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      Hunter Biden pleads guilty to nine federal tax charges – live

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      Hunter Biden, the US president Joe Biden’s son, has pleaded guilty to federal tax charges.The 54-year-old entered his plea at a Los Angeles courthouse on Thursday. Prosecutors say he failed to pay his taxes on time from 2016 to 2019, and Biden faced two felony counts of filing a false return and an additional felony count of tax evasion.Hunter Biden’s decision to plead guilty in the high-profile federal tax case against him will spare the president from a potentially embarrassing trial ahead of a crucial US election.Hunter Biden has been open about his struggles with drugs and alcohol, and a trial was expected to dig into his life, including the millions he earned in consultancy work abroad, a crack cocaine addiction and the large sums he spent on online pornography. Republicans have long seized on his work with the Ukrainian industrial conglomerate Burisma and a Chinese private equity firm to criticize Joe Biden.Hunter Biden faces up to 17 years in prison and $450,000 in penalties after pleading guilty to all nine counts against him in a federal tax case.The president’s son was scheduled to stand trial in Los Angeles after he allegedly failed to pay $1.4m in taxes between 2016 and 2019. During that time, the 54-year-old, who has struggled with addiction, was reportedly spending lavishly on “drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature”.“In short, everything but his taxes”, prosecutors said.His guilty plea will allow Biden to avoid a trial. Typically, defendants who plead guilty in criminal cases reach an agreement with prosecutors beforehand in order to obtain a shorter sentence, but that does not appear to have happened in this case.Hunter Biden, the US president Joe Biden’s son, has pleaded guilty to federal tax charges.The 54-year-old entered his plea at a Los Angeles courthouse on Thursday. Prosecutors say he failed to pay his taxes on time from 2016 to 2019, and Biden faced two felony counts of filing a false return and an additional felony count of tax evasion.US investigators have indicted a prominent Russian state television personality and his wife for violating sanctions and for money laundering as the White House targets Kremlin influence operations before the US presidential election.Dimitri Simes, a television presenter and producer for Russia’s state-owned Channel One, was charged with receiving more than $1m (£759,000) in compensation, a personal car and driver and a stipend for a flat in Moscow, despite the television station’s designation in 2022 by the US’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. He and his wife, Anastasia, were charged with money laundering to hide the proceeds of his work for Channel One.Anastasia Simes, 55, was also charged with buying arts and antiquities for a sanctioned Russian oligarch, Aleksandr Udodov, and then storing the works in their home in Virginia before they were shipped onward to Russia. The works were bought from galleries and auction houses in the United States and Europe.The couple faces 20 years in prison for each count if convicted. They left the US after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and are now believed to be in Russia, the justice department said.Allan Lichtman, the historian dubbed the “Nostradamus” of US presidential elections, has predicted that Kamala Harris will win the White House in November’s poll.Having previously warned the Democrats of the dangers of removing Joe Biden from the ticket, Lichtman nevertheless forecast that the vice-president, who became the party’s nominee after the president withdrew in July, would be elected in a video for the New York Times.He said Harris was on course to beat Donald Trump even though the Democrats had effectively surrendered the valuable key of presidential incumbency, one of 13 he used to determine the likely outcome.“Kamala Harris will be the next president of the United States – at least that’s my prediction for the outcome of this race,” Lichtman, 77, says at the conclusion of the quirky seven-minute video, which features him running in a track athlete’s garb against other elderly competitors in a qualifying race for the 2025 national senior Olympics.“But the outcome is up to you. So get out and vote,” he adds.Lichtman’s predictions are based on a set of true/false propositions, and take no account of polling trends.Hunter Biden’s attorney said Biden is offering to plead guilty to the federal tax charges he faces, without a deal with prosecutors, according to CNN.Hunter Biden, 54, had earlier on Thursday offered to plead guilty to federal tax charges but avoid admitting any wrongdoing – an unusual, last-minute legal manoeuvre that federal prosecutors quickly opposed.In a Los Angeles court earlier today, Hunter Biden sought to enter what is known as an “Alford plea”, an unusual type of guilty plea wherein a defendant does not admit to the allegations against them. US justice department prosecutors in the courtroom, however, said they would not accept that plea.On Thursday afternoon, his lawyers took a surprising turn and said that Hunter Biden was prepared to admit that his conduct satisfied the elements of the tax offenses with which he has been charged, CNN reported.The Harris-Walz campaign launched a new ad on Thursday focused on Project 2025 aimed at Black Americans in key battleground states, warning that a Donald Trump administration would “take Black America backwards”.Trump’s “Project 2025 agenda will give him unchecked political power with no guardrails”, the Harris campaign’s new 30-second spot says:
      Project 2025 would strip away our voting rights protections, and it eliminates the Department of Education. It would also require states to monitor women’s pregnancies. It bans abortion and would rip away health coverage for millions.
      “Donald Trump’s Project 2025 makes one thing clear to Black America: He doesn’t give a damn about us,” said Quentin Fulks, the Harris-Walz principal deputy campaign manager, in a statement.
      This campaign is going to make Trump defend his indefensible Project 2025 and ensure the key coalitions this campaign needs to win in November know exactly how his extreme agenda will take their communities backwards.
      Black voters in the US are often lumped into one bloc, but a new national survey has found that they can be defined by specific clusters: legacy civil rights, secular progressives, next-gen traditionalist, rightfully cynical and race-neutral conservative.Out of the 2,034 registered voters and 918 Black unregistered voters surveyed, 41% of respondents were found to be legacy civil rights voters who skewed older than 50 years old and had the highest voter turnout rates. Legacy civil rights voters were also the most likely group to believe that their vote has the power to drive change. On the other end, the rightfully cynical, 22% of respondents, were the youngest cohort and the least likely to vote. Based on their personal experiences of racism at work and with the police, this cluster was the least likely to believe that their vote matters.Next-gen traditionalists, 18% of respondents, were the most religious and least educated cluster, mostly consisting of millennial and generation Z voters. They had a low voter turnout rate and a moderate belief in the power of their vote. The most progressive respondents fell within the secular progressives cluster, at 12%, of which the majority were educated women who were highly likely to vote.Finally, the race-neutral conservatives, 7% of respondents, consisted mostly of men and were the second oldest cohort as well as the most conservative. Race-neutral conservatives had a moderate voter turnout rate and were likely to blame systemic barriers on individual choices.Katrina Gamble, CEO of Sojourn Strategies, said during a press conference on Wednesday:
      These clusters indicate that there are incredible differences within the Black community, in terms of how people think about democracy and their role in our democracy.
      Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Thursday that President Joe Biden would not pardon Hunter Biden or commute his sentence.“No, it is still very much a no,” the White House press secretary said in response to a reporter asking her whether the president intended to pardon or commute his son’s sentence.This comes as earlier this summer, the president said that he would not commute his son’s sentence, according to the New York Times, and has said over the last few months that he would not pardon his son.“I’m extremely proud of my son Hunter,” the president said in June, per the Times. “He has overcome an addiction. He’s one of the brightest, most decent men I know. I am satisfied that, I’m not going to do anything. I said I’d abide by the jury decision. I will do that.”After Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, offered to plead guilty on Thursday to federal tax charges but without admitting any wrongdoing, the US justice department prosecutors in the Los Angeles courtroom said they would not accept that plea, according to Reuters.“It’s not clear to us what they are trying to do,” one prosecutor reportedly told the judge overseeing the case.It was not clear whether the judge would accept the offer or go ahead with the trial. Jury selection is due to begin on Thursday. More

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      Harris vows to make US tax code ‘more fair’ in New Hampshire speech – live

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      Kamala Harris says she will make the US tax code “more fair” while also prioritizing investment and innovation.“Billionaires and big corporations must pay their fair share in taxes,” she tells her supporters. “That’s why I support a billionaire minimum tax and corporations paying their fair share.”She says that while her administration will ensure that the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share, it will also tax capital gains “at a rate that rewards investment in America’s innovators, founders and small businesses”.
      If you earn a million dollars a year or more, the tax rate on your long-term capital gains will be 28% under my plan. Because we know when the government encourages investment, it leads to broad based economic growth, and it creates jobs, which makes our economy stronger.
      Kamala Harris’ campaign has accepted rules for the upcoming debate with Donald Trump.The rules for the 10 September meeting of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates will include muting microphones, a source told Reuters.The campaigns had disagreed over whether microphones should be shut off when it isn’t a candidate’s turn to speak. Harris’ campaign had previously advocated for live microphones, arguing that it would “fully allow for substantive exchanges between the candidates”.Here’s footage of Kamala Harris’s remarks on the Georgia school shooting from earlier today:Tim Walz and the Harris campaign have trolled JD Vance over the GOP vice-presidential nominee’s awkward encounter at a doughnut shop:The Democratic vice-presidential candidate said: “Look at me, I have no problem picking out donuts.”The remark is a reference to Vance’s recent visit to a doughnut shop during which the GOP candidate stumbled while ordering, saying he’d get “whatever makes sense”.Tina Smith, a US senator from Minnesota, has also weighed in:Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will travel to Ground Zero in New York to commemorate the September 11 attacks, the White House has just announced.The president and vice-president will also visit the Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, officials said in a press release. Donald Trump is also reportedly considering a stop at the 9/11 memorial in New York on the anniversary, according to the New York Times.A Republican-led House committee sent a subpoena to Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, seeking documents and communications related to a vast fraud scheme conducted by a non-profit that used pandemic relief funds meant for feeding kids.NBC News first reported the subpoenas, which were sent to Walz; Minnesota’s commissioner of education, Willie Jett; the US agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack; and the agriculture inspector general, Phyllis Fong.The House committee on education and the workforce wrote to Walz to say it had been investigating the Department of Agriculture and the Minnesota department of education’s oversight of federal child nutrition programs and Feeding Our Future, the group that is alleged to have stolen more than $250m in pandemic funds.The subpoena does not seek an in-person appearance from Walz before the committee. It sets an 18 September deadline for turning over documents.Five of the people involved in the scheme were convicted for their roles earlier this year in a trial that included an attempt to bribe a juror with a bag full of $120,000 in cash left at her home. In total, 70 people have been charged in relation to the scheme.The Harris campaign has not said whether Kamala Harris supports requiring automakers to build only electric or hydrogen vehicles by 2035 – a position that she held during her 2020 presidential campaign.According to Axios, the Harris campaign has sent contradictory signals about her position on a mandate for automakers, a key issue in pivotal battleground states including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, where many autoworkers are based. The report says:
      In a lengthy ‘fact-check’ email last week that covered several issues, a campaign spokesperson included a line saying that Harris ‘does not support an electric vehicle mandate’ – suggesting she changed her previous position, without elaborating.
      When asked to clarify Harris’s position, the campaign declined to comment, according to the report.The Trump campaign said it raised $130m in August, ending the month with $295m cash on hand.The fundraising was slightly lower in August when compared with the previous month; the Trump campaign said it raised $138.7m in July and had a cash-on-hand total of $327m at the end of July.When Kamala Harris mentioned Donald Trump during her campaign speech in New Hampshire, a member of the audience shouted “Lock him up”.Harris responded by saying that “the courts will handle that and we’ll handle November”.Kamala Harris says she will make the US tax code “more fair” while also prioritizing investment and innovation.“Billionaires and big corporations must pay their fair share in taxes,” she tells her supporters. “That’s why I support a billionaire minimum tax and corporations paying their fair share.”She says that while her administration will ensure that the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share, it will also tax capital gains “at a rate that rewards investment in America’s innovators, founders and small businesses”.
      If you earn a million dollars a year or more, the tax rate on your long-term capital gains will be 28% under my plan. Because we know when the government encourages investment, it leads to broad based economic growth, and it creates jobs, which makes our economy stronger.
      Kamala Harris says she will also invest in small businesses and innovators throughout America, noting that “talent exists everywhere in our country” but that not everyone has access to the financing, venture capital or expert advice.She says that if elected, her administration will expand access to venture capital, support innovation hubs and business incubators, and increase federal contracts with small businesses. Small businesses in rural communities will be a particular focus, she says.Kamala Harris says she will also help existing small businesses to grow, by providing low- and no-interest loans to small businesses that want to expand.She also pledges to “cut the red tape that can make starting and growing a small business more difficult than it needs to be”.For example, Harris says she will make it cheaper and easier for small businesses to file their taxes.
      Let’s just take away some of the bureaucracy in the process to make it easier for people to actually do something that’s going to benefit our entire economy.
      Kamala Harris moves on to talking about what she calls an “opportunity economy”, which she envisions is a one “where everyone can compete and have a real chance to succeed”.She says America’s small businesses are an “essential foundation to our entire economy” and that she wants to see 25m new small business applications by the end of her first term, if she is elected.To help achieve this, Harris says she will lower the cost of starting a new business. It costs about $40,000 to start a new business, she says, and the current tax deduction for a startup is just $5,000.Harris proposes to expand the tax deduction for startups to $50,000, which she says is essentially “a tax cut for starting a small business”.Kamala Harris, speaking at a campaign event in New Hampshire, begins her remarks by talking about the high school shooting in Georgia.“We’re still gathering information about what happened, but we know that there were multiple fatalities and injuries,” Harris told her supporters. “Our hearts are with all the students, the teachers and their families.”She said Wednesday’s shooting is “a senseless tragedy on top of so many senseless tragedies”, adding that it is “outrageous” that parents have to send their children to school worried about whether they will come home alive.
      It’s senseless. It is. We’ve got to stop it, and we have to end this epidemic of gun violence in our country once and for all.
      Kamala Harris has just taken to the stage at a campaign event outside a brewery in New Hampshire, where she is reportedly expected to announce her economic plans including a smaller increase in taxes on capital gains.Harris is speaking from behind bulletproof glass enclosure, after the Secret Service added protective measures for outdoor campaign events in the wake of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in July. More

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      Tucker Carlson lost his platform but crucially he still has Donald Trump’s ear

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      In spring of last year, Tucker Carlson was on the outs.The former prime-time host had been booted from the Fox News channel where he had made his name. Ensconced in his remote Maine home, Carlson launched a new show on what was then called Twitter, but as his viewer figures quickly plunged, consensus opinion was that Carlson’s position as a news and political tastemaker, someone capable of creating Republican stars and taking down careers, was over.It turns out that wasn’t quite right.The eponymous network that Carlson has since created, where he hosts interviews and delivers screeds to subscribing viewers, certainly lacks the reach of his Fox News show. But he has remained a key figure behind the scenes in Republican politics, someone with the ear of Trump and the ability to influence key positions. He had a headline slot at the Republican national convention, and next month is going on a tour that will feature JD Vance, Trump’s running mate.“He’s a confidant of Trump, and the GOP is the party of Trump now,” said Heather Hendershot, a professor at Northwestern University’s school of communication whose work focuses on television news and conservative and rightwing media.That relationship has allowed Carlson to become, if not a kingmaker, then certainly a prince-maker – playing a key role in Vance’s ascendancy to vice-presidential candidate. Vance was a frequent presence on Tucker Carlson Tonight during his run for Senate in Ohio, hopping on to pontificate on all manner of issues that Carlson’s far-right audience like. It was on Carlson’s show that Vance characterized Kamala Harris and others “childless cat ladies”, a comment that resurfaced in July.The pair stayed close, and Carlson had a key role in one of the most important decisions Trump had to make: choosing his running mate. The New York Times reported that Trump was “wavering” on choosing Vance in June, considering instead the more experienced Marco Rubio or the rich, inoffensive Doug Burgum. Carlson intervened in bombastic fashion, warning Trump that such a move could see him assassinated, according to the Times, and briefing that neither Rubio, the Florida senator, nor Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, could be trusted.“[Trump’s decision to pick Vance] is kind of backfiring for him now, because Vance keeps revealing his strange attitudes about women, childless women and childless women with cats. So it’s not really helping him that much, and Trump’s team isn’t really pleased about it, I’m sure,” Hendershot said.“It’s interesting that he had Trump’s ear for that, and his rationale was very sort of strange, or weird, is the word we’re using now, and kind of conspiratorial.”The conspiratorial aspect has long been key to Carlson’s appeal, and if his influence with Trump has increased – even in the face of texts emerging in 2023 that Carlson had said of Trump: “I hate him passionately” – it has done so as Carlson has become more fringe.In February, he aired an interview with Vladimir Putin in which he allowed the Russian autocrat to drone on for two hours about everything from a ninth-century Scandinavian prince to how he was allegedly prepared to end his invasion of Ukraine, and also gave a platform to Alex Jones, a conspiracy theorist who was ordered to pay $1.5bn to the families of the Sandy Hook victims after he claimed the 2012 elementary school shooting was faked.“If anything, he appears to have descended into even more public crackpottery since he left Fox News,” said Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a leftwing advocacy group.“Someone like that having a direct line to the former president of the United States, who could be the president again, is certainly a matter of great concern.”Carlson has retained that direct line even as his ability to reach the public appears to have declined. His Tucker Carlson Network has only 200,000 subscribers, the Wall Street Journal reported, while at its peak, his Fox News show attracted millions of viewers a night, although Carlson is popular on other platforms: his podcast is the second most popular on Spotify, behind only Joe Rogan, and his interview with Putin, while widely panned, was a success in terms of numbers: it received more than 200m views when Carlson posted it to X, although it is unclear how many people watched the entire thing.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“His media influence has diminished substantially since he left Fox, but his political influence is still quite potent,” Gertz said.“Tucker Carlson was really the most powerful single figure in the rightwing media. He was someone who was capable of swinging Republican primary elections, but also someone who was capable of swinging news cycles, of creating messages that would be broadly used by the right.”Gertz said that wasn’t the case any more, although Carlson remained “a potent political force”.“His relationship with Donald Trump seems to be the key factor here, he has been able, by publicly supporting him so loudly, to ensure that he still apparently has the ability to contact Donald Trump directly and advise him on key issues.”Along with the questionable guidance Carlson gave Trump over Vance, he was also key to bringing together Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr for a meeting at the GOP convention, and Vanity Fair reported that it was Carlson and Donald Trump Jr who helped organize Kennedy’s subsequent withdrawal from the presidential race and endorsement of Trump. The New York Times reported that Carlson connected Trump and Kennedy “on a three-way text message” hours after the attempted assassination on Trump, a message chain that led to the pair speaking on the phone that night.Where Carlson’s influence ultimately leads will probably depend on whether Trump can win in November. But in the meantime, despite the low views for Carlson’s shows and his lack of a wide public platform, his position as a key figure is demonstrated from “Tucker Carlson live”, a 16-date tour he will embark on in September.Trump Jr and Vance, two of the people closest to the former president, will appear with Carlson in Florida and Pennsylvania respectively, for a tour that Carlson claims is “going to be interesting and fun as hell”.While the latter will depend on an individual’s politics and taste, Carlson’s continuing influence at the top of Republican politics is certainly interesting – and could be worrying should Trump be re-elected president. More

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      JD Vance endorsed anti-IVF report that contradicts Trump’s new stance

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      A rightwing thinktank report proposing sweeping restrictions to abortions and fertility treatments was endorsed by JD Vance years before he became a fervent backer of Donald Trump and – eventually – his vice-presidential running mate known for his derisive views on childless women.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.The report’s contents provide fresh insights into the philosophy informing some of Vance’s inflammatory later public statements, which have included saying that America is run by “childless cat ladies” and that he is disturbed by the idea of teachers who do not have children.He has also suggested that people without children are likely to become “more sociopathic”.The 2017 report was released a year after the publication of Vance’s bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, and also after he had made a series of statements denouncing Trump, whom the US senator called “cultural heroin” and speculated could become “America’s Hitler”. He also described himself as “a never Trump guy”.However, its foreword contains hints that Vance’s thoughts on the then president were already evolving.“We all seem to be waking up to the fact that things are not quite what they used to be,” he wrote. “When president Trump has spoken of the country as trapped in a losing game of international trade or decried the carnage on so many American streets, he has earned criticism for painting an overly pessimistic view of his own country. Yet that pessimism struck a chord with many Americans.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The question for those concerned about the future of the country is not whether negativity is justified, but why negativity inspired so many at the polls.”Vance’s views ultimately went full circle, and Trump endorsed his successful election campaign for the US Senate in Ohio in 2022.The foreword to the 2017 report also seems to be one of Vance’s first known links to the Heritage Foundation, a thinktank responsible for producing Project 2025, a controversial and radical blueprint for remaking US government and society in a conservative image. Trump has disowned the 922-page document. But the campaign of Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has depicted it as an assault on basic freedoms and typical of what lies in store under a second Trump presidency. More

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      The right’s obsession with childless women isn’t just about ideology: it’s essential to the capitalist machine | Nesrine Malik

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      A woman without biological children is running for high political office, and so naturally that quality will at some point be used against her. Kamala Harris has, in the short period since she emerged as the Democratic candidate for US president, been scrutinised over her lack of children. The conservative lawyer Will Chamberlain posted on X that Harris “shouldn’t be president” – apparently, she doesn’t have “skin in the game”. The Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, called Harris and other Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies miserable at their own lives”.It’s a particularly virulent tendency in the US, with a rightwing movement that is fixated on women’s reproduction. But who can forget (and if you have, I am happy to remind you of a low point that still sticks in my craw) Andrea Leadsom, during the 2016 Conservative party leadership election, saying that Theresa May might have nieces and nephews, but “I have children who are going to have children … who will be a part of what happens next”. “Genuinely,” she added, as if the message were not clear enough, “I feel that being a mum means you have a real stake in the future of our country, a tangible stake.”It’s an argument about political capability that dresses up a visceral revulsion at the idea that a woman who does not have a child should be vested with any sort of credibility or status. In other comments, Vance said that “so many of the leaders of the left, and I hate to be so personal about this, but they’re people without kids trying to brainwash the minds of our children, that really disorients me and disturbs me”. He appears so fixated on this that it is almost comical: a man whose obsession with childless women verges on a complex.But his “disorientation and disturbance” is a political tendency that persists and endures. It constantly asks the question of women who don’t have children, in subtle and explicit ways, especially the higher they rise in the professional sphere: “What’s up with that? What’s the deal?” The public sphere becomes a space for answering that question. Women perform a sort of group plea to be left the hell alone, in their painstaking examinations of how they arrived at the decision not to have kids, or why they in fact celebrate not having kids, or deliberations on ambivalence about having kids.Behind all this lies some classic old-school inability to conceive of women outside mothering. But one reason this traditionalism persists in ostensibly modern and progressive places is that women withdrawing from mothering in capitalist societies – with their poorly resourced public amenities and parental support – forces questions about our inequitable, unacknowledged economic arrangements. A woman who does not bear children is a woman who will never stay home and provide unremunerated care. She is less likely to be held in the domestic zone and extend her caregiving to elderly relatives or the children of others. She cannot be a resource that undergirds a male partner’s career, frailties, time limitations and social demands.A mother is an option, a floating worker, the joker in the pack. Not mothering creates a hole for that “free” service, which societies increasingly arranged around nuclear families and poorly subsidised rights depend on. The lack of parental leave, childcare and elderly care would become profoundly visible – “disorienting and disturbing” – if that service were removed.“Motherhood,” writes the author Helen Charman in her new book Mother State, “is a political state. Nurture, care, the creation of human life – all immediate associations with mothering – have more to do with power, status and the distribution of resources … than we like to admit. For raising children is the foundational work of society, and, from gestation onward, it is unequally shared.”Motherhood, in other words, becomes an economic input, a public good, something that is talked about as if the women themselves were not in the room. Data on declining birthrates draws comment from Elon Musk (“extremely concerning!!”) . Not having children is reduced to entirely personal motivations – selfishness, beguilement with the false promise of freedom, lack of values and foresight, irresponsibility – rather than external conditions: of the need for affordable childcare, support networks, flexible working arrangements and the risk of financial oblivion that motherhood frequently brings, therefore creating bondage to partners. To put it mildly, these are material considerations to be taken into account upon entering a state from which there is no return. Assuming motherhood happens without such context, Charman tells me, is a “useful fantasy”.It is a binary public discourse, obscuring the often thin veil between biological and social actualisation. Women who don’t have children do not exist in a state of blissful detachment from their bodies and their relationship with maternity: a number have had pregnancies, miscarriages, abortions and periods. A number have entered liminal stages of motherhood that don’t conform to the single definition from which they are excluded. A number extend mothering to various children in their lives. Some, like Harris herself, have stepchildren (who don’t count, just as May’s nieces and nephews didn’t). A number have become mothers, just not in a way that initiates them into a blissful club. They experience regret, depression and navigate unsettlement that does not conform to the image of uncomplicated validation of your purpose in life.But the privilege of those truths cannot be bestowed on creatures whose rejection of the maternal bond has become a rejection of a wider unspoken, colossally unfair contract. Women with children are handed social acceptance for their vital investment in “the future”, in exchange for unrewarded, unsupported labour that props up and stabilises the economic and social status quo. All while still suffering sneeriness about the value of their work in comparison with the serious graft of the men who win the bread.On top of that, women have to navigate all that motherhood – or not – entails, all the deeply personal, bewildering, isolating and unacknowledged realities of both, while being subject to relentless suffocating, infantilising and violating public theories and notions that trespass on their private spaces. With that comes a sense of self-doubt and shame in making the wrong decision, or not being as content with those decisions as they are expected to be. It is a constant, prodding vivisection. That, more than anything clinical observers feel, is the truly disorienting and disturbing experience.

      Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist More

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      Ex-beauty contestant condemns JD Vance for use of embarrassing video

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      A 2007 Miss Teen USA contestant who drew widespread mockery because of a stuttering response to a question that she fielded at the competition has said “it’s a shame” – and also condemned “online bullying” – after JD Vance recirculated a video of her difficult moment to attack Kamala Harris.Meanwhile, the Republican nominee for vice-president in November’s election has ruled out apologizing to Caitlin Upton, who has spoken openly about how she previously contemplated suicide at the height of the ordeal revived by Vance.Upton went viral for the wrong reasons 17 years earlier when – while competing on national television for the Miss Teen USA crown – the actor and pageant judge Aimee Teegarden asked her why she believed an estimated 20% of Americans would fail to find their own country on a world map.“I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do so because, um, some people out there in our nation don’t have maps,” replied Upton, then the 18-year-old representative of South Carolina. “And I believe that our education like such as South Africa and the Iraq and everywhere, like, such as, and I believe that they should … our education over here in the US should help the US, should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries – so we will be able to build up our future.”Host and actor Mario Lopez had barely finished deadpanning “Thank you very much, South Carolina” over the audience’s polite applause before detractors descended on Upton, especially online. An August 2007 piece from the online publication Salon titled “Miss dumb blond USA? Our national embarrassment over a South Carolina teenage contestant’s world knowledge” summarized the reaction to Upton’s verbal flub at a pageant which Donald Trump owned – along with Miss Universe and Miss USA – from 1996 to 2015, the year before he won the presidency.Upton later told New York magazine that some college baseball players taunted her cruelly when she attended a party at one point, and someone mailed her a note suggesting she “go die for [her] stupidity”. She described how the harassment drove her into a depression and prompted her to have suicidal thoughts.But she said her family and other loved ones ultimately helped her overcome the painful experience. She eventually pursued a real estate career, got married and had two children.Upton in the interim also reportedly demonstrated her support online for Trump’s presidency, including his lies that voting fraudsters unduly orchestrated his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.She had mostly faded from the public consciousness when Trump’s running mate thrust her back into it Thursday, shortly before CNN aired Harris’s first news network interview since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee.Vance’s X account republished a video clip of Upton’s infamous 2007 remarks along with the caption, “BREAKING: I have gotten ahold of the full Kamala Harris CNN interview.”Upton on Friday made clear that she did not appreciate Vance’s post.“It’s a shame that 17 years later this is still being brought up,” Upton wrote on X, just a short time before deleting her account from the social media platform. “Regardless of political beliefs, one thing I do know is that social media and online bullying still needs to stop.”Vance in turn appeared Friday on CNN, dismissed the video of Upton as little more than “a 20-year-old meme” and urged Upton to “laugh it off”.“Politics has got way too lame,” Vance said to anchor John Berman. “You can have some fun while making an argument to the American people about improving their lives.“I’m not going to apologize for posting a joke – but I wish the best for Caitlin and hope she’s doing well.”The entire sequence is unlikely to ease Republicans’ concerns over Vance’s performance during the campaign as polls show Trump trails Harris.He has repeatedly grappled with scandals over his past declarations about women and what he perceives their role to be in American society, especially after he characterized Democratic leaders as “childless cat ladies” and excoriated a teachers union president for not having “her own” children.Furthermore, the Guardian reported Saturday that Vance gave a 2021 podcast interview in which he said professional women had chosen “a path to misery” by prioritizing their work over having children. Those comments had largely gone unnoticed previously. More

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      ‘Dangerous and un-American’: new recording of JD Vance’s dark vision of women and immigration

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      Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, said that professional women “choose a path to misery” when they prioritize careers over having children in a September 2021 podcast interview in which he also claimed men in America were “suppressed” in their masculinity.The Ohio senator and vice-presidential candidate said of women like his classmates at Yale Law School that “pursuing racial or gender equity is like the value system that gives their life meaning … [but] they all find that that value system leads to misery”.Vance also sideswiped the Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a one-time Somali refugee, claiming she had shown “ingratitude” to America, and that she “would be living in a craphole” had she not moved to the US.In an emailed response to the Guardian, Omar slammed what she called the “ignorant and xenophobic rhetoric spewed by Mr Vance” as “dangerous and un-American”.Ever since he was picked by Trump, Vance has been hit by scandals over his past comments, especially those concerning women and his perception of their role in society.Last week his campaign was rocked by previous comments blasting a teachers union president for not having “some of her own” children. His previous characterizations of Democratic leaders as “childless cat ladies” have also troubled the Trump campaign’s efforts to appeal to suburban women.Now this latest recording raises renewed questions about Vance’s contribution to the Republican ticket, which is trailing behind Kamala Harris and her bid to be America’s first woman of color president.In the 2021 interview Vance also claimed men and boys in the US were “suppressed” in their masculinity and made racially charged remarks about American cities and his political opponents.Of Afghans who assisted US troops during the occupation of that country who were now seeking to come to America, Vance asked whether “certain groups of people can successfully become American citizens”, and said those hostile to Minneapolis’s Somali American community “don’t like people getting hatcheted in the street in [their] own community”.At the same time, Vance claimed that “the left uses racism as a cudgel”, and that he had been a “little too worried” in the past about such accusations because they can be “career-ending” and “destroy a person’s life”.Sophie Bjork-James, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University who has written extensively on topics including US evangelicals and populist politics, said: “Vance represents a new articulation of rightwing politics that is bridging the Christian right and a tech-influenced hypermasculine conservatism.“He appeals to evangelicals with the message that we find happiness by fulfilling traditional gender roles, which is a cornerstone of white evangelical Christianity. He also speaks to a misogynist trend emerging out of the tech world among people who would prefer not to talk about any kind of diversity at all.”“What they share is the view that women shouldn’t be in paid work: they should be in the home and rearing children. But the public line isn’t ‘we hate women’, it’s ‘women will be happier if they stay at home’,” she added.The Guardian contacted the Vance campaign for comment but received no response.‘Racial and gender resentment’A video version of the podcast was published to YouTube on 20 September 2021, and events discussed in it suggest that it was recorded in the days immediately before. The liberal watchdog Media Matters had previously flagged the broadcast.At that time, Vance was a relatively new political candidate. He achieved national prominence as a writer in 2016, but on 1 July 2021 he announced his candidacy for the US Senate. That March, the far-right tech billionaire Peter Thiel donated $10m to Protect Ohio Values, a Pac established to support a potential Vance candidacy.View image in fullscreenThe recording was initially published as an episode of the podcast of American Moment, a rightwing 501c3 non-profit whose website says its mission is to “identify, educate, and credential young Americans who will implement public policy that supports strong families, a sovereign nation, and prosperity for all”. At the time of the recording, Vance sat on the non-profit’s advisory board; he’s now listed under “board members emeritus” on the organization’s website.Vance’s hosts were American Moment’s president and founder, Saurabh Sharma, and its COO Nick Solheim. Introducing the discussion, Solheim speculated that Vance “may end up with some angry texts after this one. It was a very spicy episode.”In the recording, Vance repeatedly offered a dark vision of the lives of women who prioritized their professional careers.At about 39 minutes into the recording, when asked what he saw inside elite institutions like Yale Law School that made him view them as corrupt, Vance answered: “You have women who think that truly the liberationist path is to spend 90 hours a week working in a cubicle at McKinsey instead of starting a family and having children.”Vance added: “What they don’t realize – and I think some of them do eventually realize that, thank God – is that that is actually a path to misery. And the path to happiness and to fulfillment is something that these institutions are telling people not to do.“The corruption is it puts people on a career pipeline that causes them to chase things that will make them miserable and unhappy,” Vance said. “And so they get in positions of power and then they project that misery and happiness on the rest of society.”Minutes later, Vance adopted the perspective of a hypothetical professional woman to answer Sharma’s question about where “the racial and gender resentment comes from”.“OK, clearly, this value set has made me a miserable person who can’t have kids because I already passed the biological period when it was possible,” Vance began, “And I live in a 1,200 sq ft apartment in New York and I pay $5,000 a month for it.”He continued: “But I’m really better than these other people. What I’m going to do is project my, like, racial and gender sensitivities on the rest of them … even though the way that I think has made me a miserable person, I just need to make more people think like that.”Last weekend, Vance tried to clean up previously reported comments about childless women by claiming it was “sarcasm”.‘Soy boys who want to feed the monster’On the other hand, Vance depicted men and boys as “suppressed”, saying 52 minutes in that “one of the weird things about elite society is it’s deeply uncomfortable with masculinity”.Warming to the theme, Vance said: “This is one weird thing that conservatives don’t talk about enough … We don’t talk enough about the fact that traditional masculine traits are now actively suppressed from childhood all the way through adulthood.”Assessing his young son’s habit of fighting imaginary monsters, Vance said: “There’s something deeply cultural and biological, spiritual about this desire to defend his home and his family.”He connected this with a hypothetical invasion: “If the Chinese invade us in 10 years, they’re going to be beaten back by boys like you who practice fighting the monsters who become proud men who defend their homes.”By contrast, for Vance, “They’re not going to be defended by the soy boys who want to feed the monsters.”“Soy boy” is a term, originating on the “alt-right”, which is used to impugn the masculinity of its targets.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion‘The left uses racism as a cudgel’Looming over the conversation was the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, which had been completed on the orders of Joe Biden on 31 August, just weeks before the recording was published.These events led the trio to discussions of immigration and asylum, in which Vance expressed doubts about the suitability of Afghan and Somali people for immigration to the US, even those who had assisted the US military overseas.At about 22 minutes into the recording, Vance mocked the claims of Afghan refugees to have helped the US military in its occupation, saying: “Apparently, Afghanistan is a country of translators and interpreters because every single person that’s coming in, that’s what they say is this person is: a translator and interpreter.”He attributed the idea that the US should grant asylum to those who helped US forces to “the fraudulence of our elites”, saying: “You talk to people who served in Afghanistan. And one of the things they will tell you is, yeah, a lot of the translators and interpreters who helped us were great guys.”Vance added, however, that “a lot of the interpreters who said they were helping us were actively helping terrorists plant roadside bombs, knowing our routes”, without substantiating the claim.Vance continued: “The idea that every person in Afghanistan, even those who said they were helping us, are actually good people is a total joke.”Vance expressed similar skepticism about another immigrant group, while characterizing himself and others as victims of the left.At about 25 minutes into the recording, Solheim said: “There’s like a whole section of downtown Minneapolis that they call Little Mogadishu. Like that’s what they call it. There’s nothing in English. People are frequently hatcheted to death in the street.”Solheim added: “I was just down there a couple of weeks ago. It’s like a totally different country.”View image in fullscreenReplying, Vance said: “The thing that I hate about this is the left uses racism as a cudgel. And I myself was guilty of being a little worried about that. Like, I don’t want to be called a racist because I knew it can be career-ending and they can destroy a person’s life.”Vance then asked, rhetorically, “Why don’t you want, you know, people getting hatcheted in the street in downtown Minneapolis? Is it because you’re a racist or is it because you don’t like people getting hatcheted in the street in your own community?”“Like, obviously, the answer is the latter,” he concluded. “But the left uses racism as a cudgel to shut us up and to make it impossible to complain about obvious problems.”Last July, not long after being named as Trump’s VP pick, Vance suggested in a speech that Democrats would describe drinking Diet Mountain Dew as racist. The comment backfired and was widely mocked.‘You would be living in a craphole’Several times, the three steered assessments of migrant groups and their capacity for assimilation into negative personal commentary on the Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar.View image in fullscreenAt about 28 minutes in, Sharma said: “You know, thinking about the Minnesota example, specifically, that’s how you get someone like Ilhan Omar, who despises the country.”Vance replied, “I mean, [the US] gave her an incredible amount of opportunity and she has a complete lack of gratitude,” later adding: “My family has been here as far as I can tell for nine, 10, like many generations. I’ve never heard a person in my family express the ingratitude towards this country that Ilhan Omar does towards this country.“And look, this is the way the laws work. This country belongs to Ilhan Omar in the same way that it belongs to me,” Vance allowed.“But my God, show a little appreciation for the fact that you would be living in a craphole if this country didn’t bring you to a place that has obviously its problems, but has a lot of prosperity, too,” he concluded.Congresswoman Omar’s full response to the Guardian took Vance to task over the comments.“The ignorant and xenophobic rhetoric spewed by Mr Vance is not just troubling – it’s dangerous and un-American. I love America fiercely, that’s why I’ve dedicated my life to public service,” she wrote.Omar added: “America deserves better than Vance’s hateful, divisive politics. We are a nation of immigrants, and we will continue to welcome the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free – no matter how much it terrifies small-minded men like JD Vance.”Vance also talked about institutions like universities and the media as components of a “broken elite system”, and portrayed their inhabitants as enemies whom conservatives would need to reckon with.“There is no way for a conservative to accomplish our vision of society unless we’re willing to strike at the heart of the beast. That’s the universities.” More

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      Harris campaign accuses Trump of lying about IVF support after ex-president claims to back treatment – US elections live

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      Kamala Harris’s campaign has responded to Donald Trump’s statement yesterday that he would support requiring the government or private insurances to back IVF care:It’s worth noting that Democrats in the Senate have proposed legislation that would protect access to IVF, in response to the Alabama supreme court’s decision earlier this year that essentially banned the care in the state.However, Republican lawmakers have stopped that bill from passing:On Friday, in comments to Fox News, Trump also clarified his position on a Florida amendment that would enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution and overturn the six-week abortion ban, saying he would vote against it. The Republican candidate had previously told NBC News that the six-week window is “too short”, sparking confusion about his stance.“I think six weeks, you need more time than six weeks,” Trump said Friday, but added: “At the same time, the Democrats are radical because the nine months is just a ridiculous situation where you can do an abortion in the ninth month … So I’ll be voting no for that reason.”The amendment would ensure access to abortion care before fetal viability around the 24th week, and add exceptions when the mother’s health is in danger.Trump addressed the recent controversy at Arlington cemetery, when members of his campaign staff were reported for their behavior during a “crass” photo opportunity for the Republican candidate. Trump was there participating in a wreath-laying ceremony for 13 US service personnel killed in a 2021 suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan, and he told supporters at his rally that he was asked by families there to take photos.Blaming Biden and Harris (whose name mispronounces frequently) for the deaths of these soldiers, Trump said it was a “beautiful ceremony”:“After the ceremony they said, could you come to the graves?” he said, insisting he didn’t want any publicity.“I am the only guy who would hire a public relations agency to get less publicity,” he said, but added he wanted to do so for these families. “I am so happy they took pictures of me and them and the tombstone and their lovely son or daughter – there was a daughter too, an incredible daughter, frankly.”But as Richard Luscombe reported:
      In a statement, Arlington acknowledged one of its representatives became involved in the altercation with two Trump staffers, telling them that only cemetery representatives were allowed to take video and photographs in section 60, an area where recent US casualties, mostly from Iraq and Afghanistan, are buried.
      “Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign,” the statement said, adding that “a report was filed” over the incident.
      “Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants,” the statement said.
      The staffers “verbally abused and pushed the official aside” as the person attempted to prevent them from accompanying Trump into the section, according to NPR, which first published the allegation on Tuesday night.
      Here are some of the latest pictures from the Trump rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania:Trump has already hit many of his favorite talking points in this speech, opening by scolding journalists present at the event, using derogatory nicknames for his opponents, and talking about his patriotism. He claimed he would push for prison time for anyone who burns an American flag, even though the action is protected by the constitution, and that he agrees with death sentences for drug dealers. He also repeated claims about immigration.From the Guardian’s Chris McGreal:
      Donald Trump has attacked foreign governments for allegedly emptying their prisons and shipping criminals to the US illegally. But then said that if he was in charge of the same countries he would be more effective at the same thing.
      ‘If I was running one of those countries, I’d be doing better than them at getting them out,’ he told a rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
      Trump was hitting a favoured theme even though he has yet to produce evidence for his claim. But he did make reference to the release of video of Venezuelan gangs operating in Aurora, Colorado including shootouts. Trump has previously alleged that the Venezuelan government is one of those sending known criminals across the Mexican border.
      Donald Trump’s supporters have gathered and are waiting for him to speak in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The former president is expected to take the stage at about 4.45pm ET, before heading to a national summit in Washington of Moms for Liberty, a conservative organization pushing for the removal of LGBTQ+ mentions and structural racism from schools.Kamala Harris’s campaign has responded to Donald Trump’s statement yesterday that he would support requiring the government or private insurances to back IVF care:It’s worth noting that Democrats in the Senate have proposed legislation that would protect access to IVF, in response to the Alabama supreme court’s decision earlier this year that essentially banned the care in the state.However, Republican lawmakers have stopped that bill from passing:If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard much about Joe Biden these past few days …It’s because the president has been on vacation ever since giving the keynote speech on the first night of last week’s Democratic convention. Photographers saw him on Rehoboth Beach, Delaware on Wednesday:Here’s a look back at his speech to the Democratic convention, where he made good on his pledge to pass the torch to Kamala Harris:The Harris campaign clearly wants to keep reproductive rights at the top of voters’ minds in the weeks that remain before the 5 November election.Here’s Gwen Walz, the wife of vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz, in Virginia:Yesterday, Donald Trump said he would support requiring the government or private insurances to pay for IVF care.Patrick T Brown, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center who opposes abortion, called Donald Trump’s statement of support for a Florida ballot measure that would expand abortion access “another middle finger towards pro-lifers.”Though Trump played a major role in overturning Roe v Wade by appointing three of the conservative justices who approved the ruling, Brown’s piece underscore how uneasy his relationship is with advocates for limiting abortion. Here’s more, from Brown’s Substack:
      Florida is faced with a ballot amendment that would wipe nearly all restrictions on abortion off the books this fall. It needs 60% of votes to pass, so pro-lifers had been modestly hopefully they could keep the “yes” vote under the threshold. But their cause will not be helped by Trump suggesting that he is “going to be voting that we need more than six weeks” (though his campaign later “clarified” that he “has not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative.”) This, of course, comes after Trump has repeatedly stressed how “everyone” should be happy that the Dobbs returns abortion regulation to the states. Apparently his version of federalism only goes one direction, as his sandbagging of the efforts of Gov. Ron DeSantis and other pro-life Florida Republicans could push the “yes” side over the finish line in November – a catastrophe for the pro-life cause in the Sunshine State and nationwide.
      But wait – there’s more. At a rally that night, he outlined a proposal for covering IVF either through an Obamacare insurance mandate or paying for it with public money. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the cost per successful IVF outcome ranges somewhere around $61,000, and over 90,000 babies were born via IVF in 2022 (2.5% of all births nationwide.) That’s a static estimate of $50 billion over a ten-year budget window, putting aside what universally available free IVF would do to increase demand. For those who remember the contraceptive mandate fight of 2012, this would be that — on steroids.
      Kamala Harris’s response to a question during her CNN interview last night about her views on Israel’s invasion of Gaza was not well received by the Uncommitted movement, which has called for the Democratic party to stop supporting the incursion.“Israel has a right to defend itself – we would,” Harris said, while adding, “How it does so matters,” and “Far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.”She reiterated her support for the Biden administration’s long-running efforts to secure a ceasefire in the enclave, saying, “We have got to get a deal done. This war must end.”In response, the Uncommitted National Movement’s co-founders, Layla Elabed and Abbas Alawieh, said:
      The Vice President’s statement was morally indefensible and politically shortsighted as the lack of American consequences for Netanyahu’s horrific assault on Palestinian civilians in Gaza has emboldened Israel to now invade the West Bank. Vice President Harris must turn the page from one of the most glaring foreign policy failures of our time by aligning with the American majority that opposes sending weapons to Israel’s assault on Gaza.
      The controversy over the Trump campaign’s visit to Arlington does not appear to be going away – and some Democrats are weighing in on what they see as the latest example of the former president’s lack of respect for fallen soldiers and active servicemen and women.New Jersey congresswoman and former Navy pilot Mikie Sherill wrote on X earlier this week: “Arlington National Cemetery isn’t a place for campaign photo-ops. It’s a sacred resting place for American patriots.“But for Donald Trump, disrespecting military veterans is just par for the course. It’s an absolute disgrace.”And the Hill reports Virginia congressman Gerry Connolly and Maine representative Jared Golden – a former Marine – also criticized Trump’s use of the military cemetery for campaign purposes.Connolly said it was “sad but all too expected that Donald Trump would desecrate this hallowed ground and put campaign politics ahead of honoring our heroes”.Golden reportedly said “all visitors should take the time to learn the rules of decorum that ensure the proper respect is given to the fallen and their families”.In her interview with CNN, Kamala Harris made herself out to be a centrist leader who was not interested in discussing how her election would break longstanding racial and gender barriers in US politics, the Guardian’s Gabrielle Canon reports:In a primetime spot on CNN Thursday evening, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz sat for their first interview together as the Democratic ticket, taking questions from the anchor Dana Bash on a range of important issues, including their plans for day one if they win the race, the approach to the war in Gaza, and how Joe Biden passed the baton.With just over two months until voters will head to the polls on 5 November – and even less time before some will mail in their ballots – the Democratic candidates for president and vice-president made good on a promise to speak more candidly about how they will tackle the US’s most pressing problems.But this interview was about more than just policies and priorities.For weeks, Republicans and members of the media have called for the nominees to open themselves up to questions, especially the vice-president, who has for the most part sidestepped unscripted moments in the six weeks since the president ended his bid for re-election and endorsed her. Analysts and opponents were watching Thursday’s interview closely for new insights into how a Harris administration would approach the presidency, how the candidates interact with one another, and how she would respond in more candid moments.Here’s what we learned:Kamala Harris finally sat down for an interview yesterday, alongside her running mate Tim Walz. The encounter with CNN quelled weeks of growing pressure for her to interact with the press, though expect it to amp back up again if she doesn’t keep the outreach going. Here’s more on what the vice-president had to say, from the Guardian’s Robert Tait:Democrats lauded it as the perfect pitch; Donald Trump dismissed it as “boring”, while fellow Republicans invoked derogatory terms like “gobbledygook”.Between the two extremes, Kamala Harris appeared to have achieved what she wanted from Thursday’s groundbreaking CNN interview, given along with her running mate, Tim Walz – her first since become the Democratic presidential nominee.Under fierce scrutiny after nearly six weeks of interview radio silence, the vice-president earned lavish praise from the Democratic base while denying Republicans a clear line of attack simply by avoiding major missteps of the type that undid Joe Biden’s candidacy in June’s climactic debate.The performance is also unlikely to shake up a race that has reversed itself since Harris entered it and replaced Biden, flipping a narrow but solid Trump lead into a contest in which she is now firmly ahead.A commentator with AZCentral.com – a news site in the key swing state of Arizona – called the performance “too sane to be great TV”, an implicit comparison with Trump’s frequently ostentatious media appearances.Commenting on her championing of Biden’s record in office, the New York Times noted that “it turns out, Ms Harris is a better salesperson for Mr Biden’s accomplishments and defender of his record than he ever was”.But the highest praise came from Harris’s party supporters.“This interview with Dana Bash is a moment to recognize that it is absolutely under-appreciated that Vice President Harris is running a perfect campaign,” Bill Burton, a former deputy press secretary in Barack Obama’s presidency, posted on X.For Donald Trump’s niece, his political ascension has been so devastating that it pushed her to seek ketamine treatment, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:In a new memoir, Mary L Trump, niece of Donald Trump, writes of being pushed to despair, and ketamine therapy, by her uncle’s victory in the 2016 presidential election, his chaotic, far-right administration and his refusal to leave national politics despite his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020.“I’m here because five years ago, I lost control of my life,” Mary Trump writes, describing ketamine treatment undertaken in December 2021. “I’m here because the world has fallen away and I don’t know how to find my way back.“I’m here because Donald Trump is my uncle.”Her doctor, she says, answered: “I’m sorry. That must be very difficult for you.”Now 59, Mary Trump is a trained psychologist and bestselling author. Her new book, Who Could Ever Love You: A Family Memoir, will be published in the US on 10 September. The Guardian obtained a copy.Kamala Harris is looking to keep her momentum with voters going, after yesterday conducting the first interview of her presidential bid with CNN, alongside her running mate Tim Walz. Her campaign has announced plans for an abortion-focused bus tour that will crisscross swing states, while Georgia is reportedly seeing a surge in registrations by new voters, particularly among the groups most likely to vote for Democrats. Speaking of abortion, Donald Trump yesterday said he supported a ballot initiative to overturn Florida’s six-week ban on the procedure, but both his campaign and running mate JD Vance are trying to walk back the comment, underscoring the perils of the GOP’s position on the issue.Here’s what else has happened today so far:

      Trump also broke with years of Republican orthodoxy by saying he wouldn’t move to block abortion access in Washington DC, and told supporters he wanted the government or private insurance to pay for IVF care.

      Spencer Cox, the Republican governor of Utah, apologized after his campaign used images of Trump’s visit to Arlington national cemetery this week – which the former president has refused to do.

      House Republicans will travel to southern California for a judiciary committee hearing that will likely be aimed at Harris and her stance on undocumented migration.
      House Republicans, who have spent much of their nearly two years in control of Congress’s lower chamber investigating the Biden administration with mixed results, will next week hold a judiciary committee hearing on the effects of undocumented migrants in California.That is, of course, Kamala Harris’s home state, which she represented in the Senate from 2017 to 2021. The hearing, titled “The Biden-Harris Border Crisis: California Perspectives” will take place next Friday in Santee, California, a San Diego suburb in a Republican-leaning House district.Donald Trump and his allies have campaigned on cracking down on undocumented migrants, and have accused Harris of changing her answers over whether or not she supports building a wall along the border with Mexico.The vice-president’s stated policy on the matter is a little more complicated than they make it out to be:NBC News asked Donald Trump about his campaign’s decision to use images of his visit to Arlington national cemetery in communications to supporters, including on TikTok.He downplayed the controversial decision, saying, essentially, that they were just pictures and that he did not know “what the rules and regulations are”: More