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      US election live: Harris says Trump’s violent rhetoric about Liz Cheney ‘must be disqualifying’

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      Kamala Harris spoke of Donald Trump’s violent rhetoric about Liz Cheney in which he suggested Cheney be shot with “guns trained on her face”.Harris said:
      “He has increased his violent rhetoric, Donald Trump has, about political opponents and in great detail suggested rifles should be trained on former representative Liz Cheney. This must be disqualifying.”
      Hailing Cheney as a “courageous” and “incredible American”, Harris added:
      “I will tell you, I know Liz Cheney well enough to know that she is tough, she is incredibly courageous, and has shown herself to be a true patriot at a very difficult time in our country …
      We see this kind of rhetoric that is violent in nature, where we see this kind of spirit coming from Donald Trump that is so laden with the desire for revenge and retribution … I think that Liz Cheney is courageous and that we will always make sure that we are all fighting against and speaking out against any form of political violence.”
      Trump is now criticizing “Shawn Fain or whatever the hell his name is,” the president of the United Auto Workers, who is campaigning or Kamala Harris. The crowd boos.Trump says he can’t sleep easily and that he’s “always tossing and turning” thinking about China and the “Russia hoax” and how to make money for the American people.“I don’t feel like a senior. Does anybody feel like a senior?” Trump, 78, says, to some cheers. “I feel better – I think I’m sharper and better now than I was 25, 30 years ago. I do, I swear. I’ll let you know when I don’t.”Trump gives an update on sales of “Dark Maga” merchandise: Trump was talking about Elon Musk, and what role the billionaire will play in cutting government spending in a Trump administration. “You know where he is right now? He’s campaigning in Pennsylvania for Donald Trump. How cool is that,” Trump said.At one rally, Musk appeared and wore a “Dark Maga” black hat, Trump said, that the Republican candidate hadn’t even been aware his campaign made. That hat hadn’t sold well, maybe two hats, Trump said, until Musk wore it. Then the campaign sales of those hats took off.“They sold 71,000 black hats, can you believe it?” Trump says. “You make money with money, that’s how it is.”“But now that very low-IQ person who wants to be – have we ever had a low-IQ president before?” Trump asks of Kamala Harris.“It’s like your high school football team playing … what’s a good team today … oh, the Detroit Lions,” Trump tells his Michigan audience. He tells them Kamala Harris wouldn’t have been able to figure out which local sports team to reference.In a post on Truth Social, Trump appeared to be trying to walk back his comments about how Liz Cheney, one of his most prominent Republican critics, should face having rifles “shooting at her”.His comments yesterday have been widely condemned, including by Cheney and Kamala Harris, and are also under investigation by Arizona’s attorney general.“She’s a radical war hawk,” Trump said of Liz Cheney at an event in Arizona. Then said: “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.”“We love everybody right?” Trump says. He drops his voice. “No, we don’t.”Then Trump launches into an attack on Kamala Harris’s message of unity, a central part of her approach.“What about her, she’s always talking about, ‘You know I want to bring the country together, Trump is Hitler, ah, excuse me I shouldn’t have said that,’” Trump says, in a voice imitating Harris.He goes on with the imitation. “‘We want to get together as a country,’ ‘They’re all racists, they’re all this, they’re all that, but we want to have peace, and we want to get along.’”Trump tells his supporters that “the fake news” won’t even report on the bad jobs numbers. If you’re curious how just how false that claim is, you can Google it:Trump is now discussing the underwhelming economic numbers for last month.“This is not good news for them,” he says, of Harris and the Democrats. “How would you like to have an election in four days?”Some experts agree with Trump on this one:“You know, there are those that say that if we don’t win this election you may never have another election in this country … with these radical left lunatics that we’re dealing with,” Trump says.As you recall, Trump himself actually sparked this conversation over whether there might not be elections in the future, because of what he said to Christian voters earlier this year:Trump is now talking about the 2020 Democratic primary, talking about how early Kamala Harris dropped out and revisiting his rude nicknames for various Democratic presidential candidates from the previous election cycle, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.“This will be America’s new golden age,” Trump pledges. “Every problem facing us can be solved, and it’s going to be solved quickly.”Abortion rights advocates are mourning the loss of Nevaeh Crain, an 18-year-old pregnant teenager from Texas who died in October 2023 after three emergency room visits as she sought care for intense abdominal pain.ProPublica’s reporting on Crain, who would have turned 20 today, underscored the potentially fatal threat posed by abortion bans, argued Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All.“Pregnancy should not be a death sentence. Nevaeh Crain should be here, celebrating her 20th birthday today,” Timmaraju said in a statement.Timmaraju placed the blame for abortion bans on the shoulders of Republican politicians like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the incumbent senator who is facing a tough re-election fight against Democrat Collin Allred in Texas.“This has to stop,” she said. “And our best chance to do that is to vote for reproductive freedom, from vice-president Harris to Colin Allred and all the way down the ticket, so we can restore the right to abortion and end these bans.”“It seems so poignant,” Trump says, of the question he keeps asking, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” The crowd roars: “No!”“We’re going to miss these rallies aren’t we?” Trump says onstage in Michigan, but promises his supporters that when he is back in the White House, the spirit of the rallies will continue in a different form.His supporters will someday look back and realize, “there was something very, very, special about what we all did together,” Trump says, speaking of his rallies. He also speculates about few people future presidential candidates will draw to their rallies.“This has been the thrill of a lifetime for me, and for you, and for everybody,” Trump says.The White House pool report has an amusing detail from Janesville for the punctuation nerds: Someone behind Harris on the stage was holding a “,la” sign (comma “la”), which is the proper pronunciation of her name. More

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      US judge returns lawsuit against Elon Musk’s $1m voter scheme to state court

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      A federal judge on Friday denied an attempt by America Pac – the political action committee founded by Elon Musk to support Donald Trump’s campaign for a second presidency – to move to federal court a civil suit brought by the Philadelphia district attorney over a daily $1m prize draw for registered voters.The lawyers for Musk and his America Pac had argued that the lawsuit, which is seeking to halt the sweepstakes in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, needed to be resolved in federal court as it referenced the 5 November presidential election.But the presiding US district judge Gerald Pappert disagreed with that contention in a five-page opinion, writing that the motivations of the Philadelphia district attorney, Larry Krasner, were irrelevant – and that his office had the power to bring the case in state court.“Having now considered the parties’ submissions, the court grants the motion and remands the case back to the Court of Common Pleas,” it said.The civil suit that names both Musk and America Pac alleges that a petition asking registered voters in battleground states to submit their address, phone number and emails in exchange for $47, as well as to enter a daily $1m prize draw, was a lottery scheme that was illegal under state law.The petition has separately attracted scrutiny from the US justice department, which warned America Pac that the lottery violated federal law as it in effect amounts to paying people to register to vote. But the civil suit was the first legal action taken to stop the scheme.As the petition asks people to pledge their support to the US constitution’s first and second amendments – big causes for Republicans – it is widely seen by election law experts as illegally encouraging Trump supporters to register to vote in swing states. In a close election, turnout by voters for the former president could tip the result.

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      The suit also accuses Musk and America Pac of violating state consumer protection laws by deploying deceptive or misleading statements. For instance, Krasner contends that winners are not random, as advertised, because multiple winners have been people who showed up at Trump rallies.Musk’s defenders say it is simply a contest open to registered voters. In theory, they say, Democrats registered to vote in battleground states can complete the petition and have a chance to win the $1m lottery.The petition is perhaps the most public of the various strategies employed by America Pac to bolster Trump’s candidacy. The Super Pac now leads the crucial get-out-the-vote operation on behalf of the Trump campaign as Musk searches for more ways to help the former president return to the Oval Office.The ground game effort has suffered from some setbacks. The Guardian has previously reported that tens of thousands of Trump voters might not be reached after America Pac’s internal systems flagged that 20 to 25% of door knocks reported in Arizona and Nevada may have been fraudulent. More

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      Offensive Halloween parade float depicts shackled Harris being dragged

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      A Pittsburgh-area Halloween parade’s depiction of Kamala Harris in chains and being dragged by a vehicle displaying Donald Trump’s name is being condemned as racist – and has prompted an apology from the event organizer.Photos of Wednesday night’s parade in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, that circulated widely across social media show a person dressed as the Democratic vice-president shackled and walking behind a golf cart-like vehicle. The vehicle – a float in a Halloween parade organized by the Mount Pleasant volunteer fire department – is decorated with American flags and Trump campaign signs carrying people dressed in what appear to be Secret Service agent costumes, along with a mounted rifle.Social media was quick to express disgust at the float’s display, which came less than a week before the presidential election between Harris and the Republican former president comes to a head on 5 November.The NAACP was among those to say the float was racist. A statement from Daylon A Davis, the president of the NAACP’s Pittsburgh branch, said: “This appalling portrayal goes beyond the realm of Halloween satire or free expression; it is a harmful symbol that evokes a painful history of violence, oppression, and racism that Black and Brown communities have long endured here in America.”Harris is of Jamaican and Indian descent.Nearly 24 hours after the parade, the Mount Pleasant volunteer fire department issued a statement apologizing on Facebook for allowing the offensive float.“We do not share in the values represented by those participants, and we understand how it may have hurt or offended members of our community,” the statement said.The post did not elaborate on the process of getting approved for the parade, leaving questions about how the float was allowed to roll.On a CBS News segment, Mount Pleasant’s mayor, Diane Bailey, denounced the portrayal of Harris.“I was appalled, angered, upset,” the Democratic mayor said on Thursday. “This does not belong in this parade or in this town.”Bailey added that the fire department must change its process for allowing floats.“They’ve never taken applications in the past,” Bailey said. “They’ve never vetted anyone who wanted to come to the parade.”Michelle Milan McFall, the chairperson of Westmoreland county’s Democratic party, added that the float in question rolled during what she said may be the US’s “most contentious election”.On the campaign trail, Trump has repeatedly threatened to imprison his opponents. He has also been targeted by two assassination attempts, according to authorities.“It’s vile. It’s heartbreaking. It’s concerning. And I think it’s also got an element of danger,” Milan McFall told ABC affiliate WTAE. “Again, we’re living in this climate where people aren’t just thinking about hatred and feeling it in their guts and bones. They’re acting on it.” More

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      Liz Cheney calls Trump would-be tyrant as he imagines ‘guns trained on her face’

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      Donald Trump has called former congresswoman Liz Cheney a radical war hawk and said she should face being under fire with rifles “shooting at her” – prompting the anti-Trump Republican to warn the public against dictatorship and a presidential candidate who “wants to be a tyrant”.Cheney recently endorsed Kamala Harris and has campaigned with her, trying to persuade Republicans who don’t want Trump to win another term in the White House in this election to vote for the Democratic ticket of the US vice-president and her running mate, Tim Walz.Harris on Friday said Trump’s violent rhetoric about Cheney “must be disqualifying” ahead of the 5 November presidential election. Meanwhile, the Arizona attorney general, Kris Mayes, on Friday said her office had opened a “death threat investigation” surrounding Trump’s comments about Cheney.While still in office, Cheney co-chaired the bipartisan special House committee that investigated Trump’s conduct on January 6, when extremist supporters of his stormed the US Capitol to try, in vain, to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory over him. She lost her Wyoming seat in 2022 as Trump supporters turned against her. Trump has called for her to be jailed for investigating him.Trump was in Arizona on Thursday evening, doing a sit-down talk with the conservative broadcaster Tucker Carlson, and he brought up Cheney in the context of her father, Dick Cheney, the former vice-president who was a hawkish architect of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 during the George W Bush administration. Trump has been critical of that war and has also criticized the current US president, Joe Biden, for becoming involved in Ukraine’s struggling defense against the invasion by Russia.“She’s a radical war hawk,” he said of Liz Cheney. Then said: “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.”Early on Friday, Cheney issued a stinging response on X.“This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant. #Womenwillnotbesilenced #VoteKamala,” she posted.Trump made his comments on Thursday about Cheney after complaining that Democratic criticism of his campaign had fueled what according to authorities were two failed assassination attempts against him.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMayes told Arizona’s 12News it was not yet clear whether Trump’s comment amounted to protected free speech or a criminal threat.“That’s the question, whether it did cross the line. It’s deeply troubling,” Mayes said, according to Reuters. “It is the kind of thing that riles people up and that makes our situation in Arizona and other states more dangerous.”Cheney has said she has never voted for a Democrat before but will do so “proudly” for Harris in this election to ensure Trump never holds a position of public trust again. Her father will join her in casting his ballot for Harris. More

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      Must-win Pennsylvania still bafflingly close as Harris and Trump fight for edge

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      Kamala Harris stood before a cheering crowd of hundreds of her supporters in Philadelphia and promised that she would deliver in Pennsylvania, a battleground state considered a must-win in the electoral college.“Nine days left in one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime, and we know this is going to be a tight race until the very end,” the vice-president told supporters in Philadelphia last weekend. “And make no mistake: we will win.”And yet, just a day earlier at a rally in State College, Donald Trump declared: “We’re going to pull this off. It’ll be the greatest victory in the history of our country for all of us – not for me, for all of us.”The contradictory comments reflect a neck-and-neck race in Pennsylvania that is hurtling toward the finish line with no clear frontrunner. The victor of Pennsylvania and its 19 electoral votes, the most of any battleground state, will probably win the electoral college and determine the trajectory of the country for the next four years.View image in fullscreenJoe Biden won Pennsylvania by just 1.2 points in 2020, four years after Trump carried the state by 0.7 points. According to the Guardian’s polling tracker, Trump currently holds a lead of less than one point over Harris in the state.Conversations with voters in Pennsylvania underscore how close the election is, often to the bafflement of both Democrats and Republicans. And the outcome could perhaps shift with an unexpected turns of events, such as Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden in New York last weekend. It was there that a comedian took the stage before Trump and insulted Puerto Rico, calling it an “island of garbage”. As pundits were quick to note afterwards, Pennsylvania is home to more than 470,000 Puerto Ricans.For Democrats, the focus is on firing up voters in Pennsylvania cities such as Philadelphia and Scranton and their immediate suburbs, home to many women and college-educated voters they view as amenable to their message of protecting democracy and abortion. Republicans are more focused on winning white working-class voters and a growing number of young men of color, by attacking Harris over the president’s immigration policies and the high inflation of his early presidency.This dynamic is exemplified by Lackawanna county, which includes Scranton. Hillary Clinton won it in 2016 by 3.4 points, but she decisively lost most of its neighboring counties, as white working-class voters flocked to Trump.Four years later, Biden won Lackawanna county by 8.4 points, though Trump’s persistent strength with working-class voters in the neighboring counties helped him keep the race in Pennsylvania close.The outcome here will depend, as it always does, on turnout, and Democrats are counting on a robust ground game to help them deliver a win. The culinary union Unite Here, for instance endorsed Harris in August and has knocked on more than 1m doors in Pennsylvania this election cycle, with a goal of surpassing 1.25m by 5 November.Jaime Hunt, a 22-year-old organizer with Unite Here, walked through South Philadelphia on a recent sunny Saturday, asking voters whether they planned to vote by mail, and encouraging them to fill out their ballots on the spot if they had already received them.View image in fullscreenThe canvassing efforts of Unite Here and other pro-Harris groups could make a critical difference in Pennsylvania. In 2020, Biden narrowly defeated Trump in the state by roughly 80,000 votes, in part by maximizing his advantage in Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs. This year, based on her many conversations with voters, Hunt is confident in Harris’s chances.“There is also a lot of – a good number – of Republicans who are voting for her. A lot of people are switching,” Hunt said. “I think it’s going to be her who wins.”Daniel Levin, a regional organizing director for the youth voting group NextGen America, has spent months on Philadelphia’s college campuses getting thousands of students registered to vote, and now helping them make a plan to vote for Harris and other Democrats.Despite concerns over whether young voters will support Harris, particularly because of widespread outrage over the Biden administration’s response to the war in Gaza, Levin predicted high youth turnout in Philadelphia. On a recent Friday, he convinced a young voter at Temple University to support Harris after explaining how her policies could benefit low-income residents of the city.“This is the place to be optimistic that we’re going to get a huge turnout,” Levin said. “And I think we will this year. I really think we will in Philadelphia, and we need to to carry [Pennsylvania].”In contrast to the broad network of pro-Harris groups working to turn out left-leaning voters, the Trump campaign’s comparatively meager ground operation in battleground states such as Pennsylvania has stoked concern among his allies. Trump and the Republican National Committee have instead directed more of their attention to combating alleged voter fraud, most recently highlighting concerns about potentially fraudulent registrations in Lancaster county.Despite Trump’s inattention to his turnout operation, he has managed to keep the race in Pennsylvania highly competitive, and his most ardent supporters seem as motivated as ever to cast their ballots for him.“I’ve never in my life seen a movement like this,” said John Spatig Jr, 46, who attended a rally by Trump in Allentown and lives in Northampton county, one of the biggest bellwethers in the state. He said the top issue for him was the government response for the Covid-19 pandemic and vaccine mandates.“How is the government going to guarantee me that there will never be a lockdown?” he said.View image in fullscreenMarilynn Raymond, 77, a retired bookkeeper from Reading, said at Trump’s rally in Allentown on Tuesday that she didn’t believe the polls showing a close race.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“All the crowds that Trump has done through the whole election far outweigh Kamala,” she said. “I think he’s way ahead.”As this campaigning season nears its close, Pennsylvania voters seem to be approaching election day with a mix of fatigue, excitement and fear.The fatigue was on display as Hunt made her rounds through South Philadelphia, with one resident responding to her knock by yelling through the door: “No one is home!”Both parties have already poured hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of campaign ads into Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia especially. The Philadelphia-based ABC affiliate WPVI completely sold out of ad inventory through election day by 24 October.Alex Pearlman, a comedian from the Philadelphia suburbs with a large following on TikTok, met with Tim Walz before a rally in Scranton, and he said he urged the Democratic vice-presidential nominee to keep voters energized for the final stretch.View image in fullscreen“Everybody’s tired,” Pearlman said. “Everyone’s been pretty set, the entire time. I think most people were holding their breath just to see who the candidates were going to be after the primaries. So now that we’re at this point, almost everyone has kind of made up their mind.”That dynamic has forced Harris and Trump to fight over an ever-diminishing number of undecided voters as they race toward election day. According to an Emerson College survey conducted in late October, only 3% of likely Pennsylvania voters were still undecided. And yet, that 3% could make all the difference, given that the state has been decided by roughly one point in the past two presidential elections.The narrow margins have triggered frustration and confusion among Democrats and Republicans in Pennsylvania. How, they ask, could the race for president still be this close?“[Harris] is going to win it, but I don’t believe the polls. I can’t believe that we’re 50-50 tied,” said Kathy Andrews, a 64-year-old voter from Philadelphia who attended Harris’s rally there. “I am giving a lot of credit to the American people, that everyone has a modicum of common sense.”Morgan Pastner Jaffe, a 32-year-old voter from West Chester, said the possibility of Trump’s victory makes her feel “very scared for the future – for women, for people of color and all different religions as well”.“She has to win or we’re screwed,” Jaffe said at Harris’s rally.With the race still a toss-up, the Trump campaign, wary of alienating a critical voting bloc, has tried to distance itself from the comedian who made the comment about Puerto Rico at Madison Square Garden.Rich Patti, 71, said at Trump’s Allentown rally that he didn’t think those remarks would hurt Trump’s chances with Latino voters.“They’re the backbone of our country and the backbones are hurting right now,” he said. “They work hard, they want the same thing. They want to be able to pay their bills, live well.”People of Puerto Rican descent in the state have suggested otherwise. “I was absolutely frustrated, I was angry – but I was not surprised,” Philadelphia councilmember Quetcy Lozada told the Guardian.The high stakes of the election are on display throughout Pennsylvania. Of the many signs adorning lawns and lamp-posts in Philadelphia, some eschew the traditional “Harris-Walz 2024” for slogans such as: “Defend Choice!” and “Defend Democracy!”“I don’t think you can walk around the city of Philadelphia and not know how important it is to people,” said Shane Ringressy, Pennsylvania organizing director for NextGen. “So I will say that Philadelphia itself, including all the young people in the city, definitely seem like they’re ready to fight and do their part.” More

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      Here’s how the winner of the 2024 US presidential election did it | Jonathan Freedland

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      Here’s one prediction about the US election you can take to the bank. When the result is finally known, there will be a stampede of experts and prognosticators rushing to insist that, in effect, they knew it all along – that, hard though it was to glimpse through the fog of polls and shifting data, the eventual outcome was obvious. Even inevitable.That will be truer still if, when the voters’ will is finally known, it turns out not to have been so close after all, with one of the two main candidates sweeping most of the swing states to rack up a healthy majority in the electoral college if not the popular vote.The funny thing is, if that happens – for either candidate – it would not entirely be a surprise. Even now, you can sketch out, in advance, a very plausible case for why Donald Trump could be about to retake the presidency. And you can do the same for why Harris might be on the brink of becoming the first woman to hold the world’s most powerful office. So, much as Boris Johnson drafted two columns on the eve of the Brexit referendum – one advocating leave, the other remain – here, while the US’s verdict is still unknown, is the story of how Trump, or Harris, pulled it off.Start with the scenario of a victorious Trump. To understand it might require a single number: 28. That’s the percentage of Americans who tell pollsters they believe the country is on the right track. A measly 28%. In that environment, incumbent parties lose. And, for all the drama and buzz of her swift installation as candidate, her positioning as the face of change, Harris is a member of the incumbent party and a senior figure in the current US government. A nation that made clear long ago that it wanted to fire Joe Biden, largely over the cost of living and rising prices, as well as immigration, was bound to seize the chance to do the next best thing – and reject his deputy.If there was a way to avoid that fate, it would have required Harris to make a cleaner break from Biden than she was willing to. Whether it was personal respect for the man, or fear of rupturing her coalition, she didn’t do what had to be done. In this narrative, a key moment will prove to be her October appearance on The View, when she was asked if, looking back over the past four years, she would have done anything differently from her boss. “Not a thing that comes to mind,” was her answer. At a stroke, she robbed herself of the mantle of change, and confirmed Trump’s core message: vote Harris, get Biden 2.Should the need arise to explain a Trump win in 2024, incumbency in tough times will be the meat of it. But it won’t be the whole story. Other factors, besides inflation and petrol prices, will have played their part, tied more to culture than politics. Trump’s astonishing lead among men, especially those without a college degree – including some, albeit qualified, evidence of increased support among Black and Hispanic men, previously beyond the reach of the Republican party – points to an element of Trump’s appeal that has endured for nearly a decade. Call it cultural defiance. It sees the wagging finger of all those who sit in judgment – whether that’s the media, the universities, the “woke”, foreign countries, especially European ones, or at its most loosely defined, women, especially educated women – and shows them a big, fat middle finger in response.This is what Trump’s critics took so long to understand. What, for years, they thought would hurt him – scandal, two impeachments, multiple criminal prosecutions and convictions – only made him stronger, confirming him as an outlaw, a transgressor who crossed the very boundaries so many of his followers, chiefly men, itched to cross with him. That photo of him, bloodstained, seconds after dodging an assassin’s bullet, urging his devotees to “fight, fight, fight!” – how, we may come to ask, did we ever think he could be beaten after that?After all, Harris was his ideal opponent. A liberal, accomplished, affluent woman from California, an avatar for the very cultural elite he and many millions of others despise. In case that impression of her were not sharp enough, she reinforced it with a parade of A-list stars campaigning for her in the final stretch, repeating the same mistake Hillary Clinton made in 2016.Finally, given that the US has hardly cured itself of racism or misogyny, it should not be a shock if, in the coming days, we see that a Black woman could not get elected to the White House. It may be 2024, but perhaps the US is still not ready.So much for a Trump win. How will we explain victory for Harris, if it comes? The answer may boil down to one word: women. Outraged by the supreme court’s Dobbs ruling, overturning abortion rights in 2022, women confounded the pollsters in that year’s midterm elections: there was no Republican red wave, despite soaring inflation, because women came out in big numbers to prevent it. Success in 2024 would mean that, once again, and with an intensity missed by most surveys, women in the US had quietly resolved to do the exact same thing to the man who shaped the supreme court, Dobbs’s ultimate author: Trump.In that sense, and others, Trump’s fate would have been sealed before the 2024 campaign even began. If he loses, it will surely be because he’d become too toxic a figure to win: witness his place on the losing side of every election cycle after that first, narrow victory in 2016. What’s more, the toxicity has only got worse recently, his authoritarian, fascistic tendencies laid barer than ever, whether in his threats to deploy the US military against “the enemy from within”, meaning his liberal critics, or his reported desire to be surrounded by “the kind of generals that Hitler had”, obedient to his every whim and diktat. For too many Americans, enough might just have been enough.Trump has torn through so many old-school verities of politics that it’s become tempting to think none of them holds good any more. But on-the-ground organisation still matters. If they win, the Democrats will point to a machine that got their vote out in the critical states, precinct by precinct. Trump outsourced that task to Elon Musk, but there are some things even money cannot buy.A Trump defeat would further confirm another old rule: no politician can ever fully escape his record. This time, to take one example, he hoped to make inroads with Arab and Muslim Americans, distressed and furious at the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. But that would have required those same, crucial voters to forget what Trump had promised a decade ago: a “Muslim ban”, denying entry to the US to people from a long list of Muslim countries. Amnesia exists in politics, perhaps especially in the US. But there are limits.All these different elements are real, even if they can be combined into two very different narratives. Who will win the US election? No one knows. But even if we don’t yet know the result, we can already understand it.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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      Seth Meyers on Trump’s garbage truck stunt: ‘I think you should stay there’

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      Late-night hosts talk Donald Trump dressing up as a garbageman as a late campaign stunt and Kamala Harris’s lead among suburban women.Seth Meyers“All politicians pander,” said Seth Meyers on Thursday’s Late Night, “but Donald Trump is the most shameless and prolific panderer in American history”. And “one of Trump’s favorite pandering tactics is playing dress-up”.On Wednesday, the former US president donned his “latest and perhaps most insane outfit yet” at a campaign stop in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Wearing a reflective orange vest, Trump climbed into a garbage truck emblazoned with his name and asked reporters: “What do you think of my garbage truck?”“You want to know what I really think of your garbage truck? I think it’s awesome and I think you should stay there,” Meyers replied. “I think you should drop out of the race and host a reality show where you try out different jobs while wearing exactly one piece of that job’s uniform.”Trump continued to wear the vest at a rally after the garbage truck stunt, designed to distract from the backlash to racist comments about Puerto Rico at his rally over the weekend. At his rally, he danced to his trademark campaign song, the Village People’s YMCA. “How is this real life?” Meyers wondered. “He doesn’t look like he’s running for president. He looks like he’s at a Halloween party at an assisted living facility.”In truth, “Trump could never make it as a sanitation worker,” Meyers added. “It’s a tough job with actual stakes and genuine responsibility, and no amount of cosplaying can make up for the fact that he’d be really bad at it. He wouldn’t last a day.”The stunt underscored the “central lie” of Trump’s political career: “that he’s a populist, an everyman, a champion of the working class. It’s a fraud.” Meyers reminded that Trump has cozied up to the world’s richest people, promised deregulation to please billionaires like Elon Musk, promised a tax cut for the wealthy and said he would not continue overtime pay. During his presidency, corporate profits soared while manufacturing jobs declined.“This is the one discernible throughline of Trump’s presidency in his three campaigns: billionaires will flourish, while regular people will suffer,” said Meyers.Stephen ColbertOn the Late Show, Stephen Colbert mocked Trump’s stumbling ascent into the garbage truck. “Looks like Trump is taking walking lessons from Rudy Giuliani,” he quipped.Trump tried to give a press conference from the truck, which devolved into rambling that ended with “I hope you enjoyed this garbage truck.”“That’s an inspiring closing message,” Colbert deadpanned, before imitating the former president. “I hope you enjoyed this garbage truck, by which I mean, this campaign. It has been a true honor and a bone-chilling dumpster fire.”At his rally, Trump mused about how he was advised not to say he wants to “protect women” by allowing Roe v Wade to be overturned. “I said, well, I’m gonna go do it whether the women like it or not. I’m going to protect them,” he said.“Now, I know that seems weird and creepy there, but I promise you, it sounded much sweeter in his wedding vows,” Colbert quipped.The host also noted that over 60 million people have already voted, with a 10-point gender gap in early turnout. The polls show that Harris has a 19-point lead among suburban women. “That’s right, Harris is almost as popular among suburban women as cocktail napkins that say ‘Wine do you mean we’re out of wine?!’” he joked.The gender gap has led to a rise in online queries such as: “Can my husband find out who I voted for?”“No, he can’t,” said Colbert. “But if that’s really a concern, the two of you should just sit down, and while he’s watching TV maybe look up your old college boyfriend on Facebook.”Jimmy KimmelAnd in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel also relished Trump’s brand-emblazoned garbage truck “because he is a ridiculous person”.Nevertheless, Trump’s cronies, such as Sean Hannity, tried to spin the photo op as a triumph. “The dumber Trump gets, the deeper Sean digs to spin stupid into smart,” said Kimmel.The Fox News host tried to claim the photo op was an “iconic, epic moment that we will remember for a long time”.“Washington crossed the Delaware, Trump hitched a ride on a garbage Trump,” Kimmel quipped. “The garbage drove the truck.”Kimmel also noted the absurdity of Trump’s subsequent rally with the reflective vest still on. “If there is a single image that we will look back on and think ‘this defines what America was going through in 2024’ I think it will be the Republican nominee for president dancing to the song YMCA in a garbageman costume,” he said.“That vest will come in handy when he’s on the side of the road picking up trash with the other inmates.” More

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      ‘Leaning into the whiteness’: journalist Paola Ramos on why some Latinos have turned to the far right

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      When the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made racist and disparaging comments about Latinos and referred to Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage”, at a Donald Trump rally in New York on Sunday, it was met with outrage from many Latino politicians, voters and celebrities. Still, those comments did not deter some Republican Latinos from affirming their support for Trump.“If you were already supporting Trump, I don’t think this is a comment that will make you reconsider that choice,” said the journalist Paola Ramos, the author of Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What it Means for America.However, Ramos said that she has talked to some Latino voters who are now realizing that Trump’s xenophobia could include them: “The question is for those that are independent, or those that were flirting with the idea of voting for Trump. The biggest difference is that the narrative, for the first time in a while, shifted from being targeted at immigrants to suddenly being targeted, not just directly at Latinos, but even US citizens. That has sort of awakened a lot of people for the first time to be like, ‘Oh, wait a second.’“We’ve been so used to pinpointing a narrative at the border, on immigrants, on migrants, on undocumented people, and then suddenly the conversation has shifted to people within us and inside us.”

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      In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, Trump has gained inroads from Latino voters, a base that was once reliably Democratic. While the majority of Latinos favor Kamala Harris, the shift is pronounced among Latino men, with 44% saying that they support Trump, up from 37% in 2020, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat political shift toward far-right sentiments in Latino communities can be attributed to tribalism, traditionalism and trauma, Ramos writes in Defectors. Tribalism refers to internalised racism, while traditionalism is based on conservative moral values and the ongoing effects of colonialism, and trauma comes from grappling with political upheaval in Latin America. Additionally, fantasy heritage, a concept coined by the civil rights activist and historian Carey McWilliams in the late 1940s in which Latinos whitewash their Indigenous or Black roots in favor of their Spanish ancestry, draws some Latinos to white supremacist values.“One of the entry points for far right Latinos into the world of white supremacy and white nationalism is by leaning into the Spanish heritage, leaning into the whiteness,” Ramos said. For instance, she interviewed Mexican American border vigilantes who held anti-immigration beliefs because they distanced themselves from their immigrant roots.Ramos also spoke with African Dominican Trump supporters in the Bronx who highlight their Spanish ancestry over their African roots, although they are racialized as Black in the US. “But in their minds, because of fantasy heritage, they see themselves more aligned racially with Trump’s America than they do with Blackness, and so I think that that’s where Trump is able to tap into some of that racial grievance.”View image in fullscreenThe path toward democracy in Latin American countries has often involved an authoritarian strongman, Ramos writes in her book. In the late 1970s, for instance, 17 out of 20 Latin American nations were ruled by dictators. Ramos interviewed Eulalia Jimenez, the leader of the conservative parents rights group Moms for Liberty, and Anthony Aguero, a border vigilante in Texas, whose political trauma manifested into far-right sentiments.Trauma is also what drew some supporters, such as the Cuban American Gabriel Garcia, a Proud Boys member, to join the January 6 insurrection after Trump lost the election. Garcia’s parents, who were unaccompanied minors airlifted out of Cuba during a covert US program in the 1960s, instilled in him a fear of communism and conservative sentiments that would inform his political beliefs. “At a time when democracy seems to feel a little messy for some folks,” Ramos said, “the elements of authoritarianism [aren’t] as scary for some Latinos.”In order to win back Latino votes, Ramos said, progressives must understand the complicated and rich nature of Latino identity and their quest for belonging in the US – which is all the more important now, as the country is projected to become a majority minority nation in 2045.Younger Latinos over the past decade have grown emboldened to challenge the Democratic party. “Part of that requires a level of curiosity to understand why internalized racism works so well, and why colorism is so present, and why anti-Blackness and these anti-immigrant sentiments can really manifest themselves,” Ramos said. “And I think part of that is just having conversations around identity that I think in the party they haven’t had.”Since her book launched in September, Ramos has talked to Latino voters while touring cities from New York to Los Angeles, an experience she described as “group therapy”. Some readers shared the pain that they felt of having undocumented immigrants as well as Trump supporters in their family, or young Latinos seeking acceptance from their religious families. “They’ve been really emotional, really personal, and I think painful too.” She urged progressives to understand “the pain that a lot of people are going through with not feeling a big solidarity right now”.While it is easy to see Trump supporters as radical, Ramos said that a deeper understanding of Latin American history is crucial to regaining the trust of Latino voters who are disillusioned by politics. Toward the end of Defectors, Ramos illustrated a future in which Latinos embrace their complex history and identity in a quest for collective liberation. “In that future, we finally wake up freer,” Ramos concluded in the book. “Welcome to the year 2045.” More