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      Trump takes sexist Harris attacks to ‘whole other level’ on Truth Social

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      Donald Trump has reposted a crudely misogynistic comment about Kamala Harris on Truth Social in a move that reprised his past record of sexist behaviour and brazenly flouted pleas from members of his own party to emphasize issues over personal attacks.With fresh polls showing Harris further improving her standing – and widening the gap with her opponent among women voters – Trump drew online opprobrium by sharing a vulgar post on his social media site implying that the Democratic nominee owed her political rise to sexual favours.The post – originally posted by another user – featured photos of Harris and Hillary Clinton alongside the comment: “Funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently…”The comment was an oblique reference to innuendo surrounding Harris’s former relationship with Willie Brown, the San Francisco mayor. The mention of Clinton – Trump’s defeated opponent in the 2016 presidential election – alluded to the affair between Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern, and her husband Bill Clinton in the 1990s, which came close to ending his presidency.It was not the first time Trump had made lewd references to Harris. On 18 August, he shared a video by the Dilley Meme Team, a group of rightwing content creators, to the soundtrack of a parody of the Alanis Morrisette song Ironic that contained the lines, “She spent her whole damn life down on her knees”, as an image of Brown appeared behind a picture of the US vice-president and her husband, Doug Emhoff.But the latest post appeared among a flurry of other extreme posts on Wednesday that also included tributes to the QAnon conspiracy theory that holds that Trump is waging war against an elite network of Satan-worshipping pedophiles in government, business and the media.He reposted: “WWG1WGA! RETRUTH IF YOU AGREE.” The acronym is short for the QAnon slogan: “where we go one, we go all.” He similarly reposted another QAnon phrase: “nothing can stop what is coming.”The FBI has previously identified fringe theories like QAnon – which Trump has stopped short of endorsing while praising its supporters – as likely to fuel domestic terrorism.In yet another incendiary communication, Trump posted manipulated images of some of his favourite targets – including the entrepreneur Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, who spearheaded the US vaccine effort against Covid-19, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi – imprisoned and wearing orange jumpsuits.The Harris campaign made no immediate response to Trump’s latest burst of social media activity, which followed disclosures of an altercation between his campaign team and staff at Arlington national cemetery, the resting place of fallen US military heroes, during a visit on Monday.However, the CNN host Anderson Cooper – in a lengthy segment – said the posts took Trump’s previous campaigning to a “whole other level”.“This is the Republican candidate for president and the 45th president of the United States, talking about two women who, no matter what you think of their politics, are two of the most accomplished women in American political history,” Cooper said.Wednesday’s online outbursts came as a new Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Harris with a four-point nationwide lead, 45% to 41%, over Trump. Among women, the survey showed the vice-president increasing her lead to 13%, compared with an average of 9% in polls for July.A separate Fox News survey showed Harris leading or increasing her support in four southern Sun belt states, all considered vital battlegrounds in November.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a two-way race, Harris was up by one point in Arizona and by two points in Georgia and Nevada, while Trump is ahead by one point in North Carolina, according to the poll.Beyond the polls, there was irritation among Republicans strategists who had previously urged Trump to desist from attacking Harris personally and focus on issues of concern to voters, such as the economy, inflation and immigration.“I think people are incredibly frustrated,” Jason Roe, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican party, told the Washington Post.He said Harris’s campaign and policy stances gave “opportunities for the Trump campaign to talk about issues that actually will matter to swing voters. And rather than doing that, he’s delving into this nonsense.”Stuart Stevens, a member of the anti-Trump Republican group, the Lincoln Project, and a strategist for Mitt Romney’s failed 2012 presidential bid, challenged widespread predictions of a close election by suggesting that Trump’s approach would eventually alienate voters and enable Harris to win convincingly.“There’s been a lot of talk – it’s sort of a universal truth – that this election is going to be close,” he told CNN. “I have a different opinion. I think it’ll be close till about October 20th, and then I think it’s going to be like Carter versus Reagan [in 1980, when Reagan won in a landslide], that the bottom is going to start to drop out [of Trump’s campaign].“I think this is going to be a race that Democrats are going to win by more than Biden did,” he added. More

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      The Wisconsin race that could tip the Democratic majority in the US Senate

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      Tammy Baldwin faces a race in November that will test the rural-urban coalition the Democratic Wisconsin senator has built and help determine whether Democrats will be able to hold onto their narrow majority in the US senate.Baldwin faces Eric Hovde, a real estate mogul and banker, who has campaigned on popular Republican issues like immigration and the economy, while linking Baldwin to Joe Biden.Baldwin, who was first elected in 2012 on a tide of progressive support, is one of 23 Democratic US senators up for re-election this year; her ability to keep the support of voters in purple and red districts could determine the outcome of the critical race.Baldwin has maintained relationships and a support base among farmers and rural voters, even as Democratic attrition from rural parts of the state has eroded Democratic margins in other statewide races. It’s a trend so persistent that “Trump-Tammy” voters are recognized as a constituency in Badwin’s base – with the senator winning 17 counties during her 2016 election that Trump won the same year.“That’s definitely Tammy’s bread and butter right there,” said campaign spokesperson Jackie Rosa, of Baldwin’s rural supporters.On the campaign trail, Baldwin has made stops at farms and in rural areas, launching a “Rural Leaders for Tammy” coalition to make her case in areas of the state that tend to lean red. Issues like healthcare access and hospital deserts and subsidies for farmers form core aspects of her platform. She has highlighted populist-leaning bills, like one she drafted with JD Vance, the Republican senator and vice-presidential candidate, to require goods and services developed with federal dollars in the US to be manufactured in the US. She has even taken up issues that are less popular with liberals, like removing gray wolves from Wisconsin’s endangered species list – a move supported by some farmers but criticized by environmental and conservation groups.“She never shied away from going out into the countryside,” said Hans Breitenmoser, a dairy farmer from northern Wisconsin and a member of the Lincoln county Democratic party. “I think her message has resonated to an extent, because, you know, it’s not just all BS – she tries to understand the issues, and understands the issues at a level that some other politicians don’t.”For Hovde to win the seat, he will have to erode that support and hope for high turnout outside heavily Democratic areas like Milwaukee and Dane county, which have generated historic voter turnout in recent elections.Polling so far shows a close race, with Baldwin holding an approximately seven-point lead over Hovde, according to a poll conducted at the end of July by the Marquette University Law School. An earlier poll, conducted in June – before Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race – showed Hovde trailing Baldwin more closely.Hovde, whose campaign did not agree to an interview, is something of a blank slate. On his website, he highlights a few key issues – among them, immigration, foreign policy and healthcare – but does not specify policy solutions he supports. He has earned Trump’s endorsement – a possible boost for the businessman – but has not held public office, and will need to overcome accusations from the Baldwin campaign of carpetbagging. That could be challenging.Although Hovde grew up in Madison and maintains numerous real estate properties there, the Baldwin campaign has cast him as an out-of-touch rich guy, pointing to his mansion in Laguna Beach, California – and his status in years past as one of Orange county’s most influential businessmen – as evidence of his position as an outsider.Baldwin has focused much of her campaign messaging on the fact that with a net worth of more than $195m, Hovde would be among the wealthiest members of the Senate if elected.In recent political ads, Hovde has highlighted his diagnosis of multiple sclerosis and the numerous international charities he operates to offer a more personal side and present his wealth as a political asset.But he handles the topic of his finances sometimes uncomfortably. In numerous talk radio interviews, Hovde, who has slammed the Democrats for persistently inflated consumer prices, acknowledged that inflation could be good for a wealthy businessman like himself.“Look – inflation helps in the short to medium term, people who own assets – I’ve benefitted, because my real estate values go up, my equity portfolio goes up, the value of my private companies go up,” said Hovde in 2021, during a Wisconsin talk radio show hosted by Vicki McKenna, a popular rightwing radio personality. “But it hammers people who have a set salary, or lower-income people.”On an episode of a rightwing podcast called The Truth with Lisa Boothe in March, he echoed a similar sentiment, decrying the rise of inflation and its impact on the middle class before noting that he himself had somewhat enjoyed the period of inflation. “For those that own assets, you know, I benefit because I own real estate and stocks and companies. So, yeah, it makes me wealthier, but it’s hammering, you know, 90% of Americans,” said Hovde.According to his most recent filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Hovde has loaned $13m to his campaign, which has raised about $16m in total so far. Baldwin’s campaign had raised $27m by the end of the most recent FEC reporting period.Biden’s decision to drop out of the presidential race, with Kamala Harris ascending to the top of the ballot, likely offered Baldwin a boost in the tight race.Baldwin, who did not join calls for Biden to drop out of the race, nonetheless refrained from campaigning with Biden when he made stops in Wisconsin. Hovde seized on Biden’s unpopularity and flailing campaign to cast Baldwin as a close Biden ally, even suggesting she had played a part in a Democratic party conspiracy to hide Biden’s age from voters.“Just how long has Tammy Baldwin been involved in the Biden coverup?” asked one ad that ran in July.The impact of the shakeup at the top of the Democratic party ticket in July also quickly led to a deluge of funding for Democrats, including in Wisconsin.“Every single thing that I can measure is going up,” Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic party, told Wisconsin Public Radio on 19 August. “Fundraising has shot up, hundreds of thousands of dollars came in the 48 hours after that big decision, and the contributions have not stopped.” Rosa, the Baldwin campaign spokesperson, noted that after the vice-president announced her presidential bid, she had seen a “noticeable difference” in terms of enthusiasm and crowd sizes at Baldwin’s events.“But we’re always just really focused on our race,” said Rosa. “Of course, supporting up and down the ballot, Democrats getting across the finish line. Because Wisconsin is going to determine the White House – we’re going to determine the Senate majority.” More

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      The Democrats sound less lofty, more earthy – and it’s working | Margaret Sullivan

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      Back in 2016, as Michelle Obama was doing a campaign speech for Hillary Clinton, she urged a way to deal with bullies like Donald Trump.“When they go low, we go high,” the former first lady said.Later, once the catchphrase had caught on, she explained that “when someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level”.Taking the high road sounded inspiring and possibly effective. Was it? Trump never stopped his horrid ways; but the Democrats, having lost to him in 2016, managed to defeat him in 2020 with Joe Biden, known for his empathy and decency.However you evaluate that, the Democrats feel like a different party these days. Their tone has changed from lofty to earthy.Consider the squawking chickens. When Trump waffled on whether he’d participate in the next presidential candidate debate, Kamala Harris’s campaign didn’t exactly go high. Instead, they posted barnyard sound effects and emoji over footage of Trump speaking and asked if he was getting scared.An Axios headline summarized the new tone: “Taunting Trump: Harris campaign’s sneer tactics.”The digital campaign team operating out of Wilmington, Delaware, “has pivoted from the stuffier, decorous Biden for President campaign to a saucier, more ruthless Harris for President campaign”.And don’t forget the couch jokes.Prominent Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren and Tim Walz, have made a few none-too-subtle wisecracks about an untrue rumor that Trump running mate JD Vance had an unusual relationship with some living-room furniture.The basis for this sordid tale has been debunked. The Associated Press not only fact-checked the claim, but then deleted the fact-check, which was headlined, No, JD Vance did not have sex with a couch.Nevertheless, uproarious cheers and laughter followed when Warren took her shot, speaking at the Democratic national convention about the need for an economy that benefits working people: “Trust Donald Trump and JD Vance to look out for your family? Shoot, I wouldn’t trust them to move my couch.”The conservative New York Post tut-tutted: “Elizabeth Warren makes crude couch joke in apparent reference to JD Vance.” Steven Cheung , a Trump spokesperson, complained to Axios: “Acting like whiny schoolchildren is not a political strategy, but it is a coping mechanism for the Kamala campaign who knows they have a weak candidate incapable of being authentic.”Somehow, charges of immaturity ring a little hollow from this crowd, led by a former president who specializes in dumb nicknames and cringey insults, from “Little Marco” Rubio to “Sleepy Joe” Biden.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump occasionally tries to claim the high ground but may need more practice. Last year he posted about the Florida governor, then a rival for the Republican nomination: “I will never call Ron DeSanctimonious ‘Meatball’ Ron, as the Fake News is insisting I will.”Besides, the Harris campaign’s irreverence isn’t really all that low. Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, who should be appointed talker-in-chief, had the perfect response when challenged to defend Barack Obama’s suggestive hand-gesture joke (big? small?) about Trump’s obsession with crowd size.“We aren’t completely above the temptation to tweak our opponents,” Buttigieg admitted, while noting that the Harris campaign’s overall tone is positive and forward-looking, not mired in darkness and grievance.How effective is this counterpunching? After hesitating for days about the debate, Trump finally agreed to show up in Philadelphia next month.Did his capitulation have anything to do with suggestions that he was a coward? Any relationship to the chickens squawking as they crossed the low road?Maybe not. But for the Harris campaign, the barnyard noises do seem to be delivering the intended message.

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

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      This presidential race will be fought over competing understandings of ‘freedom’ | Eric Foner

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      The recently concluded Democratic national convention marked a sharp turn in US political rhetoric. “Freedom, where are you?” Beyoncé sang in the video that opened the gathering. Her song proved to be a fitting introduction to the days that followed. Joe Biden had made saving democracy from the threat of Maga authoritarianism the centerpiece of his ill-fated campaign for re-election. The keynote of Kamala Harris’s convention, invoked by nearly every speaker, was “freedom”.Nearly a century ago, in the wake of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt linked freedom to economic security for ordinary Americans – “freedom from want” was one of the four freedoms summarizing the country’s aims in the second world war. This definition of freedom, a product of the New Deal, assumed an active role for the federal government. But since the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan in effect redefined freedom as limited government, low taxes and unregulated economic enterprise, Democrats have pretty much ceded the word to their opponents. Now they want it back.Of course freedom – along with liberty, generally used as an equivalent – has been a US preoccupation ever since the American revolution gave birth to a nation that identified itself, in Thomas Jefferson’s words, as an “empire of liberty”, a unique embodiment of freedom in a world overrun by oppression. The declaration of independence includes liberty among mankind’s unalienable rights; the constitution announces at the outset its aim of securing the “blessings of liberty”. As a result, freedom has long been a powerful rhetorical weapon. As the educator and statesman Ralph Bunche wrote in 1940: “Every man in the street, white, black, red or yellow, knows that this is ‘The land of the free’ … [and] the ‘cradle of liberty’.”Yet freedom is neither a fixed idea nor an evolutionary progress toward a predetermined goal. The history of US freedom is a tale of debates and struggles. Often, battles for control of the idea illustrate the contrast between “negative” and “positive” meanings of freedom, a dichotomy elaborated by Sir Isaiah Berlin in an influential essay in 1958. Negative liberty defines freedom as the absence of outside restraints on individual action. Positive liberty is a form of empowerment – the ability to set and fulfill one’s goals. As the contrast between FDR and Reagan illustrates, the first sees government as a threat to freedom and the second as removing barriers to its enjoyment, often by government intervention.The Democratic convention built upon this history. Positive and negative freedom co-existed and reinforced one another. The frequent calls for “reproductive freedom” – the right to make intimate decisions free of governmental interference (or as vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz put it, the principle of “mind your own damn business”) – embraced and expanded the idea of negative freedom. Never before has the 60s slogan “the personal is political” found such powerful expression at a party convention.Positive freedom also made its appearance, notably in Bernie Sanders’ litany of future government action against the likes of big oil and big pharma in the name of combating economic inequality and “corporate greed”. Walz, echoing FDR, commented that people who lack access to affordable housing and healthcare are not truly free.There is another crucial element to the ongoing debate about freedom: who is entitled to enjoy it. When the constitution was ratified, the United States was home to half a million enslaved African Americans. The first laws defining how immigrants could become citizens, enacted in the 1790s, limited the process to “white” persons. It took more than half a century for slavery to be eradicated and for Black persons, for a brief period during the era of Reconstruction that followed the civil war, to be incorporated into the body politic.This history exemplifies what the historian Tyler Stovall, in a recent book, calls “White Freedom”. Fast forward to the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. With its freedom rides, freedom songs and insistent cry “freedom now”, that revolution linked freedom with equality regardless of race or national origin. What is now remembered simply as “the movement” did more to redefine the meaning of freedom than any other development of the last century. Its fruits were visible every night in the Democratic convention’s remarkably diverse composition.Throughout our history, freedom has been defined, in large measure, by its limits. This is how the Confederacy was able to claim to be fighting for liberty. The historian Jefferson Cowie, whose book Freedom’s Dominion won the Pulitzer prize for history in 2023, argues that negative freedom, expressed as opposition to federal intervention in local affairs, has often boiled down to little more than the determination of local elites to exercise political and economic power over subordinate groups without outside interference. Civil rights were condemned as a threat to white people’s liberty (the freedom, for example, to choose who is allowed to live in one’s neighborhood). The vaunted independence of men depended on limiting the freedom of women.With the party conventions over, the campaign now becomes, in part, a contest to define the meaning of freedom. Historical precedents exist for such a battle. In 1936, the New York Times observed that the fight for possession of “the ideal of freedom” was the central issue of that year’s presidential campaign. Three decades later, the journalist Theodore White noted that freedom was the “dominant word” of both civil rights demonstrators and supporters of the conservative Republican candidate Barry Goldwater, but they meant entirely different things by it. The United States, he concluded, sorely needed “a commonly-agreed-on concept of freedom”.Freedom is often used to mobilize support in wartime. No recent president employed it for this purpose more egregiously than George W Bush, who made freedom an all-purpose justification for the invasion of Iraq. In his first inaugural address, Bush used the words “freedom”, “free” or “liberty” seven times. In his second, a 10-minute speech delivered after the invasion, they appeared no fewer than 49 times.Bush’s egregious distortion of the ideal of freedom seemed to discourage his successors from using the word at all. Barack Obama preferred the language of community and personal responsibility. Nor has freedom been a major theme of Donald Trump, who prefers to speak of raw military and economic power. But Trump’s long campaign to deny that Obama is a US citizen, and his calls for the immense deportation of undocumented immigrants, resonate with those who seek to redraw freedom’s boundaries along racial and nativist lines.The Democratic convention appears to have guaranteed that the 2024 election will be a contest over the meaning of freedom. Whatever the result, it will likely define American freedom for years to come.

      Eric Foner’s many books on American history include The Story of American Freedom More

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      Who is running for president in 2024? Harris, Trump and the full list of candidates

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      The 2024 election season is well under way.The campaign was marked by a consequential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, followed by weeks of pressure on Biden following his debate performance, culminating in his announcement that he would drop out of the race.As Biden reconsidered his re-election, there was an attempted assassination against Trump, followed by the naming of the Ohio senator JD Vance as the Republican vice-presidential pick.After Biden’s surprise announcement, he backed his vice-president, Kamala Harris, as his choice to replace him on the party’s ticket. Harris quickly secured enough delegates to become the presumptive Democratic pick. She tapped the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate, and both were confirmed as their party’s nominees at the Democratic convention in August.Also in August, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the independent candidate with no shortage of wild stories, suspended his campaign and threw his support behind Trump.Here is the full list of candidates as of 27 August, including some long-shots who hope to challenge the major party candidates in November..gu-candidate-container.svelte-yah0vs.svelte-yah0vs{cursor:pointer;display:flex;flex-wrap:wrap;justify-content:center;width:80px}.gu-candidate-container.true.svelte-yah0vs.svelte-yah0vs{width:70px}.gu-candidate-container.true.svelte-yah0vs img.svelte-yah0vs{filter:grayscale(.8) opacity(.3) contrast(1.8);width:50px}.gu-candidate-container.true.svelte-yah0vs p.svelte-yah0vs{color:#707070}img.svelte-yah0vs.svelte-yah0vs{border-radius:100%;width:100%}p.svelte-yah0vs.svelte-yah0vs{color:#121212;font-family:Guardian Text Sans Web,Helvetica 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      The remaining candidatesView image in fullscreenDonald TrumpFormer president of the United States. Running mate: JD VanceDonald Trump accepted the Republican party’s nomination for president for the third consecutive time. At the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, the former president formally accepted the nomination on a night that was supposed to be filled with calls for unity but instead was marked by alarmist language and false claims.Trump announced Vance – once a vocal “never Trumper” – as his pick for the nomination for vice-president at the Republican convention.View image in fullscreenKamala HarrisVice-president of the United States. Running-mate: Tim WalzHarris officially accepted the Democratic party’s presidential nomination at the Democratic convention in August in Chicago, after a whirlwind tour of battleground states alongside her running mate, Walz.Harris’s campaign came after weeks of pressure following Biden’s disastrous June debate, and after Biden announced he would not accept his party’s nomination and endorsed her to replace him on the Democratic ticket.Immediately following Biden’s decision, Harris confirmed her intention to “earn and win this nomination” as a flood of Democrats endorsed her campaign, heading off a competitive race for the Democratic ticket.Harris made her first official campaign stop in Delaware on 22 July and has crisscrosed the country, stopping in swing state after swing state, since.View image in fullscreenJill SteinDoctor and activist. Running mate: Butch WareLeftwing environmentalist Jill Stein formally launched her third presidential bid in an online conversation in November 2023. Stein also stood as the Green party’s candidate in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections. Her candidacy follows the decision by Cornel West, the party’s original likely nominee, to leave the Green party and run as an independent.View image in fullscreenCornel WestProfessor and progressive activist. Running mate: Melina AbdullahThe progressive activist Cornel West announced in a video posted to Twitter that he was running for president as a member of the People’s party, a third party headed by a former campaign staffer for Bernie Sanders. West is currently a professor of philosophy at Union Theological Seminary and previously worked at Harvard but resigned, saying the school had an “intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of deep depths”.Dropped outView image in fullscreenJoe BidenPresident of the United States, dropped out 21 July 2024Joe Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election, winning all the party’s primary contests. However, following a disastrous debate performance in June against Trump, and weeks of pressure, Biden announced on 21 July that he would not accept the party’s nomination. Biden endorsed Kamala Harris to replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket. Biden served in politics for more than five decades, culminating in his 2020 victory over Donald Trump.Ryan BinkleyBusinessman and pastor, dropped out 27 February 2024Binkley, a Texas businessman, was a long-shot candidate who is also a pastor at Create church. The self-proclaimed far-right fiscal conservative criticized both Democrats and Republicans for not being able to balance the federal budget, and said he would focus on health costs, immigration reform and a national volunteer movement.View image in fullscreenDoug BurgumGovernor of North Dakota, dropped out 4 December 2023Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, announced his campaign in an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal on 6 June 2023. Viewed as a surprise, long-shot candidate, he touted his experience as a career businessman and leaned on his small-town roots in an announcement video titled Change. As governor, Burgum signed into law a near-total abortion ban, which makes the procedure illegal after six weeks, and only permissible in cases of rape, incest or medical emergency up to that point. He supported Donald Trump for president in 2016 and in 2020.View image in fullscreenChris ChristieFormer governor of New Jersey, dropped out 10 January 2024The former New Jersey governor has emerged as one of the harshest Republican critics of Donald Trump, whom he endorsed for president in 2016 after dropping out of that race. Christie says he broke ties with the former president after the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, claiming that he hadn’t spoken to Trump since then. Christie, a lawyer and a lobbyist who served as a US attorney appointed by George W Bush, announced he was running for president a second time on 6 June 2023 in New Hampshire during a town hall.View image in fullscreenRon DeSantisGovernor of Florida, dropped out 21 January 2024Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida was predicted to be the strongest contender for the GOP nomination against Donald Trump, consistently polling second among Republican primary voters. He made his formal announcement on Twitter, during a Spaces event attended by roughly 300,000 users that was riddled with technological glitches, on 24 May 2023. DeSantis, who has served as Florida’s governor since 2019 and handily defeated the Democratic challenger, Charlie Crist, in 2022, previously represented Florida’s sixth congressional district as a member of the US House from 2012 to 2018. As governor, DeSantis has signed a slate of laws banning minors from receiving gender-affirming care and restricting education on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools, and he has become an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist party.Larry ElderConservative radio host, dropped out 26 October 2023The rightwing political commentator and radio talkshow host announced his run for president on Fox News as a guest on the now-canceled Tucker Carlson Tonight on 20 April 2023. In 2021, Elder joined a list of Republicans seeking to replace Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, in a failed recall. The Los Angeles resident was an outspoken critic of the state’s mask mandates, calling them “a joke”.View image in fullscreenNikki HaleyFormer ambassador to the United Nations, dropped out 6 March 2024Haley, who got her start in politics as a member of South Carolina’s general assembly, was governor of the state from 2011 to 2017. She ended her second term early to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations under Donald Trump before announcing her resignation in 2018. She became the first Republican to announce a run against Donald Trump, even though she previously said she would not run against him. Haley vowed to “fix” the US immigration system by “stopping illegal immigration” and described herself as pro-life, but said a federal abortion ban was unrealistic. Haley, who is the daughter of Indian immigrants, would have been the first US president of Asian descent, as well as the first woman.Will HurdFormer congressman from Texas, dropped out 10 October 2023Former US Representative Will Hurd, of Texas, entered the crowded primary field as a moderate and critic of Donald Trump. Hurd announced his campaign in an interview on CBS. He followed that with a video posted online in which he called Trump a “lawless, selfish, failed politician” and laid out an agenda to curb “illegal immigration”, inflation, crime and homelessness. Hurd, who worked for nearly a decade in the CIA, served three terms in the House, from 2015 to 2021. He left office as the only Black Republican in the chamber.View image in fullscreenAsa HutchinsonFormer governor of Arkansas, dropped out 16 January 2024Hutchinson is the former governor of Arkansas, a post he held from 2015 to 2023. The relatively unknown politician announced his candidacy in an interview on ABC days after Trump was indicted in a Manhattan court, saying the ex-president should drop out of the race. Hutchinson is a businessman and lawyer who was appointed by Ronald Reagan to serve as a US attorney. He also served a stint in the US House of Representatives, winning a congressional seat in 1996 when he replaced his brother, Tim, who ran for Senate.View image in fullscreenPerry JohnsonBusinessman, dropped out 20 October 2023Johnson is a businessman who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Michigan in 2022 after providing fraudulent nominating signatures for that campaign. Originally from Illinois, Johnson founded dozens of companies, and lives in Michigan with his family. He has billed himself as Donald Trump “without the baggage” and has taken similar policy positions on curbing US debt and cracking down on the FBI.Robert F Kennedy JrLawyer and author, dropped out 23 August 2024Robert F Kennedy Jr, known for his work as an environmental lawyer and his anti-vaccine views, said he was running for president to end the “chronic disease epidemic”. Kennedy, who compared vaccine mandates during the Covid-19 pandemic to “Hitler’s Germany”, has promoted other baseless conspiracy theories such as telecom networks being used to control people. He is the nephew of John F Kennedy, the former Democratic president, who was assassinated in office, and is the son of 1968 Democratic presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy, who was assassinated on the campaign trail. He suspended his campaign on 23 August and endorsed Trump.View image in fullscreenMike PenceFormer vice-president of the United States, dropped out 28 October 2023Mike Pence officially launched his campaign for president on 7 June 2023, in a rare instance of a former vice-president challenging the president with whom he shared a ticket a few years ago. Pence joined a crowded Republican field in which he has consistently polled third, even before he officially announced his candidacy, though he trails far behind DeSantis and Trump. Pence was angling for a wide base among evangelical Christians and had vowed to ban abortion if he were elected. He denounced the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, and had used it as a talking point against Trump, who turned against him after he publicly refused supporters’ calls to overturn the results of the election.View image in fullscreenDean PhillipsRepresentative from Minnesota, dropped out 6 March 2024Dean Phillips, a three-term Democratic congressman from Minnesota, challenged Biden, saying the next generation should have the opportunity to lead the country. Phillips is the heir to a distilling company and once co-owned a gelato company. He entered public office spurred by fighting back against Trump.Vivek RamaswamyEntrepreneur and author, dropped out 16 January 2024The biotech entrepreneur and political newcomer announced his campaign in a video describing attacks on the “culture of free speech in America” and again on Fox News in an interview with now-fired Tucker Carlson. He is the author of Woke, Inc, a book that lobbies against “ESG” – a framework of corporate governance that encourages companies to consider the environment and social justice issues. Ramaswamy, who was the youngest candidate vying for the Republican nomination, had lobbied in favor of raising the national voting age to 25. Ramaswamy would have been the first president of Asian and Indian descent. He had also vowed to pardon federally indicted Donald Trump.Francis SuarezMayor of Miami, dropped out 29 August 2023Suarez, the mayor of Miami, was the first major Hispanic candidate seeking the Republican party nomination this election cycle. The son of Miami’s first Cuban-born mayor, Suarez had said he would broaden support for Republicans among Latino voters. He was the third candidate from Florida to join the crowded primary field, alongside frontrunners Trump and DeSantis. Suarez, who was first elected in 2017, filed paperwork to run the day after Trump appeared in a Miami court over federal charges and made his formal announcement on Good Morning America the day after that.View image in fullscreenTim ScottSenator from South Carolina, dropped out 13 November 2023In May, Scott became the second politician from South Carolina to run for the Republican nomination. He has served as a senator from South Carolina since 2013, when he was appointed by Republican challenger Nikki Haley to fill a vacancy. Scott, who is one of three Black members of the Senate and is the only Black Republican senator, said in his announcement speech that “America is not a racist country”. Scott joined fellow Republicans in opposing the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022. Scott served as a member of the House from 2011 to 2013 and before that spent stints in South Carolina’s general assembly and Charleston’s county council. During his 2010 campaign for the House of Representatives, Scott told Newsweek that homosexuality was a morally wrong choice.View image in fullscreenMarianne WilliamsonAuthorFailed 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, who also unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the US House of Representatives in 2014, became the first Democratic candidate to announce she is running for president as a challenge to Joe Biden. Williamson, an author of self-help books, launched her long-shot bid with campaign promises to address climate change and student loan debt. She previously worked as “spiritual leader” of a Michigan Unity church. She originally ended her campaign on 7 February 2024 but announced on 28 February she was “un-suspending”. More

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      The revised indictment against Donald Trump is the last thing he needs right now | Lloyd Green

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      On Tuesday, Jack Smith, the special counsel, delivered a revised 36-page indictment, again charging Donald Trump with conspiring to subvert the final outcome of the 2020 election. How the courts treat the latest indictment remains to be seen. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito may again race to Trump’s rescue. But two weeks before the scheduled 10 September presidential debate, the American electorate and Donald Trump are again reminded that the Republican nominee stands in legal jeopardy. Then again, winning on 5 November may be the simplest way for him to avoid jail time.Already trailing in the polls, this is not good news for Trump, a candidate who has twice lost the popular vote. Without Joe Biden as a foil, his decline and age visibly grow. At 59, Kamala Harris is almost 20 years younger. All too often, Trump, 78, slurs his words and rambles. His dance moves remind folks of their elderly uncle.Trump already labors under a state court felony conviction in New York and a nine-figure pile of civil judgments. His personal liquidity and the future of his family business are in doubt. He must again deflect renewed allegations that he sought to thwart the will of the people and obstruct the outcome of a valid election. That costs more time and money.“Despite having lost, the Defendant – who was also the incumbent President – was determined to remain in power,” the indictment reads.“For more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false.”For a guy who yammers about law and order, it’s a lousy look – as is his campaign’s physical altercation at Arlington national cemetery over its use as a prop in which Trump flashes a thumbs-up.Since Harris emerged as the Democrats’ standard-bearer, Trump is on the short end of a nine-point shift in the polls. This latest legal development will likely hinder his attempt to make up lost ground. If history matters, indictments have a way of doing just that.A veteran of George HW Bush’s losing re-election campaign, I remember Caspar Weinberger, Ronald Reagan’s defense secretary, being re-indicted just days before the 3 November 1992 election. In the run-up to that fateful Friday, the campaign had battled back into a statistical tie with Bill Clinton. The one-count re-indictment, however, derailed the campaign’s final gasp for momentum.Before the latest indictment, Harris already held an 11-point lead over Trump on the question of who is the more honest and trustworthy candidate. Expect Tuesday’s indictment to expand the gap, a development that he can ill afford.The map tells the story. According to Nate Silver, the polling guru, Harris has recaptured a lead in the electoral battlegrounds of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The website he founded, ABC’s 538, gives her nearly a three-in-five shot of winning. PredictIt, an online betting site, puts her chance at 55%.Nationally, House Democrats have improved their chances of retaking the chamber. Over in Texas, the senator Ted Cruz holds a mere two-point advantage over the representative Colin Allred, his Democratic opponent. The loathed incumbent senator is in trouble.This is not the future Trump and the Republicans envisioned after he walloped Biden in the debate. Even worse, this is not the endgame the Trump campaign anticipated. Rather, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles expected Sleepy Joe to hang on until the bitter end. Of all his unforced errors, Trump agreeing to an early debate may have been his most consequential. Lack of imagination can be fatal in politics and war.Adding insult to injury, the Harris campaign announced on Tuesday that Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, will sit for a joint interview to be aired this Thursday night on CNN. For days, the punditocracy repeatedly announced that without a media sit-down she would be unable to maintain her momentum.That box is about to be checked. Team Trump is on verge of losing another talking point.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBeyond that, the Harris-Walz interview falls on the eve of the upcoming Labor Day weekend, when most of the US is on the road, as opposed to being glued to their televisions. If the interview goes poorly for Harris, it is less likely to develop into a real-time disaster.The Trump re-indictment also serves to highlight Harris’s career as a local prosecutor and state attorney general. In this vein, a speech she delivered in late June in Atlanta sets the table for the final weeks of the campaign.“In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds: predators who abused women; fraudsters who ripped off consumers; cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain,” she advised the crowd.“So, hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type. I know the type. And I have been dealing with people like him my entire career.”Meanwhile, her campaign coffers brim. Voter registration among Black women explodes. And Trump is left to hawk another round of digital trading cards.He is not enjoying a “brat summer”.

      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

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

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

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

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

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