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      Georgia judge says women aren’t ‘some piece of collectively owned community property’ in ruling to overturn abortion ban – live

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      Georgia judge: ‘Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property’Some key quotes from the order in which Judge Robert McBurney struck down Georgia’s extremely restrictive abortion ban:
      Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote.
      … [T]he liberty of privacy means that they alone should choose whether they serve as human incubators for the five months leading up to viability. It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a Commander from The Handmaid’s Tale to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb any more so than society could – or should – force them to serve as a human tissue bank or to give up a kidney for the benefit of another.
      … [L]iberty in Georgia includes in its meaning, in its protections, and in its bundle of rights the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her healthcare choices.
      After a Georgia judge’s ruling struck down the state’s restrictive 2019 abortion law, which abortion after roughly around six weeks of pregnancy, advocates and analysts have highlighted the order’s bold arguments, which invoked the Handmaid’s Tale and compared certain kinds of abortion bans to “involuntary servitude” or “compulsory labor.”Some advocates, like senator Tina Smith of Minnesota, have highlighted the broader importance of Georgia allowing access to abortion care through 22 weeks of pregnancy, since many surrounding states in the south also have very restrictive anti-abortion laws.Others, like my colleague Carter Sherman, have noted that this ruling comes after Georgia has made national headlines after a ProPublica investigation into the deaths of two Georgia women, Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, who died what experts called “preventable” deaths after delays in care that were related to Georgia’s anti-abortion law.Georgia judge describes ‘subtext of involuntary servitude’ in abortion debateAnother key quote from the order, by Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney, that overturned Georgia’s restrictive ban on abortion at around six weeks of pregnancy, which state legislators passed in 2019:“There is an uncomfortable and usually unspoken subtext of involuntary servitude swirling about this debate, symbolically illustrated by the composition of the legal teams in this case. It is generally men who promote and defend laws like the Life Act, the effect of which is to require only women – and, given the socio-economic and demographic evidence presented at trial, primarily poor women, which means in Georgia primarily black and brown women – to engage in compulsory labor, ie, the carrying of a pregnancy to term at the government’s behest.”Read my colleague Carter Sherman’s full report here:Who is Judge Robert McBurney, who struck down Georgia’s restrictive abortion ban?It’s not the first time Robert C I McBurney, a Fulton county superior court judge based in Atlanta, has made national headlines.McBurney previously struck down Georgia’s very restrictive ban on abortion at around six weeks of pregnancy and he also presided over parts of the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump and key allies, a case that is currently stalled.McBurney, a former federal prosecutor, was appointed to his role in 2012 by Republican governor Nathan Deal, to fill the seat of a judge who was retiring. He has since run for reelection and won.In 2023, a columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called McBurney “the hardest working judge in Georgia” and said that a joke recently at the Atlanta courthouse was , “Aren’t there any other judges in the county?”McBurney is also set to hear a key case on election regulations in Georgia tomorrow, the Associated Press reports.Georgia judge: ‘Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property’Some key quotes from the order in which Judge Robert McBurney struck down Georgia’s extremely restrictive abortion ban:
      Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote.
      … [T]he liberty of privacy means that they alone should choose whether they serve as human incubators for the five months leading up to viability. It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a Commander from The Handmaid’s Tale to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb any more so than society could – or should – force them to serve as a human tissue bank or to give up a kidney for the benefit of another.
      … [L]iberty in Georgia includes in its meaning, in its protections, and in its bundle of rights the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her healthcare choices.
      More from the Associated Press on the legal reasoning behind the order:
      Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote in his order that ‘liberty in Georgia includes in its meaning, in its protections, and in its bundle of rights the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her healthcare choices.’
      McBurney wrote that his ruling means the law in the state returns to what it was before the law was passed in 2019:
      When a fetus growing inside a woman reaches viability, when society can assume care and responsibility for that separate life, then – and only then – may society intervene.
      An “arbitrary six-week ban” on abortions “is inconsistent with these rights and the proper balance that a viability rule establishes between a woman’s rights of liberty and privacy and society’s interest in protecting and caring for unborn infants”, the order says.Abortions in Georgia can once again be performed through 22 weeks – reportAfter a judge in Georgia struck down the state’s ban on abortions once a doctor can detect a fetal heartbeat, which is usually about six weeks into pregnancy, the procedure is once again legal in Georgia through about 22 weeks of pregnancy, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.More context from the Associated Press:
      When the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022 and ended a national right to abortion, it opened the door for state bans. Fourteen states now bar abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with some exceptions. Georgia was one of four where the bans kick in after about the first six weeks of pregnancy – which is often before women realize they’re pregnant.
      A judge in Georgia struck down the state’s ban on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.The law was similar to many passed by Republican-led states after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022. Democrats, including Kamala Harris, have recently seized on the law as an example of the consequences of electing Donald Trump and the Republicans, after a woman was reported to have died in the state after being denied lifesaving care due to the law. Here’s more on that:As many as 600 people remain missing after Hurricane Helene swept through the south-eastern United States, White House homeland security adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall told reporters.“The current data we have is that it looks like there could be as many as 600 loss of lives, but we don’t have any confirmation of that. We know there are 600 who are either lost or unaccounted for, and so that work is ongoing,” Sherwood-Randall said at the White House press briefing.She added that there’s a high degree of uncertainty to the numbers:
      I’ll caution you, because we’ve seen this before. Those numbers vary widely. There’s a lot of reporting that doesn’t add up about the numbers. And so, while we may see the numbers go up as we get to more locations that have not yet been fully developed in terms of disaster immediate emergency response operations, we may see more people who unfortunately perished, but we may also not see the numbers skyrocket as people have predicted they might.
      Authorities in Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and elsewhere have already confirmed more than 100 deaths from the storm that swept in from the Gulf of Mexico:Donald Trump’s dystopian vision for the United States took a new turn on Sunday, when he mulled adopting something only seen in horror films to fight crime. The Guardian’s Robert Tait has more:Donald Trump has been accused of invoking plotlines similar to The Purge – a dystopian horror film in which officially sanctioned murder is occasionally legal – as a possible solution to crime in the US after saying it could be eradicated in “one really violent day”.In what was seen as an extreme display of demagoguery even by his standards, Trump drew cheers from an audience in Erie, Pennsylvania, with a picture of an out-of-control crime spree that he said could be ended “immediately” with one “real rough, nasty day”, or “one rough hour”.“You see these guys walking out with air conditioners with refrigerators on their back, the craziest thing,” Trump said. “And the police aren’t allowed to do their job. They’re told, if you do anything, you’re gonna lose your pension.“They’re not allowed to do it because the liberal left won’t let them do it. The liberal left wants to destroy them, and they want to destroy our country.”In a passage that provoked a storm on social media, the former president and Republican nominee then said: “If you had one day, like one real rough, nasty day with the drug stores as an example, where, when they start walking out with … ”Further evidence that Donald Trump has no intention of giving the politicking a rest in the wake of Hurricane Helene can be found on X, where he implies, once again without evidence, that North Carolina’s Democratic governor Roy Cooper is frustrating the humanitarian response.“I’ll be there shortly, but don’t like the reports that I’m getting about the Federal Government, and the Democrat Governor of the State, going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas,” Trump wrote.North Carolina is considered a swing state in this election, though it has not voted for a Democratic candidate since 2008, and polls there have lately shown Trump with a narrow lead.The governorship seems to be slipping away from GOP candidate Mark Robinson, after CNN broke the news that he had a long history of making lewd and offensive comments on a pornography websites’s message board. Here’s the latest on that fiasco:When he spoke before a furniture store gutted by Hurricane Helene in Valdosta, Georgia, Donald Trump insisted he was not there for political purposes. His social media posts tell a different story.About an hour ago on Truth Social, he seized on the below tweet from Kamala Harris:The former president wrote that the photo of the president was “FAKE and STAGED”, without providing evidence, then went on to accuse both Harris and Joe Biden of leaving “Americans to drown in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and elsewhere in the South”.“Under this Administration, Americans always come last, because we have ‘leaders’ who have no idea how to lead!” Trump added.Thousands of Americans died in hurricanes that struck Texas, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere during Trump’s presidency. After he left office, a report found that his administration unnecessarily delayed emergency money for Puerto Rico, after it was devastated by Hurricane Maria:Donald Trump attempted to put politics aside as he spoke before a furniture store damaged by Hurricane Helene in Valdosta, Georgia.That’s despite the fact that he had minutes earlier accused Joe Biden of not speaking to the state’s governor Brian Kemp following the storm, even though the White House said the two men spoke on Sunday.“As you know, our country is in the final weeks of a hard-fought national election, but in a time like this, when a crisis hits, when our fellow citizens cry out in need, none of that matters. We’re not talking about politics now. We have to all get together and get this solved,” Trump said.Kamala Harris made a little bit of news earlier today, saying in an interview that she supported legalizing marijuana – a step even the cannabis-friendly administration of Joe Biden hesitated to embrace.“I just feel strongly people should not be going to jail for smoking weed. And we know historically what that has meant and who has gone to jail,” Harris told the All the Smoke podcast. “Second, I just think we have come to a point where we have to understand that we need to legalize it and stop criminalizing this behavior.”The vice-president added: “This is not a new position for me. I have felt for a long time we need to legalize it.”The statement represents a break with Biden, who moved to lower restrictions on cannabis while still keeping it broadly illegal at the federal level. Full decriminalization would solve the array of conflicts that have developed as states have moved to legalize marijuana for medicinal and recreational purposes. Here’s more on that:In about 30 minutes, Donald Trump will speak from a furniture store in Valdosta, Georgia, a town affected by Hurricane Helene.The former president began his visit to the swing state by falsely claiming that Joe Biden had not spoken to Georgia governor Brian Kemp. Here’s video of the remark, from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:The White House announced yesterday that Biden had spoken to Kemp, a Republican, along with Roy Cooper, North Carolina’s Democratic governor, and Valdosta mayor Scott Matheson.When Tim Walz and JD Vance take the debate stage tomorrow night, expect to see two very different styles of debating, and two equally different views of the nation’s future, the Guardian’s Rachel Leingang reports:When Tim Walz and JD Vance square off as vice-presidential picks on Tuesday, it will be the biggest debate stage for both of the politicians who are newly becoming household names.Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, and Vance, a Republican senator from Ohio, have been honing their public-speaking skills – and their pointed barbs at each other – in TV appearances and at events around the country in the past few months.Their experiences in electoral debates haven’t reached the levels or notoriety that come along with a presidential campaign, but both have faced opponents in public debates in past elections.Given the tightness of the presidential race, and how poorly the first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump went, there will probably be more people tuned in to the vice-presidential debate than in past cycles. While VP debates don’t usually tip the scales much, they could matter in a close race – and they build profiles for lower-profile politicians who will probably stay on the national scene for years to come.On a press call this morning, Tom Emmer, the Republican representative from Minnesota, confirmed he has been playing Tim Walz in JD Vance’s debate prep.Republicans are seeking to frame Walz, the folksy Minnesota governor who has proved to be the most popular figure in the presidential race, as a mean-spirited, ogreish figure.Asked about his portrayal of Walz, Emmer said: “Quite frankly, it’s tough because he is really good on the debate stage.”Emmer, who ran unsuccessfully for Minnesota governor in 2010, added: “[Walz] is going to stand there and he lies with conviction, and he has these little mannerisms where he’s just, hey, I’m the nice guy, but he’s not nice at all.”Emmer predicted that Vance “is prepared to wipe the floor with Tim Walz and expose him for the radical liberal he is”. He added: “Tim Walz is nothing more than Gavin Newsom [the governor of California] in a flannel shirt.”Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, predicted that Walz is “going to look to stick the shiv into JD Vance at every opportunity” and predicted that: “The Tim Walz we see tomorrow night will be a completely different character from what we’ve seen so far on the 2024 campaign trail.”Asked whether Donald Trump would agree to debate Kamala Harris for a second time, Miller said Trump “has made it pretty clear where he is”. Harris has accepted an invitation to debate on CNN on 23 October, but Trump, who was widely viewed to have lost the first debate, has claimed that it is “too late” for a second debate.The US Department of Justice has agreed to pay $22.6 million to settle a lawsuit by 34 women who claim they were wrongly dismissed from the FBI’s agent training academy because of their sex, according to a court filing today.The settlement, which must be approved by a federal judge in Washington DC, would resolve a 2019 class action claiming the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is part of the Justice Department, had a widespread practice of forcing out female trainees, Reuters reports.The plaintiffs say that they were found unsuitable to graduate from the training academy even though they performed as well as or better than many male trainees on academic, physical fitness, and firearms tests. Some of them also say they were subjected to sexual harassment and sexist jokes and comments.Along with the payout, the proposed settlement would allow eligible class members to seek reinstatement to the agent training program and require the FBI to hire outside experts to ensure that its evaluation process for trainees is fair.Department’s internal watchdog released a report in 2022 finding that female FBI trainees were disproportionately likely to be dismissed and to be cited for conduct “unsuitable” for an agent. Less than one-quarter of FBI special agents are women, the agency said in a report released in April.The man charged with attempting to assassinate Donald Trump after allegedly positioning himself with a rifle outside one of the former president’s Florida golf courses on 15 September pleaded not guilty this morning to five federal charges.Ryan Routh, 58, entered the plea to charges that include attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate during a hearing in federal court. He has already been ordered to remain in jail to await a trial, Reuters reports.Prosecutors have said Routh intended to kill Trump as he golfed at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. Routh, a struggling roofing contractor, condemned the Republican presidential candidate in a self-published book and dropped off a letter months earlier with an associate referencing an attempted assassination on Trump, according to prosecutors.
      This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I failed you,” the suspect wrote, according to a court filing by prosecutors.
      Lawyers for Routh suggested at a 23 September court hearing that the letter may have been an attempt by their client at gaining publicity and highlighted what they called Routh’s efforts to promote democracy in Ukraine and Taiwan.Routh is accused of poking a rifle through a fence at the course with the intention to kill Trump. When a federal agent spotted it and fired shots, the suspect fled but was arrested.Joe Biden finished up his remarks on the impact of Hurricane Helene by saying that as US president he had seen many disasters and heard “dozens of stories from survivors”.“I know how it feels to be left with nothing,” he said, “not even knowing where or when you’re back on track. I’m here to tell every single survivor in these impacted areas that we will be there with you as long as it takes … I urge everyone returning to their communities and homes to listen to the local officials and follow all the safety instructions.”He continued: “Take this seriously, please be safe, your nation has your back and the Biden-Harris administration will be there until the job is done.”In answer to a press question, Biden said no decision has been made yet on whether to ask the US Congress (which is in recess) to come back for a special session to approve additional emergency funding as a result of what he described as the “really, really devastating” storm.He said he had spoken to the governor of North Carolina [Democrat Roy Cooper] and expects to visit the state on Wednesday or Thursday of this week. More

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      Trump and Harris speak in swing states as running mates prep ahead of VP debate – live

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      Kamala Harris is presenting herself as a change agent who will “turn the page” and offer “a new way forward,” a move far from embracing her role in Biden’s White House.Inflation has been tamed. Illegal immigration has stabalized. Violent crime is down. In theory it is a perfect recipe for electoral success. Yet it is a gift that the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, seems reluctant to accept.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “A new way? She’s been part of a very successful administration and she was chosen by Joe Biden as VP and then essentially chosen to be his successor.“But she has to pretend that she’s going to be forging a new path because she can’t afford to be too closely associated with Biden. I know one person on the inner campaign staff who cringes every time Harris and Biden have to appear together because the visual reinforces the tie they don’t want people to make. It’s nonsensical.”Harris, as the incumbent vice-president, will be hoping to avoid a repeat of the Republican president George HW Bush’s fate in 1992. Economic indicators improved over the spring and summer but too late to save him from defeat by Bill Clinton, whose lead strategist, James Carville, memorably summed up: “It’s the economy, stupid.”Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington DC, said: “When it comes to the economy people believe their own eyes and they will make their judgments on that basis. This is a lesson I have learned in the six presidential campaigns I’ve wandered in and out of: if you have statistics on the one hand and personal experience on the other, it’s no contest.”More on Harris distancing herself from Biden’s record:Donald Trump is slated to visit Valdosta, Georgia, on Monday, and receive a briefing on the damage caused by Hurricane Helene and “facilitate the distribution of relief supplies”, his campaign announced.The former president is expected to deliver his remarks at 2pm ET.During a speech in Erie County, Pennsylvania, Trump sent his condolences to the families affected by Helene, which killed at least 64 people.Robert F Kennedy Jr will participate in a “Make America Healthy Again” event with Dr Phil McGraw in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Monday, Trump’s campaign announced.Kennedy, who was staging an independent bid for the presidency, endorsed the former president after dropping out of the race in August.Kennedy has hopes of influencing federal health policy under a possible Trump administration. The former third-party candidate has questioned the safety of vaccinating children and promoted theories that suggest HIV is not the true cause of AIDS.Joseph Costello, a Kamala Harris campaign spokesperson, reacted to Donald Trump’s speech in Erie, Pennsylvania, picking on the former president’s comments about overtime pay.“As president, Trump took executive action to rip away overtime pay for *millions* of workers, including nearly 5 million workers without a college degree,” Costello said on Twitter/X.Costello attached a link to a paper by the Economic Policy Institute titled: More than eight million workers will be left behind by the Trump overtime proposal.Donald Trump wrapped up his speech in Erie, Pennsylvania, by summing up his proposals as a presidential candidate, pledging to end crime allegedly by migrants, strengthen the military, and “keep critical race theory and transgender insanity out of our schools”.Donald Trump repeated his plan to close the Department of Education if he’s elected as president in November.“Let the states run their own education,” he said.“We spend more money per pupil than any other nation in the world, by far, and yet we’re ranked at the bottom of every list,” Trump said. “So you know the expression: what the hell do you have to lose? Right?”Donald Trump claimed Butler, Pennsylvania, has become a tourist site after his attempted assassination in July.“Cars are riding by. They’re taking pictures. It’s become an amazing tourist site,”he said.Trump announced that the event in Butler will honor the firefighter who was shot and killed at the rally in July, Corey Comperator.During his speech, Donald Trump confirmed he will return to Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of the attempted assassination attempt in July. His visit is scheduled for 5 October.“We have a lot of people coming, and I really believe that will be the safest place on Earth,” said the former president.Donald Trump brought US Senate candidate David McCormick of Pennsylvania to the stage. McCormick, ex-CEO of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, is trying to unseat Democratic Senator Bob Casey, who is seeking his fourth term.“It’s a race between strength, a guy who says ‘fight’, and weakness,” McCormick said. “We need to bring law and order to secure that border and stop these illegal immigrants coming in and bringing crime and fentanyl into Pennsylvania.”Donald Trump reaffirmed his stance that workers’ tips should not be taxed.He was the first candidate to endorse this proposal during a rally in June. Months later, Kamala Harris also expressed support for the plan, prompting the former president to label her “Copy Cat Kamala” at other rallies.“We will have no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on social security benefits for seniors,” Trump said on Sunday.“When I win, we will get Pennsylvania energy workers, fracking, drilling, pumping and producing like they have never produced before,” Donald Trump said.“Kamala vowed to repeatedly ban fracking, and she imposed a natural gas export ban that was a killer, that is starving a state right now of your wealth and wealth that you deserve right now,” Trump said.Trump criticized Harris’s support for expanding access and manufacturing of electric vehicles in the US.“Her insane electric vehicle mandate will decimate Pennsylvania’s economy by abolishing gas-powered cars and trucks for American roads and destroying your fossil fuel industry,” he said. “And there are very few states that benefit like you do from fracking.”Donald Trump quoted the lyrics of a song supposedly warning against immigration during his speech in Erie, Pennsylvania.Trump read the lyrics of The Snake, which was written by civil rights activist Oscar Brown in 1963. The song was later a hit for soul singer Al Wilson five years later.In Trump’s interpretation, it serves as a cautionary tale about the alleged danger posed by immigrants. The former president recounted the allegorical tale of a woman who foolishly embraces a dangerous serpent.The former president once again called Kamala Harris “mentally impaired” during his speech in Pennsylvania on Sunday.“Joe Biden became mentally impaired,” Trump said, adding that Harris “was born that way”.“There’s something wrong with Kamala, and I just don’t know what it is, but there is definitely something missing. And you know what? Everybody knows it,” Trump said.He later played an ad against the vice-president, composed of a compilation of her comments regarding immigration.“Honestly, we could give you clips like that all day long. This is not your president. This president would destroy our country, worse than Biden. He’s the worst president in history,” the former president said. More

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      Top Republicans disavow Trump’s ‘mentally disabled’ attacks on Harris

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      Senior Republicans distanced themselves Sunday from comments made by Donald Trump at campaign stops over the weekend that opponent Kamala Harris was born “mentally disabled” and had compared her actions to that of “a mentally disabled person”.Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, pushed back on Trump’s remarks, which came in what Trump himself admitted was a “dark” speech.“I just think the better course to take is to prosecute the case that her policies are destroying the country,” Graham said on CNN. “I’m not saying she’s crazy, her policies are crazy.”Graham’s comments came as immigration and border security remained the top domestic issue on Sunday’s political talk shows. Trump made his comments during a rally in Wisconsin on Saturday amid remarks on Harris’s actions on those issues as vice-president.“Kamala is mentally impaired. If a Republican did what she did, that Republican would be impeached and removed from office, and rightfully so, for high crimes and misdemeanors,” he said.Trump added: “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way. She was born that way. And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.”Minnesota Republican representative Tom Emmer, a member of JD Vance’s debate preparation team, told ABC News: “I think we should stick on the issues. The issues are, Donald Trump fixed it once. They broke it. He’s going to fix it again. That – those are the issues.”But Maryland governor Larry Hogan struck back, telling CBS News that Trump’s comments were “insulting not only to the vice-president, but to people that actually do have mental disabilities.“I’ve said for years that Trump’s divisive rhetoric is something we can do without,” Hogan added.Steven Cheung, the communications director for the Trump campaign, did not directly address Trump’s comments, widely criticized as offensive, but said Harris’s record on immigration and border security made her “wholly unfit to serve as president”.Trump’s comments joined a long list of personal attacks against opponents that supporters at his campaign eagerly lap up. Democrats have their own reductive articulations, calling Trump and Vance “weird”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the use of mental disability to describe Harris’s faculties has been widely seized upon. Democrat Illinois governor JB Pritzker told CNN that Trump’s remarks were “name-calling”.“Whenever he says things like that, he’s talking about himself but trying to project it onto others,” Pritzker said. Eric Holder, the former Obama administration attorney general, said Trump’s comments indicated “cognitive decline”.“Trump made a great deal of the cognitive abilities of Joe Biden,” he told MSNBC. “If this is where he is now, where is he going to be three and four years from now?”Maria Town, president of the American Association of People with Disabilities, pointed out that many presidents had disabilities.Town said in a statement to the Washington Post that Trump’s comments “say far more about him and his inaccurate, hateful biases against disabled people than it does about Vice President Harris, or any person with a disability”. More

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      Walz v Vance: two midwesterners miles apart in politics ready for debate

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      The football coach and the “Yale law guy” go head-to-head in New York City on Tuesday night, as two midwesterners with very different styles and vastly diverging messages slug it out over the future of the US.Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, faces the Republican senator from Ohio, JD Vance, in a vice-presidential debate that promises to be unusually significant in this white-hot election year. They will joust for 90 minutes under the moderation of CBS News as they seek to give their respective running mates – Kamala Harris and Donald Trump – a leg up to the White House.Walz has been prepping for the debate in Minneapolis with the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, masquerading as Vance. (Buttigieg may have been suffering deja vu – he posed as Mike Pence during Kamala Harris’s prep sessions ahead of the 2020 VP debate.)Vance has been holding mock debates with the Republican whip in the US House, Tom Emmer, standing in as Walz. Emmer is a fellow Minnesotan, so has the benefit of having studied Walz up close.The two running mates bring contrasting strengths to the gladiatorial ring. Vance is an experienced debater who will relish confrontation under the glare of the TV lights.“Look, he’s a Yale law guy,” Walz has said about his opponent. “He’ll come well prepared.”Walz by contrast will be able to lean on skills learned in the school classroom. Walz spent 17 years as a public school teacher, so he knows how to think on his feet – and deal with a disruptive kid.“I expect to see a very heated debate,” Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign manager, told CBS News.One of the big questions of the night is likely to be whether Vance can redeem himself after a troubled start to his candidacy. Will he be able to get past all the “weirdness”, as Walz has framed it, and bring consistency to the messaging of an often chaotic Trump campaign?From awkward encounters with doughnut shop workers, to the ongoing furor around his “childless cat ladies” remark, Vance has been the subject of online mockery that has at times appeared to engulf him. He also seems to be stuck on the same culture war issues that consume Trump.“Vance does not seem to have drawn additional voters to the Trump ticket, as the controversies he gets into are exactly the same as those the former president gets into,” said Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.Most egregiously, Vance has doubled down on the false and racist narrative that Haitian immigrants are eating family pets in Springfield, Ohio, despite categorical denials from local authorities. He recently confessed to CNN that he was willing to “create stories” if it meant that he attracted media attention.Such comments have sunk Vance underwater in the opinion of the voting public – his unfavorability rating is 11 points higher than his favorable, according to FiveThirtyEight.Walz by contrast is basking in the glow of a positive four-point gap between his favorability ratings, which poses him with a completely different set of challenges on debate night. He will need to parry Vance’s attempts to frame him as the misinformation candidate based on misrepresentations Walz made about his military record, defuse his rivals claims that he is dangerously liberal, and refuse to be knocked off track.“Walz just needs to get in and out of the debate without causing trouble for his ticket,” Burden said.John Conway, director of strategy for Republican Voters Against Trump, said that Walz was best advised to follow Harris’s playbook. He organised focus groups the day after Harris’s debate with Trump, involving voters from five battleground states who backed Trump in 2016 but switched to Biden in 2020.The focus group attendees were enthusiastic about Harris’s dual approach to the debate – attack Trump for his lies and felony convictions, but also lay out a positive plan for the future of the country. “That’s the blueprint Walz must follow,” Conway said, “attack when appropriate but also be substantive on the issues.”There have been several memorable made-for-TV moments from the VP debates since the first in 1976 between senators Bob Dole and Walter Mondale. Most celebrated is the 1988 incident when the Democrat Lloyd Bentsen chastised George H Bush’s running mate, Dan Quayle, for comparing himself to John F Kennedy.“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”“That was really uncalled for, senator,” Quayle wailed.More recently, John McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, ribbed Joe Biden, the Democratic VP candidate running with Barack Obama, in 2008, by telling him: “Aw, say it ain’t so, Joe.”Those were neat soundbites that entered the lexicons. But it is notable that neither Bentsen nor Palin were rewarded where it matters – at the ballot box.In fact, vice-presidential debates have tended to be underwhelming in terms of the lasting imprint they have left on US elections. Larry Sabato, professor of politics at the University of Virginia, pointed out that even after the dynamic presidential debate between Harris and Trump earlier this month, which was watched by 67 million TV viewers and which Harris was widely judged to have won, the race remains essentially neck-and-neck in the critical battleground states.Sabato said that given the lack of consequences from the debate at the top of the ticket, he expected Tuesday’s vice-presidential tussle to be equally inconclusive. “I don’t expect the vice-presidential debate to make any impact,” he said.Yet this is no ordinary election. Joe Biden’s departure and the sudden elevation of Harris, together with Trump refusing to participate in a second debate with her, has raised the stakes.Tuesday’s spectacle will probably be the final debate before election day on 5 November. “This is really the last main national moment in the campaign, so I do think it is important,” Mook said.Apart from the economy, immigration and foreign wars, which are certain to be addressed during the debate, a more amorphous struggle is likely to play out on stage: who will own the mantle of “authentic midwesterner”? Will it be Nebraska-born Walz, or the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy, Ohio’s Vance.The rivalry goes beyond mere aesthetics or regional loyalties. It resonates heavily in those states where the election could be decided – the three so-called “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.“I don’t know if the word ‘midwestern’ will be used in the debate, but feelings about the midwest will come through,” Burden said.The candidates offer a diametrically opposed vision of the heartlands. Walz’s midwest is folksy and homely, a world where neighbors look after each other, where football coaches double up as local heroes (Walz coached the sport at Mankato West high school from 1997), and where joy fills the air.Vance’s is a much darker picture of drug addiction, broken families and the threat of immigration. His is the midwest of Trump’s “American carnage” dystopia.Two utterly contrasting visions. Two tough and determined candidates. Gentlemen, shall we begin? More

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      Vance to talk at tour hosted by ‘prophet’ who thinks Harris practices witchcraft

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      JD Vance will speak at an event on Saturday hosted by the self-styled prophet and political extremist Lance Wallnau, who has claimed Kamala Harris practices witchcraft and has written that the US is headed toward bloody internal conflict.The campaign announced earlier this week that the Republican vice-presidential candidate will participate in a “town hall” as part of the Courage tour, a traveling pro-Trump tent revival, during a stop in Monroeville, Pennsylvania.Wallnau, who hosts the tour and broadcasts its speakers on his online show – drawing hundreds in-person and sometimes tens of thousands virtually – is a proponent of the “seven mountains” mandate, which commands Christians to seek leadership in seven key areas of society – the church, the education system, the family, the media, the arts, business and government.He is also a leader in the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a movement that features modern-day apostles and has taken hold in particular in non-denominational charismatic churches that embrace faith healing and believe that the Holy Spirit can speak directly through believers in the form of speaking in tongues and prophesy. These religious spaces often also practice “deliverance ministry” and “spiritual warfare” to cleanse people of demonic entities.Karrie Gaspard-Hogewood, a scholar whose research focuses on such groups, noted that NAR-aligned practitioners engage in a unique form of “spiritual warfare” – fighting malign forces in not only individuals who are believed to be inhabited by a malign entity, but also entire geographic areas.“Spiritual warfare is the belief that a demon has taken up residence and is controlling anything from a large geographic space to a culture, to the White House or the supreme court,” said Gaspard-Hogewood.Extremism researchers worry that spiritual warfare, which is by definition waged in the supernatural realm, could become dangerous if interpreted excessively literally. On January 6, spiritual warriors affiliated with the Jericho March rallied at the Capitol to protest against the election results, engaging in a form of spiritual warfare on the National Mall. Wallnau, who himself prophesied that Trump would win the 2016 election and rejected the outcome when he didn’t win again in 2020, doubled down on his position at a stop of the Courage tour in Wisconsin.“January 6 was not an insurrection – it was an election fraud intervention!” Wallnau exclaimed to the roaring crowd.Wallnau has also written in his book, God’s Chaos Candidate: Donald J Trump and the American Unraveling, that he believes the United States is headed toward a potentially bloody clash – a “fiery trial” that will come “both to believers and nations”. In his book, in which he also claims to have met with Trump on multiple occasions, Wallnau writes that the US is entering a “crucible”, which will involve “a ‘conflict’ of ideologies, often arms, to determine a victor in the power clash”.The Courage tour has made stops in Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia.The inclusion of Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, in the tour highlights the Trump campaign’s increasing alignment with a movement on the religious right that seeks to subordinate US government and society to Christian doctrine.A typical day at the Courage tour involves faith healing and music in the morning, followed by a series of speakers preaching about the scourge of secular society and espousing their opposition to LGBTQ+ inclusion. Trump-aligned organizations including TPUSA Faith and America First Policy Institute have had a presence on the tour handing out pamphlets and posting up at stands outside the tent.Vance’s speech marks the first time the Trump campaign has officially linked with the tour. In response to a request for comment about Vance’s participation in the Courage tour, a Trump campaign spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, did not directly comment on Wallnau or Vance’s participation in the event, but wrote that neither “President Trump, nor any of his supporters, ever engaged in an alleged ‘insurrection’.”Wallnau did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Republicans have long enjoyed the support of conservative, and in particular, evangelical Christians. In 2016, Trump, whose profile as a twice-divorced billionaire who has faced multiple accusations of sexual assault, managed to maintain that alliance by assuring his presidency would represent the Christian right through conservative judicial appointments. Trump made good on his promise, ushering in an ultraconservative supreme court, which in 2022 overturned Roe v Wade – delivering opponents of abortion a stunning win.Since 2020, a burgeoning movement of evangelical leaders who seek to separate the church from Maga politics could threaten that alliance. If Trump is able to hold on to those voters and turn out enough conservative Christians at the polls, he could win back the White House.With its 19 electoral votes, Pennsylvania could be a make-or-break state for Harris and Trump. Some polling shows Kamala Harris holding a narrow lead over Trump in the state; other polls suggest the candidates are virtually tied there.Vance’s participation in the Courage tour could alienate some. The campaign is probably betting the support he could shore up from rightwing Christians there will outweigh the risk of appearing at an event with extremist overtones. More

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      God knows we need an antidote to all the lousy men in the news – and I think I’ve found one | Emma Brockes

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      For the past month, every woman I know has been having versions of the same conversation, roughly opening with: for the love of God, how rapey is the news? No period of history has been free from accounts of male sex-offending. But the present roll call of alleged offenders – Diddy, Fayed, the French rapist and his endless accomplices, various scandals in broadcasting, and last week, new charges for the man who keeps giving on this subject, Harvey Weinstein – is particularly grim. For just one day, I would like to turn on the news without having to hear a presenter struggling to find a way to say “lube” in a BBC voice. So let’s talk about something else: Doug Emhoff.Doug Emhoff! Kamala Harris’s husband and consort, a man very possibly in line to be the first first gentleman of the United States and, as far as we can tell, an antidote to lousy men everywhere. This week, I heard Emhoff referred to as a “wife guy”, which made me smile – wife guy being simultaneously a nice term of affection for men who unreservedly support their wives, and also a reminder that no word for a female equivalent can exist. (What use the tautology of being a “husband chick” when, for straight women, embedded in the definition of the word “wife” is total, unwavering support of your husband).Anyway, Emhoff – what a rare beast. A former entertainment lawyer, a music person who named his kids after jazz legends, a man extremely adept at playing the lovable goofball, which doesn’t rule out the possibility he’s a lovable goofball, and a husband seemingly completely happy to promote, support and cheerlead his high-profile wife. To my eye, Emhoff, who is 59, has Dan Aykroyd, or maybe John Goodman, energy: the American every-dad who can rock a plaid shirt at the weekend, and on Monday whip up a quick lawsuit to vanquish your enemies.Exactly how Emhoff has nailed this vibe comes down to a mixture of things. The fact he’s called Doug definitely helps. Has there ever, in public life, been a bad “Doug”? (No.) Doug is easygoing. Doug is dependable – but not boring! Doug shows up. Doug quit his job when his wife became vice-president so he could give her his all. Doug is a mensch, although on the subject of his Jewishness, opponents of leftwing positions around Israel assert that Doug has overplayed his heritage for political gain. This sounds perilously close to Donald Trump’s observations about Harris’s background, but anyway, it’s all part of the 360 degrees of Doug Emhoff. After all, Doug isn’t perfect!I mean, he really isn’t. Earlier this year, Emhoff acknowledged that the end of his first marriage to Kerstin Mackin in 2008 was messy and that he had been unfaithful. It’s not ideal, I know. It is telling, however, that Emhoff’s first wife, who has kept his name, has been extremely active promoting Harris’s bid for the presidency. When JD Vance went after Harris for not having biological children – a sentence it still seems wild to have to type – Kerstin Emhoff popped up to defend the Democratic candidate, calling Vance’s remarks “baseless attacks”. She told CNN that, “for over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I”. She was, she said, grateful to have her as part of their blended family.Which brings us to the Emhoff kids. To anyone’s knowledge, has there ever been a hipster first son or daughter in the White House? Of course, go back enough years and who knows; maybe in 1798, Abigail Adams was riding around the West Wing on a penny farthing drinking mojitos out of a teacup. But in recent memory, ranging back over Trump’s children, the Obama kids, the Bush twins and Chelsea Clinton, every one of them looked perfectly primed for a postgrad internship at Goldman Sachs or a nepo arrangement in Hollywood. Ella Emhoff, by contrast, is a designer specialising in knitwear, who lives in Bushwick, Brooklyn. She turned up at the Democratic convention earlier this year covered in tattoos and wearing pebble glasses and a vintage frock.There are other wife guys out there, although you have to search quite hard to find them. A friend suggests Alexis Ohanian, husband to Serena Williams and millionaire co-founder of Reddit. Ohanian has his own thing going on, which doesn’t guarantee that a man won’t resent his wife’s success. But in public, Mr Serena Williams always seems over the moon to be by her side. There’s an argument for Prince Harry as wife guy. You’ve probably got to rope Denis Thatcher into this conversation. I’m sure there are others.But this is about Doug Emhoff, who, to the extent that we can ever know anything about other people’s relationships, offers further proof of Harris’s good judgment. She could have had anyone, but she chose Doug, and there’s a lesson in that for all of us. Whoever they may be, find your Doug Emhoff – possibly on the second go-around, just to be safe – and run for the biggest job you can imagine.

      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More

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      Mark Cuban says Harris’s economic plan is ‘better for business’; Trump to rally at site of first assassination attempt – live

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      Mark Cuban, who attended Harris’s speech at the Economic Club in Pittsburgh, praised the vice-president’s pitch as “better for business”.Cuban, the entrepreneur and investor who rose to prominence as owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team and star of the reality TV show Shark Tank, lauded Harris for discussing AI and other emerging technologies and her plans to encourage entrepreneurs in an interview with MSNBC.“Every single person in this country has that entrepreneur in them,” he said. “And she’s going to lift them up.”Trump meanwhile, “has no interest in really finding out what it takes to be successful with any policy,” Cuban said.Cuban has been a big supporter of Harris.Harris, in turn, had largely catered this speech to business owners and centrists who may have identified with pro-business Republican candidates in the past, and may be turned off by Donald Trump’s inscrutable economic agenda.The US House passed a three-month government funding package on Wednesday, sending the bill to the Senate with just days left to avert a shutdown set to begin next Tuesday.The vote was 341 to 82, with 132 Republicans and 209 Democrats supporting the legislation. All 82 votes against the bill, which will extend government funding until 20 December, came from House Republicans.Republican House speaker Mike Johnson revealed the legislation on Sunday after his original funding proposal failed to pass last week. Johnson’s original bill combined a six-month funding measure with the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (Save) act, a controversial proposal that would require people to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote. Fourteen House Republicans and all but two House Democrats voted against that bill last Wednesday, blocking its passage.Read the full story here:In Racine county, Wisconsin, the Guardian’s Callum Jones looked at Donald Trump’s promises to “rebuild the economy” and how they panned out. Less than 30 miles south of the Fiserv Forum, the Wisconsin convention center where Republicans confirmed Donald Trump as their nominee for president for the third time, lies the site of a project Trump predicted would become “the Eighth Wonder of the World”.While still in office, the then president traveled to Mount Pleasant in Racine county to break ground on a sprawling facility that the electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn had agreed to build – in exchange for billions of dollars’ worth of subsidies.Flanked by local allies and executives from the company, Trump planted a golden shovel in the ground. “America is open for business more than it has ever been open for business,” he proclaimed in June 2018, as FoxConn promised to invest $10bn and hire 13,000 local workers.Highways were built and expanded. Homes were razed. The area – a former manufacturing powerhouse – was primed for revitalization in a deal that seemed to underline the executive prowess of America’s most famous businessman, an image that has helped maintain many voters’ confidence that he could steer the US economy more competently than his rival, Kamala Harris, and could win him the White House again come November.But on a recent drive around the site, fields of long grass and weeds stretched as far as the eye could see. Trees marked where houses used to stand. The Eighth Wonder was nowhere to be seen.“Everyone was very skeptical it was going to happen,” said Wendy DeBona, a local Uber and Lyft driver, 53. “And then, of course, look what happened.”Foxconn all but pulled the plug in April 2021, blaming “unanticipated market fluctuations” as it drastically cut back its plan and struck a new deal, through which it committed to spend $672m on a campus that would create about 1,400 jobs.Today, a striking glass globe stands over what the firm did, eventually, build. What work is actually taking place there is the subject of local speculation; the company did not respond to a request for comment.Trump had left office by the time Plan A fell through. “They dug a hole with those golden shovels, and then they fell into it,” Joe Biden, his successor, suggested earlier this year. “Foxconn turned out to be just that: a con.”But one section of the site is a hive of activity, with cranes, diggers, trucks, lorries and tractors visible from the road. Biden himself visited in May, as Microsoft announced it would invest $3.3bn into a new data center on part of the land abandoned by Foxconn. The project is set to create 2,300 union construction jobs, and the tech giant has also pledged to build a new academy with a local technical college, through which more than 1,000 students will be trained in five years “to work in the new data center and IT sector jobs created in the area”.So did Biden do what Trump didn’t? It depends on whom you ask. Who is better for the economy will be a crucial question in Wisconsin, a must-win swing state in the race for the White House. The state backed Barack Obama in 2012, Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. As Trump pledges to “rebuild” the US economy by cutting taxes, boosting wages and creating jobs, those attempting to persuade Racine county to reject him believe his role in the Foxconn debacle has shifted the dial.Donald Trump’s campaign has already responded to Harris’s speech, pointing back to Joe Biden’s economic record.“She’s had three and a half years to prove herself, and she has failed. Personal savings are down, credit card debt is up, small business optimism is at a record-low, and people are struggling to afford homes, groceries and gas,” said Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign national press secretary. “ONLY President Trump will Make America WEALTHY Again” (emphasis hers).Although small business optimism remains low, it is not at a record low.As Marketplace explains:
      National Federation of Independent Business’ newest small-business optimism index is out. The good news? The index rose more than two points in July, and small businesses feel the most optimistic they have since February 2022. The less good news? Optimism is still below the survey’s 50-year average.
      The challenge for Trump’s campaign will be holding Harris accountable for the economy under Biden. Polls are increasingly finding that voters are willing to give Harris the benefit of the doubt – and hear her out.Mark Cuban, who attended Harris’s speech at the Economic Club in Pittsburgh, praised the vice-president’s pitch as “better for business”.Cuban, the entrepreneur and investor who rose to prominence as owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team and star of the reality TV show Shark Tank, lauded Harris for discussing AI and other emerging technologies and her plans to encourage entrepreneurs in an interview with MSNBC.“Every single person in this country has that entrepreneur in them,” he said. “And she’s going to lift them up.”Trump meanwhile, “has no interest in really finding out what it takes to be successful with any policy,” Cuban said.Cuban has been a big supporter of Harris.Harris, in turn, had largely catered this speech to business owners and centrists who may have identified with pro-business Republican candidates in the past, and may be turned off by Donald Trump’s inscrutable economic agenda.Although voters overall still seem to favor Donald Trump over Kamala Harris on economic issues, the former president’s edge has been blunted.Recent polls have showed that voters have more faith in Harris than they did in Joe Biden to steer the economy. A Quinnipiac poll released yesterday, for example, found that 52% of voters favored Trump vs 45% for Harris on the economy . An AP poll, meanwhile, found that voters were split – 43% favored Trump on the economy v 415 for Harris.Here’s some analysis from the AP:
      The finding is a warning sign for Trump, who has tried to link Harris to President Joe Biden’s economic track record. The new poll suggests that Harris may be escaping some of the president’s baggage on the issue, undercutting what was previously one of Trump’s major advantages.
      It may help Harris that the economy is also looking up for many voters. Interest rates are coming down, prices are stabilizing.Her speech today didn’t include much that was new – but Harris did detail several specific policies, including reiterating pledges she has previously made to help families with childcare costs, cut taxes for the middle class and encourage affordable housing construction. She also proposed policies to encourage entreprenuership.Harris wrapped up her speech by making a lengthy attack on the economic policies Donald Trump announced yesterday, saying many of them were rehashes of policies he proposed in 2016, but did not execute during his time as president.“On Trump’s watch, offshoring went up and manufacturing jobs went down across our country and across our economy. All told, almost 200,000 manufacturing jobs were lost during his presidency, starting before the pandemic hit, making Trump one of the biggest losers ever on manufacturing,” Harris said.The vice-president also accused her opponent of talking tough on China, while doing little to stand up to its government:
      Donald Trump also talked a big game on our trade deficit with China, but it is far lower under our watch than any year of his administration.
      While he constantly got played by China, I will never hesitate to take swift and strong measures when China undermines the rules of the road at the expense of our workers, our communities and our companies, whether it’s flooding the market with steel inferior or at all, unfairly subsidizing shipbuilding or hurting our small businesses with counterfeits.
      “Understand the impact of these so-called policies that really are not about a plan for strengthening our prosperity or our security,” Harris said. She then repeated a promise she made, to applause, when accepting the nomination at last month’s Democratic national convention:
      I will never sell out America to our competitors or adversaries, never, never. And I will always make sure we have the strongest economy and the most lethal fighting force anywhere in the world.
      Warning that the US’s rivals, particularly China, are catching up to it, Kamala Harris said that the “third pillar” of her economic plan would be focused on ensuring the country is the leader in technological innovation, and on cutting red tape that slows down the completion of projects.“The third pillar of our opportunity economy is leading the world in the industries of the future and making sure America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century,” Harris said.She then elaborated on the types of technologies her administration would prioritize:
      I will recommit the nation to global leadership in the sectors that will define the next century. We will invest in biomanufacturing and aerospace, remain dominant in AI and quantum computing, blockchain and other emerging technologies, expand our lead in clean energy innovation and manufacturing, so the next generation of breakthroughs from advanced batteries to geothermal to advanced nuclear are not just invented, but built here in America by American workers.
      Turning to unions, she promised to “double the number of registered apprenticeships by the end of my first term”. Harris also proposed eliminating “degree requirements while increasing skills development”, something she said she would do for federal workers.She then turned to the pace of construction in the United States, which she argued was too slow:
      But the simple truth is, in America, it takes too long and it costs too much to build. Whether it’s a new housing development, a new factory or a new bridge, projects take too long to go from concept to reality. It happens in blue states, it happens in red states, and it’s a national problem. And I will tell you this, China is not moving slowly. They’re not and we can’t afford to either.
      Lowering costs was “the first pillar” of her economic policy, and now Kamala Harris is getting into her “second pillar”, which she said was “investing in American innovation and entrepreneurship”.“There has been no incubator for unleashing human potential like America, and we need to guard that spirit,” the vice-president said.Her plan to do that involves making it easier for entrepreneurs to get loans:
      We can make it easier for our small businesses to access capital. On average, it costs about $40,000 to start a new business, but currently, the tax deduction for startups is only $5,000.
      So, currently, for startup costs, the tax deduction is $5,000. Well, in 2024 it is almost impossible to start a business on $5,000 which is why as president, I will make the start-up deduction 10 times richer, and we will raise it from $5,000 to $50,000 tax deduction and provide low- and no-interest loans to small businesses that want to expand.
      She also set the goal of generating 25m new applications for small businesses by the end of her first term, which would be in January 2029.Kamala Harris is now talking about the sorts of policies she would pursue as president, reiterating pledges she has previously made to assist families with childcare costs, cut taxes for the middle class and spur the construction of affordable housing:
      Under my plan, more than 100 million Americans will get a middle-class tax break that includes $6,000 for new parents during the first year of their child’s life to help families cover everything from car seats to cribs. We’ll also cut the cost of childcare and elder care, and finally, give all working people access to paid leave, which will help everyone caring for children, caring for aging parents and that sandwich generation, which is caring for both.
      She then went into her plan to lower housing costs, a major concern for both her and Donald Trump:
      We will also go after the biggest drivers of cost for the middle class and work to bring them down. And one of those, some would argue, one of the biggest is the cost of housing. So here’s what we will do. We will cut the red tape that stops homes from being built and take on, in addition, corporate landlords who are hiking rental prices and, yes, and we will work with builders and developers to construct 3 million new homes and rentals for the middle class, because increasing the housing supply will help drive down the cost of housing.
      Then we will also help first time homebuyers just get their foot in the door with the $25,000 down payment assistance.
      Trump’s policy on housing has centered on mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, who he argues have increased demand for housing and, therefore, costs. Here’s more about that:Harris has thus far talked less about policy than about her ideology when it comes to handling economic challenges.Harris has invoked Democratic icon Franklin Delano Roosevelt as inspiring her economic approach, saying:
      I will engage in what Franklin Roosevelt called bold, persistent experimentation, because I believe we shouldn’t be constrained by ideology, and instead, should seek practical solutions to problems, realistic assessments of what is working and what is not, applying metrics to our analysis, applying facts to our analysis, and stay focused … Not only on the crises at hand, but on our big goals, on what’s best for America over the long term.
      The vice-president then got more direct about what she supported:
      I’ve always been, and will always be, a strong supporter of workers and unions, and I also believe we need to engage those who create most of the jobs in America.
      Look, I am a capitalist. I believe in free and fair markets. I believe in consistent and transparent rules of the road to create a stable business environment, and I know the power of American innovation. I’ve been working with entrepreneurs and business owners my whole career, and I believe companies need to play by the rules, respect the rights of workers and unions and abide by fair competition, and if they don’t, I will hold them accountable.
      Harris has not actually gotten into specifics yet, but continues to elaborate on her promise to lower costs for Americans.“I want Americans and families to be able to not just get by, but be able to get ahead, to thrive, be able to thrive,” the vice-president said.She went on:
      I don’t want you to have to worry about making your monthly rent if your car breaks down. I want you to be able to save up for your child’s education, to take a nice vacation from time to time. I want you to be able to buy Christmas presents for your loved ones without feeling anxious when you’re looking at your bank statement. I want you to be able to build some wealth, not just for yourself, but also for your children and your grandchildren, intergenerational wealth.
      Harris, speaking a little more slowly and deliberately than she usually does, then went on to attack Donald Trump’s economic policies:
      The American people face a choice between two fundamentally very different paths for our economy. I intend to chart a new way forward and grow America’s middle class. Donald Trump intends to take America backward to the failed policies of the past.
      He has no intention to grow our middle class. He’s only interested in making life better for himself and people like himself, the wealthiest of Americans, you can see it spelled out in his economic agenda, an agenda that gives trillions of dollars in tax cuts to billionaires and the biggest corporations, while raising taxes on the middle class by almost $4,000 a year, slashing overtime pay, throwing tens of millions of Americans off of health care and cutting Social Security and Medicare. In sum, his agenda would weaken the economy and hurt working people and the middle class.
      In a speech in Georgia yesterday, Trump announced plans to slash taxes for corporations who make their products in the United States, and put steep tariffs on imports from countries where US firms move jobs:Kamala Harris began by recounting how the economy grew and unemployment stayed low under Joe Biden’s presidency, then pivoted to acknowledging the toll inflation has taken on Americans.“Over the past three and a half years, we have taken major steps forward to recover from the public health and economic crisis we inherited. Inflation has dropped faster here than the rest of the developed world. Unemployment is near record low levels,” she said.“But let’s be clear, for all these positive steps, the cost of living in America is still just too high. You know it, and I know it, and that was true long before the pandemic hit.”Kamala Harris is coming onstage now in Pittsburgh, where she’s set to elaborate on her proposals for the economy.We’ll let you know what she has to say. More

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      Elon Musk’s Twitter coup has harmed the right. They are now simply ‘too online’ | Paolo Gerbaudo

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      In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s shock victory in 2016, one common explanation for why the Democrats had not seen it coming was that they had succumbed to the social media echo chamber. The fact that many digital platforms, such as Twitter (now X), tended to be dominated by liberals had lured Democrats into a false sense of security. This, so the explanation went, made them complacent, leading to inconsiderate gestures that alienated sections of the electorate: Hillary Clinton’s infamous jab at Trump’s supporters as “deplorables” was often cited as a prime example.With the internet ever more captive to the caprices of timeline algorithms, the risk of echo chambers is even greater in this election cycle. However, it is now Trump and the broader political right that is – to use the internet lingo – “too online”.The rightwing surge seen in many countries’ recent elections, especially in Europe, has been paralleled (and supported) by a significant rise of the right’s influence online. As documented by much academic research on social media and politics, the leading influencers on platforms such as YouTube, X and the instant messaging platform Telegram are rightwing. On many of these platforms, the conversation has increasingly shifted towards rightwing themes and positions, with rightwing messages tending to circulate more widely.This social media hegemony, which has been in the making for many years and was cemented by Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, has now created a right that harbours a similar sense of delusion and complacency to the one that, in the past, has proved so detrimental for progressives.Consider the way vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has brazenly doubled down on his 2021 comment about “childless cat ladies”; or widely ridiculed – and dangerous – online hoaxes about cats and dogs being eaten by Haitian immigrants, which appear to have travelled from Facebook to the mouth of the Republican candidate in a matter of days; or Musk’s creepy rebuke concerning Taylor Swift after the pop singer endorsed Kamala Harris, offering to “give her a child”. Such extreme messaging does cater to the Maga (Make America great again) crowd of true believers – but it comes at the electoral cost of potentially alienating large swaths of the moderate voting-age population.As political scientists have long observed, a party’s rank and file is more ideologically extreme than its electorate. If leaders get trapped in the militant core, they can end up developing an unrealistic appraisal of the opinion of their target voters. This is precisely what 24/7 immersion in social media, with their plebiscitary pseudo-democracy of instant reactions and echo chambers, is all too likely to produce.Obsession with social media and its popularity contest can also lead to unwise choice of political personnel. JD Vance was appointed as running mate by Trump on the back of vocal support from Silicon Valley and the fervour of his social media followers. Yet, Vance is viewed favourably by a miserly 36% of the electorate, compared with 48% support for his opponent Tim Walz, according to a recent USA Today poll. Trump himself has been criticised by allies because of his closeness to internet personality Laura Loomer, a self-described “white advocate” who has built a successful career by catering to far-right digital cesspits.A key factor in this radicalisation spiral has been Musk’s transformation of broadly liberal Twitter into the reactionary X. Spending $44bn on the purchase certainly made no economic sense, but it seemed to make much political sense. Taking the reins of a platform widely recognised as a sort of “social media of record”, or official debating chamber of the internet, capable of shaping the news agenda and public perception, offered the opportunity to fiddle with the formation of public opinion – and this is precisely what Musk did in three waysFirst, he has shamelessly granted himself enormous algorithmic privileges, which reportedly boost his messages by a factor of 1,000. He has used this colossal power of amplification by conversing with, and therefore boosting, hard-right extremist accounts, spreading fake news and publishing AI-manufactured images, such as one showing Kamala Harris in communist attire.Second, by reactivating tens of thousands of accounts – including those of Nazis and antisemites – who had been suspended or banned for violating community guidelines, Musk has goaded liberal and left users to leave the platform out of disgust, therefore effectively shifting the balance of the conversation to the right.Third, there have been the effects of his “blue check” scheme, which has fundamentally transformed the dynamics of participation on the platform. Now, in any conversation, the top replies are from people with blue checks, who appear to be overwhelmingly right-leaning, largely because of the way more progressive users have boycotted the service out of their animosity towards Musk.Musk’s “Twitter coup” has offered a new home to those who had retreated to Maga platforms such as Truth Social and Parler. But in so doing it has also led to the creation of a macroscopic reactionary echo chamber, which feeds into the right’s confirmation bias and self-complacency.Ultimately, the reason why rightwing politicians and their billionaire allies invest so much energy and resources into social media is that these platforms can influence people’s opinions in a more organic way than traditional forms of political communication. The irony here is that in attempting to use its money and power to shift the discursive dial, the right might have inadvertently undermined its own prospects.

      Paolo Gerbaudo is a sociologist and the author of The Great Recoil: Politics after Populism and Pandemic More