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      New poll shows Harris four points ahead of Trump in three key swing states

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      A major new poll puts Kamala Harris ahead of Donald Trump in three key swing states, signaling a dramatic reversal in momentum for the Democratic party with three months to go until the election.The vice-president leads the ex-president by four percentage points in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, 50% to 46%, among almost 2,000 likely voters across the three states, according to new surveys by the New York Times and Siena College.The polls were conducted between 5 and 9 August, in the week Harris named midwesterner Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and a former high-school teacher, as her running mate on November’s Democratic ticket.It provides the clearest indication from crucial battleground states since Joe Biden pulled out of the race and endorsed Harris amid mounting concerns about the 81-year-old’s cognitive wellbeing and fitness to govern for a second term. The results come after months of polling that showed Biden either tied with or slightly behind Trump.Harris is viewed as more intelligent, more honest and more temperamentally fit to run the country than Trump, according to the registered voters polled.The findings, published on Saturday by the New York Times, will boost the Democrats, as Harris and Walz continue crisscrossing the country on their first week on the campaign trail together, holding a slew of events in swing states that are likely to decide the outcome of the election.On Saturday, the candidates held a rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, a state the Biden-Harris ticket won by more than two points in 2020.While only a snapshot, Democrats will probably be heartened to see that 60% of the surveyed independent voters, who always play a major role in deciding the outcome of the race, said they are satisfied with the choice of presidential candidates, compared with 45% in May.The swing appears to be largely driven by evolving voter perceptions of Harris, who has been praised for her positivity and future-focused stump speeches on the campaign trail. In Pennsylvania, where Biden beat Trump by just more than 80,000 votes four years ago, her favorability rating has surged by 10 points since last month among registered voters, according to Times/Siena polling.Harris will need to win Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan – crucial battleground states that Biden clinched in 2020 – if the Democrats are to retain the White House.The latest polls will probably further anger Trump, whose few recent campaign events have largely been dominated by ire – and apparent disbelief – at the rapid shift in momentum since naming JD Vance, the Ohio senator and former venture capitalist, as his running mate amid a celebratory atmosphere at the Republican national convention less than a month ago.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionVance, who has been derided as “weird” by the Democrats as he doubles down on 2021 comments about the US being run by “childless cat ladies”, is broadly viewed unfavorably or unenthusiastically by the majority of independents, Democrats and registered Republicans, the new poll found.But Democrats still have work to do to communicate Harris’s vision for the country. The poll found that 60% of registered voters think Trump has a clear vision of the country, compared with only 53% when asked about Harris.Crucially, Trump is also still leading when it comes to confidence over handling the economy and immigration – two of the three key issues for voters, according to polls.Still, Harris has a 24-point advantage over Trump when it comes to abortion, an issue which Democrats hope will help get out the vote in key swing states such as Arizona and Wisconsin. Harris is also viewed significantly more favorably when it comes to democracy than Trump, who continues to face charges related to his alleged role in subverting the 2020 election results and the 6 January insurrection in Washington.In a statement to the Times, Tony Fabrizio, the Trump campaign’s chief pollster, said the new polls “dramatically understated President Trump’s support”, citing surveys conducted in the days before the 2020 election that overestimated the margin of Biden’s victory. More

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      Biden, Harris to attend first joint event since he quit campaign race – live

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      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to attend an event together in Maryland next Thursday, according to the White House.No further details were given. Ordinarily, this would not be significant news, but so much has changed in the last three weeks and this will be their first appearance together in person since the US president announced on Sunday, July 21 that he would no longer seek re-election.Minutes later, he endorsed his vice president, Harris, to take up the baton and rise to the top of the Democratic ticket for the election this November against the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.Biden dialed in to a boisterous public happening that week when Harris went to what had formerly been the Biden-Harris election campaign headquarters in Delaware and talked to staff, as it became transformed into the Harris for President campaign – and is now the Harris-Walz campaign, since she chose the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate. Biden was effusive about his anointed successor.Now the two will make their first public appearance together in person since that seismic shift in the election. We’ll update you when we know a time, place and nature of the event next Thursday.On Sunday, “CBS News Sunday Morning” will air an interview with President Biden, discussing the president’s decision not to seek reelection.“When I ran the first time, I thought of myself as being a transition president,” Biden told CBS News. “I can’t even say how old I am – it’s hard for me to get it out of my mouth.”“Although it’s a great honor to be a president, I think I have an obligation to the country to do what I– most important thing you can do. And that is — we must, we must, we must defeat Trump,” he said.Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential election on July 21, and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, immediately after.Read David Smith’s analysis on Biden’s decision to withdraw for more background ahead of the interview this weekend:With Kamala Harris’s rally in Phoenix this evening still more than two hours away, footage of the crowds gathered inside and out of the venue have begun circulating on social media.The Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, where Harris will speak at 5pm local time, can hold 20,000 people.The number of Harris-Walz campaign rally attendees has made headlines recently – in contrast to the quieter crowds attending rallies for Joe Biden just weeks ago. They’ve also attracted attention from former president Trump, who has complained about the media supposedly exaggerating crowd sizes for his Democratic opponent, at his expense.Ahead of today’s rally in Phoenix, the Harris-Walz campaign released a new ad playing up Harris’s strict views on immigration.“Kamala Harris has spent decades fighting violent crime,” the ad says. “As a border state prosecutor, she took on drug cartels and jailed gang members for smuggling weapons and drugs across the border. As vice-president, she backed the toughest border control bill in decades. And as president, she will hire thousands more border agents and crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking. Fixing the border is tough, so is Kamala Harris.”The ad foreshadows the tone Harris may take as she takes the stage in Phoenix this evening – especially as Republicans criticize her record on immigration as vice president. For more on Harris’s views on immigration, read Lauren Gambino’s analysis:The justice department on Friday announced criminal charges against three executives at the voting machine company Smartmatic in connection to an alleged 2016 bribery scheme in the Philippines.The indictment, filed in federal court in south Florida, comes as the company has faced false accusations it was involved in rigging the 2020 election. Smartmatic was only used in Los Angeles county in 2020. Elon Musk, who has become a large spreader of misinformation, immediately shared news of the indictment on X.Prosecutors alleged three executives, including the president of the company, Roger Alejandro Pinate Martinez, bribed the chairman of the Commission on Elections of the Republic of the Philippines “to obtain and retain business related to providing voting machines and election services for the 2016 Philippine elections and to secure payments on the contracts, including the release of value added tax payments.” The scheme allegedly involved “at least $1m in bribes,” the justice department said in a statement.“Regardless of the veracity of the allegations and while our accused employees remain innocent until proven guilty, we have placed both employees on leaves of absence, effective immediately,” the company said in a statement. “No voter fraud has been alleged and Smartmatic is not indicted. Voters worldwide must be assured that the elections they participate in are conducted with the utmost integrity and transparency. These are the values that Smartmatic lives by.”The indictment comes as the company has several defamation lawsuits pending against several conservative news outlets, including Fox and Newsmax. It settled a suit with One America News Network and also has sued Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Mike Lindell for defamation.Alpha Kappa Alpha, the historic Black sorority that Kamala Harris joined in college, has created a political action committee, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission dated Friday, the New York Times reports.Alpha Kappa Alpha was the first Black sorority formed in the United States. Harris became a member while enrolled at Howard University.The Pac is the first in the sorority’s history, spokeswoman Carisma Ramsey Fields told The Times.Read more about the power of Black sororities from Guardian reporter Helen Sullivan:Make America Great Again, Inc, a political action committee dedicated to re-electing former president Donald Trump, has shared reporting from Fox News today on Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s record on policing:After police murdered George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, Walz signed a number of bipartisan police reforms, including a ban on certain types of chokeholds and a ban on “warrior style” police training, which emphasizes the use of force.For more coverage of Walz’s views on policing, read Gloria Oladipo’s reporting in The Guardian:Here’s a look at where things stand:

      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to attend an event together in Maryland next Thursday, according to the White House. This will be their first appearance together in person since the US president announced on July 21 that he would no longer seek re-election.

      Newly released body cam and dashboard camera footage from local Pennsylvania police officers on 13 July shows the moments right before the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The footage, obtained by CNN through a public records request, shows the moment one police officer climbed up to the roof of the building overlooking rally, and saw the shooter just before the firing began.

      A man who stood in front of a gallows and attacked police with poles on January 6, 2021 on Capitol Hill has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, the second longest sentence delivered in the riot. According to prosecutors, who sought 262 months, or 21 years, for David Dempsey, he climbed over rioters like “human scaffolding,” as well as used “his hands, feet, flag poles, crutches, pepper spray, broken pieces of furniture, and anything else he could get his hands on” as weapons against police, NBC reports.

      The US district judge overseeing the 2020 federal election interference case against Donald Trump has agreed to delay the case by several weeks after special counsel Jack Smith’s team requested an extension earlier this week. Smith’s office asked the court for extra time on Thursday, as the prosecutors said that they had not finished assessing how the US supreme court’s immunity decision issued last month.

      Texas governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, has signed an executive order ordering public hospitals in Texas to collect and report information on the immigration status of patients they treat, in order to assess the expenses of providing medical care of undocumented immigrants. Texas congresswoman Sylvia Garcia called it “unacceptable”.

      Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s rally in Detroit, Michigan was the duo’s largest campaign rally to date, featuring over 15,000 voters, the campaign announced today. It added that the crowd broke the campaign’s own record of more than 14,000 voters in Philadelphia on Monday.

      FiveThirtyEight’s new poll shows Harris leading Donald Trump by 2.1 points in the national average. Before Harris entered the race late last month, Joe Biden, who was then running for re-election, before dropping out and handing the torch to Harris, “was behind [Trump] by a significant number, not just at the national popular vote, but in battleground states.
      On Friday, Joe Rogan, the popular podcaster who has been criticized for using racist and sexist language in the past, as well as espousing Covid-19 misinformation, appeared to take a dig at Trump.Rogan said Robert F Kennedy Jr – who has become widely known as a vaccine conspiracy theorist – is “the only one that makes sense to me.”After drawing the ire of Trump who wrote on Truth Social, “It will be interesting to see how loudly Joe Rogan gets BOOED the next time he enters the UFC Ring??? MAGA2024,” Rogan took to X and wrote:
      “For the record, this isn’t an endorsement. This is me saying that I like RFKjr as a person, and I really appreciate the way he discusses things with civility and intelligence. I think we could use more of that in this world. I also think Trump raising his fist and saying “fight!” after getting shot is one of the most American fucking things of all time.”
      Nick Fuentes, the 25-year old white supremacist and Holocaust denier who once dined with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, has revoked his support for the former president.Referring to the loose network of white nationalist activists, alt-right and internet trolls known as Groypers, Fuentes wrote on X:
      “Tonight I declared a new Groyper War against the Trump campaign. We support Trump, but his campaign has been hijacked by the same consultants, lobbyists, & donors that he defeated in 2016, and they’re blowing it. Without serious changes we are headed for a catastrophic loss.”
      He added that he plans to present a “detailed statement of the facts, a mission statement, and a plan of action” on Monday.In 2022, Democrats, civil rights organizations and some Republicans criticized Trump for dining with Fuentes, who has a history of spewing violently misogynistic rhetoric, in addition to homophobic and Islamophobic views.Newly released body cam and dashboard camera footage from local Pennsylvania police officers on 13 July shows the moments right before the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.The footage, obtained by CNN through a public records request, shows the moment one police officer climbed up to the roof of the building overlooking rally, and saw the shooter just before the firing began.The officer, who was hoisted up to the roof by his colleague, is seen quickly dropping down after he sees the shooter. The officer is then seen running to the other side of the building to get a look at the roof, as the first three shots can be heard on the officer’s dashboard camera, followed by five more.In total, eight shots were fired by the shooter on 13 July, which resulted in Trump’s ear being grazed, one spectator killed and two others were injured.In the videos, the officer can be seen running back to his car to grab his rifle, and shouting at his colleagues to not put their heads up. “He’s right there,” he tells them. At this point, government snipers had killed the shooter, according to CNN.Other footage obtained by CNN shows local police officers expressing frustration and confusion, and complaining that they had previously told the Secret Service to put officers near the building the gunman fired from.“I told them that fucking Tuesday” one officer says. “I told them to post fucking guys over here”. When another officer asked who he told that to, he responded: “The Secret Service.”A man who stood in front of a gallows and attacked police with poles on January 6, 2021 on Capitol Hill has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, the second longest sentence delivered in the riot. According to prosecutors, who sought 262 months, or 21 years, for David Dempsey, he climbed over rioters like “human scaffolding,” as well as used “his hands, feet, flag poles, crutches, pepper spray, broken pieces of furniture, and anything else he could get his hands on” as weapons against police, NBC reports. According to documents reviewed by the outlet, prosecutors also wrote:
      “Though Dempsey has pled guilty only for his assaults on Detective [Phuson] Nguyen and Sergeant [Jason] Mastony, his violent assault on other officers defending the Capitol was relentless: swinging pole-like weapons more than 20 times, spraying chemical agents at least three times, hurling objects at officers at least ten times, stomping on the heads of police officers as he perched above them five times, attempting to steal a riot shield and baton, and incessantly hurling threats and insults at police while rallying other rioters to join his onslaught.”
      In a bizarre attempt to repeat the Republican attack line that Kamala Harris refuses to speak to the press, JD Vance wrote:
      “If we could convince Kamala Harris that illegal aliens are actually journalists trying to ask her questions she’d build that border wall in five seconds.”
      On Thursday, prior to departing from Detroit, Michigan on Air Force Two, a reporter asked Harris whether there is an update on when she will sit down for her first interview since being the Democratic presidential nominee.In response, Harris said:
      “I’ve talked to my team. I want us to get an interview scheduled before the end of the month.”
      The US district judge overseeing the 2020 federal election interference case against Donald Trump has agreed to delay the case by several weeks after special counsel Jack Smith’s team requested an extension earlier this week.Smith’s office asked the court for extra time on Thursday, as the prosecutors said that they had not finished assessing how the US supreme court’s immunity decision issued last month, which awarded former presidents some immunity from criminal prosecution, would narrow their case.“The Government continues to assess the new precedent set forth last month in the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v United States, including through consultation with other Department of Justice components,” prosecutors wrote in the filing requesting the extension.The joint status report that was previously due by 9 August is now due by 30 August, according to the court order, and the status conference hearing, previously scheduled for 16 August, has been postponed until 5 September.Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to attend an event together in Maryland next Thursday, according to the White House.No further details were given. Ordinarily, this would not be significant news, but so much has changed in the last three weeks and this will be their first appearance together in person since the US president announced on Sunday, July 21 that he would no longer seek re-election.Minutes later, he endorsed his vice president, Harris, to take up the baton and rise to the top of the Democratic ticket for the election this November against the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.Biden dialed in to a boisterous public happening that week when Harris went to what had formerly been the Biden-Harris election campaign headquarters in Delaware and talked to staff, as it became transformed into the Harris for President campaign – and is now the Harris-Walz campaign, since she chose the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate. Biden was effusive about his anointed successor.Now the two will make their first public appearance together in person since that seismic shift in the election. We’ll update you when we know a time, place and nature of the event next Thursday.Hello again US politics blog readers, it’s a fascinating news day even if a little less frenzied than most recent ones. The Democratic and Republican campaigns have rallies coming up later today and there is a lot of polling information around and other stories moving. We’ll keep you abreast as it happens.Here’s where things stand:

      Texas governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, has signed an executive order ordering public hospitals in Texas to collect and report information on the immigration status of patients they treat, in order to assess the expenses of providing medical care of undocumented immigrants. Texas congresswoman Sylvia Garcia called it “unacceptable”.

      Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s rally in Detroit, Michigan was the duo’s largest campaign rally to date, featuring over 15,000 voters, the campaign announced today. It added that the crowd broke the campaign’s own record of more than 14,000 voters in Philadelphia on Monday. The presumed Democratic nominees for president and vice president, respectively, addressed a gathering of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union.

      FiveThirtyEight’s new poll shows Harris leading Donald Trump by 2.1 points in the national average. Before Harris entered the race late last month, Joe Biden, who was then running for re-election, before dropping out and handing the torch to Harris, “was behind [Trump] by a significant number, not just at the national popular vote, but in battleground states.

      Meghan McCain, political commentator and daughter of the late US Senator for Arizona, John McCain, shared a video of Donald Trump comparing his crowd sizes to Martin Luther King Jr’s and then she simply posted the message: “Vice president Harris is going to win.”

      Harris and Walz plan to highlight reproductive rights – the Republicans’ war on choice and Democrats’ efforts to codify choice – and immigration policies, which have been a mess, when they hold campaign events in Arizona tonight and Nevada tomorrow. More

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      Polls show Kamala Harris building lead over Trump in 2024 election

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      Kamala Harris continues to gain strength in the US presidential election, as polls nationally and in battleground states show her building leads or catching Donald Trump.On Friday morning, FiveThirtyEight, a leading polling analysis site, puts Harris, the Democratic party’s presumptive nominee for president, up by 2.1 points over her Republican rival in its national average.In averages for swing states, where control of the White House rests, Harris led in Michigan by two points, Pennsylvania by 1.1 point and Wisconsin by 1.8 points. Trump led in Arizona by less than half a point and in Georgia by half a point.In battleground states without enough polls to calculate averages, Trump was ahead by about three points in North Carolina and the candidates were about level in Nevada. In the latter state, recent CBS and Bloomberg polls have given Harris two-point leads while on Friday the Nevada Independent reported a poll showing the Democrat six points up.The US vice-president, 59, has changed the election race since mid-July, when Joe Biden, 81, finally heeded calls from his own party to step aside for a younger candidate to take on Trump, who is 78. He endorsed Harris to take over the top of the Democratic ticket for this November, while he serves out his single term.On Thursday night, Amy Walter, of the non-partisan Cook Political Report, told PBS that before Harris entered the race, Biden “was behind by a significant number, not just at the national popular vote, but in those … battleground states. You can see almost six points in a state like Georgia and Nevada.“Now, just in the time that Harris has been in the race, you have seen those numbers move pretty significantly toward Harris, four- or five-point shifts in those battleground states, which is mirroring what we’re seeing in the national poll as well.“It hasn’t turned those states, though, from ones that favored Trump to ones that now favor Harris. It just means now that the race is no longer as lopsided in Trump’s favor as it was, say, in late July … which is why we’re calling this race a toss-up.”The same day, the Cook Political Report changed its ratings for three Sun belt swing states – Arizona, Georgia and Nevada – from “leans Republican” to “toss-up”.Another analysis site, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, based at the University of Virginia, changed Georgia from leans Republican to toss-up. Looking north, the site changed Minnesota and New Hampshire, states where Trump made gains while Biden was top of the Democratic ticket, from leans Democratic to likely Democratic.Harris’s choice for vice-president, Tim Walz, is governor of Minnesota. Any Walz effect on polling has not yet been felt but some observers expressed surprise that Harris passed over Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, a battleground state.Others argued back. For Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Joel K Goldstein said that though Shapiro and Mark Kelly, the Arizona senator who was also closely considered, were “both from competitive states that were … important pieces of the 306 electoral votes Democrats won in 2020”, in choosing Walz, “Harris demonstrated yet again that vice-presidential selection turns on matters other than the over-hyped criterion of home-state advantage.“Walz also had the most experience (17 and a half years) in traditional vice-presidential feeder positions (senator, governor, member of the House of Representatives, holder of high federal executive office) of her options, which contrasts with the very limited experience (one and a half years) of his Republican counterpart, Ohio senator JD Vance.”Among widely noted individual polls, Harris led for a second week in the Economist/YouGov survey, maintaining a two-point advantage. Reuters/Ipsos found Harris up five points, 42%-37%, up two on the last such survey, taken just after Biden withdrew. Ipsos said it also found in a separate poll Harris leading Trump 42%-40% in the seven battleground states, though it “did not break out results for individual states”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA national poll from Marquette University in Wisconsin showed Harris up six points, with 53% support among likely voters to 47% for Trump. Harris maintained that lead when other candidates were included. Robert F Kennedy Jr, the leading independent, took 6% support. In the Reuters/Ipsos poll, Kennedy’s support had fallen six points to 4% since July.The Marquette poll contained further good news for Harris, pointing to her energizing effect as the campaign heads for the home stretch: an 11-point rise in respondents saying they were very enthusiastic about voting in November.“Enthusiasm has increased substantially among Democrats, with a small increase among Republicans,” the Marquette pollster Charles Franklin wrote. “Republicans had a consistent enthusiasm advantage over Democrats in previous polls, but this has been mostly erased now.”It was not all good news for Harris and Democrats. In a poll released on Thursday, CNBC put Trump up two points and firmly ahead on who voters thought would make them financially better off.Micah Roberts of Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican pollster who worked on the survey with a Democratic counterpart, said the election was “less now a referendum on Trump than it is a head-to-head competition between the two candidates”.Harris, Roberts said, was “still carrying a lot of water for the [Biden] administration. She has to answer for that and define herself independently … That’s a lot of baggage to carry when you’ve got a compressed time frame against a mature campaign on Trump’s side.” More

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      Brats, dads and bravado: this US election will be decided on vibes

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      Now that the Democrats have found their vice-presidential candidate in Tim Walz, can anyone say what either of the parties are planning to do if they win?Of course not. Donald Trump says immigration is bad, but having claimed a wall would fix things, he’s pretty much run out of options. The Democrats are pro-reproductive freedoms, anti-inflation and environment-friendly, but what do they plan to do about it? It’s not at all clear. Not to worry though. This election is not being fought on proposed policies or past accomplishments. It’s being fought on vibes.The vibes election is a kind of free-association game that takes place in the recesses of the deep subconscious. The goal is to determine not who the candidates are but who you feel like they could be if they weren’t politicians.In the vibes election, huge political moments keep being superseded by online ephemera: Trump was almost assassinated by a sniper, but what resonated was how cool he looked in AP photos afterwards. Kamala Harris became the first Democratic nominee in modern times not to go through a primary process, but what really landed was Charli xcx tweeting “Kamala is brat”. Within minutes, Harris’s team changed their official campaign X header to brat green.It’s nothing new for presidential election campaigns to be led by viral moments and personality – Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign was built on enthusiasm for change and the gaffes of Sarah Palin rather than policy positions. Trump’s 2016 win was about amorphous ideas of draining the swamp and making America “great”. But this is something different.Trump isn’t brave. Kamala isn’t brat, in the sense that Charli’s album is about it-girls who rip cigs and do bumps of cocaine – even though there’s something in Harris’s giggly personality that suggests she could have done that in another life. Her viral quote that you “exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you” sounds like something that might be whispered in a smoking area after one too many tokes on the special vape.Walz is a shrewd politician with a progressive record as governor, but online he’s “the midwest prince”, a pun on an album by the gen Z pop star Chappell Roan you can feel confident Walz has never heard. He’s presented as a kind of gorpcore hero for the everyman (as Charlie Warzel of the Atlantic put it, “Dad is on the ballot”).Above all, and I’m sorry to be a party pooper here, JD Vance didn’t have sex with a couch, although the Republican vice-presidential nominee definitely has the vibe of someone who might have. And that’s what counts. There have been panels on CNN about what it means that people say he did. Walz even joked about it in his acceptance speech.View image in fullscreenThis is a product of the Trumpification of politics. Ever since he managed to turn the 2016 Republican primary into a Comedy Central roast, more traditional politicians have been racing to compete with his headline-grabbing one-liners. But even though it’s his playing field, he’s not doing so well in 2024, struggling to find insults that land.In contrast, Democrats have become much better at checking the vibes. Compare Hillary Clinton’s 2016 comment that half of Trump supporters were “a basket of deplorables” with the Democrats’ recent messaging that Republicans are “weird”.The former used strange, sneering verbiage to take aim at voters rather than politicians, and was said at a private event for rich fundraisers. It was easy for Trump supporters to reclaim the term and for Trump to use it to make Clinton look elitist. Clinton later acknowledged the comment was a big part of the reason she lost the election. Bad vibes.But calling Republicans “weird” punches up at the politicians themselves, using everyday language that most people, including rightwing voters, relate to. Democrats didn’t whisper this insult in private, like Clinton; they owned it with pride. That’s how you win at vibes – don’t address the person or the policy, address how it makes you feel.It’s true that not everyone is viewing the vote through this lens. Considerable numbers of people older than 50 still watch nightly TV news, where the election is being discussed in drier terms. But those under 50 don’t even have cable. The majority of gen Z’s news is coming from social media, where these conversations dominate.It goes without saying there are some pretty serious issues facing the US. People are dying from extreme heat. As Trump tried to make hay out of the assassination attempt, the family of his supporter who was killed in the crossfire mourned their loss, as did the families of the over 10,000 other Americans who have been killed by firearms this year alone. A war in Gaza, abortion rights, a far-right supreme court, mass incarceration – these issues are on voters’ minds.Certainly the Harris and Trump campaigns agree that the stakes are high. According to Democrats’ fundraising emails, American democracy is on the line and it’s up to voters to give 20 bucks before it’s too late. If Trump is to be believed, things are even more dire: he’s said that if Democrats win, they will unleash “hell on earth”. Either candidate could make this election about the issues, but that way controversy and expenditure lie. As long as they keep fighting the vibes wars, they can stay suspended in effervescent little fictions. More

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      Harris continues battleground campaign blitz after Trump’s rambling press conference – live

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      “Let the collective come together around a common experience, which at its core is about dignity and the dignity of labor, and then let the people come together to negotiate so you make the balance, and then the outcome will be fair,” said Kamala Harris.“And isn’t that what we’re talking about in this year election? We’re saying we just want fairness. We want dignity for all people. We want to recognize the right all people have to freedom and liberty to make choices, especially those that are about heart and home and not have their government telling them what to do,” she added.Since launching her campaign, Harris has turned to the ideas of freedom and individual liberties – concepts long associated with the rhetoric of the conservative movement – and turned them back on Trump and the modern Republican party. In Harris’s campaign rallies so far, abortion rights, LGBTQ+ rights and, in this speech, labor rights form the basis of freedom.“Even if you’re not a member of a union, you better thank unions. I’m here to say thank you, thank you, thank you to the sisters and brothers of UAW for all you are and all we will do over these next 89 days,” said Harris at the UAW earlier today.During her speech, the vice-president referred to a political “perversion” of the Republican party, “where there’s a suggestion that somehow strength is about making people feel small, making people feel alone, but isn’t that the very opposite of what we know, unions know, to be strong? It’s about the collective. It’s about knowing that no one should ever be made to fight alone.”Trump put out a dizzying number of falsehoods at his press conference earlier. Here are just a few:1) He said the crowd at his speech on January 6, 2020 was comparable to the crowd that gathered for Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. An estimated 50,000 people attended Trump’s speech. About a quarter of a million gathered to hear King speak.2) He claimed that the US economy was at the brink of a depression. “Not a recession, a depression,” he said. While the stock market took a dip recently, many indicators suggest that the US economy is generally on firm footing. Today, Wall Street saw its best day of trading in two years.3) He said “the vast majority of the country” supports him, and that his base includes “75 percent of the country”. That’s a bold claim for a former president who never won the popular vote. Polls currently indicate that about 43% of Americans currently hold a favorable view of Trump. The majority (more than 51%) have an unfavorable view.JD Vance’s investments reveal potential contradictions between the political persona he has sought to project, his history as a venture capitalist and Peter Thiel acolyte, and his status as a hard-edged tribune of the so-called “new right”.Companies he has invested in include a firm that carries out medical testing of therapies that may include stem cells in scientific research to tech firms with records of harvesting data. Vance and some of the people behind the various firms he is involved with also exhibit an obsession with references to the mythology around The Lord of the Rings’ fantasy world.The revelations come in part from an analysis of his financial disclosures to the Senate ethics committee since 2022, first as a Senate candidate and then as a junior senator for Ohio. The Guardian’s reporting also drew on other public records and open source materials.The most recent disclosure, which covers until the end of 2022, also showcases the peculiar preoccupations that Vance as an investor shared with a Thiel-adjacent network of rightwing Silicon Valley venture capitalists who later spent millions supporting Vance’s candidacy to the Senate in 2022.Joe Lowndes, a political science professor at Hunter College and the author of several books on the American political right, said: “Vance has been a chameleon his whole life – that’s how he described himself in his autobiography.The Cook Political Report had moved Arizona, Georgia and Nevada from “lean Republican” to “toss up” – a reflection of Harris’ momentum in the presidential race.“For the first time in a long time, Democrats are united and energized, while Republicans are on their heels. Unforced errors from both Trump and his vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance have shifted the media spotlight from Biden’s age to Trump’s liabilities,” Cook Political Report’s Amy Walters wrote. “In other words, the presidential contest has moved from one that was Trump’s to lose to a much more competitive contest.”Whereas Biden was trailing Trump in key swing states, Harris is tied with Trump or sometimes leading in more recent polls.During Donald Trump’s rambling press conference today, the former president revived many of his go-to talking points, including falsehoods about the economy, his opponets’ policies and his own record.But one of his most audacious claims was that no one died in the January 6 riot at the Capitol, and that there was a “peaceful transfer of power” after the 202 election.In fact, four Trump supporters died in the crowd.Ashli Babbitt, 35, died after she was shot in the shoulder by a Capitol Police officer while protesters “were forcing their way toward the House Chamber where Members of Congress were sheltering in place,” according to a statement from the former Capitol Police chief Steven Sund.Two other “Stop the Steal” died of heart attack, according to the DC medical examiners office and another of accidental overdose.Three law enforcement officers also died after the the attack, including one who died from blunt force injuries while defending the capitol and two who died by suicide. The families of the latter two officers, along with some elected officials, sought to deem their deaths as “line of duty” – noting they suffered from trauma following the riot.Leaders of the “uncommitted” campaign spoke with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, before a rally in Detroit on Wednesday to discuss their calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and an arms embargo on Israel.Harris “shared her sympathies and expressed an openness to a meeting with the Uncommitted leaders to discuss an arms embargo”, the organization said in a statement.But a Harris aide said on Thursday that while the vice-president did say she wanted to engage more with members of the Muslim and Palestinian communities about the Israel-Gaza war, she did not agree to discuss an arms embargo, according to Reuters.Phil Gordon, Harris’s national security adviser, also said on Twitter/X that the vice-president did not support an embargo on Israel but “will continue to work to protect civilians in Gaza and to uphold international humanitarian law”. A spokesperson for Harris’s campaign confirmed she does not support an arms embargo on Israel.The uncommitted movement, a protest vote against Joe Biden that started during the presidential primary season to send a message to the Democratic party about the US’s role in the Israel-Gaza conflict, began in Michigan and spread to several states. In Walz’s Minnesota, it captured 20% of the Democratic votes.Harris’s announcement of Walz as her running mate on Tuesday was met with celebration and even hope by many different parts of the Democratic electorate. But those in the uncommitted movement are still weighing their response, and hoping for a presidential campaign that will comprehensively address the mounting death toll in Gaza.“[Walz] is not someone who has been pro-Palestine in any way. That’s really important here. But he is also someone who’s shown a willingness to change on different issues,” said Asma Mohammed, the campaign manager for Vote Uncommitted Minnesota, and one of 35 delegates nationwide representing the uncommitted movement.Kamala Harris has finished her address to the UAW, saying:“ I’m here to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to the sisters and brothers of UAW for all you are and all we will do on these next 89 days. God bless you.”“You know, when you know what you stand for, you know what to fight for. We know what we stand for, and we stand for the people, and we stand for the dignity of work, and we stand for freedom,” said Kamala Harris.“We stand for justice. We stand for equality, and so we will fight for all of it. And the bottom line about UAW is that I also know, and I’ll say to all the friends watching, look, even if you’re not a member of the union, you better thank unions,” she added.“Let the collective come together around a common experience, which at its core is about dignity and the dignity of labor, and then let the people come together to negotiate so you make the balance, and then the outcome will be fair,” said Kamala Harris.“And isn’t that what we’re talking about in this year election? We’re saying we just want fairness. We want dignity for all people. We want to recognize the right all people have to freedom and liberty to make choices, especially those that are about heart and home and not have their government telling them what to do,” she added.Kamala Harris has taken the stage.“I understand the concept and the noble concept behind collective bargaining. And here it is…fairness. It’s about saying, ‘Hey, in a negotiation, don’t we all believe the outcome should be fair?’ I mean, who could disagree with that?” Harris said.The outcome should be fair. It should be fair, right? But when you’re talking about the individual and a big company, and you’re applying that one individual to negotiate against a big company, how’s that outcome going to be fair?,” she added.“You know, things work really well in life and really well with your neighbors and really well in communities when you mind your own damn business, things work better. Stay out of our business. Stay out of our business,” said Tim Walz.“He’s not fighting for you. He doesn’t know you. He doesn’t care about your family. And his running mate is just as dangerous and backward as he is,” he added.“So this is very simple, you know it, and it’s going to take a heck of a lot of hard work, but this election is a simple choice, what direction and what’s our country going to look like? What direction are we going?” said Tim Walz. “You know what we’ve said, If Donald Trump’s going to take it backwards, he’s going to, we aren’t going back. We’re not going back,” he added.Tim Walz has now taken the stage.“I couldn’t be prouder to be on this ticket and couldn’t be prouder to stand with UAW,” said Walz.“You got two people up here that were on the picket line of striking UAW members, that’s a place Donald Trump will never be,” said Shawn Fain.“You know, anyone can be your friend when the sun’s shining, things are going great, but you find out who your friends are when things get tough. And you know…when we look at tough times, we’ve been at tough times, we see who chose to stand with us and who chose to sit on the sideline to do nothing,” he added.“This is not a time to sit back and hope for the best. This is our generation-defining moment. Everything is at stake,” Fain continued.“You know, Donald Trump calls me stupid and you know why? Because he thinks auto workers are stupid, but we’re not stupid. We don’t fall for Trump’s alternative facts, or what we all call lies,” said Shawn Fain.“This isn’t about opinions. This election is not about party politics. All we have to do is look at these candidates in their own words and actions. That’s all the facts we need, and that paints a very clear picture of which side the candidates are on,” he added.He went on to note Trump’s absence during UAW’s strikes in recent years, saying Trump was “missing in action.”“The man’s a con-man,” Fain added.UAW president Shawn Fain is currently addressing the room.“I think you already know this, but what’s at stake in this election? It’s very simple, everything is at stake. It’s about a choice of whether we continue forward or whether we go backwards,” he said.“Kamala Harris is one of us. Governor Tim Walz is one of us. You know, they’re working class people. They have working class roots. They know struggle They know what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck,” he added.Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have just taken the stage in Detroit, Michigan where they are set to deliver remarks to the United Auto Workers union.Harris and Walz entered the union hall to a crowd of cheering supporters.ABC News has confirmed that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will debate each other on September 10.Both Harris and Trump have confirmed they will attend the debate.During his news conference in Mar-a-Lago a few minutes ago, Donald Trump, who in recent weeks has refused to debate Harris on the originally scheduled network, said that he has agreed to ABC News’ offer to debate the vice president.Speaking to reporters, Trump said:
      “We have spoken to the heads of the network and it’s all been confirmed other than some fairly minor details – audience, some location, which city would we put it into but all things that would be settled very easily.” More

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      JD Vance attacks Tim Walz’s military record as election race heats up

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      JD Vance went on the offensive on Wednesday, attacking the military record of Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick.Speaking in Michigan, Donald Trump’s Republican running mate said: “You know what really bothers me about Tim Walz? When the United States Marine Corps … asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it. I did what they asked me to do and I did it honorably, and I’m very proud of that service.“When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the army and allowed his unit to go without him.”Now a US senator from Ohio, Vance, 40, deployed to Iraq in 2005, as a military journalist. Despite his title – combat correspondent – he did not experience combat.Walz, 60, was in the army national guard for 24 years, in infantry and artillery, deploying in response to natural disasters on US soil and to Europe in support of operations in Afghanistan. He retired in 2005, to run for Congress, shortly before his unit deployed to Iraq.He has faced attacks before. In 2018, he told Minnesota Public Radio: “I know that there are certainly folks that did far more than I did. I know that. I willingly say that I got far more out of the military than they got out of me, from the GI bill to leadership opportunities to everything else.”A soldier who served under Walz, Al Bonnifield, said: “Would the soldier look down on him because he didn’t go with us? Would the common soldier say, ‘Hey, he didn’t go with us, he’s trying to skip out on a deployment?’ And he wasn’t.“… He weighed that decision to run for Congress very heavy. He loved the military, he loved the guard, he loved the soldiers he worked with.”Calling Walz “very caring” and a “very good leader”, Bonnifield said Walz helped him and other soldiers when they returned from Iraq.Vance seized on footage publicized by the Harris campaign in which, discussing gun control reform, Walz says: “We can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are at.”Vance said: “He says, ‘We shouldn’t allow weapons that I used in war to be on the American streets.’skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Well, I wonder, Tim Walz, when were you ever in war? What was this weapon that you carried into war given that you abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq? He has not spent a day in a combat zone. What bothers me about Tim Walz is the stolen valor garbage. Do not pretend to be something that you’re not.”Observers suggested Vance was attempting to “swift boat” Walz – a reference to attacks on John Kerry, the decorated US navy Vietnam veteran and Massachusetts senator who ran for president against George W Bush in 2004.Bush avoided serving in Vietnam but Republicans attacked Kerry regardless. The Republican operative (and wounded Gulf war veteran) widely credited with coordinating the effort, Chris LaCivita, now runs the Trump-Vance campaign.In a statement, the Harris campaign said: “After 24 years of military service, Governor Walz retired in 2005 and ran for Congress, where he chaired veterans affairs and was a tireless advocate for our men and women in uniform … As vice-president … he will continue to be a relentless champion for our veterans and military families.”It added: “In his 24 years of service, the Governor carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times. Governor Walz would never insult or undermine any American’s service to this country – in fact, he thanks Senator Vance for putting his life on the line for our country. It’s the American way.” More

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      US election live updates: Kamala Harris and Tim Walz hit the campaign trail in Pennsylvania

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      Kamala Harris introduced her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, to supporters at a packed, energetic rally at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Harris sought to define Walz foremost as a teacher, veteran and football coach.Walz focused on a unifying, future-focused message, and attacked the Trump-Vance ticket with a focus on reproductive rights and other freedoms.Meanwhile Josh Shapiro, who had been a vice-presidential contender, still made his mark.Read the key takeaways here.Here are some images from the Harris/Walz campaign rally in Philadelphia last night.Kamala Harris introduced her running mate Tim Walz as “the kind of vice-president America deserves” at a raucous rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday that showcased Democratic unity and enthusiasm for the party’s presidential ticket ahead of the November election.Casting their campaign as a “fight for the future”, Harris and Walz were repeatedly interrupted by applause and cheering as they addressed thousands of battleground-state voters wearing bracelets that twinkled red, white and blue at Temple University’s Liacouras Center – a crowd Harris’s team said was its largest to date.“Thank you for bringing back the joy,” a beaming Walz told Harris after she debuted the little-known Minnesota governor as a former social studies teacher, high school football coach and a National Guard veteran.“We’ve got 91 days,” he declared. “My God, that’s easy. We’ll sleep when we’re dead.”Read the full story here. More