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      Mass production of genetically selected humans: inside a Pennsylvania pronatalist candidate’s fantasy city-state

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      When Simone Collins, a Republican running for a seat in Pennsylvania’s state legislature, and her husband, Malcolm, were privately asked last year about their ideas for the model “pronatalist” city-state, they sensed an opportunity.With their own YouTube channel, online education platform and foundation, the couple are among the most high-profile and outspoken proponents of the pronatalist cause, which is centered on the belief that the developed world is facing a demographic collapse and that birthrates must rise to stave off disaster.The couple, who have four children, were approached last year by an individual posing as a wealthy donor willing to finance their work. In response to his request, they created a 15-page slide deck entitled The Next Empire: Leveraging a Changing World to Save Civilization. It contained ideas that seem plucked out of a dystopian science fiction movie. According to their presentation, the city-state they envisaged would become a magnet for “no-holds-barred” medical research, which in turn would open the door to the “mass production of genetically selected humans”.The voting rights of citizens of the city-state would be linked to their value to society, according to the Collinses’ presentation. The proposed city-state government would have “incentive systems that grant more voting power to creators of economically productive agents” and would be run by a single “executor” – which the proposal also called a “dictator” – with full control of the government’s laws and operational structure. The executor would be replaced every four years by three “wards”, according to the slide deck. Wards would be elected by previous executors.It may appear that the Collinses’ views are so far outside the mainstream that one could shrug off pronouncements as eccentric and alarmist. But the Collinses are part of a movement they call the “new right”, which rejects some aspects of traditional conservatism and bills itself as pragmatic, family-oriented and anti-bureaucratic. They staunchly support the Republican ticket, Donald Trump and JD Vance, and billionaire Elon Musk.Last year, Malcolm Collins said he thought the Isle of Man would be the best place to begin.“I actually think that’s the most viable place to do it. You’re near the center of Europe, you’re in a rapidly depopulating area, you can tell them look, this will obviously bring a lot of technology and investment to your country. But the great thing about a proposal like this is even if they turn it down, you can take it to other countries,” Malcolm told the man purporting to be an investor at the time.The funding never materialized and the proposal was never pitched to the Isle of Man, a British crown dependency located in the Irish Sea, because the man who claimed to be a wealthy investor was actually an undercover researcher with Hope Not Hate, a UK-based anti-racism group. It shared video recordings of the encounters with the Collinses – and a copy of their presentation – with the Guardian.Asked about the slide deck in an interview with the Guardian last week in their home in Audubon, Pennsylvania, Simone and Malcolm, who work together and appear rarely to be apart, acknowledged that their proposal “wasn’t supposed to be public”. But Simone Collins nevertheless said she stood by its core tenets “100%”, including the idea of mass-producing embryos, and of giving people who they deem to be less productive members of society less voting power.“If you are draining resources, you should have less influence,” she said.Asked about how it felt to be the subject of undercover research, Malcolm Collins said: “The experience was quite validating for both us and our movement.” He added: “Now I think it is pretty clear that despite us not socially isolating people with toxic views, the worst views we actually have are being slightly elitist and weird eccentrics (which isn’t exactly surprising to anyone).”The couple say their ideas were meant to be experimental and fit for a city-state, not a democracy such as the US. But the views are not dissimilar to ones expressed by one of Simone and Malcolm’s political heroes, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance. In a July 2021 speech, Vance said parents should be given “an advantage” and “more power” in the voting process than those who don’t have children.Simone Collins previously worked as managing director of Dialog, which she describes as an exclusive secret society, co-founded by Peter Thiel. Thiel, the PayPal founder, helped launch and fund Vance’s political career, and has supported the rightwing blogger Curtis Yarvin, who in 2012 said he believed the US should install a monarchy and “get over their dictator phobia”.‘We do target the elites’The Collinses often describe their pronatalist agenda in humanitarian terms – part of a wider bid to save the developed world from impending social and economic catastrophe. Their website outlines their desire to work with “any person or organization that shares our goal to preserve as much of civilization and as many cultures as possible”.But in the recordings made by Hope Not Hate, Malcolm describes their pronatalist agenda as being principally designed to transform the current socioeconomic elite into a future biological elite.“It’s easy to forget how small the population of people in the world who actually impacts anything or matters is,” he said. “When we do our campaigns we work really aggressively on how do we spread ideas within that narrow network, because also they are the people we want having kids and we want in the future.”View image in fullscreen“When we talk to reporters we’re very ‘Oh, this isn’t just for the elites’, but, in truth, we do target the elites – ha ha – unfortunately.”Malcolm said he and his wife are working to create a network of other pronatalist families, with whom their children can go to summer camp, grow up alongside “knowing this isn’t weird, what we’re doing” and, ultimately, marry. But this goes beyond the average desire to find family friends with shared values and be part of a community. “What I’m really trying to do is ensure that my kids have an isolated and differential breeding network,” he said.The so-called “elites” appear to be a central preoccupation for the Collinses and it is a theme they return to repeatedly and unprompted. “The very few families – and I think we might be talking about a hundred, 500 families in the world today – who are high fertility and really technologically engaged and economically engaged … own the future of our species,” Malcolm said.When the Guardian asked the Collinses about the remarks, Malcolm said they were “not incongruent with our other messaging”, and that they were better off “convincing Taylor Swift to have kids than John Doe on the street if we want to create ripple effects society-wide leading to more kids”.Race for the statehouseSimone Collins’s run to represent Pennsylvania’s 150th district in the state’s house of representatives was born, she said, out of frustration with traditional political campaigns. She acknowledges that her odds of success are low and that she has eschewed traditional local campaign tactics, like investing in ads or mailers.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut she is a big supporter of Donald Trump’s run for the presidency and has sought through her own candidacy, which has mostly been self-funded by what she calls the family’s “what the hell” savings account, to encourage so-called low propensity voters in her Pennsylvania district to boost the former president’s chances.“We are very interested in tipping the election [in Trump’s favor] and one of the most meaningful ways I can do so is as a Republican candidate running in a key, key swing spot,” she said. The Collinses have done this, she said, by printing out “hundreds and hundreds” of mail-in ballot applications, filling them out, and sending them to potential Republican voters to sign and send back so that they can be sent mail-in ballots. She said it is part of an effort to examine whether there are “low-cost and highly effective ways” to sway election results, even in Democratic-leaning districts like hers, where incumbent Democrat Joe Webster was first elected in 2018. Records show Webster has spent about $80,000 on his campaign, while Collins has spent just under $5,000.“I didn’t have enough money to send mail-in ballot applications to every low-propensity voter, but we’ll look after the election of what percent of those people voted,” she said.Asked whether there are aspects of Trump’s candidacy that trouble her – from his criminal convictions to being found liable for sexual assault – Collins said she is no more troubled by the Republican nominee’s record than that of Kamala Harris, the vice-president and Democratic nominee.“Nobody elects a president. You elect a team,” she said. “So many smart people I know are tapped into who his team is going to be.”She is most excited about billionaire Elon Musk’s high-profile involvement in the Trump campaign, and the Republican nominee’s promise that Musk would lead a cost cutting and “efficiency” drive in government spending. Musk has admitted it would lead to “temporary hardship” for Americans.Musk is reportedly a father of “at least” 11 children, according to a recent New York Times report that detailed the Tesla co-founder’s effort to fill a compound full of his own children and their mothers. Although he has been open about his pronatalist views, the New York Times reported that Musk likes to keep details about his own growing family a secret.It is the emergence of Silicon Valley as key partners in “the new right” that has the couple most excited about Republicans today. The Skype co-founder and Estonian billionaire Jaan Tallinn (a father of five) donated just under half a million dollars to the Collinses’ pronatalist foundation in 2022.The issues“I’m very pro-gun. If you walk around this house you’ll find guns all over the place,” Simone Collins said, pointing to an old musket that is mounted on the wall. She said the guns are locked up and not loaded, and that ammunition is kept in proximity. While others might not like the constant sound of gunfire from a nearby gun club and shooting range, Collins said she loved the sound.Child protective services (CPS), the state agency people can call if they fear a child is being abused or neglected, has visited the Collinses at home on two occasions. Asked what prompted the first visit, Malcolm told the Guardian in a written statement that it “was supposedly because our kids were wearing used clothing, played outside in our fenced-in yard (with us watching from inside), and got sick frequently (this was before we took them out of preschool and during a time when sickness in preschools post-pandemic was brutal as kids returned from isolation)”.The second visit by CPS, Simone Collins said, followed the publication of the last Guardian article about the couple, published in May, which included a description of how Malcolm had slapped their then two-year-old on the face for nearly knocking over a table in a restaurant. Slapping a child is legal in Pennsylvania if it doesn’t cause serious pain or injury.View image in fullscreen“After the Guardian piece came out, CPS was here again. They walked through every room of this house because the internet decided that we were abusive, terrible people. They came again. I feel bad wasting their time. They’re like, ‘Please don’t beat your infants, or whatever. But no, you’re obviously fine,’” she said.Some voters in her district have called her directly to ask about her stance on issues, including abortion. Abortion is legal in Pennsylvania up until 24 weeks, though there are some restrictions in place. Simone Collins said she would support what in effect would amount to an abortion ban in the state after 12 to 15 weeks, with exceptions if a woman’s life was in danger or the fetus had an anomaly. Any abortion performed after 15 weeks, she said, would have to include giving the fetus pain medication.Collins is, however, an unabashed advocate for IVF, which is opposed by many conservative and anti-abortion Republicans. Simone and Malcolm have used IVF themselves and plan to continue having more children. They also are “huge early supporters” of embryo selection based on a “polygenic score” related to intelligence. In other words, selecting embryos based on IQ.Collins is planning for her next embryo transfer in January. More

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      Everything you need to know about the 2024 US presidential election

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      The 60th US presidential election and will decide the 47th president – widely held to be the most powerful job in the world – and 50th vice-president. The candidates and their supporters are describing it as the most important election of their lifetimes with democracy and the American way of life are at stake. Record amounts of money have been raised and spent on campaign ads and ground games. Media coverage in print, on TV, online and on podcasts has never been more intense – or more polarised.All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs along with 34 of the 100 seats in the Senate, which together will decide the membership of the 119th Congress. Thirteen state and territorial governorships and numerous other state and local elections will take place.Voters in 41 states will consider a total of 159 ballot initiatives. Ten states including Arizona, Colorado and Florida have abortion-related measures on the ballot. Florida, North Dakota and South Dakota are considering whether to legalise marijuana.How are people voting?@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff) 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      It no longer makes sense to talk solely about “election day”. Tens of millions of people have voted early by mail or in-person, thereby avoiding long queues, potential bad weather or other inconveniences. Georgia’s first day of early voting “shattered records”, according to state officials, while an “unheard of” 97,000-plus voted on day one in Wisconsin.Democrats encouraged people to vote by mail in 2020 to avoid exposure to Covid-19 during the pandemic and fought legal battles to expand absentee voting. Trump, by contrast, falsely claimed that the practice was rife with fraud (it is extremely rare), although Republicans have since changed their messaging and increasingly embraced it.With the exception of Alabama, Mississippi and New Hampshire, all states give voters the chance to cast a ballot in person at a polling place ahead of election day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.Most states begin counting those ballots on election day, and some require officials to wait until polls are closed to begin counting. Some states offer a version of early voting called “in-person absentee” voting, in which a voter can obtain and submit an absentee ballot in person at a polling place before election day.Most states offer some form of absentee voting, in which a voter requests a ballot in advance and returns it by mail. Some offer voters the option of returning absentee ballots to a secure dropbox. Eight states practice “all-mail” elections in which all registered voters receive a ballot in the mail, whether or not they plan to use it.Federal law requires states to send absentee ballots to military voters and voters overseas. Most states allow officials to immediately process absentee ballots but some require them to wait until election day to begin processing ballots – which can slow the release of election results.On election day, which is 5 November this year, everyone else goes to polling places to cast their vote. 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      Kamala Harris, 60, the current vice-president, won the Democratic party’s nomination after Joe Biden ended his re-election bid. She is a former senator, California attorney general and San Francisco prosecutor and is bidding to make history as the first woman and first woman of colour to be elected president in America’s 248-year history.Donald Trump, 78, the Republican nominee, is making make his third consecutive run for the White House. The businessman and reality TV star continues to repeat his false claim that Democrats stole the 2020 election from him. He is the first president to be impeached twice and convicted of a crime. Trump is also the oldest major party nominee in history and this summer survived two assassination attempts.Chase Oliver, 39, is the little-known candidate for the Libertarian party. Oliver ran for a Georgia state senate seat in 2022 and garnered 2% of the vote. The party, which prioritises small government and individual freedoms, typically gains 3% or less of the national vote but its members could yet prove crucial in swing states.Jill Stein, 74, a physician who ran under the Green party in 2016, is running again in 2024. She launched her current campaign accusing Democrats of betraying their promises “for working people, youth and the climate again and again – while Republicans don’t even make such promises in the first place”.Cornel West, 71, is running as an independent candidate. The political activist, philosopher and academic is making an effort to attract more progressive, Democratic-leaning voters.What are the paths to victory?@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff) 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      Democrats have won the national popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections. But the Republicans George W Bush and Donald Trump won the White House by gaining more than 270 votes in the all-important electoral college.Each state counts its votes separately. With two exceptions – Nebraska and Maine – the winner of a state gets all of its electoral votes. Each state has a number of electors based on the number of congressional districts it has, plus two additional votes representing the state’s Senate seats. Washington DC has three electoral votes, despite having no voting representation in Congress.This year the electoral college will probably come down to seven crucial battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The Harris and Trump campaigns are eyeing multiple combinations that could put them over the top.Pennsylvania, which carries 19 electoral college votes, is the ultimate prize and has been the focus of much campaigning. Along with Michigan and Wisconsin, it forms a “blue wall” won by Barack Obama, lost by Hillary Clinton and won by Joe Biden. Trump is targeting rural blue-collar voters; Harris is aiming to turn out Black voters in big cities.Losses in these states might be offset by victories in Arizona, where Trump has made gains among Latino voters; Nevada, the most diverse swing state; and Georgia, long a red state which Biden narrowly flipped in 2020. Republicans have won North Carolina in every election since 2012 but Democrats are running close this time.Democrats currently control the Senate but face a tough map this year. Democrats and senators who caucus with them currently occupy seven of the eight most competitive seats, including Montana and Ohio, which generally lean Republican.The House is likely to hinge on 42 of the most competitive elections. Republicans could retain control by winning just 12 of the 26 seats rated as toss-ups by the Cook Political Report if they also win seats deemed “likely” or “lean” Republican.What are the main issues that will decide the White House?@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) 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      Abortion. This is the first presidential election since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that enshrined the constitutional right to abortion. Many Republican-led states have since imposed total or near-total bans on the procedure. Harris has made reproductive rights and personal freedoms a rallying cry and backs a national law codifying access to safe abortion. Trump has struggled to find his footing on the issue, insisting that it is a state matter and belatedly ruling out a national ban. Constitutional amendments that would protect or expand abortion rights will appear on the ballot in 10 states, which Democrats hope will drive higher turnout.Democracy. Democrats have warned that Trump poses an existential threat to democratic norms, citing the 6 January 2021 insurrection, when a mob of his supporters attempted to overturn his election defeat. Harris has described her opponent as a fascist who has said he would be a dictator on day one and who would yield to foreign autocrats such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un. Trump has sought to turn the tables by claiming – without evidence – that Harris is the true threat to democracy, citing alleged online censorship and the criminal cases against him. He has refused to commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election. A recent a Washington Post-Schar School survey of voters in seven swing states found that slightly more trust Trump to handle threats to democracy than Harris.Economy. The Economist magazine describes the US economy as the envy of the world, contending: “The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust.” But despite strong growth, low unemployment and stabilising inflation, Biden and Harris have consistently trailed Trump in opinion polls. Harris’s economic plans include tax cuts for most Americans, price-gouging bans, more affordable housing and a new child tax credit as well as efforts to boost domestic manufacturing. Trump has vowed to cut taxes, impose sweeping tariffs on imported goods and protect social security and Medicare.Immigration. This has been Trump’s signature issue since he trundled down an escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015 to launch his presidential bid. This time, even as border crossings drop to 2020 levels, he has pledged what he calls the biggest deportation operation in US history. He has also used dehumanising language reminiscent of the Nazis to claim that undocumented immigrants are “animals”, have “bad genes” and are “poisoning the blood of our country”. Harris has shifted to the centre on the issue, underlining her support for a bipartisan proposal in Congress that would have hired thousands of new border security agents and closed the border if crossings hit an average of more than 5,000 people a day over a week.What is the state of the race?@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) 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      Excruciatingly close. Harris and Trump are tied at 48% each for the popular vote, according to the final New York Times/Siena College national poll published on 25 October.After Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in the 27 June debate, Trump held a four-percentage-point lead over Biden among registered voters, according to the Pew Research Center. Biden dropped out and endorsed Harris, who then surged to parity and a small lead over Trump amid a wave of energy and enthusiasm.In recent weeks the race has stabilised and an equilibrium has been restored.The national race is less important than swing states that will decide the electoral college. These too are tantalisingly close. As of 17 October, for example, the Guardian’s poll tracker showed Trump narrowly leading in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin, Harris ahead in Nevada and Pennsylvania and a dead heat in North Carolina – but all could still go one way or the other.The election will provide another test for a polling industry battered by the 2016 and 2020 elections when it seemed to underestimate Trump’s strength. Conversely, in the 2022 midterms, Democrats overperformed the polls and headed off the predicted “red wave”.Political analysts and commentators are understandably reluctant to stick out their necks and guess the outcome. Frank Luntz, a consultant and pollster, said: “You can’t call it. Anyone who calls it is an idiot.” But Allan Lichtman, a historian with a predictive method that has been right nine times out of 10, has declared he thinks Harris will win.Does the US have exit polls?@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) 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      Exit polls are surveys conducted with voters immediately after they have cast their ballots. Major news networks such as CNN, ABC and Fox News use them to make early projections about who is likely to win, though these are subject to revisions as actual vote counts come in. Traditionally, media outlets agree not to release exit poll data before all polls have closed to avoid influencing people still voting.Exit pollsters position interviewers at selected polling stations, chosen to represent a cross-section of the voting population. Voters leaving polling stations are asked to voluntarily complete anonymous questionnaires covering the candidate they voted for, key issues and demographic information. Interviewers typically phone in the results three times during the day.Exit poll data is analysed quickly to generate insights about the voter base such as who is winning certain demographic groups. Dearborn, Michigan, for example, will be studied closely for any evidence that the war in Gaza affected turnout of Arab and Muslim Americans.Exit polls include absentee voters by conducting phone, text and email surveys. In states with a high level of early in-person voters, exit polls are carried out weeks before election day as these voters leave the polling place. The results are then combined with data from election day.There is a strict embargo on exit poll data until 5pm ET on election day. Within the next hour some initial demographic information about voters and their policy views begins to emerge. Networks are not allowed to project a winner while voting is still taking place. 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      If the polls are wrong and one candidate has a clear lead over the other – think Ronald Reagan’s 49-state landslide victory in 1984 – the result will be obvious within hours. But given the closeness of the elections in 2016 and 2020, a nail-biter that runs through the night and possibly days beyond is more likely. Prolonged court cases are also possible: Republican donors and conservative billionaires have given $140m to 50 “election integrity” groups ready to do battle.News organisations such the Associated Press (AP) often project a winner on election night based on an analysis of votes already counted, the number of outstanding votes and the margin between the candidates. (The AP says its accuracy rate for the past several general elections is above 99.9%.) The losing candidate typically concedes in the early hours of the next morning, signalling that the contest is in effect over.Officially, however, there is still work to do. Local officials finish counting ballots in the days after the election and send their results to state officials. They approve the results and send them to federal officials. Every state must name individuals known as electors by 11 December; they must meet in their respective state capitols to cast their votes for president and vice-president on 17 December.On 6 January the House and Senate will count and tally the electoral certificates in a joint session. The vice-president serves as the president of the Senate and formally presides over the receiving and counting of electoral ballots cast and announces the result. In this case, Harris will proclaim her own victory or defeat on the fourth anniversary of the insurrection at the US Capitol.The election could be a big payday for lawyers. In 2000, when the Republican George W Bush and the Democrat Al Gore were the candidates, polling day fell on 7 November but the result was not called until 12 December. All eyes were on Florida, where votes were subject to an automatic recount because of Bush’s gossamer-thin margin of victory. The dispute went all the way to the supreme court, where justices voted to terminate the recount, prompting Gore to concede.In 2020 the AP declared Joe Biden the winner four days after election day – at 11.26am ET on Saturday 7 November. Trump had declared victory three days earlier, even as more than 1m ballots remained uncounted, and went on to lose more than 60 legal challenges. Few would bet against him mounting a similar effort this time.What happens after the race is decided?@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff) 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      The president-elect forms a transition team to plan for the transfer of power. This works on setting up policy priorities, vetting candidates for key administration positions and coordinating with the outgoing administration. The president-elect and key members of their team begin receiving classified national security briefings to prepare for handling ongoing or emerging global threats.The 47th president will be inaugurated at 12 noon on 20 January at the US Capitol. Big crowds will be expected to return next year after Biden’s scaled-down pandemic version. The outgoing president typically attends the inauguration as a symbol of the peaceful transfer of power, although Trump boycotted in 2020. The new president begins work immediately, often signing a series of executive orders to reverse or continue certain policies and holding meetings with their team.Design, development and production: Rich Cousins, Pip Burkett and Bruno Haward. More

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      Today’s populism is informed by bigotry, but its roots lie in the promise of equality | Kenan Malik

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      ‘American politics has often been an arena for angry minds.” Not a comment on this year’s presidential campaign but an observation on another US presidential race, that of 1964. It is the opening line to one of the most influential political essays of the postwar era, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, first published 60 years ago this month.The very title of Richard Hofstadter’s essay is redolent of contemporary fears. As Donald Trump has, over the past decade, built a movement out of anger and disaffection, old copies of Hofstadter have been dusted off and op-eds written with titles such as “The paranoid style in American politics is back” and “Donald Trump’s style perfectly embodies the theories of renowned historian”.Not just Hofstadter’s analysis of the paranoid style but his evisceration of populism, too, has found a new generation of readers. Yet, as brilliant and influential as Hofstadter was, he was often wrong on both issues, and it is his wrongness that has shaped much subsequent debate.One of America’s most celebrated historians, Hofstadter moved from Marxist leanings in the 1930s into a cold war liberal who regarded social consensus rather than class conflict as the defining feature of American history. His 1964 essay, an abridged version of a lecture he had given in Oxford (the full version appearing later in book form), was an attempt to confront a new, belligerent form of rightwing reactionary politics that had emerged, displayed in Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist witch-hunt, in the creation of the ultraconservative John Birch Society, and in the success of Arizona senator Barry Goldwater in routing the Republican establishment to secure the party’s 1964 presidential nomination.The mainstream response to Goldwater in the 1960s prefigured in many ways the hostility to Trump half a century later. Some saw Goldwater’s rise as portending fascism. Fact magazine published a special edition on “The Mind of Barry Goldwater” in which more than 1,100 psychiatrists, none of whom had ever met the would-be president, diagnosed him as “psychologically unfit” for office. If he consolidated his Republican “party coup” by winning the election, Hofstadter warned, he would “put the democratic process in this country in jeopardy”. Goldwater lost to Lyndon Baines Johnson by a landslide.For Hofstadter, the new right was a potent expression of the “paranoid style”, a way of thinking that cast conspiracy not as a singular occurrence, but as “the motive force” in history. “The paranoid spokesman”, Hofstadter wrote, “always speaks in apocalyptic terms”, and is “always manning the barricades of civilization” in the existential struggle between good and evil.Hofstadter insisted he was not using “paranoia” in a clinical sense, but “borrowing a clinical term for other purposes”. Yet, he also believed “the recurrence of the paranoid style” across history “suggests that a mentality disposed to see the world in the paranoid’s way may always be present in some considerable minority of the population”. In other words, it is an ineradicable pathology lying latent within the population, and activated by the emergence of particular social movements or political organisations.It is an argument that many find appealing because it gives licence to dismiss alternative viewpoints as a form of mental illness. It is also a perspective that wrenches political responses out of a historical frame. Even “millennial sects of Europe from the eleventh to the sixteenth century”, Hofstadter wrote, exhibited a “psychological complex that closely resembles” that of the reactionary right in postwar America. “The paranoid style as described by Hofstadter,” the historian Andrew McKenzie-McHarg wryly observes, “is present throughout history yet does not itself appear to have any real history of which to speak.” It is a perspective, too, that allows liberals to be oblivious to the presence of such traits within their own ranks. Rightwing populists certainly trade heavily on conspiracy theories, whether about immigration or the elites. Liberal panics about the coming of “fascism” and the “end of democracy” often exhibit, though, an equally apocalyptic view and present the fight against populism in black and white terms.This takes us to the second key theme in Hofstadter’s work in the 1950s and 60s – his critique of populism. As Hofstadter moved from early radicalism to midlife centrism, he became increasingly wary of the masses and their impact on culture and intellectual life. His growing distrust of working-class movements led him to be sceptical of democracy itself. “Intellect,” he wrote in his 1963 book Anti-intellectualism in American Life, “is pitted against democracy, since intellect is felt to be a form of distinction that defies egalitarianism.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis political transformation shaped his reading of history. Until Hofstadter, most historians had viewed the rise of Populist movements in 1890s America in positive terms. These original populists were driven by a hatred of the inequalities and injustices of the so-called Gilded Age. They sought to forge cross-racial coalitions of farmers and workers to demand democratic reforms, progressive taxation and government ownership of utilities.Hofstadter, in his 1955 book The Age of Reform, questioned this narrative, portraying the movement as a racist insurgency with a conspiratorial view of the world that “seems very strongly to foreshadow” McCarthyism and postwar reactionary conservatism. Strands of bigotry were certainly on display, especially as the movement disintegrated in the face of a ferocious assault from the established order. But the Populists’ democratic and egalitarian promise cannot be gainsaid.A host of historians, including C Vann Woodward, Lawrence Goodwyn and Walter Nugent, challenged and largely rebutted Hofstadter’s revisionism. The political substance of his argument, however, became entrenched. After Hofstadter, Nugent wrote in a 2013 preface to his 1963 book The Tolerant Populists, “populism” began “to carry the connotation of demagogic, unreasoning, narrow-minded, conspiratorial, fearful attitudes toward society and politics”. It still does, shaping our view not just of the past but of the present, too.“Having come of age in a political culture that glorified ‘the people’ as the wellspring of democracy and decency in American life,” Eric Foner, perhaps the most distinguished living historian of the American tradition, observed of his mentor’s trajectory, “he came to portray politics as a realm of fears, symbols and nostalgia, and ordinary Americans as beset by bigotry, xenophobia and paranoid delusions”.The loss of hope, the sense of betrayal, disillusionment with fellow Americans – that might describe not just Hofstadter’s trajectory but America’s too. The tragedy is that whoever wins on Tuesday, that will not change. More

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      US presidential election updates: Kamala Harris on Saturday Night Live, Iowa polling puts Donald Trump behind

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      Kamala Harris and Donald Trump criss-crossed the United States on Saturday as both candidates tried to drum up support on the final weekend before the 5 November presidential election. Both candidates began the day in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, before Democratic nominee Harris departed for Atlanta and then Charlotte, North Carolina. Trump, the Republican nominee, also travelled to North Carolina, before heading to a rally in Virginia. Almost 70 million Americans have already voted in the historic US election that comes to a head on Tuesday, prompting furious arguments over what early voting trends might mean as Trump and Harris prepare for their final showdown.A Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll on Saturday unexpectedly showed Harris ahead of Trump 47% to 44% among likely voters. Broadly though, the polls have remained deadlocked. The Guardian’s Robert Tait writes that some experts think such a tight race is improbable. Josh Clinton, a politics professor at Vanderbilt University, and John Lapinski, NBC’s director of elections, write on the network’s website: “Some of the tools pollsters are using in 2024 to address the polling problems of 2020, such as weighting by partisanship, past vote or other factors, may be flattening out the differences and reducing the variation in reported poll results … [This] raises the possibility that the results of the election could be unexpectedly different than the razor-close narrative the cluster of state polls and the polling averages suggest.”Here’s what else happened on Saturday:Donald Trump election news and updates

      A Georgia judge rejected a Republican lawsuit trying to block counties from opening election offices on Saturday and Sunday to let voters hand in their mail ballots in person. The lawsuit only targeted Fulton county, a Democratic stronghold. Trump falsely blamed Fulton county workers for his loss of the 2020 election in Georgia.

      Ed Pilkington writes that if Trump re-enters the White House he will do so emboldened by a power that no previous incoming president has ever enjoyed: immunity from criminal prosecution for any act carried out in his official capacity. Whereas losing the election, writes David Smith, could mean he ends up in jail.
      Kamala Harris election news and updates

      Harris made a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live, playing herself as the mirror-image double of Maya Rudolph’s version of her. “It is nice to see you Kamala,” Harris told Rudolph, “and I’m just here to remind you, you got this.” In sync, the two said supporters needed to “Keep Kamala and carry-on-ala”, declared that they shared each other’s “belief in the promise of America”, and delivered the signature “Live from New York it’s Saturday night!”.

      Harris struck a contrast between her work as a prosecutor and a Trump campaign “obsessed with revenge and consumed with grievance” on Saturday in Atlanta. “In less than 90 days it’s either going to be him or me in the Oval Office,” Harris said. The vice-president filled the fields at the Atlanta Civic Center, attracting thousands on little notice in the crucial swing state of Georgia, which Joe Biden won in 2020.
      Elsewhere on the campaign trail

      Americans took to the streets in cities across the country for a day ofwomen’s marches. Marches were planned in all 50 states for the eighth annual gathering, which began the day after Trump was inaugurated in 2017.

      Vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr could assume some control over US health and food safety in a second Trump administration, according to reports on Saturday. Kennedy said in a social media post that he would remove fluoride from all public water.
      Read more about the 2024 US election:

      Presidential poll tracker

      Harris and Trump policies

      What to know about early voting More

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      Can democracy work without journalism? With the US election upon us, we may be about to find out | Margaret Simons

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      It is commonly claimed that democracy can’t work unless you have journalism, and a free media at that. How are people to decide how to cast a vote if they don’t access independent, reliable information?With the US election upon us, we may be about to find out.Because, more than ever before, the people who decide the election will be those who are least engaged with professional news media – the kind of researched, fact-checked content that you are likely to find in the New York Times or, for that matter, the Guardian.Forty-three per cent of US citizens avoid the news, according to the latest Digital News Report – a worldwide survey of media use conducted by the Reuters Institute for Journalism at Oxford University.Most of these people nevertheless encounter some news – not because of loyalty to a brand or because they actively seek out a preferred outlet, but because it comes at them, so to speak.And what comes for free is either partisanly motivated, or funded by advertising – which means heavy with content pitched to draw eyeballs – sensationalism and clickbait.It is the low news consumers on which the campaigning candidates are concentrating, and on which the result of the election depends.There are significant things about news consumption that are different, this time around, from the last US election.But before I get to how things have changed since 2020, the facts I have already given mean that all the controversies, among the politically engaged, about whether mainstream media are “sanewashing” Trump, or whether or not outlets such as the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times publish editorial endorsements of a candidate, won’t affect the election result.It is a debate of principal and morality, playing out among people who, overwhelmingly, have already made up their minds on how to vote. The citizens who will decide the election probably don’t even know about these controversies, and if they did they probably wouldn’t care.The researchers at the Reuters Institute report that once disengaged from the news, people struggle to get back in, even if they want to.Benjamin Toff, the author of a book on news avoidance, writes: “It’s like trying to tune into the fourth episode season of Game of Thrones without knowing who these people are, or what difference any of this makes. For a lot of people, that’s their feeling about the news.”Traditionally, the journalistic mission has included making the important understandable, seeking to engage the disengaged. But while this still forms part of the rhetoric of the profession, the truth is that most serious news organisations publishing political news are not serving the politically disengaged.Instead, with so much advertising having disappeared from media outlets to online platforms, the path to financial sustainability for serious journalism outlets lies in trying to get people who already read the news to spend more time with the outlet, and to convert them into paying subscribers.This is essential to survival, for serious media. Yet also represents a failure of the journalistic mission.All this challenges our conventional ideas about the connections between democracy and journalism.It is true that democracy and journalism grew up together, and that each strengthens the other, but they are not as indivisible as the journalism profession suggests. Ancient Greece had democracy (though not for slaves) but no journalism. Al Jazeera provides journalism, but has its headquarters in non-democratic Qatar.And, in today’s western democracies, we now have political journalism that risks no longer being mass media, but elite media.And then on top of that, playing to the mass, we have content. All kinds of content, much of it partisan, distorted and sometimes straight-out lies.In the last US election in 2020, we worried about misinformation and conspiracy theories spread through social media, and Facebook in particular.Four years later, news consumption on Facebook is in decline across the world, largely because owner Meta has actively discouraged it. TikTok is on the rise as a source of news, overtaking X (formerly Twitter). Facebook and Twitter, for all their faults, did carry content from mainstream media outlets to new audiences.But now, increasingly, it is podcasters and vodcasters and influencers who reach new audiences on social media. And they have at least some chance of reaching the disengaged and persuadable. That is why both Trump and Harris have been spending time with them.It is fashionable to blame all our current societal ills on social media. Blocking access to social media for the young is now bipartisan – if ill-defined – policy in Australia. It is, after all, so much easier as a response to the mental health crises among the young than tackling the climate change crisis, which makes depression and anxiety almost inevitable.Likewise, traditional news media outlets tend to blame social media for the spread of misinformation and the undermining of quality journalism.But that is only partly right.Surveys in Australia and the USA have shown that mainstream news media was in a crisis of trust from at least the 1970s, long before the internet, let alone Facebook and TikTok. It was therefore in rotten shape to respond to the challenges of the means of publication being in many more hands.Meanwhile, a recent research paper published in Nature suggests, based on a survey, that fake news and misinformation is not as influential as we may think.The survey showed that most people have low exposure to false and inflammatory content, and they tend to distrust it. However a narrow, partisan fringe seeks it out, believing content that confirms already hard-set views.This suggests that political partisanship drives consumption of misinformation at least as much as the other way round.There are a few bright spots in all this. The Reuters Digital News Media survey shows that countries that have strong investment in public service media – such as the public broadcasters of the BBC in Britain and the ABC in Australia – have much higher rates of engagement with news and more political engagement.But that doesn’t apply to the USA, where public broadcasting is tiny.Solutions? I don’t have any easy answers, and the problems are fast-moving targets. By the time of the next US election, many citizens may be consuming news written by artificial intelligence. If we are lucky, or if governments have been smart with their regulatory responses, the robots will be aggregating reliable sources.But we have been neither smart nor lucky so far.In the meantime, with the sands shifting beneath us, if we want voters to be well informed, we have to find a way of financially supporting and reinvigorating the journalistic mission – beyond internal chatter among an elite.

      Margaret Simons is an award-winning freelance journalist and author. She is an honorary principal fellow of the Centre for Advancing Journalism and a member of the board of the Scott Trust, which owns Guardian Media Group More

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      Harris grabs unexpected last-minute lead over Trump in Iowa poll

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      A poll in Iowa that has unexpectedly put Kamala Harris ahead of Donald Trump in what was previously expected to be a safe state for the Republicans has sent shockwaves through America’s poll-watchers.The Selzer poll carried out for the Des Moines Register newspaper showed Harris ahead of her Republican rival by three points.Midwestern Iowa is not one of the seven battleground states of the 2024 election, which have consisted of the Rust belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and the Sun belt states of Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and Arizona.While political experts and pollsters are very wary of putting too much store in any one single poll, Selzer is a widely respected polling organisation with a good record in Iowa. If Harris were even competitive in Iowa – which Trump won in both 2016 and 2020 – it could radically reshape the race.The Selzer poll has Harris over Trump 47% to 44% among likely voters. A September poll showed Trump with a four-point lead over Harris and a June survey showed him with an 18-point lead over then-candidate Joe Biden.“It’s hard for anybody to say they saw this coming,” pollster J Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co, told the Register. “She has clearly leaped into a leading position.”The poll showed that women are driving the late shift toward Harris in the state. If true and borne out more widely, that would also be significant as the Harris campaign has focused on turning out women amid a broad gender gap with Republican-trending male voters. Harris and her campaign have focused on the overturning of federal abortion rights by the conservative-dominated US supreme court.The reaction among pundits and pollsters was largely one of shock and surprise, though it was also pointed out that a rival polling group still had Trump leading in Iowa.“This is a stunning poll. But Ann Seltzer [sic] has as stellar a record as any pollster of forecasting election outcomes in her state. Women are powering this surge. Portents for the country?” said David Axelrod, a former top aide to Barack Obama.“I mean, margins of error exist and polls can be outliers and I doubt Harris will win Iowa, but Selzer is extremely well-regarded and a within-the-margin race in Iowa is not impossible particularly if the reported late shifts to Harris were real,” said Washington Post columnist Philip Bump.Selzer is the highest-rated pollster on the national US survey done by polling guru Nate Silver, one of the most closely watched polling experts in the US.“In the world where Harris wins Iowa, she is probably also cleaning up elsewhere in the midwest, particularly in Michigan and Wisconsin, in which case she’s already almost certain to win the electoral college,” Silver said on his website.However, he also cautioned that another survey had been published on Saturday in Iowa that still had Trump ahead. The Emerson poll put the former US president up by nine points in the state compared with Harris.“It is incredibly gutsy to release this poll. It won’t put Harris ahead in our forecast because there was also another Iowa poll out today that was good for Trump. But wouldn’t want to play poker against Ann Selzer,” Silver said.That seemed to prevent any premature celebrations on behalf of many Democrats.“Celebrate the Selzer poll for 90 seconds and get back to work. We have an election to win,” said Christopher Hale, a former Democrat congressional candidate in Tennessee. More

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      RFK Jr could lead US health and food safety in a second Trump term

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr could assume some control over US health and food safety in a second Trump administration, according to reports on Saturday, alarming Democrats who believe the former environmental lawyer and independent presidential candidate could be empowered to act on his vaccine-sceptical views.According to the Washington Post, Kennedy has met with Trump transition officials to help draw up an agenda for a new administration and could take a broad “health tsar” position that would not require confirmation by the Senate.Kennedy, who ended his White House bid and endorsed Trump, and his advisers have also been drafting 30-, 60- and 90-day plans for a second Trump term, the outlet reported, citing a source “familiar” with the planning process.Kamala Harris slammed the idea, saying Friday that Kennedy is “the exact last person in America who should be setting healthcare policy for America’s families and children”.The Democratic candidate further described Kennedy as “someone who has routinely promoted junk science and crazy conspiracy theories”.Last week, Kennedy warned in a post on X that the “FDA’s war on public health is about to end. This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma.”He added: “If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1 Preserve your records, and 2 Pack your bags.”Ted Kennedy Jr, a cousin of RFK Jr and a healthcare lawyer, said he was “deeply concerned” about Trump’s choice.“We can’t put anyone in charge of healthcare who doesn’t understand how doctors and scientists develop best practices and keep us safe, and has no medical background and no knowledge about how health care is organized, delivered and paid for,” he told Stat.But Trump seems determined. He told rightwing figure Tucker Carlson last week that Kennedy was “going to work on health and women’s health”.“He really wants to with the pesticides and the, you know, all the different things. I said, he can do it,” Trump said. “He can do anything he wants. He wants to look at the vaccines. He wants – everything. I think it’s great. I think it’s great.”“He’s a great guy. I’ve known him a long time. And all he wants to do – it’s very simple – he wants to make people healthy,” Trump told NBC News on Friday. Campaign officials previously told the outlet that Kennedy might spearhead an “Operation Warp Speed for childhood chronic disease”, a reference to the Trump administration’s $20bn Covid vaccine development program.But the discussion over a potential role for Kennedy in a new Trump administration has also raised the topic of the response to the 2020-21 Covid-19 pandemic that has been largely absent from the campaign trail.JD Vance, Trump’s vice-presidential pick, expressed scepticism about the Covid vaccine during a sit-down with podcaster Joe Rogan released on Thursday.“I took the vax, and you know, I haven’t been boosted or anything, but the moment where I really started to get red-pilled on the whole vax thing was the sickest that I have been in the last 15 years by far was when I took the vaccine,” the Ohio senator told Rogan.Kennedy, who has also expressed doubts about Covid vaccines, told a rally last week that Trump had promised him “control” of public health agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture.Howard Lutnick, the Trump transition team co-chair, confirmed to CNN this week that he’d spent two-and-a-half hours with Kennedy “and it was the most extraordinary thing”.“I said: ‘So, tell me. How’s it going to go?’ And he said: ‘Why don’t you just listen to me explain things,’” Lutnick said. He did not deny that Kennedy was correct to say he would lead public health agencies in a Trump administration.“I think it’ll be pretty cool to give him the data. Let’s see what he comes up with,” Lutnick added.In a statement, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said there were “no formal decisions” about potential Trump administration appointments. But she added that the former president “has said he will work alongside passionate voices like RFK Jr to make America healthy again by providing families with safe food and ending the chronic disease epidemic plaguing our children”, referring to type 2 diabetes. More

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      Donald Trump is a superspreader of a craziness that has split America in two | Simon Tisdall

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      Is Donald Trump going mad? It depends how you define the word. But since he’s hoping to be elected US president on Tuesday, it would be handy to know. Democrats describe him as “weird” and “unhinged”. His rival, Kamala Harris, raised the “M” question again last week. “This is someone who is “unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance, and out for unchecked power,” she warned.Harris, to her credit, was being relatively polite, though goodness knows why, given the way he disses and demeans her. So let’s pose the question in more colloquial, idiomatic terms. Has stark raving Trump finally lost his marbles? Are there bats in the belfry? If he’s off his rocker, not playing with a full deck and away with the fairies, the world and the voters have a right to know.Harris’s assessment is obviously not an objective medical diagnosis of mental disorder. It’s a normal person’s reaction to the abnormal things Trump says and does. Crazy-strange campaign speeches by him and his supporters, notably at Madison Square Garden last weekend – a gathering akin to a Nazi Nuremberg rally – are reviving the debate about his sanity that began during his first term.In The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, published in 2017, a group of 27 psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals raised numerous red flags. One contributor suggested he was clearly off his chump: “Trump is now the most powerful head of state in the world, and one of the most impulsive, arrogant, ignorant, disorganised, chaotic, nihilistic, self-contradictory, self-important, and self-serving.”That professional opinion, made seven years ago, still rings true. Yet is the madness of “King” Trump, like the madness of King George (whose tyrannical rule Trump seeks to emulate), getting worse?By one measure – his wild, deranged language – the deterioration is marked. “His speeches have grown coarser and coarser,” wrote veteran White House watcher Peter Baker, who dubs him “the profanity president”.“Counting tamer four-letter words like ‘damn’ and ‘hell,’ he has cursed in public at least 1,787 times in 2024,” Baker wrote. His analysis shows Trump is using such language 69% more often than when he ran in 2016. It’s shocking, even by today’s tawdry standards. Trump calls Harris a “shit vice-president” who is “mentally impaired”. Doubtless he knows of what he speaks.Vulgarity, however gross, is not proof of madness. But it may be symptomatic. The Merriam-Webster dictionary, America’s oldest, defines a mad person as one “completely unrestrained by reason and judgment; unable to think in a clear or sensible way”. Trump aces this definition every time he opens his mouth. It fits him to a tee. Exhibit A: his oddball musings about golfer Arnold Palmer’s penis.Bizarre Trump traits, such as compulsive, blatant lying, meet another dictionary definition of madness – behaviour that is “incapable of being explained or accounted for”.A third definition, rooted in US rather than British usage, suggests that Trump is indisputably bananas, in the sense that he is constantly “intensely angry or displeased”. Always feeling furious, feeling “mad as hell”, must be exhausting. It’s enough to drive anyone round the bend. Older people often get irritable, of course; and screw-loose Trump is 78. So is incipient senility, or cognitive decline, another cause of his exceptional looney-ness?Trump stumbles, mispronounces words, forgets where he is and loses his train of thought. Just like Joe Biden, in fact. But Biden is merely old. Trump is nuts.Trump has refused to take credible mental acuity tests or release his medical records. Last month, more than 230 healthcare specialists urged him to be more transparent. “As we all age, we lose sharpness and revert to base instincts,” they noted. “We are seeing that from Trump as he uses his rallies… to crudely lash out.”It may go back to childhood. One theory is that Trump, bullied and bullier, was driven up the wall by maternal love denied. Another theory is that he suffers from “disinhibition”. This is when people become less restrained, the older they get.But the Atlantic journalist McKay Coppins, who interviewed Trump 10 years ago, says he’s always been this way. His “depthless vanity, his brittle ego, his tragic craving for elite approval” haven’t changed one bit, Coppins wrote.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNarcissism, hedonism, obsession, a need to provoke, scare, shock and scandalise, and chronic, paranoid feelings of victimhood are all indicators of worsening mental imbalance, if not early-onset imbecility. Recent Trump lunacies include claims that flies are buzzing round his head for “suspicious” reasons, North Korea is trying to kill him, the 6 January riot was a “lovefest”, pet-eating migrants are akin to Hannibal Lecter, and that God saved him in the assassination attempt on his life.If Trump were to go mad on his own time, no problem. Unfortunately, by publicly projecting and displaying mental dysfunction daily on a national stage, he is driving America nuts, too – fans and foes alike. He brings out the worst in everyone, right and left. It could be termed national derangement syndrome (NDS).The poisonous effect of NDS was on show at Madison Square Garden, where “comedians” amplified Trump’s sexist, racist, hate-filled messages. This superspreader craziness destroys reasoned debate, splits the country into opposing camps (hence the dead-heat opinion polls) and sends blood pressure soaring. Many Americans fear civil violence. That’s bonkers.This collective madness, akin to mass hysteria, is all-consuming and universally destructive. Like much that happens in America, it reverberates around the globe. Trump’s fascistic Mad Hatter world is also the world of sicko revanchist dictators like Russia’s Putin, Europe’s far-right ultra-nationalist fruitcases, Iran’s manic mullahs and off-their-heads Israeli génocidaires.It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world – to hijack the title of Stanley Kramer’s 1963 comedy classic – but it’s no laughing matter. It may be about to get madder still. Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s Foreign Affairs Commentator More