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      If Kamala Harris is trying to show she can meet the needs of Black America, she has gaps to fill | Shamira Ibrahim

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      As we enter the final 21 days of the 2024 presidential election, the euphoric sheen from the summer’s “Kamala is Brat” phenomenon, which resonated with large swaths of gen Z voters, has waned. The Harris campaign is scrambling to communicate its case for selection at the polls, with the vice-president hurriedly pushing out platforms that address lingering skepticism amongst various demographic groups. On Tuesday night, during a broadcast conversation with the radio host Charlamagne tha God, Harris turned her attention to Black men.Harris’s concern is not completely unfounded – several notable Black male celebrities, such as the rapper 50 Cent and the sports personality Stephen A Smith, have expressed their receptiveness to the Trump campaign. On the aggregate, there has been a dip in support: a New York Times/Siena College poll of likely Black voters reported that 78% of all Black voters expressed an interest in voting for Harris, which would be a significantly smaller turnout than the 90% of Black people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020. The most pronounced drop comes from Black men, 85% of whom turned out for the US president in the last election and just 70% of whom now say they would vote for Harris.In the hour-long interview, Charlamagne, whose daily morning show The Breakfast Club reaches a predominantly Black audience of 8 million listeners monthly, prodded Harris on topics spanning reparations, criminal justice reform, economic inequality and the fearmongering of the Trump campaign. Harris homed in on her consistent talking points about the necessity of voter participation, a proposed influx of capital for the middle class and misinformation, responses that felt stale and limited. But at other times, her replies landed with impact: when asked about issues specific to Black people that she would prioritize, Harris stressed initiatives around Black maternal mortality and the child tax credit as long neglected needs.In a few cases, Harris’s answers felt like fitting a square peg into a round hole. When asked by a caller how she intends to address the homelessness crisis in the US when the current administration seems to overemphasize foreign interests such as the Israel-Gaza war, the Democratic nominee deflected, punting back to her well-tread lines on home ownership and small business loans.The full exchange, which aired on iHeartRadio’s podcast platform and was simulcast on CNN, both reflected Harris’s best assets and underscored her biggest flaws as a candidate. She remains unflappable on her key points – including the idea that Trump is an existential threat to democracy and Black advancement – and she’s deft at articulating the possibilities and limitations of the government.But her inability to veer away from her entrenched positions or to adequately explain how they could substantively apply to the poor and working class, where Black communities are disproportionately represented, leaves much to be desired. If Harris’s aim is to squash the nagging perspective that she will be unable to meet the needs of Black America, then she still has a gap to fill. Her insistence that “we can do it all” is undercut by the reality that a large part of the Black working class is struggling with unemployment, homelessness, and other critical issues that prevent successful class migration.Yesterday, Harris’s campaign released the Opportunity Agenda for Black Men, a five-point platform focused on Black entrepreneurship, mentorship, marijuana legislation, and cryptocurrency. The platform came on the heels of a contentious lecture from Barack Obama to Black men in Pittsburgh, where the former president alleged that they “just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that”.Whether misogyny is a factor in Harris’s current polling numbers or it isn’t, the emphasis on Black men feels overstated. The Black population accounts for barely 13% of the country, with high distribution in metropolitan areas that skew predominantly Democratic, while white and non-Black populations have voted for Trump at significantly higher rates.Despite this disconnect, the Harris campaign has responded with an aggressive media blitz of interviews and campaign stops directly targeted at Black communities. As a result many Black voters are ultimately left with the idea of voting as a means of harm reduction and not one of enthusiasm. For all of Harris’s insistence that the Trump campaign thrives on driving fear, the most animating influence on her campaign’s push to get Black voters to the polls seems to be fear as well. More

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      Taiwan and trade: how China sees its future with the US after the election

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      Deciphering the obscure machinations of elite politics is a pursuit that western China-watchers are all too familiar with. But as the US election approaches, it is analysts in China who are struggling to read the tea leaves on what differentiates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump when it comes to their stance on the US’s biggest geopolitical rival.Commentators are calling it the vibes election. For Beijing, despite the cheers and whoops of Harris’s campaign, her vibes are largely similar to Trump’s.“Harris will continue Biden’s policies” on China, says Wang Yiwei, a professor of international studies at Renmin University in Beijing. What are Biden’s policies? He is a “Trumpist without the Trump”, says Wang.Harris has done little to dispel the belief that her stance on China will be largely the same as Biden’s, should she win the election in November. In her headline speech at the Democratic national convention on 22 August, China was mentioned just once: she promised to ensure that “America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century”.Harris has little foreign policy record to be judged on. But in an economic policy speech on 16 August, she emphasised her goal of “building up our middle class”, a vision that Biden has used to justify placing high tariffs on Chinese imports, extending Donald Trump’s trade war.Beijing fundamentally does not see there being much difference between a Democratic- or Republican-controlled White House. Indeed, hawkishness on China has become one of the few bipartisan issues in US politics.In a recent piece for Foreign Affairs, leading foreign policy commentators Wang Jisi, Hu Ran and Zhao Jianwei wrote that “Chinese strategists hold few illusions that US policy toward China might change course over the next decade … they assume that whoever is elected in November 2024 will continue to prioritise strategic competition and even containment in Washington’s approach to Beijing.” The authors predicted that although Harris’s policymaking would likely be more “organised and predictable” than Trump’s, both would be “strategically consistent”.Jude Blanchette, a China expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, also says that US-China relations would remain strained, no matter who was in the White House. “The US-China relationship is trending negative irrespective of who assumes office next January, but a Trump 2.0 would likely bring significantly more economic friction owing to an almost certain trade war,” Blanchette said.Even in areas where US-China co-operation used to be more fruitful, such as climate policies, there are concerns that such exchanges are on thin ice. In a recent briefing, Kate Logan, associate director of climate at the Asia Society Policy Institute, noted that China “seems to be placing a greater emphasis on subnational cooperation”: provincial- or state-level dialogues rather than negotiations between Washington and Beijing. This is partly driven by a concern that should Trump be re-elected, national-level climate diplomacy could be in jeopardy.Harris’s nomination of Tim Walz, the governor of Minnestoa, has also been a curveball for China’s America-watchers. Having taught in China in 1989 and 1990, and travelled there extensively in the years since, Walz has more China experience than anyone on a presidential ticket since George HW Bush. But other than Walz’s sustained support of human rights in China, it is unclear how he could or would shape the White House’s China policy if Harris were to win in November.More impactful would be the national security team that Harris assembles. Her current national security adviser, Philip Gordon, is a likely pick. In 2019, Gordon signed an open letter cautioning against treating China as “an enemy” of the US. Some analysts have speculated that his more recent experience inside the White House may have pushed him in a hawkish direction. But in a recent conversation with the Council on Foreign Relations, a thinktank in New York, Gordon refrained from describing China as an enemy or a threat. Instead, he repeatedly referred to the “challenge” from China – one that the US should be worried about, but that could be managed.High on China’s own agenda is Taiwan, which in January elected Lai Ching-te, who is detested by Beijing, as president. Lai is from the pro-sovereignty Democratic Progressive party. For Beijing, a red line in its US relations is Washington’s support for “separatist forces”, and it see Lai as an agent of these forces.Beijing puts adherence to its version of the “one China” principle – the notion that Taiwan is part of the People’s Republic of China’s rightful territory – at the centre of its international diplomacy. In China’s official readout of President Xi Jinping’s meeting with Biden in November, the Taiwan issue was described as “the most important and sensitive issue in Sino-US relations”.Certain members of the Chinese foreign policy establishment welcome the idea of a second Trump term, because they see Trump as a business-minded actor who would not be inclined to provide US resources or moral support to the cause of Taiwanese sovereignty. Wang, the Renmin University professor, says that Trump has less respect for the international alliance system than Biden, which works in China’s favour. “His allies don’t trust him very much … Taiwan is more worried about Trump,” Wang said.

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      But Trump is also unpredictable. In the event of a Trump presidency, Blanchette notes, “he will be surrounded by advisers who are hawkish on China and very likely pro-Taiwan. That won’t determine his decisions, but it will shape them.”Early in his presidential term, Trump was actually quite popular in Taiwan because of his tough stance on China. But opinions have cooled, especially after his recent comments suggesting Taiwan should pay the US to defend it. Local headlines likened him to a mobster running a protection racket.Those same outlets have latched on to Walz, focusing on his time spent in both China and Taiwan, and his support of Tibet and Hong Kong. Some describe him as the friendly “neighbourhood uncle”.According to a recent Brookings Institution poll, 55% of people in Taiwan think that the US will aid Taiwan’s defence, regardless of who is in the White House.Among analysts and diplomats, there’s tentative agreement, with some saying that while the rhetoric would be very different under Trump, actual policies wouldn’t change so much.“Obviously, the personalities are dramatically different, but US national interests are not,” said Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew school of public policy.“Either administration is going to come in and recognise Taiwan’s innate value to the US as a democratic partner in a tough neighbourhood, as a major security partner, major trading partner, and critical supplier of ICT [information and communication technology] goods.”Contingencies are being prepared in Taipei, but in reality, US support for Taiwan is hard-baked into laws like the Taiwan Relations Act and – deliberately – quite hard for a single administration to change on a whim.But improving cross-strait relations probably aren’t high on Trump’s agenda, and he is unlikely to expend political capital on Taiwan.“I think the bigger US interest, if Trump were going to expend political capital to engage Xi Jinping, would be the US economy, not to broker cross-strait peace,” said Thompson.Experts think that a similar, America-first case could be made to Trump regarding tensions in the South China Sea: the US and the Philippines have a mutual defence treaty and the US formally recognises the Philippines’ claims to waters and islets disputed with China (as did an international tribunal in 2016). But, although there are fears about Trump’s fickle attitude towards international alliances, the previous Trump administration’s stance on the dispute was largely in line with the Biden administration’s, and the fact that about 60% of global maritime trade passes through the contested waterway makes stability there important to the US economy.For normal people in Taiwan, the election feels like an event that could shape their futures, despite the fact that they have no say in it. Zhang Zhi-yu, a 71-year-old shopkeeper in Hualien, a city on Taiwan’s east coast, says that Trump is “crazy and irresponsible”.But, she concludes, “It’s no use worrying about war … we’re just ordinary people. If a foreign country wants to rescue Taiwan, people like us won’t be rescued first”. More

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      Trump vows to impose tariffs as experts warn of price hikes and angry allies

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      Donald Trump doubled down on his promise to levy tariffs on all imports in a bid to boost American manufacturing, a proposal that economists say would probably mean higher prices for consumers while angering US allies.“To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariffs’,” Trump said in an often-combative conversation with John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday. “It’s my favorite word.”Trump was grilled on the potential impacts of tariffs, and often dodged questions about the tangible impacts of the levies on inflation and geopolitics. Trump is proposing an at least 10% blanket tariff on all imports, with tariffs as high as 60% on goods from China.“You see these empty, old, beautiful steel mills and factories that are empty and falling down,” Trump said. “We’re going to bring the companies back. We’re going to lower taxes for companies that are going to make their products in the USA. And we’re going to protect those companies with strong tariffs.”

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      Though speaking in Chicago, Trump repeated many of the claims he made at the Detroit Economic Club last week. At the time, Trump bashed the city, saying it has a high crime rate and few job opportunities.“We’re a developing nation, too,” he said on Tuesday. “Take a look at Detroit.”Trump centered the auto industry, claiming that tariffs would encourage car manufacturers to build plants in the US – an assertion some economists have suggested amounts to wishful thinking.“The higher the tariff, the more you’re going to put on the value of those goods, the higher people are going to have to pay,” Micklethwait told Trump.“The higher the tariff, the more likely it is that the company will come into the United States and build a factory,” Trump said in response, to applause from the audience.Micklethwait pointed out that economists have estimated Trump’s economic proposals would add $7.5tn to the US deficit, twice the amount as Kamala Harris’s proposals. He also pointed out that the tariffs would also be targeting American allies.“Our allies have taken advantage of us, more so than our enemies,” Trump said.When asked whether he had talked to Vladimir Putin after the end of his presidency, Trump said that he doesn’t “comment on that, but I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing”.“If I’m friendly with people, if I can have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing,” he said.Trump was also asked about his stance on the Federal Reserve, specifically on comments he has made against Fed chair Jerome Powell, whom Trump first appointed in 2018.“I think if you’re a very good president with good sense, you should at least get to talk to [the Fed],” Trump said. “I think I have the right to say, as a very good businessman … I think you should go up or down a little bit.“I don’t think I should be allowed to order it, but I think I have the right to put in comments as to whether or not interest rates should go up or down.”Even a recommendation from the White House as to what the Fed should do with interest rates would amount to a significant step away from the central bank’s long-established independence.Trump frequently made personal jabs at Micklethwait, saying “I know you’re an anti-tariff guy” and at one point: “This is a man who has not been a big Trump fan.” More

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      Trump bizarrely claims Democrats want to ban cows and windows in buildings

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      Donald Trump over the weekend told supporters of his campaign for a second presidency that his Democratic opponents want to ban cows and windows in buildings, inviting another round of questions about his mental fitness.“They just come up, they want to do things like no more cows and no windows in buildings,” the Republican White House nominee said during a campaign event with Hispanic voters in Las Vegas on Saturday. “They have some wonderful plans for this country.“Honestly, they’re crazy, and they’re really hurting out country, badly.”Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign subsequently reacted to the remarks on social media by writing, “a confused Trump goes on a delusional rant”.Other Trump critics echoed the Democratic vice-president’s observation, describing the rant as “stunningly senile” and “incoherent”.Nevada’s Democratic party also criticized the former president, writing: “Trump came to town and questioned Nevadans’ values and rambled about cows and windows.”Saturday was not the first time that the former president has accused Democrats of wanting to get rid of cows.

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      During a rally earlier this summer, Trump said that Harris would pass laws to outlaw red meat if elected. He added: “You know what that means – that means no more cows.”Trump has also said over the last several years that the Green New Deal, an expansive climate plan introduced and supported by progressive Democrats, would “take out the cows”.The Green New Deal, he said in 2020, “would crush our farms, destroy our wonderful cows”.“I love cows. They want to kill our cows. You know why, right? You know why? Don’t say it. They want to kill our cows. That means you are next,” he said.The Green New Deal, introduced in part by the progressive Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, outlines broad principles of a plan to fight inequity and tackle climate change while aiming to begin reducing the US’s reliance on fossil fuels that are fueling destructive global warming.The resolution does not call for eliminating animal agriculture. But it calls for “working collaboratively with farmers and ranchers in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector as much as is technologically feasible”.Though it suggests reducing emissions from agriculture, that “doesn’t mean you end cows”. Ocasio-Cortez said in 2019.According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, about 10% of total American greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, including cows, soils and rice production.Trump’s confusing comments about Democrats wanting to get rid of cows and windows on buildings on Saturday came just two days before another bizarre moment from this campaign cycle.On Monday, at a town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania, Trump stood on stage swaying and bobbing his head for about 30 minutes while music played after medical emergency-related interruptions.At the same event, although his election against Harris is on 5 November, he told the crowd to get out and vote on “January 5 or before” – prompting critics online to again comment on Trump’s cognitive health.Harris released a medical report which found that the most notable aspects of her health history were seasonal allergies and hives. “She possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency” if she is elected in November, the report said.A senior aide to Harris, 59, stated that the vice-president’s advisers saw the release of her health report and medical history as a chance to call attention to questions about Trump’s physical fitness and mental acuity.On Sunday, more than 230 doctors, nurses and healthcare providers, called on the 78-year-old Trump to release his medical records, arguing that he should be transparent about his health as he seeks to become the oldest president elected.“With no recent disclosure of health information from Donald Trump, we are left to extrapolate from public appearances,” the doctors wrote in a public letter. “And on that front, Trump is falling concerningly short of any standard of fitness for office and displaying alarming characteristics of declining acuity.”Trump has consistently declined to disclose detailed information about his health during his public life. On Tuesday, the former president went on his Truth social media platform and published a post claiming his health “IS PERFECT – NO PROBLEMS!!!” More

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      Georgia counties are mandated to certify elections, judge rules

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      Election certification is a mandatory duty, not discretionary, for county election officials in Georgia, a judge ruled on Tuesday, rejecting assertions made by a Republican elections official that elections board members could refuse to certify an election based on their suspicions of fraud or error.Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton county board of registration and elections, brought the suit earlier this year after abstaining from a vote to certify the May primary election. The America First Policy Institute, a legal thinktank that was formed by former Donald Trump advisers in the wake of Trump’s 2020 election loss to help lay legal groundwork for his potential return to office, joined the suit.Adams refused certification after claiming she had been denied access to a long list of elections documents. But Robert McBurney, Fulton county superior court judge, ruled that Adams was entitled to review documents quickly, but failing to provide those documents was not grounds for denying the certification of an election.“If election superintendents were, as plaintiff urges, free to play investigator, prosecutor, jury, and judge and so – because of a unilateral determination of error or fraud – refuse to certify election results, Georgia voters would be silenced,” wrote McBurney in his ruling. “Our Constitution and our election code do not allow for that to happen.”The law uses the world “shall”, meaning certification is an order, McBurney wrote.“To users of common parlance, ‘shall’ connotes instruction or command: You shall not pass!” he wrote.Adams is the regional coordinator for south-eastern states in the Election Integrity Network (EIN), a national group that has recruited election deniers to target local election offices. EIN was founded by Cleta Mitchell, a Trump ally who aided his efforts to overturn the election in Georgia and elsewhere.Adams’s suit aimed to overturn longstanding Georgia precedent that the act of election certification is “ministerial”, an administrative activity marking the end of an election. Elections disputes in Georgia have historically been managed through investigation by local district attorneys, the attorney general’s office and ultimately in court.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA bloc of Trump-aligned Republicans on Georgia’s state elections board have rejected that interpretation of the law and implemented changes to election policies allowing for an undefined “reasonable inquiry” by local elections officers before certification. Those changes are under challenge by Democratic leaders in separate court cases. More

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      Harris and Trump are tied in the polls – so I conducted my own less traditional research | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Polls! What are they good for? Absolutely nothing, except for driving yourself bonkers. Oh look: Donald Trump is up by two points. Wait, it looks like Kamala Harris is up by five points. Yikes, now Trump is up by one-nineteenth of a point. Now, according to a much discussed NBC News poll that came out on Sunday, Trump and Harris are neck and neck.As the US election draws closer, I have developed a severe case of poll-tigue. Can we just give the damn things a rest already? As we all know, polling is an inexact science at the best of times. More importantly, pretty much all the results of recent Trump-Harris polls have been within the margin of error. The fact that this new poll shows Harris tied with Trump (within the margin of error) while a poll in September showed that Harris was leading Trump (also within the margin of error) might signal that the Harris honeymoon is officially over, but ultimately, it’s not that big a deal. You can scrutinise the numbers ad infinitum, but when it comes down to it, the truth is that nobody knows what is going to happen in November other than it’s (probably) going to be very close. Polls are basically astrology for political nerds at this point.Speaking of which, professional astrologers have their own murky methods for predicting the outcome of elections and they seem just as confused as everyone else. Laurie Rivers, a political analyst turned astrologer with more than 235,000 TikTok followers, told the Economist she sees Harris winning “overwhelmingly”. Meanwhile, Amy Tripp, another influential astrologist, has said Trump will win and she can make “objective” forecasts because she is an Aquarius.I’m not an Aquarius, but I’ve also been dabbling in some “objective” forecasting. I recently devised two unorthodox polling methods, the results of which I will exclusively present in this column. In terms of methodology, both surveys were conducted by me in Philadelphia – the biggest city in Pennsylvania, which is probably the most important swing state in the US. In other words: very serious stuff.Let’s start with Arwa’s Little Walk poll. On Monday I counted all the political signs I saw displayed in people’s houses on the 10-minute walk from my house to my child’s preschool. The final tally? Twenty-six Harris/Walz signs, zero Trump signs and one sign for “Giant Meteor 2024”. (That sign did not belong to me, but I share the sentiment.) In short: a giant meteor has a better chance of winning my little stretch of Philadelphia than Trump. What does this mean? Well, it means I live in a liberal bubble. And, also, that I might be on some kind of neighbourhood watch list now because I peered into so many strangers’ windows.We’ll call the next experiment the Rascal Eats a Treat poll. I put a brown treat in one hand (representing Harris) and a pink treat in another (representing Trump), then I asked my dog Rascal to pick a hand. Much to Rascal’s delight, I conducted this experiment multiple times. And guess what? Every single time he picked the Harris indicator. At first I thought that meant my dog was a savant trapped in a chihuahua’s scruffy little body. Then, of course, I realised Rascal could smell the difference between the treats and simply preferred one artificial flavour to the other. As an objective Aries, I will admit that this poll would probably not stand up to serious scrutiny.That said, the Rascal treat test is not quite as ridiculous as it might sound. The Busken Bakery in Cincinnati has been running a presidential Cookie poll since 1984. It sells cookies with candidate’s faces on them and the highest-selling cookie candidate has won nine out of 10 elections (2020 was the outlier). A random bakery has been right just as many times as Allan Lichtman, the distinguished professor who is famous for his 13 “keys” to the White House. (Lichtman got 2020 right but 2000 wrong.) And the bakery has certainly done better than many pollsters.In all seriousness – and before the Guardian gets inundated with complaints from the Association for Preserving the Reputation of Political Polling – I should clarify that polls aren’t a complete waste of time. The latest NBC poll is yet another reminder that the US is a deeply divided country and this election will be won on the margins. And my own polls show that Rascal is a dog of discerning taste. More