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      Chinese believed to have targeted Trump’s and Vance’s phones in US telecommunications breach

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      Chinese government-linked hackers are believed to have targeted phones used by Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, as part of a larger breach of US telecommunications networks, according to a New York Times report.The Trump campaign was informed this week that the phone numbers of the Republican presidential and vice-presidential nominee were among those targeted during a breach of the Verizon network, the paper said, citing sources.Investigators are working to determine what data, if any, was accessed by the “sophisticated” hack, the sources said. Other current and former government officials were also targeted, according to the report.The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency confirmed an investigation was under way into the “unauthorized access to commercial telecommunications infrastructure by actors affiliated with the People’s Republic of China”. It did not name the Trump campaign in the statement.“After the FBI identified specific malicious activity targeting the sector, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) immediately notified affected companies, rendered technical assistance, and rapidly shared information to assist other potential victims,” the agency said.The Trump campaign did not directly address whether the phones used by Trump and Vance had been targeted.In a statement, a Trump campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, criticized the White House and Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris, and sought to blame them for allowing a foreign adversary to target the campaign, the Times reported.A Wall Street Journal report last month said a cyber-attack linked to the Chinese government had infiltrated multiple US telecommunications firms and may have gained access to systems used by the federal government in court-approved wiretapping efforts.The hackers accessed at least three telecommunication companies – AT&T, Verizon and Lumen Technologies – in what may have been an attempt to find sensitive information related to national security, according to the report.The Trump campaign earlier this year revealed it had been hacked and said Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe US justice department unsealed criminal charges in September against three members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps suspected of hacking the Trump campaign.Justice department officials said hackers were trying to undermine Trump’s campaign and intended to sow discord, exploit divisions within American society and potentially influence the outcome of the 5 November election.With the election under two weeks away, Trump and Kamala Harris are locked in a tight race. In both national head-to-head polls and surveys in the crucial swing states where the election will be decided, the pair seem almost deadlocked. More

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      The Washington Post and LA Times refused to endorse a candidate. Why? | Margaret Sullivan

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      The choice for president has seldom been starker.On one side is Donald Trump, a felonious and twice-impeached conman, raring to finish off the job of dismantling American democracy. On the other is Kamala Harris, a capable and experienced leader who stands for traditional democratic principles.Nevertheless – and shockingly – the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post have decided to sit this one out. Both major news organizations, each owned by a billionaire, announced this week that their editorial boards would not make a presidential endorsement, despite their decades-long traditions of doing so.There’s no other way to see this other than as an appalling display of cowardice and a dereliction of their public duty.At the Los Angeles Times, the decision rests clearly with Patrick Soon-Shiong, who bought the ailing paper in 2018, raising great hopes of a resurgence there.At the Post (where I was the media columnist from 2016 to 2022), the editorial page editor David Shipley said he owned the decision, but it clearly came from above – specifically from the publisher, Will Lewis, the veteran of Rupert Murdoch’s media properties, hand-picked last year by the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos. Was Bezos himself the author of this abhorrent decision? Maybe not, but it could not have come as a surprise.All of this may look like nonpartisan neutrality, or be intended to, but it’s far from that. For one thing, it’s a shameful smackdown of both papers’ reporting and opinion-writing staffs who have done important work exposing Trump’s dangers for many years.It’s also a strong statement of preference. The papers’ leaders have made it clear that they either want Trump (who is, after all, a boon to large personal fortunes) or that they don’t wish to risk the ex-president’s wrath and retribution if he wins. If the latter was a factor, it’s based on a shortsighted judgment, since Trump has been a hazard to press rights and would only be emboldened in a second term.“Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage,” the wrote former Washington Post editor Marty Baron on Friday on X, blasting the Post’s decision. He predicted that Trump would see this as an invitation to try further to intimidate Bezos, a dynamic detailed in Baron’s 2023 book Collision of Power.The editorials editor at the Los Angeles Times, Mariel Garza, resigned this week over the owner’s decision to kill off the editorial board’s planned endorsement of Harris.“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent,” Garza told Columbia Journalism Review’s editor, Sewell Chan. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”Others, including a Pulitzer prize-winning editorial writer at the California paper, followed her principled lead. The Washington Post editor at large Robert Kagan resigned in protest, too. They do so at considerable personal cost, since there are so few similar positions in today’s financially troubled media industry.Some news organizations upheld their duty and remained true to their mission.The New York Times endorsed Harris last month, calling her “the only patriotic choice for president”, and writing that Trump “has proved himself morally unfit for an office that asks its occupant to put the good of the nation above self-interest”.The Guardian, too, strongly endorsed Harris, saying she would “unlock democracy’s potential, not give in to its flaws”, and calling Trump a “transactional and corrupting politician”.Meanwhile, the Murdoch-controlled New York Post has endorsed Trump. Although that decision lacks a moral core, it’s far from surprising.But the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post decisions are, in their way, far worse.They constitute “an abdication”, said Jelani Cobb, dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. (I run an ethics center and teach there.)The refusal to endorse, he told me, “tacitly equalizes two wildly distinct candidates, one of whom has tried to overturn a presidential election and one of whom has not”.As for the message this refusal sends to the public? It’s ugly.Readers will reasonably conclude that the newspapers were intimidated. And people will fairly question, Cobb said, when else they “have chosen expediency over courage”.This is no moment to stand at the sidelines – shrugging, speechless and self-interested.With the most consequential election of the modern era only days away, the silence is deafening.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      Pennsylvania officials investigating 2,500 voter registrations for fraud

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      Officials in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, are investigating about 2,500 voter registrations after election workers discovered signs that they may be fraudulent.The registrations under investigation were dropped off in two batches just before Pennsylvania’s voter-registration deadline on Monday. Election workers contacted the district attorney’s office after they noticed several suspicious applications that contained the same handwriting, signatures for voters that didn’t match what was on file, and inaccurate personal identifier information, including names, addresses, social security and driver’s license numbers, said Heather Adams, the district attorney, during a press conference on Friday.Investigators also spoke with voters who said they had not requested or filled out the forms that were turned in, she said.The announcement comes as voting is already under way in Pennsylvania, a must-win battleground state for both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris this election. Lancaster county, known for its Amish population, voted for Trump by nearly 16 points in 2020.Adams did not say how many applications her office had reviewed so far, but said that 60% of them had been fraudulent. She acknowledged that there were some legitimate applications in the batch and said those registrations would be processed.The effort appears to be associated with a large-scale canvassing group – she did not identify which one – and said that two other counties in the state are investigating a similar issue. The canvassers were paid, a common practice. Officials did not say whether there was a partisan breakdown in the applications.“It really shouldn’t matter. If there’s voters on the books that shouldn’t be, it increases the chance that we’re gonna have voter fraud,” Williams said.The announcement comes days after the county was accused of wrongfully holding up voter-registration applications from students. More

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      The Guardian view on the US election and foreign policy: the world can’t afford Trump again | Editorial

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      This spring Josep Borrell, the EU foreign affairs chief, warned bluntly that Europe should prepare itself for potential war: “Maybe, depending on who is ruling in Washington, we cannot rely on the American support and on the American capacity to protect us,” he said. Weeks earlier, Donald Trump had remarked that he would encourage Russia to attack Nato countries who paid too little.Japanese defence spending has soared. In South Korea, there are growing calls for an independent nuclear deterrent. America’s allies are nervous as they contemplate next month’s election. Autocrats, upon whom Mr Trump lavishes praise, are hopeful. The votes of tens of thousands of Americans in battleground states are likely to prove profoundly consequential for the rest of the world.The assumption is that a Trump victory would be felt first and hardest by Ukraine. Whatever his precise relationship with Vladimir Putin, with its cosy phone calls, the former president’s sympathies are clear. He blamed Volodymyr Zelenskyy for starting the war with Russia. Mr Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, has urged an immediate end to assistance.On the Middle East, Kamala Harris has been more sympathetic to Palestinians and critical of Israel than Joe Biden, but there is no sign yet that she differs on policy. The dramatic erosion of Arab American support does not appear to have prompted a long‑overdue reconsideration of arms shipments to Israel. Yet Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is thought to eagerly anticipate the return of a president who rewarded and encouraged the Israeli right. Mr Trump pulled out of the Iranian nuclear deal, with which Tehran was complying – though at least his aversion to “endless wars” held him back from a strike on Iran. Would that hold now?Mr Trump’s presidency made the world more dangerous. Since his blustering mishandling of Kim Jong-un, North Korea has accelerated its nuclear programme and moved closer to China and Russia.The Biden administration did not reject all aspects of Mr Trump’s tenure. Hawkishness on China is one of the few bipartisan issues left. But the White House’s targeted approach is in contrast to Mr Trump’s crude economic nationalism – threatening 60% tariffs on Chinese products and up to 20% on all imports – which could spark a global trade war. He initially wooed Taiwan, but now says it should pay the US for its defence. That reflects a nakedly short-termist, transactional approach to foreign policy – with domestic political needs the priority.The Democrats – and Ms Harris – have tacked right on immigration, but Mr Trump has snatched infants from their parents and now promises mass deportations. His fascistic language about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of America legitimised and spread racism. He has emboldened misogynists, the far right and strongmen internationally.Ms Harris is not thought to be as emotionally attached to Israel or Europe as her boss, nor to share his vision of a civilisational clash between democracies and their foes. She says she would “stand strong” with Ukraine, but might be somewhat more inclined than Mr Biden to push for a deal with Russia. While most expect there would be broad continuity, it is impossible to predict exactly what a candidate will do once in office.We can be sure, however, that while Ms Harris would not always get it right on foreign policy, she would bring stability, responsibility and dedication – in contrast to Mr Trump’s reckless, erratic, fact-free and narcissistic approach. And while climate action under her would still fall short of what is needed, her rival would deliberately wreck existing global accords. For all these reasons, the world cannot afford a second Trump administration. More

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      A woman says Trump groped her in front of Jeffrey Epstein. Will anyone listen? | Moira Donegan

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      Does sexual assault matter politically? Eight years ago, in October of 2016, many people thought that it did. When the Access Hollywood tape was released on 7 October of that year, and audio blared from every cable news channel in which Donald Trump, attempting to impress the celebrity interviewer Billy Bush, bragged that his stardom meant he could grab women “by the pussy”, the incident was, for a moment at least, widely believed to have ended his presidential bid. The clip sparked outrage, condemnation and calls for Trump to drop out of the race – including from sitting Republican governors, senators and representatives. The Republican National Committee suspended support for Trump’s campaign in response to the tape. His political career was widely assumed to be over.It wasn’t. The allegations of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen other women that were made in the days, weeks and years thereafter – including from reporters, models, yoga instructors, Mar-a-Lago regulars, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA contestants, strangers he sat next to on planes, women who worked for him, entrepreneurs, adult film stars, advice columnists and one woman who had the misfortune of attending a Mother’s Day brunch event at a Trump-owned property – did not, either. For all the seriousness and solemnity with which Republican politicians condemned Trump in the days following the release of the Access Hollywood tape – for all their furrowed brows and reverent declarations that alleged sexual assault is no laughing matter – ultimately, the Republican party establishment lined up behind Trump. So did their voters.It might be a sign of how far we have fallen that the political world, this week, barely seemed to notice when the veteran model Stacey Williams came forward to say she was groped by Trump in 1993, while the pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein – a close friend of Trump’s and Williams’s boyfriend at the time – looked on. Williams’s account mirrors those provided by many of Trump’s other accusers: like them, she seems to have been lewdly groped by Trump, who grabbed her breasts and buttocks in an abrupt and perfunctory fashion. Indeed, what happened to Williams sounds a bit like how Trump himself has described his conduct: “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”This time, there were no calls for Donald Trump to drop out of the race; no solemn condemnations; no handwringing over whether Trump’s boorishness, his braying entitlement, or his violent and vulgar treatment of women and girls might disqualify him from the power and supposed honor of the position that he’s seeking. No one bothered to point out that someone who assaults women – let alone someone who does so as routinely and prolifically as Trump is said to have done – does not deserve to be the president. Even the Democrats mostly shrugged.Part of this, to be sure, is because hardly anyone is surprised by Trump anymore. There are few minds most Americans will ever know as intimately as we have all been forced to know Trump’s. We know his narcissism, its surprising pettiness; we know his monumental vanity, his cynicism, his relentless dishonesty; we know the uncanny self-awareness of his humor – though it never, ever comes at his own expense – and we know the compass-like constancy of his devotion to his own short-term self-interest.We even know that he was friends with Epstein, whose predations on underage girl children Trump joked about in an interview with New York Magazine in the 90s. We know, already, how he behaves towards women; we have been shown. We’ve learned not only from the more than two dozen women who have told us, not only from the sworn testimony of Stormy Daniels, not even only from the jury’s verdict in the civil suit for rape and assault that was brought against him, successfully, by the writer E Jean Carroll. We know from watching him, as we have been compelled to do, now, for the better part of a decade.What might be more revealing, then, is what the non-response to Stacey Williams’s story tells us about ourselves. In the wake of Donald Trump’s election – and in direct response to the indignity American women faced when a man who bragged about and was alleged to have serially committed sexual assault was elevated to a position of superlative authority – the #MeToo movement faced a mass public reckoning over sexual violence, and its prevalence and impunity in all sectors of American life.Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, two investigative reporters at the New York Times, published their first story about the predations of the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein on 5 October 2017 – just two days shy of the one-year anniversary of the Access Hollywood tape. For a heady moment, powerful men who did the kinds of things Trump has been accused of – and has bragged about doing – were losing their positions of dignity and power as a result. Even Republican politicians were not immune: Roy Moore, a far-right Republican Senate candidate, lost his election in no less a deep-red state than Alabama after nine women accused him of sexual misconduct against them while he was in his 30s and they were in their teens.Many solemn declarations were made then, too: about the long-overdue reckoning, the pain of survivors, the need to reconsider sexual scripts, the eroticization of inequality, and the ways inequality had been weaponized to demean women and keep them from public life. All of this proceeded while Trump sat in the Oval Office. None of it could touch him: everyone presumed he was immune from any accountability for the way he treated women, and he was.Maybe other men are now, too. The #MeToo movement was a large and internally fractious movement, but if it can be said to have had a singular goal, it might have been this: to resolve our culture’s cognitive dissonance about sexual violence. For decades, the world operated on a kind of grim hypocrisy: everyone – from the law to the HR department, from Hollywood to your weekend hobby group – professed to abhor sexual violence, to take it maximally seriously. But, in practice, sexual violence was not taken very seriously at all: the incidents were minimized, the prevalence was shrugged off, the victims were blamed, demonized and smeared as vindictive or hysterical for ever bringing it up.Everyone said they hated sexual violence and that they thought it mattered; most people acted as if they thought it didn’t. The goal of #MeToo could be said to bring actions into line with words: to make people behave as if they thought sexual violence was as wrong as they said it was. Instead, it may have resolved the cognitive dissonance in the other direction: now people admit that they care very little about sexual violence. Their actions, I suppose, finally match their words.Before the Guardian broke Williams’s story, there was a flutter of rumors about an impending accusation on social media. These were flamed by Mark Halperin, a onetime political journalist, who took to his YouTube show on Wednesday to say that he had been pitched a story about Trump that “could end” the former president’s campaign. Halperin’s supposed story never materialized, and maybe that’s to be expected: he would have been an odd choice for such a leak. After all, his own career was derailed during the #MeToo movement, when he was accused by five women of sexual misconduct and harassment – including groping of exactly the sort that Williams says Donald Trump subjected her to. He still felt comfortable shilling a possible sexual violence story anyway, despite his own history. Probably, he assumed no one would bring it up.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Fascism, Donald Trump and George Orwell | Letters

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      Emma Brockes points out that the word “fascist” gets thrown around a lot (The word ‘fascist’ has lost all meaning. And Trump is using that to his advantage, 23 October). It was the same in George Orwell’s day. In his 1944 Tribune column he said that, “as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless … I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley’s broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.” The best definition he could come up with was to suggest that “almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’”.Neil SmithSolihull, West Midlands Although Emma Brockes provides examples of the usage of the word “fascist” to mean anyone in opposition to liberal elites, she should really have strictly defined it, and possibly pleaded that it has been so misused that the meaning has become obscured. The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1964) defines it as, “the principles and organization of the patriotic and anti-communist movement in Italy started during the 1914-18 war, culminating in the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini”. Thus of historic origin. Obviously, the word originates in the Latin fasces meaning a bundle; in ancient Rome a bundle of sticks enclosing an axe was a sign of law and power. Chambers Dictionary (2011) adds that it is militaristic, “characterised by restrictions on individual freedom”. It has become a loose insult to anyone who speaks out against the liberal left, or holds views that challenge or differ from the prevailing political ideology. Similar sloppy usage applies to “far right” and “far left” as well. Journalists should be advocates for precision in language in these somewhat combustible times.Dr Jane DonatiHarpenden, Hertfordshire More

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      Seth Meyers on ex-president’s alleged admiration of Nazi generals: ‘Trump is a fascist’

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      Late-night hosts talk the former White House chief of staff John Kelly calling Donald Trump a fascist and Tucker Carlson’s bizarre rant about spanking on the campaign trail.Seth MeyersSeth Meyers devoted his Thursday Closer Look segment to the bombshell political story of the week: a New York Times interview with John Kelly, in which the former White House chief of staff said Donald Trump expressed admiration for Hitler and his generals. “I’m not sure we as a society have fully absorbed the magnitude of this story, given the way the media has been covering it,” the Late Night host said before a clip of CNN following up the story with a report on Eminem campaigning for Kamala Harris.“You can’t follow up a story as insane as ‘presidential candidate praises Hitler’ with fun wordplay about Eminem,” said Meyers. “If the first story is the next president could be a Hitler-lover, then just don’t have a second story. That’s enough to fill an hour.”“I get it can be tough to figure out how to cover something like this, because like all Trump revelations it’s both shocking and not at all surprising,” he added. “So we’re left in this weird middle ground where you’re reporting something that everyone basically knows already, but it’s also still insane. It’s like going through a haunted house with a group of friends that used to work there.”Naturally, Republicans are scrambling to normalize the situation. Meyers played a clip of the New Hampshire governor, Chris Sununu, who said on CNN: “Look, we’ve heard a lot of extreme things about Donald Trump from Donald Trump. It’s kinda par for the course. It’s really, unfortunately, with a guy like that, it’s really baked into the vote.”“His love of Adolf Hitler is baked in?” Meyers marveled. “That’s like saying, ‘Look, that dead rat is baked into this loaf of sourdough. What are you going to do, go all the way back to the bakery?’ If it’s baked in, then don’t eat the thing it’s baked into!“This is not a complicated story,” he concluded. “Trump is a fascist who likes other fascists and wants to emulate fascism. If you’re shrugging that off as baked in, then you’re just saying that you’re OK with fascism. If you’re still supporting Trump, just admit that you think fascism is cool.”Stephen ColbertOn the Late Show, Stephen Colbert noted that Trump will hold a rally at Madison Square Garden this weekend. “Just what New Yorkers need – more garbage around Penn Station,” he joked.The rally is “confusing”, as “New York is not what you call a swing state,” he said. Trump trails Kamala Harris by 19 points in the state – “or as the New York Jets say, not bad!” Colbert quipped.Given the interview with Kelly this week, in 10 days, “we all get to find out whether we live in a fascist country”, said Colbert. “I’m not saying that’s a good feeling, but definitely the feeling. And if you’re feeling the same way, you’re not alone.”Colbert played a clip from CNN’s presidential town hall in which Anderson Cooper asked Harris whether she thought Trump was a fascist; she replied: “Yes, I do.”Meanwhile, Trump was joined on the campaign trail by the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who made his case for the former president with a bizarre rant about spanking. “Dad comes home. He’s pissed. Dad is pissed. And when dad gets home, you know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now,’” he told the crowd.“I just can’t figure out why they’re having trouble appealing to female voters,” Colbert deadpanned. “Not to fact-check you there, Tuck, but we know from Stormy Daniels that Daddy is the one who likes to get spanked.”Overall, “that was an upsetting little monologue,” Colbert concluded. “Angry Daddies punishing little girls? I’m guessing when Tucker wrote that, he was vigorously spanking something.”The Daily ShowAnd on The Daily Show, the guest host Michael Kosta also mocked Carlson’s bizarre spanking speech. Carlson began his speech with a cackle, delighting in what he said was his first appearance at a political rally. “I don’t want to be a hater – he’s excited for his first political rally. Seems like a perfectly reasonable time to laugh like an old-timey villain who tied a woman to the railroad tracks,” Kosta joked.And then he played one of Carlson’s most offending lines: “You’ve been a bad little girl and you’re getting a vigorous spanking, right now.”“This might be why you’ve never been invited to speak at a political rally before,” said Kosta. “You see, America, these Trump people, they aren’t weird. They just know that Trump is a big, strong daddy that’s coming home to spank us all. Totally normal stuff! I can’t wait to hear Tucker’s thoughts on the economy – ‘Inflation is like a babysitter, and she’s been naughty.’” More

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      Trump really could be the next president. So it’s time to call his instincts what they are: fascist | Jonathan Freedland

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      There is a good chance that in 10 days’ time, Americans will elect the first fascist president of the United States. It sounds hyperbolic, it sounds hysterical. Indeed, for exactly those reasons, many of his opponents long held back from using that word about Donald Trump. But the hour is late. Voting is already under way. It’s time to spell out what Trump has said and done, what he threatens to do, what he is.Put aside the personal grossness, on display again in recent days with his reference to the size of the late Arnold Palmer’s manhood. Put aside the fact that he’s a twice-impeached, four times indicted, convicted felon who has been found liable by a court for rape. Put aside the latest accusations from a former model who says she met Trump through Jeffrey Epstein, and that the former president groped her in what she believed was a “twisted game” between the two men.Focus instead on the F-word. In recent days, the taboo on that word has been broken, starting with a warning from a former head of the US military, Mark Milley, that the president he once served is a “fascist to the core”. In an interview a few days later, the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi told me she shared that view, and Kamala Harris herself has spoken in similar terms. But this week came perhaps the most detailed, and therefore persuasive, deployment of that term.It came from a man who worked exceptionally closely with Trump, serving as his White House chief of staff: General John Kelly. Like Milley, Kelly did not use the word “fascist” to mean racist or really rightwing, as some loosely throw around that term, but rather to describe Trump’s attitude to power. Indeed, Kelly took pains to be precise.In an interview with the New York Times, he read aloud a definition of fascism: “It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he said, adding that Trump fitted that description. “In my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America.”It’s not a stretch to speak of “autocracy”. Kelly and others have told how Trump believed all power should reside in him, how he bridled at the insistence by senior officials in the government or military, including those he called “my generals”, that their loyalty was to the constitution rather than to him personally. Trump saw that and all such constraints on his authority, including the law, as irritating – if not illegitimate.That was troubling enough in his first term, but it would be more alarming in a second. For one thing, Trump will not repeat his mistake of appointing lieutenants who believe their duty is to serve the country rather than him, even if that means thwarting his will. Next time, he will be surrounded by loyalists. Some of them have been remarkably candid about their plans. In the words of one, Russell T Vought, speaking of how Trump aims to take direct control of every corner of the US federal government, “What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them.”An obvious early target will be the department of justice. Trump has left little doubt that he will not respect that body’s independence. Instead he will use it as a weapon to get the “retribution” he has promised by prosecuting his enemies. What’s more, a second-term Trump will be emboldened by an extraordinary ruling of the supreme court. In July that bench, remade in his image with three Trump-appointed judges, granted the president sweeping legal immunity.What especially alarms the retired generals is Trump’s repeated threats to use the US military against American citizens, to crush dissent. When the Black Lives Matter protests erupted in Washington DC in 2020, Trump sent in the national guard, but now he talks, explicitly, about going much further, promising to use the army against those he calls “the enemy from within”. When pressed to say who he had in mind, he did not cite terrorists or criminals but Adam Schiff, a Democratic congressman from California.The same instinct animates his serial threats to the free press. “CBS should lose its license,” Trump posted on social media last week, after the network displeased him with an interview with Harris: “60 Minutes should be immediately taken off the air.” Earlier he had called for ABC’s licence to be “terminated” because he didn’t like the way his debate with Harris had gone. Presidents cannot block TV networks on a whim, but they do appoint the board that hands out broadcast licences – so it’s not an empty threat.This, remember, is a man who gushes like a teenager in his admiration for Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un, but rarely has a good word to say for America’s democratic allies. This is a man who has promised to be a dictator “on day one”. What more does he have to do to tell us who he is, short of dressing up in jackboots and doing a Hitler salute? And before you dismiss that as a joke, recall Kelly’s confirmation that, more than once, Trump spoke positively of the Nazi dictator: “You know, Hitler did some good things, too,” he would say.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGiven all this, it should be shocking that Trump is even a contender for the White House, let alone one who, polls suggest, is locked in a tie with his opponent. But too many Americans are fed up with high prices and fearful about immigration; too many blame the incumbent Democratic administration and see Harris as part of that status quo. In that context it didn’t help that, when asked if she would have done anything differently from Joe Biden these last four years, Harris replied, “Not a thing that comes to mind.”In her closing argument, Harris is rightly focusing on the threat Trump poses to democracy and freedom. But she has to make that threat ever more concrete. Polls show she is losing ground among Black and Hispanic voters, especially men. Why not, as the Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein has argued, remind those voters that Trump threatens to cut federal funding to police departments that don’t implement “stop-and-frisk”, a practice that disproportionately targets Black men? Or that Trump plans a door-to-door operation against undocumented immigrants, a programme of mass deportation that could see the rounding up of 11 million people? This is not a niche issue: there are 4 million young US citizens with at least one undocumented parent. And if you’re wondering where they would all go, recall that Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s closest advisers, has said that “illegals” awaiting deportation will be sent to massive internment camps.On Monday, Donald Trump will address a rally at Madison Square Garden. Others have already noted the uncomfortable echo of the vast America First rally held in that same venue in 1939, when an earlier variant of American fascism was at its height. The US, and the world, got lucky then, as that movement was steadily eclipsed by events. On 5 November, America and the world desperately need to get lucky again – and time is running out.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More