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      Kamala Harris’ VP pick may signal a shift away from pivoting to the center | Moira Donegan

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      “Historically, the vice-president, in terms of the election, does not have any impact,” Donald Trump told the National Association of Black Journalists last week. “I mean, virtually no impact … virtually never has it mattered.” The former US president may have been engaged in a bit of wishful thinking. If the last few weeks have shown us anything, it’s that vice-presidential running mates do, in fact, matter. His, the Ohio senator JD Vance, has quickly become a centerpiece of the race, which has shifted to become in part a referendum on Vance’s regressive and hateful views of women.The VP choice is not a superficial one, not merely an ornament to the presidential nominee or a bit of tactical cosmetic maneuvering to balance his or her weaknesses. A decision that is ultimately left entirely in the hands of the presidential nominee, it is a signal of that person’s perspectives and priorities, and one of the most influential choices he or she can make to shape the future of their party.What sort of future for the Democratic party does Kamala Harris see in her choice of the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz? The move may reflect a shift away from the strategy of pivoting to the center that the Democrats have been pursuing for decades and towards a new policy and messaging strategy that seeks to attack the sadism and bigotry of Republicans and make an affirmative case for progressive values. Because frankly, if they were doing things the old way, they would have picked Josh Shapiro.Shapiro, the popular governor of Pennsylvania, was the early favorite for the VP slot. There are few paths to victory for the Harris campaign that do not require her to win Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes, and Shapiro was thought to be the safest bet to secure them. But Shapiro is a relatively untested politician. He only ascended to national notice in 2022, when he ran for governor against an election-denying quack who barely mounted a campaign. In the quick but comparatively much more thorough vetting process of Harris’s vice-presidential search, an array of liabilities emerged. Shapiro, who volunteered with the Israeli army as a young man, wrote a piece when he was in college that suggested that Palestinians were racially incapable of peace. More recently, he has spoken with uncommon contempt about anti-genocide protestors on college campuses. His appointment would have reinvigorated divisions within the Democratic base over Israel’s war on Palestinians just as college semesters are set to begin.Shapiro, too, seems to have some problems with gender issues, a unique liability in a campaign that is set to be defined by them: he is alleged to have tolerated and helped cover up harassment and sexual harassment of women by one of his closest aides, has antagonized the woman-dominated teachers’ union with his support of private school vouchers, and came under scrutiny while attorney general for his office’s classification of a woman’s death – in which she was stabbed multiple times, including in the head, neck and chest – as a suicide.Shapiro is what other versions of the Democratic party would have been considered the safe choice: a moderate, seen as antagonizing the party’s left, who could appeal to white male conservative voters in a swing state. That’s what Hillary Clinton chose when she selected Tim Kaine as her running mate in 2016; that was the political theory of change that had been advocated by Bill Clinton and his Democratic party successors in every election since 1992. But cumulatively, Shapiro’s liabilities threatened to divide the base, alienate the left and weaken the Democratic party’s claim to be advocates of gender equality. Placed against Vance, his contrast would have been minimal: the VP contenders would have been two elite lawyers from fancy schools, slick and ambitious and weird about women. The Democratic party has changed. What might have seemed safe in 2016 ultimately appeared too risky in 2024.Walz, by contrast, offers a long record of policy accomplishments, experience both in Congress and as an executive, an amazing absence of scandal, and an almost relentless midwestern cheerfulness. A former history teacher and champion high school football coach, Walz volunteered to serve as the first faculty advisor to his public school’s gay-straight alliance – back in the 90s, when gay acceptance was still years away and Minnesota still had criminal bans on gay sex on the books.He later served 12 years in the House of Representatives from 2007 to 2019, representing Minnesota’s first district – a vast rural expanse, spanning the whole southern width of the state along the Iowa border – becoming the first Democrat elected to that seat in years. A veteran, Walz was the highest-ranking non-commissioned officer to ever serve in Congress; in a body made up overwhelmingly of the rich, where other veterans often entered the military as officers from elite service academies, Walz was a public college graduate who had joined the Minnesota national guard as an enlisted soldier.While in Congress, Walz was a consistent advocate for labor unions and abortion rights, while still earning a reputation for bipartisanship. But it is in his role as Minnesota’s governor, an office he was first elected to in 2018, that Walz has distinguished himself. His administration has racked up multiple wins for progressive policy priorities in the state, even as Democrats have held only an extremely slim majority in the state house. As governor, he has signed laws providing free school lunches for all children, decriminalizing marijuana, assuring paid family and medical leave for workers, advancing common-sense gun control like universal background checks and red flag protections, codifying abortion rights in the Minnesota state constitution and protecting those who travel to the state for reproductive or gender-affirming care, and advancing labor and union protections.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThese progressive policy wins have been coupled in Walz’s persona, a cheerful, folksy wholesomeness that contrasts nicely with Harris’s public posture of competent self-assurance. Walz is aggressively normal; his public persona is the human embodiment of a dad joke. This non-threatening masculinity allows him to posit his own progressive values as normative American values – and to contrast the Republicans’ maximalist social conservative agenda as a creepy intrusion on the American way of life. It was Walz, in a television appearance he made while auditioning for the VP job, who famously first described the Trump-Vance ticket as “weird”, a playful pejorative that the Harris campaign quickly seized on.For decades, Democrats have feared seeming “weird”, feared that too robust a commitment to their policy positions would alienate an America that they imagined as fundamentally conservative. But times have changed. It is the Democrats, now under the banner of Harris and Walz, who can argue that their progressive vision represents the American mainstream.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      The Guardian view on Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick: Tim Walz is a smart choice for Democrats | Editorial

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      Kamala Harris’s own ascension to the top of the ticket has shone a brighter spotlight than usual on the Democrats’ choice of vice-presidential nominee, underlining why the second slot on the ticket matters. The impact of the running mate is usually limited unless they prove extraordinarily popular or unpopular. Growing concerns about the state of the US economy are likely to be far more consequential. But Ms Harris’s selection of Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, on Tuesday, and the enthusiasm it is engendering, contribute to the sense of a rejuvenated campaign. Democrats are not taking poll improvements for granted, but now believe that it is possible to beat Donald Trump.Ms Harris stressed Mr Walz’s record of “fighting for middle-class families”. Originally from rural Nebraska, he is a former teacher and high school football coach who served in the army national guard for 24 years. As governor he has overseen – with Minnesota’s Democratic legislature – progressive policies including free school meals, abortion protections, pro-worker policies and gun restrictions. He has a better record on facing the climate crisis than rivals.He has been adept at winning over moderate Republicans, but also at attacking Donald Trump; Ms Harris’s description of the former president as “weird” was borrowed from him. The right has already argued that he should have been swifter to call in the national guard when protests following George Floyd’s murder by a police officer in Minneapolis turned violent. But the Trump campaign will surely find that the tag of “dangerously liberal extremist” is harder to pin on a folksy white Midwestern man who loves hunting than on a black woman from California. Critically, Mr Walz also has significant political experience and ties, having first been elected to Congress in 2006; friends there rallied behind him.Vice-presidential nominees tend to be important primarily in how they reflect on their boss and balance the ticket. JD Vance was meant to bring a shot of youthful energy when Mr Trump was running against Mr Biden; with Ms Harris as the de facto Democratic nominee, it is his extreme stance on abortion and remarks on “childless cat ladies” that grab attention. The disastrous bet on Sarah Palin threw doubt on John McCain’s judgment, experience and leadership. People need to believe that, in a crisis, the running mate would be capable of running the show: around one in five US vice-presidents have taken over under such circumstances.While some suggested that other candidates – notably Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor and reportedly the other finalist for the role – would bring a swing state with them, political scientists suggest that is a myth. Christopher Devine and Kyle Kopko, who analysed election data going back to the late 19th century, suggested that “the vice presidential home state advantage is, essentially, zero”.What vice-presidential picks can do is enthuse the party and help to establish a sense of unity and direction. Mr Walz was the most progressive of the Democratic politicians seriously considered for the role. While activists lobbied against other candidates, there appears to be real enthusiasm about both what he stands for and his ability to communicate that straightforwardly. Ms Harris’s pick contributes to a renewed sense of purpose, and is another welcome step in a campaign that still has a long way to run. More

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      Kamala Harris bets on Tim Walz as running mate: ‘We are going to win’

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      Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for US president, has named Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, as her running mate ahead of the November election.The decision ends intense speculation over which candidate Harris would pick to go up against Donald Trump, the Republican nominee and former president, and his choice for vice-president, the Ohio senator JD Vance.Walz first ran for office in 2006 in a Republican-leaning congressional district, upsetting the incumbent. He kept the seat until he won the Minnesota governorship in 2018, then again in 2022. Under his leadership, the state has seen significant progressive legislative wins in recent years, including universal school meals, legalized marijuana, abortion protections and gun control measures.Before he entered public office, he was a school teacher in Mankato, Minnesota, teaching geography to high school students. He also served in the army national guard for 24 years.In an Instagram post announcing the pick, Harris said: “One of the things that stood out to me about Tim is how his convictions on fighting for middle-class families run deep. It’s personal.”She cited his upbringing in Nebraska, and how after his father’s death to cancer, his family relied on social security survivor benefits to make ends meet. He used the GI bill to attend college. He coached high school football and advised the high school’s gay-straight alliance. His background is “impressive in its own right”, but also informs his governing, she said.Minnesota Democrats’ legislative record played into her choice – she noted a law that constitutionally protects access to abortion and one requiring universal background checks for gun purchases.“But what impressed me most about Tim is his deep commitment to his family,” she added.“We are going to build a great partnership. We are going to build a great team. We are going to win this election.”Walz posted a short statement to X on Tuesday. “Vice-President Harris is showing us the politics of what’s possible. It reminds me a bit of the first day of school,” he said.His midwesterner dad charm and straight-talk propelled him up the list as a potential vice-presidential pick, though, and as the head of the Democratic Governors Association, he has been stumping for Biden and Harris for the past year.It was his simple retort against Trump and his allies that caught national Democrats’ attention most: he called them weird. His clips on TV shows went viral, showing him pushing back on Republicans’ “weird behavior” while showcasing a list of what he had accomplished as a Democratic governor and how Democrats would govern if they win the White House again.Walz explained in a TV interview why he had started calling Trump weird. It’s true that Trump’s policy would put women’s lives on the line and that he’s a threat to constitutional values, Walz said. But he’s also on the campaign trail “talking about Hannibal Lecter and shocking sharks and just whatever crazy thing pops into his mind”.“Have you ever seen the guy laugh? That seems very weird to me, that an adult can go through six and a half years of being in the public eye. If he has laughed, it’s at someone, not with someone. That is weird behavior,” Walz said of Trump.Walz grew up in small-town Nebraska, giving him rural bona fides that will help voters who have moved away from Democrats in recent years.“The golden rule that makes small towns work so we’re not at each others’ throats all the time in a little town is: mind your own damn business,” Walz said in one TV spot.His former colleagues praised his ability to connect with those crucial voters in the Rust belt, and to not only explain what’s bad about Republicans, but what Democrats would actually do in office.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTim Ryan, a former Democratic US representative and Walz’s friend, called to mind a recent clip in which Walz mentioned that Minnesota ranked in the top three for happiest states in the nation. “Isn’t that really the goal here? For some joy? When he mentioned that I was like, dang man, that’s really good. That’s really good, because it gets us out of the political space and into the human being space.”Some political commentators had suggested that, as the first woman of color nominated by a major party, Harris was mostly likely to pick a white man to balance the ticket.The 59-year-old former California senator is looking to build on a successful campaign launch after stepping in to replace Joe Biden, who bowed to pressure from Democratic colleagues and dropped out of the race after a disastrous debate performance against Trump.Harris and Walz can expect a rapturous welcome at the Democratic national convention in Chicago starting on 19 August. She has been endorsed by former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.A New York Times/Siena College national opinion poll published on 25 July found that Harris has narrowed what had been a sizable Trump lead. Trump was ahead of Harris 48% to 46% among registered voters, compared with a lead of 49% to 41% over Biden in early July.Republicans immediately began attacking Walz as a “radical leftist” and claimed that picking Walz was “a massive gift to Republicans”, suggesting his presence on the ticket will tank the Harris campaign.In a statement, the Trump campaign called Walz a “west coast wannabe” who has “spent his governorship trying to reshape Minnesota in the image of the Golden state”. The campaign brought up a clip from 2017 where Walz talks about electoral maps that show broad swathes of red, saying those areas are “mostly cows and rocks”.“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 Trump campaign said.Speaking in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Vance first told reporters he could not “say a lot about who Tim Walz is because the Democrats have shown a willingness to put a little switcheroo on us”, by switching presidential candidate from Biden to Harris.Vance said he had called Walz to congratulate him on his selection and would debate him, but only after the Democratic convention later this month.“So that’s the first reason,” for not commenting too much about Walz, Vance said – though he subsequently attacked Walz freely in terms he himself indicated: “The second reason is that Tim Walz’s record is a joke. He’s one of the most far-left radicals in the entire United States government, at any level.” More

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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