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      Kamala Harris: why does the US struggle with the idea of a woman leader, when other countries don’t?

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      A “childless cat lady”. “Crazy”. “Dumb as a rock.” Those are just some of the insults that have been directed at Kamala Harris since she announced her intention to gain the Democratic nomination for president.

      Harris, now the presumptive Democratic nominee, would only be the second woman to gain a major party’s nomination for president of the United States. The first woman in this position, Hillary Clinton, was labelled a “nasty woman” by her opponent Donald Trump in 2016.

      If Germany, Serbia, Peru, Barbados, Iceland and Samoa can elect women as leaders, and a third of UN member countries overall, why is it still an issue in the US? And if a woman can be vice president in the US, surely she could also be president? After many other countries have elected women leaders, is the US really not ready for a woman president?

      Last week, YouGov data sparked conversations about the US’ “woman problem” again. While more than half of respondents (54%) said the US was ready to elect a woman as president, this number is down from 2015. During the first month of Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic nomination, 63% said the country was ready to elect a woman to its highest office.

      That Americans are feeling less confident about the issue now is hardly surprising and could be explained through cultivation theory. This suggests that when gendered stereotypes and sexist narratives persist in media coverage, voters are more likely to reflect these as well.

      For many voters, Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016 and the defeat of several female candidates in the 2020 and 2024 Democratic and Republican primaries may indicate that the country is simply not ready to elect a woman president. Surveys such as the recent YouGov data further reinforce this perception as journalists report on the declining support for a potential female president. But the issue is significantly more layered than that.

      Despite a decrease in sexism against women politicians around the world, the US presidency remains a role which many voters associate with stereotypically “male” characteristics such as power, strength and assertiveness. This makes it more likely that women candidates will face negative gendered coverage and attacks when aspiring to this office.

      Many people still associate more stereotypically masculine traits with their views of the ideal president or hold stereotypical, gendered associations about policy issues. For instance, foreign policy and the economy are often seen as issues that men would be better suited to handle.

      Indeed, polling data suggests Harris is seen as weaker than Trump on stereotypically masculine issues such as foreign policy, inflation and crime. However, she is seen as the stronger candidate on issues such as abortion rights, tackling climate change, improving education and healthcare.

      Those issues are currently at the top of the news agenda and consequently at the forefront of voters’ minds. If she continues to emphasise her experience and policy plans on these issues, Harris could win over a substantial share of the electorate.

      Harris seen as stronger debater than Trump

      Recent surveys include further promising data for Harris and her campaign team. Among US adults, she is seen as a slightly better debater than Trump. The sentiment has been amplified on social media, where younger voters in particular are expressing excitement over the prospect of a Harris-Trump debate, saying they look forward to seeing Harris outperform Trump.

      This has not gone unnoticed by Trump who backtracked on his commitment to a televised debate in September just last week. “It shows that he is afraid,” was Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s assessment in an MSNBC clip shared to X by the Harris HQ account: “It shows that he knows if the two of them are on a stage together, it’s not going to end well for him.”

      The younger generation and social media are of high importance for Harris’s campaign, having created positive narratives around her through memes and “fancams” (fan videos) since she announced her campaign. Having noticed the momentum and its potential, Harris officially joined TikTok last week and enjoys her highest approval (favorability) ratings among voters under the age of 30.

      Read more:
      Kamala Harris’s ‘Brat summer’: how memes can change a political campaign

      “Just call her Madam President”

      For women candidates, however, a significant challenge lies in the stereotypical framing that their opponents use, and how to respond. As research has shown, coverage about women candidates is more likely to focus on their personal lives than it is for men.

      This is also true for political attacks. In the few days that Harris has been in the race, attacks from her opponents have included criticising her personal life choices, attacking her family, and mocking her name by only using her first name and intentionally mispronouncing it.

      So far, Harris’s team seems prepared to fight where necessary and to take the high road where appropriate. But Harris’s campaign has introduced a middle way as well – addressing comments without explicitly mentioning them, a strong political communication strategy for the digital age.

      For instance, when Vance’s comments about Harris as a “childless cat lady” resurfaced, instead of going on the defence, her campaign hinted at the comments in a post about World IVF Day.

      “The Harris campaign wishes a happy IVF Day to everyone except for @JDVance,” they captioned the post which included sharp criticism of Vance for “insulting couples struggling with infertility, demeaning women’s choices and their freedoms” before stating Harris’s stance on the issue.

      As for mocking her name, Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff presented “good news” for Trump and others: “After the election, you can just call her Madam President.” More

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      Dar Leaf, Michigan’s ‘constitutional’ pro-militia sheriff, vies for re-election

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      This article was produced as a collaboration between Bolts and the Guardian.On a sunny afternoon in July, a crowd of roughly 100 gathered to listen to their local sheriff campaign for re-election in south-western Michigan. A self-described “constitutional sheriff” with longstanding ties to militia groups, Dar Leaf has made a national name for himself in far-right circles with his fruitless investigation to uncover evidence for Donald Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen.But that wasn’t what he wanted to discuss at his rally. Having come under intense scrutiny in the last three years for his election investigation and militia affiliations, Leaf spoke to his supporters about his office’s more mundane work – upgraded vehicles and new training – and urged them to ignore the attacks he’s faced.“Our eyes are forward, that’s why God put ’em in front of our head,” he said to laughter and applause. “We’ve got to keep moving towards that finish line.”Still, it’s his relentless effort to uncover voter fraud and his associations with far-right groups that have come to define him as he seeks to defeat three rivals in next week’s Republican primary.Taking up Trump’s unfounded grievances, Leaf sent deputies to interrogate local election officials and tried to seize voting machines, which he claimed flipped votes from Trump to Joe Biden. His activities fit in a broader network of far-right sheriffs who responded to Trump’s lies by wanting to police elections, and who may soon double down if the former president challenges the results of November’s elections.Leaf’s skepticism about elections and convictions about the excesses of the federal government fit in comfortably in Barry county, a deeply red and rural county just north of Kalamazoo that voted for Trump over Biden in 2020 by a two to-one margin.But locally, some Republicans want to turn the page. Two of his intra-party challengers in the 6 August primary have highlighted his investigation into the 2020 election as a key point of contrast.“The sheriff has propagated these lies,” says Joel Ibbotson, one of his three opponents. “I’m sick of that. I want it to end.”A years-long investigationWhen Trump falsely alleged a Democratic party plot to steal the 2020 election through widespread voter fraud, he found a sympathetic audience in Barry county and its sheriff.With the guidance of Stefanie Lambert, an election-denying lawyer who now faces felony charges for allegedly improperly breaching Michigan voting machines, Leaf launched an investigation into how the election unfolded in his county. He sent deputies to question local elections clerks, who saw his hunt as a form of intimidation. He repeatedly requested authorization to seize voting machines, but was denied by federal and state courts.Throughout the investigation, Leaf presented no evidence of irregularities, let alone of a plot to steal the election. He maintains that the investigation is ongoing, and said that he couldn’t elaborate on its status.Scott Price, a local pastor who supports Leaf’s re-election campaign, said Leaf was giving voice to widespread concerns about election integrity. “We’re grateful that we have somebody that has the courage and literally is willing to stand and take the heat for something that other people are saying didn’t even happen,” said Price.But some within Leaf’s own party resisted the investigation.Julie Nakfoor Pratt, the county’s Republican prosecutor, rejected Leaf’s inquiry into the 2020 election and denounced it as a waste of resources. In a lengthy statement before the county board of supervisors on 25 October 2022, Nakfoor Pratt explained why she could not act on Leaf’s allegations, pointing to the importance of probable cause and exhaustive detective work in prosecuting cases. She recounted her office’s investigation into a grisly homicide case as an example of the kind of rigor necessary in investigative policing.Without evidence, she said, a case couldn’t be prosecuted. “I will not put my signature on something if it’s not there,” said Nakfoor Pratt.When his office approached her with a search warrant for voting equipment, “there was no probable cause,” Nakfoor Pratt said. “It wasn’t insufficient: there was none.”View image in fullscreenEarlier this year, Lambert, the lawyer, shared troves of private documents that she claimed were signs of a conspiracy with Leaf. She had obtained them during discovery while representing Patrick Byrne, a Trump ally, in a defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems, which some conservatives have falsely accused of rigging the 2020 election. The documents show Serbian Dominion employees troubleshooting technical questions, but in a letter to US representative Jim Jordan, Leaf wrote that they revealed something more nefarious.“Serbian employees planned and conspired with premeditation to delete United States election data,” wrote Leaf, echoing a similar claim that Lambert made on the social media platform X.A constitutional sheriffSince long before the 2020 election, Leaf has been involved with the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), an ultraconservative group that promotes the belief that sheriffs have the ultimate authority to interpret and enforce the constitution within their county. This philosophy came into focus for him during the Covid-19 pandemic when, angered by lockdown orders intended to mitigate the spread of the virus, Leaf refused to enforce social distancing rules.In an interview, Leaf said he first learned about the constitutional sheriffs in 2010, when Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff and the founder of CSPOA, reached out.“I think they were just calling sheriffs up, especially new sheriffs,” said Leaf, who was intrigued enough by their movement to attend a conference in Las Vegas. What he heard there, he said, “was a big wake-up call”.Most important, Leaf said, was what he learned about Printz v United States, a supreme court case brought by Mack and Jay Printz, a Montana sheriff who argued that a provision of a federal gun violence prevention bill that required law enforcement agencies to conduct background checks was unconstitutional. They won; the supreme court ruled that the federal government could not compel state agencies to enact such a measure.“The case proved that local officials have the right, the power and the duty to stand against the far reaching inclusions by our own Federal Government,” Mack later wrote in his book.The ideas behind the constitutional sheriffs movement are shared by a startling number of sheriffs.Still, actual membership in CSPOA appears low. One study, produced by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, identified 69 sheriffs who publicly endorsed the CSPOA or claimed membership in the organization. A national CSPOA conference in Las Vegas this year drew about 100 attendees, among them January 6 defendants, conspiracy theorists and rightwing influencers – but few actual sheriffs.Leaf was in Vegas, though, telling attendees excitedly: “I’m getting goose-bumpy here.”‘You can’t get away from his name’Since assuming the office of sheriff two decades ago, Leaf has developed a passionate following in Barry county.“Dar is the most well-known person in the community,” said Barry county resident Olivia Bennett, who described Leaf as a family friend. “You just can’t get away from his name.” Bennett’s father served in Leaf’s “posse”, a word Leaf uses to describe a group of citizens who don’t work for the sheriff’s office but assist him in his duties.“My dad would come home and say different things, like, ‘If terrorists come, they’re going to come from these small towns first,’ and I just thought it was stuff my dad said,” Bennett said. “When later, I heard Dar speaking about it, I realized, ‘Oh no, my dad got these beliefs from Dar himself.’“Dar really does make people feel scared and make it sound like he’s the only one who can really protect you,” Bennett added.Leaf has long flexed his beliefs that sheriffs are guardians of order. “We’re not here to intimidate people,” he told local media in 2014. “This is still a badge, it’s not a swastika. We have to prepare for the worst. We have to prepare for things you don’t like talking about.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSince joining the CSPOA, Leaf has strived to introduce his community to the group’s lofty ideas about sheriffs’ unique role in upholding the constitution. Leaf hosts bi-monthly study groups focusing on Christian faith and common law and leads a course on militias, titled Awaken the Sleeping Militia Clause, promising attenders willing to pay the $175 entry fee that they’ll “learn a militiaman’s duty” and earn a certificate of completion.In one meeting, whose recording Bolts and the Guardian reviewed, Leaf expounds on Michigan’s new red flag law, which allows police to take firearms away from individuals who a judge has determined pose a threat to themselves or others. He describes it as illegitimate, implying that he had the authority to make that determination within his county.“No, my people did not consent to that,” said Leaf. “It’s a jurisdictional thing.”View image in fullscreenDuring a separate meeting this spring, Leaf updated members on the CSPOA’s April conference in Las Vegas. He said he was especially pleased to hear from Richard Fleming, a doctor who pleaded guilty in 2009 to felony charges of mail and healthcare fraud and has made a name of himself since then as a proponent of the unsubstantiated theory that Covid-19 was created as a bioweapon.Fleming’s claims, Leaf said, “are pretty much being ignored by the cabal that’s trying to take over the world”.Lockdowns and militiasAs Covid-19 spread across the country in March 2020, Leaf vowed to strike back against stay-at-home orders that he viewed as an example of governmental overreach.During that period, Gretchen Whitmer, the Michigan governor, briefly prohibited the use of motor boats, permitting only kayaking and canoeing as a form of outdoor recreation. The order, which Whitmer later walked back, infuriated many residents of Barry county.Leaf said he would not enforce the order. “The sheriff came out and said, ‘I don’t care if your boat has a motor on it or not. If you’re getting in a heated argument with your wife, go on the lake and go fishing, if that’s what it takes to cool off,’” said Ibbotson, who used to be an outspoken supporter of the sheriff and is now running as one of his primary challengers.Leaf took part in a rally against Michigan’s stay-at-home orders, and called them tantamount to an “unlawful arrest”. Also at the event were members of a militia called the Wolverine Watchmen, a group that was later implicated in a plot to kidnap Whitmer.When William and Michael Null, two brothers from Barry county who attended the event, were accused of taking part in the kidnapping plot, Leaf defended them. The group, he suggested, could have been planning to “arrest” the governor. “In Michigan, if it’s a felony, you can make a felony arrest,” he told a local news outlet. The Null brothers were later acquitted, during a trial that showcased how deeply involved FBI informants and agents had been in pushing the militia members’ rhetoric toward a kidnapping plot.When asked about the controversy and about concerns that he might be too closely connected to militias, Leaf smiled and looked a little bewildered.“Of course,” Leaf said. “There should be militias connected with every sheriff.”Pushback from RepublicansLeaf’s growing embrace of far-right politics has ruffled residents, including some of his former supporters.“When he had mentioned that the Null brothers were perhaps just trying to do a citizen’s arrest on the governor, that was the final straw for me,” said Ibbotson, who decided to challenge him in the Republican primary.Ibbotson, who owns a logistics company, said he wanted the office to drop the election issue. Election administration, he said, should be in the hands of the county and township clerks.“My goal through this, even if I lose, is to make it unpopular to talk about election integrity, in the sense that the sheriff has propagated these lies,” said Ibbotson. “I’m sick of that. I want it to end.” Ibbotson says he has hired formerly incarcerated drivers to work in his business in hopes of reducing recidivism.Leaf’s second challenger, Richelle Spencer, is a sergeant in the Barry county sheriff’s office, who has worked as a narcotics detective and in the K9 unit, says she decided to run for sheriff despite her aversion to politics. She said that the unending election investigation and Leaf’s involvement in the CSPOA has sowed divisions.“Everybody is ready for something different in the sheriff’s office – we’re ready for some stability, I can tell you that,” said Spencer.“He goes away and does these speaking engagements and when he’s doing that, he’s not available to us,” she added, “and he’s not aware of what’s going on in his own community.”Leaf’s third challenger, Mark Noteboom, a deputy in the sheriff’s office, has had a direct hand in Leaf’s investigation. Noteboom declined to share specifics about the investigation, but told Bolts and the Guardian that he felt “the clerks in Barry county did absolutely nothing wrong. They did everything they were supposed to do, and they did it the right way.” Noteboom added that as sheriff he would focus on improving conditions in the county jail and other local issues.“You’re the sheriff of Barry county, not the sheriff of the United States,” he added.At the CSPOA event in March, Leaf addressed the gathering on the topic of his investigation in Barry county and the status of election integrity nationwide. His police work, Leaf said, had been hampered by Dana Nessel, attorney general of Michigan and a Democrat who has been investigating Lambert and others for allegedly improperly seizing and tampering with voting machines. Deputies in his office didn’t want to touch the case.“That was the first major stumbling block,” said Leaf. Local crime had also pulled him away from the investigation. “We had a missing person and we took quite a while, a lot of manpower, to go find. I had to put my light-duty deputy off to go find this missing person.”There were so many leads, the investigation had become so expansive, and the end wasn’t even in sight more than two years after Leaf initiated the investigation. Still, he said, he had not given up. It was on him and other sympathetic minds to keep up with the search.“Keep chuggin’,” he advised the room. “Keep charging the castle!” More

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      Donald Trump sure makes a lot of ‘jokes’ about ruling as a dictator, doesn’t he? | Moustafa Bayoumi

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      Last Friday, Donald Trump told an audience of Christian conservatives to “get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it any more. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians.”Selling the idea to US citizens that their next vote will be their last one just doesn’t seem like a winning proposition to me, but what do I know? I’m not running to be elected dictator on day one of my second presidency.That campaign pledge is of course what the former president told Sean Hannity last December. Hannity posed a question to Trump, who weeks earlier had called his political opponents “vermin”. “You are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?” Hannity asked.“Except for day one,” Trump responded. “I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill.”Democrats rang all the alarm bells then, as they are ringing them now, responsibly warning us of our impending authoritarian future under Trump. And Trump’s supporters? They just thought he was kidding. “Of course he’s joking,” one attendee who’s been to more than a dozen Trump events told the Washington Post last December. “You can’t be a dictator with a constitutional republic.”Whether this attendee is right isn’t the point. The issue is how one side hears jackboots marching just over the hill, ready to trample on our democracy. And the other side hears only guffaws.And this disconnect continues, day by day, week by week, month by month. After Trump’s comments on Friday, the prominent Democrat and California representative Adam Schiff stated: “Democracy is on the ballot, and if we are to save it, we must vote against authoritarianism.” Meanwhile, on CNN’s State of the Union, Senator Tom Cotton dismissed any worry about Trump’s call to end voting by 2028 by saying that Trump was “obviously making a joke”.I don’t find Trump’s jokes funny, but what’s really missing from this conversation is how much Trump’s so-called sense of humor draws from the information strategies of the contemporary far right, and how much the Democrats end up playing right into his hands.There was a time when satire and irony belonged primarily to the left. From Jonathan Swift to Jon Stewart, humor was the knife to cut deepest into the excesses of political authority. There is thankfully still some residual humor on the left today – John Oliver comes to mind – but, as a political party, the Democrats could learn a thing or two about comic timing. (Their timing for stepping down from high office, admittedly, is sublime.) Eschewing political humor, Democrats seem comfortable opting for a moralizing politics, which truth be told can be as politically off-putting as it is well-meaning.Today’s right wing, on the other hand, “weaponizes irony to attract and radicalize potential supporters”, according to media studies scholar Viveca Greene. She argues that today’s far right uses irony and humor “to challenge progressive ideologies and institutions”, and in so doing, the right is able “to create a toxic counter public”.Greene is mostly concerned with the alt-right – that is to say, the more extreme elements of the right wing – but Trump’s signature contribution to this discourse is to mainstream alt-right communication strategies on to a national stage. And a kind of plausible deniability plays an enormous role in this rhetorical ecosystem.Did Trump just call for democracy to end in the next election cycle? Oh, come on. He’s just being funny! (But yes, he did.) Did Trump guarantee to root out the “radical left thugs” that “live like vermin” in our country? That’s hilarious! (He said he will.) Did Trump promise that he will be president for three terms? Stop! My sides are aching! (You bet he did.) Will Trump “terminate” the US constitution if he’s elected? So funny! It’s like he’s saying: “You’re fired!” to a piece of paper! (It’s on the record.)And with every rightwing excess and with each lousy joke, often at the expense of politically marginal populations (such as Muslims and immigrants), the Democrats predictably recoil in public and performative horror. Yet by doing so they only add to their perceived unfunny “wokeness” and provide more material for the political comedian who will next seek to legislate our very laughter at his own pathetic humor, as if a monstrous dad joke just became our Dear Leader.Wouldn’t it be smarter to draw attention to Trump’s ridiculousness rather than his threats? Isn’t there some cliche out there about choosing honey over vinegar? Can the Democrats rediscover the extraordinary political power of satire before it’s too late? The demands on humor on a national stage have never been greater, and that’s no laughing matter.

      Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Joe Biden is politicizing US supreme court reform – and that’s a good thing | Austin Sarat

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      “Better late than never” is a useful maxim in all of life and in politics as well. On Monday, Joe Biden caught the “better late than never” bug when he unveiled a series of proposals to reform the US supreme court.Those proposals come more than two and a half years after the US president’s presidential commission on the supreme court issued its recommendations, and more than 40 years after Biden called former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s plan to impose term limits on the court “boneheaded”.In 2020, during his quest for the White House, Biden again distanced himself from people who were pushing for significant institutional reform at the court.How times have changed. That was before the court overruled Roe v Wade, the ethics scandals of justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas came to light, and before the court gave the president almost blanket immunity from criminal prosecution.Biden announced his new thinking in a Washington Post op-ed, in which he detailed what he called “three bold reforms to restore trust and accountability to the court and our democracy”. They begin with a constitutional amendment designed to reverse the supreme court’s Trump v United States decision granting presidents immunity from criminal prosecution for their official acts.Biden calls it the “No One Is Above the Law Amendment”. It would “make clear that there is no immunity for crimes a former president committed while in office”.The second of Biden’s reform proposals would impose term limits on the justices who sit on the supreme court. It would institute “a system in which the president would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in active service on the Supreme Court”.Third, Biden called for enacting “a binding code of conduct for the Supreme Court”. Justices, Biden wrote, “should be required to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest”.While each of these proposals is a wise response to the current crisis of the supreme court, none of them has any chance of being enacted in the near future. Still, Biden has done a service by going public with these ideas and politicizing the court reform question.His op-ed and speech on court reform at an event commemorating the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act will help ensure that supreme court reform is a live issue during the remainder of the 2024 presidential campaign.The first of Biden’s proposals, the call for a constitutional amendment, is the most important but also the most difficult to achieve among his three ideas. Like earlier versions of the same idea, it offers an important vehicle for engaging the public in resisting yet another exercise of judicial supremacy by our increasingly rogue supreme court.America has a long history of using the amendment process to reverse repugnant supreme court decisions, like Trump v United States. But as Harvard Law’s Jill Lepore notes, over the long arc of American history, amending the constitution has “become a lost art”.In fact, Lepore noted elsewhere: “The US Constitution hasn’t been meaningfully amended since 1971.”However, by supporting an amendment to reverse Trump v United States, Biden has teed up a winning issue for Kamala Harris. Polls show that 65% of Americans do not think presidents should have immunity for actions taken in office.Among independent voters, that number is 68%.Even larger majorities support 18-year term limits for supreme court justices. As the Biden commission noted: “Up until the late 1960s, the average term of service was 15 years. It has now risen to roughly 26 years, and a number of Justices have served three or more decades, spanning numerous election cycles and presidential administrations.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis may be why a Fox News Poll conducted earlier this month found that 78% of the respondents favor that idea. That is up from 66% in 2022.While term limits are popular, it is unclear whether Congress could impose them by ordinary legislation or whether this proposal would also require a constitutional amendment. Even Biden’s supreme court commission was divided on that question.As an article in Forbes explains: “Article III of the Constitution states judges ‘shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour,’ which has been interpreted to mean justices have to hold lifetime appointments. The commission said Congress could get around the issue by having only the most recent justices hear most cases, which originate in lower courts, while still keeping the older ones on to hear cases that originate in the Supreme Court.”“That strategy … would create the ‘effective equivalent’ of term limits without actually violating Article III by kicking justices off the court.”What is clear is that Donald Trump is on the wrong side of the supreme court term limits idea. Earlier this month, the former president branded court reform proposals such as term limits “illegal” and “unconstitutional”.“The Democrats are attempting to interfere in the Presidential Election, and destroy our Justice System, by attacking their Political Opponent, ME, and our Honorable Supreme Court,” he posted on Truth Social. “We have to fight for our Fair and Independent Courts, and protect our Country.”Trump is even out of step with his supporters on the idea of term limits for justices. Newsweek says: “Among those who voted for Trump in 2020, 54% supported term limits, while 20% opposed them.”Finally, a Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted last September showed that “three-in-four voters want the justices bound to an ethics code, the most popular reform proposal in the survey”. This figure reflects what Politico calls “a bipartisan consensus of 81% of Democrats, 72% of Republicans, and 69% of independents”.Here, too, Maga world is on the wrong side politically, as well as on the wrong side of history. Just last month, as NBC News reported, Senate Republicans “blocked a Democratic-sponsored bill that would have required Supreme Court justices to adopt a binding code of conduct”.In the end, no matter how Biden’s proposals play out in the presidential contest, by politicizing the issue, by going public with them in a high-profile manner, the president has offered the people of the United States a chance to make their voices heard about the kind of supreme court they want. It is now up to all of us to take him up on that offer and use our votes to weigh in on this most important question.

      Austin Sarat is a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College and the author of Lethal Injection and the False Promise of Humane Execution More

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      Trump favorite Kari Lake wins Arizona’s Republican Senate primary

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      Kari Lake, the far-right firebrand and favorite of Donald Trump, has won Arizona’s Republican Senate primary.The Associated Press projected the race at 8.44pm Arizona time on Tuesday night. Lake rose to prominence as a gubernatorial candidate in 2022, when she refused to concede the race to her Democratic challenger Katie Hobbs.Having secured a primary victory, she will face off against the Democratic US representative Ruben Gallego for an open Senate seat vacated by the centrist independent senator Kyrsten Sinema.Lake, endorsed by Trump, was widely favored to win the primary against Mark Lamb, the sheriff of Pinal county. Lamb, who has far less name recognition and campaign funding than Lake, pulled in about 40% of the vote as of Tuesday night – a potential sign of general election trouble for Lake, who has alienated the more moderate voters required to win statewide in Arizona.Her contest, along with several key down-ballot races, is considered a gauge for the relative strength of the Maga movement in a key swing state that has been racked with election chaos brought on by a far-right flank pushing false claims about election fraud.Lake, a former news anchor who rocked into the national stage by becoming one of the most ardent and telegenic faces of election denialism, once carried a sledgehammer on stage and told supporters she would use it on electronic voting machines.The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee quickly launched an ad against Lake, where she talks about how abortion pills should be illegal and brands her as a “power-hungry liar who only cares about herself”. Gallego tweeted: “It’s official – my opponent is Kari Lake. Arizona, the choice is clear: Kari wants to ban abortion. I will always protect abortion rights.”Election prognosticators Sabato’s Crystal Ball and the Cook Political Report rank the race as leaning Democratic, citing Lake’s election denialism and belief in abortion restrictions as factors moving the race toward Democrats. Polling on the matchup between Gallego and Lake has generally shown Gallego up a few points over Lake.The race is key nationally for the balance of power in the US Senate – Democrats need to keep it in their control to maintain their 51-49 majority in the chamber. It’s one of few close races around the country expected to see massive funding and attention as November nears.Far-right election deniers starred in several other key Republican primary races. Abe Hamadeh, who repeatedly tried to have his loss in the 2022 attorney general election overturned and has spread conspiracy theories about election security, is leading in a crowded Republican primary in the state’s deep-red eighth congressional district, where Trump made the rare move to endorse two candidates, including Hamadeh.His Republican rivals included venture capitalist Blake Masters, who Trump endorsed last-minute, as well as state senator and fake elector Anthony Kern, Ben Toma, the speaker of the Arizona house; Trent Franks, who resigned from Congress after staffers claimed he asked them to serve as surrogates for him; and political newcomer Pat Briody.View image in fullscreenMeanwhile, Mark Finchem, who has still not accepted that he lost his bid for secretary of state in 2022 has the lead in a race against relative moderate Republican Ken Bennett for a state senate seat.In Arizona’s Maricopa county – which includes Phoenix – election deniers vied for positions that could give them oversight in future elections. Early results show a mixed bag for election-defending county officials.Stephen Richer, the Maricopa county recorder who became a nationally known voice for defending elections and sued Lake for defamation over election falsehoods, was behind in his race for reelection as of Tuesday night. He is falling behind Justin Heap, a state representative who will not say whether he believes the 2020 or 2022 elections were stolen, but has called Maricopa county elections a “laughing stock” and supported bills that stemmed from election conspiracies. Another challenger, Don Hiatt, has said the 2020 election was stolen and wants to curtail voting access and is in third.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDebbie Lesko, an outgoing Republican congresswoman who is endorsed by Trump and voted to overturn election results on 6 January 2021, has a strong lead in the primary to join the county board of supervisors over another election denier, Bob Branch, a professor at the Christian college Grand Canyon University.The Maricopa county board of supervisors and recorder played a crucial role in 2020 standing up to pressure from Trump and his allies in their scheme to overturn the results of that year’s presidential election.The recorder and many board members have faced ongoing threats, some of which have been prosecuted and led to prison sentences. The pressure has remained intense in the lead-up to this year’s elections, with errors such as printing problems in the 2022 election adding fuel to rightwing conspiracies.Amid the threats and harassment, two supervisors, Bill Gates and Clint Hickman, decided not to run for re-election.For Gates’s seat, moderate former state lawmaker Kate Brophy McGee is far ahead in the primary against Tabatha LaVoie, who said on her campaign website that she wanted to restore voter confidence because: “Our County cannot continue to raise doubts about the integrity of our elections.”Jack Sellers, currently the board chair, is trailing far behind Mark Stewart, currently a council member in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler. Stewart won’t say whether he would have certified results in 2020 or 2022 and claims he will restore confidence in county elections.Thomas Galvin, who was not on the board in 2020 but has defended county elections since taking office after beating election-denying candidates in 2022, is fending off a challenge from Michelle Ugenti-Rita, a former state lawmaker and Lake-endorsed candidate who promised to “fight for election integrity” and “take back Maricopa County from the establishment”.On the Democratic side, former state senator Raquel Terán is trailing in her primary for Arizona’s third district, for the seat that will be vacated by Gallego. A longtime organiser against anti-immigrant laws in the state, Téran focused her campaign on protecting abortion rights. Her main rival former city council member in Phoenix, Yassamin Ansari, had raised more funds and secured several key labour endorsements, and has the lead as of Tuesday night.And in what is likely his last unsuccessful bid for office, the former Maricopa county sheriff Joe Arpaio, notorious for his harsh immigration regime, was trounced in a local mayoral race to lead the Phoenix suburb of Fountain Hills. Arpaio, 92, was recently kissed on the cheek by Trump at a rally in Arizona. In his run for mayor, one of his main ideas was to make the town’s eponymous fountain go higher. More

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      ‘Cat ladies’ come together to show support for Kamala Harris

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      A group of pet lovers and self-described “cat ladies” came together for the latest in a series of Zoom calls in support of Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. The Tuesday evening call was hosted by Christine Pelosi, a political consultant and the daughter of Nancy Pelosi, and Nikki Fried, the chair of the Florida Democratic party.The call was not organized around racial and ethnic identity, but as a rebuff to comments made in 2021 by JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, who told the then Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the US was being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs and “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too”.Tuesday’s meeting began with a slideshow of pet pictures that played over Dancing Queen by Abba. Nancy Pelosi, a surprise guest, bopped along to the tune before telling the audience that the purpose of the gathering was to show support for women’s freedom to “love how they wanna love, and live how they wanna live”.“When JD Vance couched his opinion on our freedom, we decided that the cat ladies are striking back,” Pelosi said. “He didn’t realize what an opportunity he was giving us, and what he would unleash.”The digital conference was organized by a group called Pet Lovers for Kamala. Originally, the group was focused on cat owners in particular, but Christine Pelosi said they found solidarity among dog owners, so they formed an inclusive group that includes owners of all animals.That included Donna Brazile, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee, and Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois congresswoman. Both appeared with their dogs.Christine Pelosi and the call’s other organizers gave tips for how to engage people via social media posts, phone and text banks, and by volunteering on behalf of Harris. Fried, who also served as Florida’s commissioner of agriculture from 2019 to 2023, said Harris winning was the only thing stopping the rest of the US going the way of her home state.“I had to sit next to Ron DeSantis for four straight years and see up close and personal the strangeness of Ron DeSantis,” Fried said. “We have been living under Project 2025. We have been the lab rats for the Heritage Foundation.”The Tuesday call also follows several other Zoom rallies put on by affinity groups to raise money for the presumptive Democratic nominee.Within 24 hours of Joe Biden announcing he was ending his campaign, nearly 100,000 Black people logged on to Zoom calls with the groups Win with Black Women and Win with Black Men in support of Harris’s campaign.Last week, Shannon Watts, best known for founding the gun violence prevention group Moms Demand Action, corralled more than 160,000 white women, and on Monday, a White Dudes for Harris call attracted more than 190,000 people and raised $4m for the vice-president’s campaign.A virtual meeting of Latino voters is slated for Wednesday and will be hosted by comedian George Lopez. More

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      Atlanta rally: Harris tells Trump to ‘say it to my face’ and challenges him to debate

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      Three weeks ago, the political commentariat was writing off Georgia and talking of narrow pathways for Joe Biden to hold the White House. Georgia was a desert. Tuesday evening, an Atlanta crowd greeted Kamala Harris like she backed up a truck full of sweet tea to that desert.It’s probably too early – nine days since the president’s withdrawal and the vice-president’s ascension – to know if sentiment in Georgia had shifted enough to justify jubilation. But the crowd in Atlanta treated the new presumptive presidential nominee as a reason to celebrate after months of her quieter campaigning in the city as the vice-presidential nominee.“As many of you know, before I was elected vice-president … I was an elected attorney general and an elected district attorney,” Harris said after taking the stand. “Hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type, and I have been dealing with people like him my entire career.”This elicited chants of: “Lock him up!”Harris addressed a crowd of 10,000 who filled the Georgia State Convocation Center, with people waiting outside for a seat. She touted her prosecution record and referenced Trump’s criminal convictions and the findings of fraud in his businesses.“As an attorney general, I held big Wall Street banks accountable for fraud. Donald Trump was found guilty of fraud,” Harris said. “In this campaign, I will proudly put my record against his any day, including on the issue of immigration.”Harris spoke of walking underground tunnels at the California border and prosecuting traffickers, and pledged to bring back the border security bill that was tanked in Congress by Republicans to preserve the issue in the campaign.Referencing a Migos song – popular as an Atlanta group – she said: “He does not walk it as he talks it.”Ahead of Harris’s appearance on Tuesday, several Atlanta voices made the case for her. Mayor Andre Dickens noted that this was the vice-president’s 15th time visiting the state since 2021. Harris has been in Atlanta so often that she may as well have rented a condo in Buckhead to save money.Harris is expected back in the state next week, and will debut her running mate on a seven-stop swing state tour, according to details confirmed by her campaign. Politico reported Harris will hold the first rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday. Harris said she as of today has not yet picked the candidate yet.For the last two years, Harris has been Joe Biden’s chief campaign surrogate in Georgia, making deliberate connections with campaign organizers and Black community leaders, a weapon in the Democratic arsenal that Republicans have not been able to match.“Georgia is on everybody’s mind,” said Raphael Warnock, the senator and reverend, to a boisterous crowd. “And there’s a reason. Because of what you did in 2020, 2021, everybody knows that the road to the White House goes through Georgia.”View image in fullscreenDonald Trump has been on his heels in recent polls, which show ground captured in the rust belt. The former president announced that he would refrain from committing to a debate against Harris until after the Democratic national convention, which the senator Jon Ossoff characterized as cowardice.“I know about having an opponent who’s too scared to debate,” Ossoff said, harkening back to his winning 2020 campaign against then senator David Perdue, in which he spent 90 minutes debating an empty chair. “The candidate who is dodging debates is the candidate who is losing.”Stacey Abrams took the stage at 5.33pm to thunderous chants of “Stacey!”, which Abrams immediately turned around into a chant for “Kamala!”“We are the ones who put our boots on the ground,” said the former gubernatorial candidate and voting rights advocate. She preached the virtues of a progressive presidency on infrastructure development in the Black community, on job creation and on the climate. She pointedly noted that Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, who defeated her two years ago, took credit for new investment in solar panel manufacturing in Georgia even as the federal government has been spurring those investments.View image in fullscreen“They started with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden believing in the environment,” she said.Now that Harris has replaced Biden as the presumptive nominee, the question is whether there is time to capitalize on the administration’s connections in a state that may still be difficult to win for Democrats.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“When we get deep into those communities, when we are hitting apartment complexes in the hood, when we’re places we don’t usually go, I’ll know its real,” said state representative Imani Barnes, a Democrat representing a sprawling suburban district in DeKalb county near Atlanta.Barnes’ constituents range from CDC scientists to some of the poorest immigrant communities in the state, and she can see how campaigns have to change the language on flyers to reach some voters. “That’s how we know a campaign is making a difference.”Previous appearances in Georgia by Biden and Harris have been closely vetted campaign events filled with a curated selection of activists, advocates and party leaders. Though the guest speakers on Tuesday were a selection of federal officials and local leaders – with Geoff Duncan, the former Republican lieutenant governor, stalking the edges of the press pit – that selectivity was less evident.“Georgia saved the whole nation,” Warnock said. “I have a feeling that Georgia is going to save the nation one more time.”In her speech, Harris sought not only to attack her opponent but to refocus on top voter issues in Georgia, such as the economy.“Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency,” she said. “When our middle class is strong, America is strong. To keep our middle class strong, families need relief from the high cost of living so that they have a chance not to get by but to get ahead.”She said she would go after price gouging and hidden fees by banks and other companies, and take on corporate landlords to cap unfair rent increases, and to cap prescription drug costs.“There are signs Donald Trump is feeling” the competition, she says.“You may have noticed he pulled out of the debate.”She repeated the assertion made by her campaign in recent days that Trump is “just plain weird”.“I do hope Trump will agree to meet me on the debate stage, because as the saying goes – if you got something to say, say it to my face,” she said as the crowd exploded.The convocation center at Georgia State University is a state-owned building. Election law requires the facility to offer its use on the same terms to the Trump campaign. Hence, Trump will appear here Saturday, offering a mark to compare their relative fortunes even as he refuses to accept debate. More

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      JD Vance writes glowing foreword to Project 2025 leader’s upcoming book

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      JD Vance endorses the ideas of Kevin Roberts, leader of Project 2025, as a “fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics” and a “surprising – even jarring” path forward for conservatives, the Republican vice-presidential nominee writes in the foreword of Roberts’ upcoming book.The foreword was obtained and published in full by the New Republic on Tuesday. Roberts’ book is out in September. Its title was watered down recently to remove references to “burning down” Washington.In the foreword, Vance finds parallels between his upbringing and that of Roberts, and between their visions for what the US needs. Both grew up in poor families in parts of the country “largely ignored by America’s elites”, with Roberts in Louisiana and Vance in Ohio and Kentucky. They’re both Catholic, with Vance as a convert in his adult life. Both had grandparents who played big roles in their upbringing.Now both are in DC, with Roberts “just a few steps” from Vance’s office.Vance praises Roberts for using his perch as the president of the Heritage Foundation, a rightwing DC thinktank, to advance a more radical conservative vision rather than resting on the foundation’s laurels.“The Heritage Foundation isn’t some random outpost on Capitol Hill; it is and has been the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump,” Vance writes. “Yet it is Heritage’s power and influence that makes it easy to avoid risks. Roberts could collect a nice salary, write decent books, and tell donors what they want to hear. But Roberts believes doing the same old thing could lead to the ruin of our nation.”The Trump campaign has tried to distance the former president from Project 2025, a conservative roadmap for a second Trump term that includes policy ideas unpopular with the voters Trump needs to win. But Vance’s ties to Roberts, like the foreword, make it harder for Trump to make the case he doesn’t know what the project is.In the hours before the foreword was published by news outlets, Project 2025’s director, Paul Dans, said he was stepping down from his role and that some of the project’s work was winding down, though it’s not clear what that means. The project consists largely of a 900-plus-page policy manifesto and an effort to find potential staffers for a second Trump term. Roberts said the plan to create a “personnel apparatus” for all levels of government would continue.Roberts has faced scrutiny in recent weeks for comments that the US is “in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless, if the left allows it to be”. His ties to a radical part of the Catholic church, Opus Dei, and belief that birth control should be outlawed were also revealed by the Guardian.Vance has previously said Roberts “is somebody I rely on a lot who has very good advice, very good political instincts”, he told news outlet Notus in January. He said that Heritage, under Roberts, went from a “relatively vanilla” thinktank to one willing to participate in the fights and debates on the right about where the party should head.On two subjects in particular, Vance praises the way Roberts lays out the stakes and his goals: reining in large tech companies and focusing on a Christian view of the family.He notes that Roberts argues the US founders would not have envisioned the way companies like Apple or Google would amass power to “censor speech, influence elections, and work seamlessly with intelligence services and other federal bureaucrats”, saying this “deserves the scrutiny of the right, not its support”.And Vance agrees with the way Roberts recognizes that “cultural norms and attitudes matter”.“We should encourage our kids to get married and have kids,” Vance writes. “We should teach them that marriage isn’t just a contract, but a sacred – and to the extent possible, lifelong – union. We should discourage them from behaviors that threaten the stability of their families.”This belief in the family also means that conservatives need to ensure that families aren’t just for people with wealth, which calls for creating better jobs and listening to young people when they say they can’t afford homes or families, he writes.“Roberts is articulating a fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics: recognizing that virtue and material progress go hand in hand,” Vance writes.In order to create the America Roberts and Vance envision, conservatives need to go on offense – not just remove policies they don’t like, but rebuild the country in what Roberts has referred to as a “second American Revolution”.“The old conservative movement argued if you just got government out of the way, natural forces would resolve problems – we are no longer in this situation and must take a different approach,” Vance writes. “As Kevin Roberts writes, ‘It’s fine to take a laissez-faire approach when you are in the safety of the sunshine. But when the twilight descends and you hear the wolves, you’ve got to circle the wagons and load the muskets.’“We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay [sic] ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon.” More