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      Harris and Walz to give first sit-down interview as Democratic ticket on CNN

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      Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will sit for their first interview as the Democratic ticket on Thursday, after weeks of demands from Republicans and members of the media for the nominees to open themselves up to questions.The interview, which will be conducted by CNN anchor Dana Bash from the battleground state of Georgia, is set for a primetime spot on CNN at 9pm ET.Despite a whirlwind of media coverage of the Harris campaign and a surge of support in the six weeks since Joe Biden ended his bid for re-election and endorsed her, the vice-president has yet to do a formal interview or hold a press conference.“There are a lot of questions that have been lingering out there for her to answer as we go into this fall campaign,” David Chalian, CNN’s political director, said after announcing the interview on the network Tuesday. “We have been waiting to see this next important hurdle for Kamala Harris and her campaign to jump,” Chalian added, noting that Harris and Walz successfully rallied the party, raised heaps of money, and pulled off the convention. “All of that is very scripted,” he said. “This is the first time she is going to take questions.”Harris laid out some broad policy agendas at the Democratic national convention last week, promising a middle class tax cut at home and a muscular foreign policy of standing up to Russia and North Korea. In recent weeks, Harris also shared some of the first glimpses into what her policy priorities might look like, including a proposal for $25,000 down-payment support programs for first-time home buyers and a call for cracking down on price-gouging companies.But while her campaign is busy spreading enthusiasm for her nomination, some details have been left scant. There still isn’t a dedicated policy page on the official campaign website and Harris has turned down interview requests, opting instead for less-risky campaign appearances and short conversations with pool reporters.“On the whole, Harris’s top communications aides are deeply skeptical, as Biden’s inner circle was, that doing big interviews with major TV networks or national newspapers offer much real upside when it comes to reaching swing voters,” Politico reported earlier this month, citing two unnamed people close to the campaign. An anonymous source claimed there is little incentive to change course: “She’s getting out exactly the message she wants to get out,” they said.Now, as time ticks down for Harris and Walz, the governor of Minnesota, to make their final appeal to anyone who might still be undecided, their campaign has embraced a slight shift in strategy.Harris and her opponent, Donald Trump, are scheduled to debate each other next month, even as a back-and-forth continues between the campaigns over what rules have been agreed.The dispute has centered on the issue of microphone muting, which Biden’s campaign made a condition of his decision to accept any debates this year. Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday that the parameters for the 10 September debate would be “the same as the last CNN Debate”, when both candidates’ microphones were muted except when it was their turn to speak.But Harris’s campaign said on Tuesday that specifics for the debate are still being worked out with the host, ABC News. A Harris spokesperson noted: “Both candidates have publicly made clear their willingness to debate with unmuted mics for the duration of the debate to fully allow for substantive exchanges between the candidates – but it appears Donald Trump is letting his handlers overrule him. Sad!”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeanwhile, the Democratic ticket will make good on its promise to do an interview.“Now is the opportunity to hear her ruminate aloud,” Chalian said, “with Dana asking her about her policy positions, her plans for the future, her plans for the country, in an unscripted setting – and, of course, to see the Democratic ticket interacting with each other.”The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this story More

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      Why is alleged predator Bill Clinton still welcome in the Democratic party? | Moira Donegan

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      One of the grim lessons of the #MeToo movement and its long backlash is this: whether someone finds a sexual abuse allegation credible largely depends on their pre-existing opinion of the man accused. When a woman comes forward with an account of a man’s mistreatment of her – be it humiliating boorishness, violent rape or any of the range of degradations and hurts that fall along the wide spectrum between – the listener’s response is fairly predictable. If they hate the accused man, they’ll believe his accuser. If they like him, they’ll say it’s bullshit.This rule holds, I am sorry to say, even for women who identify themselves as feminists. It held for Gloria Steinem, the famed feminist now in her 90s, who in 1998 defended Clinton amid his slew of sex scandals and abuse allegations in the pages of the New York Times, dismissing the allegations against him as trivial and making an unconvincing case that the offense she took at similar allegations against Clarence Thomas was different. It held true, most famously, for Bill Clinton’s wife, the liberal feminist icon Hillary Clinton, who has remained silently beside her husband throughout each of the allegations against him – and retained her feminist credibility despite her loyalty to an allegedly abusive man that I can only describe as canine.People who like Bill Clinton, or who find him convenient for their own goals, have a long history of underplaying the multiple allegations of sexual harassment and violence that he faces from at least four women. They say that Paula Jones, the former Arkansas state employee who sued Bill Clinton for sexual harassment after the then governor brought her to his hotel room, propositioned her and exposed himself, is lying – even though Jones has multiple corroborating witnesses, and even though her story has not changed in more than 30 years.They say that Juanita Broaddrick, the woman who says that Clinton raped her in a hotel room in 1978, when he was Arkansas attorney general, is lying, too – even though Broaddrick, like Jones, told multiple people of Clinton’s attack at the time.They say that Monica Lewinsky, the 22-year-old unpaid intern whom Clinton carried on an affair with in the White House when he was 49 and the most powerful person in the world, technically consented to the sex acts that Clinton asked her to do – an insistence that betrays a startlingly simple-minded and willfully obtuse understanding of sexual ethics.They echo Clinton’s denials of wrongdoing in all these cases, against all these women. That is, at least, what they say when they acknowledge the allegations about Bill Clinton’s conduct at all. Mostly, they ignore them – as Bill Clinton has, as his wife, Hillary Clinton has, and as Bill Clinton’s popular legacy seems to do.Bill Clinton’s supporters ignore his accusers because they can. These women’s dignity, their equality and their right to control their own bodies matter less to them than their esteem for Bill Clinton – less than whether he can deliver a few votes, make a zinger on television or look nice in a suit.On Wednesday night, the third night of the Democratic national convention, the whole party ignored these women when they gave Bill Clinton, a multiply accused alleged sexual harasser and rapist, a rousing welcome at Chicago’s United Center. The former president was given a prime-time speaking spot, trotted out like a prize and applauded like a hero.Are these people not embarrassed? Do they not, at least, take note of the hypocrisy involved? After all, the 2024 election is quickly shaping up to be about gender, with the boorish Trump, creepy, sex-obsessed JD Vance and the radically anti-choice Republican party turning the contest into a referendum on the status of women in American society. Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee who will seek to become the nation’s first female president on election day, has taken on the mantle of the women’s struggle – not only in the symbolism of her candidacy, but in the tenor of her advocacy, in which she has championed the “freedom” of women to control their own bodies and lives.These are noble goals, ones that the Democrats can be proud of pursuing; but they are not commensurate with celebrations of an alleged rapist, with pomp and obsequiousness trotted out for a man who allegedly habitually sexually harassed women who worked for him and carried on an affair with an intern young enough to be his daughter. Sexual abuse, too, is hostile to women’s freedom – the freedom of women to live, work and participate in public without the threat of sexual force. This is a kind of gendered freedom that Bill Clinton has made it abundantly clear that he does not respect.The call for women’s freedom from rape, abuse and harassment has always been the least popular and most politically fraught feminist cause. Abortion has always had more appeal to male voters as a political issue. Misogynist men – in a tradition that extends from the Playboy founder (and alleged rapist) Hugh Hefner to Barstool Sports founder (and alleged perpetrator of sexual assault) Dave Portnoy to former president (and alleged rapist) Bill Clinton – have long supported abortion rights, in part because they understand abortion not as a matter of women’s fundamental freedom and dignity but as a matter of men’s increased sexual access to women and decreased responsibility for the resulting pregnancies.These prurient, sexually entitled misogynists are not all Republicans – rape, and its apologism, have always been bipartisan endeavors – but they are not the kind of voters that Democrats should be courting. A bargain in which women’s right to end a pregnancy is made in exchange for men’s right to rape, harass and abuse women is not an acceptable one. We can do better: we can reach for a version of America in which women are truly free and equal, endowed with all the bodily sovereignty, self-determination and sexual autonomy that men are. That’s not the world that Bill Clinton represents, and it’s not a world that a party that insists on celebrating him can deliver.Bill Clinton has been out of office for nearly three decades. In that time, his once-rosy status as a liberal hero has thankfully dimmed, even if his alleged history of sexual abuse has not played a sufficient role in the reassessment of his reputation. Liberals now rightly look back at Clinton’s crime bill with horror; his devastating cuts to the welfare system were punitive and cruel, hurting women and children the most. He modeled a vision of a conservative Democratic party, one less committed to its principles than in cynically trading them away for a chance at power.His vision of change has failed, and his political project has been revealed as morally bankrupt. It’s not clear that he can even deliver many votes; a large swath of the American electorate is now too young to remember much of his presidency, aside from the sex scandals. It’s time for Democrats to send the old man home. And to tell him to keep his hands to himself.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Democrats sue Georgia officials over election rules that could ‘invite chaos’

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      Democrats sued Georgia state election officials on Monday, alleging new rules that could allow local officials to delay certification of November’s presidential results were illegal.The lawsuit was filed in the superior court of Fulton county by local Georgia Democratic politicians, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic party of Georgia. It says the rules approved by the Republican-controlled Georgia state election board this month were intended to give individual county election officials the ability to delay or cancel the certification of votes.The lawsuit says the new rules “introduce substantial uncertainty in the post-election process and – if interpreted as their drafters have suggested – invite chaos by establishing new processes at odds with existing statutory duties”.The Georgia secretary of state’s office, which oversees the board, did not respond to requests for comment.Last week, the five-member Georgia election board, which includes three conservative members championed by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, voted 3-2 to empower county election board members to investigate any discrepancies between the number of cast ballots and the number of voters in each precinct before certification.Such mismatches are not uncommon and are not typically evidence of fraud, according to voting rights advocates, who say that rule could permit individual board members to intentionally delay approval of the results.The board has also in recent weeks approved a separate rule that county election boards conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into any irregularities before certifying the results. The rule did not define “reasonable” or set a particular deadline for completing the inquiry.The Democrats’ lawsuit says it is established law that it is the responsibility of the judicial system, not individual county election officials, to resolve allegations of voter fraud.The former president has falsely claimed for years that the 2020 election was rigged by fraud.His infamous January 2021 phone call in which he asked Georgia’s top election official, Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes to sway the outcome helped lead to Trump’s pending indictment on state charges.Voter fraud in the US is vanishingly rare, research shows.Trump faces Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, in the 5 November election. Polls show a close race, with Georgia among seven states likely to determine the outcome. More

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      Special counsel appeals dismissal of Trump classified documents case; Harris endorsed by former Republican staffers – live

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      Special counsel Jack Smith, in a court filing on Monday, urged a federal appeals court to revive the criminal case accusing Donald Trump of retaining classified documents after it was dismissed by US district court judge Aileen Cannon last month.“Congress has bestowed on the Attorney General, like the heads of many Executive Departments, broad authority to structure the agency he leads to carry out the responsibilities imposed on him by law,” Smith’s team wrote.
      The district court’s contrary view conflicts with an otherwise unbroken course of decisions, including by the Supreme Court, that the Attorney General has such authority, and it is at odds with widespread and longstanding appointment practices in the Department of Justice and across the government.
      Rashida Tlaib, the Michigan congresswoman and leading progressive Democrat, criticized the Democratic national convention for denying a speaking slot for a Palestinian American on the main stage last week.Tlaib, who is the sole Palestinian American member of Congress, told Zeteo in a statement:
      It’s hard not to feel invisible as a Palestinian-American. Our trauma and pain feel unseen and ignored by both parties. One party uses our identity as a slur, and the other refuses to hear from us. Where is the shared humanity? Ignoring us won’t stop the genocide.
      The uncommitted national movement, who represent hundreds of thousands of anti-war protest votes from the primary season, staged a multi-day sit-in protest outside the United Center in Chicago where the Democratic convention was being held, after the DNC told the group it would not get a speaker on the main stage.The family of the Israeli American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October, spoke on the convention stage on Wednesday, which the uncommitted movement supported.Tlaib, who did not attend the convention, said the lineup showed that the DNC “made it clear with their speakers that they value Israeli children more than Palestinian children.”Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman who endorsed Donald Trump on Monday, served in the military in Iraq and ran for president in the Democratic primary in 2020.Gabbard quit the Democratic party two years later and has become a fixture at conservative conferences and in rightwing media.Addressing a National Guard Association conference in Detroit, Michigan, where the former president was speaking, Gabbard, who represented Hawaii in Congress and is a former vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee, accused Kamala Harris of retaliating against political opponents, undermining civil liberties and weaponising the US’s institutions against both Trump and herself.Recently Gabbard has been helping Trump prepare for next month’s televised presidential debate against Harris. In 2020 she took Harris to taskon the debate stage over her record as a prosecutor – a clip that still circulates in rightwing media.Her announcement comes a day after Robert F Kennedy Jr, scion of a Democratic dynasty, suspended his own White House bid and threw his weight behind Trump. Elon Musk, who describes himself as “historically a moderate Democrat”, is also backing Trump.The judge overseeing the Arizona “fake electors” case involving a scheme by Republican allies of Donald Trump to overturn his loss in the state during the 2020 presidential election has set a trial date of 5 January 2026.Trump allies including the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani will stand trial on charges they conspired to subvert Arizona’s presidential election results.If you type in NeverWalz.com in your browser, the page that appears probably doesn’t look like what you expected from a webpage donning a slogan against Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and the current vice-presidential candidate for the Democratic party.“Trump is a convicted felon. Let’s vote for adults,” the webpage reads. “Try being joyful instead of an asshole.”After just a few seconds on the webpage, users are automatically redirected to KamalaHarris.com, the official website for Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign.The slogan “Never Walz” is indeed anti-Walz, and was seen recently plastered on a booth set up by an group against Walzt, Action 4 Liberty, at the Minnesota state fair. The group was seen handing out fliers and selling merchandise that criticizes Walz.But, it appears that the group did not secure a website domain for the “Never Walz” slogan, leaving it available for someone else to buy and use.As of Monday, the website domain NeverWalz.com is being used to criticize Donald Trump and then quickly redirects viewers to the Harris campaign website.The Arizona Police Association (APA) announced its endorsement of Democrat Ruben Gallego in the state’s Senate race, despite backing Republican Kari Lake in her gubernatorial bid last cycle.Gallego “understands the complexities of modern policing in American society today”, the group’s president Justin Harris said in a statement posted to Twitter/X.
      The APA does not take our endorsements lightly; we recognize the importance of having a U.S. senator that can bring people together to improve society for all. We believe congressman Gallego will be that U.S. Senator.
      The group publicly threw its support behind Donald Trump just days ago during a rally in Glendale.A messy Michigan Republican party gathering this weekend to nominate candidates for office illustrated the diminished sway of two high-profile Michigan election deniers and highlighted longstanding divisions within the party.Matthew DePerno, who faces charges for allegedly assisting in a scheme to improperly access voting machines in the wake of the 2020 election, withdrew from the race for Michigan’s top court hours before the state party convention. In a statement, DePerno said that instead of running for state supreme court, he would “use my knowledge about how elections work to get Republicans elected”.DePerno, a rightwing attorney from Kalamazoo, Michigan, was a vocal proponent of Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election in Michigan after Trump lost in 2020 to Joe Biden, appearing on rightwing media to promote the claims of widespread fraud and helping fund Arizona’s sham election audit. DePerno ran for Michigan attorney general in 2022 but lost decisively to Dana Nessel – whose office has charged him for his role in allegedly tampering with voting machines.In 2023, he lost his bid to chair the state party to Kristina Karamo – an outspoken elections conspiracy theorist who was ousted from her role earlier this year amid accusations that she had mismanaged the party’s already dwindling finances.During the convention, Karamo faced a more dramatic setback of her own when she was escorted from the venue by police officers. Karamo reportedly entered with an all-access pass, which was revoked during the convention.The US district judge Aileen Cannon threw out the classified documents case against Donald Trump last month after concluding that Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional.Smith’s team appealed to the 11th US circuit court of appeals, arguing that Cannon’s decision was “at odds with widespread and longstanding appointment practices in the Department of Justice and across the government”.It is unclear how long the appeals court’s decision could take, but even if it overturns Cannon’s dismissal there is no chance of a trial before the November presidential election, according to AP.If elected, Trump could then appoint an attorney general who would dismiss the case.The special counsel Jack Smith has urged an appeals court to reinstate his office’s classified documents case against Donald Trump after it was dismissed by a judge last month.At least five Secret Service agents have been placed on leave after the failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump in July.The action is reportedly the latest consequence of the security failings surrounding the 13 July shooting, when a 20-year-old gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, opened fire on Trump as he spoke at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump was wounded after a bullet grazed his right ear. One rally-goer, Corey Comperatore, was killed in the shooting while two others were seriously injured. Crooks was later shot dead by a Secret Service sniper.The agents who were placed on leave work at the Secret Service’s Pittsburgh field office, which was responsible for coordinating security at the rally along with local law enforcement, according to Real Clear Politics, which broke the story. They include the head of the Pittsburgh office.The officers concerned are believed to have been put on administrative leave, which usually involves being taken off operational duties while still receiving a full salary. They are expected to report to the office and may be given paperwork duties.Donald Trump, in his remarks to the National Guard Association of the United States, made reference to “if there is a debate”.In a Truth Social post last night, Trump cast doubt on whether he would participate in a scheduled debate with Kamala Harris next month, claiming that the network that had agreed to host it was “biased” against him.Donald Trump, speaking to the National Guard Association of the United States, pledged to create a “Space National Guard” if he is elected back to the Oval Office.Trump said launching space force in 2019 was one of his proudest achievements in his first term, adding:
      The time has come to create a Space National Guard as the primary combat reserve of the US space force.
      More than 200 former Republican staffers who worked for former president George W Bush, and senators John McCain and Mitt Romney, have signed a letter endorsing vice-president Kamala Harris for president.The letter, obtained and published by USA Today reads in part:
      Of course, we have plenty of honest, ideological disagreements with Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz. That’s to be expected. The alternative, however, is simply untenable.
      At home, another four years of Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership, this time focused on advancing the dangerous goals of Project 2025, will hurt real, everyday people and weaken our sacred institutions.
      Abroad, democratic movements will be irreparably jeopardized as Trump and his acolyte JD Vance kowtow to dictators like Vladimir Putin while turning their backs on our allies.
      We can’t let that happen.
      When endorsing Donald Trump for president, Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic Hawaii congresswoman who is also an Iraq war veteran, told the crowd at the National Guard Association’s conference that she believes that Trump has a better understanding of the “grave responsibility” that a president bears “for every single one of our lives.”Gabbard praised the former president and said that during his first term, Trump “exercised the courage that we expect from our Commander in Chief,” and exhausted “all measures of diplomacy, having the courage to meet with adversaries, dictators, allies and partners alike in the pursuit of peace.”Tulsi Gabbard has just formally endorsed former president Donald Trump for president.Gabbard left the Democratic party in 2022, after her 2020 run for president and it was recently reported that she has been helping Trump prepare for next month’s presidential debate against Kamala Harris.Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic Hawaii congresswoman, has just been introduced on stage by former president Donald Trump at the National Guard Association of the United States Conference in Detroit, Michigan.“She’s a special person” Trump said of Gabbard. “She’s got great common sense, great spirit, she loves our country and she loves the people in this room.”Donald Trump is about to appear at the National Guard Association of the United States Conference in Detroit, Michigan.Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic Hawaii congresswoman, is expected to formally endorse Trump’s presidential bid at the event, CNN reported earlier today, citing a source.Donald Trump has appeared to undercut his campaign’s position on a scheduled televised debate with Kamala Harris by declaring he would prefer to have the microphones on when it was not their turn to speak.

      Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that he’d “rather have it probably on, but the agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time. In that case, it was muted” amid a reported impasse between the Kamala Harris and Trump campaigns over the conditions of next month’s debate.

      Trump, in a Truth Social post on Sunday, threatened to pull out of the 10 September debate with Harris, hurling a trademark “fake news” slur at ABC News.

      Kamala Harris’s campaign said it has now raised $540m for its election battle against Trump. The campaign said it saw a surge of donations during last week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago where Harris and her vice-presidential running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, accepted their nominations.

      Elizabeth Warren said on Sunday that “American women are not stupid” enough to believe JD Vance’s promise that Trump would veto any nationwide abortion ban passed by Congress if Trump is elected again to the Oval Office.

      Kerry Kennedy, the sister of Robert F Kennedy Jr, said on Sunday she was “disgusted” by his decision to drop out and endorse Trump’s presidential bid. Max Kennedy, her brother, also condemned his sibling’s endorsement of Trump.

      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris issued statements on Monday marking the third anniversary of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Donald Trump visited Arlington national cemetery in Virginia on Monday to take part in a wreath laying ceremony as he seeks to tie Harris to the chaotic US pullout and attack at Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate that killed 13 American soldiers.

      Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic Hawaii congresswoman, is expected to formally endorse Donald Trump’s presidential bid today at his event in Detroit, Michigan, according to a report.

      A judge in Arizona will hear arguments on Monday in the “fake electors” case involving a scheme by Republican allies of Trump to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the state during the 2020 presidential election. More

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      Ex-Democrat Tulsi Gabbard endorses Donald Trump in 2024 presidential race

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      Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, has endorsed the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, in the US presidential election.Gabbard, who served in the military in Iraq, ran for president in the Democratic primary in 2020. She quit the party two years later and has become a fixture at conservative conferences and in rightwing media.Addressing a National Guard Association conference in Detroit, Michigan, where Trump was speaking, Gabbard said: “This administration has us facing multiple wars on multiple fronts in regions around the world and closer to the brink of nuclear war than we ever have been before.“This is one of the main reasons why I’m committed to doing all that I can to send President Trump back to the White House, where he can once again serve us as our commander-in-chief. Because I am confident that his first task will be to do the work to walk us back from the brink of war.”Gabbard, who represented Hawaii in Congress and is a former vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee, accused the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, of retaliating against political opponents, undermining civil liberties and weaponising America’s institutions against both Trump and herself.“We as Americans must stand together to reject this anti-freedom culture of political retaliation and abuse of power,” she added.Gabbard’s announcement comes a day after Robert F Kennedy Jr, scion of a Democratic dynasty, suspended his own White House bid and threw his weight behind Trump. Elon Musk, who describes himself as “historically a moderate Democrat”, is also backing the former president.Trump, who has been portraying Harris as a leftwing extremist, told the gathering on Monday: “This fight is no longer between Democrats and Republicans. This is a fight between communism and freedom.“It’s a very serious fight. That’s why millions of traditional Democrats, including FDR Democrats, JFK Democrats, independents and old-fashioned liberals are joining our movement. Our poll numbers are great.”Trump admitted that he had not been aware that Gabbard served as a lieutenant-colonel in the army. “She’s a special person,” he added. “She’s got great common sense, great spirit. She loves our country and she loves the people in this room.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRecently Gabbard has been helping Trump prepare for next month’s televised presidential debate against Harris. In 2020 she took Harris to taskon the debate stage over her record as a prosecutor – a clip that still circulates in rightwing media.Trump, who earlier laid wreaths during a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, was marking the third anniversary of a suicide bombing that killed 13 US service members during the withdrawal from Afghanistan. “The humiliation in Afghanistan set off the collapse of American credibility and respect all around the world,” he said in Detroit, seeking to blame Harris and Joe Biden for the deaths.In her own statement marking the anniversary of the Kabul airport attack, Harris said she mourns the 13 service members who were killed. “My prayers are with their families and loved ones,” she added. “My heart breaks for their pain and their loss.” More

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      Anti-Walz slogan website used to troll Trump supporters: ‘Let’s vote for adults’

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      If you type in NeverWalz.com in your browser, the page that appears probably doesn’t look like what you expected from a webpage donning a slogan against Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and the current vice-presidential candidate for the Democratic party.“Trump is a convicted felon. Let’s vote for adults,” the webpage reads. “Try being joyful instead of an asshole.”After just a few seconds on the webpage, users are automatically redirected to KamalaHarris.com, the official website for Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign.The slogan “Never Walz” is indeed anti-Walz, and was seen recently plastered on a booth set up by an group against the vice-presidential nominee, Action 4 Liberty, at the Minnesota state fair. The group was seen handing out fliers and selling merchandise that criticizes Walz.But, it appears that the group did not secure a website domain for the “Never Walz” slogan, leaving it available for someone else to buy and use.As of Monday, the website domain NeverWalz.com is being used to criticize former president Donald Trump and then quickly redirects viewers to the Harris campaign website.The website is being shared on social media by supporters of Walz and Harris.“They forgot to buy the domain,” one X user said posting the link. “Click link for a good laugh.”Action 4 Liberty did not immediately return a request for comment. More

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      ‘Georgia’s ours to lose’: Trump and Harris camps zero in on swing states

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      As Kamala Harris and Donald Trump brace themselves for what promises to be an ugly and bruising sprint to the finishing line in November, both presidential candidates’ campaigns are turning their sights back on the handful of desperately close swing states where the battle is likely to be decided.Georgia is coming into view as a critical battleground for both leaders as they struggle to gain voters’ attention in an epochal election. On Wednesday, the vice-president will travel from the White House to southern Georgia to hold her first campaign event in the state with her recently anointed running mate and former high school football coach, Minnesota governor Tim Walz.The duo will go on a bus tour of the region, attempting to reach out to diverse voting groups including rural areas where the former president is strong, as well as suburban and urban districts in Albany and Valdosta, where large Black communities are among their target demographics. On Thursday night, Harris is scheduled to cap the tour with a rally in Savannah, where she will talk to Georgians about the stakes of this election.The intense focus on Georgia by the Democratic campaign underlines that they are not resting on their laurels after what most commentators have agreed was a pitch-perfect convention in Chicago last week. Despite the pronounced bounce in popularity that Harris has enjoyed since she dramatically switched with Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket five weeks ago, the race remains essentially neck and neck.The latest poll tracker by 538 for Georgia puts Trump 0.6% ahead of Harris in Georgia, with Harris on 46.0% and Trump on 46.6%. That is bang in the middle of the margin of error – and suggests that the state is open territory for the two candidates.In Sunday’s political talkshows, Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina who is one of Trump’s closest surrogates, underlined the importance of Georgia to Trump’s re-election hopes. “If we don’t win Georgia, I don’t see how we get to 270,” he told CNN’s State of the Union, referring to the number of electoral college votes needed to win the presidency.Graham added that he would be accompanying Trump to what he called a “unity event” in Georgia soon. He predicted that if Trump played the right game in the state he would win.“I do believe Georgia’s ours to lose. It’s really hard for Harris to tell Georgians that we’re on the right track – they don’t believe it,” Graham said.The problem for Graham and other top Republican advisers is that Trump frequently blatantly ignores their guidance. In his most recent trip to Georgia, Trump ranted about the state’s Republican governor Brian Kemp, whom he still blames for failing to back him in his attempt to subvert the 2020 election – and whose support he now needs to prevail in November.Graham implicitly admitted to CNN the trouble that the attack on Kemp had caused but insisted: “We repaired the damage, I think, between Governor Kemp and President Trump.“He’s going to put his ground game behind President Trump and all other Republicans in Georgia.”Three days after the Democratic convention, which went off in a blaze of red, white and blue balloons and an ecstatic response from delegates, the Harris-Walz campaign is now laser-focused on that same ground game. The key is to turn the palpable surge in energy that exploded from the Chicago convention into hard work making calls and knocking on doors in Georgia and the other six battleground states: Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.The chairperson of the campaign, Jen O’Malley Dillon, released new data on Sunday which she said demonstrated the positive impact of the convention throughout the battleground states. Chicago marked the biggest week so far in Harris’s nascent pitch for the White House, she said, with volunteers signing up for almost 200,000 shifts during the week.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMoney also continues to pour in, with the campaign raising $540m in five weeks – a record in US presidential campaign history. About $82m of that was received during convention week.O’Malley Dillon said that it was all a sign of Harris building on her momentum: “We are taking no voters for granted and communicating relentlessly with battleground voters every single day between now and election day – all the while Trump is focused on very little beyond online tantrums.”A leading Harris surrogate, the Colorado’s Democratic governor Jared Polis, appeared on Fox News Sunday to try to convince right-leaning voters and undecided independents that they could safely back Harris. “She’s come to the middle,” Polis said, when asked about some of the more progressive policies Harris previously espoused but has since dropped – including a ban on fracking and Medicare for all.Polis added: “She’s pragmatic. She’s a tough leader. She’s the leader for the future.“She’s going to be a president for all the American people.”As the euphoria of the convention fades, Harris has already begun to face tougher questions, notably when will she expose herself to tougher questions by facing an interviewer. The Democratic candidate has so far studiously avoided a sit-down with any major news outlet.Quizzed himself about Harris’s resistance to being questioned, Cory Booker, the Democratic senator from New Jersey, told CNN: “As this campaign goes on, she’ll be sitting for more interviews”.“She’ll be engaging in debates,” Booker said. “I think she wants to do more.”With the battleground states all still essentially anyone’s to win, there are growing fears that Trump might be tempted to unleash another conspiracy to overturn the result should he narrowly lose in November. There are numerous indications that Trump and his Make America Great Again (Maga) supporters may be laying down the foundations of a challenge.At a rally last week in Asheboro, North Carolina, Trump said: “Our primary focus is not to get out the vote – it’s to make sure they don’t cheat, because we have all the votes you need.”Trump’s running mate, the US senator from Ohio, JD Vance, was asked by NBC News’s Meet the Press whether he believed the election would be free and fair. “I do think it’s going to be free and fair,” he replied.Then he added: “We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that happens. We’re going to pursue every pathway to make sure legal ballots get counted.” More

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      ‘This is my political home’: how 30 ceasefire delegates changed the Democratic convention

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      Asma Mohammed organized the uncommitted movement in Minnesota because she “was seeing children who look like my son be massacred”.June Rose, an uncommitted delegate from Rhode Island, joined the cause because they were raised as an orthodox Jew, kept away from Palestinians and taught that the occupation of Palestine was for their safety. Then Rose went to Palestine. “And I realized that not one single child needs to die in order to keep me safe,” they said.Abbas Alawieh, a leader of the movement, kept coming back to his experience as a 15-year-old in south Lebanon, where he said he survived US-funded Israeli bombings. “I remember what those bombs feel like when they drop. I remember how your bones shake within your body. I remember what they smell like. I remember what the dust feels like when it fills the room after a bomb drops and I can’t even see my own hand in front of my own face,” he said.At the Democratic national convention in Chicago this week, uncommitted delegates repeatedly shared the personal reasons they had decided to start an anti-war movement within the Democratic party – and what Kamala Harris needs to do to win back the voters they represent, who don’t agree with the Biden administration’s policy of sending more weapons to Israel as a disproportionate number of civilians in Gaza are being killed.Over the course of the four-day convention, the delegates pushed for a Palestinian American speaker to get time on the main stage – a request the Harris campaign denied – leading to an impromptu sit-in and, ultimately, the support of lawmakers, hundreds of delegates, and far more attention to the cause.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenThese are Democrats. Most are activists, seasoned at turning out their communities to vote. Alawieh was a congressional staffer for multiple members of Congress. He was a staffer on 6 January 2021, he said, when rioters flooded the US Capitol building in Washington DC. “I don’t need to be convinced how dangerous Trump is,” he said.There’s no chance Mohammed changes parties because of this. “Imagine me, a hijabi Muslim woman, walking into the [Republican national convention] right now. It would never happen. This is our party. That’s why we are working on our own party. This is my political home. That’s why we are working on the inside.”At the Chicago convention, most Democrats focused on joy and celebration, rallying around Harris after a slog of an election abruptly changed course a month ago.But there was a convention within the convention, so to speak, of hundreds wracked with grief and despair over the ongoing war in Gaza, which has taken at least 40,000 Palestinian lives and left hundreds of thousands of people starving, sick and injured. Attendees could go from hearing a doctor describe children – the only remaining members of their families – covered in burns, then walk a few feet away into a display about coconuts, a nod to a meme-ified Harris quote.The juxtaposition made Dr Thaer Ahmad, a doctor who grew up in the Chicago area known as Little Palestine, sick to his stomach. Ahmad worked in a hospital in Gaza early this year, and said he will never forget what he saw. First, a bomb would go off, shaking the hospital. Minutes later, families would pour into the doors of the emergency department.“We didn’t have any beds because the hospital was already totally full, so we’re seeing five-year-olds, six-year-olds on the ground, some of whom have already been killed, are already dead, and others who are shrieking in pain who have had a limb blown off and we don’t even have any pain medicine to give them,” he said. “And you’re just sort of looking around a room that’s full of bleeding and suffering patients, some of whom will die while you’re sitting there trying to figure out what your next move is. And you’re lost.”Ahmad was among a handful of doctors who shared, time after time, what they saw in Gaza hospitals with reporters and convention attendees. He came to Chicago, he said, “to essentially spoil the party”.“I can’t come in one place and talk to you about the five-year-old and the six-year-old and the family and the house, and then see somebody get up there on the main stage and just sort of pretend like we’re in la-la land,” he said. “I mean, it’s so hard to even listen to. It’s just very cringy, to be honest, and to be fair, that’s how I’ve felt for a lot of the last several months.”Using the system for changeStarting in Michigan, Democratic activists hatched the grassroots plan to vote “uncommitted” instead of for Biden in the Democratic primary earlier this year. The idea spread to other states, with nearly 800,000 voters selecting some version of an uncommitted vote on their ballots.This protest vote would send a message that voters demanded a change on Gaza for Biden to get their votes. In some of the states, uncommitted won enough votes to earn delegates to the convention. Those delegates, organizers planned, would use their power inside the party process to win over committed delegates, amplify their voices and, hopefully, get Harris’s attention – and action.Throughout the campaign, the group has kept its sole focus on getting a ceasefire and arms embargo. Before the convention began, they added the call for a speaker on the main stage, first suggesting a doctor who had worked in Gaza and a Palestinian American leader, as a way to bring attention to the issue.Tens of thousands of people also took to the streets outside the convention throughout the week, but the delegates didn’t join them. Their focus has been on working the system inside, finding allies among other Democratic activists and officials.View image in fullscreenThe Democratic party included the uncommitted delegates in the convention process – to an extent. They were allowed a space for press conferences, but it was in a far-flung corner of a building beyond the main action during the day – people would not accidentally happen upon this room. They were granted a panel on Palestinian human rights, a first of its kind, but it was scheduled for the last slot of the day, after shuttles started departing to the United Center.The speaker request was shut down, without much reason given for why.The Harris campaign later defended the decision not to allow a Palestinian speaker by saying the party had given the uncommitted movement lots of ways to engage in the convention process already. The delegates disagreed.“The scale is just completely out of whack when we’re talking about room space versus when we’re talking about a Palestinian American getting to speak at the convention, or when we’re talking about meaningful policy change, an immediate, permanent ceasefire and an arms embargo,” Rose said.But much of the process still worked: the 30 uncommitted delegates convinced more than 300 Harris delegates to sign a pledge to become ceasefire delegates, building their power tenfold. And, as the week wore on, and the speaker request languished, prominent progressive elected officials including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Greg Casar, started joining the public call for a Palestinian on the main stage and helped internally to send that message to the Harris campaign and Democratic party.Finding alliesThe caucus and council meetings offered to the group did not lend themselves to organizing large groups – they were essentially panel discussions. Instead, the delegates fanned out around the convention, at morning breakfast meetings where all convention attendees had to pick up credentials each morning, at press conferences, in the hallways outside panels, in the crowded walkways at the United Center.They stayed visible. Their shirts, emblazoned with bright red flowers, said “democratic majority for Palestine”. Their pins, in red font, said “ceasefire delegate”. They wore white-and-black keffiyehs, some of which said “Democrats for Palestinian Rights”.View image in fullscreenOn the first day, they handed out flyers for a historic event: the first time the convention had allowed a panel on Palestinian human rights. Outside the panel, delegates asked those attending to sign on to their petition, to join them in the ceasefire cause even if they were already pledged to Harris. The panel itself drew a few hundred people, who listened as a doctor who had worked in Gaza described children blown apart by US-funded bombs and as a Palestinian American shared the stories of the more than 100 family members she had lost.Inga Gibson, an uncommitted delegate from Hawaii, said other middle-aged women, her peers, would come up to her as she sat in the hall. They said their kids were challenging them – ”What are you going to do about this, Mom?” – and telling them they might not vote because of Gaza, Gibson said. She convinced several to sign on to the petition as ceasefire delegates.On Tuesday, while a few delegates sat on a bench in a broad hall not far from where people had lined up to buy Democratic merchandise, a person with a “save the children” pin walked up. “I love your pin,” Mohammed said, then started talking about becoming a ceasefire delegate. At another point, someone walked up and said: “I appreciate what y’all are doing.” “Are you a delegate?” Mohammed asked.On Wednesday morning, she said, a man came up to her and said: “Is that a ceasefire shirt?” She thought he was going to be upset. “What does a ceasefire even mean?” he continued. She started to reply when he added: “I’m going to stop you right there. I’m a Jewish American, and I hate that they’re doing this in my name,” Mohammed recounted. He signed on as a ceasefire delegate after their conversation.Time to sit inAlawieh’s hands had a slight shake as his voice cracked with emotion on the third day of the convention, after several press conferences where he had shared that he was waiting for a call to greenlight the main stage speaker and again recounted his story of surviving bombings as a teenager.Standing amid dozens of reporters and delegates outside the United Center, he made an impromptu personal decision: he would just sit and wait.He pulled his phone out in the middle of the press conference, calling his contact with the Harris campaign. “I’m someone who works within the system and I was asking a very reasonable ask, not to be suppressed,” he told the person on the phone. “I’ve run out of options from my position as a delegate so I’m leaning into my power as an everyday citizen and I’m sitting here, and I’m not going anywhere.”View image in fullscreenIn between the United Center, which displayed images of Harris and running mate Tim Walz bathed in bright red, white and blue lights, and a CNN Politico tent where journalists and politicians partied, the uncommitted movement started their sit-in.About a dozen ceasefire delegates slept overnight on the pavement outside the United Center on the penultimate night of the convention, grabbing a few moments of sleep where they could. Mohammed was one of them. Asked how she was feeling the next morning, she said: “Really tired. Holding out hope.”By the next day, the final day of the convention, Harris’s team still had not budged. The movement set a 6pm deadline, which passed.The work they’d done inside had convinced hundreds of their fellow Democrats, but it hadn’t swayed the Harris campaign enough to grant a speaker on the main stage. And the speaker, they pointed out, had not been going to give a radical speech: Ruwa Romman, a Georgia state representative and one of the speakers the uncommitted delegates had suggested, wrote about her Palestinian grandfather’s influence on her life and called for people to unite behind Harris and push for an end of the war in Gaza.As political elite spoke inside, Romman gave her speech to the cameras gathered outside instead.View image in fullscreenAlawieh said he was certain her speech had gotten more media attention this way than it would have if she’d been given a short slot on stage earlier in the week. “I would put all my money, she would not have had this many cameras pointed at her,” he said.The uncommitted movement then issued a demand to Harris to come meet them in their communities, in Michigan, to talk about a ceasefire and arms embargo. They gave a deadline of 15 September. The speaker request may not have been granted, but the uncommitted delegates cast their work at the convention as a success, leaders told reporters that evening.The uncommitted delegates decided to go inside the arena, where their party was about to hear from Harris herself. They weren’t going to disrupt the process – something party officials had worried about throughout the week. Instead, the delegates linked arms and weaved through the crowded hallways attempting to get to their seats. They stopped and stood in a circle, singing “ceasefire now”.View image in fullscreenOutside, helicopters whirred overhead as the uncommitted movement packed up the rest of the sit-in. They put away the snacks and water. They rolled up banners that said “not another bomb”. They packed away extra ceasefire T-shirts and keffiyehs and an errant cheesehead, the preferred headgear of the Wisconsin delegation.View image in fullscreenStanding outside as the sun moved lower in the sky, Layla Elabed, one of the co-founders of the movement, said that her belief in the democratic system hadn’t been shaken.“Power, for me, is with people,” Elabed explained. “Because often it isn’t electeds who wake up one day and decide that, oh, we should have a policy change that actually speaks to the most marginalized people, the most displaced people, the people without the most resources.“Black folks didn’t get the Civil Rights Act because those who were in office decided one day and woke up and said, oh, we should do this. It is because people mobilized and organized and advocated and put so much pressure on policymakers and moved those policymakers to make that right decision. That’s what we’re going to be doing.” More