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      Trump ally calls GOP attack on Harris’s racial identity a ‘phony controversy’

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      Donald Trump ally Byron Donalds and ABC host George Stephanopoulos sparred on Sunday over Republicans’ attack line questioning Kamala Harris’s racial identity.During an interview on ABC’s This Week, the Republican Florida representative called the issue a “phony controversy” and said “I don’t really care.” He then proceeded to double down on the issues – which the former president brought up earlier this week at the NABJ conference – by saying: “When Kamala Harris went into the United States Senate, it was AP that said she was the first Indian American United States senator … Now she’s running nationally, obviously the campaign has shifted. They’re talking much more about her father’s heritage and her Black identity.”Donalds then added: “It doesn’t really matter.”In response, Stephanopoulos said: “If it doesn’t matter, why do you all keep questioning her again? She’s always identified as a Black woman. She’s biracial. She has a Jamaican father and Indian mother she’s always identified as both. Why are you questioning that?”“Well George, first of all, this is something that’s actually a conversation all throughout social media right now. There are a lot of people trying to figure this out. But again, that’s a side issue, not the main issue,” Donalds replied.Stephanopoulos followed up, saying: “Sir, one second. You just did it again. Why do you insist on questioning her racial identity?” to which Donalds said: “You want me to talk?”“I want you to answer my question,” Stephanopoulos replied.Donalds’ comments come despite some Republican figures including South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham and House speaker Mike Johnson saying their party should avoid that kind of attack.In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Graham said: “Every day we’re talking about her heritage and not her … record … is a good day for her and a bad day for us.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeanwhile, Axios last month reported Johnson encouraging Republican members to take aim at Harris’s policies instead of her heritage. The outlet further reports that during a closed-door meeting, Donalds himself “encouraged members in the meeting to ‘hold off on editorializing’ on Kamala. Just stick to her disastrous record,” according to a Republican lawmaker who was present.The attacks against the vice-president’s racial identity also come as Trump says he would debate her on Fox News while Harris insists on ABC, the original network chosen for the second presidential debate.In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote: “The Debate was previously scheduled against … Biden on ABC, but has been terminated in that Biden will no longer be a participant, and I am in litigation against ABC Network and George Slopadopoulos, thereby creating a conflict of interest.”Harris’s team has not agreed to Trump’s request to carry out the debate on the Republican-friendly network, with campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler saying: “Donald Trump is running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to and running straight to Fox News to bail him out.” More

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      Democratic primary in Arizona’s third district remains too close to call

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      The Democratic primary in Arizona’s third congressional district still remains too close to call and could be headed for a recount.Former Phoenix city council member Yassamin Ansari led former state lawmaker Raquel Terán by 67 votes with nearly 44,000 ballots counted as of Saturday evening.Ansari’s lead was 89 votes on Friday, a margin of just 0.21 percentage points and within the range of an automatic recount. Arizona law calls for a recount if the margin is 0.5 percentage points or less.Maricopa county election officials said about 99% of the roughly 740,000 ballots cast in Tuesday’s primary election had been tabulated and verified by Saturday night.More votes were expected to be counted by Sunday night.Both candidates sent out statements Saturday and noted the close race.“We are still hard at work ensuring that every vote is counted,” Ansari said. “Thank you to the thousands of voters who made their voices heard in this election.”Terán said “we’re narrowing the gap” and “there are still more outstanding ballots to come. We believe every vote matters.”The seat is open due to Democratic Representative Ruben Gallego’s run for US Senate.The winner of the Democratic primary will be the favorite in the November election against Republican Jeff Zink to represent the district, which leans Democratic and covers central and south-west Phoenix.Ansari, the daughter of Iranian immigrants, previously served as vice-mayor of Phoenix. She resigned from the council in March to focus on the congressional district race.Terán, who previously chaired the Arizona Democratic party, was in her first term serving in the Arizona Senate after being elected in November 2022. She resigned in April 2023 to focus on her congressional run. More

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      Trump calls union leader who endorsed Kamala Harris ‘a stupid person’

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      The United Auto Workers’ decision to endorse Kamala Harris’s presidential run has apparently gotten under the skin of Donald Trump, who has responded by insulting the union’s leader as “a stupid person”.In a new interview with Fox News on Sunday, as reported by the Hill, the former president said of union chief Shawn Fain: “Look, the United Auto Workers I know very well – they vote for me. They have a stupid person leading them, but they vote for me. They’re going to love Donald Trump more than ever before.”Trump’s remarks allude to the harsh 100% tariff he has proposed on imported cars. Economists have warned that such a tariff would raise product costs for Americans, but Trump has insisted on it, saying it reflects how he would prioritize the auto industry if returned to White House in November’s election.“We’re going to take in a fortune but we’re going to tariff those jobs,” Trump said.“We’re bringing back the automobile industry and we’re going to do that with tariffs,” Trump said.Fain and the UAW – one of the US’s largest and most diverse labor unions – nonetheless gave their coveted endorsement to the vice-president, saying in a statement that Harris had a “proven track record of delivering for the working class”.Trump’s comments about Fain and the UAW come just days after Fain announced that the union – one of the country’s largest and most diverse – is endorsing Harris for president.“We can put a billionaire back in office who stands against everything our union stands for, or we can elect Kamala Harris who will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with us in our war on corporate greed,” said the statement announcing the UAW’s endorsement for November’s White House election.Trump and the UAW have frequently traded barbs, with Trump calling for Fain to be “fired immediately” during his speech at the Republican national convention in July.In response, the UAW called Trump a “scab” – a derogatory term for someone who abandons or refuses to join a labor union – as well as a corporate businessman whose main interest is protecting the wealthy.When the UAW endorsed Joe Biden before the president quit his re-election campaign in July, Trump took to his Truth Social platform to attack Fain, calling him a “dope” and urging autoworkers to defy the union’s endorsement by voting for him instead.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Sunday, Fain appeared on CBS News’s Face the Nation and elaborated on his union’s decision to endorse Harris.“When you put Kamala Harris and Donald Trump side-by-side, there’s a very telling difference in who stands with working-class people and who left working-class people behind,” Fain said.He continued: “Trump’s been all talk for working-class people.“One of the biggest issues facing this country is inflation. It’s not policy-driven. It’s driven by corporate greed and consumer price gouging and that’s what Donald Trump stands for. The rich get richer and the working class gets left behind.” More

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      Trump exploits the end of the American dream | Letters

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      Stephen Reicher says Trump implies that the people need him as their saviour, to buck “the establishment” (Donald Trump is a misogynistic, billionaire felon. Here’s why Americans can’t stop voting for him, 26 July). It appears to me that he is exploiting the collapse of the American dream. Most “ordinary” people have realised that neither they nor their children will be better off in the future; that the dream is an illusion. And here comes the man promising to revitalise it, claiming that he is the incarnation of their dreams and that he, who has been successful as an establishment outsider, is the one person who can offer them hope again. This appears to be irresistible to all those who feel that the promise that hard work would guarantee a better life has not been upheld.Finally, they see others – in their view, less hard-working people – being supported and promoted, often by way of equality-enhancing measures or dismantling white male privilege, which they themselves have perceived as well-deserved entitlements. Their messiah confirms it, exploiting latent racism. It’s a message that they love to believe, regardless of whatever their leader does in reality. Emotions trump rationality, and Trump sets them free. Frightening, in particular for a German aware of how German democracy lost out to agitators a century ago.Dr Joachim H SpangenbergCologne, Germany While much of Stephen Reicher’s arguments regarding Donald Trump’s success is true, he fails to recognise the key issue – that US revolutionary fervour is politically agnostic. In much the same way that Barack Obama’s initial promise of “fundamental transformation” identified a problem with the system and its structures, Trump also primarily focuses on his supposed intent to bring genuine societal change.Unfortunately, what unites these two American icons is that neither had or has any intention of doing anything of the kind. The problem then, given the rules of the US electoral process, is that a substantial (or majority) demographic that craves meaningful change is only permitted to choose between candidates selected by the only two political parties possessing the financial backing of economic interests that do not want change.Dr Clive T DarwellManchester I appreciate Stephen Reicher’s analysis, especially the dynamic of how every violation of law by Trump demonstrates that he is a victim. Victimhood supersedes rule of law, because laws are a product of the establishment, government, etc, out to control people’s freedom. Yes, but let’s acknowledge that Trump has never won a popular majority, even in 2016. It’s only because of the electoral college that a few swing states control the outcomes.Also note the increased activities of Republicans to disenfranchise people of colour. Trump’s distorted, destructive views don’t work with the majority of American voters, which is why they’re hellbent on depriving people of the vote. Maga supporters will continue to be stoked by fear, but many more Americans are waking up to how to think rather than be consumed by fear. Gratefully, Kamala Harris can lead us into the future. And even then, the US will be plunged into violence of great proportion.Margaret WheatleyProvo Canyon, Utah Prof Reicher states his case cogently, but misses two points. First, within the hearts of many, there lies a deep desire for a simple answer to complex problems. Second, I and mine have done no wrong, it was the others who got us into this mess. Harness those who desperately want to believe these points to your populist cause and you are well on your way to elected office.David HastingsBalbeggie, Perth and Kinross More

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      Kentucky’s governor clears schedule for Harris VP announcement, stoking speculation

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      Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, canceled a planned appearance in the western part of his state on Friday with no official explanation, intensifying speculation over whether Kamala Harris might choose him as her running mate.Beshear’s schedule change is far from a guarantee that Harris will select him considering that Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, another name on the shortlist of potential running-mates, also canceled a fundraising trip planned for this weekend amid reports that Harris was interviewing a number of vice-presidential candidate contenders over the weekend.Shapiro is widely viewed as a frontrunner in the veepstakes, as Democrats hope he could help deliver the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, but Beshear’s supporters insist he is best positioned to sway independent voters in the presidential race. According to a recent Morning Consult survey, Beshear has the highest approval rating of any Democratic governor in the country, with 67% of Kentuckians holding a favorable impression of him.Beshear’s popularity is all the more astounding given the political leanings of his state. In 2020, Donald Trump defeated Joe Biden by 26 points in Kentucky, and no Democratic presidential candidate has carried the state since 1996.Despite those significant hurdles, Beshear won re-election to a second term last year by five points, besting the then Republican attorney general, Daniel Cameron. The victory came four years after Beshear defeated a deeply unpopular Republican incumbent, Matt Bevin, by just 0.4 points. The surprise victory was made possible in part because of Beshear’s high name recognition, as his father, Steve Beshear, served as Kentucky’s governor for two terms.Beshear’s strong performance last year was credited to his consistent leadership of the state through the coronavirus pandemic and multiple natural disasters. The governor pitched himself as a hard-working executive capable of rising above politics to do what is right for his state, an argument that he has reiterated at Harris campaign events in recent days.At a rally in Georgia last weekend, Beshear contrasted himself with Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance, who grew up in Ohio but touted his family connections to Kentucky in his memoir Hillbilly Elegy.“I mean, there’s a county that JD Vance says he’s from in Kentucky – and I won it by 22 points last November,” Beshear said.While Beshear emphasized his experience as he sought re-election last year, he also cast a spotlight on one of the social issues that may decide the presidential race: abortion access. A year after Kentucky voters rejected a ballot measure stipulating that the state constitution did not protect reproductive rights, Beshear capitalized on his opponent’s anti-abortion views in a searing campaign ad.The ad featured a woman named Hadley Duvall, who shared that she was raped by her stepfather when she was 12. Duvall condemned Cameron’s support for an abortion ban as a severe threat to Kentuckians.“Anyone who believes there should be no exceptions for rape and incest could never understand what it’s like to stand in my shoes,” Duvall said in the ad. “To tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her is unthinkable. I’m speaking out because women and girls need to have options. Daniel Cameron would give us none.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEven though Beshear leaned into the issue of abortion access during his campaign, reproductive rights groups have questioned his record. They note that Beshear often focuses on pregnancies involving rape or incest when he discusses abortion and that his lieutenant governor, Jacqueline Coleman, previously described herself as “a pro-life compassionate Democrat”. (Coleman has more recently endorsed Harris and condemned the overturning of Roe v Wade.)Speaking to reporters in Georgia last weekend, Beshear forcefully rejected any suggestion that he was weak on reproductive rights. He reminded them of his multiple vetoes of anti-abortion bills, even though some of those proposals were enacted anyway because of the Republican supermajority in the state legislature.“I’m the first Democrat in Kentucky that has ever run an abortion ad​​ during an election,” he told reporters. “I’ve stood up every single time, knowing that it would be one of the No 1 attacks on me.”Questions over Beshear’s stance on abortion could play an important role in Harris’s deliberations, as she has placed a heavy emphasis on the issue since formally launching her campaign last week. But if Beshear joins Harris’s ticket, he will probably follow the example of his predecessors by embracing the agenda of the presidential nominee.Harris’s announcement is expected no later than Tuesday, when she will appear at a rally in Pennsylvania with her new running mate. More

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      Sofa so bad for JD Vance as Trump’s VP pick faces swirling speculation

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      It all started with a tweet about a couch. Within hours of Donald Trump announcing the Ohio senator JD Vance as his running mate in the presidential race, a rather lurid accusation cropped up on social media.The user of a since-deleted X account wrote last month, “can’t say for sure but he might be the first vp pick to have admitted in a ny times bestseller to fucking an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions (vance, hillbilly elegy, pp. 179-181).”The fake page citation from Vance’s bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy lent credibility to what turned out to be a baseless claim, as detailed in a now-removed fact check from the Associated Press. Soon, the internet was awash in memes mocking Vance’s relationship with various pieces of furniture. “I did not have sectional relations,” one X user joked, paraphrasing Bill Clinton’s infamous quote about his extramarital affair. Another user added: “Who hasn’t been excited by the thrill of the chaise?”Even Kamala Harris’s newly launched presidential campaign appeared to get in on the fun, tweeting: “JD Vance does not couch his hatred for women.”The couch debacle only underscored Vance’s overall dismal introduction to the country after his somewhat forgettable speech at the Republican national convention last month, prompting some to wonder if Trump should make the historic decision to ditch his running mate just three months before election day. Vance enters the final 100-day stretch of the election season as one of the most unpopular running mates in recent history. According to a CNN analysis, Vance is the least liked non-incumbent vice-presidential nominee since 1980.And the backlash goes deeper than couch memes. Critics have dug up his past comments supporting a nationwide abortion ban and attacking women without children. In a clip from 2021 that has circulated widely over the past two weeks, Vance told the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the US was managed 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”.That comment struck many Americans as so out of touch that it sparked censure from some surprising figures, including the generally apolitical celebrity Jennifer Aniston. “Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day,” Aniston wrote in an Instagram post. “I hope she will not need to turn to [in vitro fertilization] as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too.”The Harris campaign cast an even brighter spotlight on the controversy with a statement titled, Happy World IVF Day To Everyone Except JD Vance.The turmoil has intensified questions over whether Trump might replace Vance as his running mate, a strategy that has not been pursued since 1972. One unnamed House Republican told the Hill last week: “I think if you were to ask many people around this building, 9 out of 10 on our side would say he’s the wrong pick … He’s the only person who can do serious damage.”View image in fullscreenBut many of Vance’s vulnerabilities were apparent well before he joined Trump’s ticket. Vance won his Senate seat in 2022 after emerging victorious from a heated and closely contested Republican primary in Ohio. Vance only won the primary by eight points, even after securing Trump’s crucial endorsement. The endorsement surprised many, as Vance had sharply criticized Trump in the past. Vance’s primary opponents repeatedly attacked him as a fake Trump supporter, reminding voters that he once described the former president as “America’s Hitler”.After advancing from that ugly primary fight, Vance went on to defeat the Democrat Tim Ryan by six points, even though Trump had carried Ohio by eight points just two years earlier. (In comparison, Mike DeWine won re-election as Ohio’s governor by 25 points that same year.) Ryan was able to keep the race competitive enough to force outside Republican groups to spend tens of millions of dollars in Vance’s defense. The Senate Leadership Pac, which has close ties to the top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell, spent more than $32m in the race, according to OpenSecrets.Since joining the Senate last year, Vance has become one of Trump’s most loyal supporters in Congress and embraced the former president’s agenda on everything from foreign policy to election denialism. In one illuminating interview with CNN in May, Vance suggested pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses should face criminal charges.“So you agree that people who break in and vandalize a building should be prosecuted?” asked the CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins.“Exactly,” Vance said.Collins replied, “I’m just checking because you did help raise money for people who did so on January 6.”All of this baggage has come to the forefront right as Vance is trying to introduce himself to a much larger audience of voters, and the search for a Democratic vice-presidential nominee has only exacerbated his troubles. The Democrats vying to become Harris’s running mate have taken to publicly lambasting Vance at every turn, offering a preview of a potential vice-presidential debate.The Kentucky governor, Andy Beshear, who is reportedly on Harris’s shortlist of options, has accused Vance of caricaturing Appalachian residents in Hillbilly Elegy. In the book, Vance leaned into his family roots in eastern Kentucky, even though he was raised in an Ohio city near Cincinnati.“I want the American people to know what a Kentuckian is and what they look like, because let me just tell you that JD Vance ain’t from here,” Beshear told MSNBC last week.The governor added at a fundraiser in Des Moines, Iowa, last weekend: “This is somebody who exploited us – who used to come for weddings or funerals or a couple weeks in the summer to see his kin, and I respect that. But to claim that you know our culture and then to insult our people is just wrong.”Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, who is also on Harris’s shortlist, has mocked Trump and Vance as “weird”, an attack line now echoed by other prominent Democrats.“The fascists depend on us going back, but we’re not afraid of weird people,” Walz said last weekend at a Harris campaign event. “We’re a little bit creeped out, but we’re not afraid.”View image in fullscreenAs of now, Trump has given no public indication that he intends to drop his running mate, and Vance is trying his hardest to shake off the damage of the past two weeks.“I knew that when I came out of the gate there was going to be a couple of days of positive media coverage and then immediately they would go and attack me over everything that I had ever said in my life,” Vance told NBC News on Tuesday. “The price of entry of being on the national ticket and giving me an opportunity to govern is you have to … take the shots, and so I sort of expected it.”But in a less than stellar review of Vance’s performance so far, Trump reminded voters that elections are not generally decided by the vice-presidential nominee.“This is well-documented, historically, the vice-president in terms of the election does not have any impact, virtually no impact,” Trump said on Wednesday during his contentious interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention. “You can have a vice-president that is outstanding in every way, and I think JD is, I think all of them would have been, but you’re not voting that way. You’re voting for the president. You’re voting for me.”Trump’s best hope for the moment is that voters will start forgetting about Vance. And after the month he’s had, Vance might not mind some obscurity either. More

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      Democratic politicians’ husbands rake in record haul during New York event

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      While Kamala Harris cleared her campaign diary this weekend to finalize her choice of running mate ahead of a swing-state presidential campaign blitz next week, political spouses were hard at work.The vice-president’s husband, Doug Emhoff, and Chasten Buttigieg, husband of the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg – a potential running mate for Harris at the top of November’s Democratic ticket whose candidacy has been strengthening in recent days – were on New York’s Fire Island on Friday for a sold-out event that raised $321,000.According to reports, the total was a record for the Pines, part of the narrow barrier island that runs south of Long Island, famous as an LGBTQ+ summering spot second only to Provincetown, Massachusetts.Former treasurer of the Democratic National Committee Andrew Tobias told Vanity Fair that the double-teaming husbands had beat the $200,000 haul for a 2016 political event hosted by the singer Cher.The outlet reported that US Secret Service agents “appeared to waylay hunks in bikini cut swimsuits to smuggle Emhoff on and off the island”. The fundraiser had initially been organized for Harris and Joe Biden before the president quit his re-election campaign – and it had sold out before the vice-president had become the candidate.“The right to love who you want to love, the right to marry who you want to marry, to do what you want in your home, with who you love, without the government over your shoulder … this affects all of you,” Emhoff told the crowd, echoing fears that a US supreme court with three Trump appointees could eliminate same-sex couples’ right to marriage. “We need to have an army for freedom, an army for justice, led by my wife, Kamala Harris.”The Emhoff-Buttigieg husband double act raised speculation that it could be a test run for the transportation secretary to be Harris’s vice-presidential pick. Harris has until Tuesday to decide whom to pick as her running mate.Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, whom many consider as the leading candidate to be Harris’s running mate, may help with his crucial swing state. But he could also bleed votes away from Harris elsewhere over his strong support of Israel’s war on Gaza, which became a constant source of criticism for the Biden White House.“Of course I want it to be Pete,” fundraiser Jack Kabin said. But Kabin said he was worried “America isn’t ready for a gay vice-president”.Rumors of Buttigieg’s strengthening contention in the veepstakes come amid a media blitz. He is estimated to have made at least 30 media appearances, trips to two swing states and held a Washington news conference in the past two weeks. In recent days, he acknowledged that he is “probably” being vetted.In Buttigieg’s favor is his ability as a calm, skilled communicator. He is a Rhodes scholar and a veteran, previously served as a mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and he has emerged as formidable critic of Trump and the Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance.Buttigieg frequently appears on Fox News. Recently, he went on the Republican-friendly network and criticized Trump supporters for fostering a “warped reality” in which the former president is “perfectly fine … even though he’s rambling about electrocuting sharks”.Asked why he was so frequently on the outlet, Buttigieg told Bill Maher in July that it was not his job to speak only to people that agreed with him.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAsked why wealthy men, including gay tech investor Peter Thiel, supported Trump, he said the issues had been made “way too complicated”.“It’s super simple,” he said. “These are very rich men who have decided to back the Republican party that tends to do good things for very rich men.”On CNN, he called Vance “a regrettable choice” because he is “somebody who was at his most convincing and effective when he talked about how unfit for office Donald Trump is, and he has not explained any reason, other than of course his obvious interest in power, why he would have changed his mind on that”.In Esquire magazine, columnist, actor and former White House engagement adviser Kal Penn wrote that Buttigieg is the Democratic party’s “best chance for expanding the electorate and evolving the platform”.“He’s multilingual,” Penn wrote. “He’s comfortable on the world stage. He is deeply connected to blue-collar voters. He polls exceptionally well.“Most important, as a young husband and father of two with a modest home in northern Michigan, he speaks openly about his own family’s struggles and triumphs, which mirror what many Americans deal with day to day.” More

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      ‘I’m trying to make it’: Jimmy Carter’s goal is to vote for Kamala Harris

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      Nearing his 100th birthday and in hospice care since February 2023, the former 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. Many took that announcement to mean Carter was near the end of his life.And the next month, the current president, Joe Biden, said he had been asked to deliver Carter’s eulogy.Biden also said Carter’s doctors had “found a way to keep him going for a lot longer than they anticipated because they found a breakthrough”.In October 2023, as the White House celebrated Carter’s 99th birthday, the former Democratic National Committee chairperson Donna Brazile said the former Georgia governor was “a towering, old southern oak … as good as they come and tough as they come”.The following month, Carter’s wife, Rosalynn Carter, died aged 96. The couple, who campaigned for human rights and mental health reform, were married for 77 years, through Jimmy Carter’s time in the US navy, in Georgia state politics, in the White House and in a post-presidency widely regarded as one of the most productive.In 2002, Carter was awarded the Nobel peace prize, “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development”.In 2021, he told the Associated Press the secret to a long life was “to marry the right person”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Saturday, the Journal-Constitution said Jason Carter said his grandfather had in recent days been “more alert and interested in politics and the war in Gaza”, the latter a tricky issue for Harris to navigate, not least as she nears a decision on her vice-presidential pick.Jason Carter said his grandfather a few days ago voiced his wish to vote for Harris, who has served as Biden’s vice-president. Jimmy Carter expressed his support for Harris when Chip Carter asked if he was trying to make it to 100.As the Journal-Constitution noted, early voting in Georgia begins on 15 October – two weeks past the former president’s centenarian birthday. More