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      How could Tim Walz’s political record help and hurt Harris?

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      The presumptive Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, has chosen the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate in the presidential race, elevating a popular although relatively unknown leader who has attracted the support of progressive voters in recent days.Walz has served as Minnesota’s governor since 2019 after 12 years in the House of Representatives and now leads the Democratic Governors Association. He has built a reputation as a folksy politician who can get things done, as Minnesota has adopted a number of progressive laws during his tenure. According to a poll conducted earlier this year, Walz enjoys an approval rating of 55% among Minnesotans.Since Minnesota Democrats achieved a legislative trifecta in the 2022 elections, Walz and his allies have used their power to push a slate of progressive policies. The governor signed bills protecting abortion access, expanding background checks for prospective gun owners and legalizing recreational marijuana.“Right now, Minnesota is showing the country you don’t win elections to bank political capital,” Walz said last year. “You win elections to burn political capital and improve lives.”That philosophy has endeared him to progressives, who threw their support behind him as the veepstakes kicked into high gear over the past two weeks. They reshared clips of Walz lightly mocking his daughter’s vegetarianism and tinkering with his car to paint him as the dad that America needs right now. But as the running mate, Walz will need to introduce himself to a much wider audience. A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll showed that only 13% of Americans knew enough about Walz to register an opinion of him.The other finalist in Harris’s running mate search was the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, whose popularity with his constituents could have helped Democrats in a key battleground state. Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by just one point in 2020, while he enjoyed a more comfortable seven-point victory in Minnesota. But Democrats are confident that Walz’s record will mobilize voters across the country.Last year, Walz signed a bill that provided free breakfast and lunch for all students attending public and charter schools in Minnesota. The program allows students to receive one free breakfast and lunch a day, regardless of their income, according to the Minnesota Reformer. Through the first few months it was in effect, the state saw a significant jump in the number of meals requested.When he was running for Congress in 2010, Walz received an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association. At the time, the group cited his support for legislation allowing people to carry guns in national parks, as well as his decision to sign on to a pro-gun amicus brief in District of Columbia v Heller, a 2008 supreme court case, that significantly expanded the second amendment.But since then, Walz has spoken out in favor of gun control measures. Last year, he approved a measure to enact a “red flag” law to remove guns from people deemed to be a danger to themselves or others. He also expanded background checks for gun purchases to include private transactions. And he has said he favors an assault weapons ban. When he ran for governor in 2018, Walz celebrated that the NRA gave him an “F” rating, and donated the $18,000 the group had given him throughout his congressional career to a veterans group, according to CNBC.After the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, Walz was the first governor to enshrine abortion protections in state law. He has also taken executive action to protect gender-affirming care in his state and enacted paid family leave supported by a 0.7% payroll tax on employers, according to CBS News.He has also approved legislation that requires Minnesota to generate all of its energy from carbon-free sources by 2040.Walz enacted a swath of expansive voting rights measures.He signed a bill last year making it easier for people with a felony conviction to vote in Minnesota. The measure automatically allows people with felonies to vote once they leave prison – they previously had to also complete probation as well as parole. The bill allowed at least 55,000 people to vote. He has also approved a state-level Voting Rights Act, cementing protections for minority voters at the state level as the US supreme court chips away at the federal version of the law. Walz also enacted legislation that allows for automatic voter registration, permits 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote, and lets Minnesotans sign up to automatically receive a mail-in ballot.Walz also legalized marijuana in the state, though his cannabis tsar was forced to resign after it emerged that she had sold illegal marijuana products in the state. He also approved a bill that allows undocumented people to get a driver’s license.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWalz hasn’t been without criticism during his time in office. A state audit of his department of education found that it “failed to act on warning signs” that could have prevented a giant $250m non-profit fraud related to pandemic funds, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune. Walz’s office has also clashed with the prosecutor in Hennepin county over some high-profile cases, CBS News reported.Republicans wasted no time in beginning to attack Walz.“It’s no surprise that San Francisco liberal Kamala Harris wants west coast wannabe Tim Walz as her running-mate – Walz has spent his governorship trying to reshape Minnesota in the image of the Golden state. While Walz pretends to support Americans in the Heartland, when the cameras are off, he believes that rural America is ‘mostly cows and rocks’,” the Trump campaign said in a statement.“From proposing his own carbon-free agenda, to suggesting stricter emission standards for gas-powered cars, and embracing policies to allow convicted felons to vote, Walz is obsessed with spreading California’s dangerously liberal agenda far and wide. If Walz won’t tell voters the truth, we will: just like Kamala Harris, Tim Walz is a dangerously liberal extremist, and the Harris-Walz California dream is every American’s nightmare.”“The most liberal ‘nominee’ to ever appear on a presidential ballot has now chosen a progressive running mate who has voiced support for socialism, supports sanctuary cities and wants to give driver’s licenses to the millions of illegal aliens Kamala Harris has allowed into our country. No amount of spin from the campaign or the media can distract from the objective facts and the disastrous records of Harris and Walz,” Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, said in a statement on Tuesday.Walz also received criticism in May 2020, when the city of Minneapolis was engulfed in unrest following the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer. After a police station was set on fire, Walz criticized the city’s response to the unrest as an “abject failure”.After days of increasing tensions, the state took over the response to the protests. Walz said he had followed the correct protocol by waiting for city leaders to request assistance before sending in the national guard, but some critics dismissed the governor’s action as too little too late.“Above all else, this is a failure in leadership, and that leadership rests on Governor Walz’s shoulders. The governor cannot blame the mayors of Minneapolis and St Paul,” Paul Gazelka, who was then the Republican state senate majority leader, said at the time.With Walz now back in the news as Harris’s running mate, he can expect that every piece of his résumé will be subject to the strictest scrutiny in the weeks ahead. More

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      US supreme court won’t stop Trump sentencing from going ahead – live

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      The US supreme court has declined to halt Donald Trump’s upcoming sentencing for his conviction in state court in New York on felony charges involving hush money paid to an adult film star, Stormy Daniels, and a related gag order until after the 5 November election.The decision by the justices came in response to a lawsuit by the state of Missouri claiming that the case against Trump infringed on the right of voters under the US constitution to hear from the Republican presidential nominee as he seeks to regain the White House, Reuters reports.Trump is set to be sentenced on 18 September in Manhattan. He was found guilty in May of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.He is the Republican party nominee for president in the election in November, facing Kamala Harris for the Democrats.The Guardian’s George Chidi was at the Trump rally in Georgia this weekend, where the former president picked a fight with the state’s popular Republican governor. Here’s his analysis from the campaign trail:All Donald Trump had to do on Saturday in Georgia is show up, bring the tent together and not pick a fight with other Republicans. It might have been money in the bag.Instead, Trump attacked Governor Brian Kemp, who is substantially more popular in Georgia than he is. Early in his comments, Trump pointed to a few recent high-profile murders in Atlanta, saying: “Atlanta is like a killing field, and your governor should get off his ass and do something about it.”Maga is not a majority in Georgia, if anywhere. Republicans cannot win this state when conventional conservatives abandon the party, as Herschel Walker’s Trump-inflected US Senate challenge against Raphael Warnock demonstrated two years ago.Georgia’s split-ticket-voting conservatives love Kemp and are indifferent at best to Trump. And Trump gave them no love on Saturday.“If it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t be your governor. I think everybody knows that,” Trump bloviated, describing them as disloyal.Then Trump went after Kemp’s wife, who told people she wrote her husband’s name in for president in the Republican presidential primary this year.On and on …On Saturday, Trump handed his opponents soundbites about what he thinks about Georgia, its popular governor, and how he expects the state election board to overturn an election he may lose, that will be replayed on YouTube ads on every iPhone between the Fox Theater and the Lake Lanier for the next 91 days.And Republican political professionals know it.Earlier this morning, the Guardian reported that five secretaries of state were preparing to send Elon Musk a letter urging changes to X’s AI search assistant, Grok.As the Guardian’s Lauren Aratani reported, Grok told users that the ballots were “locked and loaded” and that “the ballot deadline has passed for several states” in nine states where the ballot deadline had not, in fact, passed.It seems the secretaries of state have gone ahead and sent the letter. Scripps News obtained a copy.“We urge X to immediately adopt a policy of directing Grok users to CanIVote.org when asked about elections in the US,” the officials from Minnesota, Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Washington wrote.Here’s more from Lauren:For those watching the veepstakes …Kamala Harris’s team is tamping down rumors and reporting that she has chosen a running mate. Here’s a Harris spokesperson, emphasizing that she has “made no decision on a running mate yet”:Harris is expected to announce her running mate tomorrow before a rally in Philadelphia. Reuters reported today that the search had narrowed to two governors: Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Tim Walz of Minnesota.Read more about it here:Donald Trump’s campaign attorney Jenna Ellis will cooperate with Arizona prosecutors in a fake electors case, the state attorney general’s office announced.Arizona’s attorney general Kris Mayes has agreed to drop nine felony charges against Ellis in exchange for her cooperation in an investigation into Republicans’ plan in 2020 to deliver the state’s 11 electoral votes to Trump rather than the rightful winner, Joe Biden.“Her insights are invaluable and will greatly aid the state in proving its case in court,” Mayes said. “As I stated when the initial charges were announced, I will not allow American democracy to be undermined – it is far too important. Today’s announcement is a win for the rule of law.”Ellis worked closely with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who has pleaded not guilty to felony charges. Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, has also pleaded not guilty for his role in trying to submit a document to Congress falsely declaring Trump as the winner.The White House has responded to the latest revelations that there is more free travel that the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas did not declare publicly, supplied by the conservative billionaire Harlan Crow.Press spokesperson Andrew Bates said: “As president Biden said at the LBJ Library last week, the supreme court is ‘mired in a crisis of ethics’ and today’s news strengthens the case he made for common-sense reforms that are backed by constitutional experts across the political spectrum – as well as the vast majority of the American people.”Bates added: “Congress should pass an enforceable code of conduct for the supreme court, in line with the requirements that every other federal judge already follows. The most powerful court in the United States shouldn’t be subject to the lowest ethical standards, and conflicts of interest on the supreme court cannot go unchecked.”In her interview broadcast by Fox News this morning – a friendly interview with Fox and Friends – Usha Vance discussed her husband’s swiftly infamous attacks on “childless cat ladies” among his Democratic foes, claiming the controversial remark was merely a “quip”.You can read more on those remarks here.But Usha Vance also addressed controversy over other past remarks that have come back to haunt JD Vance as the Ohio senator attempts to establish himself as an effective running mate for Donald Trump.In remarks to a former friend, reported last week, Vance said: “I hate the police.”“JD certainly does not hate the police,” his wife said in the interview broadcast by Fox on Monday, though she added: “He maybe had a negative interaction once or twice and made a remark like that, I don’t know.”The Yale law school friend to whom Vance made the remark about the police, Sofia Nelson, now a public defender in Detroit, is transgender.Last year, Vance introduced the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, a law to stop minors accessing puberty blockers, hormone therapy and other transition-related care.Nelson attended Yale with JD and Usha Vance and attended their wedding in 2014 – a time when Usha Vance was a registered Democrat.Nelson recently gave correspondence with JD to the New York Times, which added it to mounting evidence of his former distrust and dislike for Trump.“He achieved great success and became very rich by being a Never Trumper who explained the white working class to the liberal elite,” Nelson told the Times, referring to Vance’s authorship of Hillbilly Elegy, a 2016 bestseller about his Appalachian youth.“Now he’s amassing even more power by expressing the exact opposite.”Usha Vance told Fox: “It is hard to know that sometimes politics comes in the way of friendships.”More:There is a little more explanation of the supreme court ruling today that Donald Trump’s criminal sentencing next month won’t be pushed back beyond the presidential election as a result of a legal challenge.The Missouri attorney general went to the highest court with the unusual request to sue the state of New York after the supreme court justices in the last big decision of their term granted Trump broad immunity from prosecution – in a separate case brought in Washington, DC relating to federal charges over interference in the 2020 election, the Associated Press reports.The news agency described Missouri’s legal challenge as “a long shot” in Trump’s long-running legal saga.Andrew Bailey, the AG in question, argued the New York case’s gag order, which Missouri wanted stayed until after the election, wrongly limited what Trump can say on the campaign trail, and that Trump’s eventual sentence could affect his ability to travel.New York, meanwhile, said the limited gag order does allow Trump to talk about the issues important to voters, and the sentence may not affect his movement at all. The Democratic New York attorney general, Letitia James, argued that appeals are moving through state courts and there’s no state-on-state conflict that would allow the supreme court to weigh in at this point.The decision by the supreme court today not to delay sentencing following Donald Trump’s criminal conviction came in response to a lawsuit by the state of Missouri claiming that the case against Trump infringed on the right of voters under the US constitution to hear from the Republican presidential nominee as he seeks to regain the White House in this November’s election.The supreme court’s order was unsigned. Conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito indicated they would have heard Missouri’s case, Reuters reports.Trump was found guilty in May of falsifying business records to cover up a $130,000 payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she has said she had with Trump in the past, which he denies. Prosecutors have said the payment was designed to boost his presidential campaign in 2016, when he defeated the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton.Missouri’s Republican state attorney general, Andrew Bailey, filed a 3 July lawsuit against New York state asking the supreme court to pause Trump’s impending sentencing and the gag order placed on him by New York state judge Juan Merchan, who presided in the case.The US supreme court has declined to halt Donald Trump’s upcoming sentencing for his conviction in state court in New York on felony charges involving hush money paid to an adult film star, Stormy Daniels, and a related gag order until after the 5 November election.The decision by the justices came in response to a lawsuit by the state of Missouri claiming that the case against Trump infringed on the right of voters under the US constitution to hear from the Republican presidential nominee as he seeks to regain the White House, Reuters reports.Trump is set to be sentenced on 18 September in Manhattan. He was found guilty in May of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.He is the Republican party nominee for president in the election in November, facing Kamala Harris for the Democrats.Donald Trump is taking good political advantage of the falling financial markets today by blaming his rival for the presidency this November and calling the dive the “Great Kamala crash of 2024”.Shares on Wall Street and in London have fallen heavily amid a global stock market rout triggered by fears of a recession in the US, kicked off by something close to a panic sale on the Nikkei in Tokyo earlier today.Trump, the Republican nominee for president, hopped onto his platforms, Truth Social and his campaign communications machine, and blamed his rival in this November’s election, Kamala Harris.“Of course there is a massive market downturn. Kamala is even worse than Crooked Joe,” Trump posted online, referring to Joe Biden, the US president. There were a couple of other posts, and his election campaign put out an email. Then he went off in all caps.“VOTERS HAVE A CHOICE – TRUMP PROSPERITY, OR THE KAMALA CRASH & GREAT DEPRESSION OF 2024, NOT TO MENTION THE PROBABILITY OF WORLD WAR lll IF THESE VERY STUPID PEOPLE REMAIN IN OFFICE. REMEMBER, TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!!!” he posted.Kamala Harris is poised to secure the Democratic presidential nomination this evening.Harris’s nomination will become official after a five-day round of online balloting by Democratic national convention delegates ends on Monday night and the party announces the results. The party had long contemplated the early virtual roll call to ensure Biden would appear on the ballot in every state, the Associated Press reports.Already Harris has telegraphed that she doesn’t plan to veer much from the themes and policies that framed Biden’s candidacy, such as democracy, gun violence prevention and abortion rights. But her delivery can be far fierier, particularly when she invokes her prosecutorial background to lambast Trump and his 34 felony convictions for falsifying business records in connection with a hush money scheme.
      Given that unique voice of a new generation, of a prosecutor and a woman when fundamental rights, especially reproductive rights, are on the line, it’s almost as if the stars have aligned for her at this moment in history,” said Democratic senator Alex Padilla of California, who was tapped to succeed Harris in the Senate when she became vice-president.
      Last Friday, Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee, announced that the vice-president had earned the majority of delegates’ votes to become the party’s nominee to challenge Donald Trump in November, though her nomination would not be official until Monday, the end of the virtual roll-call vote.Hello again, US politics blog readers, the state of the blog this hour can be summed up with the phrase bated breath.Everyone is waiting for Kamala Harris to announce the name of her running mate. It could come today or tomorrow and one report has the shortlist down to two. Elsewhere, Donald Trump is calling the stock market dive the “Kamala crash” and Joe Biden is about to meet with his national security team in the situation room at the White House, with Harris also attending, as tensions rise again in the Middle East.Stick with Guardian US live blogs for the news as it happens. Our west coast colleagues will take the blog on later today.Meanwhile, here’s where things stand:

      Top Democratic US senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, has written to a lawyer about his client’s providing yet more travel on his private jet for US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas which has not been declared to the public. The client? Harlan Crow.

      Kamala Harris has narrowed her search for a vice-presidential running mate to two finalists, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro and Minnesota governor Tim Walz, Reuters reports, citing unnamed sources familiar.

      A Virginia man was charged with making violent online threats against US vice-president Kamala Harris days after she began her US presidential campaign last month. The man was charged in federal court after saying online that he could resort to burning the US vice-president alive. FBI agents seized a rifle and a handgun from his home.

      Harris has crept just ahead of her Republican rival, Donald Trump, in the 2024 presidential election, according to some influential new polls. The race is neck and neck, but Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, now leads Trump by 1.4 points in a national polling average presented yesterday by Nate Silver in his Silver Bulletin newsletter.

      Harris is very close to naming her choice of vice-presidential candidate to join her on the Democratic ticket to fight the 2024 election against Donald Trump this November. She has been talking to final contenders over the weekend and she needs to announce her choice before tomorrow evening, when Harris and her running mate are due to appear together at a rally in Philadelphia to raise the curtain on their campaign together.
      There’s some more news on Robert F Kennedy Jr.The independent presidential candidate arrived at a New York court today to fight a lawsuit alleging he falsely claimed to live in New York as he sought to get on the ballot in the state.Kennedy appeared and sat at his attorneys’ table during legal arguments on Monday morning, ahead of a civil trial expected to start later in the day in the state capital of Albany. Under state election law, a judge is set to decide the case without a jury, the Associated Press reports.The lawsuit alleges that Kennedy’s nominating petition falsely said his residence was in New York’s northern suburbs while he actually has lived in Los Angeles since 2014, when he married actor Cheryl Hines, known for Curb Your Enthusiasm.The suit seeks to invalidate his petition. The case was brought by Clear Choice Pac, a Super Pac led by supporters of Joe Biden. Kennedy has the potential to do better than any independent presidential candidate in decades, having gained traction with a famous name and a loyal base. Strategists from both major parties worry that he could win enough votes to tip the election.A senior Democratic US senator has written to a lawyer about his client’s providing yet more travel on his private jet for US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas which has not been declared to the public.Thomas failed to disclose publicly that he had taken a flight provided by the conservative donor Harlan Crow that fell outside what he had belatedly revealed to the public about freebie luxury travel and gifts, the New York Times reports.The letter is dated today and was sent by the Democratic US senator for Oregon Ron Wyden to Michael Bopp, a lawyer who represents Crow. It says that Thomas and his wife, Virginia, flew on a return trip between Hawaii and New Zealand in 2010 on Crow’s private jet, but that journey was not listed in financial disclosure forms justices fill our annually.This is the latest in a series of revelations about Thomas over the last year, and some other justices, mainly Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch on the supreme court, about gifts and favors, as well as alleged political bias. Thomas relatively recently said he didn’t need to disclose free travel and hospitality from “friends” such as Crow, unless individuals had business directly before the supreme court.He later amended disclosures, but more details are trickling out about other perks that he has not declared.Last month, Joe Biden called for sweeping reforms of the supreme court. He said the recent decision granting some immunity to presidents from criminal prosecution makes them a king before the law. And he said the scandals involving justices and free travel etc had caused public opinion to question the court’s fairness and independence and impeded its mission. Biden called for a binding code of conduct for the supreme court and term limits for justices.Nearing his 100th birthday and in hospice care in his hometown in Georgia since February 2023, former US president Jimmy Carter reportedly has one goal: voting for Kamala Harris against Donald Trump.“I’m only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris,” Carter told his son Chip this week, as his grandson Jason Carter recounted to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.Harris, Carter’s fellow Democrat, will face the Republican Trump for the presidency on 5 November. Carter’s 100th birthday will fall on 1 October.A Democrat who was in the White House from 1977 to 1981, Carter is the oldest living president. In ill health for several years, his family announced that he entered hospice care on 18 February 2023.Carter is due to turn 100 on October 1. The presidential election is on November 5. As the Journal-Constitution noted, early voting in Georgia begins on 15 October. Full report here.The person who emerges as Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential choice for the Democratic ticket in this election will be informed of her decision tonight or in the morning, Reuters reports, citing three unnamed sources with knowledge of goings-on.The news agency reported moments ago that the competition has narrowed to two names, the governors of Pennsylvania and Minnesota, respectively, Josh Shapiro and Tim Walz.The Harris campaign plans an announcement via social media, featuring the nominee and her running mate, campaign officials familiar with the arrangements told Reuters.Over the weekend, Harris met with her vetting team, including former attorney general Eric Holder, whose law firm Covington & Burling LLP scrutinized the finances and background of potential running mates. Holder and his office made in-depth presentations on each of the finalists, according to multiple sources familiar with the process.Harris is weighing the decision with her husband, Doug Emhoff, brother-in-law Tony West and a small circle of aides and advisers, the sources said.Kamala Harris has spent the last few days interviewing contenders to be her running mate on the Democratic ticket this election and may have whittled her list from six to just two in recent hours, if a report via anonymous sources from Reuters comes true.The news wire says it’s down to Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, and Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz.Guardian US has not verified this report. At the top of the day there apparently were still six guys in the race, although some outlets appeared to be homing in on Shapiro, Walz and the US senator from Arizona Mark Kelly as the top three.Harris and her No 2 will debut as the presumptive Democratic ticket at a rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania tomorrow evening. So if it’s not Shapiro that would be hard for him to swallow.If it’s really down to two, here are our thumbnails on them.Shapiro, a congressional aide turned state representative and state attorney general, the 51-year-old father of four was elected governor in 2022. Close to two years later, he maintains historically high approval ratings. What are regarded as pros and cons of choosing him? Report here.Walz has captured the internet’s attention and swayed Democrats’ messaging recently by succinctly summing up how he views Republicans: they’re weird. Before he took up politics, Walz, 60, was born and raised in small-town Nebraska and became a teacher, first in China, then Nebraska, finally Minnesota. Report here.Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has narrowed her search for a vice-presidential running mate to two finalists, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro and Minnesota governor Tim Walz, three sources with knowledge of the matter said today.Harris, the US vice-president, is expected to announce her selection by Tuesday, ahead of her first scheduled public appearance with her running mate in the evening at Temple University in Philadelphia, Reuters reports.It was unclear if a final decision has been made, the sources told the news wire. The rally will kick off a five-day, seven-city tour of the battleground states likely to decide the 5 November election.Speculation had focused on six men in all – four governors, a senator and a cabinet secretary in the Biden administration.The independent US presidential candidate, Robert F Kennedy Jr, called Donald Trump “a terrible human being”, the “worse [sic] president ever” and “barely human”.“He is probably a sociopath,” Kennedy said in texts to an unnamed person, the New Yorker reported on Monday.Kennedy has been linked to a job in any second Trump administration, not least after Kennedy’s son posted footage of such a move appearing to be discussed. Kennedy attended the Republican convention in Milwaukee in July.On Monday, a spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Kennedy’s reported remarks.They were included in an in-depth New Yorker profile otherwise remarkable for containing the story of how Kennedy came to dump a dead bear in the city’s Central Park 10 years ago.Last month it was reported that Kennedy held recent talks with Trump about endorsing his campaign for a second presidency and – if successful – taking a job in his administration. The election is on 5 November.Read Martin Pengelly’s report in full here.In the realm of how many flip-flop emojis you can garner, however, RFK Jr is running behind Trump’s veep pick, his underperforming and apparently lowly valued running mate JD Vance, a Republican Ohio senator and Maga convert.Meanwhile, here’s an interesting image from the campaign trail: More

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      Clarence Thomas failed to disclose more private jet travel, senator says

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      The conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose more private travel on a jet owned by the rightwing mega-donor Harlan Crow, a Democratic senator said on Monday, amid a swirling ethics scandal and demands for judiciary reform.“I am deeply concerned that Mr Crow may have been showering a public official with extravagant gifts, then writing off those gifts to lower his tax bill,” Ron Wyden of Oregon, the Senate finance committee chair, told a lawyer for Crow in a letter.“This concern is only heightened by the committee’s recent discovery of additional undisclosed international travel on Mr Crow’s private jet by Justice Thomas.”The committee, Wyden said, had “obtained international flight records showing that on 19 November 2010, Justice Thomas and his wife [the rightwing activist Ginni Thomas] flew from Hawaii to New Zealand on Mr Crow’s private jet, before flying back from New Zealand to Hawaii on the jet a week later on 27 November 2010. Mr Crow was also a passenger on these flights.“To date, Justice Thomas has never disclosed this private jet travel on any financial disclosure forms, even though Justice Thomas has amended disclosures to reflect other international travel on Mr Crow’s private jet.”Thomas was confirmed in 1991, after stormy hearings in which he was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill, a law professor. More than 30 years later, he is the longest-serving rightwinger on a court controlled by Republican nominees, 6-3.Gifts to Thomas, undeclared and primarily from Crow but also from other sources and to other justices, have stoked an ethics crisis. Apparent political sympathies among the judges – and family members, with Ginni Thomas having participated in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election – have only added fuel to the fire.The non-profit newsroom ProPublica won a Pulitzer prize for its reporting on the issue. In Congress, the New York progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has led calls for Thomas and Samuel Alito, his fellow arch-rightwinger, to be impeached and removed – a political gambit without a realistic chance of success.Supreme court justices are nominally subject to the same ethics rules as all federal judges but in practice police themselves. An ethics code was introduced last November but remains without outside means of enforcement.Elena Kagan, one of three liberals on the court, has called for better enforcement of ethics rules. John Roberts, the rightwing chief justice, apparently remains unmoved. Despite calls from Wyden and other Democrats, Roberts has refused to testify in Congress.All the while, the Roberts court has handed down major conservative victories, including removing the federal right to abortion and saying presidents enjoy immunity for some acts.Joe Biden recently introduced reform proposals including term limits. In response to the president’s proposal, Neil Gorsuch, the first of three rightwingers appointed in four years during Trump’s presidency, used an interview with Fox News to warn: “I just say: be careful.”Thomas has said he initially believed he did not have to disclose gifts from donors. In the case of Crow, a real-estate billionaire known for collecting memorabilia associated with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, gifts to Thomas also included resort stays, a property purchase and payment of school fees.Thomas did not immediately comment about Wyden’s letter.As reported by the New York Times, a spokesperson for Crow said his lawyers had “already addressed Senator Wyden’s inquiries, which have no legal basis and are only intended to harass a private citizen”.Crow “consider[s] this matter settled”, they said.Wyden said he was “concerned that I have so far been unable to even determine the full extent of the potential tax abuse at issue”.A committee spokesperson told the Times the panel still hoped Crow would provide tax records voluntarily.Wyden said: “Neither Mr Crow nor Justice Thomas have disclosed the full scale of the Thomases’ use of the Michaela Rose [Crow’s superyacht] and private jets courtesy of Mr Crow, even as the Congress continues to uncover additional international private jet travel with Mr Crow that Justice Thomas failed to disclose on his ethics filings.”Citing filings recently updated by Thomas, “to include an eight-day voyage aboard the Michaela Rose in Indonesia in 2019”, Wyden said the justice “still has not disclosed other trips” on Crow’s yacht”.He added: “Public reports show evidence that Justice Thomas was a passenger aboard the Michaela Rose in Greece, New Zealand and elsewhere.“Additionally, a relative of Justice Thomas has stated that he personally witnessed Justice Thomas travel aboard the Michaela Rose in the Caribbean, Russia and the Baltics, with the trip to Russia also including helicopter ride(s).”Caroline Ciccone, president of Accountable.US, a group which campaigns for court reform, said: “The undue influence exerted by wealthy and powerful individuals like Harlan Crow over Justice Thomas highlights systemic corruption that cannot be ignored.”Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson, said Wyden had “strengthen[ed] the case [the president] made for common-sense reforms that are backed by constitutional experts across the political spectrum – as well as the vast majority of the American people.“The most powerful court in the United States shouldn’t be subject to the lowest ethical standards, and conflicts of interest on the supreme court cannot go unchecked.” More

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      Harris to announce VP pick on Tuesday ahead of Philadelphia rally – report

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      Kamala Harris is reportedly set to announce her choice of a running mate with a video released on Tuesday, before they appear together at an evening rally in Philadelphia to kick off a five-day tour of the swing states that are crucial to winning the presidential election.Politico, which first reported the Harris campaign’s plan, noted that Joe Biden also prepared a video to reveal Harris as his running mate in 2020.The culmination of what has been a lightning-fast vetting process – it is little more than two weeks since Biden, the 81-year-old president, made the historic decision to stand aside and Harris became the de facto nominee – has seen a round of interviews both in person and online.On Monday, Reuters reported that the search had narrowed to two governors: Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Tim Walz of Minnesota. Harris, 59, interviewed both men, as well as the Arizona senator Mark Kelly, over the weekend at the Naval Observatory, the Washington DC residence of the vice-president.Three other men were reported to be on her shortlist: the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker; the Kentucky governor, Andy Beshear; and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who is now the US secretary of transportation.With polling showing her gaining on Donald Trump – CBS gave the Democrat a one-point edge nationally and put the candidates level in battleground states – and a rocky rollout for Trump’s own vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, speculation has been rife as to whom Harris will select, with reporters seizing on even the smallest clues.Her choice of Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, for her first rally with her new running mate has fueled speculation that it will be Shapiro, while Kelly on Sunday tweeted then deleted the statement: “My mission is now serving Arizonans.” Reuters subsequently cited anonymous sources that Kelly was indeed out of the running.In Kentucky, meanwhile, Beshear was corralled by reporters in Frankfort while out walking his labradoodle, Winnie, responding only: “Just walking the dog this morning.”Each of the contenders was widely seen to bring strengths to the ticket. Kelly is a former combat pilot and astronaut from the border state of Arizona, which is is also an election battleground state.Pennsylvania, too, is a swing state, and Shapiro is strikingly popular with Republican voters, whom Harris courted this weekend by rolling out a slate of endorsements from anti-Trump conservatives, including former Trump White House officials.Although Minnesota is not a battleground state, Walz is more popular with young and progressive voters than Kelly or Shapiro, the latter having drawn heavy fire for his stance on Israel’s war in Gaza and pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses.Whoever is chosen will then embark on a rapid-fire tour of battleground states with events in Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia.Vance, the US senator from Ohio attempting to improve his poor showing so far on the Trump ticket, has scheduled a Tuesday campaign stop in Philadelphia of his own.The CBS poll showed Harris and Trump level in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona. Harris was ahead by two points in Nevada. Trump was up by three points in North Carolina and Georgia, and by one point in Wisconsin. More

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      JD Vance’s wife says his ‘childless cat ladies’ comment was a ‘quip’

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      Women offended by JD Vance’s contention that the US is run by “childless cat ladies” should realise it was merely a “quip”, the Republican vice-presidential nominee’s wife, Usha Vance, claimed in an interview broadcast on Monday.“I took a moment to look and actually see what he had said and tried to understand what the context was and all that, which is something that I really wish people would do a little bit more often,” Vance told Fox News in remarks that doubled down on a controversy that has emerged as one of her husband’s most persistent.“And the reality is, he made a quip in service of making a point that he wanted to make that was substantive and had actual meaning. And I just wish sometimes that … we would spend a lot less time just sort of going through this three-word phrase or that three-word phrase.”But JD Vance’s three-word phrase lies at the heart of his rocky rollout as Donald Trump’s running mate.Speaking in 2021, a year shy of election to the US Senate in Ohio and when best known as the author of the bestseller Hillbilly Elegy, Vance told the then Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the US was run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.“It’s just a basic fact – you look at [vice-president] Kamala Harris, [US transportation secretary] Pete Buttigieg, AOC [congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] – the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”Buttigieg now has children, adopted with his husband, Chasten, in 2021.Vance has come under sustained fire over a host of allegedly misogynistic remarks, including about women who choose not to have children or cannot have them at all.Harris, a stepmother of two, is now the Democratic nominee for president, preparing to name her own running mate to face Trump and Vance.On Fox and Friends, Usha Vance – who has three children – insisted her husband “was really saying … that it can be really hard to be a parent in this country and sometimes our policies are designed in a way that make it even harder”.She did not mention, and was not asked about, her husband’s support for a national abortion ban (having even compared abortion to slavery), or his presence among Senate Republicans who blocked a bill to establish the right to in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), a treatment that helps millions of Americans who might otherwise not be able to have children.In a recent statement, Aida Ross, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, said: “Trump and Vance’s extreme … agenda wouldn’t just ban abortion nationwide with or without Congress – it would also threaten access to IVF for millions of women. Vance can try to cover for his anti-choice record all he wants, but the American people see through the spin.”Usha Vance insisted that with his “childless cat ladies” remark, her husband had really meant to say: “What is it about our leadership and the way that they think about the world that makes it so hard sometimes for parents? And that’s the conversation that I really think that we should have and I understand why he was saying that.”Asked what she would say to women “hurt or offended” by her husband’s remarks – prominently including the actor Jennifer Aniston – Vance said: “I think I would say first of all that JD absolutely at the time, and today, would never ever, ever want to say something to hurt someone who was trying to have a family who was really struggling with that. And he made that clear at the time, and he’s made that clear today.“And we have lots of friends who have been in that position. It is challenging and never ever anything that we want to mock or make fun of.“And I also understand there are a lot of other reasons why people may choose not to have families, and many of those reasons are very good.”Vance was also asked about another controversy affecting her husband – that over remarks in which he said: “I hate the police.”“JD certainly does not hate the police,” Vance said, though she added: “He maybe had a negative interaction once or twice and made a remark like that, I don’t know.”The former friend to whom Vance made the remark, Sofia Nelson, now a public defender in Detroit, is transgender.Last year, Vance introduced the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, a law to stop minors accessing puberty blockers, hormone therapy and other transition-related care.Nelson attended Yale law school with JD and Usha Vance and attended their wedding in 2014. Back then, Usha Vance was a registered Democrat.Nelson recently gave her correspondence with JD to the New York Times, which added it to evidence of his former distrust and dislike for Trump.“He achieved great success and became very rich by being a Never Trumper who explained the white working class to the liberal elite,” Nelson told the Times. “Now he’s amassing even more power by expressing the exact opposite.”Usha Vance told Fox: “It is hard to know that sometimes politics comes in the way of friendships.” More

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      Democrats should run on a progressive economic agenda. Americans are ready | Bernie Sanders

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      One of the most extraordinary aspects of our corporate-dominated American political system is the degree to which the needs of working-class people, the majority of our population, are systematically ignored by political and media elites.Americans who are following the 2024 presidential campaign – and the vital campaigns for control of the US Senate and the US House – will see, hear and read a whole lot of rhetoric from political insiders and the corporate media about the “political game”.They’ll hear about horserace polls, how much money the candidates raise, what billionaire “donors” are demanding, who the vice-presidential candidate might be and, of course, the dumb things candidates said or did five years ago. Or 10 years ago. Or 20 years ago.But, in the midst of all the political gossip on TV and in the newspapers, what Americans will not encounter is a serious discussion of the multiple economic crises facing the 60% of our fellow citizens who live paycheck to paycheck – the working class of this country. What you will not hear about is why, in the richest country in the history of the world, so few have so much while so many have so little. What you will not hear about is the pain, the stress, the anxiety that tens of millions of Americans experience on a daily basis, and how governmental decisions can improve their lives.In order to combat a political system which ignores so many of the most important concerns facing the majority of our people, my campaign recently commissioned a poll in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It asked some pretty basic questions: what are the major concerns that you and your families have? What would you like your government to do about them?The results of the poll are not surprising, and not unlike other polls done over the years.They show that, at the time of huge income and wealth inequality, unprecedented corporate greed, a failing healthcare system, a grossly unfair tax structure, an extremely high rate of childhood poverty, and too many seniors struggling to pay for their basic necessities, the American people want strong governmental action which addresses the longstanding needs of working families.In other words, it turns out that progressive economic proposals are extremely popular – not only among Democrats but also among independents, Republicans and even the most ardent Trump supporters.One of the key findings of the poll is that, on core economic issues, by a wide margin, voters are more likely to vote for a candidate who favors expanding social security benefits by making the wealthy pay the same tax rate as the working class. They strongly support a candidate who favors expanding Medicare to cover vision, dental and hearing needs, who favors cutting the cost of prescription drugs in half by making sure that Americans pay no more than what they pay in Europe or Canada, and who favors hiking taxes on the rich and multinational corporations so that they pay their fair share.In other words: campaigning on an economic agenda that speaks to the needs of working families is a winning formula for Kamala Harris and Democrats in November. Indeed, it is the formula that could give Harris the sort of victory that sweeps in a Democratic Senate and House and allows her to govern in the best tradition of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Joe Biden’s Build Back Better program.In fact, whether a candidate is running for the White House or a city council seat, endorsing policies that support working families is not only the right thing to do, it’s good politics.I don’t usually say that candidates should pay attention to the polls. But, in this instance, Democrats should do just that.Here are some of the key results. The full poll can be read here.Swing-state voters are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports:Expanding Medicare to cover dental, vision and hearing;

      77% overall

      73% independents

      69% Republicans

      67% Trump voters
      Cutting the cost of prescription drugs in half by making sure that Americans pay no more than what they pay in Europe or Canada;

      75% overall

      68% independents

      68% Republicans

      65% Trump voters
      Expanding social security benefits by making the wealthy pay the same tax rate as the working class;

      72% overall

      72% independents

      56% Republicans

      56% Trump voters
      Making the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share of taxes;

      70% overall

      68% independents

      54% Republicans

      53% Trump voters
      Instituting a cap on rent increases;

      63% overall

      57% independents

      46% Republicans

      46% Trump voters
      Establishing a Medicare for all single-payer healthcare system guaranteeing healthcare to all America;

      62% overall

      62% independents

      39% Republicans

      39% Trump voters
      Eliminating all medical debt;

      62% overall

      59% independents

      43% Republicans

      42% Trump voters
      Building at least 2m units of affordable housing;

      59% overall

      57% independents

      38% Republicans

      42% Trump voters
      Re-establishing the child tax credits;

      58% overall

      55% independents

      43% Republicans

      43% Trump voters
      Capping the amount of money families spend on childcare at 7% of their income;

      54% overall

      49% independents

      37% Republicans

      37% Trump voters
      Raising the minimum wage to $17 an hour;

      51% overall

      49% independents

      47% Republicans

      42% Trump voters
      Making public colleges and universities tuition-free;

      50% Overall

      51% independents

      25% Republicans

      25% Trump voters
      Passing the Pro Act, which would make it easier for Americans to join unions;

      48% overall

      41% independents

      29% Republicans

      28% Trump voters

      Bernie Sanders is a US senator, and chair of the health education labor and pensions committee. He represents the state of Vermont, and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress More

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      Ashwin Ramaswami takes on a fake elector for a Georgia state senate seat

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      The top of a ticket might normally be expected to have a profound impact on local races, especially with new vigor thanks to Kamala Harris replacing Joe Biden. The problem in Georgia is that there are almost no local races worth discussing because the state is gerrymandered to microscopic proportions.There is exactly one state senate race that’s predictably competitive for a Democratic pick-up in Georgia. And that one race is spicy.The Republican state senator Shawn Still will face trial in the Fulton county election interference case along with Donald Trump and 17 other co-defendants. He is accused of being one of the so-called fake electors in the scheme.Facing Still in November for the suburban Atlanta seat is Ashwin Ramaswami, a 25-year-old techie graduate of Forsyth county’s renowned public schools, impossibly earnest, unusually young, reflective of this district’s increasingly diverse demography, and utterly indefatigable. He is everywhere all at once and – perhaps unintentionally – wearing people down with high-end nerd glam and the zeal of a challenger.Ramaswami is a computer science graduate from Stanford University with a law degree from Georgetown, which he somehow managed to obtain while bouncing between startups and Google internships and fellowships with venture capital outfits and work for the federal government on election cybersecurity.He turned 25 at the end of July, four months ahead of the cutoff where he would have been too young to run for the Georgia senate.Most people on his trajectory end up in a 70-hour-a-week consulting job, earning a salary that reads like a phone number that they don’t have time to spend.“I just soon realized that just going off into tech and making money that way wasn’t really for me,” he told the Guardian. “It wasn’t that interesting, to be honest, because there are so many bigger issues going on, right?”If a devoutly Hindu candidate who is young enough to be on his parent’s health insurance does not sound like the profile of a Georgia politician, it is because politics is playing catchup with Atlanta’s rapid demographic changes and its increasingly international character.Georgia’s 48th state senate district crosses north Fulton, Forsyth and Gwinnett counties and is in the heart of the region’s affluent tech community. Nearly a third of its residents are foreign born. Ramaswami’s parents are from the same part of India as Kamala Harris’s mother, he said. (He is not related to Vivek Ramaswamy, former Republican presidential candidate and conservative firecracker.)Politically the district has been a purple mosaic of longtime Republican voters increasingly competing with newer, younger, Democratic transplants. The former Georgia GOP chairman David Shafer – one of the defendants in the Trump case here – held this seat when he was a state senator. It passed to Democrat Michelle Au, an Asian American physician, before the legislature carved it up in redistricting. Still won it by 11 points in 2022.The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee believes Still’s seat has a 7-point Republican lean now, discounting the effects of the indictment on the race. Two senate seats held by Democrats are within striking distance of a Republican. All of Georgia’s remaining senate districts require a wipeout wave election to be seriously competitive.Still, 52, owner of a swimming pool subcontracting company and a former finance chairman for the Georgia Republican party, did not return calls or emails asking for comment. But he has presented himself as a relatively moderate Republican and maintains his innocence in the case, describing his role as necessary to preserve legal challenges to the 2020 election in Georgia.View image in fullscreen“We went to the meeting. We listened to the attorneys. We signed our names exactly as we were prescribed,” he said on the Alan Sanders Show last month. “I never thought for a moment I had anything to hide.” Still characterizes the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, as “corrupt” for bringing charges, and said he would go to court immediately to clear his name if he could. An appellate court hearing to see if the case moves forward is scheduled for October.Twenty years ago, most people who lived in the district were white. Not so now, Still said.“We are in a minority to majority state,” Still told Sanders. “If people think that we can keep doing things the way that we’ve always done it, we are going to be in for a pretty rude awakening and wake up one day and never be able to win office again.”Still has campaigned aggressively to hold his seat, including and especially in the Indian community, which has a significant number of Republican supporters. “They’ve been very welcoming, because we share the same values, about family, about public safety, about education,” Still said. “If they see that you share their values, it’s OK if you don’t look like them, or worship like them, right.“In the past, I think a lot of Republicans have just kind of written off smaller groups like that. And we can’t afford to do that any more.”Education is a key component of Ramaswami’s pitch. The high school Ramaswami attended in the district – from which he graduated second in his class – is now majority students of color and 28% Asian.Ramaswami speaks often about the value of a product of these schools representing the community in the legislature. He can speak authentically and with authority about the somewhat absurd expectations parents in this part of Georgia place on their children’s achievements. Ramaswami is the kid that blows the grading curve.Up until recently, he also sounded like it.Constant campaigning has started to scrape the geek off of him, a bit. Conversations with voters and donors – and anyone he can corral – has that effect over time, he said.“You do it over and over again and then you get better, right?” he said. “Like, I wasn’t good at this when I was starting, but I figured I need to get better at it. I want to actually, you know, serve my community.”Ramaswami’s campaign has been relentless, even by the heightened standards of swing state politics. He has become a fixture in public in the north metro area, knocking on doors and showing up to churches and mosques and synagogues and temples and perhaps backyard pool parties and pickup basketball games. That retail politicking has been coupled with an intense social media and digital media campaign, fueled by more than $400,000 in fundraising – more than double that of his opponent.“I didn’t know him at the time, but the first thing I ever heard about him was from other people who do politics in north Fulton and Johns Creek talking about how often they’re getting texts and campaign emails from him,” said Alex Vanden Heuvel, a 27-year-old political consultant with FTR Political Strategies. “Anytime we bring it up, that’s the first thing out of anybody’s mouth is his digital game, like he’s always in your inbox, always in your texts.”Sara Henderson, a Georgia-based political consultant, knows Ramaswami and likened the persistence of his campaigning to being sold an extended warranty.“Every second of the day. It doesn’t turn it off,” she said. “Twenty-four seven. I think that it’s good in a way, to see that excitement and that, like, ‘I’m in it for the right reasons.’ But there’s also some learning that needs to happen about political nuance and knowing the right timing … Sometimes the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but it doesn’t always get the grease it needs.”But the goal is name recognition, Ramaswami said. His internal polling suggests he is now more recognizable than Still is.“It has actually been the case for a lot of my career, where I feel like I’m just doing normal things and then somehow that’s, like, 10 times more than what everyone else does,” Ramaswami said. “So, you know, I’m glad that it’s setting a new standard. I don’t feel overworked.” More

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      Nancy Pelosi reveals struggle with guilt after husband’s attack: ‘I was the target’

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      The former US House speaker Nancy Pelosi has revealed that she has been struggling with guilt ever since a man wielding a hammer invaded her home and gave her husband a near fatal beating that had been meant for her ahead of the fall 2022 elections.“He was looking for me. Imagine the guilt of all of that,” the California Democratic congresswoman said in an interview aired on CBS News Sunday Morning, which contained some of her most extensive remarks to date about the attack that badly injured Paul Pelosi. “It’s just a horrible thing.“I was the target.”Pelosi was in Washington DC when a man named David DePape broke into her San Francisco home through the back door in the early hours of 28 October 2022. Less than two weeks before that year’s federal midterm elections, DePape planned to kidnap the then-speaker, question her and post footage of the purported interrogation online. DePape was motivated by a far-right conspiracy theory falsely claiming Donald Trump is locked in secret, mortal combat with a cabal of elite Democratic pedophiles trying to take out the Republican former president.But instead DePape only encountered Paul Pelosi – aged 82 at the time – in his bedroom. Holding a hammer and zip ties, DePape demanded: “Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy?”Paul Pelosi managed to call the police for help. Before officers arrived, DePape used the hammer to repeatedly batter Paul Pelosi in the head and knock him unconscious.Pelosi needed surgery for a fractured skull as well as injuries to his arm and hands. In addition to having a metal plate placed in his head, Pelosi has since grappled with dizziness, balance problems and permanent nerve damage in his left hand, according to a letter filed in federal court.Juries convicted DePape on both state and federal charges connected to the violent home intrusion. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison.In her new book, The Art of Power, Pelosi explained how her daughter – documentary film-maker Alexandra Pelosi – told her, “You have to give … up … everything in your public life” following the break-in.But Pelosi told CBS that her family did not blame her as much as “certain elements of the Republican party who had been demonizing” her for years.She seemingly alluded to a speech Trump delivered at the California Republican party’s convention last September during which he mockingly asked: “How’s [Pelosi’s] husband doing by the way? Anybody know?”“The sad thing about my husband’s assault was that they just made a joke of it – they thought it was funny, and people laughed,” said Pelosi, whose book is scheduled for a Tuesday release.The feelings of guilt that Pelosi described on Sunday in her conversation with CBS’s Lesley Stahl are common among people whose loved ones experience a traumatic situation, whether or not they are public figures, according to experts.Pelosi, 84, joined Congress in 1987. She served two four-year stints as House speaker, beginning in 2007 and 2019.One of her party’s most influential voices on Capitol Hill, Pelosi reportedly played a key role in passing on messages to Joe Biden about their fellow Democrats’ concerns over his ability to retain the Oval Office in November.The president ultimately quit his re-election campaign on 21 July, making way for his vice-president, Kamala Harris, to become the Democratic nominee to face Trump in November’s race for the White House.As of Sunday, polls suggested the lead that Trump had built against Biden in vital swing states had vanished, and he and Harris were locked in a close contest that many believe could decide the future of American democracy.Pelosi on Sunday declined to answer when asked if it was true that Biden was furious at her over the looming end of his presidency. She also declared “No, I wasn’t a leader of any pressure” campaign for Biden to step down.“He knows that I love him very much,” Pelosi said to Stahl. “Let me say the things that I didn’t do. I didn’t call one person. I did not call one person. I could always say to him: ‘I never called anybody.’“What I’m saying is – I had confidence that the president would make the proper choice for our country, whatever that would be. And I said, … ‘Whatever that is, we’ll go with.’” More