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      in Elections

      Georgia election deniers helped pass new laws. Many worry it’ll lead to chaos in November

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      Conservative activists in Georgia have worked with prominent election deniers to pass a series of significant changes to the procedures for counting ballots in recent weeks, raising alarm about the potential for confusion and interference in the election certification process in a key swing state this fall.Since the beginning of August, the five-member state election board has adopted rules that allow local election boards to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into election results before they are certified, and to allow any local election board member “to examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections prior to certification of results”. The same rule also requires local boards to reconcile any discrepancies between the total number of ballots cast and the number of voters who check in. If it can’t reconcile the numbers, the board is authorized to come up with a way to figure out which votes count and which do not.At its upcoming meeting in September, the board is also expected to approve a measure that would require local officials to hand-count ballots to check the machine tabulations. Experts have warned that hand-counts are unreliable, costly and time-consuming.Georgia law requires county officials to certify an election no later than 5pm on the Monday following election day (the deadline will be one day later this year because of a state holiday). Legal experts have noted that state law is clear about that deadline and that none of the recent rules change that.But at the same time, observers are concerned new changes are seeding the ground to give local county commissioners justifications to object to the certification of the vote.“State law clearly states the certification deadline. They can add on whatever they want, but cannot go against the existing state law that says it has to be certified by a specific date,” said Julie Houk, a voting rights attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. At the same time, she added: “What’s going to happen when they have not completed a review of those thousands of records? Are the board members going to say ‘we can’t certify’ even though it requires them to?”“What’s going to happen if certain board members or boards determine that now that we have all the records we’ve demanded, we can’t get through them in time to certify?”The changes have caused considerable alarm in one of the most competitive battleground states this presidential cycle, which is expected to be extremely close. Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020 by 11,799 votes, a razor-thin margin.Georgia’s state election board, charged with making election rules consistent with Georgia law, was not really paid attention to until this year. But in recent months it has moved forward with a blitz of changes. Earlier this year, Republicans essentially forced out a member who had rebuffed proposed changes and replaced him with someone who has been more sympathetic to the changes.That new member, Rick Jeffares, has previously posted in support of Trump’s election lies, though he recently told the Guardian he believed the former president lost in Georgia in 2020. He also said that he had proposed himself for a job with the Environmental Protection Agency in a second Trump administration.The new rules enacted by the board have been shaped with input from the Republican party and a network of election denial activists. The precinct reconciliation rule adopted on Monday, for example, was presented by Bridget Thorne, a Fulton county commissioner who has run a private Telegram channel filled with election conspiracies. She said during the meeting on Monday she had worked with a number of people on the proposal, including Heather Honey, a prominent activist in the election denialism movement.Input on rules has also come from the state Republican party, the New York Times reported. Julie Adams, who is connected to a network of election deniers and has refused to certify two elections this year as a member of the Fulton county election board, has also had input on the rules, ProPublica reported.Trump has publicly praised three of the Republicans on the board who have constituted the majority to enact the new rules. During a rally earlier this month he called them “pitbulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory”.Three lawyers tied to Trump also spoke out in favor of the new rules on Monday. They included Hans von Spakovsky, a lawyer at the Heritage Foundation who served on Trump’s voter fraud commission, Ken Cuccinelli, who had a top role in the Department of Homeland Security under Trump, and Harry MacDougald, who is defending former justice department official Jeffrey Clark in the Georgia criminal case dealing with Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.John Fervier, the Republican chair on the board who voted against the rule, said he was also concerned about refusal to certify elections.“We’ve seen boards, or board members recently, that refused to certify because they didn’t see X, Y or Z documents. I think this just even opens the door more to that,” he said.During Monday’s meeting, those who supported the rule insisted that local county commissioners could refuse to certify an election if they did not believe the tally was accurate.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“One individual board member does not have authority to overrule other board members,” Thorne said. “Board members would have the right to disagree if they wanted to disagree. But hopefully by having this process in place, everyone will be confident and go ahead and certify.MacDougald, one of the lawyers supporting the proposal, suggested that a judge could not force a majority of election board members to certify a result they believed was incorrect. “The board members have the right to vote on certification, that necessarily gives them the right to vote against it,” he said.“Unless a board member has full confidence in the administration of the election, that it was done without error, they should not certify the election,” von Spakovsky said at the meeting.Election officials have expressed concern about the new rule that prevents them from counting any ballots in a precinct if the number of voters checked in doesn’t align with the number of ballots cast. These small discrepancies often occur because of human error – a voter might check in and leave with their ballot or a voter concerned about their mail-in vote counting might decide to cast a vote in person. These small discrepancies are almost always smaller than the margin of votes and are explained in a reconciliation report to the secretary of state after the election.There also could be problems with the portion of the rule that empowers local boards to come up with a way of tabulating the votes if the discrepancy, no matter how small, can’t be explained.“Let’s say I’m at a poll that has 500 ballots. And we go through and determined one of those 500 voters should not have cast that belt for whatever reason,” said Joseph Kirk, the election director in Bartow county, Georgia, which is about an hour north-west of Atlanta. “How do we know which ballot to take out of the box? They’re anonymous.”Even if the election result is eventually certified, any discovery found during the new investigatory phase could become fodder to continue to challenge the election results. In 2020 and 2022, Trump and allies seized on human errors to falsely argue that they were only the tip of a corrupt system.The Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, an organization that represents election officials across the state, called on the board to stop making changes, warning that continuing to do so would cause confusion.“Any last-minute changes to the rules risk undermining the public’s trust in the electoral process and place undue pressure on the individuals responsible for managing the polls and administering the election,” said W Travis Doss, the group’s president and the executive director of the board of elections in Richmond county, Georgia. “This could ultimately lead to errors or delays in voting, which is the last thing anyone wants.” More

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      in US Politics

      Harris urges America to choose ‘freedom and fairness’ over Trump extremism – as it happened

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      Kamala Harris then accepted the Democratic presidential nomination:
      So, on behalf of the people, on behalf of every American, regardless of party, race, gender or the language your grandmother speaks, on behalf of my mother and everyone who has ever set out on their own unlikely journey on behalf of Americans, like the people I grew up with, people who work hard, chase their dreams and look out for one another, on behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth. I accept your nomination for president of the United States of America.
      The room erupted into applause.This blog is closing now, thanks for following along. Here is Joan E Greve’s piece on the last night of the DNC:It was not a political address for the ages. It was not even the best of the convention (no one can compete with the Obamas). But Kamala Harris did enough in her speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday to put an exclamation mark on one of the most dramatic turnarounds in modern political history.And she made you reflect that you would not want to be Donald Trump facing her in next month’s televised debate. A speech that was short on policy and poetry was nevertheless devastating in skewering the menace from Mar-a-Lago. Trump can expect the same kind of interrogation when the two go head to head that would make most mortals tremble.Just over a month after Joe Biden exited the race and passed her the baton, this was the most important speech of Harris’s career as she sought to build on the momentum of huge crowds, record fundraising and viral phenomena on social media. Long in Biden’s shadow as vice-president, the primary objective was to make the American public comfortable with the notion of a President Harris regularly appearing on their screens.Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday with a sweeping, pointed speech in which she vowed to prosecute the case against Donald Trump and carry the country to a brighter and fairer future.In an address that balanced optimism with scathing criticism of her opponent, Harris acknowledged her “unlikely” path to the nomination and extended her hand to voters of all political ideologies who believe in America’s promise. Harris would make history if elected – as the first woman, first Black woman and first Asian American woman to serve as president – but she instead focused on the history that the country could change in November.“Our nation, with this election, has a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism and divisive battles of the past, a chance to chart a new way forward – not as members of any one party or faction, but as Americans,” Harris told thousands of Democrats in Chicago.She then said to roaring applause: “On behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth, I accept your nomination for president of the United States of America.”The speech came just one month after Harris launched her campaign, following Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race. With the president’s endorsement, Harris was able to quickly consolidate Democrats’ support and secure the nomination. Harris has enjoyed a wave of enthusiasm since entering the race, as most polls now show her pulling slightly ahead of Trump in the key battleground states that will determine the outcome of the election.This photograph is of Kamala Harris’ great-niece, Amara, watching Harris make her speech. It was taken by Kevin Wurm, for Reuters:Civil rights leader the Rev Al Sharpton brought out four of the exonerated Central Park Five, including Yusef Salaam, who was recently elected to the New York City council. The survivors of wrongful incarceration spoke about the impact of Trump’s vicious attacks, which included his calls for execution of the group of innocent young men.Salaam said Trump “wanted us un-alive. He wanted us dead. Today we are exonerated because the actual perpetrator confessed and DNA proved it.” He noted that the former president refuses to recant his accusations against them, saying: “He dismisses the scientific evidence rather than admit he was wrong … He has never changed, and he never will.”In one of the most emotional moments of the four-day convention, survivors of gun violence took the stage to call for gun safety. The Georgia congresswoman Lucy McBath, who lost her son to gun violence, led the group, saying: “Our losses do not weaken us. They strengthen our resolve. We will secure safer futures … We will organize. We will advocate. We will run for office.” Kim Rubio, the mother of 10-year-old Lexi, who was killed in Uvalde, Texas, talked about her child she “will never hold again”. And Abbey Clements, a teacher and survivor of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, recounted in detail the terror of the shooting, saying: “I carry that horrific day with me.”Former congresswoman Gabby Giffords recounted her recovery from the assassination attempt she survived, adding: “Kamala will be a great president. She is tough. She has grit. Kamala can beat the gun lobby. She can fight gun trafficking.”After days of sustained pro-Palestinian protests calling for an arms embargo on Israel, Harris’s final address offered both a defense of Israel and a call for Palestinian self-determination. She said: “I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself, because the people of Israel must never again face the horror … Hamas caused on October 7.”“What has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost, desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again, the scale of suffering is heartbreaking,” Harris continued. “Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.”And the story you’ve all been waiting for:As Kamala Harris prepared to deliver the biggest speech of her career, one of the year’s biggest rumours snowballed online and in the media about a potential surprise guest.In an election campaign in which anything has seemed possible, a Democratic National Convention appearance by Beyoncé, whose song Freedom is the Harris campaign’s official song, seemed for a brief moment like it could be on the cards.On Thursday, TMZ published a story with the headline “Beyoncé Performing at DNC final night!!!”, reporting “multiple sources in the know” had said she would “be the big surprise performer”.The Hill posted a story headlined Beyoncé to perform at Democratic convention: Sources and also reported that Nick Hutchins, who works for the progressive firm Swing Left, had posted on social media saying he heard a band at the convention rehearsing Beyoncé songs, including “Cuff It”.Florida Representative Frentrice Driskell also posted video of the band performing a Beyoncé song.The convention ended without a Palestinian American speaker on the main stage, a key demand of the uncommitted movement. The Harris campaign and Democratic party faced increasing pressure throughout the week to include a Palestinian voice, particularly after parents of a Hamas hostage were given a speaking slot and delivered emotional testimony on Wednesday. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other high-profile Democrats and activists had called on the convention to find a way to accommodate the uncommitted delegates’ request, but officials did not change the schedule.Ruwa Romman, a Georgia state representative who wrote a speech for the convention to consider, read her prepared remarks to a crowd gathered outside, instead. Abbas Alawieh, a leader of the uncommitted movement, told supporters: “The scandal is that there are forces within Democratic party leadership who do not want us to talk about Palestinian human rights.”More from a second post-speech gathering gathering, where, per the pool report, the crowd sang “Happy Anniversary” to Harris and Emhoff to the tune of Happy Birthday. Harris said the campaign has been “gruelling” and “uplifting.” She said the next days are going to be “rough and tough.”“Tonight we’re partying, tomorrow lets get back to work. Please wish me and my husband a happy anniversary.” Walz spoke, and said that he had lost his voice. He thanked the convention staff, saying the “country saw the best of America.”The second gentleman’s remarks were almost parallel to his remarks at the first party talking about their first dance 10 years ago.If you’re just joining us, here is a look at Harris’s speech at the DNC:The vice-president’s final speech offered a forceful rebuke of Donald Trump and laid out the stakes of the election: “Consider not only the chaos and calamity when he was in office, but also the gravity of what has happened since he lost … Trump tried to throw away your votes. When he failed, he sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol, where they assaulted law enforcement … For an entirely different set of crimes, he was found guilty of fraud by a jury of everyday Americans and separately, found liable for committing sexual abuse … Consider the power he will have, especially after the United States supreme court just ruled that he would be immune from criminal prosecution. Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails.”She ended with a message of hope and optimism that has been a theme all week: “Let us show each other and the world who we are and what we stand for: freedom, opportunity, compassion, dignity, fairness and endless possibilities. We are the heirs to the greatest democracy in the history of the world and … we must be worthy of this moment. It is now our turn to do what generations before us have done, guided by optimism and faith, to fight for this country we love, to fight for the ideals we cherish.”Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, made brief remarks at a gathering after the DNC closing speech.Today is their tenth wedding anniversary, and Emhoff, the first second gentleman, raised a toast to his wife.Harris said:
      So thank you for sharing this important day with us, but truly, thank you all so very much. I know who’s in this room. I know what you do every day and what you have done to support everything that we care about, everything that we believe is possible. We are truly invested in the future of our country. Our fight is truly and deeply worn out. Love country, and I know we’re gonna get this done. We’re gonna win!”“But only if we understand you can party tonight and you need to work for the next 75 days or so. “its been a wonderful convention, and so much of it is about everyone who is here who dedicates so much of your time and love to our country. We’re gonna get this done!”
      Then Emhoff spoke, saying:
      It is hard to imagine, like, literally 10 years ago right now, we had just taken our vows, gotten married, and we’re probably likely no that’s just literally, like probably having our first dance. And then to think about, literally, 10 years later, to the night she gave one of, if not the greatest speeches. But like she said, we haven’t won anything yet, right? So it’s just 70 odd days left. Let’s I think tonight we can’t have some fun. And unlike my great friend, Governor Walz, he’s gonna he said he sleep when he’s dead. That’s extreme. I want to see her be president, so I’m gonna sleep on November 6, celebrating you becoming our next president.So join me in toasting my wife, the love of the love of my life, on our 10th anniversary. But we’re not looking back. We’re not going back. We’re looking into the future with you as our next president. Kamala Harris, we love you.”
      This is Helen Sullivan taking over our live US politics and post-DNC coverage. More

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      in US Politics

      Kamala Harris pledges to ‘chart a new way forward’ as she accepts nomination

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      Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday with a sweeping, pointed speech in which she vowed to prosecute the case against Donald Trump and carry the country to a brighter and fairer future.In an address that balanced optimism with scathing criticism of her opponent, Harris acknowledged her “unlikely” path to the nomination and extended her hand to voters of all political ideologies who believe in America’s promise. Harris would make history if elected – as the first woman, first Black woman and first Asian American woman to serve as president – but she instead focused on the history that the country could change in November.“Our nation, with this election, has a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism and divisive battles of the past, a chance to chart a new way forward – not as members of any one party or faction, but as Americans,” Harris told thousands of Democrats in Chicago.She then said to roaring applause: “On behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth, I accept your nomination for president of the United States of America.”The speech came just one month after Harris launched her campaign, following Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race. With the president’s endorsement, Harris was able to quickly consolidate Democrats’ support and secure the nomination. Harris has enjoyed a wave of enthusiasm since entering the race, as most polls now show her pulling slightly ahead of Trump in the key battleground states that will determine the outcome of the election.Throughout the speech, Harris implicitly and explicitly contrasted herself with her opponent, warning that Trump’s return to the White House would resurrect the “chaos and calamity” of his first presidential term. She condemned Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, blaming him for the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, and reminded voters of his many legal battles since leaving office.“Consider the power he will have, especially after the United States supreme court just ruled that he would be immune from criminal prosecution,” Harris said. “Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails and how he would use the immense powers of the presidency of the United States – not to improve your life, not to strengthen our national security, but to serve the only client he has ever had: himself.”Harris then led the crowd, packed to full capacity in Chicago’s United Center, in a chant of “We’re not going back!” The chant has become a recurring feature of Harris’ campaign rallies in the past month.The speech represented Harris’ most significant opportunity yet to define herself in the eyes of voters. Although Harris served as vice-president under Biden for four years and as a US senator from California before that, polls suggest voters’ opinions of the new nominee are not set in stone. Trump has already tried to define Harris as a “radical” Democrat, mocking her as “Comrade Kamala,” but he has struggled to land successful attack lines against his new opponent.Addressing a national audience, Harris presented herself as a “realistic” and “practical” leader who would lean on her background as a prosecutor to govern based on common sense and equality. She credited her sense of justice to her mother, Shyamala Harris, a scientist who emigrated to the US from India when she was 19.“She was tough, courageous, a trailblazer in the fight for women’s health, and she taught Maya and me a lesson that Michelle [Obama] mentioned the other night,” Harris said. “She taught us to never complain about injustice, but do something about it.”In an election that has often been characterized as personality versus policy, Harris attempted to intertwine the two. After discussing her record as a prosecutor fighting for “women and children against predators who abused them,” she turned her attention to the women whose lives have been jeopardized due to a lack of abortion access.She shared stories of pregnant women getting sepsis and miscarrying in parking lots, and placed the blame for their pain squarely on Trump’s shoulders, as he nominated three of the justices who ruled to overturn Roe v Wade.“This is what’s happening in our country because of Donald Trump,” Harris said. “And understand he is not done as a part of his agenda. He and his allies would limit access to birth control, ban medication abortion, and enact a nationwide abortion ban, with or without Congress … Simply put, they are out of their minds.”View image in fullscreenHarris was at times light on the details when it came to policy, as when she pledged to build “an opportunity economy” and “end America’s housing shortage”. She was arguably most forceful when it came to discussing foreign policy, as she promised to “stand strong with Ukraine” and accused Trump of aligning himself with autocrats.“I will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong-un, who are rooting for Trump because they know he is easy to manipulate with flattery and favors,” Harris said. “As president, I will never waver in defense of America’s security and ideals – because, in the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny, I know where I stand and where the United States of America belongs.”In one of the most highly anticipated portions of her speech, Harris outlined her stance on the war in Gaza. Harris condemned the Hamas attacks against Israel on 7 October and mourned the “many innocent lives lost” in Gaza since the start of the war, but she vowed to “always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself,” in an apparent rejection of recent calls for an arms embargo.“President Biden and I are working around the clock because now is the time to get a hostage deal and ceasefire done,” Harris said. “President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.”The call for Palestinian self-determination was met with robust applause in the convention center, but it is unclear whether that rhetoric will appease ceasefire supporters, thousands of whom took to the streets of Chicago to protest the war this week.Harris will likely need those voters’ support in November, as the presidential race remains a toss-up despite her recent gains. The coming days will show if and how Harris’ speech might expand her lead. More

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      in US Politics

      Project 2025: Democrats warn convention extreme plan is no joke

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      The Saturday Night Live cast member Kenan Thompson carted out a massive version of the Project 2025 book onto the main stage at the Democratic national convention on Wednesday night. Despite the comedian’s involvement with the prop, which has been used throughout the convention, Democrats want voters to know that the conservative manifesto for a second Trump administration is no joke.Democrats have sprinkled the words “Project 2025” into speech after speech for months, culminating in the big book’s spot on the big stage – a sign of the toxicity that the mere mention of the project has with voters of multiple political persuasions.The project would dismantle much of what Democrats have done in the federal government under Joe Biden’s administration. The 900-plus-page policy outline, the Mandate for Leadership, is just one piece of the plan, which also involves assembling a roster of potential political appointees for jobs if Donald Trump wins, training those allies on how it thinks the government should work and coming up with a playbook to swiftly put those plans into place if Trump wins in November.A poll from the University of Massachusetts Amherst released earlier this month showed that more than half of respondents had heard of Project 2025, and the majority of those surveyed did not agree with many of its aims.Trump and his campaign have worked to distance the candidate from the project, which was put together by the conservative thinktank the Heritage Foundation. But many of the authors and groups behind the project have Trump ties, and the policy goals often align with things Trump has said he intends to do if he wins again. Trump’s team cheered when a Project 2025 leader announced he was stepping down from his role after pressure from the campaign.After the Minnesota governor and vice-presidential nominee, Tim Walz, mentioned Project 2025 in his speech on Wednesday night, Trump called into Fox & Friends on Thursday morning to say it was “disgraceful” that Democrats keep tying him to it.“They know I have nothing to do with it,” he said. “I had no idea what it was. A group of people got together, they drew up some conservative values, very conservative values, and in some cases perhaps they went over the line, perhaps they didn’t, but I have no idea what Project 25 is.”Each night at the convention, an elected official has lugged the book back on to the stage to cite an exact page number for a policy that should concern Democrats. The Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow talked about plans to weaponize the Department of Justice. The Pennsylvania state representative Malcolm Kenyatta talked about its plans to stop Medicare from negotiating drug prices. The Colorado governor, Jared Polis, pointed to plans to limit abortions and promote “traditional” families.“Usually Republicans want to ban books but now they’re trying to shove this down our throats,” Kenyatta said.The bit with SNL’s Thompson involved video appearances by a handful of Democrats from around the country who would be affected by policy changes the project suggests, including a teacher, a federal employee and a doctor.“What do you do for a living?” Thompson asks an OB-GYN. “An OB-GYN that delivers babies? Uh-oh.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It’s bad news, isn’t it?” the OB-GYN responds.“It sure is. On page 459, Project 2025 resurrects a law from the 1800s called the Comstock Act to ban abortion nationwide and throw healthcare providers in jail,” Thompson replies.The speakers, including Thompson, reference a webpage put up by the Harris campaign to highlight parts of the project that are most egregious for Democrats.“Just remember, everything that we just talked about is very real. It is in this book,” Thompson said. “You can stop it from ever happening by electing Kamala Harris as the president of the United States.” More

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      in US Politics

      Democrats are finally done with the ‘high road’ – and hitting Trump where it hurts | Robert Reich

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      I’m glad Democrats are finally hitting back at Trump. Enough with the “high road”.They’re calling him “weird”.They’re mocking him. “Donald Trump fell asleep at his own trial,” Hillary Clinton sneered at the Democratic convention. “When he woke up, he’d made his own kind of history – the first person to run for president with 34 felony convictions.”Barack Obama noted Trump’s “weird obsession with crowd sizes”.Michelle Obama asked: “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?”Trump hates to be laughed at. He cannot abide ridicule. So, keep it up.But in addition to the mockery, we must not forget Trump’s treachery.The values a president enunciates and demonstrates ricochet through society, strengthening or undermining the common good.George Washington’s biographer, Douglas Southall Freeman, noted that by June 1775, when Congress appointed him to command the nation’s army, Washington had already “become a moral rallying post”.In the 2016 presidential campaign, 240 years later, candidate Donald Trump’s moral squalor was on full display. When accused of failing to pay his income taxes he responded: “That makes me smart.”He thereby signaled to millions of Americans that paying taxes in full is not an obligation of citizenship.Trump also boasted about giving money to politicians so they would do whatever he wanted. “When they call, I give. And you know what, when I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me.”In other words, it’s perfectly OK for business leaders to pay off politicians, regardless of the effect on our democracy.After Trump launched an attack on NFL players who kneeled during the national anthem, Steve Kerr, coach of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, explained that the players were trying to protect a core American value. “They’re protesting excessive police violence and racial inequality,” said Kerr. “Those are really good things to fight against. And they’re doing it in a nonviolent way. Which is everything that Martin Luther King preached, right?”Before Trump, the peaceful transfer of power was assumed to be a central feature of American democracy.As the Harvard political scientist Archon Fung has noted, when losing candidates congratulate winners and deliver gracious concession speeches, they demonstrate their commitment to the democratic system over the result they fought to achieve – an important means of reaffirming the common good.Think of Al Gore’s gracious concession speech to George W Bush in 2000, after five weeks of a bitterly contested election and just one day after the US supreme court ruled in favor of Bush:“I say to President-elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of this country … Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the court’s decision, I accept it … And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.”Consider what might have occurred had Gore bitterly accused Bush of winning fraudulently and blamed the five Republican appointees on the supreme court for siding with Bush for partisan reasons. Or if, during his campaign, Bush had promised to put Gore in jail for various alleged improprieties, and then, after he won, accused Gore of spying on him during the campaign and trying to use the FBI and CIA to bring his downfall.These statements – close to ones Trump actually made – might have imperiled the political stability of the nation.Instead, Gore made the same moral choice his predecessors made at the end of every previous American presidential election, and for the same reason: he understood that the peaceful transition of power confirmed the nation’s commitment to the constitution, which was far more important than his own loss.Trump has had no such qualms. When he lost, he embarked on a coup against the United States and instigated an assault on the US Capitol, resulting in five deaths.At this moment, Trump and his lackeys are installing loyalists in state and county election offices to deny certification to the Harris-Walz ticket and other Democrats down the ballot.The essence of Trump’s failure as president – and the fundamental reason he doesn’t merit a second term – is not that he has behaved in childish and vindictive ways or is “weird”.It is that he sacrificed – and continues to sacrifice – the processes and institutions that undergird America to achieve his own selfish aims.He abused the trust we place in a president to preserve and protect the nation’s capacity for self-government.Trump is a traitor.He and the Republican party – now a personality cult based on Trump’s “big lie” – violate everything America stands for.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      in US Politics

      Environmental activists urge Kamala Harris to go big on climate: ‘She’s got to seize the moment’

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      As Donald Trump accuses Kamala Harris of waging “war on American energy”, some advocates are pressing the vice-president to embrace a bold climate message at the Democratic national convention this week.Harris will have a major opportunity to lay out her key platform as she accepts the Democratic party’s presidential nomination on Thursday evening. Some are hoping climate features heavily in her speech.“There’s a moment here and we think she’s got to seize it,” said Saul Levin, legislative and political director of the progressive advocacy group Green New Deal Network.Harris’s candidacy has excited much of the climate movement, with scores of green groups, including Levin’s, endorsing her presidential run. At a Wednesday meeting, influential climate hawks such as Ed Markey, the Massachusetts senator; Gina McCarthy, the former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator; and Robert Bullard, the esteemed environmental justice scholar and advocate encouraged climate voters to stand behind Harris.But Harris has yet to release an official plan to take on the climate crisis. Unlike Joe Biden, who placed climate at the heart of his 2020 presidential run, Harris has so far only mentioned the issue in passing on the campaign trail. And though the issue has been woven into Democratic national convention events, it has not yet been a central focus of the convention.“It’s a bit of a bummer that it hasn’t gotten more time,” said Cassidy DiPaola, spokesperson for the Make Polluters Pay Campaign, which focuses on climate accountability.Harris may find it difficult to make bold climate promises amid Trump’s attacks. At a campaign stop in Pennsylvania this week, the former president called Harris a “non-fracker”, though she has distanced herself from past support for a fracking ban, disappointing climate advocates.Trump has also repeatedly claimed Harris wants to ban red meat and “get rid of all cows”. In response, she said she enjoys eating the occasional cheeseburger but added that Americans should be incentivized to eat a lower-carbon, healthier diet.Amid this pressure from the right, some climate advocates have said they will stand behind Harris no matter how much she mentions climate.“Regardless of whether this issue is in the speech or not tomorrow night, we know Vice-President Harris is an environmental champion,” said Michelle Deatrick, who chairs the Democratic National Committee’ Council on the Environment and Climate Crisis. She said Harris’s record speaks for itself.Recent polling from progressive group Data for Progress and environmental organization Climate Power shows that a strong majority of US voters prefer Harris’s approach to climate.It’s an indicator that focusing on climate is “good politics”, said Stevie O’Hanlon, spokesperson for the youth-led environmental justice group the Sunrise Movement.“Climate is one of the issues where voters trust Harris the most over Trump,” she said. “To capitalize on that, she needs to talk about it.”An ‘existential threat’The 2024 Democratic party platform approved on Monday refers to the climate crisis as an “existential threat” and “a consequence of delay and destruction by people like Donald Trump and his friends in Big Oil”.It also includes a commitment to “making polluters pay”. It’s something DiPaola said she was “stoked” to see, though she added that she’d eventually like to see “less vague language about how they’re going to make climate accountability real”.Additionally, the platform underlines the creation of hundreds of thousands of clean-energy jobs and highlights the historic green investments spurred by the 2021 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).But Levin says he hopes Harris lays out plans to go beyond the IRA and increase investments in green jobs, public transit and renewable power. Though the bill constitutes the largest downpayment on climate policy in US history with hundreds of billions of dollars in green funding, experts say that is a fraction of what the US must ultimately spend.“We can’t just say, oh, we did the IRA, so we did climate and now let’s move to another issue,” said Levin. “The IRA made tremendous progress, but it was just a start.”He said some aspects of the platform, including pledges to double funding for public transit and cut down public subsidies for oil companies, inspired hope that a bolder climate platform will emerge.That platform and Harris’ rhetoric, said DiPaola, should lean “populist,” said DiPaola.“Voters are frustrated with corporate power and influence,” she said. “She can ultimately appeal to both climate-motivated voters as well as economically motivated voters … by highlighting the need to clamp down on big oil’s greed.”‘Big oil’s hold on our economy’Though the Democratic party platform rails against “big oil’s hold on our economy”, the Democratic convention itself has not been unfriendly to the industry. The American Petroleum Institute, the country’s largest fossil fuel lobby group, participated in several events this week.Oil major ExxonMobil sponsored two Wednesday panel discussions hosted by Punchbowl News on the sidelines of the convention, one of which featured the firm’s senior director of climate strategy and technology and a representative from gas lobby group the American Gas Association.Activists with environmental non-profits including Friends of the Earth, Oil Change International, and Climate Hawks Vote disrupted the event.“I am here because Exxon lied and people died,” chanted RL Miller, the Climate Hawks Vote founder and a former Democratic National Committee member, before being escorted from the room.Federal data shows Exxon has poured $111,500 into Republican congressional campaign committees. Collin Rees of Oil Change International, who took part in the protest, said if the party is looking to take on big oil, the company “should have no platform at the DNC”.War in GazaGaza solidarity protesters interrupted a meeting of the environment and climate crisis council at the convention on Wednesday, chanting “free, free Palestine”.“If you want to show some political courage, go and interrupt one of Donald Trump’s rallies,” responded Jamie Raskin, the Maryland representative, who had been speaking. “Anybody who interferes with that is objectively helping Donald Trump … so cut it out.”Some climate groups, however, are pushing for the Harris campaign to stop supporting Israel’s deadly war in Gaza by issuing an arms embargo. Among them is the Sunrise Movement.“Young people want a livable world for our generation and generations. We want everyone to have clean air and water and safe homes,” said O’Hanlon. “Everyone must have those rights and freedoms, including Palestinians.” More

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      ‘Excited to show up for her’: mixed-race voters finally feel seen with Harris’s nomination

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      For Sonia Smith Kang, it hasn’t come as a surprise that Kamala Harris’s ethnic background has been challenged by her opponent and other members of the Republican party. “It’s what mixed folks have been dealing with for a long time,” said Smith Kang, who is both Mexican and Black and is married to a Korean man.Since Donald Trump’s false attacks on the racial identity of Kamala Harris at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention last month, he has purposely mispronounced her name, posted a photo of her in a traditional Indian sari and employed supporters to claim that the Democratic presidential candidate is not Black. For mixed-race voters who heard Trump state that Harris “happened to turn Black”, feelings of anger, frustration and annoyance instantly arose.“Everyone thinks we’re in this post-racial time, but Trump proved why classes and courses still need to be taught,” Smith Kang said.When the landmark case Loving v Virginia overturned state laws that restricted interracial marriage in the US in 1967, just 3% of marriages were interracial. By 2019, that number grew to 11%. Today, about one in 10 Americans – 33.8 million people – identify as mixed race.The rapid rise of multiracial people could not only affect the 2024 election, but reshape American electoral politics since mixed-race people tend to be young and the country’s white population is ageing. The Guardian spoke to numerous biracial and multiracial Americans who see their own stories in Harris and believe her mixed heritage gives her a political advantage.Smith Kang, the founder of the multicultural children’s apparel line Mixed Up Clothing and the vice-president of the non-profit advocacy group Multiracial Americans of Southern California is organizing a national call later this month to galvanize the mixed-race community to support Harris. “We’re really excited to mobilize and show up for her,” said the San Fernando Valley resident.View image in fullscreenAfter Barack Obama, Harris is the second-ever presidential nominee of a major political party to identify as biracial or mixed race. The daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, Harris has long embraced her south Asian and Black ethnic background. As her popularity has shot up in recent weeks, the topic of multiracial identity has been thrust into the spotlight.“I had to reread Trump’s quotes and the first things I felt were shock and also anger and defensiveness of Kamala Harris,” said Charlee Thompson, who lives in Seattle and works on clean energy and climate policy. “The fact that mixed identity is in the mainstream media on this political stage is shocking to me.”Thompson, who has a Japanese mother from Hawaii and a Mexican and white father, said multiracial people like herself and Harris were still treated as different or exotic even in 2024. “In the last month, I had three different people in completely different situations ask me or guess what I was,” she said. “I think light needs to be shed on the fact that multiracial people exist and how people respond can be othering or make people feel like they don’t belong in the community they belong to.”Dr Jenn Noble, a psychologist and educator who coaches parents of mixed-race kids, believes something more sinister than ignorance is going on when it comes to Trump questioning Harris’s identity. “He’s doing something a lot of people accuse mixed-race people of, which is being deceitful or somehow playing their background in a way that benefits them or suits them when it fits them,” she said.Los Angeles-based Noble, who is of Black and Sri Lankan heritage, said research shows there are benefits to being mixed race such as cognitive flexibility, which allows for people who are exposed to multiple languages or cultures to switch between groups easily, which could benefit the vice-president during her run. “I think Harris would have quite a bit of the skills to see the needs of varying groups and meet them in a way that works for that group,” she said.View image in fullscreenAfter Trump received widespread criticism for his remarks about Harris, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, defended the former president’s comments, saying Harris was “fundamentally a fake person” and “chameleon-like”. Vance has biracial children with his Indian American wife, Usha. (Vance recently told CNN he believed Harris was “whatever she says she is”.)Academics and mental health professionals have said they worry about the implications of Trump’s comments, as “identity denial” – telling someone they are not what they actually are – is a common stressor for mixed-race Americans. Historically in the US, the one-drop rule asserted that anyone with a Black ancestor was considered Black and even today, multiracial people are often spoken about in fractions rather than using words like “both” or “and”.The 2020 US Census made it easier for multiracial people to identify themselves, which led to an increase in population and a more accurate portrait of a racially diverse country. According to a recent New York Times analysis, the number of Americans who identify as both Black and Asian has tripled over the last 15 years to more than 600,000 – and about 20% of them live in Harris’s home state of California.For David Chetlain, a resident of Newberg, Oregon, who was born to a white American mother and a Black father from Ghana and adopted by a Native American mother and white father, Trump’s recent remarks made him recall the times strangers interrogated his own appearance, making comments such as: “Where did you come from?” and asking his mother: “Did the milkman pay you a visit?”“When people do that it’s to demean you or put you in a box,” said Chetlain, a navy veteran who works in software sales. “People try to make you feel less of an American.” What Chetlain has learned so far about Harris and her late mother, a breast cancer researcher, and father, a prominent economist, impressed him.“They are the American Dream,” said Chetlain of Harris and her immigrant parents. “That’s a true meritocracy. Nobody gave [Harris] $400m to start a career of fraud and tax evasion.” More

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      No tax on tips fires up Nevada hospitality workers: ‘I want that!’

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      Kristine serves gamblers playing countertop video poker screens at the center bar of Las Vegas’s Ellis Island casino. She declines to share her last name for privacy reasons, but is not timid about her support for Donald Trump when asked about his campaign promise to end federal taxation on tips.“I want that!” Kristine says as she fulfills cocktail waitresses’ orders. “Our tip compliance is too high. They take so much from our paycheck.”Tip compliance – the tax process for expected earnings from tips – has become a political football in Nevada, with federal lawmakers from both parties piling in to co-sponsor bills or present their vision for how tax exemption for tips should work.The push for tax relief for a specific sector of wageworker may seem out of the blue if the idea wasn’t so brazenly opportunistic. According to state employment figures, one in four jobs in this crucial swing state are in leisure and hospitality, many if not most of which are tip-earning positions at bars, restaurants, casinos, spas and hotels in Las Vegas and Reno.The frenzy over the issue started in June, during a Trump rally in Las Vegas, where he surprised supporters, press and members of his own party, saying: “Hotel workers and people that get tips, you’re going to be very happy because when I get to office we are going to not charge taxes on tips.”It was a “wild-ass promise”, says Ted Pappageorge, treasurer for the Culinary Union Local 226, which represents 60,000 hospitality workers in Nevada.He points out that during Trump’s four years in office and the four years since, the union’s heard “not a peep out of him” regarding overtaxed wage workers. Indeed, Trump’s signature legislative achievement as president was a tax cut that mainly benefited corporations, real estate developers, and billionaires and millionaires transferring wealth to their scions. “One of the problems is Trump lies, and he lies a lot,” Pappageorge said.But, Pappageorge added, Trump’s comments created an opening. “There’s actually a requirement now to have a discussion and an opportunity for us to wedge into the discussion, to make it real.”The union is now seeking tip compliance relief for their members while also advocating to raise the federal sub-minimum wage, which allows employers in some states to pay tipped earners as little as $2.13 per hour.Trump’s opponents have been listening. In Kamala Harris’s first Las Vegas rally as the presumptive Democratic nominee, she announced that she wouldas also pursue no taxes on tips, delighting rank-and-file Democrats who had become intrigued with the proposal, and irritating Trump supporters who wanted him to have the policy all to himself.“Why is she copying him?” says Kristine, the Ellis Island bartender. She voted for Trump in the last two election cycles and will again this fall. “I believe in women power, but I feel like we need a better president, like a strong personality, a tough one, to put [things] back to normal.”Wistful for the pre-pandemic economy, before food, fuel and housing prices shot up, Kristine says it would be nice if people could afford to enjoy themselves again: “Go on vacation again, because everything we make goes to bills, that’s it, and it’s not enough still. Everything is so expensive and you’re making the same money.”Southern Nevada’s vulnerability to economic slumps has led to two local sayings: the region is “the first to suffer, last to recover” because “when the economy gets sick, Las Vegas catches pneumonia.”The city was hit hard by pandemic-era travel restrictions. Since then, resorts have recovered strongly, reporting record profits from gaming each of the past three years. In resorts and casinos that are unionized (Ellis Island is not), the culinary union leveraged these historic profits to negotiate higher wages for their members.Still, many workers say their tip earnings have remained stagnant.Machines such as the Smarttender beverage-mixer and screen-based ordering systems have depressed tip earnings by dehumanizing the experience and distorting the scale of service, says Sheri Earl, 51, a cocktail waitress at Mandalay Bay. “It looks like a lot of the servers are bringing out so many drinks, but we’re not being tipped on all of those.View image in fullscreen“Also,” Earl adds, “people just aren’t tipping the way that they used to because they don’t have the money. I noticed when I’m serving, more people will give $1 for four drinks, whereas it used to be $1 per drink, so I’m serving more drinks, but bringing back less money.”A lifelong Democrat, Earl’s loyalty to the party had wavered in recent years, and her conversations in the employee break room suggest that many her colleagues will support Trump out of nostalgia for how they thrived before Covid.But Harris’s candidacy has reaffirmed her allegiance to the Democratic ticket, Earl says. “She’s very optimistic about changes that she wants to do as a female president, and a lot of the tax cuts for the working class helps.“Now, I don’t think there will ever be no taxes on tips,” Earl clarified. “I expect to pay it, but not at rates where it’s unrealistic, or I can’t support my family, or I can’t pay my bills at the end of the month.”Others were less inspired.“It’s a ‘so you vote for me’ promise,” says Samantha, a blackjack dealer at Ellis Island. “I don’t think Congress will let it happen. [The candidates] can say it, and they can hope that because they said it, you’re going to vote for them, but it isn’t going to happen.” Shrugging, she says she does not intend to vote. “Unfortunately, I don’t believe that my vote matters.”Democratic presidential candidates have enjoyed a winning streak in Nevada that goes back four cycles from Biden’s narrow 2020 win, to Hillary Clinton’s 2.4% margin over Trump, to Barack Obama’s victories in 2012 and 2008. Survey averages currently show Trump leading Harris by 2 to 3 percentage points.Before Biden dropped out, Trump led by 9 points in Nevada. Harris has rejuvenated Democratic enthusiasm and made strides to corral the unwieldly coalition that defeated Trump four years ago, but Nevada is proving to be a different beast. It’s one of the few swing states in which Trump continues to lead in most major polls. But her canny decision to jump on the no tax bandwagon may help.Badass Tax Guys, a tax preparation company in Henderson, Nevada, has hundreds of tip-earning clients, and many have mentioned to owner Robert Wagner that the proposal, while intriguing, seems too good to be true.“‘We see all the upside, and we love keeping our money, but what’s the catch potentially?’ is what I’m hearing right now,” he paraphrases while warning that it would be exploited if not written carefully to solely target those who need relief.“I would put a tip jar on my desk, you know what I mean?” Wagner quips. “I’ll charge lower fees and you can throw the difference in the tip jar. All of a sudden, my income is to going to go down quite a bit. I generally like the idea overall, but if you’re going to do that there needs to be a way to stop Wall Street from taking advantage of it.” More