oldies.
      “We had the best economy in the history of the world, better than China, better than any country in the world, better than any country’s ever had,” he said, waving his hand at what was ostensibly a coronavirus taskforce briefing. “We had the highest stock market in history by far, and I’m honoured by the fact it’s started to go up very substantially.”
      Donald Trump is asked whether he agrees with the argument that his current strategy of personal attacks against Kamala Harris isn’t working. He is also asked about his hiring of five new operatives.Trump denies that this is a sign of a shifting strategy, and says Corey Lewandowski is coming in as a “personal envoy”.He says he believes he is “entitled to personal attacks” because he is “very angry” at “what [Harris] has done to the country”. He adds:
      I don’t have a lot of respect for her. I thinks she’ll be a terrible president.
      Donald Trump is asked whether he has put much thought into “why God saved your life” during the assassination attempt last month, and “for what purpose”.Trump, who once promised that he would only talk about the shooting once “because it’s actually too painful to tell”, says it was a “miracle”. He says:
      It’s a miracle, and God had something – maybe it’s [because] we want to save the world.
      Donald Trump is asked when he last spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, following reports that the pair spoke on Wednesday about ongoing Gaza ceasefire and hostage release talks.Trump says the last time he saw Netanyahu was at Mar-a-Lago last month. He says that he has a “very good relationship” with Israel and claims that the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on 7 October “would have never happened” if he had been in the White House at the time.Trump says that his meeting with Netanyahu at the time was about two-and-a-half hours long, and that he hasn’t spoken to him since then.Donald Trump sold this as a news conference, but he has only just started taking questions from reporters – more than 45 minutes into his speech.Donald Trump claims that Kamala Harris wants to “defund the police”, despite the fact that the vice-president has distanced herself from previous remarks praising the movement following the murder of George Floyd in 2020.Harris has not advocated abolishing police forces, and her spokesperson has said that “she wants to fund the police, but she wants to do the other things as well”.Donald Trump says Kamala Harris is “far more radical than Bernie Sanders”, and says she has picked herself a running mate, Tim Walz, who is also “far more radical” than Sanders.Harris “wants to change a free-enterprise-type country into a communist-type country”, Trump says.He claims that as attorney general of California, Harris “destroyed” the state and that if elected, that she will do the same to the country.Trump claims that in California “you’re allowed to rob a store as long as it’s not more than $950”. This is not true.California’s Proposition 47 reclassified some felony crimes so that individuals who commit certain nonviolent drug and property crimes, including shoplifting merchandise under $950, would be sentenced on misdemeanor charges instead of felony charges.A misdemeanor sentence would still lead to a person serving up to a year in county jail, according to the Los Angeles Times.Donald Trump, speaking at a news conference from his New Jersey golf club, is sticking to a very similar script as when he addressed supporters at a rally yesterday in North Carolina.Wednesday’s rally was billed as a major address on the economy, an issue that is taking center stage in this presidential contest. Despite this, Trump said yesterday he was “not sure the economy is the most important topic” of the election.Trump claims Kamala Harris wants “communist price controls”, calling them “the Maduro plan” in reference to Venezuela’s authoritarian socialist leader. He quotes various inflation statistics for various staples of US household diets, as well as higher car insurance premiums and fuel costs.Donald Trump has begun speaking at his news conference in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he says he has “a lot of interesting” and “some very specific things” to talk about.Trump repeats his claim that the US is a “failing nation” with a “failing economy”, and says Kamala Harris has “broke the world” and that she “destroys everything she touches”.He goes on to accuse Harris of being Biden’s “border czar”, despite the fact that the vice-president was never made Biden’s “border czar”. The homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, is the official in charge of border security.Trump claims that Harris is going to be easier to beat than Biden, and claims that he is leading in “most of the polls”. In reality, polls are showing that Harris is ahead of Trump or at least tied with him in most of the battleground states.The Ohio senator and the Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, said he hoped that Robert F Kennedy Jr will drop out as an independent presidential candidate and endorse Donald Trump.Vance, speaking to reporters on his campaign plane today, said there were “a lot of people” in Trumpworld who think Kennedy is “fundamentally running a campaign that’s helping Kamala Harris”. He added:
      At this point, I certainly hope that he drops out and endorses, you know, endorses President Trump.
      Kennedy is “much closer on the issues” to Trump than to Harris,” Vance argued.From ABC News’s Hannah Demissie:Kamala Harris’s campaign has released a new video in which she and her running mate, the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, describe their ticket as joyful underdogs on the path to victory.“Our campaign is the underdog campaign,” Harris says to Walz in the 10-minute video.
      And with our joy, we also have to understand that we’re still up against some forces that are trying to divide our country.
      Walz compares the election to a football game, saying it’s “half-time in America”, to which Harris responds: “I’m looking at Coach Walz right now.”The video recalls a similar one between Joe Biden and Barack Obama during the 2020 campaign, AP reported.The Secret Service has approved a new security plan to better protect Donald Trump at outdoor events, the Washington Post is reporting.The security plan includes the use of bulletproof glass to shield him on stage, the Post writes, citing a Secret Service official.The effort comes after the Secret Service urged the Trump campaign to temporarily pause having him appear at outdoor rallies, after the assassination attempt on the former president at an open-air campaign rally last month. More

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      Biden and Harris celebrate landmark deal to lower medication prices

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      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on Thursday cast themselves as the champions of American seniors in a David-and-Goliath fight against big pharmaceutical companies, at a joint event touting a landmark deal to lower the cost of prescription drugs.“We finally beat big pharma,” the US president declared, sharing the stage with his vice-president for the first time since he abandoned his re-election bid in late July and Harris replaced him as the Democratic nominee.The event, which came after a morning announcement about new lower drug prices for beneficiaries of Medicare, a government health insurance plan for seniors, was an opportunity to persuade voters that their administration has helped ease costs after years of high inflation. Healthcare, particularly the high cost of prescription drugs, is a top concern for US voters. Biden had held a slight lead over Donald Trump for his platform throughout the year before he dropped out of the race.Harris spoke first, calling Biden “our extraordinary president”, as the crowd, packed into the gymnasium at Prince George’s Community College, rose to its feet to applaud the president. “Thank you, Joe,” they chanted in appreciation of – according to several attendees – his record and his decision to step aside and pass the torch to Harris.Biden called Harris an “incredible partner” and said she would “make one hell of a president”.“We finally addressed the longstanding issue that for years was one of the biggest challenges on this subject, which was that Medicare was prohibited by law from negotiating lower drug prices, and those costs then got passed on to our seniors,” Harris said. “But not any more.”The 10 drugs subject to negotiations, among them widely used blood thinners and diabetes medications, are expected to save $6bn for Medicare, which is a major government health insurance program covering Americans older than 65, and those with certain disabilities, the administration said. Seniors should save $1.5bn directly in out-of-pocket costs.The negotiated prices, which take effect in 2026, were authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act, that Biden emphasized passed without a single Republican vote. The vice-president cast the tie-breaking vote in her role as president of the Senate.“We pay way too much for prescription drugs in America,” the health and human services secretary, Xavier Becerra, said.Before Biden and Harris spoke, administration officials and Maryland politicians celebrated the deal while thrilling the crowd with discreet references to Harris’s candidacy.“President’s a good title for her,” the retiring Maryland senator Ben Cardin winked in his remarks, crediting Harris for helping to pass the Democrats’ sweeping health and climate change bill.Biden, who simultaneously touted his record in office and played pass-the-torch, warned that if given a second term, Trump – who the president mocked as “the guy we’re running against, what’s his name? Donald Dump?” – would repeal Medicare’s authority to negotiate drug prices. He named the sweeping conservative policy agenda, Project 2025, that Trump has sought to distance himself from.“Let me tell you what our Project 2025 is: beat the hell out of them,” Biden said, drawing loud applause.Republican lawmakers have been highly critical of the Biden administration’s move, arguing that government-negotiated drug prices will stifle innovation and result in fewer lifesaving drugs being brought to market.In a joint statement, House Republicans accused Biden of “price-fixing”.“Make no mistake, price fixing has failed in every sector and in every country where it has ever been tried,” the statement by the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the Republican leadership team said. “The Biden-Harris administration says it wants to lower prices for families, but their prescription drug price fixing scheme has accomplished just two things: driving up health care costs and crushing American innovation in medicine.”View image in fullscreenThe double act attracted a raucous audience, with hundreds of people waiting in the summer heat to glimpse the president’s final act and the vice-president’s ascent.“I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long, long time,” Biden said, noting that the first time he introduced legislation to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices was as a freshman senator shortly after he was elected, in 1972.“For the longest time I was too damn young because I was only 29 when I got elected,” he said. “Now I’m too damn old.”The negotiated prices, which take effect in 2026, are expected to save billions of dollars for the taxpayer-funded Medicare program. But they will lead to direct out-of-pocket savings for only a subset of the millions of older Americans who take the drugs subject to negotiations. Healthcare costs in the US have been rising for several decades, and Americans spend upwards of $13,000 a year on medical services and medications.The law already caps out-of-pocket costs for insulin at $35 a month for Medicare patients. It also calls for a $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket drug spending.Earlier this week, Harris and Biden participated in a Situation Room meeting to discuss the situation in the Middle East. They also appeared together on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews to welcome home US citizens wrongfully detained in Russia.On the campaign trail, the economy and cost of living remain top issues for voters, as Democrats seek to convince them that the president’s economic policies have had an impact on their pocketbooks. Democrats cheered news on Wednesday of easing inflation. Consumer prices rose 2.9% July, falling below 3% for the first time since 2021, new government data showed. But Americans continue to be squeezed by the high cost of rent and groceries.On Friday, Harris will travel to North Carolina to deliver an economic policy speech, during which her campaign said she would call for a federal ban on price gouging on groceries. Though Trump had held an advantage on the economy over Biden, recent polling suggests Harris has erased much of his early lead.Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland, introduced Biden and Harris, referring to them as the 46th and 47th president of the United States, which prompted chants of “48” – a promising sign for the charismatic Democratic rising star.Linda Hunt, 80, said she rarely attended political events, but came to witness history.“I came to pay him respect – that’s primary but I also wanted to see and hear her in person,” she said. “It was historical.” More

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      JD Vance agrees to October vice-presidential debate with Tim Walz

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      JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, has accepted an invitation by CBS to debate Tim Walz, his Democratic counterpart, on 1 October after initially appearing to hedge.Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, also said he was accepting another invitation from CNN to debate Walz on 18 September, although it was unclear whether the Democratic nominee had agreed to the challenge.“The American people deserve as many debates as possible, which is why President Trump has challenged Kamala [Harris] to three of them already,” Vance posted on X.“Not only do I accept the CBS debate on October 1st, I accept the CNN debate on September 18th as well. I look forward to seeing you at both!”Vance’s sudden willingness was a belated response to Walz, the governor of Minnesota, who had posted “See you on October 1, JD” after CBS offered four possible debate dates on Wednesday.The Republican vice-presidential candidate had originally told Fox News that he wanted to avoid “a fake news garbage debate” and said he had questions over the moderators and format before accepting.There was no immediate sign that Walz – who has goaded Vance about his hardline anti-abortion stance – had accepted the CNN invite to a separate debate.A statement from the Harris-Walz campaign’s communication director, Michael Tyler, referred only to the confirmed scheduling of the 1 October debate and two separate encounters between Harris and Trump, one set for 10 September and the other for the following month.“Assuming Donald Trump actually shows up on September 10 to debate Vice-President Harris, then Governor Walz will see JD Vance on October 1 and the American people will have another opportunity to see the vice-president and Donald Trump on the debate stage in October,” Tyler said.“Voters deserve to see the candidates for the highest office in the land share their competing visions for our future. The more they play games, the more insecure and unserious Trump and Vance reveal themselves to be to the American people. Those games end now.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHarris owes her elevation to the top of the Democratic ticket to a debate – or rather to Joe Biden’s inability to participate in it effectively. It was the president’s woeful performance in a debate against Trump on 27 June that led to intense pressure from Democrats for him to step aside as the party’s candidate, which he did on 21 July.Biden and Trump were due to debate again on 10 September, hosted by ABC. But since the president’s withdrawal from the race, Trump has sent mixed signals about his intention to turn up for the same rendezvous against Harris, before eventually agreeing to do so.Vance has affected disappointment that Harris’s promotion has denied him the opportunity to debate her.“I was told I was gonna get to debate Kamala Harris, and now President Trump’s gonna get to debate her? I’m kind of pissed off about that, if I’m being honest with you,” he said at a campaign rally in Middletown, Ohio, last month. More

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      Trump adds five new campaign advisers as he attempts to find attack lines against Harris

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      Donald Trump expanded his circle of senior campaign advisers to include five new operatives on Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter.The move comes as he attempts to reset the race and find effective attack lines against Kamala Harris with roughly 80 days until the 2024 election.The former president moved over Taylor Budowich, Alex Pfeiffer and Alex Bruesewitz from the Trump-aligned Maga Inc political action committee, as well as previous Trump campaign veterans Corey Lewandowski and Tim Murtaugh.The new additions are coming onto the Trump campaign as senior advisers, meaning they are lateral hires to a campaign still being run by co-campaign chiefs Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, the people said.Lewandowski previously ran the 2016 campaign but does not have the same role again. He has remained an informal adviser to Trump since the first presidential campaign, and will continue that function but in a more formal capacity through the final stretch to November, one of the people said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMurtaugh, who was the communications director for the 2020 campaign, is returning in a broader role, as will Budowich, Pfeiffer and Bruesewitz, one of the people said. Bruesewitz has a large online following and is expected to help direct social outreach.The additions came after senior aides on the Trump campaign found themselves open to criticism and challenges to their positions after perhaps the rockiest stretch for the campaign since it launched in 2022, the Guardian has previously reported.The summer months have historically been the time that Trump makes changes to his campaign chiefs, as he did in 2016 when he installed Kellyanne Conway, Steve Bannon, and David Bossie to take the reins, as well as in 2020, when he replaced Brad Parscale with Bill Stepien.The past month has been bad enough for the Trump campaign that advisers have taken those challenges – whether from enemies real or perceived – as serious threats or slights that necessitate devoting time and effort to slap down. More

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      Google says Iranian group tried to hack Trump and Harris campaigns

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      Google said on Wednesday that an Iranian group linked to the country’s Revolutionary Guard has tried to infiltrate the personal email accounts of roughly a dozen people linked to Joe Biden, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris since May.The tech company’s threat intelligence arm said the group was still actively targeting people associated with Biden, Trump and Harris, who replaced the US president as the Democratic candidate last month when he dropped out. It said those targeted included current and former government officials, as well as presidential campaign affiliates.The new report from Google’s Threat Analysis Group affirms and expands on a Microsoft report released on Friday that revealed a suspected Iranian cyber intrusion in this year’s US presidential election. It sheds light on how foreign adversaries are ramping up their efforts to disrupt the election, which is less than three months away.Google’s report said its threat researchers detected and disrupted a “small but steady cadence” of the Iranian attackers using email credential phishing, a type of cyberattack in which the attacker poses as a trusted sender to try to get an email recipient to share their login details. John Hultquist, chief analyst for the company’s threat intelligence arm, said the company sends suspected targets of these attacks a Gmail popup that warns them that a government-backed attacker might be trying to steal their password.The report said Google observed the group gaining access to one high-profile political consultant’s personal Gmail account. Google reported the incident to the FBI in July. Microsoft’s Friday report shared similar information, noting that the email account of a former senior adviser to a presidential campaign had been compromised and weaponized to send a phishing email to a high-ranking campaign official.The group is familiar to Google’s threat intelligence arm and other researchers, and this is not the first time it has tried to interfere in US elections, Hultquist said. The report noted that the same Iranian group targeted both the Biden and Trump campaigns with phishing attacks during the 2020 cycle, as early as June of that year.The group also has been prolific in other cyber espionage activity, particularly in the Middle East, the report said. In recent months, as the Israel-Hamas war has aggravated tensions in the region, that activity has included email phishing campaigns targeted at Israeli diplomats, academics, non-governmental organizations and military affiliates.Trump’s campaign said on Saturday that it had been hacked and that sensitive internal documents had been stolen and distributed. It declared that Iranian actors were to blame.The same day, Politico revealed it had received leaked internal Trump campaign documents by email, though it was not clear whether the leaked documents were related to the suspected Iranian cyber activity. The Washington Post and the New York Times also received the documents.While the Trump campaign has not provided specific evidence linking Iran to the hack, both Trump and his longtime friend and former adviser Roger Stone have said they were contacted by Microsoft related to suspected cyber intrusions. Stone’s email was compromised by hackers targeting Trump’s campaign, a person familiar with the matter said.Google and Microsoft would not identify the people targeted in the Iranian intrusion attempts or confirm that Stone was among them. Google did confirm that the Iranian group in its report, which it calls APT42, was the same as the one in Microsoft’s research. Microsoft refers to the group as Mint Sandstorm.Harris’s campaign has declined to say whether it has identified any state-based intrusion attempts, but has said it vigilantly monitors cyber threats and is not aware of any security breaches of its systems.The FBI on Monday confirmed that it was investigating the intrusion into the Trump campaign. Two people familiar with the matter said the FBI was also investigating attempts to gain access to the Biden-Harris campaign.The reports of Iranian hacking come as US intelligence officials have warned of persistent and mounting efforts from both Russia and Iran to influence the US election through online activity. Beyond these hacking incidents, groups linked to the countries have used fake news websites and social media accounts to churn out content that appears intended to sway voters’ opinions.While neither Microsoft nor Google specified Iran’s intentions in the US presidential race, officials have previously hinted that Iran particularly opposes Trump. They have also expressed alarm about Tehran’s efforts to seek retaliation for a 2020 strike on an Iranian general that was ordered by Trump.Iran’s mission to the United Nations, when asked about the claim of the Trump campaign, denied being involved.“We do not accord any credence to such reports,” the mission told the Associated Press. “The Iranian government neither possesses nor harbors any intent or motive to interfere in the United States presidential election.”The mission did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday about Google’s report. More

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      Harris backed by major Latino voter group: ‘She understands immigrants’

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      The immigrant rights group Make the Road Action is backing Kamala Harris in its first-ever general election presidential endorsement.The 15-year-old organisation dedicated to Latino voter engagement in key swing states including Nevada and Pennsylvania, had previously supported Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential primaries but has otherwise avoided endorsing any presidential candidates. The voter mobilization group’s endorsement on Thursday, provided first to the Guardian, comes amid a rush of enthusiasm for Harris’s nascent campaign.“Harris taking on the nomination has added a new kind of energy,” said Theo Oshiro, executive director at Make the Road New York. “Our members are excited. Harris is a woman of colour, and a person who comes from an immigrant family. So they see their children or themselves in this candidate. They feel that she is someone who at least understands where we are coming from.”The decision to make this first-ever general election endorsement came after two meetings with more than 250 members, who debated the stakes of the election before ultimately agreeing to publicly support Harris.The group is concerned about issues including housing affordability, the climate crisis and the US government’s role in Israel’s war on Gaza. But immigration rights were the main focus of deliberations.Painful memories from the Trump administration’s immigration policies, as well as his amped-up anti-immigrant rhetoric and his legally dubious plans for mass deportations and vast detention camps for migrants had upped the pressure. “We are hungry, and ready to fight back,” Oshiro said. “This was one of those moments in history where we had to come together to beat Donald Trump.”Harris will need to shore up support from Latinx communities in swing states, including Pennsylvania and Nevada where Make the Road has a presence, to secure a victory in November. The organisation is on track to knock about 1m doors this election cycle – including half a million in Pennsylvania, and 330,000 in Nevada.Members agreed that Harris has a complicated record on immigration, starting with her warning during her first foreign trip as vice-president to would-be Guatemalan immigrants: “Do not come” across the US-Mexico border. Harris will also have to answer for the Biden administration’s decision to severely restrict asylum at the US southern border.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut Harris has also shown that she is someone who is willing to work with immigrant rights activists and push for much-needed reforms, Oshiro said. Shortly after the Biden administration announced his asylum restrictions, infuriating many Democrats and Latino leaders who likened them to Trump-era policies, the administration also unveiled a new plan to provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented spouses of US citizens.“We talked about this deeply, because the Biden administration, and by extension, Kamala Harris as Biden’s vice-president, have not been perfect on immigration,” Oshiro said. “When we’re doing endorsements, we’re not picking a saviour. We’re picking someone we think we can move and push to the right direction.” More

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      Can Kamala Harris win over disenchanted Latino voters?

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      The abrupt substitution of Kamala Harris for Joe Biden as the Democratic party’s presidential nominee has energized two of the party’s bedrock bases of support – pro-choice women and African Americans – along with millions of young voters who felt dismay at the Hobson’s choice posed by two old white guys in the presidential contest.But the country’s estimated 36 million eligible Latino voters could be another story.Their importance in presidential races has been steadily growing over the past 50 years, and Latinos are projected to represent nearly 15% of eligible voters nationwide by November.Historically, Latinos have ranked among the Democratic party’s most reliable sources of votes, in about the same league as Black and Jewish voters. But the party’s once commanding advantage has been shrinking. Hillary Clinton trounced Donald Trump among Latinos nationwide in 2016 by a factor of 81% to 16%, yet four years later the former president upped his share to one out of every four votes cast by Latinos.A slew of prominent Latino politicians and trade unionists have endorsed the vice-president since the president’s withdrawal from the race on 21 July. They include some progressive Democrats who had condemned the terse message Harris had for would-be Latin American immigrants to the United States during a 2021 press conference in Guatemala City: “Do not come.”But it remains unclear whether Latino voters overall will give Harris a big boost in her bid to defeat Trump. For starters, they are diverse in national origin as well as the circumstances and histories of their communities’ immigration.Most southern California Chicanos reflect their state’s liberal tendencies and have little in common ideologically with the majority of Miami’s right-leaning Cuban Americans. Phoenix-based pollster Mike Noble notes that Latino voters whose roots go back to Colombia, Venezuela and other South American countries have been gravitating towards the Republican party over the past four years.Latinos are not yet digging deep into their pockets to support Harris. Two Zoom fundraising calls with Black women and men held on consecutive nights right after Biden bowed out brought in a total of $2.8m. Similar Zoom calls with Latinas and Latinos for Kamala on 24 and 31 July, respectively, posted a combined net haul of $188,000.Axios Latino has been tracking US Latinos’ views of Harris in conjunction with Noticias Telemundo and the Ipsos market research and public opinion firm since the first year of the Biden administration. By the end of 2021, Axios Latino found that 48% of Latinos had a favorable opinion of Harris – but that figure had slumped to 39% by last March. A different survey of Latinos in 10 states found that sentiment persisted in Arizona and Nevada even days after Biden’s fateful debate performance in late June.But a more recent survey of 800 Latino voters living in seven swing states brought Harris and the Democrats some very welcome news. Carried out by the pollster Gary Segura on behalf of the Washington-based Somos Political Action Committee in the immediate aftermath of Biden’s bombshell announcement, the survey gave Harris an impressive 18-percentage-point lead over Trump and surprisingly high favorability ratings among Latino voters in Arizona and Nevada, which have the highest percentage of eligible Latino voters among those swing states.In a separate poll by Equis Research released Wednesday, Harris is still a few points short of Biden’s support from Latino voters in the 2020 election, but is still leading Trump by 19 points among registered Latino voters in the seven most competitive states.Harris and her newly selected running mate, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, addressed rallies in Phoenix and Las Vegas late last week, and a new 30-second TV spot aimed at Latino voters has started airing in both English and Spanish.“Throughout her career, she’s always worked to earn the support of Latino voters and has made core issues like healthcare, childcare and fighting gun violence her focus,” said the campaign’s Hispanic media director, Maca Casado. “Vice-President Harris’s campaign knows Latinos’ political power, and we won’t take their votes for granted.”In Harris’s performance at the polls among Latinos in her native California, she garnered a majority of the Latino vote in both of her successful campaigns for the office of state attorney general, in 2010 and 2014.But Latinos are not expected to play a decisive role in the Golden state or any of the other three states where they are most numerous. Both California and New York are widely considered to be a lock for Democrats, and the same is true of Texas and Florida for Republicans.That leaves Arizona and Nevada, and the outlook for Democrats remains cloudy.CNN exit polling in November 2020 showed Biden beating Trump handily among Arizona Latino voters by a 27-percentage-point margin, thanks in part to folks like Matthew Sotelo. The 37-year-old leader of a non-profit community organization in Phoenix is a registered Democrat who thinks that Biden has done a “solid” job as president. But Sotelo senses a welcome change in the political climate since Harris became the party’s standard bearer.“The energy is different, and despite what the polls say about Harris being in a dead heat with Trump, the momentum is swinging to her side,” says the Arizona-born Mexican American.During Harris’s abortive run for the presidency in 2019, Sotelo did have some reservations about her track record as a prosecutor in San Francisco who sought prison terms for people arrested for possession of small amounts of controlled substances. But he sees her as an open-minded politician.“Do I think she has done a perfect job [on the border]? Absolutely not,” says Sotelo. “But I understand there has been an opportunity for Harris to grow as a leader, and she’ll continue to learn and grow.”One seasoned Latino pollster warns that Republicans have made major inroads in Arizona. “The Democrats have been losing ground there, and a lot of it has to do with the border,” says Eduardo Gamarra, a Florida International University professor of political science who oversaw last month’s poll of Latino voters in 10 states.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFelix Garcia concurs. Born in the Mexican state of Sonora and a resident of Phoenix since 2000, the 42-year-old business consultant has spent his entire life on either side of the US-Mexican border.“We have so many people from different countries on the border every day, and Kamala has never tried to fix the situation on the border,” says the registered Republican, who describes himself as a moderate in the mold of the late Arizona senator John McCain.Garcia’s issues with Harris do not end with immigration. “We have so many problems with the Biden administration – inflation, Ukraine, Russia, Israel – and she is part of this administration,” he says.During a campaign rally in Arizona last Friday, Harris drew attention to the years she served as California’s attorney general. “I went after the transnational gangs, the drug cartels and human traffickers,” she declared. “I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won.”Mike Noble, a former consultant and manager of Republican legislative campaigns in Arizona, found that many Latino voters in Arizona and Nevada are focused on pocketbook issues like inflation and housing affordability. Those anxieties are not likely to favor Harris.“She’s done a little better in places like the midwest and Pennsylvania, but in the sun belt, Harris is basically starting off in the same position as Biden was,” he says.The ascent of Harris has left David Navarro unmoved. The 27-year-old native of Las Vegas is a registered Democrat who supported Bernie Sanders’ presidential bids in 2016 and 2020 and voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election. But he says he is done with both major political parties and will vote for Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein in the fall.“I don’t support their views or any of their policies towards Israel and Gaza, and neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are doing anything to address the causes of inflation, which are corporations and their price increases,” says the systems engineer whose father immigrated from El Salvador. “They don’t value us as Americans, and I don’t want a presidential candidate who is run by the major donors who are billionaires and the corporations.”A scholar from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV) cautions that many Latinos in that state, like millions of Americans across the country regardless of their race or ethnicity, do not know all that much about Harris at this juncture beyond her name and current job title.“People know Biden and Trump, but when it comes to Harris, she has a lot more opportunity to shape the narrative, introduce herself and recalibrate things,” says Rebecca Gill, UNLV associate professor of political science. “She has the potential to move her numbers more than Trump or Biden.”In a volatile election cycle already punctuated by an assassination attempt, a debate debacle of historic dimensions, and the nomination of the first Black female presidential candidate of a major political party, Latino voters could spring surprises of their own even in swing states with relatively small Latino populations.“The Hispanic vote is large enough in virtually every state in the US that it could make the difference between winning and losing, including Pennsylvania and Georgia,” notes Fernand Amandi, a Miami-based Democratic pollster who specializes in tracking voting trends in the Latino community.“It’s the very reason why so many people are hyper-focused on the Hispanic vote.” More