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      Monday briefing: ‘Not going back’ – why Kamala Harris has reason to hope

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      Good morning. In the week since Kamala Harris became the de facto Democratic nominee, the contest for the presidency has been transformed. Money has poured in, the polls have tightened, and the campaign is about something fundamentally different. The same Democrats who were almost catatonic over Joe Biden’s chances of victory because so many voters saw him as too old to do the job now believe that Donald Trump can be defeated.But none of that means that Harris is sure of taking the Oval Office – or even that she is the favourite. Today’s newsletter explains how she has changed the race, and how much she still has left to do. Here are the headlines.Five big stories

      Social care | Teachers, NHS staff and other key workers who balance part-time work with caring for loved ones are quitting their jobs to avoid being hit with huge cash penalties for breaching carer’s allowance rules, according to a study by Carers UK. The report details carers being forced to take desperate measures to avoid breaching tight earnings limits, including quitting their jobs, cutting their hours, turning down pay rises, one-off cost of living payments and performance bonuses, and even working free hours each month.

      Israel-Gaza war | Global leaders were engaged in intensive diplomacy on Sunday to dissuade Israel from increasing attacks on Lebanon, in response to a rocket strike that killed 12 children in the occupied Golan Heights. Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he would determine the “type” and “timing” of the response to Hezbollah’s attack.

      Immigration and asylum | A woman has died trying to cross the Channel in an overcrowded dinghy, as a number of small boats made the dangerous journey over the weekend.

      Home Office | Environmental groups are among 92 civil society organisations who have warned the home secretary Yvette Cooper against “the steady erosion of the right to protest” in the UK, and called on her to reverse the previous government’s crackdown on peaceful protest.

      Venezuela | Nicolás Maduro has been declared the winner of Venezuela’s presidential election by the government-controlled electoral authority – a result that appeared to dash opposition hopes of ending 25 years of socialist rule and looked certain to be bitterly contested.
      In depth: ‘The Republicans are road testing a lot of different messages’View image in fullscreenOn Friday, Barack and Michelle Obama formally endorsed Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for president, completing the set of high-profile party leaders who have publicly given her their support.Her ascent to the nomination appears to have gone much more smoothly, and with her party much more united behind her, than anyone imagined before Biden stepped aside.But the disastrous Biden campaign is a low bar for comparison – and Trump still holds plenty of cards. Here’s what you need to know as the Harris campaign moves from being a novelty act to the new normal.Her messages on the campaign trailEven though she’s been vice-president for more than three years, Harris is still relatively undefined for most voters, and so this is a crucial moment to set up the rest of the campaign.Her first campaign ad sought to draw a sharp contrast with Trump through the prism of freedom: to the tune of Beyoncé’s song of the same name, she talks about “the freedom not just to get by, but to get ahead. The freedom to be safe from gun violence. The freedom to make decisions about your own body.” Trump’s vision of America, she meanwhile said, was “a country of chaos, of fear, of hate”.She struck a similar note in an address to a teachers’ union in Houston, saying: “We are in a fight for our most fundamental freedoms” and warning that “we want to ban assault weapons, and they want to ban books”. And in a speech to more than 6,000 Black women in Indianapolis, she said: “Ours is a fight for the future and a fight for freedom.”In her first rally in the battleground state of Wisconsin a couple of days earlier – which saw a hasty venue change because it was so oversubscribed – she set up what is likely to be the consistent contrast drawn with Trump in the months ahead: she is a prosecutor, he is a convicted criminal. “I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” she said. “So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”Two slogans, meanwhile, have come to the fore – and they have a vigorous, defiant tone that sounds like it’s meant to enthuse the Democratic base. She led the fired-up crowd in Wisconsin in a chorus of “When we fight, we win.” And when she said: “America has tried these failed economic policies before, but we are not going back,” the crowd chanted: “Not going back! Not going back!”How the Trump campaign has respondedOne analysis of Harris’s impact on the campaign came from Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio, who sent a memo to staffers acknowledging a “honeymoon” with “wall-to-wall coverage … from the mainstream media” but added: “the fundamentals of the race stay the same”.But that seems obviously untrue: Harris is a very different candidate to Biden, and is invulnerable to the case that the Trump campaign has been set up to make – that their opponent is too old.Trump’s own approach was crystallised at the Bojangles Coliseum (real name) in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he held his first campaign rally since Biden’s exit. He called her the “ultraliberal driving force” behind Biden’s policies and said she was a “radical-left lunatic who will destroy our country”. He also branded her “lyin’ Kamala Harris” and repeatedly pronounced her name wrong. While immigration is meant to be a central line of attack, he did not mention it once in an interview with Fox News last Monday. Fox News contributors, meanwhile, seem to be obsessed with her view on plastic straws.All of that suggests that the Republicans are yet to settle on a message that is likely to appeal to swing voters, although that’s not to say they won’t: “They’re road testing a lot of different messages, have not really narrowed down what resonates, what people care about,” Republican strategist Jason Roe told Politico.How Democrats have reactedThe scale of the fundraising improvement – $200m in the week since she was endorsed by Joe Biden – is well documented, but also important is where it comes from: the Harris campaign said that 888,000 grassroots donors made donations of less than $200 in the first 24 hours. About 66% of the weekly total came from first-time donors, according to the campaign, opening up a potential new revenue stream in the months ahead. Late last week, Harris’s team hosted a zoom call with 160,000 attendees which appeared to break records in donations.Meanwhile, Future Forward, the biggest Democratic political action committee – which operates independently of the campaign – said it raised $150m in the first 24 hours.The campaign also said that 100,000 people had signed up to volunteer by Wednesday, and 2,000 had applied for campaign jobs. As supporters waited for new Harris for President signs – her design team came up with six options in three hours last Sunday and had to take them to campaign headquarters while they were still wet – some of them made DIY versions by lopping the incumbent president’s name off the top of existing BIDEN HARRIS signs. All of that, along with the memeification of Harris via Charli xcx’s “brat summer”, suggests an early rush of enthusiasm of an organic kind that is gold for political campaigns.How the polls have changedThe first concrete evidence that the race has changed came in a spate of polls released towards the end of last week, which showed a significant narrowing of the gap between Trump and Harris as compared to Biden’s performance.A national poll conducted by the New York Times and Siena College showed Harris behind 47 to 48 – closing the Biden-Trump gap by five points. An aggregate of 80 polls from the Hill and Decision Desk HQ had Harris 2.1 points behind, where Biden had been trailing by 3.3 points.Polls in the crucial battleground states, meanwhile, tend to show Trump with leads, but Harris improving on Biden’s position. And the Democrats say that they believe Harris at the top of the ticket can put them in contention in a swathe of states that appeared to be out of Biden’s reach: a memo from Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon argues that her greater popularity with young and minority voters means that North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada – all which were leaning towards Trump – are now in play.While all of that looks like very good news for Harris, there are strong caveats. Most polls say that Trump is still winning. And the improvement in national polls may overstate her chances because she is less popular with older, white working-class voters than Biden was – and they are the key constituency in the states most likely to decide the election.It’s also probably true that Harris is enjoying a honeymoon – and her momentum may slow. But the Democratic convention is two weeks away, and she will make more headlines when she announces her pick for vice-president before that. The hope for the Harris campaign is that by the time Trump has the chance to wrest back control of the agenda, she may be in an even better position than she is today.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhat else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreen

      Ann Lee’s interview with Sean Wang (above) about his new debut film Dìdi is delightful. The pair discuss the significance of the semi-autobiographical film and why he felt compelled to make it. Nimo

      “You just don’t imagine these complications happening to a top athlete”: the Guardian’s Fascinating Olympians series ends with an interview with Allyson Felix, who tells Tobi Thomas about the highs and lows of elite competition, and why she has spent the last few years advocating for better maternal health outcomes for Black mothers. Hannah J Davies, deputy editor, newsletters

      Public inquiries can be an important way to uncover wrongdoing. In recent years though, they have become a routine response to institutional failures and rarely prompt significant change. “If justice delayed is justice denied, then inquiries that take years to report, after taking decades to get off the ground, look as though they are simply kicking difficult issues into the long grass,” Samira Shackle writes. Nimo

      From burpees to shoulder circles, Phil Daoust has got some exercise “snacks” to pepper throughout your day – even if you’re in the office. Hannah

      Michael Safi and William Christou’s dispatch from Lebanon finds that despite the high tensions with Israel and deadly strikes, the tourism industry is still booming. Dalya Farran, the owner of a beach club, said that while it’s bizarre, “you eat some good food, have some beers – or juice – and then go for a swim, and the sea washes away your worries and stress.” Nimo
      SportView image in fullscreenOlympics | Adam Peaty missed out on a third consecutive Olympic 100m breaststroke title by 0.02sec, sharing silver with Nic Fink of the US in a desperately close race won by the Italian Nicolò Martinenghi. Countless celebrities lined the stands as Simone Biles returned to compete in front of the world. Biles effortlessly worked her way through a smooth, ­efficient ­opening beam routine, qualifying for the all-around final in first place with a score of 59.566.F1 | George Russell won the Belgian Grand Prix, pulling off a surprise victory for Mercedes at Spa Francorchamps after a thrilling and impossibly tense battle with his teammate, Lewis Hamilton, who was second, completing a Mercedes one-two.Cricket | “In the end, resistance was futile,” writes Ali Martin about England’s decisive victory over West Indies, with the team securing a 10-wicket victory for England and a 3-0 series clean sweep.The front pagesView image in fullscreenThe Guardian leads with “Reeves paves way for cuts and tax rises to fix finances”. The Times characterises the Chancellor’s comments as “Squeeze on spending to lift UK from £20bn hole”.The i reports “GPs threaten to bring NHS to ‘standstill’ by capping daily patient numbers”. The Mail has “GPs: We will bring NHS to a standstill”. The Mirror covers the same story under the headline “Bitter pill”.The Telegraph leads with “Israel ‘to retaliate’ against Hezbollah”. The Financial Times reports “Harris raises $200mn in first week of ‘record shattering’ election campaign”.Today in FocusView image in fullscreenWhy Spain wants tourists to go homeFor decades, Spain has been the destination of choice for Brits desperate for sun, sea and sand. But now there is a growing backlash against tourism. What went wrong? Sam Jones reports.Cartoon of the day | Ella BaronView image in fullscreenThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badView image in fullscreenA new report by the development agency FSD Africa has found that greener economies could bring millions of jobs to some of the largest countries in Africa by 2030. About 10% of the jobs created, which will mostly be in renewable energy, will require university degrees, 30% will be “specialised” work that needs certification or vocational training, and 20% will be administrative. “Unskilled” labour will be more stable, with opportunities for upward mobility, the study predicts. The researchers behind the report are urging policymakers, funders and educational institutions to invest in training a workforce in green industries. They say it could “contribute to the formalisation of African economies”.Kevin Munjal, director of development impact at FSD Africa, says investing in greener economies provides ample opportunity to address the continent’s demographic crisis: “Africa has the youngest, fastest-growing workforce but … the youth need jobs.”Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

      Quick crossword

      Cryptic crossword

      Wordiply More

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      Australia fears being abandoned by America – but do the two countries need each other?

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      In any presidential year, the Australian media – including social media – will suddenly generate a vast army of instant experts on American politics, all with a take you just have to read or hear. They’ll cover everything from laws governing electoral delegates in Arizona to the impact of demographic change on voting patterns in western Pennsylvania. In the 2024 US presidential year, when so much is at stake, that ramps right up.

      Allan Behm’s The Odd Couple, a study of the Australia–America relationship that also serves as a meditation on both countries, could hardly be more timely. It belongs to a rather different tradition than that of instant analysis with newly acquired (and dubious) “expertise”.

      The Odd Couple: The Australia–America Relationship – Allan Behm (Upswell)

      Behm is a considered and reflective commentator. An experienced former diplomat, public servant and (Labor) political adviser who now works at the Australia Institute, he is qualified to offer both well-informed critique and constructive suggestions for the relationship.

      He has a way with words and is widely read, displaying a formidable cultural range that can take in the Argonauts, Davy Crockett and the Lone Ranger, the foundational documents of the United States, novels and poems from the 19th century, big thick books of political history and international relations, and much in between.

      The result is a valuable contribution to discussion of the Australia–America relationship. The quality of this debate here is poor. There are too many commentators with too much skin in the game, too many with warm recollections of their last trip to that conference in Aspen, or who are waiting in hope or expectation for their invitation to the Australian American Leadership Dialogue.

      The dissidents are there, but they struggle to exercise influence in a public culture dominated by a news empire controlled by (American) Citizen Murdoch.

      There are some who do a good job of questioning many of the pieties about the alliance. They include James Curran (a University of Sydney history professor and the Australian Financial Review’s foreign editor), Hugh White (former senior public servant and Australian National University academic) and Behm’s colleague at the Australian Institute, Emma Shortis. You will also find penetrating critics further to the left, in magazines such as Arena: Guy Rundle, Clinton Fernandez and David Lee. They tend to treat the US as an empire, Australia as a compliant sub-empire.

      Critics remind Australians that the alliance’s risks and costs are only magnified by the reflexive “follow the leader” approach to US policy pursued by Australian policy-makers. But compared with the chorus of pro-alliance commentators, the critics exercise limited influence with a political class whose timidity is one of Behm’s themes. Australia’s “international policies have been characteristically defensive and deferential to the interests of others,” he judges.

      ‘Half a dissident’

      Behm is only half a dissident: he does not reject the alliance. Each nation needs the other and their relationship is broadly complementary. Take out the US, and Behm can imagine only a bleak future for Australia: “Without America, Australia would be alone, adrift on its continent in a region that it does not understand and with which it has no affinity.”

      It is a rather pessimistic summation of Australian capacity – perhaps too much so – but “fear of abandonment” is a familiar theme in Australian foreign policy.

      Behm does not like visceral identity politics, but he does like a politics and diplomacy in which national actors have a strong and coherent sense of identity. He would like Australia to have a Bill of Rights, as the US does, but admires the shared commitment of the US and our country to the rule of law.

      Many of the alliance’s benefits – strategic, economic and cultural – are set out in The Odd Couple, but Behm worries Australians have done too little either to evaluate the dangers and losses, or to extract the full benefit they could gain from the relationship.

      Perhaps oddly for a book on this theme appearing at this moment, AUKUS, the security agreement between Australia, the UK, and the US, does not figure as a major topic. There is more on the economy: Behm draws attention to how the relationship helped Australia in the global financial crisis, but harmed it via the Howard-era free trade agreement.

      That agreement, Behm suggests, has undermined multilateralism, given the US sway over our Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and handed US companies new opportunities to constrain Australian policy-making. Behm believes the massive increase in two-way foreign direct investment between the two countries this century had very little to do with the free trade agreement.

      A 2003 protest against the free trade agreement with the US.
      Alan Porritt/AAP

      Behm is also a critic of US adventurism in war and Australia’s supine behaviour in following the leader, notably in Vietnam and Iraq. These failures, among others, were the result of Australia’s inability to articulate a strong sense of its own national identity or interests. It has too often, and too readily, subordinated itself to the much larger and more powerful country.

      He would like Australia to be more like Israel and Taiwan in the dogged pursuit of its interests with US policymakers, especially in working the Congress. Behm thinks we should invest more in diplomacy, recognising that power depends on culture, persuasion and a strong sense of national selfhood. It is not only about military firepower (including that of nuclear-powered submarines). He would like to see “a bit of jostling in the relationship”, less deference.

      Behm’s argument that the relationship with the US is multifaceted is hardly new, but it is worth reiterating and updating. He has chapters dealing with the law, economics, culture, war and peace. All contain valuable insights, although the chapter on culture was the least focused – and (though this Gen-X reviewer surprises himself in saying so) a little hard on the Baby Boomers.

      Deeper insecurities

      Two themes are either absent or lightly touched on. Behm says little about intelligence sharing. And he touches only lightly on religion, which is surely central to any understanding of the American experience in general, and of the twists and turns of its politics in recent decades.

      Behm is interested in the common histories of the US and Australia as settler societies founded on the dispossession of, and violence towards, Indigenous peoples. He detects a fundamental insecurity at the heart of each nation, based on this original sin.

      The apparently “boundless self-belief” of the Americans with their claims to exceptionalism, and Australia’s “brasher kind of larrikinism” each express a “much deeper insecurity born of a shared inability to ‘belong to’ – as distinct from ‘to own’ – the continents on which they live”.

      It is to Behm’s credit that he is not afraid of this kind of ambitious generalisation. That said, it carries the risk of inviting objection from the measurers and straighteners who review books. For example, I can’t help but suspect some complexity is being brushed over a little too lightly when I read: “The simple fact is that Australians no longer trust their governments. Nor do they trust one another.”

      The most serious of our recent crises, the pandemic, surely revealed that, when the chips are down, Australians do largely trust their governments – and one another, too.

      Behm gets the occasional historical detail wrong. The Myall Creek massacre was in 1838, not 1832, and Australia had no federal election in 1932. We are told at one point: “At the end of World War II, coal and iron ore declined as key exports.” In fact, neither had ever been key exports. But these are minor matters.

      Behm has an intelligent understanding of the past, which he applies to a wise, witty and subtle analysis. The Odd Couple is a welcome contribution to a domain of public debate in Australia where too many people think it’s best simply to keep a lid on their opinions. More

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      Biden administration blames Hezbollah for ‘horrific’ Golan Heights rocket attack

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      The Biden administration formally placed blame on Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah for the rocket strike that killed 12 children and teenagers on a soccer field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Sunday.National security council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the attack was “conducted by Lebanese Hezbollah. It was their rocket, and launched from an area they control. It should be universally condemned.”The spokesperson described the attack as “horrific” and said the US is “working on a diplomatic solution along the Blue Line that will end all attacks once and for all, and allow citizens on both sides of the border to safely return to their homes”.The statement added that US “support for Israel’s security is ironclad and unwavering against all Iran-backed threats, including Hezbollah”.The statement was issued as the Israeli government announced on Sunday that it was withdrawing David Barnea, Israel’s foreign intelligence chief, from cease-fire negotiations between Israel, Egypt, Qatar and the US over the Israel-Gaza war.The day-long talks in Rome were convened to negotiate an Israel-Hamas truce that would see the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians jailed by Israel. Israel did not offer a reason for withdrawing its top negotiator.The attack on Majdal Shams village has intensified fears that without a ceasefire in Gaza of an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon is drawing closer and could draw the US deeper into a regional conflict.Senior US political figures on Sunday looked past the immediate responsibility for attack to blame Iran for escalating regional unrest.The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, emphasized Israel’s “right to defend its citizens and our determination to make sure that they’re able to do that”.But, he added that the US “also don’t want to see the conflict escalate”.“Iran, through its surrogates, Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, is really the real evil in this area,” said Democrat Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer on CBS’s Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.“Israel has every right to defend itself against Hezbollah like they do against Hamas. It’s sort of – it shows you how bad Iran and its surrogates are,” Schumer added, saying that the Hezbollah attack had hit “Arab kids”.“They don’t care – they sent missiles at and they don’t even care who that is. But having said that, I don’t think anyone wants a wider war. So I hope there are moves to de-escalate.”Schumer, the most senior Jewish-American politician in Congress, was part of the controversial bipartisan invitation to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before Congress last week, which led to accusations that US politicians had allowed the body to be used as a stage prop for Israel’s nine-month offensive in Gaza.Schumer, however, did not shake Netanyahu’s hand. “I went to this speech, because the relationship between Israel and America is ironclad and I wanted to show that,” Schumer said, adding that he also has “serious disagreements” with the way the Israeli prime minister “has conducted these policies”.The former house speaker Nancy Pelosi later tweeted that Netanyahu’s “presentation in the House chamber was by far the worst presentation of any foreign dignitary invited and honored with that privilege in American history”.On the other side of the political spectrum, Republican senator Lindsey Graham predicted that US and Lebanese efforts to cool tensions between Israel and Hezbollah would not be successful because “Iran is behind all of this” and warned of possible nuclear concerns.Speaking with CBS’s Face the Nation, Graham blamed the Biden-Harris administration for “a colossal failure in terms of controlling the Ayatollah. They’ve enriched him and Israel is paying the price.”Republican congressman Michael McCaul, chairman of the House foreign affairs committee, which oversees all US foreign military sales and transfers, accused the Biden administration of intentionally delaying weapons shipments to Israel in order to have “leverage” over Israel’s decision-making processes.McCaul said “daylight” between the US and Israel was “very dangerous, especially right now, for us to somehow put daylight between us and our most important US ally democracy in the Middle East.“We don’t want escalation for sure,” he said, describing Hezbollah, Hamas and Houthi rebels as “proxies of Iran”. He said Iran doesn’t want Saudi-Israel normalization, “so it’s not in their interest to have any cease-fire.” More

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      Kamala Harris allies deploy new Trump attack line: he is ‘just plain weird’

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      US Democrats have spent recent days trying out a relatively new attack line on Donald Trump: that he is weird. The tactic is almost certainly calibrated to resonate with young and independent voters who, polls show, are moving from marked disinterest in the now-dropped matchup between Joe Biden and his presidential predecessor to engagement in the 100-day contest between Trump and Kamala Harris.In a press release Thursday, vice-president and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris issued a list of the main takeaways of what Trump had given the American people. “Is Donald Trump OK?” the X message said. The seventh of nine entries was: “Trump is old and quite weird?”At a fundraising event in Massachusetts on Saturday, Harris tried out the line again, describing what Trump and running mate JD Vance had been saying about her as “just plain weird”.“I mean that’s the box you put that in,” Harris said after Trump had called her “a bum” the previous day and Vance disparaged her in 2021 as a “childless cat (lady)”.The Harris campaign, working to redefine the race with particular attention to the youth vote, including colorizing online HarrisHQ banners lime green after Charli xcx’s “brat” endorsement, has sought to draw attention to Trump’s rally storytelling. Particularly, they have highlighted his frequent but references to fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter of Silence of the Lambs fame as well as the choice between being shocked by a sinking electric boat or being eaten by a shark.But “weird” is what seems to be sticking, in part as an apparent simplification of warnings about the threat to democracy that Trump poses – which dominated 15 months of Biden’s re-election campaign.Minnesota’s Democratic governor Tim Walz appears to have started the “weird” political trendline. He posted on X, “Say it with me: Weird,” in response to a video of Trump speaking about Lecter. Walz later followed up with “these guys are weird” to describe Trump and Vance.During a Sunday appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Walz was asked if “weird” had replaced existential threat to democracy as a more effective attack strategy. The retired high school educator and football coach replied: “It’s an observation because being a schoolteacher I see a lot of things.”Walz added that a second Trump presidency could indeed put women’s lives at risk over reproductive rights after three of his US supreme court appointees helped eliminate federal abortion rights in 2022. He also said Trump could end other constitutional liberties – but musing about his embodiment of a threat to democracy “gives him way too much power,” Walz argued.“Listen to the guy. He’s talking about Hannibal Lecter and shocking sharks and whatever crazy thing pops into his mind,” Walz said.“I think we give him way too much credit. If you just ratchet down some of the scariness and just name it what it is. Have you seen the guy laugh? It seems very weird to me that an adult can go through six-and-a-half years of being in the public eye and when he laughs it’s at someone – not with them.”“That’s very weird behavior,” Walz explained on State of the Union. “I don’t think you call it anything else. It’s simply what we’re observing.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe US transport secretary Pete Buttigieg, also an outside contender for Harris’ vice president pick, tried a slightly amended line, telling Fox News that Trump is “clearly older and stranger than when America first got to know him”.The 78-year-old Trump’s campaign, he added, has maintained its candidate “is strong as an ox, leaps tall buildings in … bounds, but we don’t have that kind of warped reality on our side”.“I’m pretty sure voters are worried about the age and acuity of president Trump compared to Kamala Harris, who represents being a generation younger,” Buttigieg said. “And how could anybody not watch the stuff he’s saying, the rambling on the trail, and not be just a little bit concerned?”The new Democratic line on Trump comes after several days of criticism aimed at Vance not only about the “childless cat” lady comment – but also because of reportedly resurfaced comments calling Trump “morally reprehensible” and expressing his hatred for police officers, who generally enjoy the support of Republicans.Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer described Vance’s selection as an “incredibly bad choice” to CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, adding that the Ohio Republican senator “seems to be more erratic and more extreme than President Trump”.“I’ll bet President Trump is sitting there scratching his head and wondering, why did I pick this guy? The choice may be one of the best things he ever did for Democrats,” Schumer said.The discursions come as a new ABC News/Ipsos poll on Sunday found that Harris’ favorability rating had jumped to 43% from 35% a week earlier. It found a major jump in her favorability rating among electorally crucial independent voters, with 44% saying they viewed her favorably compared to 28% the previous week.Also significant is the 59-year-old Harris’s numbers within the swing group of “double haters” – voters who liked neither Biden nor Trump. Within that group, the number who liked neither candidate has dropped from 15% to 7%. More

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      The Guardian view on female political leaders: new strains of misogyny fuel old battles | Editorial

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      In 1989, a schoolgirl asked Gerald Ford what advice he had for a young lady wanting to become US president, as he had been. “It won’t happen in the normal course of events,” he predicted. Instead, a man would win the presidency with a female running mate, and the woman would take over because the man would die in office. After that, he suggested, men would have to fight hard to even become the nominee.Video of that encounter went viral after Joe Biden quit his re-election bid and Democrats rallied behind Kamala Harris. Ford’s prediction and his acknowledgment that female politicians are unfairly dismissed had new resonance, though of course Mr Biden is alive and it is still a matter of hope, not fact, that the US will see its first female president. Any Democratic nominee would face a difficult race. But even after Barack Obama became the first black president, and after female leaders such as Angela Merkel and Jacinda Ardern have commanded international respect and admiration, some fear that the racism and misogyny Ms Harris faces could prove insurmountable, though she inspires and energises other voters.Four years ago, Donald Trump said the quiet part out loud, remarking of her that “we’re not going to have a socialist president. Especially any female.” JD Vance, his running mate, described Ms Harris and others as “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”. Online attacks from their supporters have been even more vicious, bigoted and graphic – and may well alienate moderate voters. For many, however, the prejudice is unconscious. Research has repeatedly shown that in politics, as in other walks of life, “women leaders are perceived as competent or liked, but rarely both”.Macho attitudes and patriarchal values have been fostered and legitimised by strongmen worldwide in recent years. Giorgia Meloni and Marine Le Pen are ample proof that women can also be prominent in far-right movements and do little for other women. But a marked political gender gap has emerged in many places in the last few years. In the US, polling suggests women aged 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than men of that age.Similar gaps are evident in countries from the UK and Poland to Tunisia and South Korea – where a backlash against demands for women’s rights was central to the 2022 election. The country has the highest gender pay gap of any Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development nation, yet President Yoon Suk Yeol claims structural discrimination does not exist, and won over angry young men by vowing to abolish the ministry of gender equality. The contest was an alarming harbinger of how not just regressive but explicitly anti-feminist attitudes can be politically weaponised. In Argentina, Javier Milei followed suit and won the presidency.Ford predicted that the 1990s would see a female president; the US had already seen a vice-presidential nominee (and in the UK, of course, Margaret Thatcher was then prime minister). But it took until 2008 before there was another, Sarah Palin, and 2016 before Hillary Clinton became the first female presidential nominee of a major party. Now Ms Harris has her shot. Like women around the world, she faces not only old stumbling blocks, but new strains of misogyny. The unfairness and extremity of attacks upon her, however, could yet help to fuel a groundswell of support.

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Top Republicans call Kamala Harris a ‘dangerous liberal’ as attacks ramp up

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      Republicans took to the airwaves Sunday to criticize a surging Kamala Harris, calling the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee a “dangerous liberal” as US conservatives’ lines of attack on the vice-president began to solidify.In appearances across CNN and Fox News, senior Republican figures Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham and former presidential candidate Ron DeSantis each attempted to paint Harris – who is typically seen as a centrist Democrat – as having far-left politics.Those remarks came after Trump sought to insult Harris at a rally on Friday night. The ex-president appeared to deliberately mispronounce Harris’s first name, claimed she is “the most incompetent, unpopular and far-left vice-president in American history” and stated: “She was a bum three weeks ago.”Speaking to CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Cotton, the US senator from Arkansas, said: “For four years things were good” during Trump’s presidency. He argued that after Joe Biden took the White House in 2020 with Harris as his running mate, “everything has gone to hell”.“And it will be much worse under Kamala Harris,” Cotton said. “Just look at her record. She wants to ban private health insurance, she wants to ban fossil fuel production, she wants to ban guns.”In 2019, Harris did propose a universal healthcare plan during her run for president. But the plan did not propose eliminating private health insurance. Harris has not said that she wants to ban fossil fuel production. And it is untrue that Harris wants to ban all guns, although she has said high-capacity rifles – used in many US mass shootings – should be banned.Cotton added: “Kamala Harris is a dangerous liberal. She makes Joe Biden look competent and moderate by contrast.”In an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation show, the South Carolina US senator Graham also attacked Harris as being too liberal.“If you expect vice-president Harris to change the course we’re on as a nation, you’re going to be sadly disappointed,” Graham said of the candidate endorsed by Biden after he halted his re-election campaign on 21 July.“She is the most liberal senator in the United States senate. There is no liberal horse that she has chosen not to ride. She sponsored the Green new deal and medicare for all. At the end of the day recasting her as something she’s not – she’s a nice person but she’s incredibly liberal. I mean, major league liberal,” Graham said.A noted military hawk, Graham attempted to tie Harris to Biden’s policies in the Middle East.“When it comes to Iran, Biden and Harris have been a colossal failure in terms of controlling the Ayatollah. They’ve enriched him and Israel is paying the price,” Graham said. He suggested that Iran could “sprint to a nuclear weapon” in the four months leading up to the US election.Graham was asked about JD Vance’s characterization of Harris and others as “childless cat ladies who are miserable in their own lives”.“This idea of trying to marginalize JD and make him some kind of bad person is not going to work, because he’s not a bad person – he’s a good person,” Graham said. The scrutiny over Vance comes as some Republicans are said to be concerned about Trump having selected him to be his running mate.DeSantis, the Florida governor who became locked in a fierce battle with Trump as the pair ran for the Republican presidential nomination, claimed that “the entrenched corporate media” will attempt to “rewrite history” regarding Harris.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“They’re going to try to present her as something she’s just not,” DeSantis told Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures.“She owns all the policies. She’s not going to be able to distance herself from them, and most Americans think that this country’s going in the wrong direction.”DeSantis did concede that Republicans would have preferred to run against Biden, who had generally fallen several points behind Trump in opinion polls before Harris’s introduction into the race essentially reset it.“You take somebody like Harris, who’s not exactly lighting the world on fire – but Biden makes her look like Socrates just because we’re so used to him not even being able to do anything,” DeSantis said.Byron Donalds, the Republican congressman for Florida who had been rumored to be a potential Trump running mate, joined in the criticism of Harris on Sunday as Republicans appeared to solidify around the idea of painting her as an extreme liberal.“She wanted Medicaid for all, which would have cost our country easily $100tn. She wanted the Green New Deal, the massive old Green New Deal, not the scaled down version they were able to get through Congress,” Donalds told Sunday Morning Futures.Donalds, who has previously stressed the need to “unite this country”, also took aim at Roy Cooper, the governor of North Carolina, and Mark Kelly, the senator from Arizona. Both men are rumored to be potential Harris running mates.“Knowing both of those gentlemen, they’re both boring and nobody’s really going to care. But at the end of the day, this is about Kamala Harris’s terrible record versus a record of success from Donald Trump,” Donalds said. More

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      Swat team says it had no contact with Secret Service before Trump rally shooting

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      Local police officers on a special tactical team who were assigned to help protect Donald Trump on the day the former president was wounded during a 13 July assassination attempt in Butler county, Pennsylvania, have said they had no contact with Secret Service agents before the gunman opened fire.“We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service members whenever they arrived, and that never happened,” Jason Woods, lead sharpshooter on the Swat team in nearby Beaver county, Pennsylvania, told ABC News.Woods said that initial failure in planning and communications was likely the start of errors that would lead to the 20-year-old gunman killing one spectator, injuring two others and – according to the FBI – striking the tip of one of Trump’s ears.“I think that was probably a pivotal point, where I started thinking things were wrong because it never happened,” Woods told the outlet. “We had no communication.”Separately, members of Trump’s Secret Service detail and his top advisers have questioned why they were not told that local police assigned to guard the outer perimeter of the fairgrounds on 13 July had spotted a suspicious person who turned out to be the would-be assassin.According to the Washington Post, Trump’s top advisers were in a large white tent behind the stage where the former president was speaking at the time of the shooting. They thought the sounds of shots were fireworks and later could not understand why they had not been alerted of the suspicious person before Trump took the stage.“Nobody mentioned it. Nobody said there was a problem,” Trump told Fox News recently. “They could’ve said, ‘Let’s wait for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, five minutes,’ something. Nobody said – I think that was a mistake.”According to Woods, the first communication between the Beaver Swat team and the Secret Service was “not until after the shooting”.By then, Woods added, “it was too late”.Local counter-snipers had seen Thomas Matthew Crooks loitering near the buildings that would later become his perch 20 to 25 minutes before he opened fire. They had sent a photograph to a command center staffed by state troopers and Secret Service agents, according to testimony by the head of the Pennsylvania state police.Apparent failures in communication between different law enforcement agencies are now the subject of three separate investigations. After Secret Service director Kimberley Cheatle resigned from her post on 23 July, the FBI confirmed that Trump had been struck by a bullet – whether whole or fragmented.The FBI director Christopher Wray has also said that would-be assassin Crooks, who does not appear to have any overriding ideological motive for the attempt on Trump’s life, had searched online for the distance that Lee Harvey Oswald was from John F Kennedy when shot the president to death in November 1963.As agencies continue passing blame on for the shooting, Trump has said he plans to return to Butler for “FOR A BIG AND BEAUTIFUL RALLY” despite advice from the presidential protection service that he avoid holding outdoor rallies.Trump has also dismissed criticism that hiring at the Secret Service, and the quality of the protection it provides, was negatively affected by diversity programs – something that had become a talking point among some Republicans.At a rally in Minnesota on Saturday, he defended a “brave” female Secret Service agent who “shielded” him during the attempted assassination. He praised the agent and said she “wanted to take a bullet”.“She was shielding me with everything she could and she got criticized by the fake news because she wasn’t tall enough,” he said. “She was so brave, she was shielding me with everything, she wanted to take a bullet.”The Secret Service had not commented directly on the comments by Woods. But agency spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi has said the Secret Service “is committed to better understanding what happened before, during, and after the assassination attempt of former President Trump to ensure that never happens again”. More

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      Buttigieg: Republicans calling Kamala Harris a diversity hire is ‘a bad look’

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      White House administrator Pete Buttigieg says it is “a bad look” for Republicans to call Kamala Harris a diversity hire in their attempts to slow down the momentum that has greeted her ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket for November’s presidential race.On Saturday’s episode of the New York Times podcast The Interview, the Democratic transportation secretary said “you can tell” that is the case because of how even Republican US House speaker Mike Johnson has tried to distance himself from that line of attack against Harris.“You got somebody like Mike Johnson, who is a very, very conservative figure … telling his own caucus, like, ‘Hey, cool it,’” Buttigieg remarked to podcast host Lulu Garcia-Navarro. “He’s basically saying that they are embarrassing the party, and I think acknowledging that they are diminishing the party’s chances by indulging in that kind of rhetoric.”Buttigieg added: “And the fact that they can’t think of what else to do, besides go right to race and gender, isn’t just revealing about some of the ugliest undercurrents in today’s Republican party – it’s also profoundly unimaginative because it means that they can’t speak to how any of this is going to make people’s lives better.”Harris, a former California attorney general and US senator who is of Indian and Jamaican heritage, became the first woman to be elected vice-president when Joe Biden won the Oval Office in 2020. She is now poised to become the first woman of color to lead a major-party presidential ticket after Biden halted his re-election bid on 21 July and endorsed her, setting the stage for Harris to reportedly sign up 170,000 campaign volunteers and raise $200m for her political warchest in a matter of days.Supporters of the Republican nominee Donald Trump – who lost the presidency to Biden – have met those accomplishments by disparaging Harris as a hire resulting from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. While grappling with a criminal conviction for election-related fraud in a case involving an adult film actor who alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with him as well as other prosecutions pending against him, Trump has insulted Harris as “crazy”, “nuts”, “dumb as a rock” and – at a rally on Friday – “a bum”.That approach prompted some Republican leaders to try to warn party members against aiming overt racism and sexism at Harris. Those included Johnson, who said at a Tuesday news briefing: “This election will be about policies and not personalities.”The Louisiana congressman added: “This is not personal with regard to Kamala Harris, and her ethnicity or her gender having nothing to do with this whatsoever.”Buttigieg went on the Republican-friendly Fox News Sunday show and said Harris has proven herself in “one of the most visible leadership roles in the country”.“The idea that somebody hasn’t been tested or vetted when they have been vice-president of the United States just doesn’t make any sense,” Buttigieg said.Opinion polls show Harris is running a tight race with Trump after Biden had fallen several points behind, with the president’s support in vital swing states plummeting.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionButtigieg – the ex-mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 – is considered to be among a field of contenders to be Harris’s running mate. And in fact, a National Public Radio/PBS News/Marist poll showed him tied as the most popular Democratic vice-presidential candidate for the fall election.He declined to tell Garcia-Navarro whether he believed he would make a good vice-president.“I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to talk like that knowing that the person who needs to make that decision is … her – not me,” Buttigieg said. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to wander down that path with you right now.” More