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      Mormons were once reliably Republican – but they could tip Arizona Harris’s way

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      A valuable Republican voting bloc in Arizona is seeing a shift from members towards Kamala Harris in numbers that Democrats believe could make the difference for them in an election where the latest polls have Donald Trump slightly ahead in the swing state.With nearly 450,000 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as LDS or Mormons, living in Arizona, they make up about 6% of the state’s population and both the Harris and Trump campaigns have been going all out to woo them.While the church’s home base of Utah is one of the deepest red states, in neighboring Arizona there is a growing partisan rift.Mormons in Arizona are now “poised to support Kamala Harris more than any other presidential Democratic ticket in 60 years”, Jacob Rugh, an associate professor in the department of sociology at the LDS church-run Brigham Young University, said in a Harris-Walz campaign call in August.In the 2020 election, Joe Biden delivered the first Democratic win in Arizona in a presidential election in 24 years. He garnered an estimated 18,000 votes from the LDS community, double Hillary Clinton’s share of LDS voters there – and won the state by just 10,457 votes.“The 18,000 votes was more than the margin of victory, and it showed the significance of the LDS vote,” said Robert Taber, the national director of LDS for Harris-Walz.“Where Biden got 18% of the LDS vote in 2020, I think Harris could hit 25-30% of the LDS vote,” Taber added, citing the increased Democratic campaign efforts there this cycle, as well as the “post-January 6” environment.“I think there’s a decent chance that Harris does a little bit better than Biden,” he said, which, if it happens, could help the Democrats to “hold on to Nevada and Arizona”, he added.In the United States, members of the LDS church make up a relatively small, predominantly white voting bloc – about 2% of the population – and have traditionally been among the most loyal voting blocs for the Republicans over the last several decades, historically aligning on traditional conservative values such as religious freedoms, pro-life stances and small government.But in 2016, when Trump was nominated as the Republican presidential candidate, some in the community felt conflicted. That year, after the Hollywood Access tape was published, Deseret News website, which is owned by the LDS church, called on Trump to resign, stating that he did not align with the community’s ideals and values.A small but increasing number of LDS voters continue to shift away from him.Julie Spilsbury, a Republican council member in Mesa, Arizona, and an LDS church member, recently endorsed Harris .“I think the character of our leaders matter,” Spilsbury, 47, said. “And when I hear him talk about – women, immigrants, refugees, people who disagree with him – I cannot, in good conscience, vote for someone like that.”Spilsbury voted for Trump in 2016 but later abandoned him due to his character, divisiveness and rhetoric, she said. She voted for Biden four years later – but quietly. Now she’s publicly supporting Harris.In 2020, about half of LDS voters under the age of 40 voted for Biden, and in Utah, he performed the best of any Democratic presidential candidate since 1964.While most LDS voters nationwide are expected to vote for Trump, if Harris can better the Biden numbers among the group, it could make a crucial difference in Arizona – and Nevada, where Mormon numbers are also strong, although there is less data available about their voting history in that state from 2020.View image in fullscreenThe Harris campaign launched an LDS advisory committee in Arizona in September and in Nevada in early October to canvas Mormon voters and hold events.The Republicans launched a Latter-day Saints for Trump coalition in early October, and Trump called in to an LDS for Trump video call as the campaign tried to shore up the vote.But in Arizona, John Giles, a lifelong Republican, LDS member and the mayor of Mesa – once dubbed the most conservative city in America – publicly backed Harris just eight days after Biden dropped out of his re-election campaign.He wrote an op-ed in the Arizona Republican saying Harris “is fighting to make sure Americans can get ahead and be safe from gun violence and to restore and protect the rights of women”, while Trump stood for the far right, “crudeness and vulgarity”.And at a recent Harris-Walz rally in Arizona, Giles said the GOP had been “taken over by extremists”, and described Trump as “morally and ethically bankrupt”.In recent years, Trump has also clashed with prominent LDS members, including Mitt Romney, Utah’s retiring US senator and past presidential nominee, who voted to impeach Trump after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol; Rusty Bowers, the former speaker of the Arizona house who resisted Trump’s demands to undermine the 2020 election in Arizona; and former Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, who recently endorsed Harris.“I saw a lot of people really upset about the way that he attacked very well-respected Arizona politicians like Rusty Bowers,” said Lacy Chaffee, a member of the LDS church and a candidate for school board in Mesa.“Rusty campaigned for Trump, but he wasn’t willing to lie,” she added. “So I think that that’s something that speaks very deeply to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We hold very deeply the sense of integrity and truth, and I think that, for a lot of people, was the breaking point.”The Mormon church itself maintains political neutrality, but it encourages civic participation and for members to elect politicians who are “honest, wise and good”.Rugh, the sociology expert, said his analysis showed that candidates who denied that Biden won the 2020 election lost substantial LDS votes.Meanwhile, the church teaches members that the principles in the US constitution are divinely inspired, said Taber, the director of LDS for Harris-Walz. . But Trump has said the constitution should be “terminated”.The LDS youth vote is also shifting significantly. Brittany Romanello, an anthropologist and faculty associate at Arizona State University, said that Harris and the Democrats “have a very big opening” with young LDS voters because of greater diversity both of people and opinions in their ranks, and agreater willingness to disagree with the church majority.“Gen Z is the most politically, ethnically, sexually and romantically diverse generation, and they’re a huge part of the voting bloc, and this includes Mormons,” Romanello said.Rugh’s analysis also found that more than 50% of gen Z LDS members voted for Biden in 2020.View image in fullscreenIn terms of more LDS voters being willing to buck the norm, and be open about it, Spilsbury said:“If me speaking out helps some others, specifically LDS women, know that there’s another choice and that we don’t have to vote Republican just because it’s the thing we think we’re supposed to do, then that’s really important to me.”She said a lot of the reaction from her community to her choice had been “rough” but that she received some positive messages, too.Meanwhile, Mormonism is a conservative, pro-life religion but known as less fiercely anti-abortion than some, generally supporting exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the mother or child. Harris has zeroed in on reproductive rights since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, after Trump’s three appointees tipped the bench to the right.LDS Arizona resident Monica Chabot, 28, had a miscarriage last year and elected to have the fetus removed rather than wait for it to pass naturally. Her experience changed her perspective on the Republican party and its anti-choice stance, she said. She believes theprocedure would probably not have been allowed under an extreme ban dating from 1864 that briefly took effect in Arizona after Roe was overturned, before some Republicans crossed the aisle to repeal it, which the state’s Democratic governor signed off on, leaving a less harsh ban.“It made me realize how little Trump and other Republicans seem to care about me and my experiences and my body,” she said. “And hearing Kamala talk about it and fighting for that is a big reason why I’ve been involved in the Harris campaign.”Arizona voters have a ballot measure this November that would enshrine in the state constitution the right to abortion until viability, or around 24 weeks. It remains to be seen whether it will encourage split tickets as conservatives who want reproductive choice vote for the measure but also for Trump, or whether it boosts women’s turnout in a huge windfall for Harris.Chabot said that while she would never choose to get an abortion, or encourage others to get an abortion, she doesn’t believe in the government making that decision for a woman.She said: “We talk a lot about agency in the church, and how it’s one of our greatest gifts from God – the ability to choose.” More

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      Here’s how the winner of the 2024 US presidential election did it | Jonathan Freedland

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      Here’s one prediction about the US election you can take to the bank. When the result is finally known, there will be a stampede of experts and prognosticators rushing to insist that, in effect, they knew it all along – that, hard though it was to glimpse through the fog of polls and shifting data, the eventual outcome was obvious. Even inevitable.That will be truer still if, when the voters’ will is finally known, it turns out not to have been so close after all, with one of the two main candidates sweeping most of the swing states to rack up a healthy majority in the electoral college if not the popular vote.The funny thing is, if that happens – for either candidate – it would not entirely be a surprise. Even now, you can sketch out, in advance, a very plausible case for why Donald Trump could be about to retake the presidency. And you can do the same for why Harris might be on the brink of becoming the first woman to hold the world’s most powerful office. So, much as Boris Johnson drafted two columns on the eve of the Brexit referendum – one advocating leave, the other remain – here, while the US’s verdict is still unknown, is the story of how Trump, or Harris, pulled it off.Start with the scenario of a victorious Trump. To understand it might require a single number: 28. That’s the percentage of Americans who tell pollsters they believe the country is on the right track. A measly 28%. In that environment, incumbent parties lose. And, for all the drama and buzz of her swift installation as candidate, her positioning as the face of change, Harris is a member of the incumbent party and a senior figure in the current US government. A nation that made clear long ago that it wanted to fire Joe Biden, largely over the cost of living and rising prices, as well as immigration, was bound to seize the chance to do the next best thing – and reject his deputy.If there was a way to avoid that fate, it would have required Harris to make a cleaner break from Biden than she was willing to. Whether it was personal respect for the man, or fear of rupturing her coalition, she didn’t do what had to be done. In this narrative, a key moment will prove to be her October appearance on The View, when she was asked if, looking back over the past four years, she would have done anything differently from her boss. “Not a thing that comes to mind,” was her answer. At a stroke, she robbed herself of the mantle of change, and confirmed Trump’s core message: vote Harris, get Biden 2.Should the need arise to explain a Trump win in 2024, incumbency in tough times will be the meat of it. But it won’t be the whole story. Other factors, besides inflation and petrol prices, will have played their part, tied more to culture than politics. Trump’s astonishing lead among men, especially those without a college degree – including some, albeit qualified, evidence of increased support among Black and Hispanic men, previously beyond the reach of the Republican party – points to an element of Trump’s appeal that has endured for nearly a decade. Call it cultural defiance. It sees the wagging finger of all those who sit in judgment – whether that’s the media, the universities, the “woke”, foreign countries, especially European ones, or at its most loosely defined, women, especially educated women – and shows them a big, fat middle finger in response.This is what Trump’s critics took so long to understand. What, for years, they thought would hurt him – scandal, two impeachments, multiple criminal prosecutions and convictions – only made him stronger, confirming him as an outlaw, a transgressor who crossed the very boundaries so many of his followers, chiefly men, itched to cross with him. That photo of him, bloodstained, seconds after dodging an assassin’s bullet, urging his devotees to “fight, fight, fight!” – how, we may come to ask, did we ever think he could be beaten after that?After all, Harris was his ideal opponent. A liberal, accomplished, affluent woman from California, an avatar for the very cultural elite he and many millions of others despise. In case that impression of her were not sharp enough, she reinforced it with a parade of A-list stars campaigning for her in the final stretch, repeating the same mistake Hillary Clinton made in 2016.Finally, given that the US has hardly cured itself of racism or misogyny, it should not be a shock if, in the coming days, we see that a Black woman could not get elected to the White House. It may be 2024, but perhaps the US is still not ready.So much for a Trump win. How will we explain victory for Harris, if it comes? The answer may boil down to one word: women. Outraged by the supreme court’s Dobbs ruling, overturning abortion rights in 2022, women confounded the pollsters in that year’s midterm elections: there was no Republican red wave, despite soaring inflation, because women came out in big numbers to prevent it. Success in 2024 would mean that, once again, and with an intensity missed by most surveys, women in the US had quietly resolved to do the exact same thing to the man who shaped the supreme court, Dobbs’s ultimate author: Trump.In that sense, and others, Trump’s fate would have been sealed before the 2024 campaign even began. If he loses, it will surely be because he’d become too toxic a figure to win: witness his place on the losing side of every election cycle after that first, narrow victory in 2016. What’s more, the toxicity has only got worse recently, his authoritarian, fascistic tendencies laid barer than ever, whether in his threats to deploy the US military against “the enemy from within”, meaning his liberal critics, or his reported desire to be surrounded by “the kind of generals that Hitler had”, obedient to his every whim and diktat. For too many Americans, enough might just have been enough.Trump has torn through so many old-school verities of politics that it’s become tempting to think none of them holds good any more. But on-the-ground organisation still matters. If they win, the Democrats will point to a machine that got their vote out in the critical states, precinct by precinct. Trump outsourced that task to Elon Musk, but there are some things even money cannot buy.A Trump defeat would further confirm another old rule: no politician can ever fully escape his record. This time, to take one example, he hoped to make inroads with Arab and Muslim Americans, distressed and furious at the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. But that would have required those same, crucial voters to forget what Trump had promised a decade ago: a “Muslim ban”, denying entry to the US to people from a long list of Muslim countries. Amnesia exists in politics, perhaps especially in the US. But there are limits.All these different elements are real, even if they can be combined into two very different narratives. Who will win the US election? No one knows. But even if we don’t yet know the result, we can already understand it.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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      Harris hits out at Trump for calling himself protector of women ‘whether they like it or not’ – US election live updates

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      Kamala Harris has taken the stage in Phoenix, telling supporters: “We have five days left in one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime.”She emphasized the threats a Trump administration would pose to reproductive rights. “Did everyone hear what he just said yesterday, that he will do what he wants, whether the women like it or not?” she said, referencing his appearance in Wisconsin, when he declared he would protect them “whether the women like it or not”.“There’s a saying that you gotta listen to people when they tell you who they are,” she said. “He does not believe women should have the agency and authority to make decisions about their own bodies.”Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James has endorsed Kamala Harris, writing: “When I think about my kids and my family and how they will grow up, the choice is clear to me.”The endorsement isn’t a surprise – James has supported Democrats before, and been critical of Donald Trump.Supporters of Donald Trump, gathering for a campaign rally in Henderson, near Las Vegas in Nevada, are confident that he will win next week’s presidential election – and some refuse to contemplate defeat.Bob Diaz, 69, who is Latino and teaches at a college, said Trump is doing “a lot better” with Latino voters this time. “People will be blown away about how much he actually won by,” he said. “He’s going to get the electoral votes and the popular vote as well.”His wife, Audrey, also 69, a homemaker and mediator, added: “Polls are just polls. I believe he’s going to win. I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve been involved with other campaigns. I’ve never seen so many age groups, so many cultures, so many countries, so many languages. I’ve never, ever seen this before.”She believes that border security is a winning issue for the Republican nominee. “I wish he didn’t cuss, I wish he didn’t say weird things, but he’s going to protect our borders and clean it up from the inside and protect it from the outside. Bottom line.”Some here say they would not accept a Trump defeat. Kathy Holesapple, 56, an entrepreneu, pilot and aircraft mechanic, said: “We won’t. None of us will. We know he didn’t lose in 2020 either.“God’s going to bring it in and take down the wicked. The righteous will be lifted up and the wicked will fall and those who support the death of innocent children in America and around the world will not survive in this nation. They will not be in power for much longer.”Enrique Lopez, 32, a physical therapy student and military veteran, warned: “No matter what happens, there’s going to be a lot of chaos on both sides. Whether Trump wins or loses, there’s going to be so much chaos.”Kamala Harris has taken the stage in Phoenix, telling supporters: “We have five days left in one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime.”She emphasized the threats a Trump administration would pose to reproductive rights. “Did everyone hear what he just said yesterday, that he will do what he wants, whether the women like it or not?” she said, referencing his appearance in Wisconsin, when he declared he would protect them “whether the women like it or not”.“There’s a saying that you gotta listen to people when they tell you who they are,” she said. “He does not believe women should have the agency and authority to make decisions about their own bodies.”Donald Trump has baselessly claimed that Democrats are acting like the “gestapo” in forcing people to adopt electric vehicles, during a rally in New Mexico today.In his latest broadside against electric cars, the former president said that trucks made 50 years ago are better than electric versions today but that people are being forced to switch by a Joe Biden administration that is using tactics he likened to Nazi Germany.“So, I said, did you explain that to the authorities as they burst into your office to demand that you go all electric?” Trump said, in reference to a conversation he’d had with someone. “He said: ‘I explained it.’ ‘What did they say?’ ‘We don’t give a damn. We want you to go all electric.’“This is what we’re dealing with. It’s like gestapo stuff, OK? They use that term. It’s like gestapo stuff. What they’re doing to our country is unbelievable.”Trump’s accusation is based on a falsehood – there is no obligation to switch to electric cars nor any ban on gasoline or diesel cars. Despite this, Trump’s campaign has repeatedly claimed otherwise, assailing Kamala Harris in TV adverts for adopting an “EV mandate”.Electric cars have long stirred antipathy in Trump, who has said incentives to buy them are “lunacy” and that their supporters should “rot in hell” even as Elon Musk, the billionaire chief of electric car giant Tesla, has become one of Trump’s most prominent backers.The president acknowledged this incongruity in August when he said: “I’m for electric cars, I have to be because Elon endorsed me very strongly.”The ceasefire against electric vehicles now appears to be over, however. Should he win next week’s election, Trump is expected to roll back vehicle pollution standards that nudge people to buy electric alternatives, as well as repeal tax rebates for people to buy electric models.Gasoline cars, trucks and other forms of transport are the largest sectoral contributor of planet-heating gases in the US, as well as a major source of the air pollution that routinely causes tens of thousands of respiratory and cardiovascular health problems, and deaths, among Americans each year.Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is quite present at this Quakertown voting location, where there’s a long line of people waiting to vote.They have a table set up with coffee and donuts, and volunteers are going up and down the line giving voters the forms they need to fill out to request their mail-in ballots on demand.I chatted with Betsy Cross, a Trump campaign volunteer from New Jersey who was handing out forms to people in line to request their mail-in ballots on demand. She had been there since 2.30 and estimated people were waiting two hours to vote. Was she surprised that so many people were there? “No,” she said. “People want to bank their vote for president Trump.”I just stopped by a voting location in Bucks county, a Pennsylvania battleground where a local judge extended the deadline for voters to cast ballots after a Trump campaign lawsuit.Voters here can request and return an absentee ballot on the spot – Pennsylvania’s clunky version of early, in-person voting – until Friday. The deadline for the rest of the state was Tuesday, but the Trump campaign successfully sued the county to get voting extended until Friday. The county had been wrongly preventing people from voting if they weren’t in line by 5pm.I arrived a little after 3pm at the government offices in Quakertown and saw that there was a pretty long line stretching around the corner. Just before he went into vote, a man at the front of the line told me he had been waiting about an hour.One of the people in the back of the line was Phil Haegele, a 47-year-old plumber who was celebrating his sixth wedding anniversary. He said he was supporting Donald Trump and that he’d heard about voting being extended on the radio yesterday and got “probably 50 text messages” encouraging him and his wife to come vote.Haegele usually votes on election day but said that he had decided to come out and cast his ballot early.“We had saw that on a lot of the news agencies that we follow, they were saying that they were trying to get as many Trump supporters to vote early to try and ward off as much fraud as they could,” he said.He predicted that the election would be a “blowout”, even though the polls show an extremely tight race in Pennsylvania and across the country.“If they call the election on election day, it’s gonna be a blowout,” he said. “If they need to take a week to print more ballots, then yes, it’s gonna be tough.”Supporters of Donald Trump in Henderson, near Las Vegas in Nevada, are giving short shrift to a controversy over his remark on Wednesday that he would protect women “whether the women like it or not”.Awaiting a Trump campaign rally, Patty Periva, 74, a retired education worker, said: “I don’t care. The Democrats do not protect women. They allow abortions. How many of those abortions are women? They’re killing women and they don’t protect women. It’s a lie.”Lisa Consigilo, 60, a retired personal trainer, added: “My family’s from New York. Some things he says people take literally but I know how he speaks: it’s how my dad spoke. You don’t need to take stuff so literally.“All their campaign is running on lies. He’s not going to ban abortion across the country. You can’t: it’s impossible. He’s not for that. Everything that they’re running on is not true about Project 2025. He’s a dad, he’s a grandfather, it wasn’t literal like: ‘I’m going to protect women.’”Opinion polls suggest a historic gender gap in the presidential election, with women supporting Kamala Harris by a wide margin. But Kathy Holesapple, 56, an entrepreneur, pilot and aircraft mechanic, said: “They’ve weaponised the women against this party but the truth is that they’ve also held down the women in this nation by calling us Karens.“We’re not allowed to stand up and speak for our beliefs. They call us a Karen every time we speak up. So the American woman needs to stand up – and they will – and they’re going to realise that Trump is for American women. He’s for women all over the world.”Raids and mass deportations lie at the heart of the former president’s second-term vision – a web of policies so vast that critics say their collective implementation would challenge the very ideal of the United States as a nation of immigrants.Should he win in November, the Republican nominee has vowed not only to restore many of his most controversial immigration policies, but to go even further. While a number of his first-term plans were stymied by the courts and Congress, immigration rights leaders believe a second Trump administration would likely be more sophisticated and strategic.“It is different this time. There’s a plan. There is a sense of urgency that they’ve created around this issue,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the immigration advocacy group America’s Voice. “And they know how to use the levers of government in a way they didn’t in 2016.”Donald Trump would also be operating in a changed political landscape. Since leaving office, the political center of gravity has shifted rightward, amid a post-pandemic rise in global migration that saw a record number of people arriving at the southern border and claiming asylum. Americans have become less tolerant of illegal immigration while a growing minority is increasingly concerned about its impact on the country’s economy and national identity.Though border crossings have plummeted this year following the president’s asylum clampdown, a sense of disorder persists. Voters continue to broadly disapprove of the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the situation. Trump and his team are confident immigration remains a potent political issue for voters – and one that he has long played to his advantage.When Trump first descended a golden escalator in 2015, he pledged to construct a “great wall” along the south-west border with Mexico to keep out immigrants he disparaged as “rapists” and drug dealers. Now, in the final weeks of his third presidential race, Trump has again escalated his threats against immigrants, but this time he is turning his vitriol inward toward those already here.“The United States is now an occupied country,” Trump claimed recently at a rally in Atlanta. “But on November 5, 2024, that will be liberation day in America.”The vice-president will be appearing in Phoenix alongside the musical group Los Tigres del Norte.Then, she’ll be heading to Las Vegas, where she will be campaigning alongside Jennifer Lopez and Maná.In both cities, Harris will seek to energize Latino voters, who could help decide the outcome of the race in the key swing states of Arizona and Nevada.Happy Halloween! There are barely five days left in the 2024 US presidential election and polls show the candidates – Kamala Harris and Donald Trump – remain neck and neck in swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina. More than 60 million Americans have cast ballots so far.Harris and Trump are traveling across the western half of the country in states like New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona in the final days of their campaigns.Here’s a summary of the day so far:

      Tim Keller, the mayor of Albuquerque, where Trump is holding a rally, said last Friday that the Republican presidential candidate owes the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills from his last visit. The Trump campaign owed the city $200,000 for when he hosted his last rally at its convention center in 2019, which has climbed to almost $445,000 with interest. The costs covered police coverage, barricades and other expenses. Trump is banned from rallying in the city over the unpaid bill – his event is being held instead at a private hangar owned by CSI Aviation near the Albuquerque international sunport.

      Billionaires have flushed the election with cash – roughly $1.9b to be exact, largely to the benefit of republican candidates like Trump. “Billionaire campaign spending on this scale drowns out the voices and concerns of ordinary Americans. It is one of the most obvious and disturbing consequences of the growth of billionaire fortunes, as well as being a prime indicator that the system regulating campaign finance has collapsed,” said David Kass, ATF’s executive director.

      Voter enthusiasm is at a historical high for a presidential election, a Gallup poll found. Similar to November 2020, 70% of registered voters nationwide said that they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting now compared to March, when only 56% expressed enthusiasm.

      Trump’s former attorney Kenneth Chesebro has been suspended from practicing law in New York. Chesboro was indicted on state racketeering and conspiracy charges over efforts to overturn Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election in Georgia.

      Harris has received more endorsements today. Former New York mayor and 2020 presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg and the Economist have publicly expressed their support.

      Harris said on Thursday that Trump’s comment that he would protect women “whether the women like it or not” showed that the Republican presidential nominee does not understand women’s “agency, their authority, their right and their ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies”. “I think it’s offensive to everybody, by the way,” Harris said before she set out to spend the day campaigning in the western swing states of Arizona and Nevada.

      Harris will be joined by Jennifer Lopez for her rally in Las Vegas, Nevada – a critical swing state.

      Ex-Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson will interview Trump in Arizona before the former president heads to his own rally in Nevada.
      Of the more than 60 million Americans who have gone to the polls early – some 32 million and counting did so in person. Here are some of the best pictures of early voting from the newswires:Tim Keller, the mayor of Albuquerque, where Trump is holding a rally, said last Friday that the Republican presidential candidate owes the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills from his last visit.“Trump now owes almost a half a million dollars to the city of Albuquerque … We’ve had collection agencies calling and so forth for about two years now,” Keller said.The Trump campaign owed the city $200,000 for when he hosted his last rally at its convention center in 2019, which has climbed to almost $445,000 with interest. The costs covered police coverage, barricades and other expenses. Since the Trump campaign still allegedly hasn’t paid its bills, he was banned from rallying there. Instead, the rally is being held at a private hangar owned by CSI Aviation near the Albuquerque international sunport.The general manager for the Albuquerque convention center, Ray Roa, confirmed to the Albuquerque Journal on Monday that members of the Trump campaign contacted them to try to rent the convention center but were denied.Trump called his supporters smarter than “crooked Joe’s or lyin’ Kamala’s” and denounced Joe Biden over his “garbage” remark.Trump took several digs at his opponent, telling his crowd that Harris “doesn’t have the stamina, the intellect or that special quality” that certain leaders have. More

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      Democrats press for congressional seats in once-red Orange county: ‘If we sit on our asses, we lose’

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      In an industrial business park in Orange county – the affluent, largely suburban slice of southern California wedged between Los Angeles and San Diego – Dave Min was feeling the weight of the world last weekend.“If we sit on our asses for the next 10 days, we lose,” the Democratic candidate for California’s 47th congressional district told a roomful of Asian American supporters at his campaign headquarters. “We need to get out that vote.”Earlier in the day, with former president Bill Clinton standing next to him, Min spelled out the stakes to a noisy crowd of about 200 volunteers about to spread out and canvass for him. “America is under greater threat to our most cherished values than at any time in our lifetimes,” he told them gravely. “And control of Congress could depend on who wins this particular district.”That claim was no exaggeration. As Democrats vie to overturn the Republicans’ four-seat majority in the House of Representatives – a vital backstop, as they see it, if they should lose the White House to Donald Trump – their chances hinge on a number of highly competitive California districts, three of them in Orange county.View image in fullscreenOnce a bastion of Reagan Republicanism, the county has edged towards the centre-left as its population has grown more ethnically diverse and a crucial percentage of Republican voters – college-educated women, in particular – have grown disgusted with Trump and his Maga movement.Just how far, and how reliably, the county has moved will be put to the test on 5 November, following a campaign in which both parties have sunk tens of millions of dollars and bombarded the airwaves and people’s mailboxes with a toxic brew of attack ads invoking everything from the Chinese Communist party to pedophilia.Min, a Korean American law professor who has a solid legislative record in California’s state senate, is fighting to fill a seat being vacated by Katie Porter, the outspoken Democratic party populist and prolific fundraiser who ran for the US Senate but fell short in the March primary against her House colleague Adam Schiff.Inland from Porter’s coastal district, Derek Tran is hoping to become the first Vietnamese American member of Congress, in an area with the largest ethnic Vietnamese population outside Vietnam. To succeed, he will have to unseat Michelle Steel, a powerful, well-funded Republican incumbent with deep roots in county politics and who, as a Korean American, has her own Asian bona fides.To the south of both districts, the incumbent Democrat, Mike Levin, is facing an unexpectedly strong challenge from Matt Gunderson, a wealthy car dealer who previously ran for office in Wisconsin.Opinion polls in all three districts have been volatile. Levin’s campaign manager, Adam Berkowitz, described his race as a “pollercoaster” – recent surveys have put Levin anywhere from 12 points to just a single percentage point ahead – and he said he expected the determining factor not to be overall voting preferences so much as the ability of each party to turn out its supporters.View image in fullscreenFor the Democrats to succeed, they will need to depend on three key, overlapping groups: Asian Americans, who see an opportunity to flex their political muscles in two of the three districts; female voters alarmed at the prospect of a national abortion ban if Republicans take both chambers of Congress and the White House; and moderate Republicans (many of them now former Republicans) appalled by the fealty of all three GOP congressional candidates to Donald Trump and everything he stands for.The Republicans, meanwhile, have done their best to talk about anything but abortion – their candidates have twisted themselves into pretzels claiming to be more moderate on the issue than their past stances would suggest – and are betting that well-to-do Orange county residents will see more opportunities to increase their wealth if Republicans take charge in Washington.That bet is causing particular heartburn for politically engaged women who have abandoned the GOP and wish they could convince more of their wealthy suburban friends to do likewise. “It’s all about what Republican voters think he [Trump] will bring to the table so they can save a buck or two on their taxes,” former Republican turned Democratic party fundraiser Katherine Amoukhteh said. “They’ve decided that leaving millions to their kids is more important than climate change.”Not everyone, though, thinks the choice is quite so transactional, or so cut and dried. Liz Dorn Parker, another former Republican who supervises endorsements for Women for American Values and Ethics (Wave), a non-partisan Orange county political action committee, believes the threat to reproductive rights is a powerful motivator for female voters – whether or not they admit it publicly, or tell their husbands.“You’ve got to imagine some of these older Republican women, many of them divorced or widowed,” Parker said, painting with a deliberately broad brush. “All their money is tied to housing, and, yes, they’re worried about the Democrats being communists. But they’re also looking at their granddaughters and asking, what if they get raped? The issue is freaking people out in ways that the men just don’t understand.”An immigrant community eyes alternativesAs the races come into the home stretch, the Democrats are cautiously confident that Tran can unseat Steel, following a bruising campaign in which Steel’s team has tried to make political hay out of everything from the clients Tran took on as a consumer rights lawyer to his investments in cryptocurrencies which, they say, link him to Chinese Communist party, a reliable bogeyman in Orange county, especially among Vietnamese American voters.A Steel spokesperson described Tran as “a sleazy trial lawyer” and offered a statement to the Guardian, reflecting the overall tone, accusing him of making a fortune “working for sexual predators, filing frivolous lawsuits, discrediting the victims and blaming the women”.Tran has not shied away from calling Steel a “Trump lackey” and a “complete fraud” for withdrawing her support for the strict anti-abortion Life at Conception Act, a bill she previously co-sponsored.View image in fullscreenStill, Tran’s campaign says the relentless, often baseless attacks against him are a sign of Steel’s nervousness, in a district where Democrats hold a five-point registration edge and the most recent internal polling put him a few points ahead. Tran’s candidacy has generated genuine excitement in Little Saigon, a staunchly conservative area in northern Orange county at the centre of Steel’s C-shaped district, where Tran campaign signs are now prominent even among the names of other much more conservative candidates for local office.That alone is striking, since most Vietnamese immigrants to the United States fled during the fall of Saigon in 1975 and have translated their native anticommunism into staunchly Republican politics that they have passed down to their children and grandchildren.

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      “This all boils down to the fact that this community has never had representation from one of its own in the 49-plus years they’ve been in this country,” Tran said in an interview. “For many seniors, I’m the first Democrat they’ve ever voted for. They’re putting heritage over party lines, and that’s exactly what we want them to do.”The Democrats are further encouraged that Steel’s policy positions are too far to the right for her voters. One of her congressional allies is Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose support for Steel’s re-election proved so awkward that Steel opted not to cash a check the showboating congresswoman wrote. They also say Steel has a reputation for spending little time in her district and offering little in the way of constituent services. Her campaign did not respond to several invitations to comment.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSome of Steel’s attacks on Tran have arguably pushed the bounds of believability, including one recent television appearance in which she said: “I think I am more Vietnamese than my opponent.”A bruising contest for a vacated seatMin almost certainly faces a tougher challenge than Tran, even though his Republican opponent, Scott Baugh, has run for Congress twice before and was embroiled in an election fraud scheme 28 years ago that resulted in a large civil fine.Several activists who might otherwise have offered full-throated support to Min were dismayed when Porter walked away from the seat, seeing the decision as close to a betrayal, and were dismayed all over again when Min ran a negative and highly personal primary campaign to defeat his leading challenger. That, local political operatives say, has significantly eaten into Min’s ability to mount an effective grassroots campaign.View image in fullscreenIn addition, Min was arrested for driving under the influence last year, prompting calls across the political spectrum for him to drop out of the race. The episode has left him with the unfortunate nickname “DUI Dave”, which the Republicans have gleefully propagated.Min has called the DUI his “biggest mistake”.He has plenty of strengths as a candidate – he appears smart and well-spoken on the stump, and centrist enough to have won the endorsement of law enforcement organisations that typically lean Republican. But Baugh has run a strong campaign of his own, coming across in television appearances as affable and relatively moderate by Trump-era Republican standards.Min appeared energised last weekend when Bill Clinton and a cohort of elected Democrats from around the country turned up in his district for the final campaign push, and the school gymnasium where he fired up his volunteers did not lack enthusiasm. “Min for the Win,” their T-shirts read, and they cheered on every one of his campaign lines.But Min himself acknowledged in an interview that he hadn’t talked to as many voters as he would have liked and had had to rely on TV ads and other forms of mass communication in the absence of a robust local media. “When I go on TV, a lot of people don’t know me,” he said.Parker, the Wave endorsement manager, acknowledged that bad blood among Democrats had hurt Min especially since he had a steep hill to climb to match Porter’s name recognition. “People are mad at Dave … People got personally hurt,” she said. “My answer to that is: ‘This is politics, people. Grow up.’ Whoever wins, you’ve got to work for. You gotta keep the seat blue.”A more liberal area, but also more polarisedWorking hard has not been a problem for Mike Levin, whose district straddles the most conservative areas of Orange county – including San Clemente, seat of Richard Nixon’s “western White House” – and more liberal beach cities north of San Diego.Levin has made re-election look relatively easy since he first won the seat in 2018, thanks to a ground operation that has grown with each passing election cycle. This year, an early canvassing operation over the spring and summer reached an unprecedented 80,000 voters. After two months of follow-up phone-banking work, his campaign is now sending canvassers back out to make sure people are filling out their ballots and returning them correctly. “We’re hitting 2,000 houses a day, seven days a week,” one of his field officers, Gene Larson, reported.In all three districts, Democrats are betting that this is no longer “your father’s Orange county”, as Min described it, meaning it is now more diverse and more liberal. But the area is also more polarised and, in some quarters, more extreme than it was a generation ago.Porter’s district includes Huntington Beach, a city so radical it has banned books in its libraries, refused to fly a Pride flag outside its city hall and adopted its own local anti-immigration agenda. Min said the city had “weaponised its school districts into bastions of hate”.Are the county’s ranks of Latinos, Asians and the well-educated – the “diploma divide”, as it is known – enough to offset such experiments in Maga Republicanism? Many of the Democrats who flooded into Orange county to support their candidates last weekend are counting on it, and are looking to Asian voters, in particular, to make the crucial difference.“We are going from being marginalised,” Representative Judy Chu of Los Angeles said, “to being the margin of victory.”Bill Clinton, for one, did not want to contemplate a world in which that prediction was wrong. “It’ll be almost impossible for us to win a House majority,” he said, “if we don’t win these … seats in southern California.” More

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      How will the outcome of the US election affect Australia, Aukus and our region?

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      More people have gone to a ballot box in 2024 than in any other year in human history. Billions have cast votes across scores of countries, including some of the largest, most powerful democracies on Earth.But America’s remains the world’s global election, the most forensically examined, the most consequential all over the world. America matters.“The US is still the most powerful actor in the international system,” Dr Michael Fullilove, executive director of the Lowy Institute, told the Guardian this week. “It is the richest company, with the biggest military, the biggest economy.“It is the only country that runs a truly global foreign policy, the only country that can project power anywhere on Earth.“It is the democratic, meritocratic superpower … it still attracts so many people around the world … the whole world is remarkably well-informed about the US election.”And Australia’s future is bound up in America’s electoral decision. As one of America’s closest allies – supporters might argue for “staunchest”, opponents might claim “uncritical” – Australia’s economic, security and multilateral landscape is tied to that of the US and the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.How could the election of a second Donald Trump presidency impact Australia? Or how might the quasi-continuity of Vice-President Kamala Harris ascending to the White House?Trump, neccesarily, is the object of much of Australia’s focus. Harris, as Joe Biden’s vice-president, is the continuity candidate – promoting policy positions in line with the current administration – meaning a Trump victory would raise many more questions.The election too, will be keenly fought over a host of domestic issues which have no direct – though some peripheral – impact on Australia. This includes issues such as reproductive rights (the overturning of Roe v Wade by the supreme court and a mooted national abortion ban), migration (particularly on the country’s southern border), gun control and law and order – issues excluded in this piece.Watching the crescendo of an increasingly vituperative election campaign, Fullilove said that politically “America is running a high temperature at the moment”.“My real hope for the election is that there is a clear result, that the loser accepts defeat, that the transfer of power is peaceful – that might sound like a low bar – but it is critical, for America and for the world.”Values and democracyResponding to the unpredictability of Trump’s first presidency, Australian politicians repeated the refrain that the Australian-US alliance runs deeper than a president or prime minister and that it is one founded on shared values and democratic principles.Trump has said he would not be a dictator, “except on day one”. He said he would seek retribution on his political opponents: “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections”.As commander-in-chief, he said he would consider using the military to attack domestic enemies: “It should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by the national guard, or if really necessary, by the military”.Trump’s former chief of staff, Gen John Kelly, said this week Trump was a “fascist” who “certainly prefers the dictator approach to government”. Trump has repeatedly lied that he won the 2020 election and mused on “terminating” the constitution.He told a rally in July that if he was elected president again, “you won’t have to vote any more”.“In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going have to vote.”Harris has denounced Trump as a “fascist” who wants “unchecked power” and a military personally loyal to him.In her speech to the Democratic National Convention, she cited the supreme court’s split decision in July stating Trump enjoyed broad immunity for official acts taken while in office.“Consider the power he [Trump] will have, especially after the United States supreme court ruled he will be immune from prosecution,” she said. “Imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails.”ClimateClimate change is “one of the greatest scams of all time”, Trump said last month. “We will drill, baby, drill,” he told the Republican National Convention when accepting the party’s nomination. “We will do it at levels that nobody’s ever seen before.”He has said he would prohibit, by executive order, all offshore wind projects on the first day of his presidency, saying they kill whales.In his first term, Trump withdrew from the Paris agreement (the US rejoined under Biden). But his campaign has indicated a second Trump presidency might re-abandon the Paris agreement, as well as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which underpins it. 198 countries have committed to the UNFCCC: none has left it.The withdrawal of the US – the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter and the country that has contributed the largest share of historical emissions – would increase political uncertainty around the transition to net zero and deter investment. It would weaken the influence of the so-called umbrella group – of which Australia is a member – and give succour to climate laggards, such as the petrostates, to further slow global reduction efforts.Some have argued that much of the impetus and funding for global emissions reductions is locked in and emissions reductions efforts are working on timescales far longer than a four-year presidential cycle.But Michael Mann, distinguished professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University, has argued “a second Trump term is game over for the climate”.Harris has called climate change an “existential threat”. As attorney general in California, she prosecuted oil companies for breaches of environmental laws. As vice-president, she was the tie-breaking vote in the Senate to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which provided about US$370bn to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 40% below 2005 levels by 2030.But during Harris’s vice-presidency, the US produced and exported the most crude oil of any country at any time in history, according to the US Energy Information Administration’s figures. Crude oil production averaged 12.9m barrels a day in 2023, breaking the previous global record of 12.3m, set in 2019.Trade and the economyTrump is a fierce economic nationalist, hostile to free trade and intensely focused on America’s trade deficit, which he regards as a sign of weakness. He has pledged to impose a 10% tariff on all imports to the US, with a 60% tariff on all Chinese imports and a 100% tariff on Chinese cars.Economists argue the policy will lead to higher prices and lower growth. The nonpartisan Peterson Institute for International Economics estimated the proposed tariffs would lower the incomes of an average American household by US$1,700 a year: poor Americans would be more affected than the rich.In September, Trump said: “Together, we will deliver low taxes, low regulations, low energy costs, low interest rates and low inflation so that everyone can afford groceries, a car and a home”. He has promised to reduce regulation and cut taxes, but some economists argue his tax cuts would benefit America’s wealthiest while hurting the poorest.Australia is not dependent on direct trade with the US, but the majority of Australia’s trade is with China. If China’s economy, already weak, is damaged further by a trade war with America, Australia will be exposed.Harris has criticised Trump’s tariff policies, arguing they would act as a “sales tax on Americans” and lead to higher prices and inflation. But the Biden administration – of which she has been vice-president – has extended Trump-era tariffs and used tariffs to influence trade on industries it sees as strategic – particularly in relation to China. The administration extended tariffs on solar panels in 2022, and in May this year, increased tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles to 100%.As a senator, Harris opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free trade agreement (involving Australia) negotiated by President Obama and from which Trump withdrew.Defence and AukusWhile Trump has been critical of Nato, he has not criticised Australia as a military ally or the Aukus deal, a tripartite agreement (between the US, UK, and Australia) for Australia to acquire up to eight nuclear-powered submarines between now and the mid-2050s, the first in the 2030s.Australia’s deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, said his government believed Trump would honour the agreement: “Every engagement we’ve had with the Trump camp in the normal process of speaking with people on both sides of politics in America, there is support for … Aukus,” he said.

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      But John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser – now a fierce critic of the former president – said of Aukus: “I think it could be in jeopardy”.Fullilove asked Trump’s vice-presidential candidate JD Vance this year for his position on the agreement. Vance replied he was “a fan of Aukus”.“I suspect that Aukus would be safe under Trump too,” Fullilove told the Guardian.“Australia is an example of an ally that is contributing to deterrence and contributing to the US industrial base. You could imagine Trump threatening to unpick it, but my conclusion is it is safe.”Aukus was signed by the Biden-Harris administration. The administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy commits to the deal, but does not give a timeline: “Through the Aukus partnership, we will identify the optimal pathway to deliver nuclear-powered submarines to the Royal Australian Navy at the earliest achievable date.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAirbases in Australia were used for US airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen this month. The defence department confirmed Australia provided support for the US strikes “through access and overflight for US aircraft in northern Australia”.Israel-GazaBoth Trump and Harris have declared their support for Israel and reiterated support for a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine.The US continues to supply Israel with billions of dollars of weapons and munitions as Israel carries out its bombardment of Gaza, Lebanon, and, this week, strikes on Iran.The US is, by far, the largest supplier of arms to Israel: 69% of Israel’s imports of major conventional arms between 2019 and 2023 came from America, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The US has signed an agreement to provide Israel with $3.8bn in annual military aid under a 10-year-agreement.1,200 Israelis died in the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas. More than 42,000 people have died in Gaza since, including more than 16,000 children.Trump has expressed his support for Israel’s invasion and bombardment of Gaza. He has also urged Israel to “finish up” the war because it is losing support.“You have to finish up your war … you’ve got to get it done,” he told Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom. “We’ve got to get to peace. You can’t have this going on, and I will say Israel has to be very careful because you are losing a lot of the world. You are losing a lot of support.”Trump said of Harris: “She hates Israel. If she’s president, I believe that Israel will not exist within two years from now.”In his first term, Trump released a peace proposal he called a blueprint for a two-state solution: it would not have created an independent Palestinian state and was seen as strongly favouring Israel.“Israel has a right to defend itself,” Harris said in September’s presidential debate.She continued: “How it does so matters. Because it is also true far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Children. Mothers. What we know is that this war must end. It must end immediately, and the way it will end is we need a ceasefire deal and we need the hostages out.”Harris has consistently reiterated support for a two-state solution.The war in UkraineNearly three years on since Russia invaded Ukraine – and a decade since its initial assault on Crimea – the US remains the largest backer of Ukraine’s war effort. It is by far the single biggest contributor of money and materiel, outspending the next largest contributor, Germany, by five to one.Trump has made it abundantly clear he wants the war over – or, more precisely, he wants to stop paying for it.He told a rally: “I think [Ukrainian president Volodymyr] Zelenskyy is maybe the greatest salesman of any politician that’s ever lived. Every time he comes to our country he walks away with $US60bn.”Influencing Republican allies in Congress, Trump stalled the last funding package from passing for months while Ukrainian forces – critically short of ammunition and artillery – struggled to hold back Russian advances. Trump’s manoeuvring was criticised as essentially backing Vladimir Putin’s irredentism.Trump has also repeatedly claimed if re-elected he would end the war in a day – “I’ll have that done in 24 hours” – without detailing how. It is presumed a deal to stop the conflict would involve the ceding of Ukrainian territory to Russia.Trump’s disposition towards Ukraine has broader implications for the collective security principle underpinning Nato. Trump has compared Nato to a protection racket and said he would not protect “delinquent” allies.“In fact, I would encourage them [the Russians] to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay! You gotta pay your bills.”Trump has repeatedly upbraided European countries for failing to live up to their commitment to spend 2% of their GDP on defence.Harris has pledged to continue Biden’s support for Ukraine and for the Nato alliance. She said as vice-president “I helped mobilise a global response – over 50 countries – to defend against Putin’s aggression.“And as president, I will stand strong with Ukraine and our Nato allies.”Harris, however, has wavered on Ukraine being admitted as a member to Nato, saying the question was among the “issues that we will deal with if and when it arrives at that point”.China“Trump and Kamala Harris are two bowls of poison for Beijing. Both see China as a competitor or even an adversary,” Prof Zhao Minghao, from the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University, told the Financial Times.Trump was hawkish towards China in his first term, confronting Beijing over what he argued were a suite of unfair practices and abuses such as intellectual property theft, currency manipulation and economic espionage. He pledged to “completely eliminate dependence on China in all critical areas,” including electronics, steel, pharmaceuticals, and rare earths. And he has flagged new laws to stop US companies from investing in China and a ban on federal contracts for any company that outsources to China.His first administration rejected Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea, condemning Beijing’s “campaign of bullying” of other countries.Harris spoke on China in September, saying her government would work to ensure the US “is leading the world in the industries of the future and making sure America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century”.“China is not moving slowly … if we are to compete, we can’t afford to, either.”She condemned Trump as having “constantly got played by China” and said his administration shipped advanced semiconductors to China, allowing them to upgrade their military.“I will never hesitate to take swift and strong measures when China undermines the rules of the road at the expense of our workers, our communities, and our companies.”The PacificClimate change is an urgent existential threat for the islands of the Pacific. Trump does not mention the climate crisis in his platform, nor is it mentioned in Agenda47.The Heritage Foundation – the conservative thinktank behind the Trump-linked Project 2025 – has urged for partnership with the Pacific islands, but on American terms and in its interests. “The US must adopt a clear-eyed approach about putting American interests and objectives in the Pacific islands first,” it said.The Biden-Harris administration have held two Pacific islands-US summits which have been big on ambition – with commitments of more than $1bn to resilience regionalism and sustainable development – but seen as lacking, so far, in application and results.The 2022 US-Pacific partnership declared a shared vision for “a resilient Pacific region of peace, harmony, security, social inclusion, and prosperity”.Fullilove said while Harris sits within the mainstream traditions of US foreign policy over recent decades, “it’s hard to get a really accurate fix on what she thinks about the world”.“At a broad level, she believes in American leadership, she believes in alliances, she prefers democracy to dictators, she more pro-trade than Trump. But beyond that, it’s very hard to know how she will approach Asia, the part of the world Australia is in, because she hasn’t been a prominent foreign policy voice in the Biden administration.”Read more about the 2024 US presidential election:

      Presidential poll tracker

      Harris and Trump policies

      What to know about early voting More