US Politics

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Swifties for Kamala rally raises nearly $140,000 for Harris

      by

      Taylor Swift has yet to publicly endorse a candidate, but some of her fanbase are already mobilizing for Kamala Harris. The Swifties for Kamala Coalition officially launched on Tuesday, raising more than $138,000 for the Democratic candidate in a virtual rally featuring Carole King and the senators Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand.Swift, who has no affiliation with the group, was not present on the Zoom call nor involved in the event. The group has amassed about 250 million followers on social media platforms since Joe Biden dropped out of the race in late July and endorsed the vice-president.More than 26,000 people joined the Zoom call on Tuesday, according to CNN.King was introduced as the self-proclaimed “original cat lady” and began her speech by praising Swift as “my musical and songwriting granddaughter”. Swift inducted King into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021 with a performance of Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, calling her “the greatest songwriter of all time”.“I’m excited about Kamala, because so many people are excited about Kamala,” King said after rapping the chorus to Swift’s 2014 hit Shake It Off. “I have admired her, the idea that this happened, and the stars lined up, and Joe Biden did a really gracious, hard thing to do, and I’m so proud of him … But this is about you. This call is about you.”King provided attendees with advice for volunteering, such as phone banking and door knocking. “I’ve been a political activist for years. I’ve been a volunteer, I’ve been a door knocker, even as a famous person,” she said. “I’m telling you all this because if any of you are thinking of volunteering to be door knockers or phone callers, but you’re a little nervous about what you might say, please believe me: there is nothing to lose and everything to gain.”Each speaker, including the senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, the congressman Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, the congresswoman Becca Balint of Vermont and the chair of the North Carolina Democratic party, Anderson Clayton, named their favorite Swift song before their remarks. Warren picked the 10-minute version of All Too Well and her 2022 hit Karma. Warren also praised Swifties’ battle against Ticketmaster and summoned the “era of the first woman president”.“You are resilient, and you know how to take on bullies and you know how to be your most authentic, most joyful selves,” Warren said. “You come together hand-in-hand, friendship bracelets on your wrist, and you overcome pretty much anything that life throws at you. And that is what the Kamala Harris campaign is all about. It’s about standing up for what is right in the face of bullies, like Donald Trump.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile Swift has yet to comment on the 2024 election, she did ultimately back the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020. But the group is not waiting for her endorsement. “We are not waiting on Taylor to show her support for Kamala Harris,” the group’s social media manager, Rohan Reagan, told Cosmopolitan in August. “We are doing this outside of her, using the platform of Swifties as a way to get people involved in the election. Taylor did throw her support toward Joe Biden during the 2020 election, so it is possible that she’ll show her support again. But Swifties for Kamala aren’t waiting for her to do that.” More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      JD Vance attacks childless teachers in newly resurfaced remarks

      by

      JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate and US senator from Ohio, attacked teachers who do not have children in newly resurfaced remarks from 2021.In the resurfaced clip, Vance, who was speaking at a forum held by the Center for Christian Virtue, attacks “leaders on the left” and Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, for not having children.“So many of the leaders of the left, and I hate to be so personal about this, but they’re people without kids trying to brainwash the minds of our children, that really disorients me and disturbs me,” Vance can be heard saying in the clip.“Randi Weingarten, who’s the head of the most powerful teachers’ union in the country, she doesn’t have a single child. If she wants to brainwash and destroy the minds of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone.”In a post on X, Weingarten responded to Vance’s resurfaced comments, calling them “gross”, and adding that the remarks are “sad and insulting to millions of modern families, and school teachers including Catholic nuns, none of whom should be targeted for their family decisions”.Weingarten, whose union endorsed Kamala Harris for president in July, continued: “Teachers who are in back-to-school mode right now help other people’s children every single day. Those who virtuously serve our communities should be lauded, not vilified.”The remarks resurfaced on social media this week and have already been making the rounds online. Kamala Harris’s campaign also shared the clip of the remarks online on Tuesday.A spokesperson for Vance did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but in a statement sent to NBC News on Tuesday, Taylor Van Kirk, a spokesperson for Vance, said the Ohio senator “will continue to loudly call this crap out to defend our kids”.“There is no bigger threat to American children than the leftwing indoctrination being peddled in our schools by radicals like Randi Weingarten, with the support of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz,” Van Kirk added.The newly resurfaced comments come just weeks after Vance came under fire after a clip of him in 2021 calling leading Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies” resurfaced after he was chosen by the former president Donald Trump to be his running mate in the 2024 election. The comments caused outrage and were quickly denounced by many Democrats, as well as celebrities and some Republicans.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionVance has claimed that the “childless cat ladies” comment was merely a “sarcastic remark”.In additional resurfaced clips, Vance has said that people without children should pay higher taxes, and that people with children should be given more voting power than those without children. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump, without evidence, blames Biden and Harris for assassination attempt

      by

      Donald Trump has blamed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for last month’s failed assassination attempt against him by accusing them of making it difficult for the Secret Service to protect him.The Republican presidential nominee’s claim – for which he offered no evidence – was made on the television talkshow Dr Phil, hosted by Phil McGraw, on Tuesday. The remarks follow disclosures that several Secret Service agents from the Pittsburgh field office had been placed on administrative leave after the 13 July shooting.At a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last month, Trump was grazed on the ear by a bullet after a 20-year-old gunman opened fire from the roof of a nearby building. One rallygoer, Corey Comperatore, was killed and two others were seriously wounded. The gunman was shot dead by a Secret Service officer at the scene.“When this happened, people would ask, whose fault is it?” Trump told McGraw. “I think to a certain extent it’s Biden’s fault and Harris’s fault. And I’m the opponent. They were weaponising government against me, they brought in the whole DoJ to try and get me, they weren’t too interested in my health and safety.“They were making it very difficult to have proper staffing in terms of Secret Service.”The Secret Service admitted in the days after the attempt on Trump’s life that the former president’s security detail had complained about a lack of security and personnel in the previous two years, acknowledging that they denied some requests.The agency’s protection of Trump has been stepped up since the episode, with agents being diverted from Biden’s previous campaign security detail.The agency’s director, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned after a heated Capitol Hill hearing in which Republican members of Congress assailed her for failing to adequately answer questions over possible security failings leading to the attempt against Trump.However, there has been no evidence that Biden and Harris, who both condemned the attempt, were directly involved in or interfered with the Secret Service’s arrangements.Biden, who was still the Democratic presidential nominee at the time of the shooting before later withdrawing, made several public statements in its aftermath and called for a cooling down of the political rhetoric.In his interview on Tuesday, Trump appeared to blame Biden and Harris for that rhetoric and suggested it may have inspired the attempt on his life.“They’re saying I’m a threat to democracy,” he said. “They would say that, that was standard line, just keep saying it, and you know that can get assassins or potential assassins going. That’s a terrible thing … Maybe that bullet is because of their rhetoric.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe FBI has said the gunman acted alone and that it has found no evidence that he was driven by ideological motives.Trump’s comments were his most direct yet about the Biden administration’s supposed responsibility for the episode. He previously wrote on a post in his Truth Social network that it failed in its duty to protect him.“The Biden/Harris Administration did not properly protect me, and I was forced to take a bullet for Democracy. IT WAS MY GREAT HONOR TO DO SO!” he wrote 10 days after the shooting.Trump previously made unfounded claims that Biden was weaponising the government against him, accusing the president of unleashing the justice department and orchestrating the multiple criminal investigations he has faced since leaving office.He also accused FBI agents of being “locked and loaded” and ready to kill him in a 2022 raid on his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida to retrieve classified documents. The bureau said the raid had been timed to ensure the former president was not present and that its agents had been armed in line with standard operation procedure.The Harris campaign has been contacted for comment. More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Enough is enough’: the Muslim American officials who resigned over US’s Israel-Gaza policy

      by

      When Maryam Hassanein joined the US Department of Interior as a Biden administration appointee in January, she hoped that Israel’s war on Gaza would soon come to an end. But when the US authorized a $1bn arms shipment to Israel in the spring, Hassanein decided to use her voice to affect change. She was inspired by the resilience of students involved in the anti-war movement at nearby George Washington University, where she had attended pro-Palestinian rallies.“Seeing the strength of the students who led that movement across the country really made me think about what I should be doing,” Hassanein said, “and how I can advocate far more for an end to the carnage in Palestine.”So last month, Hassanein joined the ranks of at least a dozen officials who have resigned from the Biden administration due to the US’s support of Israel’s war on Gaza, where more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October, according to the Gaza health ministry. Hassanein said she saw “value in making your voice heard on a public level when it’s not being heard while working there”.View image in fullscreenIn a Zoom call hosted by the civil rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) on Tuesday, Hassanein and Hala Rharrit, a former US state department diplomat who resigned in April, shared their experiences of witnessing the Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian animus that they say drives the Biden administration’s Middle East policies.Rharrit resigned after nearly two decades of working with the state department because she said she witnessed US officials continuously dehumanize Palestinians following Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel. Robust debate was once welcomed at the state department, Rharrit said, but that changed 10 months ago. “I never faced a situation personally where there was fear for retaliation, there was silencing, there was self censorship,” she said. “For me, personally, in the 18 years that I’ve served, this is the very first time.”When engaging with Arab media, Rharrit said she was directed to repeat a narrative that Israel had the right to defend itself. And when giving a presentation to other diplomats, she said that she was lambasted for wanting to include a picture of a Palestinian child dying of starvation. In a group chat where diplomats discussed Egyptian journalists, she said that one colleague expressed disbelief that the Egyptians had built the pyramids.“This is a failed policy,” Rharrit said about the US’s aid to Israel, “and we as Americans and as taxpayers that are sending these bombs and these weapons need to have a collective voice and say: enough is enough.”In her role at the interior department, Hassanein joined other staffers in signing letters, attending rallies and vigils, but soon recognized that her voice wasn’t being heard, she said. “What I realized is that I don’t want to just be a Muslim in a public service position for the sake of being a Muslim in a public service position,” she added. “I want my perspective and my background and the fact that I’m a representation for Muslim communities in the country to truly be considered.” She also disapproved of the Democratic national convention’s denial of a speaking slot for the Georgia state representative Ruwa Romman.Since her public resignation last month, Hassanein said that she has not received a response from her former employer. The interior department and state department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The Harris-Walz campaign is not doing enough to change course on Gaza policy, Hassanein said. She is undecided on whether she will vote for Harris in November and wants to see a marked shift in US’s Gaza policy before casting a ballot for her. In a call to action, Cair encouraged attenders to demand that the state department and the White House uphold US law by ending the transfer of weapons to Israel.“I hope that as horrific as all of this has been, that we eventually emerge from it with a sense of realization of the things that we need to do – the healing that we all need in order to treat each other with humanity, dignity and respect, regardless of background,” Rharrit said. More

    • 200 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      There’s a fair way to ensure third-party candidates don’t ‘spoil’ the US election | David Daley

      by

      Robert F Kennedy Jr has suspended his presidential campaign and endorsed Donald Trump, in part because he did not want to be a spoiler across competitive swing states. The third-party “spoiler problem”, unfortunately, will not vanish with him.Three committed independents and third-party nominees remain: progressive activist Cornel West, Libertarian Chase Oliver, and Jill Stein of the Green party. They could still tip the balance: the White House looks likely to be won by the tiniest margins across just seven swing states, just as it was in 2016 and 2020.The next president should not be decided by whether Stein earns 0.4% in Michigan or 0.2%, or if Oliver claims 1.1% or 0.8% in Libertarian-friendly Georgia and Arizona. But under our current system, that’s very much possible.We need a modern fix that recognizes that third parties are here to stay, but also that a nation with a guiding principle of majority rule deserves winners who earn more than 50% of their fellow Americans’ votes. The best solution to the urgent “spoiler” problem – which we’ve been exhaustingly debating since Ross Perot’s run in 1992 – is ranked-choice voting (RCV).Two states – Maine and Alaska – have already adopted this common-sense, nonpartisan fix for fairer results and will vote for president this fall with RCV. Others should follow their lead. RCV has lots of benefits. But most crucially, by giving voters the power to rank the field, it fixes the spoiler effect that emerges in any race with more than two candidates.A RCV election works much like an instant runoff. If someone wins a majority of voters’ first choices, they win – like any other election. If not, the last-place finishers are eliminated, one by one, and their supporters’ second choices come into play to identify a majority winner.In other words, a Democrat in Michigan who wants a different approach in Gaza could feel free to rank West or Stein first, and Kamala Harris second. A Sun belt conservative who thinks the national debt grew too quickly under Trump could put Oliver first and the former president second. They could make their voice heard – without worrying that their vote would elect someone they fear could be worse on the issue most important to them.Currently, despite our political nuances and the increasing number of registered independents, the spoiler problem continues to be the prism through which every third-party run is considered. Kennedy never seemed likely to win, but pundits agonized for months over whether he drew more from Democrats or the Republican party. It’s no surprise that serious independent candidates or anti-Trump conservatives such as Larry Hogan and Chris Christie rejected entreaties to run this year, when such a run would be reduced to the question of who they’d “siphon” votes from.It’s too early to judge the effect that Kennedy’s exit will have on the race. His support had softened in recent weeks. Yet almost no matter how his supporters break, the most competitive states remain extremely close.As of 21 August, Harris leads Arizona by 1.2%, Pennsylvania by 1.6%, and North Carolina by 0.2%. Trump holds a lead of 0.8% in Georgia. Any of the remaining third-party candidates could easily exceed the margin of victory in competitive states. It’s not just Florida in 2000, when George W Bush carried the electoral college tipping-point by 537 votes, a margin far surpassed by Ralph Nader voters. In Wisconsin in 2020, the Libertarian Jo Jorgensen and conservative-leaning independents took more than twice as many votes as the margin between Joe Biden and Trump.It’s easy to imagine something similar this year, perhaps even an election night 2024 where the electoral college is knotted up. Harris and Trump each have 251 electoral votes. Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin remain too close to call, each separated by a handful of votes. A tense nation awaits the verdict.Wouldn’t the result have more legitimacy if everyone knew that the electoral votes in those states went to a winner with more than 50% of the vote?Kennedy might have left the scene, but third-party candidates are not going away. Nor should they be forced out. We can adjust to that reality, or we can dig in our heels, repeat this tired debate, blame Ralph Nader and Jill Stein for everything, forever, and – at a time when the country feels ever more polarized – risk electing a president without a majority in the decisive states, leaving us even more divided than we are now.There’s no silver bullet to everything that ails our civic spirit. Yet the road out of this toxicity might begin with embracing values that most of us hold dear: more individual choice is good, all of us should be heard and majorities must rule. Ranked-choice voting makes that possible.

      David Daley is the author of Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count and Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy. He is a senior fellow at FairVote More

    • 175 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Democrats can win this election by championing the working class | Katrina vanden Heuvel

      by

      One of the most compelling speeches at last week’s Democratic national convention wasn’t followed by balloons. Delivered just a few hours before Kamala Harris’s primetime address, it came from a man with – until now, anyway – zero name recognition. John Russell is a mulleted tree-stump grinder turned activist journalist from rural Ohio. He seemed a bit of a misfit next to glamorous speakers like Oprah and the guy who played the president on Scandal. But on the final night in Chicago, Russell took the stage to give what my colleague Bhaskar Sunkara called “the most radical speech” in the convention’s history.His blistering remarks cut through the convention’s fever dream to deliver a necessary wake-up call. He warned about the working class’s political disillusionment. He demanded that Democrats reclaim their heritage as fearless defenders of labor. And he issued ambitious prescriptions for action on everything from a living wage to climate crisis. On that last issue, he reminded the gathered delegates that environmental degradation isn’t just a matter of coastal (elite) flooding, but of strip mining and poisoned water in flyover country. Perhaps most impressively, he spoke all this truth to power in only two minutes. As he said himself: “It is our moment to live up to. Let’s get after it.”This barn burner reminded the Democratic party that elevating voices like Russell’s for just one night in August won’t cut it: the Harris campaign needs to center heartland populism all the way through November.Such an emphasis has become even more imperative with JD Vance’s ascension to the No 2 spot on the Republican ticket. Though doughnuts may baffle him, this native son of Appalachia does have a knack for enticing Rust belt voters with a menu of faux-populist policies. From his support for unions to his endorsement of Lina Khan, the US Federal Trade Commission chair, Vance’s words make it seem like the only thing he despises more than cat ladies is corporations. But as Russell pointed out, Vance’s work for Peter Thiel and his fealty to Donald Trump prove his true loyalties lie with crypto miners, not coal miners.Authentic populists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can certainly counter-signal Vance’s siren song. Sanders, for his part, delivered a typically rousing address at the DNC, calling on his fellow Democratic leaders to “stand up to wealth and power and deliver justice for people at home and abroad”.The Democrats’ populist bench extends beyond elected officials, too. The night before Sanders’s remarks, Shawn Fain, the United Auto Workers president, appeared onstage in a red T-shirt that declared “Trump Is A Scab.” Though Sean O’Brien, the Teamsters president, had made a tentative courtship of the right by speaking at the Republican convention in July, Fain affirmed that labor’s true home remains with the left.But no one can rebut the Hillbilly Elegist more effectively than on-the-ground Appalachians like Russell. He reports on heartland labor issues for a progressive news outlet called More Perfect Union, enabling him to connect with the very workers who could swing races up and down the ballot. A video that played before his convention remarks showed him meeting with construction workers in rural Tennessee. They had just joined a union for the first time, but it may have also been the first time they met a Democrat who shared their tribulations.And Russell isn’t the only self-described redneck trying to build a grassroots movement. Beth Howard, for example, is organizing other coal miners’ daughters in eastern Kentucky on behalf of a program called Showing Up For Racial Justice. It aims to mobilize predominantly white communities in the south to combat racism and classism alike. And in the Central time zone, Midwest Academy continues to pump out progressive organizers who know what’s the matter with Kansas and how to fix it. Founded 51 years ago to check a different surge of rightwing populism, Midwest Academy has become the training ground for blue activists in red states. Its graduates would make mighty canvassers for Harris.Joe Biden has made headway in reclaiming the working class as the Democratic base. He has declared himself the most pro-union president ever, and his legislative accomplishments undoubtedly make him the best ally to labor in the White House since at least Lyndon Johnson. Last year, More Perfect Union even helped connect Biden with striking autoworkers, opening the way for him to make history as the first president to join a picket line. Harris would do well to follow her boss’s lead and embrace John Russell and his fellow activists – not just as surrogates, but advisers.To paraphrase Russell, this is Harris’s moment to live up to – or live down.

      Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of the Nation, she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and has contributed to the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Harris and Walz to give first sit-down interview as Democratic ticket on CNN

      by

      Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will sit for their first interview as the Democratic ticket on Thursday, after weeks of demands from Republicans and members of the media for the nominees to open themselves up to questions.The interview, which will be conducted by CNN anchor Dana Bash from the battleground state of Georgia, is set for a primetime spot on CNN at 9pm ET.Despite a whirlwind of media coverage of the Harris campaign and a surge of support in the six weeks since Joe Biden ended his bid for re-election and endorsed her, the vice-president has yet to do a formal interview or hold a press conference.“There are a lot of questions that have been lingering out there for her to answer as we go into this fall campaign,” David Chalian, CNN’s political director, said after announcing the interview on the network Tuesday. “We have been waiting to see this next important hurdle for Kamala Harris and her campaign to jump,” Chalian added, noting that Harris and Walz successfully rallied the party, raised heaps of money, and pulled off the convention. “All of that is very scripted,” he said. “This is the first time she is going to take questions.”Harris laid out some broad policy agendas at the Democratic national convention last week, promising a middle class tax cut at home and a muscular foreign policy of standing up to Russia and North Korea. In recent weeks, Harris also shared some of the first glimpses into what her policy priorities might look like, including a proposal for $25,000 down-payment support programs for first-time home buyers and a call for cracking down on price-gouging companies.But while her campaign is busy spreading enthusiasm for her nomination, some details have been left scant. There still isn’t a dedicated policy page on the official campaign website and Harris has turned down interview requests, opting instead for less-risky campaign appearances and short conversations with pool reporters.“On the whole, Harris’s top communications aides are deeply skeptical, as Biden’s inner circle was, that doing big interviews with major TV networks or national newspapers offer much real upside when it comes to reaching swing voters,” Politico reported earlier this month, citing two unnamed people close to the campaign. An anonymous source claimed there is little incentive to change course: “She’s getting out exactly the message she wants to get out,” they said.Now, as time ticks down for Harris and Walz, the governor of Minnesota, to make their final appeal to anyone who might still be undecided, their campaign has embraced a slight shift in strategy.Harris and her opponent, Donald Trump, are scheduled to debate each other next month, even as a back-and-forth continues between the campaigns over what rules have been agreed.The dispute has centered on the issue of microphone muting, which Biden’s campaign made a condition of his decision to accept any debates this year. Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday that the parameters for the 10 September debate would be “the same as the last CNN Debate”, when both candidates’ microphones were muted except when it was their turn to speak.But Harris’s campaign said on Tuesday that specifics for the debate are still being worked out with the host, ABC News. A Harris spokesperson noted: “Both candidates have publicly made clear their willingness to debate with unmuted mics for the duration of the debate to fully allow for substantive exchanges between the candidates – but it appears Donald Trump is letting his handlers overrule him. Sad!”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeanwhile, the Democratic ticket will make good on its promise to do an interview.“Now is the opportunity to hear her ruminate aloud,” Chalian said, “with Dana asking her about her policy positions, her plans for the future, her plans for the country, in an unscripted setting – and, of course, to see the Democratic ticket interacting with each other.”The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this story More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump appoints RFK Jr and Tulsi Gabbard to transition team

      by

      Donald Trump has appointed Robert F Kennedy Jr and Tulsi Gabbard, two former Democrats who have endorsed his bid for a second presidency, to the transition team that could shape his future administration.The pair will serve as honorary co-chairs of a body that will help him choose policies and personnel if he wins November’s presidential election, the New York Times reported.Kennedy’s appointment came after he suspended his own presidential campaign as an independent candidate last week and threw his weight behind an erstwhile opponent who, just four months ago, branded him a “radical-left lunatic”.He had already flagged up his new role in an interview with Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host and prominent Trump supporter, posted on X.Gabbard, a former member of Congress for Hawaii, unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and left the party shortly thereafter.She has rebranded herself as a pro-Trump celebrity and has been helping the Republican nominee prepare for a 10 September debate with Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent, which is to be hosted by ABC.Gabbard and Harris clashed in a televised primary debate in 2019, footage from which was posted on social media on Tuesday.Gabbard, a former member of the national guard who served in the Middle East, criticised the Democratic party in the debate, saying it was “not the party that is of, by and for the people and continues to be influenced by the foreign policy establishment in Washington represented by [Hillary] Clinton … and other greedy corporate interests”. She also attacked Harris’s record as a prosecutor.Harris responded by describing Gabbard as “someone who during the Obama administration spent four years full-time on Fox News criticising President Obama”. She also accused Gabbard of “buddying up” to Steve Bannon, a key Trump supporter and adviser, to get a meeting with Trump after he won the 2016 presidential election.It is unclear what role Kennedy or Gabbard will play on the transition team, which also features two of Trump’s sons, Donald Jr and Eric, and his vice-presidential running mate, JD Vance.On Tuesday, the Wisconsin elections commission voted to keep Kennedy on the presidential ballot, despite requesting to be removed from the ballot in all swing states when he endorsed Donald Trump last week.US media reported that Kennedy would also remain on the ballot in another key swing state: Michigan. The presence of independent and third-party candidates on the ballots could be a key factor in states where four of the last six presidential elections have been decided by between 5,700 votes and about 23,000 votes.Kennedy, who has traded in debunked conspiracy theories about children’s vaccines and the causes of the Covid epidemic, has been touted as a potential member of a second Trump administration, and has said he would expect any role would involve healthcare and food and drug policy.Trump has supported some of Kennedy’s vaccine scepticism, but played down suggestions that he could appoint him as secretary of health and human services. That post would see him surmounting the potentially problematic hurdle of Senate confirmation.Marc Short, a former chief of staff to Mike Pence, who served as Trump’s vice-president, told the New York Times that the appointment of Kennedy and Gabbard was a setback to conservatives.“From the convention platform to the transition team, free-market, limited-government and social conservatives have been kicked to the curb,” he said. “Doubling down on big-government populists will not energise turnout among traditional conservatives.” More