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      Democrats are scrambling to keep the Senate. Could an old-school bipartisan help save it?

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      “Everybody’s got their comfy shoes?” Jacky Rosen scanned the room full of union workers who were preparing canvas for her in Reno, Nevada. The room erupted in response.“Those gym shoes are going to be worn out,” the Democratic senator told the crowd. “But that’s OK. Those holes in the bottom mean you’re doing the good work … helping return the Democratic majority in the United States.”Rosen has been wearing out her own shoes – crisscrossing the state and running one of the most aggressive and persistent re-election campaigns in the country as she fights to preserve her own career, and a precarious party advantage in the US Senate. Her campaign message has matched her practical footwear.Her platform has focused on a few big, national issues – including the cost of living and abortion – but also many small ones specific to her geographically vast, politically enigmatic state. She touts her record preserving a local postal hub in northern Nevada, bringing in money for a solar facility.“We’re trying to take care of what we have here, and we want our kids to have a good place to grow up,” she told members of Culinary Workers Union Local 226 – a powerful organisation representing tens of thousands of hospitality workers in the state. “That’s what everyone wants.”With early voting in Nevada already underway, Rosen holds an eight-point lead in polling averages. But she’s not letting up or taking any chances. Armies of volunteers from unions and a coalition of moderate and progressive political groups are knocking on doors on her behalf. And a barrage of advertisements, on the radio and television, in English and Spanish – are tearing down her opponent Sam Brown, a Donald Trump-backed Republican that Rosen has characterised as extreme.The race will be a test of whether candidates like her – a pragmatic, old-school bipartisan focused on local issues – can prevail in a politically polarised country. The outcome in Nevada will help determine which party controls the closely divided Senate, with the power to either impede of enable the agenda of Trump or Kamala Harris.In April, the non-partisan Cook Political Report had ranked the race a “toss-up” – in a swing state that appeared increasingly inscrutable to pollsters. In 2022, the Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto won her seat by fewer than 8,000 votes.And Rosen’s challenger, Sam Brown, a military veteran and Purple Heart recipient, had the makings of a model candidate – one who could help Republicans pick up a Senate seat and flip the chamber for the party. But by August, the polling agency had moved the race to “leaning Democrat” – citing growing enthusiasm for Democrats following Harris’s entry into the race, as well as Brown’s failure to drum up much enthusiasm.“Sam Brown just didn’t turn out to be the candidate that I think Republicans hoped he would be – in terms of energy, in terms of fundraising, in terms of just doing what’s needed,” said David Byler, chief of research at the polling firm Noble Predictive Insights. “And then you have a Democratic incumbent who doesn’t have any obvious flaws.”Paradoxically, Rosen’s unobtrusive temperament and heads-down approach to her first term could become her greatest asset. In Las Vegas and Reno, dozens of voters told the Guardian they weren’t particularly familiar with Rosen’s record – but she seemed to be doing just fine.“She does what she says she’s gonna do,” said Vivian Jackson, 69, of Las Vegas. “They try to attack her, but she’s not like that. She’s a real person.”“She’s occasionally said some stuff that’s given me pause,” said her neighbour Kenneth Logan, 65, a retired bartender and veteran who lives in west Las Vegas. On several issues, his politics are to the left of Rosen’s. “But I’m probably going to vote for her. She’s doing fine, and I can’t think of a candidate I’d vote for instead of her.”Rosen is a former computer programmer and synagogue president who was hand-picked to run for Congress, and then the Senate – seemingly out of nowhere – by Harry Reid, the former Democratic senate leader from Nevada who helped reshape the state’s politics over his long political career. In 2018 – after serving just two years in Congress – she unseated Republican senator Dean Heller with a five-point margin, largely relying on support from the state’s powerful labour unions and by emphasising her support for the Affordable Care Act and immigration reform. Heller had embraced Trump and voted to repeal the popular health care law.Six years later, Nevada – like the US at large – is much more politically polarised. Canvassers for the Libre Initiative, a conservative group affiliated with mega-donor Charles Koch’s political network, have been messaging to mostly Latino voters that Rosen is closely tied with the Biden administration. “She voted 94% of the time with Joe Biden,” said Eddie Diaz, a strategic director at Libre in Nevada. “And people are not better off than they were before.”But unlike many of her colleagues, Rosen has shied away from a national profile, forgoing the Democratic national convention in August in favour of staying in Nevada to campaign there.“I think she’s done a decent job so far, and that’s largely because she’s moderate, and bipartisan,” said Kim, 66, a mental health and wellness educator who said she didn’t want to share her full name because many of her family and clients are staunch Republicans.Her partner, Luis, 55, used to belong to the same synagogue as Rosen. “It’s a small world,” he said.Gladis Blanco, a political organiser with the Culinary Workers Union in Reno, said she credits Rosen for working with the administration to lower the cost of asthma medication. A single mother of five, Blanco said both she and several of her children have asthma – and new price caps on inhalers have transformed her family’s monthly budget. “When I tell voters about that they get so excited,” she said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeanwhile Miguel Martinez, a Reno city council member who has been canvassing on behalf of Rosen and Harris, said he was especially impressed that Rosen successfully fought against the US postal service plan to move all mail processing from its Reno facility to California, which locals, especially in remote regions of rural northern Nevada, worried would result in delayed medication deliveries and mail ballot processing. “That was a really big win in our community,” he said.And much like her mentor Reid, who was famous for funnelling funds to the state, Rosen has managed to win allies by delivering federal aid to the state’s cities and rural communities.In recent weeks, several rural Republican officials have backed Rosen over Brown – noting, simply, that they’re happy with the incumbent’s record. “Jacky Rosen helped bring Democrats and Republicans together to pass the largest infrastructure investment in a generation,” said Nathan Robertson, the Republican mayor of the small eastern Nevada town of Ely. “That law is now leading to better and safer roads for our residents, including $24m in federal transportation funding to improve Ely’s streets and sidewalks and revitalise our downtown.”Ed Lawson – the Republican mayor of Sparks, a small city just outside Reno – similarly cited all the funding she has brought to his region. Just a day prior to his endorsement, Rosen and Cortez Masto announced that they had secured $275m in federal funding to enhance a major highway corridor east of Sparks.“I’m a lifelong Republican who has never voted for a Democrat, but this November I’ll be voting for Jacky Rosen,” he said.It has helped Rosen’s cause that Brown has floundered though the election cycle.With early voting underway, the Senate Leadership Fund – the Republican party’s main outside group supporting Senate races – announced it would spend an addition $6.2m on TV, radio and digital ads for Brown. But it’s unclear if the funds will come too late.Brown has often leaned on his personal story in appeals to voters. In 2008, when he was a US army officer in Afghanistan, his Humvee hit a roadside bomb. The explosion caused third-degree burns and Brown had to endure dozens of reconstructive surgeries. The experience was transformative, Brown has said. “God saved me for a purpose,” he wrote in a recent campaign email.But while he has made clear why he’s running for office, he has struggled to define how for voters he would govern.Trump endorsed Brown just days before the primary elections and since then Brown has clung tightly to the former president and his platform. Brown said he wouldn’t have supported the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law or the Inflation Reduction Act – Biden administration programs that have brought unprecedented federal dollars into the state and help fund a range of projects. His past support for storing nuclear waste in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain – a third rail of politics in the state – has also left the impression that he is out of touch with Nevada.Such missteps have opened the opportunity for an easy critique – that Brown is a newcomer, one who moved from Reno to Dallas in 2018, and simply doesn’t know enough about the state.His muddled stance on abortion has also played badly. In attack ads, Rosen has called Brown a “Maga extremist” who would take away abortion rights. And though Brown has responded by saying he supports Nevada’s current law, which allows abortions up to 24 weeks – he has repeatedly dodged questions on whether he’ll support the state’s abortion ballot initiative, which aims to enshrine Nevada’s abortion rights in the state constitution.Nearly 70% of Republicans and 90% of Democrats said they opposed criminalising abortion, according to a recent poll by the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland.Diane Gutierrez, a 65-year-old real estate agent based in Reno, said she is personally opposed to abortion, due to her faith, but believes it should remain protected. “I don’t believe that that should be taken away from any woman,” she said. “It’s just not OK to go backwards.”A registered non-partisan, Gutierrez said she’s voted for both Republican and Democratic candidates in the past. But in recent years, she has gotten more involved in volunteering with the Democratic party – and has largely steered clear of Republicans. “The party has had time, but they haven’t selected good candidates,” she said, adding they’ve failed to make a good case to voters. Initially, she thought Brown bucked the trend.“Being from a military family – my dad was a marine – I appreciate Sam Brown and thank him for his service because obviously he paid a huge price,” she said. “When you’re in the military, you have respect.”But his failure to define a platform of his own has been disappointing, she said. “I would like him to speak up more,” she said. “Where’s Sam Brown? Is he in Nevada? It’s like, ‘Sam – say something.’” More

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      ‘It’s going to be tight’: Tim Walz rallies Pennsylvanians for final stretch in Biden’s home town

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      Tim Walz delivered a rousing pep talk in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on Friday, encouraging supporters to do everything they can in the next 11 days to elect Kamala Harris as president.Addressing hundreds of voters at the Scranton Cultural Center, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee compared the final days of the neck-and-neck presidential race between Harris and Donald Trump to the fourth quarter of a football game, leaning on his background as a former high school teacher and coach.“It’s going to be tight. It’s the fourth quarter. We have got the best team on the field,” Walz said. “We have got to do this one inch at a time, one yard at a time, one door at a time, one call at a time, one dollar at a time, one vote at a time.”The rally came as polls show a deadlocked race between Harris and Trump, despite hundreds of millions of dollars having been spent in the battleground states. According to the Guardian’s poll tracker, Harris now leads Trump by less than 1 point in Pennsylvania, which could serve as the tipping point state in the electoral college.Walz, the governor of Minnesota, warned supporters in Scranton against the “dangerous complacency” of downplaying the threat that Trump represents to the country.“We are running like everything is on the line because everything is on the line. It is. We feel it. You know it,” Walz said. “[Trump] is telling you what he is going to do, and none of it is good.”Walz specifically reiterated Harris’s message from her CNN town hall on Wednesday, during which she said that Trump’s former advisers were sending a “911 call” to the nation. In an Atlantic article published this week, John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff, recounted that the then president expressed a wish for “the kind of generals that Hitler had”. (Trump’s campaign has denied Kelly’s claim.)Walz told voters in Scranton: “Maybe Donald forgot that Hitler and his generals were on the other side of this thing, and it was the sons of Minnesota and Pennsylvania that were carrying the stars and stripes, that kicked his ass and saved this world from fascism.”After cultivating a persona as a “joyful warrior”, Walz has turned increasingly punchy in the final stretch of the presidential race. In Wisconsin on Tuesday, Walz described Elon Musk, who recently appeared alongside Trump at a campaign rally, as a “dipshit”, and the governor repeated the insult on Friday.“I used a midwestern euphemism. I said that he was prancing and dancing around like a dipshit. That is exactly what it was,” Walz said, prompting cheers from the crowd.On a more positive note, Walz took a moment to express his appreciation for Joe Biden, who was born in Scranton and remains a popular figure in the city.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This country owes a huge debt to you and a huge debt to Joe Biden,” Walz said. “[Presidents] have always put this country above themselves, no matter the cost to their personal ambitions or what happened to them. Joe Biden has secured his place in history by upholding that tradition.”The Scranton crowd erupted into cheers of “Joe!” as Walz spoke. Michael McNulty, a 47-year-old voter from Scranton, lives down the street from Biden’s childhood home and expressed his gratitude for the president but said he felt invigorated by the Harris-Walz ticket.“I think there’s a real sense of optimism and hope here. It’s not just against Trump,” McNulty, wearing a Harris-Walz camo hat, said after the Scranton rally. “They’re sharing a vision for the future of the country that is one I want to live in. It’s one that I want to raise my children in and that I’m really proud to go out and contribute to make happen.”Biden won Pennsylvania by 1.2 points in 2020, four years after Trump carried the state by 0.7 points. Although polls show a tied race, McNulty is confident that Harris will win the Keystone state this time around.“We’re going to push this over the finish line here for the Harris-Walz ticket,” he said. “PA is going to deliver, and we’re going to have Madame President.” More

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      Can this Trump-backed car dealer unseat the Ohio Democrat and win Republicans the Senate?

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      When the Democrat Sherrod Brown was first elected to the US Senate in 2006, Ohio, with its large urban populations and manufacturing industries, was fairly reliable territory for Democrats.Barack Obama claimed the state in 2008 and 2012 on his way to the White House. Democrats boasted strong representation in Ohio’s politics. Analysts zealously watched its voting patterns, such was its prominence as a bellwether state.In the years since, the state has become older, whiter and more conservative. Manufacturing has shrunk and population has stagnated.Brown is now the only Democrat holding a statewide seat in Ohio. And he is weeks out from a crucial Senate election against former luxury car dealer Bernie Moreno, a contest that could reshape US politics for years to come,For one, keeping Brown’s seat is crucial if Democrats hope to maintain their control of the US Senate.If Brown can win re-election, it would be notable in a state where Republicans have engineered a gerrymandering process to their advantage. They hold a supermajority in the state’s house of representatives and senate, and control the offices of the governor, secretary of state and attorney general as well as the state supreme court. Ohio’s second US senator is none other than Trump’s pick for vice-president, JD Vance.Brown is facing his most formidable on-comer yet – not because his Republican challenger has resonated particularly effectively with the Ohio electorate, but because Brown has, until now, never run in a year when Donald Trump was also on the ballot.For James Spencer, who has lived in Moraine, a working-class suburb of Dayton, for 27 years, the former president’s endorsement of Moreno is enough to secure his vote.As a retired construction contractor, he was unhappy to see the nearby General Motors plant that once employed thousands of blue-collar workers taken over by a Chinese auto glass manufacturer, Fuyao Glass. He believes the perceived problems associated with the company, including a raid by the Department of Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies investigating allegations of financial crimes and labor exploitation in July, have only worsened since.In the past, he said, “Everything went around the plant. Your friends, your family. It was like a big GM community … We’ve lost so much in this area.”The declining fortunes experienced by white working-class Ohioans such as Spencer have been seized on by Trump and Moreno.However, Brown, the incumbent, is hoping his longstanding position as a champion of workers’ rights can carry him over the line.His campaign and supporters have largely disassociated Brown from the Biden administration and Kamala Harris campaign, despite the former helping to bring billions of dollars in infrastructure funding to rural parts of the state.“Brown has crossover appeal among Ohioans. The labor vote, which has increasingly gone to Trump, has also gone to Brown,” said Thomas Sutton, a political science professor and acting president of Baldwin Wallace University.“He shares some of the same positions as Trump when it comes to protecting local industry, manufacturing [and] support for farmers.”Ohioans have been bombarded with ads featuring Brown riding a speedboat while wearing a bullet-proof vest, a scene meant to depict his tough-on-immigration stance.Critics of Brown say that despite him being an apparent champion of the working class, he has mostly never held a non-political job himself (he worked as a teacher for a few years in the 1970s and 80s).A representative of Brown’s campaign said he was not available for comment for this article. Emails sent to Moreno’s campaign were unanswered.Trump’s endorsement of Moreno, a relative political novice, has energized Ohio’s Maga electorate.“Moreno is doing a pretty good job in handing his campaign over to the professional ad people. They’re using the scare tactics against Brown, tying him to the Biden administration,” said Sutton.A cryptocurrency industry Pac has spent $40m on Moreno’s campaign, while polling conducted for Moreno’s campaign suggests their candidate has a three-point lead over Brown. Other polls suggest a very close race.But Moreno’s run, and his record, are not flawless.Last year, he settled more than a dozen wage-theft lawsuits and was forced to pay more than $400,000 to two former employees of his car dealership.Recently, he has been criticized for telling attenders at a town hall that women over 50 shouldn’t be concerned about reproductive rights.“When you take away women’s abortion rights, you take away healthcare, and we in Ohio have voted that that’s none of your business,” said Amy Cox, a Democrat who is running this year to unseat a Republican incumbent in the US House of Representatives in a district that includes Moraine, Dayton and Springfield.Last year, Ohio Democrats and liberals were revitalized by a rare win at the ballot box when voters decided by a 13-point margin to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution.“Women and men are really energized by the fall of Roe, and Project 2025 is really motivating people to get out and vote,” said Cox.A bribery scandal involving a failing energy company and leading Ohio Republicans hasn’t helped them.The former speaker of the statehouse, Larry Householder, was jailed for 20 years last year for racketeering.“This is going to be won and lost in the three C’s,” the cities of Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, said Sutton.And the election will be about “whether more typically Democratic areas have better mobilization and turnout to counteract what would be normal voter turnout in the Republican-leaning rural and small-town areas”, he added.For Spencer, who lives near the Fuyao Glass factory in Moraine, Moreno’s attack ads that feature Brown’s alleged failures on immigration have hit home.“I’m hoping that if Trump and JD Vance get in, they will deal with what’s going on over there,” he said. 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      Harris holds rally with Obama while Trump calls US a ‘garbage can’ – US election live

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      Good morning and welcome to the US election live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest from the campaign trail over the next couple of hours.We start with news that vice-president Kamala Harris appeared with Barack Obama for the first time, offering closing arguments targeting Black voters in Atlanta’s eastern suburbs, a vibrant, symbolic part of Georgia.“Ours is a fight for the future,” Harris said at the rally in Clarkston. She touched on familiar themes – reducing the costs of drugs, housing and groceries. “I come from the middle class, and I will never forget where I come from.Harris said she believes “healthcare should be a right and not just a privilege for those who can afford it”, and said Trump would gut the Affordable Care Act and roll back the $35 cap on insulin.The Democratic nominee also reaffirmed her support for abortion rights, referring to the death of Amber Nicole Thurman, a Georgia woman whose death was recently found to be a result of the state’s abortion ban. Harris said: “Donald Trump still refuses to acknowledge the pain and suffering he has caused … women are being denied care during miscarriages.”For more on the rally, see George Chidi’s full report here:Meanwhile, in other news:

      The family of Amber Nicole Thurman, a Black 28-year-old mother who died just weeks after Georgia’s abortion ban went into effect, was in attendance at the Harris rally. Harris is expected to make another high profile appearance today, this time alongside Beyoncé in Houston, where the vice-president hopes to rally support for Senate candidate Colin Allred.

      Donald Trump rallied supporters in Tempe, Arizona, where he spoke alongside Senate candidate Kari Lake. Earlier in the day, Trump made news when he vowed that, if elected, he would immediately fire Jack Smith, the justice department special counsel who is prosecuting him for allegedly plotting to overturn the 2020 election and hide classified documents.

      Trump called the country a “garbage can” because of immigration policies under the Biden administration. “We’re like a garbage can, you know, it’s the first time I’ve ever said that,” Trump said in Tempe, the home of Arizona State University. “And every time I come up and talk about what they’ve done to our country, I get angry. First time I’ve ever said garbage can, but you know what, it’s a very accurate description.”

      Phoenix police arrested a man suspected of setting fire to a mailbox there, damaging mail-in ballots. The news comes just days after Tempe police arrested another man in connection with three shootings at Democratic party campaign offices in Tempe. An Arizona prosecutor said the second man had more than 120 guns and more than 250,000 rounds of ammunition in his home, leading law enforcement to believe he may have been planning a mass casualty event.

      Harris picked up the endorsement of two Republicans, one a former congressman from Michigan, the other a mayor in a pivotal county in Wisconsin.

      Joe Biden announced he will issue an apology for the US government’s role in forcing thousands of Indigenous American children to attend Indian boarding schools – a policy which has been widely recognized as an element of genocide. The news comes as Harris is trailing in the polls in Arizona, a state that Biden famously won in 2020, largely due to the support of Indigenous American voters.

      More than 29 million people have voted already in the 2024 election, at least partly driven by Republicans embracing early voting at Donald Trump’s direction. So far, Republicans have cast 32% of ballots, up from 27% at this point in 2020. Whereas Democrats have cast 42% of the votes, down from 47% at this point in the last presidential election. More

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      Springsteen calls Trump an ‘American tyrant’ at Harris’s star-studded rally

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      Bruce Springsteen urged voters to back Kamala Harris in the presidential election, warning that Donald Trump is a would-be “tyrant”.“I want a president who reveres the constitution, who does not threaten but wants to protect and guide our great democracy, who believes in the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power, who will fight for a woman’s right to choose, and who wants to create a middle-class economy that will serve all our citizens,” Springsteen said at the Thursday evening rally.The rally at James R Hallford Stadium in Clarkston, Georgia, drew about 20,000 people, according to the Democratic nominee’s campaign, which would make it her largest political rally yet, besting the 17,000 Harris drew in Greensboro, North Carolina, in early September.“There is only one candidate in this election who holds those principles dear: Kamala Harris. She’s running to be the 47th president of the United States.”The Born in the USA singer is among the many celebrities stumping for Harris; directors Spike Lee and Tyler Perry, as well as actor Samuel L Jackson, were also in attendance.“Do not wait until election day to show your support, you can vote early,” Jackson, a Morehouse graduate, said, exhorting voters to go to the polls early. “Showing up at the polls is the only way.”

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      Early voting totals have been breaking records in Georgia, with about 30% of the electorate having already cast a ballot.“We’ve heard her favorite curse word is a favorite of mine too,” Jackson said, pointedly avoiding the use of the actual offensive term he is famous for. “That’s the kind of president I can stand behind.”Lee, also a Morehouse grad, said: “Power is knowing your past. Georgia is where the future is being written. Georgia is showing up and showing out, no matter what kind of shenanigans, skullduggery and subterfuge.”Beyoncé is expected to appear at a Harris rally on Friday night, according to the Associated Press. Rapper Eminem and singer Lizzo have also taken the stage in support of Harris at rallies in Detroit.“Donald Trump is running to be an American tyrant,” Springsteen said. “He does not understand this country, its history or what it means to be deeply American, and that’s why on November 5, I’m casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. I urge all of you who believe in the American way to join me.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSpringsteen’s appearance at the rally is eclipsed only by that of Barack Obama, as this event marks the first time the former president and Harris appear together on stage.Perry spoke about growing up poor and the power of the American dream. He noted how Harris’s initiatives to help seniors with medication costs, and youth with education expenses, were among the reasons he backed her.“I believe in affordable healthcare. It should not be replaced with a concept of a plan, what the hell?” Perry said, poking fun of Trump’s viral “concepts of a plan” comment on replacing the Affordable Care Act benefits.Neither “a government nor a man should be telling a woman what she can or cannot do with her body”, Perry said to cheers.Perry introduced Obama to the crowd shortly thereafter. More

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      Harris hails Republican endorsements as campaign condemns Trump’s threat to fire Jack Smith – US elections live

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      In brief remarks to the press in Philadelphia before departing for a campaign event in Georgia, Kamala Harris thanked the two Republican politicians who announced they would be voting for her.Former congressman Fred Upton of Michigan and Waukesha, Wisconsin mayor Shawn Reilly both cited their concerns with Donald Trump in announcing their endorsement of Harris.“This continues to be, I think, evidence of the fact that people who have been leaders in our country, regardless of their political party, understand what’s at stake. And they are weighing in courageously, in many cases, in support of what we need to have, which is a president of the United States who understands the obligation to uphold the constitution of the United States and our democracy,” Harris said.She also hit out at Donald Trump, who declined to participate in a second debate with Harris hosted by CNN that would have happened last night. Instead, the vice-president to appeared solo at a town hall the network organized with undecided voters in Philadelphia.Here’s what Harris said:
      As for last night, yet again, Trump not showing up, refused to be a part of a CNN debate, and clearly his staff has been saying he’s exhausted. And the sad part about that is, he’s trying to be president of the United States, probably the toughest job in the world, and he’s exhausted.
      I said last night what I mean, which is the American people are being presented with a very serious decision, and it includes what we must understand will happen starting on January 20, in this choice. Either you have the choice of a Donald Trump will sit in the Oval Office stewing, plotting revenge, retribution, writing out his enemies list, or what I will be doing, which is responding to folks like the folks last night with a to-do list, understanding the need to work on lifting up the American people, whether it be through the issue of grocery prices and bringing them down, or investing in our economy, investing in our small businesses, investing in our families.
      Donald Trump’s rally in Tempe, Arizona is starting late. Meanwhile, his running mate JD Vance is expected to take the stage shortly at a separate event in Waterford, Michigan. We’ll alert you of any developments as the events get underway. Trump is expected to hold another rally in Las Vegas, Nevada this evening after Kamala Harris campaigns alongside ex-President Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen in Atlanta this afternoon.In a rare post on X, Donald Trump is denouncing his former chief of staff John Kelly, who recently made news for saying Trump meets the definition of a fascist. In the post, Trump calls Kelly a “bad general”, an apparent reference to a separate interview Kelly gave the Atlantic where he described Trump lamenting that he did not have generals who were loyal in the way he believed German military commanders had been to Hitler.Robert Tait has more on Kelly’s comments about Trump’s authoritarian leanings:As Joe Biden travels to Arizona and Donald Trump prepares to take the stage at two rallies there today, Phoenix police have arrested a man suspected of setting fire to a mailbox there where mail-in ballots were damaged this morning. The news comes just days after Tempe police arrested a separate man in connection with three shootings at Democratic party campaign offices in Tempe.The Arizona Republic reports that Phoenix police arrested Dieter Klofkorn, who told investigators he lit the fire because he wanted to be arrested, this morning. Before firefighters could extinguish the fire, the New York Times reports, approximately 20 ballots were damaged. Arizona secretary of state Adrian Fontes told the paper that voters whose ballots were damaged will receive a new ballot.Donald Trump will be taking the stage at his rally in Tempe, Arizona, shortly, where he is expected to return to the issue that has defined his campaign: immigration. According to his prepared remarks, Trump will argue that Kamala Harris’s handling of the border should disqualify her from the presidency.Trump will be joined on stage by Kari Lake, a former television news anchor and dedicated follower of Trump’s who is running for the state’s open Senate seat. Ahead of her appearance in Tempe, Lake told the Associated Press that she would use the CBP One app, which allows migrants to request asylum at the south-west border, to deport people if elected.“That app works both ways,” Lake said. “In January 2025, we’re gonna control that app and we’re gonna find the people who invaded our country and we’re going to send them home.”Hilary Clinton will appear on CNN this evening in an interview with Kaitlan Collins, host of The Source. The interview comes just a day after the network aired its town hall with Kamala Harris, an event that Donald Trump declined to attend.Joe Biden will travel to Arizona today and is expected to formally apologize tomorrow for the US government’s role in forcing thousands of Native American children to attend Indian boarding schools – a policy which has been widely recognized as an element of genocide. The news comes as Kamala Harris is trailing in the polls in Arizona, a state that Biden famously won in 2020, largely due to the support of Native American voters.“I would never have guessed in a million years that something like this would happen,” the secretary of interior, Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, told the Associated Press. “It’s a big deal to me. I’m sure it will be a big deal to all of Indian Country.”As the first Native American to lead the Department of the Interior, Haaland launched an investigation into the boarding school system, which found that at least 18,000 children were removed from their parents and forced to attend the schools, which sought to assimilate them into white American culture. The investigation documented about 1,000 deaths of children that occurred at the boarding schools.On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, the Democratic National Committee announced that it had launched a “six-figure ad campaign” aimed at turning out Native American voters in Arizona, North Carolina, Montana and Alaska. It is the party’s third Native-focused campaign this year, and “the most the DNC has ever spent on a campaign targeting Native voters”.Phoenix mayor Kate Gallego has announced the arrest of a suspect involved in setting a fire at a USPS mailbox that damaged a small number of mail-in ballots:Phoenix is the largest city in swing state Arizona, and many residents are returning ballots by mail. Here’s more of what we know about the incident:Things aren’t looking terrible everywhere for Democrats.The party grew nervous earlier this year in Maryland when Republican former governor Larry Hogan jumped into the race for the open Senate seat in what is typically a Democratic bastion. Maryland voters had twice elected Hogan to the governor’s mansion, and he is viewed as perhaps the only Republican in the state with a shot at winning the Senate seat.But a poll from the Washington Post and the University of Maryland released today shows the Democratic nominee, Prince George’s county executive Angela Alsobrooks, with a commanding lead of 52% among likely voters, and Hogan at a mere 40%. That’s sure to quell some jitters in the party, though winning the seat, which is currently occupied by Democrat Ben Cardin, is not enough to get the party the majority in the chamber.Democratic senator Jon Tester’s bid for re-election in Montana is a mirror of the party’s wider struggles to maintain the support of voters in rural areas across the country, which have grown increasingly Republican in recent years, threatening the party’s ability to win races up and down the ballot. The Guardian’s David Smith traveled to Big Sky Country to see if Tester’s circumstances are as dire as they appear from afar:He was a young and little-known underdog. So Max Baucus, candidate for Congress, decided to trek 630 miles across Montana and listen to people talk about their problems. “As luck would have it, on the first day, I walked into a blizzard,” he recalls, pointing to a photo of his young self caked in snow. “It was cold! But the blizzard didn’t last that long.”Baucus shed 12lb during that two-and-a-half month journey in 1974. He also made friends. The Democrat defeated a Republican incumbent and would soon go on to serve as a Montana senator for 36 years. He never lost an election but saw his beloved home state undergo many changes. Among them is the prospect that Democrats like him are now facing political extinction.Jon Tester, a moderate Democrat who is one of Montana’s current senators, is fighting for his political life in the 5 November election. Opinion polls suggest that he is trailing his Republican rival, Tim Sheehy. Control of the closely divided Senate, and the ability to enable or stymie the ambitions of a President Kamala Harris or President Donald Trump, could hinge on the outcome.The Senate race in Montana is widely seen as a litmus test of whether Democrats can still win in largely rural states that have embraced Trump’s Republican party. It is also a study in whether the type of hyperlocal campaigning that Baucus practised half a century ago can outpace shifts in demographics, media and spending that have rendered all politics national.Democrats are fighting to keep their majority in the Senate, and evidence continues to mount that Jon Tester, the Montana senator whose re-election is viewed as essential to doing that, is struggling.The party has already conceded a seat in deep-red West Virginia, but is hoping Kamala Harris’s victory combined with those of Tester and Sherrod Brown in Ohio, along with several other incumbents, will renew its majority.Polls have lately shown Tester trailing his Republican opponent, and the political advertising trackers at Medium Buying report a Republican group has cancelled television ads in Montana – a sign the party views the seat as theirs for the taking:Here’s more on the calculations behind the quest for control of Congress’s upper chamber:Harris then took a few questions from the press, but didn’t make news.Asked for more details of the Philadelphia concert scheduled for Monday where Bruce Springsteen will perform and Barack Obama will speak in support of her candidacy, Harris demurred.“I have nothing to report at this moment. Stay tuned,” the vice-president said, after noting that Springsteen was “an American icon”.She dodged a question about whether she would allow construction of a wall on the border with Mexico, and how she would vote on a California ballot proposition to heighten penalties for shoplifters and drug dealers.Harris did share some thoughts on the gender divide pollsters say they are observing ahead of the election, with women breaking for Democrats and men for Republicans by increasingly wide margins:
      It’s not what I see, in terms of my rallies, in terms of interactions I’m having with people in communities and on the ground. What I’m seeing is, in equal measure, men and women talking about their concerns about the future of our democracy, talking about the fact that they want a president who leads with optimism and takes on the challenges that we face, whether it be grocery prices or investing in small businesses or home ownership.
      In brief remarks to the press in Philadelphia before departing for a campaign event in Georgia, Kamala Harris thanked the two Republican politicians who announced they would be voting for her.Former congressman Fred Upton of Michigan and Waukesha, Wisconsin mayor Shawn Reilly both cited their concerns with Donald Trump in announcing their endorsement of Harris.“This continues to be, I think, evidence of the fact that people who have been leaders in our country, regardless of their political party, understand what’s at stake. And they are weighing in courageously, in many cases, in support of what we need to have, which is a president of the United States who understands the obligation to uphold the constitution of the United States and our democracy,” Harris said.She also hit out at Donald Trump, who declined to participate in a second debate with Harris hosted by CNN that would have happened last night. Instead, the vice-president to appeared solo at a town hall the network organized with undecided voters in Philadelphia.Here’s what Harris said:
      As for last night, yet again, Trump not showing up, refused to be a part of a CNN debate, and clearly his staff has been saying he’s exhausted. And the sad part about that is, he’s trying to be president of the United States, probably the toughest job in the world, and he’s exhausted.
      I said last night what I mean, which is the American people are being presented with a very serious decision, and it includes what we must understand will happen starting on January 20, in this choice. Either you have the choice of a Donald Trump will sit in the Oval Office stewing, plotting revenge, retribution, writing out his enemies list, or what I will be doing, which is responding to folks like the folks last night with a to-do list, understanding the need to work on lifting up the American people, whether it be through the issue of grocery prices and bringing them down, or investing in our economy, investing in our small businesses, investing in our families.
      Voto Latino, a top civic engagement non-profit aimed at empowering Latino voters, has launched a new campaign to raise awareness about what Project 2025 means for Latinos.The organization identified parts of Project 2025 that would have the most negative effect on the Latino community, and translated these portions into Spanish. Voto Latino is launching paid ads in Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Michigan to publicize this initiative, in a $3.5m campaign.Remember: Trump has tried to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation-backed initiative to overhaul the US government, which includes plans to outlaw abortion and fire civil servants en masse, as polling indicated it was a political liability for him. The Vera Institute for Justice said that provisions relating to immigration were “designed to initiate mass deportations.”“As much as former President Trump tries to distance himself from Project 2025, we will not be fooled: We know that he will implement this extremist agenda if he wins. It is clear that Project 2025 will set us back by dismantling the fabric of our country through extreme conservative efforts to impose a regressive vision for our nation,” Maria Teresa Kumar, Voto Latino President and Co-Founder, said in a press release announcing the campaign.“The threats posed to our community by Project 2025 are clear and present. Latino voters and other voters of color will be affected the most by Project 2025.”“We have the power to ensure that an extremist agenda does not go into place by making our voices heard at the ballot box in November,” Kumar also said. “In this election, over 36 million Latinos are eligible to vote. We have a responsibility to inform one another of the potential dangers related to Trump’s agenda as seen in Project 2025, and the impact that it will have on ourselves, our communities, and our families.”Donald Trump has been working tirelessly to win over male voters and by some measures, his efforts appear effective.Trump is besting Kamala Harris among men 53 to 37 percent, according to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll, while the vice president is winning women 53 percent to his 36 percent.Trump’s far-right politics seem especially appealing to white male voters, and there have been various explanations for this trend. Some have opined that it’s sheer sexism; others believe that it’s due to a purported male loneliness epidemic and uncertainty about their role in American society.The Guardian’s Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone spoke with residents of Middletown, Ohio–GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s hometown– in an effort to learn why gender is a watershed issue in this election.Here is their eye-opening report. More

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      This race could affect Pennsylvanians more than the presidential election. Can Democrats win?

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      In a Pennsylvania suburb whose voters are coveted by both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Nicole Ruscitto walked from house to house on a gloomy Tuesday afternoon, informing residents that there is another important race in November.“I’m Nicole, I’m running for state senate in your district,” she told voters on the doorsteps of their red brick houses in Bethel Park, a town about 30 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh, which, if yard signs and election results are any gauge, is about evenly divided between Trump and Harris supporters. “I want to go to Harrisburg to help our families.”In a swing state that’s considered by both Trump and Harris as perhaps the most important to deciding the presidential election, Ruscitto is running for an office that receives less attention than the occupant of White House or members of Congress, yet may have far more impact on the day-to-day life of Pennsylvanians.For three decades, Democrats have been locked out of power in the state’s general assembly. On 5 November, the party is hoping the elections of Ruscitto, a school teacher and former town councilmember, and three other candidates to the state senate will change that.Should they wind up with control of the senate and the house of representatives – the party’s majority in the latter is just one seat – Democrats will finally be able to send Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor, a host of legislation that Republicans are currently blocking, ranging from increasing the minimum wage to abortion rights.“If we could have that trifecta, Governor Shapiro would be able to do so many great things for the people here in Pennsylvania, and I plan on doing that 100%,” Ruscitto said in an interview at her campaign office.While many Americans are fixated on the presidential election, there are 5,808 legislative seats in 44 states up for grabs in November, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and voters’ choices may be more impactful than ever before. State governments across the United States have in recent years picked up the policymaking slack from Washington DC, where partisan gridlock and uncooperative Congresses have meant successive presidents have failed to enact many of their campaign promises.The results can be seen in the stark differences between laws in red and blue states.Where Democrats rule, governors have enacted laws to protect abortion access, cut down on emissions tied to climate change, curb gun violence and streamline the process to cast ballots. Republican-led states, meanwhile, have banned abortion to varying degrees, targeted gender-affirming care for transgender youths, restricted cities from passing gun control measures and expanded the role of religion in public education.Many states have legislatures and governor’s mansions controlled by the same party. A smaller group of states, including Wisconsin, Kansas and North Carolina, have governors of one party and legislatures controlled by the other. Pennsylvania is the only state in the union where the two houses of the general assembly are held by different parties.Considered a part of Democrats’ “blue wall” along the Great Lakes, the Keystone state has supported the party’s presidential candidates in most recent elections, though this year’s polls show Trump and Harris essentially tied. Democrats have also seen victories at the state level with the election of Shapiro and the US senator John Fetterman in 2022.But control of the general assembly has eluded them since 1994. John J Kennedy, a political science professor at West Chester University and an expert on the state legislature, credited that to a push by Republicans to draw district maps in their favor, as well as Democratic voters’ tendency to be clustered in states’ urban areas.“Democrats are at a natural disadvantage when it comes to the geography of a state like Pennsylvania, because they waste more votes,” he said. “Democrats are so concentrated, they’re at a sort of a natural disadvantage when it comes to accumulating a majority of seats.”The tide began to turn two years ago, when Democrats barely took control of the house in midterm elections that saw the party perform far better than expected nationwide, fueled by voters’ outrage at the US supreme court for overturning Roe v Wade. But Republican control of the state senate has meant many of their legislative ambitions – including a bill intended to protect abortion seekers in the state, where the procedure is legal up until about 24 weeks of pregnancy – have gone nowhere.Vincent Hughes, a Democratic senator who is the campaign chair of the Pennsylvania senate Democratic campaign committee, said he believes more voters are aware of the importance of legislative races, citing Trump’s attempts to get Republicans in Pennsylvania and other swing states to go along with his plan to block Joe Biden from taking office in 2020.“What has happened is that the importance of state legislators nationally has become much clearer in the last four or five years, and I think that will lead to more folks getting more engaged in down-ballot races at the state legislative level,” he said in an interview.Democrats’ hopes for a majority hinge on winning purple districts around the city of Erie, the state capital Harrisburg, and two in Pittsburgh’s suburbs – including the one in its western outskirts where Ruscitto is running against incumbent Devlin Robinson. A Marine Corps veteran and businessman, Robinson unseated a Democratic officeholder four years ago and promptly signed a letter, along with many of his colleagues, encouraging the top Republicans in Congress to delay certifying Pennsylvania’s election results as part of Trump’s disproven campaign of election denialism.

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      Ruscitto hopes her emphasis on cost-of-living issues and personal experience as a teacher, as well as attacks on Robinson for voting for a state constitutional amendment that could be used to curb abortion access, will give her an edge.“We have the lowest minimum wage, and it sits in our state senate, and it’s not getting passed. And, to me, that’s absurd,” she said.Residents of the district say Robinson has been stepping up his outreach to constituents as election day approaches. Joyce Reinoso, a retired teacher and campaigner for candidates who backs organized labor and public education, said he also has the power of incumbency.“I don’t care what party, it’s always harder to beat the incumbent because the name recognition, if nothing else,” she said.The Ruscitto campaign’s internal polling has found her leading Robinson by a mere two percentage points, within their survey’s margin of error. This week, the University of Virginia’s center for politics rated Pennsylvania’s house as a toss-up, but said the GOP has the edge in keeping the senate.In Bethel Park, which was briefly thrust into the national spotlight in July when a man from the town tried to kill the former president, houses with Trump yards signs and flags sit across the street from those backing Harris, and the two candidates’ ads are ubiquitous online and on television. But signs for Ruscitto and Robinson are relatively scarce – as are strong opinions.As she sat down for an early dinner at Ma and Pop’s Country Kitchen, Sandy Messiner, a retired bookkeeper, expressed no doubts about voting for Trump again.“If Trump gets in, my investments will go up. We need a businessman to run this country,” the 70-year-old said. And though she knew less about them, she planned to vote for all the other Republicans on the ballot.“I don’t care who gets in as long as they’re Republican.”Sitting at the other end of the counter was Pam Cirucci, an 83-year-old retired nurse who was sure she would not be voting for Trump, because “he doesn’t respect females”.A former Republican, Cirucci was less concerned with who controlled the legislature – or what the lawmakers in Harrisburg were up to at all.“There are so many things that are more important,” she said. More

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      An unlikely Oakland mayor is fighting for political survival amid a billionaire-backed recall

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      The Oakland mayor, Sheng Thao’s political rise was precarious from the start.For progressives, her narrow victory in 2022 affirmed their city’s radical, leftist roots. By electing a daughter of Hmong refugees and a domestic violence survivor who promised to advocate for the city’s most vulnerable residents, it seemed Oakland had defied the tech billionaires and venture capitalists who were working to transform the political landscape in neighbouring San Francisco.Almost as soon as she was sworn in, her detractors were questioning the legitimacy of her leadership and called for a recount. Things only got messier from there.This summer, just 18 months into Thao’s tenure, a recall effort against her qualified for the ballot – the first in Oakland in more than a century. Bankrolled by wealthy tech and crypto executives and a hedge-fund manager, the recall gave voice to voters who were furious over what seemed like a decades-long failure by city hall to fix everything from potholes to crime and homelessness.“Since I’ve been here, I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Pamela Drake, a longtime activist and political commentator who moved to Oakland in 1968. “This recall is a reaction during a time when the whole country is in somewhat of a state of reaction, when the whole world is sort of chaotic.”The town where Kamala Harris was born and launched a political career has been under a spotlight lately – or, perhaps, a microscope. National politicians on the right have all too eagerly cast it as a dysfunctional hellscape with runaway crime. But its struggles of late have been painfully real.View image in fullscreenA spiralling housing crisis has driven hundreds of people into sprawling encampments. Acclaimed restaurants have closed, blaming crime and rising costs. And the city’s last remaining major league sports team has left Oakland’s crumbling Coliseum.Many of the same groups backing the recall against Thao helped launch a recall effort against the county’s top prosecutor, the progressive Pamela Price.“People are fed up with crime and homelessness,” said Dan Lindheim, a former Oakland city administrator and now professor at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. “And they want to hold somebody accountable. It was like: ‘We don’t like what they’re doing, so – symbolically – it’s off with their heads.’”It didn’t matter that homicides had spiked under Thao’s predecessor, and that neither Thao nor Price had direct or total control over the police department or crime rates. Nor does Thao have broad authority to quickly fix a housing crisis that has plagued nearly every corner of California. “But I don’t think this movement was sort of the sum of rational decisions,” Lindheim said. “I think it’s sort of an emotional tidal wave.”Just one day after the effort to recall Thao qualified for the ballot, the city saw one of its worst mass shootings in years: 14 people were shot at a Juneteenth celebration, after a sideshow – an illegal street takeover – developed nearby and fighting broke out.As if to put a finer point on the city’s turmoil, the day after that, FBI agents descended on Thao’s home, carrying out boxes of evidence in an investigation that has neither implicated the mayor in any wrongdoing, nor absolved her of it. “It was just piling one thing on top of another,” Lindheim said. “That was the seal of death for her mayoral position.”Two years into office, Thao has argued she is just getting started. “We’re doing all this great work,” she told the Guardian in an interview. “The first year was about trying to figure out what our ills are, and finding solutions to our ailments. And now we’re seeing wins come in.”At recent rallies and town halls, the mayor and her supporters have pointed to statistics that in Oakland, as in cities across the US, crime, and especially violent crime, has been declining. This summer, a report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which represents the police chiefs of big cities, found a 17% decrease in the number of Oakland’s homicides from January through June, compared with the same time period last year. The local news outlet Oaklandside reported that the number of robberies, assaults and rapes had also dipped.They’ve questioned the extent to which the recallers’ grievances can be pinned to Thao, or any mayor. Crime was increasing before she took office, as was homelessness. The Oakland As – the town’s beloved major league baseball team – had been in talks to leave the city for years. Thao points out that she helped bring in the Ballers, an independent league team that began competing this summer in West Oakland.She has contradicted her critics’ characterizations of her as soft on crime by pointing out that she has expanded surveillance and policing, by calling in state funds and resources. And – much to the chagrin of some of her progressive backers – she recently ordered the city to take a more aggressive approach to removing homeless encampments.View image in fullscreenShe also has insisted on her innocence in the scandal that followed the FBI’s raid on her house. Thao had said she is not the target of the investigation, but the agency has not publicly commented on the case, nor has it confirmed her claim. It has also raided properties of the politically powerful Duong family, who hold the city’s curbside recycling contract and who had previously been under investigation by the city’s ethics commission. Thao has called out the agency for refusing to clarify the situation and timing the raid so close to the recall. “It shouldn’t look like they’re putting their finger on the scale when it comes to elections,” she said.Her arguments appear to have done little to quell broader anxieties about crime and calls for more policing. It hasn’t helped that even California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has jumped into the morass, publicly urging Oakland’s leaders to change a policy to allow more police vehicle chases, after observing “criminals often fleeing with impunity”.“Since taking office, Thao has shown herself incapable of handling the city’s most pressing challenges, while repeatedly deceiving the public about her actions and their consequences,” Seneca Scott, a recall organizer who also ran against Thao for mayor, said in a statement. “The effort to recall Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao isn’t about a single issue – it’s about a pattern of dishonesty, mismanagement and failure to provide effective leadership for the people of Oakland.”Scott and other recall supporters frequently point to reports by the San Francisco Chronicle that Oakland’s police department had been publishing misleading crime data for years. “Overall crime rates have worsened under Thao,” he said.But, at issue in the Chronicle report is the department’s weekly crime reports, which misstated some non-violent crimes. The Chronicle also found that the department had far overestimated violent crime.Longtime activists see the recall efforts against Thao and the county’s progressive district attorney as part of a broader backlash against calls for reforms following the George Floyd protests against police brutality.“I don’t know that there’s been any other time in Oakland besides that, where things had swung so far to the left,” said Cat Brooks, co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project.During the George Floyd protests, thousands were screaming in the streets in support of defunding the police – and briefly, it seemed that officials at the local and national levels were starting to pay heed. “And so I think what we’re seeing right now is a really big swing to the right,” Brooks said.Harping on the discontent are Thao’s longtime political detractors.Mere days after the election, the moderate councilmember Loren Taylor, whom Thao defeated in the mayoral race, said Oakland’s ranked-choice voting system was a form of “voter suppression” – even though the system has been in use for decades, and got him elected to his own seat.Taylor has continued his criticism of Thao, leading a group called Empower Oakland, which endorsed the recall, and vowing to run for election if Thao is removed. Thao’s predecessor, Libby Schaaf, who backed Taylor, has also endorsed the recall, telling KQED she believes Thao “is not capable of growing into the job”.Another major critic is LeRonne Armstrong, the former chief of Oakland’s troubled police department, which for decades has been under federal oversight. Thao fired Armstrong after an investigation implicated him in systemic failures within the department and after he publicly accused the federal watchdog of corruption, without evidence. But Armstrong – who is now running for a city council seat – had been well-liked in Oakland, and his dismissal triggered a fresh wave of animosity toward the mayor.Brenda Harbin-Forte, a former Alameda county superior court judge and police commissioner whom Thao removed after taking office, ended up leading the campaign against the mayor – focusing in large part on public safety and Thao’s dismissal of Armstrong.Leaders within the Oakland chapter of the NAACP have also backed the recall, with Cynthia Adams, the chapter president, calling Armstrong’s firing a “modern-day lynch”.“If you go down the streets of Oakland, it looks like a third-world country. Oakland never looked like this,” Adams told the Guardian.Meanwhile, several current and former members of the NAACP chapter have said the group has been “hijacked” by conservatives.Adding fuel to the recall effort’s momentum are hundreds of thousands of dollars from wealthy benefactors. Oaklandside revealed that the recall’s biggest funder was one man – Philip Dreyfuss, a hedge-fund manager who lives in the nearby wealthy enclave of Piedmont and was also top donor in the successful effort to oust San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin in 2022. Ron Conway, a billionaire tech investor who was also involved in the San Francisco recall effort, is another major funder.In recent weeks, several prominent Democratic lawmakers have voiced their support for Thao – or, at least, their opposition to the recall. “The voters – through regular elections, not a few billionaires – are the ones with the power to ensure our democratic process remains strong and in place,” said Barbara Lee, a longtime ranking member of the US House, representing Oakland and neighbouring communities.“Except in rare circumstances of serious misconduct,” said Nancy Skinner, a state senator, “recalls are undemocratic and a waste of public funds.”Thao, too, has been on the offensive, holding public rallies and town halls.Whether it will be enough to fight off the challenge is unclear. At a public-safety town hall event in Oakland’s bustling Temescal neighbourhood earlier this month, Thao appeared alongside the city’s new police chief, fire chief and transportation director to reassure voters that things were getting better.The city had managed to hire dozens of new 911 operators and was in the process of hiring more, and crisis call response times had gone down since Thao took office. Also, Thao had overseen the revival of Operation Ceasefire, one of the city’s marquee gun violence prevention strategies that had been watered down under the previous administration.“We are seeing a decline in our crimes,” Thao told the crowd. “And we are seeing that we are intervening before crime actually gets started.”Attenders, many of them members of the spiritualist church that was hosting the event, seemed dubious. Were the city’s new license-plate readers making any difference? When did they expect to fill the vacancies in the police department, and hire more officers?There were stacks of notecards with questions about potholes, littered streets and illegal dumping. Thao and her team projected statistics showing that Oakland had fixed nearly as many potholes over the last fiscal year as it had during the entire 10-year period between 2008 and 2018.Linda St Julian, 75, remained unconvinced. “I’m just so upset with how nasty the city has gotten. I’m just hurt to see my city go down like this” she said. “But I’ll be dead before they fix things.”St Julian had already decided she was in favor of the recall; Thao hadn’t done enough to address crime or homelessness, she felt. Nor had Schaaf, a moderate who is now running for state treasurer. “I don’t like any of them,” St Julian said, shaking her head, referring to the city’s last several mayors.Laux Williams, 37, agreed. The last mayor they felt had done a good job was Ron Dellums, who served from 2007-2011. Williams didn’t want to say whether or not they would vote to recall Thao – but said Oakland had been suffering. “I’m just waiting on a change,” they said. More