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      JD Vance’s obsession with cats is bizarre. He needs to stop spreading fake mews | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Want to know the secret to winning elections and influencing people? Cat memes. This is according to JD Vance, who, you might have noticed, has a bizarre fixation with felines. Donald Trump’s running mate – a man who might soon become one of the most powerful people in the world – has been widely ridiculed and condemned for his comments about “childless cat ladies”. But instead of trying to move the news cycle on from cat-related matters, he seems to have doubled down on them. Vance is now in the headlines for spreading outrageous, and wildly racist, false rumours about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. Trump amplified those rumours during his debate with Kamala Harris last week.These accusations, which partly stemmed from a Facebook post some random woman wrote (and has now apologised for) about a friend of a neighbour losing a cat, have wreaked havoc in Springfield. There have been bomb threats against local hospitals and Haitian community members are reportedly terrified. We all know Trump doesn’t have a conscience – but is Vance even the slightest bit contrite?Of course not. Vance isn’t just standing by the debunked claims – he is defending them while also seemingly admitting to lying. During an interview on CNN on Sunday, he claimed he has evidence to back up the accusations and insisted he is doing people a public service. “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes,” Vance said. He added: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”I’m all for Vance creating stories – just not while running for high office. Please, JD, quit politics and go back to writing! You clearly have a knack for fiction. Or, since you are so obsessed with children, why not spend more time with your own kids and tell them a bedtime story or two? Just, you know, try to stick to unicorns and mermaids rather than people eating cats. And please, for the love of dogs, stop spreading fake mews. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

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      JD Vance defends pet-eating remarks: ‘The media has a responsibility to fact-check’

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      JD Vance defended his comments about Haitian immigrants eating pets during a Tuesday rally, saying that “the media has a responsibility to fact-check” stories – not him.The rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, came two days after the Ohio senator told CNN host Dana Bash it was OK “to create stories” to draw attention to issues his constituents care about, regarding inflammatory and unfounded claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, had eaten residents’ pets.The comments, in which he appeared to say that politicians can brazenly lie, drew immediate rebuke. But during his rally, Vance defended them and claimed that numerous constituents had told him “they’d seen something in Springfield”.“On top of it, if there are certain people who refuse to listen to them, who refuse to take their concerns seriously,” he said, “that’s when it’s my job as United States senator to listen to my constituents.”Vance took questions from reporters but knocked the press repeatedly, a line of attack that brought the crowd to their feet.“When I said – and the media always does this, they’re very dishonest – when I say that I created a story, I’m talking about the media story, by focusing the press’s intention on what’s going on in Springfield,” said Vance.During his speech to a crowd of several hundred people, Vance spoke at length about immigration, invoking a crime committed by an undocumented person in the town of Prairie du Chien that Republicans in the state have already seized on to bolster Republican claims about immigrants committing violent crimes. In fact, research shows immigrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than people born in the US.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Every community is a border state,” said Vance. “The problems that Kamala Harris has imported through that American southern border have now gone nationwide.”He also blamed the vice-president for the recent apparent assassination attempt at Mar-a-Lago.“The American media, the Democrats, the Kamala Harris campaign, they’ve gotta cut this crap out or they’re gonna get somebody killed,” said Vance, alleging that Democrats, who have highlighted Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric and attempts to overturn the 2020 election, are to blame for the two apparent assassination attempts that Trump has faced so far during his 2024 campaign.Vance described a chaotic, dark, and violent vision of the US under a Harris presidency.“We are closer, in this moment, to a nuclear war, or a third world war, than at any time in our country’s history and we have the chaos and incompetence of Kamala Harris to thank for it,” the Republican vice-presidential nominee said during a campaign event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.Vance’s message, especially on immigration, was well-received by the crowd.“You don’t know who’s coming across that border. You don’t know the violence or the background of those people,” said Victoria Bischel, who owns a farm and a real estate business and appreciated Vance’s comments. “I believe in immigration. I believe in legal immigration […] I don’t hop over the fence to Saudi Arabia and decide that I want to live there.” More

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      Harris condemns Senate Republicans for blocking IVF bill; VP calls Ohio attacks a ‘crying shame’ – live

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      Kamala Harris said that Senate Republicans refusal to vote in favor of protecting IVF “is not an isolated incident”:
      Every woman in every state must have reproductive freedom. Yet, Republicans in Congress have once again made clear that they will not protect access to the fertility treatments many couples need to fulfill their dream of having a child.Congressional Republicans’ repeated refusal to protect access to IVF is not an isolated incident. Extremist so-called leaders have launched a full-on attack against reproductive freedom across our country. In the more than two years since Roe v Wade was overturned, they have proposed and passed abortion bans that criminalize doctors and make no exception for rape or incest. They have also blocked legislation to protect the right to contraception and proposed four national abortion bans.Their opposition to a woman’s freedom to make decisions about her own body is extreme, dangerous and wrong. Our administration will always fight to protect reproductive freedoms, which must include access to IVF. We stand with the majority of Americans – Republicans and Democrats alike – who support protecting access to fertility treatments. And we continue to call on Congress to finally pass a bill that restores reproductive freedom.
      Arizona’s top elections official said Tuesday that a newly identified error in the state’s voter registration process needs to be swiftly resolved, as early ballots are scheduled to go out to some voters as soon as this week.Election staff in the Maricopa county recorder’s office identified an issue last week, which concerns voters with old drivers licenses who may never have provided documentary proof of citizenship but were coded as having provided it and therefore were able to vote full ballots. The state has a bifurcated system in which voters who do not provide documentary proof of citizenship cannot vote in local or state elections, only federal ones.Because of the state’s very close elections and status as a swing state, the issue affecting nearly 100,000 voters will likely be the subject of intense scrutiny and litigation in the coming weeks. Arizona has more than 4.1 million registered voters.Governor Katie Hobbs directed the motor vehicles division to fix the coding error, which the secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, said was already resolved going forward.It’s not clear if any of these voters have unlawfully cast a ballot or if they have already provided proof of citizenship. People who register to vote check a box on registration forms, under penalty of perjury, declaring they are citizens.“We have no reason to believe that there are any significant numbers of individuals remaining on this list who are not eligible to vote in Arizona,” Fontes said in a press conference Tuesday. “We cannot confirm that at this moment, but we don’t have any reason to believe that.”The error, reported by Votebeat on Tuesday, relates to several quirks of Arizona governance.Since 1996, Arizona residents have been required to show proof of citizenship to get a regular driver’s license. And since 2004, they have been required to show proof of citizenship to vote in state and local elections.State drivers licenses also do not expire until a driver is age 65, meaning for some residents, they will have a valid license for decades before needing renewal. These factors play into the error.The issue has split the Republican recorder in the state’s largest county, Maricopa, and the Democratic secretary of state. Recorder Stephen Richer is arguing that these voters should only be able to cast a federal-only ballot, while Fontes says the state should keep the status quo of allowing them to vote full ballots given how soon the election is. Fontes directed counties to allow these residents to cast full ballots this year.Read more here:Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has said that Republicans would do well to help avert a looming government shutdown.The path to preventing a shutdown, as ever, remains shrouded. House leader Mike Johnson’s current proposal – which extends funding while also folding in a Republican measure requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote in national elections – lacks even enough Republican votes to pass.Non-citizen voting is already illegal and voter fraud by non-citizens is virtually non-existent, and the inclusion of the measure, which would add barriers to voting for US citizens, is a nonstarter for Democrats in the Senate.Meanwhile, far-right Republicans say Johnson’s proposal doesn’t go far enough in pushing their agenda, and see the threat of shutdown as an opportunity to push Democrats to compromise on immigration and other issues.Since Kamala Harris launched her presidential bid in July, Democrats have showered her campaign with cash. Last month alone, the vice-president raised $361m, tripling Donald Trump’s fundraising haul of $130m for the month. According to Harris’s campaign, she brought in $540m in the six weeks after Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race.Democratic congressional candidates appear to be benefiting from this financial windfall as well, as Republicans sound the alarm about their fundraising deficit in key races that will determine control of the House and Senate in November.But in one crucial area, Republicans maintain a substantial cash advantage over Democrats: state legislative races. In recent years, Republicans have controlled more state legislative chambers than Democrats, giving them more power over those states’ budgets, election laws and abortion policies.The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), which supports the party’s state legislative candidates, has raised $35m between the start of 2023 and the end of this June, the committee told the Guardian. In comparison, the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) – which invests in an array of state-level campaigns, such as supreme court races, in addition to legislative campaigns – has raised $62m in the same time period.That resource gap is now rearing its head in key battleground states, the DLCC says. In Pennsylvania, a crucial state for the presidential and congressional maps, Republican state legislative candidates have spent $4.5m on paid advertisements, compared with $1.4m for Democratic candidates.“When we think about the context of what’s at stake, we think about more than 65 million people being covered by our target map this year,” said Heather Williams, president of the DLCC. “And that means that the rights of all those people will be determined by who’s in power the day after the election.”Read more here:A national voter poll from Monmouth has found that there are fewer “double haters” – voters that dislike both the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates – since Kamala Harris joined the race.Only 7% of voters polled in this latest round favored neither Donald Trump nor Harris – compared to 16% of disliked both Trump and Joe Biden.“Senate Republicans put politics first and families last again today by blocking the Right to IVF Act for the second time since June,” said Emilia Rowland, national press secretary for the Democratic National Committee.Rowland warned that Donald Trump, who claimed to be a “leader” on IVF during his debate against Kamala Harris last week, would jeopardize access to fertility treatments if he wins in November.“Voters know the difference between words and actions,” she said. “And between now and November, they will turn out against Republicans from the top to bottom of the ballot.”JD Vance is scheduled to speak in an hour at an event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.The last time I was at this event space was for one of Kamala Harris’s inaugural rallies, which was held on the sprawling grounds adjacent to the hall where Vance will speak today.Cathy Weber, a retired farmer and military serviceperson, said she came to see Vance speak to get a better sense of who he is as a politician. When I asked about Vance’s comments about Haitian immigrants, she said she thought “he misspoke,” and chalked it up to being a younger politician – which she viewed as an asset.“He’s 39,” said Weber. “I said to my son: ‘That’s your generation, that’s our future.’”As the Guardian’s Robert Tait reported earlier this month, JD Vance has a history of opposing IVF – in contradiction to the Republican party and Donald Trump’s current stance that they support it:In 2017, months into Trump’s presidency, Vance wrote the foreword to the Index of Culture and Opportunity, a collection of essays by conservative authors for the Heritage Foundation that included ideas for encouraging women to have children earlier and promoting a resurgence of “traditional” family structure.The essays lauded the increase in state laws restricting abortion rights and included arguments that the practice should become “unthinkable” in the US, a hardline posture the Democrats now say is the agenda of Trump and Vance, who they accuse of harbouring the intent to impose a national ban following a 2022 supreme court ruling overturning Roe v Wade and annulling the federal right to abort a pregnancy.The report also includes an essay lamenting the spread of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and other fertility treatments, with the author attributing them as reasons for women delaying having children and prioritising higher education rather than starting families.IVF has emerged as an issue in November’s presidential race after Trump said last week that he favoured it being covered by government funding or private health insurance companies – a stance seeming at odds with many Republicans, including Vance, who was one of 47 GOP senators to vote against a bill in June intended to expand access to the treatment.Kamala Harris said that Senate Republicans refusal to vote in favor of protecting IVF “is not an isolated incident”:
      Every woman in every state must have reproductive freedom. Yet, Republicans in Congress have once again made clear that they will not protect access to the fertility treatments many couples need to fulfill their dream of having a child.Congressional Republicans’ repeated refusal to protect access to IVF is not an isolated incident. Extremist so-called leaders have launched a full-on attack against reproductive freedom across our country. In the more than two years since Roe v Wade was overturned, they have proposed and passed abortion bans that criminalize doctors and make no exception for rape or incest. They have also blocked legislation to protect the right to contraception and proposed four national abortion bans.Their opposition to a woman’s freedom to make decisions about her own body is extreme, dangerous and wrong. Our administration will always fight to protect reproductive freedoms, which must include access to IVF. We stand with the majority of Americans – Republicans and Democrats alike – who support protecting access to fertility treatments. And we continue to call on Congress to finally pass a bill that restores reproductive freedom.
      Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, pointed to the failure of the IVF bill today as proof that Republicans’ promise to protect access to in vitro fertilization is hollow:Meanwhile, John Thune, a Republican of South Dakota, called the bill “an attempt by Democrats to try and create a political issue where there isn’t one”.Before its convention this year, the Republican party adopted a policy platform that supports states establishing fetal personhood, while also, contradictorily, encouraging support for IVF. But the platform does not explain how IVF could be legally protected if frozen embryos are given the same rights as people.Senate Republicans voted to block a bill that would have ensured access to in vitro fertilization nationwide.Every Republican, except Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted against the measure. Though a majority of 51 voted in favor, the bill needed 60 votes to pass.Democrats had brought the measure back to the floor after Republicans previously blocked it from advancing in June.Democrats have been pushing the issue this year after the Alabama’s supreme court ruled that frozen embryos could be considered children under state law, leading several clinics in the state to suspend IVF treatment.Republicans, including Donald Trump, have scrambled to counter what could be a deeply unpopular stance against IVF. More

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      Biden’s green policies will save 200,000 lives and have boosted clean energy jobs, data shows

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      The environmental policies of Joe Biden’s administration will save approximately 200,000 Americans’ lives from dangerous pollution in the coming decades and have spurred a surge in clean energy jobs, two independent reports outlining the stakes of the upcoming US presidential election have found.The first full year of the Inflation Reduction Act, the sprawling climate bill passed by Democratic votes in Congress in 2022, saw nearly 150,000 clean energy jobs added, according to a new report by nonpartisan business group E2.Nearly 3.5 million people now work in these fields in the US, more than the total number of nurses nationwide, with 1m of these jobs centered in the US south, a region politically dominated by Republicans.Clean energy jobs grew by 4.5% last year, nearly twice as fast as overall US employment growth, and account for one in 16 new jobs nationally, the report found. New roles in energy efficiency led the way, followed by an increase in jobs in renewable energy, such as wind and solar, electric car manufacturing and battery and electric grid upgrades.But the future of the IRA, which provides tax credits and grants for new clean energy activity, is a flashpoint in the election campaign, with Donald Trump vowing to “terminate Kamala Harris’s green new scam and rescind all of the unspent funds”.The former president and Republican nominee has accused Harris, his Democratic opponent, of waging a “war on American energy” and called for an end to incentives encouraging Americans to drive electric cars.Harris, who has promised in unspecified ways to build upon the IRA, has attacked Trump for “surrendering” on the climate crisis as well as in the US’s attempts to compete with China, the world’s clean energy manufacturing powerhouse.Bob O’Keefe, executive director of E2, said the IRA has helped lead “an American economic revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen in generations”.“But we’re just getting started,” Keefe added. “The biggest threats to this unprecedented progress are misguided efforts to repeal or roll back parts of the IRA, despite the law’s clear benefits both to American workers and the communities where they live.”Should Trump return to the White House, he will need congressional approval to completely repeal the IRA, although his administration could slow down and even claw back funding allocated but not yet released for clean energy projects, such as the $500m pledged for a green overhaul of a steel mill in JD Vance’s home town of Middletown, Ohio.A new Trump administration would have more discretion, though, over the future of air pollution regulations set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Biden. “One of the things that is so bad for us is the environmental agencies, they make it impossible to do anything,” Trump has complained while on the campaign trail.Any major rollbacks will have a heavy toll upon public health, however, with a new analysis of 16 regulations passed by the EPA since Biden’s term started in 2021 finding that they are on track to save 200,000 lives and prevent more than 100m asthma attacks by 2050.The analysis, conducted by the Environmental Protection Network, a group founded by retired EPA staff, calculated the public health benefits of the suite of new rules that aim to limit pollution flowing from cars, power plants and oil and gas operations.Jeremy Symons, a former climate policy adviser at the EPA and a co-author of the report, said the findings were “jaw-dropping”. He added: “The EPA’s accomplishments have been nothing short of lifesaving over the last four years. These are real people who wouldn’t be alive if not for the non-partisan work of the EPA to start doing its job again after the last administration.”It’s unclear what Trump’s exact plan for the EPA would be should he regain power but he attempted to radically cut the agency’s budget when he was president, only to be rebuffed by Congress, and oversaw the elimination and weakening of a host of pollution rules.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump has directly promised oil and gas industry executives a fresh wave of deregulation should he return to the White House, in return for $1bn in campaign contributions.Project 2025, a conservative blueprint authored by many former Trump officials but disavowed by the Trump campaign, demands the dismantling of parts of the agency, a rollback of environmental rules and a politicization of decision making.“This would put polluters in charge of air regulations and put millions of Americans at needless risk of cancer, heart disease and asthma,” said Symons.“Several of the authors of Project 2025 used the years of working at the EPA under Trump as a training ground for more reckless plans should they get their hands on the agency again. This plan would be a wrecking ball to the EPA.”Asked to comment, the Trump campaign criticized the Biden-Harris administration on inflation and what it called its “war on energy”.“Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate for the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, which actually created the worst inflation crisis in a generation. She proudly helped Joe Biden implement all of his disastrous policies including his war on American energy that is driving up prices astronomically for American consumers,” said Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign national press secretary.“President Trump is the only candidate who will make America energy dominant again, protect our energy jobs, and bring down the cost of living for all Americans,” Leavitt added.An EPA spokesperson said: “We appreciate the work of the Environmental Protection Network and look forward to reviewing their report. EPA remains committed to protecting public health and the environment by implementing science-based pollution standards that address climate change and improve air quality for all Americans.” More

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      Suspect never had sight of Trump and didn’t fire shots at agent, Secret Service chief says after apparent assassination attempt – live

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      Ronald Rowe Jr, acting director of the Secret Service, said that once an agent detected Routh armed with a rifle, he discharged his firearm before the 58-year-old fled.“He did not fire or get off any shots at our agent,” Rowe said. “With reports of gunfire, the former president’s close protection detail immediately evacuated the president to a safe location.”Rowe also told reporters that Trump was “out of sight of the gunman” during his unscheduled visit to the golf club.“The protective methodologies of the Secret Service were effective yesterday,” Rowe added.Shortly after Donald Trump became president, authorities tried to warn him about the risks of golfing at his own courses because of their proximity to public roads, according to The Washington Post.The agents told him that if photographers with long-range lenses could capture images of the president on the course, potential gunmen could do the same.Despite these warnings, Trump reportedly insisted that his clubs were safe and decided to keep golfing in them.Ryan Wesley Routh, the suspect in what the FBI has called an “attempted assassination”, previously made a series of donations to Democratic presidential candidates in the 2020 elections, according to Federal Election Commission records.The documents show that Routh donated to campaigns supporting Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard, Beto O’Rourke, and Tom Steyer.The donations, which did not exceed $25, were made between September 2019 and March 2020, according to the records.Ronald Rowe from the Secret Service said he has “ordered a paradigm shift”.He said that the current methodologies work and described them as “sound”, but called on a reevaluation amid the current “dynamic threat environment”.Earlier, he said that the Secret Service constantly evaluates their methodologies “based on threat.”Ronald Rowe said that former president Donald Trump was not scheduled to be at the golf course on Sunday.When reporters asked if Routh knew whether Trump was going to be at the golf course at that time, Rowe responded: “It’s an active investigation. I don’t have any information on that subject.”Ronald Rowe Jr, acting director of the Secret Service, said that once an agent detected Routh armed with a rifle, he discharged his firearm before the 58-year-old fled.“He did not fire or get off any shots at our agent,” Rowe said. “With reports of gunfire, the former president’s close protection detail immediately evacuated the president to a safe location.”Rowe also told reporters that Trump was “out of sight of the gunman” during his unscheduled visit to the golf club.“The protective methodologies of the Secret Service were effective yesterday,” Rowe added.Jeffrey B Veltri, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Miami field office, took the stage, stating that the agency is investigating the event as “an apparent assassination attempt of former president Trump”.“We view this as extremely serious and are determined to provide as to what led up to the events that took place,” he said.Veltri stated that Routh was the subject of an investigation in 2019 by the FBI based on a tip that he was in possession of a firearm.“In the area of the tree line from where Routh fled, agents found a digital camera, a backpack, a loaded SKS-style rifle with a scope and a black plastic bag containing food,” Lapointe said.He also said Routh was convicted of felonies in North Carolina in December 2002 and March 2010. Routh was prohibited from carrying a firearm amid these felonies, according to Lapointe.US attorney Markenzy Lapointe for the southern district of Florida is providing an update about the apparent assassination attempt on former Donald Trump at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida.Lapointe confirmed that Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was charged with gun-related offenses. He had an appearance in court this morning in West Palm Beach.Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader from Kentucky, issued a statement regarding the potential assassination attempt against Donald Trump, describing this week as “a time to reflect on the ways that our political process has been infected by reprehensible violence”.“For the second time in as many months, law enforcement faces an even more urgent task: completing a thorough, swift and transparent investigation into the circumstances of yesterday’s close call,” he said.“The American people deserve answers. They deserve assurance that a former President who tens of millions of Americans have nominated once again will receive every appropriate measure of security,” he added.Federal prosecutors have brought gun charges against Ryan Wesley Routh, who was arrested yesterday in Florida after what investigators believe may have been a potential assassination attempt against Donald Trump. In charging documents, an FBI special agent said that Routh’s cellphone spent nearly 12 hours in the vicinity of the tree line at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, and that he had previously been convicted in North Carolina on a felony charge of possessing “a weapon of mass death and destruction” after being found with a fully automatic gun. Trump sought to use the incident, in which he was not injured, to his advantage, telling Fox News that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were to blame because they’ve described him as a threat to democracy for his attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss.Here’s what else has happened today:

      The sheriff’s office in Martin county, Florida, shared footage of the moment that Routh was arrested yesterday.

      Biden spoke briefly to reporters about the incident, saying the Secret Service should be given more resources, perhaps personnel.

      Harris said she was “deeply disturbed by the possible assassination attempt” targeting Trump.

      In addition to blaming Democrats, Trump is fundraising off the potential assassination attempt.

      Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Democratic majority leader, said more funding for the Secret Service could be included in a spending bill under negotiation with House Republicans.
      Reuters reports that Ryan Wesley Routh, who was arrested yesterday for potentially trying to assassinate Donald Trump, was charged for possessing “a weapon of mass death and destruction” in North Carolina in 2002 after being found with a fully automatic gun.Reuters also found that Routh has a criminal history in the state that goes back to at least 1990, including for writing bad checks, traffic violations and possessing stolen goods.Amid calls from across the political spectrum to give the Secret Service more resources after a potential second assassination attempt yesterday targeting Donald Trump, Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer has hinted that the funds could be allocated as part of the latest round of spending negotiations.“We all must do our part to ensure an incident like this does not happen again. This means that Congress has a responsibility to ensure the Secret Service and all law enforcement have the resources they need to do their jobs,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor.“So, as we continue the appropriations process, if the Secret Service is in need of more resources, we are prepared to provide it for them, possibly in the upcoming funding agreement.”Congressional leaders are trying to pass some kind of funding agreement to keep the government running beyond 30 September, when the current authorizations expire. Democrats, who control the Senate, and Republicans, who hold a majority in the House, have not yet reached an agreement, with one of the sticking points being calls from Trump and some GOP lawmakers to also pass a bill that makes voting by non-citizens a federal crime. Here’s more on that:Donald Trump is returning to X Spaces this evening for a broadcast on the social media platform’s live audio feature:About a month ago, he held a nearly three-hour-long talk on Spaces with X’s chairman, Elon Musk, which was surprisingly light on news:Before news of a potential second assassination attempt targeting Donald Trump broke, the New York Times reported on Sunday that John Roberts, the conservative chief justice of the supreme court, to encourage his colleagues to rule in favor of the former president on the question of his immunity that came before them earlier this year. Here’s more on that, from the Guardian’s Anna Betts:John Roberts Jr used his position as the US supreme court’s chief justice to urge his colleagues to rule quickly – and in favor – of Donald Trump ahead of the decision that granted him and other presidents immunity for official acts, according to a New York Times investigation published on Sunday.The new report provides details about what was happening behind the scenes in the country’s highest court during the three recent supreme court decisions centering on – and generally favoring – the Republican former president.Based on leaked memos, documentation of the proceedings and interviews with court insiders, the Times report suggests that Roberts – who was appointed to the supreme court during Republican George W Bush’s presidency – took an unusually active role in the three cases in question. And he wrote the majority opinions on all three.In addition to the presidential immunity ruling, the decisions collectively barred states from removing any official – including Trump – from a federal ballot as well as declaring the government had overstepped with respect to obstruction of justice charges filed against participants of the 6 January 2021 attack that the former president’s supporters aimed at Congress.The Times reported that last February, Roberts sent a memo to his fellow supreme court justices regarding the criminal charges against Trump for attempting to overturn the result of the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden.Merrick Garland, the attorney general, issued a statement where he promised to “work tirelessly” and use “every available resource” in the investigation into the apparent attempted assassination on Donald Trump.“We are grateful the former president is safe,” Garland’s statement reads.
      The entire justice department – including the FBI, the US attorney’s office for the southern district of Florida, and the national security division – is coordinating closely with our law enforcement partners on the ground.
      “We will work tirelessly to ensure accountability, and we will bring every available resource to bear in this investigation,” he added.Here’s more from Joe Biden’s address to the National HBCU Week Conference in Philadelphia, during which he decried the apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump and urged Americans to work together to stop the scourge of political violence.The Secret Service’s acting director, Ronald Rowe Jr, was in Florida “assessing what happened and determining whether any further adjustments need to be made to ensure” Trump’s safety, AP quoted Biden as saying. He added:
      America has suffered too many times the tragedy of an assassin’s bullet. It solves nothing. It just tears the country apart. We must do everything we can to prevent it and never give it any oxygen.
      Joe Biden has been speaking at a conference of historically Black colleges and universities in Philadelphia, during which he addressed the apparent assassination attempt against Donald Trump.Biden commended the Secret Service for their “expert handling of the situation”, per pool report. He said:
      Let me just say there is no – and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, and those of you who know me know this – in America, there is no place for political violence.
      A video posted to Facebook on Monday shows the arrest of the man suspected in the apparent assassination attempt of Donald Trump.The body camera footage shared by the Martin county sheriff’s office shows Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, walking backward with his hands over his head on the side of a road before being handcuffed and led away by law enforcement.The White House described a now-deleted post by Elon Musk on X as “irresponsible” after the tech mogul questioned why Donald Trump has faced two apparent assassination attempts while Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have not encountered any.In a Sunday night post, Musk wrote: “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala.” He later the deleted the post after intense backlash, claiming his comments were intended as a joke.In a statement, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said:
      As President Biden and Vice President Harris said after yesterday’s disturbing news, ‘there is no place for political violence or for any violence ever in our country,’ and ‘we all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more violence.’
      “Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about. This rhetoric is irresponsible,” the statement added. More

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      Political violence and fearmongering bigotry have become too normalized | Robert Reich

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      The second apparent attempt on Donald Trump’s life – on Sunday at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida – occurred just over two months after he was wounded during an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. “They’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you,” the former president said after the first attempt. “I’m just standing in the way.”“They” should not be coming after anyone. There is no place in a democracy for violence, nor for threats of violence.Which brings me to Trump’s claim in last week’s debate that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are “eating the dogs … eating the cats. They’re eating – they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”It quickly became a vast internet joke, fueling thousands of hilarious memes and songs. But it’s no laughing matter. Trump’s claim has already provoked threats of violence.Last weekend, two hospitals in Springfield were locked down after bomb threats, police said. Other threats received by Springfield officials have forced government buildings to close, two elementary schools to be evacuated and the students moved to a different location, and a middle school to shut down altogether.After Republican VP nominee JD Vance first began spreading baseless rumors about Haitians in Springfield, members of the neo-Nazi group “Blood Tribe” marched into the city carrying guns, wearing body armor, and carrying Neo-Nazi flags. At a 27 August town hall meeting, one claimed that the city had been taken over by “degenerate third worlders”, blamed Jewish people for the influx, and warned “crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you allow in.”Springfield’s Haitian immigrants say they are afraid. Some have kept their children home from school, fearing violence. Others have reported harassment on the street, in their cars, and at stores.A Springfield family whose son died last year when a car driven by a Haitian immigrant accidentally collided with a school bus has pleaded for Trump and Vance to stop using their deceased son for political purposes.Yet Trump and Vance are doubling down. On Sunday, before the attempt on Trump’s life, Vance said on CNN that the claims about Haitians eating the pets of Springfield residents came from “firsthand accounts from my constituents”. When interviewer Dana Bash suggested that the claims had caused bomb threats, Vance called her a “Democratic propagandist”. But the connection is indisputable.Rather than offhand comments, Trump’s and Vance’s claims are calculated. Trump’s last two posts on Truth Social before the debate were AI images of cats – one depicting cats in military fatigues carrying assault rifles and wearing Maga hats, the other showing the candidate himself sitting on a plane amid a crowd of ducks and cats.Trump is now talking about holding a rally in Springfield. “We’re going to get these people out,” Trump said in a Friday news conference. Although Springfield’s Haitian immigrants are in the United States legally, he promised to stage “the largest deportation in the history of our country” if re-elected.Trump’s and Vance’s claims are completely bogus. Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, told CBS News on Wednesday: “These Haitians came in here to work because there were jobs, and they filled a lot of jobs. And if you talk to employers, they’ve done a very, very good job and they work very, very hard.”Another of Trump’s bogus claims is now threatening legal immigrants in Aurora, Colorado, a Denver suburb that Trump has repeatedly asserted is being “taken over” by Venezuelan criminals. “Simply not true”, Aurora’s Republican mayor and city council member wrote in a joint statement.As in Springfield, Trump’s baseless claims are harming innocent people in Aurora. Immigrants there say they have been told their nationality makes them ineligible for jobs or housing. Trump’s claims have led to threats and drawn armed groups to the city, claiming to offer vigilante-style protection.Trump and Vance are using the oldest of tyrannical ploys – fueling deep-seated fears by creating an “other”, depicted as subhuman, who “take over” towns and “devour” loved ones.In Springfield, the loved ones are peoples’ pets. But how far is this bogus claim from vicious Nazi claims of Jewish people devouring children? Substitute “Jew” for “Haitian” in Springfield or for “Venezuelan” in Aurora, and you’re back to the Nazis of the 1930s.In demonizing and dehumanizing migrants, Trump and Vance are not just seeking to win over a few wavering voters across the nation or making a play for control of the Senate. They are trying to scare America into becoming a more fearsome, more racist nation.“They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump said of immigrants at a rally in New Hampshire eight months ago – virtually quoting Adolf Hitler, who wrote in Mein Kampf: “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning.”In a last-ditch effort to prevail in their campaign, Trump and Vance are encouraging the haters. On 10 September, Vance told his followers to “keep the cat memes flowing”, notwithstanding that they were endangering people in his own state.Meanwhile, members of Trump’s social media war room – including Trump confidante Laura Loomer, known for sexist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-Muslim, and antisemitic posts – are busily spreading AI-generated images of dogs and cats being protected by Trump, along with other content promoting the claim that pets are being eaten by Haitians.Let me repeat: there no justification whatsoever for violence or threats of violence in our democracy. While utterly despicable, Sunday’s second apparent assassination attempt on Trump can be seen as a symptom of the hate-filled politics that he and Vance are peddling.This must stop.

      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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      The Stakes: how JD Vance’s home town has won millions in climate investment that he calls a ‘green scam’

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      This is the first part of the standfirst This is the second part of the standfirst Headline what’s at stake?
      View image in fullscreenA hulking steel plant in Middletown, Ohio, is the city’s economic heartbeat as well as a keystone origin story of JD Vance, the hometown senator now running to be Donald Trump’s vice-president.Its future, however, may hinge upon $500m in funding from landmark climate legislation that Vance has called a “scam” and is a Trump target for demolition.In March, Joe Biden’s administration announced the US’s largest ever grant to produce greener steel, enabling the Cleveland-Cliffs facility in Middletown to build one of the largest hydrogen fuel furnaces in the world, cutting emissions by a million tons a year by ditching the coal that accelerates the climate crisis and befouls the air for nearby locals.View image in fullscreenIn a blue-collar urban area north of Cincinnati that has long pinned its fortunes upon the vicissitudes of the US steel industry, the investment’s promise of a revitalized plant with 170 new jobs and 1,200 temporary construction positions was met with jubilation among residents and unions.“It felt like a miracle, an answered prayer that we weren’t going to be left to die on the vine,” said Michael Bailey, who is now a pastor in Middletown but worked at the plant, then owned by Armco, for 30 years.“It hit the news and you could almost hear everybody screaming, ‘Yay yay yay!’,” said Heather Gibson, owner of the Triple Moon cafe in central Middletown. “It showed commitment for the long term. It was just so exciting.”This funding from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the $370bn bill to turbocharge clean energy signed by Biden after narrowly passing Congress via Democratic votes in 2022, has been far less thrilling to Vance, however, despite his deep personal ties to the Cleveland-Cliffs plant.View image in fullscreenThe steel mill, dating back to 1899 and now employing about 2,500 people, is foundational to Middletown, helping churn out the first generations of cars and then wartime tanks. Vance’s late grandfather, who he called Papaw, was a union worker at the plant, making it the family’s “economic savior – the engine that brought them from the hills of Kentucky into America’s middle class”, Vance wrote in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.But although it grew into a prosperous All-American city built on steel and paper production, Middletown became a place “hemorrhaging jobs and hope” as industries decamped offshore in the 1980s, Vance wrote. He sees little salvation in the IRA even as, by one estimate, it has already spurred $10bn in investment and nearly 14,000 new jobs in Ohio.When campaigning for the Senate in 2022, Vance said Biden’s sweeping climate bill is “dumb, does nothing for the environment and will make us all poorer”, and more recently as vice-presidential candidate called the IRA a “green energy scam that’s actually shipped a lot more manufacturing jobs to China”.America needs “a leader who rejects Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s green new scam and fights to bring back our great American factories”, Vance said at the Republican convention in July. “We need President Donald J Trump.”Republicans in Congress have repeatedly attempted to gut the IRA, with Project 2025, a conservative blueprint authored by many former Trump officials, demanding its repeal should Republicans regain the White House.Such plans have major implications for Vance’s home town. The Middletown plant’s $500m grant from the Department of Energy, still not formally handed over, could be halted if Trump prevails in November. The former president recently vowed to “terminate Kamala Harris’s green new scam and rescind all of the unspent funds”.Some longtime Middletown residents are bemused by such opposition. “How can you think that saving the lives of people is the wrong thing to do?” said Adrienne Shearer, a small business adviser who spent several decades helping the reinvigoration of Middletown’s downtown area, which was hollowed out by economic malaise, offshored jobs and out-of-town malls.“People thought the plant was in danger of leaving or closing, which would totally destroy the town,” she said. “And now people think it’s not going anywhere.”Shearer, a political independent, said she didn’t like Vance’s book because it “trashed our community” and that he had shown no alternative vision for his home town. “Maybe people who serve with him in Washington know him, but we don’t here in Middletown,” she said.View image in fullscreenClimate campaigners are even more scathing of Vance. “It’s no surprise that he’s now threatening to gut a $500m investment in US manufacturing in his own home town,” said Pete Jones, rapid response director at Climate Power. “Vance wrote a book about economic hardship in his home town, and now he has 900 new pages from Trump’s dangerous Project 2025 agenda to make the problem worse so that big oil can profit.”Local Republicans are more complimentary, even if they differ somewhat on the IRA. Mark Messer, Republican mayor of the neighboring town of Lebanon, used the vast bill’s clean energy tax credits to offset the cost of an upcoming solar array that will help slash energy costs for residents. Still, Vance is a strong running mate for Trump and has “done good for Ohio”, according to Messer.“My focus is my constituents and doing what’s best for them – how else will this empty floodplain produce $1m for people in our town?” Messer said. “Nothing is going do that but solar. I’m happy to use the IRA, but if I had a national role my view might be different. I mean printing money and giving it away to people won’t solve inflation, it will make it worse.”Some Middletown voters are proud of Vance’s ascension, too. “You have to give him credit, he went to [Yale] Law School, he built his own business up in the financial industry – he’s self-made, he did it all on his own,” said Doug Pergram, a local business owner who blames Democrats for high inflation and is planning to vote for Trump and Vance, even though he thinks the steel plant investment is welcome.This illustrates a problem for Democrats, who have struggled to translate a surge of new clean energy projects and a glut of resulting jobs into voting strength, with polls showing most Americans don’t know much about the IRA or don’t credit Biden or Harris for its benefits.Ohio was once a swing state but voted for Trump – with his promises of Rust belt renewal that’s only now materializing under Biden – in the last two elections and is set to do the same again in November. Harris, meanwhile, has only fleetingly mentioned climate change and barely attempted to sell the IRA, a groundbreaking but deeply unsexy volume of rebates and tax credits, on the campaign trail.View image in fullscreen“Democrats have not done well in patting themselves on the back, they need to be out there screaming from the rooftops, ‘This is what we’ve done,’” said Gibson, a political independent who suffers directly from the status quo by living next to the Middletown facility that processes coke coal, a particularly dirty type of coal used in steel production that will become obsolete in the mill’s new era.“The air pollution is horrendous, so the idea of eliminating the need for coke, well, I can’t tell you how happy that makes me,” said Gibson. The site, called SunCoke, heats half a million short tons of coal a year to make coke that’s funneled to the steel plant, a process that causes a strong odor and spews debris across the neighborhood. Gibson rarely opens her windows because of this pollution.“Last year it snowed in July, all this white stuff was falling from the sky,” Gibson said. “The soot covers everything, covers the car, I have to Clorox my windows. The smell is so bad I’ve had to end get-togethers early from my house because people get so sick. It gives you an instant headache. It burns your throat, it burns your nose. It’s just awful.”The prospect of a cleaner, more secure future for Middletown is something the Biden administration tried to stress in March, when Jennifer Granholm, the US energy secretary, appeared at the steel mill with the Cleveland-Cliffs chief executive, union leaders and workers to extol the new hydrogen furnace. The grant helps solve a knotty problem where industry is reluctant to invest in cleaner-burning hydrogen because there aren’t enough extant examples of such technology.View image in fullscreen“Mills like this aren’t just employers, they are anchors embedded deeply in the community. We want your kids and grandkids to produce steel here in America too,” Granholm said. “Consumers are demanding cleaner, greener products all over the world. We don’t want to just make the best products in the world, we want to make sure we make the best and cleanest products in the world.”Lourenco Goncalves, chief executive of Cleveland-Cliffs, the largest flat-rolled steel producer in North America, followed Granholm to boast that a low-emissions furnace of this size was a world first, with the technology set to be expanded to 15 other company plants in the US.Republicans elsewhere in the US have jumped onboard similar ribbon-cutting events, despite voting against the funding that enables them, but notably absent among the dignitaries seated in front of two enormous American flags hanging in the Middletown warehouse that day was Vance, the Ohio senator who went to high school just 4 miles from this place. His office did not respond to questions about the plant or his plans for the future of the IRA.Bailey, a 71-year-old who retired from the steel plant in 2002, said that as a pastor he did speak several times to Vance about ways to aid Middletown but then became alarmed by the senator’s rightwards shift in comments about women, as well as his lack of support for the new steel mill funding.“JD Vance has never mentioned anything about helping Middletown rebound,” said Bailey, who witnessed a “brutal” 2006 management lockout of workers during a union dispute after which drug addiction and homelessness soared in Middletown. “He’s used Middletown for, in my view, his own personal gain.“Somewhere in there, JD changed,” he added. “He’s allowed outsiders to pimp him. This guy is embarrassing us. That’s not who we are.” More

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      JD Vance admits he is willing to ‘create stories’ to get media attention

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      In a stunning admission, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, said he was willing “to create stories” on the campaign trail while defending his spreading false, racist rumors of pets being abducted and eaten in a town in his home state of Ohio.Vance’s remarks came during an appearance on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, where he said he felt the need “to create stories so that the … media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people”.Asked by the CNN host Dana Bash whether the false rumors centering on Springfield, Ohio, were “a story that you created”, Vance replied, “Yes!” He then said the claims were rooted in “accounts from … constituents” and that he as well as the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, had spoken publicly about them to draw attention to Springfield’s relatively large Haitian population.Vance’s remarks drew a quick rebuke from the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, a Democrat who supports his party’s White House nominee in November’s election, Kamala Harris.“Remarkable confession by JD Vance when he said he will ‘create stories’ (that is, lie) to redirect the media,” Buttigieg wrote on X. “All this to change the subject away from abortion rights, manufacturing jobs, taxation of the rich, and the other things clearly at stake in this election.”Vance further insulted people in Springfield who are Haitian as “illegal”, though the vast majority of them are in the US legally through a temporary protected status (TPS) that has been allocated to them due to the violence and unrest in their home country in the Caribbean. The status must be renewed after 18 months.The rumors proliferating out of Springfield have led to bomb threats aimed at local hospitals and government offices. Vance on Sunday told Bash it was “disgusting” for the media to suggest any of his remarks had led to those threats. He also used the same term to refer to the people issuing those threats, though – in a separate appearance on Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press – he made it a point to blame the media for accurately reporting on them, saying it was “amplifying the worst people in the world”.Vance ultimately defended his endorsement of the lies about Springfield as calling attention to the immigration policies at the White House while Harris has served as vice-president to Joe Biden.“I’m not mad at Haitian migrants for wanting to have a better life,” Vance said. “We’re angry at Kamala Harris for letting this happen.”Haitians in Springfield have been thrust under the US’s divisive political spotlight after Trump alleged that some of them were responsible for the abduction and consumption of pets during the former president’s debate with Harris on Tuesday.Town officials have vociferously rejected the lies, and a woman who helped start the rumors on a widely circulated Facebook post acknowledged they were unfounded hearsay.Nonetheless, Springfield has been subjected to far-right conspiracy theories.About 15,000 immigrants began trickling into Springfield – a city of about 60,000 – in 2017 to work in local produce packaging and machining factories. They have been particularly in demand at a vegetable manufacturer and at automotive machining plants whose owners were experiencing a labor shortage in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.The Republican governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, said on Sunday on ABC’s This Week that Haitians in Springfield “are here legally”.“What the employers tell you is, you know, we don’t know what we would do without them,” DeWine said. “They are working. And they are working very hard. And they’re fitting in.”Nonetheless, while vulnerable with voters over their handling of reproductive rights, Republicans have helped spread the xenophobic rumors in Springfield in an attempt to capitalize on voters’ dissatisfaction with Democrats’ handling of immigration.Vance on Sunday also sought to distance himself from a second controversy, telling the Meet the Press host Kristen Welker that he doesn’t like remarks by the far-right Trump campaign ally Laura Loomer that the White House “will smell like curry” if Harris wins the election.Harris is of Indian and Jamaican heritage. Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, is of Indian heritage, too.“I make a mean chicken curry,” he said, but “I don’t think that it’s insulting for anybody to talk about their dietary preferences or what they want to do in the White House.“What Laura said about Kamala Harris is not what we should be focused on. We should be focused on the policy and on the issues.”Vance has spent much of his vice-presidential run on the defensive, including over his stated belief that women who choose to pursue professional careers rather than roles as family matriarchs are miserable. More