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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

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      Kamala Harris says she would appoint a Republican to cabinet if elected president – live

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      Kamala Harris said that if elected she would appoint a Republican to serve in her cabinet.In her first major interview since becoming the Democratic nominee, the vice-president told CNN journalist Dana Bash that she had spent her career “inviting diversity of opinion”.“I think it’s important to have people at the table when some of the most important decisions are being made that have different views, different experiences. And I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my Cabinet who was a Republican,” Harris said.Donald Trump defended his visit to Arlington national cemetery this week and accused the media of creating a scandal over photos his campaign took of his appearance at the site.US army officials confirmed Thursday that a worker at Arlington national cemetery was “abruptly pushed aside” during an altercation with members of the former president’s staff, and that Trump’s team was explicitly told in advance that it was against the law to take photographs and video footage at the cemetery.During his speech in Michigan, Trump said that he was invited to Arlington by the family of some of the 13 US servicemen and women killed in a suicide bomb attack ahead of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.“I spent a lot of time there. And while I was there, those families that asked me to be there … they said, could you take pictures over the grave of my son, my sister, my brother? Would you take pictures with us, sir?” Trump said. “I did. And then I said, farewell. I said, goodbye, and last night I read that I was using the site to politic, that I used it to politic. This all comes out of Washington.”“They ask me to have a picture. And they say, I was campaigning. The one thing I get is plenty of publicity. I don’t need that. I don’t need the publicity.”During his speech in Michigan, Trump has aired his usual grievances, complaining about the media’s coverage of his speeches and polling.He complained about Kamala Harris replacing Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee, criticizing her 2020 presidential campaign, and criticized the media’s responses to the vice-president compared to the responses to his speeches, and accused polls of being rigged.“They can make those polls sing. They can make them do whatever they want,” he said, without evidence.He also targeted the United Auto Workers, which has endorsed Harris, and their president Shawn Fain, calling up Brian Pannebecker, the founder of Auto Workers for Trump, to briefly speak on stage during his speech. Trump praised Pannebecker’s arms before taking back the microphone.Donald Trump continued his attacks on Kamala Harris in blustering – and often demonstrably false – remarks at a Michigan steel plant on Thursday.Trump gave the speech in front of an American flag between groups of supporters wearing hard hats and reflective work vests. He walked out to greet the crowd to God Bless the USA by Lee Greenwood, a Trump supporter, as his campaign has received cease and desist letters from musicians for unauthorized use of their music in 2024 campaign videos and rallies including Abba, Beyoncé, Celine Dion, and the Foo Fighters.“Your long economic nightmare will very soon be over,” Trump said. “When was the last time you heard about the American dream. They don’t talk about it. They copy everything else I do so I guess that’ll be that they’ll be copying that.”Trump accused Kamala Harris of being a “Marxist” and a “fascist”, and he criticized the Biden administration’s immigration policies.He jumped on the criticism the Harris campaign has received for the lack of interviews she has given to the press – Harris sat down with CNN this week in her first major interview. Trump also repeated falsehoods about US election integrity, polling and abortion laws.The Republican presidential candidate has escalated his attacks on Harris in recent days.Kamala Harris said that if elected she would appoint a Republican to serve in her cabinet.In her first major interview since becoming the Democratic nominee, the vice-president told CNN journalist Dana Bash that she had spent her career “inviting diversity of opinion”.“I think it’s important to have people at the table when some of the most important decisions are being made that have different views, different experiences. And I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my Cabinet who was a Republican,” Harris said.In the first clip of the CNN interview with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, the vice-president said that her values have not changed.CNN journalist Dana Bash asked Harris what voters should make of the changes to some of her policy positions.“Dana, I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed,” Harris said.“You mentioned the Green New Deal. I have always believed that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time,” she said. “We did that with the Inflation Reduction Act.”“My value around what we need to do to secure our border – that value has not changed. I spent two terms as the attorney general of California prosecuting transnational criminal organizations, violations of American laws regarding the illegal passage of guns, drugs and human beings across our border. My values have not changed.”CNN journalist Dana Bash shared a photo of her interview with Tim Walz and Kamala Harris, and said we’ll see the first excerpt from their talk in about 10 minutes:Donald Trump is scheduled to speak this afternoon about the economy at a steel plant in Potterville, Michigan.It’s the Republican candidate’s eighth visit to the state this year, and his speech will take place at Alro Steel’s facility in the town just west of the state capital, Lansing.The Secret Service will receive additional military support to protect presidential and vice-presidential candidates, Reuters reports.Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, approved a request for unspecified support to the agency, which will be provided by the military’s US Northern Command at different locations, a Pentagon spokesperson announced. She did not elaborate on what kind of support would be provided.CNN journalist Dana Bash conducted the interview with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz this afternoon.It was Harris and Walz’s first joint interview since becoming the Democratic standard bearers, as well as Harris’s first sit-down interview since Joe Biden ended his bid for a second term.Before the broadcast, the New York Times published a Q&A with CNN reporter Astead Herndon, who last year had a lengthy interview with Harris for a profile. He remembers his talk with the vice-president as “arduous”. Here’s more:
      In a word or two, how would you describe that 2023 interview?
      Arduous! When she sat down, I asked her if she liked her job, and she said she did – but that she didn’t like doing this. I was putting her in a position to self-reflect, and to articulate her own story of growth and change. I thought she would want to tell a story on that front, and was surprised that she did not.
      During the interview, she showed a reluctance to label herself politically, like when you asked her how she saw herself in the world of California politics. How did that shape the interview and shape your understanding of her?
      It showed how she does not view herself with those labels and feels confined by those boxes. I think she’s someone who doesn’t like feeling known, doesn’t like you assuming to have figured her out, and I think that’s true politically and personally.
      I don’t think she loses any sleep over whether you think she’s a moderate or progressive. I think she thinks, ‘I’m a person who makes big and hard decisions, with all the evidence in front of me.’ That’s what’s mattered most as a prosecutor and attorney general, and I think that’s how she views political leadership.
      Donald Trump has not said much publicly about the campaign staffer who pushed aside an employee of Arlington national cemetery during his visit there earlier this week.But JD Vance has responded by calling the episode “fake”, and downplaying the uproar it generated:The Trump campaign earlier this week said it would release video proving that the incident did not happen the way it has been reported, but has not yet done so.The setting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s interview with CNN is Kim’s Cafe, a local Black-owned business in Savannah, Georgia.Perhaps Harris or Walz will explain their choice of the venue in the interview, which airs at 9pm this evening. But it can be surmised that it’s part of their outreach to African American voters, a bloc that could decide the outcome in several swing states, including North Carolina, Michigan and Pennsylvania.Here’s more from the Guardian’s Melissa Hellman on what Black voters in Georgia are looking for from the Democratic ticket:JD Vance addressed his previous comments about former president Donald Trump during his speech to the firefighters’ union on Thursday, telling them that “once upon a time” he wasn’t a “Trump guy either”, adding that “the president never lets me forget it”.Vance continued:
      But the truth is, I didn’t fully believe in the promises Trump made, I didn’t believe in the promises that any politician made, and you shouldn’t either. But I didn’t change my mind because of Donald Trump’s promises, I changed my mind because he did a good job for the American people.
      During his speech to the International Association of Fire Fighters in Boston on Thursday, JD Vance was met with boos and heckles as he told the crowd that he and the former president Donald Trump “are proud to be the most pro-worker Republican ticket in history”.“I know this is a diverse union,” Vance said later in his speech. “Some of you love President Trump, and some of you clearly don’t, I’ve heard from both sides just giving this little speech.”In 2019, the International Association of Fire Fighters union endorsed Joe Biden for president, and called him one of the “strongest and most influential voices for hard-working Americans”.“After supporting Democrats so long in this union, what has it gotten you?” Vance asked the crowd on Thursday.The Financial Times reported on Thursday that Vance made the plea in an interview with the outlet.Vance reportedly told the Financial Times:
      I’m going to keep on talking to Peter and persuading him that – you know, he’s obviously been exhausted by politics a little bit – but he’s going to be really exhausted by politics if we lose and if Kamala Harris is president.
      He is fundamentally a conservative guy, and I think that he needs to get off the sidelines and support the ticket.
      This comes as last year, Thiel said that he was not planning on funding any 2024 races after he backed Trump in 2016. But, he said at the time, “there’s always a chance I might change my mind”.JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate and Ohio senator, spoke at the International Association of Fire Fighters convention in Boston earlier this afternoon.Right as Vance was about to begin his speech, the vice-presidential hopeful was met with a mix of applause and boos from the crowd.“Sounds like we’ve got some fans and some haters”, Vance said. “That’s OK. Let’s listen to what I have to say here and I’ll make my pitch.”Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate and Governor of Minnesota, spoke at the same convention on Wednesday.The army has issued a rare statement rebuking Donald Trump’s campaign for their conduct at Arlington national cemetery earlier this week. It acknowledged that one of their employees was “pushed aside” during his visit in what it described as an “unfortunate” incident. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are set for their first interview since ascending to the top of the Democratic ticket, which CNN will air at 9pm tonight (though we may see excerpts earlier in the day). The pair are currently in south Georgia, as part of their strategy to limit losses in rural areas of a swing state that could be vital to their path to the White House. Late yesterday, a poll showed Harris drawing near even with Trump in the four Sun Belt swing states, including Georgia, while polling released today showed a similar dynamic in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.Here’s what else has happened today so far:

      Trump shared a TikTok video of his visit to Arlington national cemetery, which may have violated federal law, NPR reports.

      The big question of the 10 September presidential debate appears to have been answered: microphones will be off when the candidates aren’t speaking, as Trump preferred, according to a copy of the rules obtained by the Associated Press.

      Democratic Senate candidates are holding their own against the GOP in key races nationwide, Emerson College found, though it did not poll the re-election prospects of Democratic senators in the red states Montana and Ohio.
      Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will meet for the first time when they debate on 10 September.But the two sides have been at odds in recent days over whether or not the candidates’ microphones would be on or off when it isn’t their turn to speak. Harris’s campaign wants them activated, but Trump appears to prefer them to be off – as they were during his June debate against Joe Biden.The Associated Press obtained a copy of the rules that debate host ABC News shared with the campaigns, which indicates that mics will be off, as Trump prefers. Here’s more:
      Next month’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump won’t have an audience, live microphones when candidates aren’t speaking, or written notes, according to rules that ABC News, the host network, shared this week with both campaigns.
      A copy of the rules was provided to the Associated Press on Thursday by a senior Trump campaign official on condition of anonymity ahead of the network’s announcement. The Harris campaign on Thursday insisted it was still discussing the muting of mics with ABC.
      The parameters now in place for the Sept. 10 debate are essentially the same as they were for the June debate between Trump and President Joe Biden, a disastrous performance for the incumbent Democrat that fueled his exit from the campaign. It is the only debate that’s been firmly scheduled and could be the only time voters see Harris and Trump go head to head before the November general election.
      The back-and-forth over the debate rules reached a fever pitch this week, particularly on the issue of whether the microphones would be muted between turns speaking.
      Harris’ campaign had advocated for live microphones for the whole debate, saying in a statement that the practice would “fully allow for substantive exchanges between the candidates.”
      Biden’s campaign had made microphone muting condition of his decision to accept any debates this year, a decision some aides now regret, saying voters were shielded from hearing Trump’s outbursts during the debate.
      “It’s interesting that Trump’s handlers keep insisting on muting him, despite the candidate himself saying the opposite,” Harris spokesman Ian Sams said. “Why won’t they just do what the candidate wants?”
      Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will tape their interview with CNN in Savannah, Georgia, after spending yesterday on a bus tour of the swing state’s southern counties.While most Democratic supporters these days are found in Georgia’s urban and suburban areas, Harris and Walz’s tour is part of a strategy to win at least some votes in GOP-leaning rural areas of the state.Harris will cap off the swing with a solo rally in Savannah at 5.30pm today, though Walz won’t be in attendance. Their joint interview is scheduled to air on CNN at 9pm. More

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      Project 2025 started a half century ago. A Trump win could solidify it forever | David Sirota

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      You can be forgiven for thinking Vice-President Kamala Harris’s first attack ad against Donald Trump seems a little far-fetched. Launched this week, the television spot has all the hallmarks of a YouTube video promoting an internet conspiracy theory. There’s the obligatory scary music and the baritone narrator warning about a mysterious manifesto with the kind of cartoonish name that a Bond villain would label his blueprint for global conquest: Project 2025.And yet, this isn’t a Dr Evil send-up: Project 2025 is very real, it is absolutely Trump’s agenda and it wasn’t some slapdash screed that came out of nowhere. It is the culmination of the 50-year plot that our reporters at the Lever have uncovered in our new audio series Master Plan – a scheme first envisioned by the US supreme court justice who created the foundation for Citizens United and the modern era of corporate politics.Project 2025 touts itself as “the conservative movement’s unified effort to be ready for the next conservative Administration to govern at 12:00 noon, January 20, 2025” – a grandiose and self-important billing, but no overstatement. The 922-page manifesto is a plug-and-play agenda of detailed policies designed to immediately empower the conservative movement, billionaires and Republican donors the moment Trump is sworn in for a second term.Highlights include plans to kill off climate regulations; eviscerate pollution laws; terminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that protects Americans from Wall Street scams; raise taxes on the middle class to finance billionaire and corporate tax cuts; empower the White House to replace civil servants with ideological loyalists; and limit the government’s authority to enforce campaign finance laws designed to deter pay-to-play corruption.The blueprint’s provenance means that it isn’t some fanciful pie-in-the-sky wishlist – it is a meticulously constructed action plan designed to be implemented, just as an earlier version of it was in Trump’s first term.Project 2025 was built with the involvement of at least 140 former Trump administration officials, it is endorsed by a constellation of oligarch-funded conservative groups, and it is published by the powerful Heritage Foundation, which Trump himself lauded as “a great group” that is “going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America”.This connection to the Heritage Foundation isn’t incidental. It tells us that conservatives see a Trump presidency as the final stage of their grand half-century scheme to destroy the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society – a scheme first outlined a half-century ago.Heritage was originally launched in the early 1970s with seed funding from the beer magnate Joseph Coors. He told a historian that his political activism at the time was specifically “stirred” by a 1971 memo authored by the soon-to-be supreme court justice Lewis Powell. That memo written for the US Chamber of Commerce implored corporations and oligarchs to be “far more aggressive” in influencing the political system, which he feared was becoming far too responsive to popular demands for the regulation of business.“It is essential that spokesmen for the enterprise system – at all levels and at every opportunity – be far more aggressive than in the past,” wrote Powell, who would soon after author a landmark supreme court ruling giving corporations new rights to spend money influencing elections. “There should be not the slightest hesitation to press vigorously in all political arenas for support of the enterprise system. Nor should there be reluctance to penalize politically those who oppose it.”According to documents unearthed in Master Plan, the chamber established a taskforce on the Powell memorandum composed of executives from some of the country’s most powerful corporations including General Electric, Phillips Petroleum, Amway and United States Steel.At a series of secret meetings in the 1970s, those powerbrokers formulated ways corporate groups could build out their political, legal and communications apparatus. The resulting political infrastructure – conservative thinktanks, law firms and advocacy groups – aimed to weaken campaign finance laws so that corporations could wield more power, and then use that power to tilt the courts and legislative systems in their favor.With Powell’s memo inspiring Coors’s lavish funding, Heritage carved out a special role for itself in all this nascent organizing: it focused intently on public policy.“Around the vortex of Heritage have spun projects, individuals and organizations devoted to Coors’ ambition to rescue the United States from the gloom and despair he believes it to be in,” the Washington Post reported in 1975. “Weyrich and Coors agree that the liberalizing trend must be halted or the United States will become, in effect, another version of godless communism.”In a White House memo just before that story was published, President Gerald Ford’s deputy chief of staff, Dick Cheney, told his boss, Donald Rumsfeld: “Coors may have problems by using this tax exempt foundation to support political activities.”But as the Powell memo movement’s conservative legal groups secured supreme court victories gutting campaign finance laws and ushering in the era of dark money, such groups faced little scrutiny in how they blurred the legal distinction between dispassionate charity and political machine.Heritage was most certainly the latter, and within a few years of its launch, it was focused on influencing presidential administrations with the original version of Project 2025 – Mandate for Leadership, described in the press at the time as “a blueprint for grabbing the government by its frayed New Deal lapels and shaking out 48 years of liberal policy”.“Mandate for Leadership was published in January 1981 – the same month Ronald Reagan was sworn into his presidency,” Heritage gushes in the foreword of Project 2025, which is officially the ninth installment of the Mandate for Leadership series. “By the end of that year, more than 60 percent of its recommendations had become policy.”Underscoring that success, Reagan delivered a speech at Heritage lauding “the importance of the Heritage Foundation, the remarkable work of Ed Feulner, Joe and Holly Coors [and] so many of you in this room in bringing to Washington the political revolution.”Fast forward through the neoliberal rampage of tax cuts and deregulation that defined Reagan’s term and three more Republican presidencies, and the question now is: would that same political revolution inspired by the Powell memo’s master plan continue if Trump wins again?The recent past offers clues: during the first year of Trump’s first term, Heritage boasted that two-thirds of its 2016 Mandate for Leadership recommendations were championed by the Republican president.Will Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation’s agenda find the same receptive audience in a second Trump administration? Or should we trust Trump when now – under assault by Harris’s criticism – he insists he doesn’t even know what Project 2025 is?The answer to that can be found in the words of Trump’s own running mate.“The Heritage Foundation isn’t some random outpost on Capitol Hill,” wrote the Republican vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance. “It is and has been the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.”

      David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an award-winning investigative journalist. He is an editor at large at Jacobin, and the founder of the Lever. He served as Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign speechwriter More

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      Vance says Harris can ‘go to hell’ in critical remarks on Biden administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal – live

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      JD Vance said at a rally that Kamala Harris can “go to hell” as he heavily criticized the Biden administration’s handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal.The Republican vice-presidential candidate was speaking at a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania. Republicans have long sought to use the Afghanistan pullout to attack Joe Biden and are now using the same line of criticism against Harris in hopes of defeating the Democrat in November.Sarah Palin won a new trial in her libel lawsuit against the New York Times.A jury in 2022 rejected the former Alaska governor’s claims of defamation. Palin had argued that the newspaper damaged her reputation by linking her campaign rhetoric to the 2011 Arizona shooting that wounded US representative Gabby Giffords and left six others dead.On Wednesday, a federal appeals court ruled that she should receive a new trial, and found that the judge in the original proceedings made several errors, including wrongly excluding evidence.A spokesperson for the Times called Wednesday’s decision “disappointing” while Palin’s lawyer said it was “a significant step forward”.Mike Waltz, a Republican congressman, shared a statement from the families of US soldiers killed and injured during the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, who said they approved of Donald Trump’s campaign staff taking photos and videos during his visit to Arlington national cemetery on Monday:However, according to NPR, an Arlington official got into an altercation with Trump’s campaign staff because the former president’s entourage had been visiting a section of the grounds where only cemetery employees can take photos.It’s unclear whether Trump having the permission of some of the families of those buried there is relevant to the cemetery’s policies.Speaking of Donald Trump, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that the former president is gearing up to continue his legal challenge against special counsel Jack Smith, who yesterday unveiled a new indictment against him for trying to overturn the 2020 election:Donald Trump is expected to​ continue to battle against criminal charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election by challenging further parts of the revised indictment that removed allegations​ the US supreme court found were subject to immunity​.The superseding indictment ​filed on Tuesday by special counsel prosecutors mainly removed allegations about Trump’s efforts to use the​ justice department to ​obstruct the peaceful transfer of power and reframed the narrative to say Trump was being charged in his capacity as a candidate​.The document retains the same four criminal ​conspiracy statutes against Trump that were originally filed last summer. But portions of the new indictment have been rewritten to emphasize that Trump was not acting in his official capacity during his efforts to try​ to overturn the election.Trump’s lawyers see the changes as minimal and will seek to pare back the charges further, ​according to people familiar with the matter, because they consider large parts of what remains in the updated indictment to be presumptively immune conduct that the judge needs to resolve​.In that sense, there are no immediate consequences of the ​special ​counsel Jack Smith getting a superseding indictment in the case. Trump still ​plans to initiate new litigation, ​which will be appealed to the US court of appeals for the DC circuit​, and any trial would not happen before the November election.JD Vance said the Trump campaign was given permission to have a photographer present during his visit this week to a section of Arlington national cemetery where photography is not allowed.“There is verifiable evidence that the campaign was allowed to have a photographer there … they were invited to have a photographer there,” Vance said during a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania.NPR has reported that two Trump campaign staffers got in an altercation with a Arlington official for filming and taking pictures in a section of the cemetery reserved for recent US military casualties, and where only staff members are allowed to use cameras.Addressing reports of a scuffle, Vance said: “The altercation at Arlington cemetery is the media creating a story where I really don’t think that there is one,” and, “Apparently somebody at Arlington cemetery, some staff member, had a little disagreement with somebody, and they have turned the media has turned this into a national news story.”During an appearance in Erie, Pennsylvania, this afternoon, JD Vance trotted out a new attack line against Kamala Harris, accusing her of running a “copycat campaign”.The Ohio senator, who Donald Trump selected as his running mate last month, said, without offering evidence, that the Democratic nominee had adopted the same policies as his campaign.“If you look at her campaign the past week and a half, she pretends that she agrees with Donald J Trump on every issue. She is running a copycat campaign,” Vance said.There are wide differences between the two campaigns – something Vance well knows, considering that he spent much of his speech attacking Harris for her support of efforts to encourage electric vehicle usage.The “copycat campaign” line may be a reference to one of the few areas where the two candidates align, which is on taxing tips. Trump has said he’d like to remove taxes on gratuities, and Harris recently said she would support that as well. The policy is generally seen as a way to woo votes in Nevada, a swing states with a large number of workers dependent on tips:The US supreme court has declined a request from the Biden administration to allow a plan that would lower or pause federal student debt payments for borrowers to take effect, the Associated Press reports.Joe Biden proposed the plan, known as Save, after a previous attempt to cancel billions of dollars in federal student loans was blocked by the supreme court’s conservative majority. Republican-led states sued over the Save plan, and have won rulings against it at the appeals level.Today’s decision from the nation’s highest court will allow those rulings to stand while litigation plays out.Here’s more, from the AP:
      The justices rejected an administration request to put most of it back into effect. It was blocked by 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
      In an unsigned order, the court said it expects the appeals court to issue a fuller decision on the plan “with appropriate dispatch.”
      The Education Department is seeking to provide a faster path to loan cancellation, and reduce monthly income-based repayments from 10% to 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income. The plan also wouldn’t require borrowers to make payments if they earn less than 225% of the federal poverty line — $32,800 a year for a single person.
      Last year, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority rejected an earlier plan that would have wiped away more than $400 billion in student loan debt.
      Cost estimates of the new SAVE plan vary. The Republican-led states challenging the plan peg the cost at $475 billion over 10 years. The administration cites a Congressional Budget Office estimate of $276 billion.
      Two separate legal challenges to the SAVE plan have been making their way through federal courts. In June, judges in Kansas and Missouri issued separate rulings that blocked much of the administration’s plan. Debt that already had been forgiven under the plan was unaffected.
      The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that allowed the department to proceed with a provision allowing for lower monthly payments. Republican-led states had asked the high court to undo that ruling.
      But after the 8th Circuit blocked the entire plan, the states had no need for the Supreme Court to intervene, the justices noted in a separate order issued Wednesday.
      The gunman who tried to kill Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, viewed the event as a “target of opportunity”, the FBI revealed today, according to the Associated Press.The special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh office, Kevin Rojek, told reporters that Thomas Crooks, who opened fire on Trump, searched on the internet for: “Where will Trump speak from at Butler Farm Show?” “Butler Farm Show podium” and “Butler Farm Show photos” ahead of the former president’s rally in July.However, Rojek said that Crooks’s motive remains a mystery: “We have a clear idea of mindset, but we are not ready to make any conclusive statements regarding motive at this time.”The gunman who tried to assassinate former president Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania in July searched more than 60 times for information about Trump and Joe Biden, before registering for the Trump rally, according to a new Reuters report that cites FBI officials.Reuters also reported that Kevin Rojek, the FBI’s top official in western Pennsylvania, said that the 20-year-old gunman, Thomas Crooks, mounted a “sustained, detailed effort to plan an attack on some events, meaning he looked at any number of events or targets”.Crooks then became “hyper focused” on the Trump rally after it was announced, Rojek said.According to USA Today, Rojek said that Crooks researched the Trump and Biden campaigns between April and July 2024.A new poll released today by ActiVote shows the vice-president, Kamala Harris, and the former president Donald Trump “essentially tied” in the battleground state of Michigan, with Harris leading Trump by just 0.2%.The new Michigan presidential poll was conducted between 28 July and 28 August and was among 400 likely voters. The poll has an “average expected error of 4.9%”, the company said.According to the data, Harris leads among such as urban voters, women, low income voters, young voters in Michigan, where Trump leads among rural and suburban voters, men, and those 50 to 64 years old, ActiVote wrote.A new survey released by Gallup suggests that a majority of Americans continue to approve of labor unions.According to the survey, 70% of respondents said that they approve of labor unions, up from 67% last year. This year’s approval rating is the second highest recorded by Gallup since 1965, per the data, with the 2022 being the highest with 71% approval rating of labor unions.The recent survey, which was conducted in August of this year, also states that 23% of respondents said that they disapproved of labor unions and 7% had no opinion.The new data comes as Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate and governor of Minnesota, spoke to unionized firefighters this morning at the International Association of Fire Fighters convention in Boston.Controversy brews over a report that campaign staffers for Donald Trump were involved in a physical altercation with an official from Arlington national cemetery, which he visited earlier this week. Trump’s former defense secretary Mark Esper told CNN he was waiting to hear the outcome of an investigation into the scuffle, while saying the cemetery should never be used for “partisan political purposes”. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris’s communications director indicated that her campaign and Trump’s were still not on the same page about the rules for their 10 September debate, with the sticking point being whether the candidates’ microphones would be live when it was not their turn to talk. Trump seems to want them switched off, while Harris’s people want them on.Here’s what else has happened today so far:

      Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor who is Harris’s running mate, invited unionized firefighters to tune into the debate, saying: “It’s going to be good.”

      Clips of JD Vance attacking people who do not have children keep emerging.

      Trump continued to rail against the gag order imposed on him in his hush money case, saying it is preventing him from talking about the “most important and corrupt aspects” of his prosecution.
      Donald Trump’s legal troubles are clearly on his mind today, if his recent Truth Social posts are any indication.The special counsel Jack Smith yesterday unveiled a new indictment of the former president for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. While it does not dramatically alter the facts of the case, and appears mostly a response to the supreme court’s immunity decision handed down last month, the Guardian’s Victoria Bekiempis reports in our Trump on Trial newsletter that it may be a sign the former president’s luck in the courts has run out:Donald Trump is meanwhile busy on Truth Social, posting about various things on his mind, including the gag order he remains under in his New York hush-money case.The order prevents him from making statements about prosecutors, court staff and their families, at least until his 18 September sentencing date. That’s a fairly small group of people, but Trump is nonetheless very upset about it, as he wrote:
      When asked about the lawless Manhattan D.A. Hoax, I am not allowed to talk about the most important and corrupt aspects of it, because of the completely unConstitutional Gag Order. I am the first Candidate in American History who is not allowed to freely speak about a major Witch Hunt being perpetrated against him. I must be immediately released from the Gag Order, so I can continue to expose the Weaponization of our Justice System by the Radical Democrats. The GOOD NEWS is that the American People see through these Witch Hunts, and will bring us a dominant Victory on November 5th. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
      Donald Trump yesterday said he had agreed on the rules for his 10 September debate with Kamala Harris, but a spokesman for the vice-president indicates they still are not on the same page over whether the microphones will be on or off when it is not a candidate’s turn to speak.Trump yesterday said he had agreed to the same rules that governed his June debate with Joe Biden. In that case, microphones were muted when it was not time for him or the president to talk.In an interview with CNN today, the Harris campaign’s communications director Michael Tyler implied that Trump had agreed that microphones would be on throughout – something the former president has not explicitly said.“We’re going to have a 90-minute debate. Both candidates have said that they are comfortable with live, unmuted microphones for the duration of the debate that allows for the free flow and exchange of ideas between the two candidates. I understand that Donald Trump’s team of handlers is now attempting to overrule him. But as insofar as the candidates themselves, we’re in total alignment that this should be a 90-minute debate with live microphones. And so that’s what we look forward to,” Tyler said.Asked if Harris would attend the debate, hosted by ABC News, if microphones are not always on, Tyler replied:
      We fully intend to debate. We’re going to be there. The question is, will Donald Trump commit to the terms that he’s publicly agreed to? Or will he let his team overrule him? So I guess we’ll see if when he shows up on September 10, which decision he has made. More

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      Who is running for president in 2024? Harris, Trump and the full list of candidates

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      The 2024 election season is well under way.The campaign was marked by a consequential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, followed by weeks of pressure on Biden following his debate performance, culminating in his announcement that he would drop out of the race.As Biden reconsidered his re-election, there was an attempted assassination against Trump, followed by the naming of the Ohio senator JD Vance as the Republican vice-presidential pick.After Biden’s surprise announcement, he backed his vice-president, Kamala Harris, as his choice to replace him on the party’s ticket. Harris quickly secured enough delegates to become the presumptive Democratic pick. She tapped the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate, and both were confirmed as their party’s nominees at the Democratic convention in August.Also in August, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the independent candidate with no shortage of wild stories, suspended his campaign and threw his support behind Trump.Here is the full list of candidates as of 27 August, including some long-shots who hope to challenge the major party candidates in November..gu-candidate-container.svelte-yah0vs.svelte-yah0vs{cursor:pointer;display:flex;flex-wrap:wrap;justify-content:center;width:80px}.gu-candidate-container.true.svelte-yah0vs.svelte-yah0vs{width:70px}.gu-candidate-container.true.svelte-yah0vs img.svelte-yah0vs{filter:grayscale(.8) opacity(.3) contrast(1.8);width:50px}.gu-candidate-container.true.svelte-yah0vs p.svelte-yah0vs{color:#707070}img.svelte-yah0vs.svelte-yah0vs{border-radius:100%;width:100%}p.svelte-yah0vs.svelte-yah0vs{color:#121212;font-family:Guardian Text Sans Web,Helvetica 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      The remaining candidatesView image in fullscreenDonald TrumpFormer president of the United States. Running mate: JD VanceDonald Trump accepted the Republican party’s nomination for president for the third consecutive time. At the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, the former president formally accepted the nomination on a night that was supposed to be filled with calls for unity but instead was marked by alarmist language and false claims.Trump announced Vance – once a vocal “never Trumper” – as his pick for the nomination for vice-president at the Republican convention.View image in fullscreenKamala HarrisVice-president of the United States. Running-mate: Tim WalzHarris officially accepted the Democratic party’s presidential nomination at the Democratic convention in August in Chicago, after a whirlwind tour of battleground states alongside her running mate, Walz.Harris’s campaign came after weeks of pressure following Biden’s disastrous June debate, and after Biden announced he would not accept his party’s nomination and endorsed her to replace him on the Democratic ticket.Immediately following Biden’s decision, Harris confirmed her intention to “earn and win this nomination” as a flood of Democrats endorsed her campaign, heading off a competitive race for the Democratic ticket.Harris made her first official campaign stop in Delaware on 22 July and has crisscrosed the country, stopping in swing state after swing state, since.View image in fullscreenJill SteinDoctor and activist. Running mate: Butch WareLeftwing environmentalist Jill Stein formally launched her third presidential bid in an online conversation in November 2023. Stein also stood as the Green party’s candidate in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections. Her candidacy follows the decision by Cornel West, the party’s original likely nominee, to leave the Green party and run as an independent.View image in fullscreenCornel WestProfessor and progressive activist. Running mate: Melina AbdullahThe progressive activist Cornel West announced in a video posted to Twitter that he was running for president as a member of the People’s party, a third party headed by a former campaign staffer for Bernie Sanders. West is currently a professor of philosophy at Union Theological Seminary and previously worked at Harvard but resigned, saying the school had an “intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of deep depths”.Dropped outView image in fullscreenJoe BidenPresident of the United States, dropped out 21 July 2024Joe Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election, winning all the party’s primary contests. However, following a disastrous debate performance in June against Trump, and weeks of pressure, Biden announced on 21 July that he would not accept the party’s nomination. Biden endorsed Kamala Harris to replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket. Biden served in politics for more than five decades, culminating in his 2020 victory over Donald Trump.Ryan BinkleyBusinessman and pastor, dropped out 27 February 2024Binkley, a Texas businessman, was a long-shot candidate who is also a pastor at Create church. The self-proclaimed far-right fiscal conservative criticized both Democrats and Republicans for not being able to balance the federal budget, and said he would focus on health costs, immigration reform and a national volunteer movement.View image in fullscreenDoug BurgumGovernor of North Dakota, dropped out 4 December 2023Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, announced his campaign in an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal on 6 June 2023. Viewed as a surprise, long-shot candidate, he touted his experience as a career businessman and leaned on his small-town roots in an announcement video titled Change. As governor, Burgum signed into law a near-total abortion ban, which makes the procedure illegal after six weeks, and only permissible in cases of rape, incest or medical emergency up to that point. He supported Donald Trump for president in 2016 and in 2020.View image in fullscreenChris ChristieFormer governor of New Jersey, dropped out 10 January 2024The former New Jersey governor has emerged as one of the harshest Republican critics of Donald Trump, whom he endorsed for president in 2016 after dropping out of that race. Christie says he broke ties with the former president after the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, claiming that he hadn’t spoken to Trump since then. Christie, a lawyer and a lobbyist who served as a US attorney appointed by George W Bush, announced he was running for president a second time on 6 June 2023 in New Hampshire during a town hall.View image in fullscreenRon DeSantisGovernor of Florida, dropped out 21 January 2024Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida was predicted to be the strongest contender for the GOP nomination against Donald Trump, consistently polling second among Republican primary voters. He made his formal announcement on Twitter, during a Spaces event attended by roughly 300,000 users that was riddled with technological glitches, on 24 May 2023. DeSantis, who has served as Florida’s governor since 2019 and handily defeated the Democratic challenger, Charlie Crist, in 2022, previously represented Florida’s sixth congressional district as a member of the US House from 2012 to 2018. As governor, DeSantis has signed a slate of laws banning minors from receiving gender-affirming care and restricting education on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools, and he has become an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist party.Larry ElderConservative radio host, dropped out 26 October 2023The rightwing political commentator and radio talkshow host announced his run for president on Fox News as a guest on the now-canceled Tucker Carlson Tonight on 20 April 2023. In 2021, Elder joined a list of Republicans seeking to replace Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, in a failed recall. The Los Angeles resident was an outspoken critic of the state’s mask mandates, calling them “a joke”.View image in fullscreenNikki HaleyFormer ambassador to the United Nations, dropped out 6 March 2024Haley, who got her start in politics as a member of South Carolina’s general assembly, was governor of the state from 2011 to 2017. She ended her second term early to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations under Donald Trump before announcing her resignation in 2018. She became the first Republican to announce a run against Donald Trump, even though she previously said she would not run against him. Haley vowed to “fix” the US immigration system by “stopping illegal immigration” and described herself as pro-life, but said a federal abortion ban was unrealistic. Haley, who is the daughter of Indian immigrants, would have been the first US president of Asian descent, as well as the first woman.Will HurdFormer congressman from Texas, dropped out 10 October 2023Former US Representative Will Hurd, of Texas, entered the crowded primary field as a moderate and critic of Donald Trump. Hurd announced his campaign in an interview on CBS. He followed that with a video posted online in which he called Trump a “lawless, selfish, failed politician” and laid out an agenda to curb “illegal immigration”, inflation, crime and homelessness. Hurd, who worked for nearly a decade in the CIA, served three terms in the House, from 2015 to 2021. He left office as the only Black Republican in the chamber.View image in fullscreenAsa HutchinsonFormer governor of Arkansas, dropped out 16 January 2024Hutchinson is the former governor of Arkansas, a post he held from 2015 to 2023. The relatively unknown politician announced his candidacy in an interview on ABC days after Trump was indicted in a Manhattan court, saying the ex-president should drop out of the race. Hutchinson is a businessman and lawyer who was appointed by Ronald Reagan to serve as a US attorney. He also served a stint in the US House of Representatives, winning a congressional seat in 1996 when he replaced his brother, Tim, who ran for Senate.View image in fullscreenPerry JohnsonBusinessman, dropped out 20 October 2023Johnson is a businessman who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Michigan in 2022 after providing fraudulent nominating signatures for that campaign. Originally from Illinois, Johnson founded dozens of companies, and lives in Michigan with his family. He has billed himself as Donald Trump “without the baggage” and has taken similar policy positions on curbing US debt and cracking down on the FBI.Robert F Kennedy JrLawyer and author, dropped out 23 August 2024Robert F Kennedy Jr, known for his work as an environmental lawyer and his anti-vaccine views, said he was running for president to end the “chronic disease epidemic”. Kennedy, who compared vaccine mandates during the Covid-19 pandemic to “Hitler’s Germany”, has promoted other baseless conspiracy theories such as telecom networks being used to control people. He is the nephew of John F Kennedy, the former Democratic president, who was assassinated in office, and is the son of 1968 Democratic presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy, who was assassinated on the campaign trail. He suspended his campaign on 23 August and endorsed Trump.View image in fullscreenMike PenceFormer vice-president of the United States, dropped out 28 October 2023Mike Pence officially launched his campaign for president on 7 June 2023, in a rare instance of a former vice-president challenging the president with whom he shared a ticket a few years ago. Pence joined a crowded Republican field in which he has consistently polled third, even before he officially announced his candidacy, though he trails far behind DeSantis and Trump. Pence was angling for a wide base among evangelical Christians and had vowed to ban abortion if he were elected. He denounced the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, and had used it as a talking point against Trump, who turned against him after he publicly refused supporters’ calls to overturn the results of the election.View image in fullscreenDean PhillipsRepresentative from Minnesota, dropped out 6 March 2024Dean Phillips, a three-term Democratic congressman from Minnesota, challenged Biden, saying the next generation should have the opportunity to lead the country. Phillips is the heir to a distilling company and once co-owned a gelato company. He entered public office spurred by fighting back against Trump.Vivek RamaswamyEntrepreneur and author, dropped out 16 January 2024The biotech entrepreneur and political newcomer announced his campaign in a video describing attacks on the “culture of free speech in America” and again on Fox News in an interview with now-fired Tucker Carlson. He is the author of Woke, Inc, a book that lobbies against “ESG” – a framework of corporate governance that encourages companies to consider the environment and social justice issues. Ramaswamy, who was the youngest candidate vying for the Republican nomination, had lobbied in favor of raising the national voting age to 25. Ramaswamy would have been the first president of Asian and Indian descent. He had also vowed to pardon federally indicted Donald Trump.Francis SuarezMayor of Miami, dropped out 29 August 2023Suarez, the mayor of Miami, was the first major Hispanic candidate seeking the Republican party nomination this election cycle. The son of Miami’s first Cuban-born mayor, Suarez had said he would broaden support for Republicans among Latino voters. He was the third candidate from Florida to join the crowded primary field, alongside frontrunners Trump and DeSantis. Suarez, who was first elected in 2017, filed paperwork to run the day after Trump appeared in a Miami court over federal charges and made his formal announcement on Good Morning America the day after that.View image in fullscreenTim ScottSenator from South Carolina, dropped out 13 November 2023In May, Scott became the second politician from South Carolina to run for the Republican nomination. He has served as a senator from South Carolina since 2013, when he was appointed by Republican challenger Nikki Haley to fill a vacancy. Scott, who is one of three Black members of the Senate and is the only Black Republican senator, said in his announcement speech that “America is not a racist country”. Scott joined fellow Republicans in opposing the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022. Scott served as a member of the House from 2011 to 2013 and before that spent stints in South Carolina’s general assembly and Charleston’s county council. During his 2010 campaign for the House of Representatives, Scott told Newsweek that homosexuality was a morally wrong choice.View image in fullscreenMarianne WilliamsonAuthorFailed 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, who also unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the US House of Representatives in 2014, became the first Democratic candidate to announce she is running for president as a challenge to Joe Biden. Williamson, an author of self-help books, launched her long-shot bid with campaign promises to address climate change and student loan debt. She previously worked as “spiritual leader” of a Michigan Unity church. She originally ended her campaign on 7 February 2024 but announced on 28 February she was “un-suspending”. More

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      JD Vance attacks childless teachers in newly resurfaced remarks

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      JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate and US senator from Ohio, attacked teachers who do not have children in newly resurfaced remarks from 2021.In the resurfaced clip, Vance, who was speaking at a forum held by the Center for Christian Virtue, attacks “leaders on the left” and Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, for not having children.“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,” Vance can be heard saying in the clip.“Randi Weingarten, who’s the head of the most powerful teachers’ union in the country, she doesn’t have a single child. If she wants to brainwash and destroy the minds of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone.”In a post on X, Weingarten responded to Vance’s resurfaced comments, calling them “gross”, and adding that the remarks are “sad and insulting to millions of modern families, and school teachers including Catholic nuns, none of whom should be targeted for their family decisions”.Weingarten, whose union endorsed Kamala Harris for president in July, continued: “Teachers who are in back-to-school mode right now help other people’s children every single day. Those who virtuously serve our communities should be lauded, not vilified.”The remarks resurfaced on social media this week and have already been making the rounds online. Kamala Harris’s campaign also shared the clip of the remarks online on Tuesday.A spokesperson for Vance did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but in a statement sent to NBC News on Tuesday, Taylor Van Kirk, a spokesperson for Vance, said the Ohio senator “will continue to loudly call this crap out to defend our kids”.“There is no bigger threat to American children than the leftwing indoctrination being peddled in our schools by radicals like Randi Weingarten, with the support of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz,” Van Kirk added.The newly resurfaced comments come just weeks after Vance came under fire after a clip of him in 2021 calling leading Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies” resurfaced after he was chosen by the former president Donald Trump to be his running mate in the 2024 election. The comments caused outrage and were quickly denounced by many Democrats, as well as celebrities and some Republicans.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionVance has claimed that the “childless cat ladies” comment was merely a “sarcastic remark”.In additional resurfaced clips, Vance has said that people without children should pay higher taxes, and that people with children should be given more voting power than those without children. More

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      Special counsel files new indictment against Trump in election subversion case – live

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      Donald Trump faces a new indictment in the 2020 case against him after the US supreme court ruling that former presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution.The new indictment filed by the special counsel Jack Smith dropped allegations that Trump attempted to pressure the US justice department in his effort to overturn his defeat.Kamala Harris’s campaign denied Donald Trump’s claims that the two sides had reached an agreement about their upcoming debate in September.The former president said Tuesday that he had agreed to the rules for the 10 September debate, which will be their first encounter since Harris kicked off her White House campaign. Trump had previously spent several days suggesting he might not participate.The vice-president’s campaign has suggested the debate terms have not been finalized.“Both candidates have publicly made clear their willingness to debate with unmuted mics for the duration of the debate to fully allow for substantive exchanges between the candidates – but it appears Donald Trump is letting his handlers overrule him. Sad!” the Harris campaign said in a statement.More on the updated indictment against Donald Trump:The justice department filed a new indictment against Donald Trump on Tuesday over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The maneuver does not substantially change the criminal case against him but protects it in the wake of a July supreme court decision ruling saying that Trump and other presidents have immunity for official acts, but not unofficial ones.“Today, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned a superseding indictment, charging the defendant with the same criminal offenses that were charged in the original indictment,” lawyers for Jack Smith, the special counsel handling the case, said in a filing that accompanied what’s known as a supersedeing indictment.“The superseding indictment, which was presented to a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in this case, reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings and remand instructions in Trump v United States.”The document retains the same four criminal charges against Trump that were originally filed last summer. But portions of the new indictment are rewritten to emphasize that Trump was not acting in his official capacity during his efforts to try to overturn the election.Read the full story here:Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will sit down for a joint interview with CNN on Thursday, the outlet reported.The interview will be their first together and the first for the vice-president in more than a month. It comes as Harris has faced growing criticism for not sitting down with a major media organization or holding a full press conference since she began her campaign.The updated indictment against Trump was issued by a grand jury that had not heard evidence in the case before, the special counsel said.The new indictment keeps the same charges, but there are several key changes – primarily, the removal of allegations against the former president related to his interactions with the justice department.It also no longer includes Jeffrey Clark, an official at the justice department who promoted Trump’s false claims that the election had been stolen, as a co-conspirator.Donald Trump faces a new indictment in the 2020 case against him after the US supreme court ruling that former presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution.The new indictment filed by the special counsel Jack Smith dropped allegations that Trump attempted to pressure the US justice department in his effort to overturn his defeat.It’s worth noting that Kamala Harris has not responded to Donald Trump’s announcement that he has reached an agreement for the rules of their debate on 10 September.Earlier this month, her campaign said she would be willing to do two debates, one on 10 September, and another on a to-be-determined date in October. Her running mate Tim Walz will do one debate with Trump’s pick, JD Vance, on 1 October.Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris say they support cutting taxes on tips, and the topic may come up at their debate on 10 September. But as the Guardian’s Michael Sainato reports, workers’-rights advocates aren’t thrilled about the suddenly popular policy:Tipping has always been a controversial subject in the US. Imported from Europe and popularized by some accounts after the fall of slavery to reinforce racial wage disparities, the practice comes freighted with historic baggage.Nor is it overly popular with consumers. Since the pandemic, 72% of US adults say tipping is expected in more places today than it was in 2019, according to a Pew survey. Four in 10 Americans oppose the suggested tips that have been popping up on payment screens everywhere from coffee shops and dry cleaners to self-service machines in airports.That hasn’t stopped Donald Trump and Kamala Harris from putting tips at the center of their election battle. Earlier this month, in a bold move, the vice-president endorsed a policy that the former president touted earlier this year to ban taxes on tips for service workers, as both candidates have been vying for working-class voters in the 2024 election, especially in the swing state of Nevada.At a glance, the idea of giving a break to tipped workers is attractive – in some states, the minimum wage for tipped workers is just $2.13 an hour, and an alarming 14.8% of those workers live in poverty. But the idea raises many issues: why should a low-wage worker who does get tips be treated differently from one who doesn’t? Will higher-paid workers be able to use the measure to cut their tax bills? Harris says no; Trump is less clear.Donald Trump agreed to the rules of the 10 September presidential debate after spending the last few days openly mulling pulling out of the event entirely. Here’s a look back at what we know about the squabble over the debate’s rules, from the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe:Donald Trump has expressed doubt that he will participate in a scheduled televised debate with Kamala Harris next month, hurling a trademark “fake news” slur at the network that agreed to host it.The former president and Republican presidential nominee threatened to pull out of the 10 September meeting with Harris, the vice-president and Democratic nominee for November’s election, in a post on his Truth Social network on Sunday night.Referring to an interview on ABC’s This Week earlier in the day with the host Jonathan Karl and Tom Cotton, the Republican Arkansas US senator, Trump questioned the network’s fairness for the only debate that both presidential candidates had already agreed on.“I watched ABC FAKE NEWS this morning, both lightweight reporter Jonathan Carl’s(K?) ridiculous and biased interview of Tom Cotton (who was fantastic!), and their so-called Panel of Trump Haters, and I ask, why would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network?” Trump wrote with his usual penchant for erroneous uppercase letters.He also alluded to his ongoing defamation lawsuit against the This Week host George Stephanopoulos and the ABC network over comments the anchor made in March stating Trump had been found “liable for rape” instead of sexual abuse in a case brought by the New York writer E Jean Carroll.Donald Trump says he has agreed to the rules for ABC News’s 10 September debate with Kamala Harris, which will be their first encounter since she launched her presidential campaign.The two campaigns had reportedly been at odds over the rules of the debate, with the biggest point of contention being whether the candidates’ microphones would be muted when the other candidate was talking. Politico reported yesterday that Harris’s team wanted the microphones live during the whole broadcast, which would be a change from the CNN-hosted June debate between Trump and Joe Biden.In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that the debate will be held under CNN’s rules – which seems to indicate microphones will be muted when a candidate is not speaking:
      I have reached an agreement with the Radical Left Democrats for a Debate with Comrade Kamala Harris. It will be Broadcast Live on ABC FAKE NEWS, by far the nastiest and most unfair newscaster in the business, on Tuesday, September 10th, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Rules will be the same as the last CNN Debate, which seemed to work out well for everyone except, perhaps, Crooked Joe Biden. The Debate will be “stand up,” and Candidates cannot bring notes, or “cheat sheets.” We have also been given assurance by ABC that this will be a “fair and equitable” Debate, and that neither side will be given the questions in advance (No Donna Brazile!). Harris would not agree to the FoxNews Debate on September 4th, but that date will be held open in case she changes her mind or, Flip Flops, as she has done on every single one of her long held and cherished policy beliefs. A possible third Debate, which would go to NBC FAKE NEWS, has not been agreed to by the Radical Left. GOD BLESS AMERICA!
      Second gentleman Doug Emhoff will host fundraisers in three well-heeled western towns, the Harris-Walz campaign announced this afternoon.Emhoff’s first event will be in Ketchum, Idaho, on Thursday, and then on Friday, he’ll hold fundraisers in San Francisco and in Aspen, Colorado.Harris has raked in donations since entering the presidential race in late July following Joe Biden’s withdrawal, and saw a pronounced surge in fundraising during last week’s Democratic convention: More