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      Judge in federal Trump election interference case to allow special counsel to file hundreds of pages of evidence – live

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      A federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s federal election interference case will allow special counsel Jack Smith to submit a 180-page brief that could contain new evidence.The oversized brief contains legal arguments and evidence reflecting how the supreme court’s ruling regarding presidential immunity will affect the case against Trump, which include felony charges for his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.The supreme court’s ruling regarding presidential immunity affects the charges against Trump, who is facing four felony counts related to his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.Trump’s legal team called the request to submit the brief “fundamentally unfair” in part because it was so much longer than most opening briefs.The Trump campaign is holding a bus tour this week in Wisconsin featuring campaign surrogates and local party activists. The bus stopped in Appleton today, drawing around 100 spectators and featuring a lineup of activists, including an activist with the rightwing organization Moms for Liberty, the president of the Faith and Freedom Coalition – Wisconsin, and Trump loyalist Kash Patel.During the event, John Pudner of Wisconsin’s chapter of the Faith and Freedom Coalition handed out pamphlets for attendees to hand out to the public and stressed that faith-focused voters could have an outsize impact on the election if the Republican party can turn them out.“Let me tell you something,” said Pudner. “Florida in 2000 is Wisconsin in 2024.”In 2000, Florida’s election was decided by roughly 500 votes and a supreme court decision to end the recount there.The first ballots have been sent out for the hotly contested November elections that will determine the nation’s future.What is early voting?States – with the exception of Mississippi, New Hampshire and Alabama – offer all voters the opportunity to cast a ballot in person at a polling place before election day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.In those places, registered voters can head to their polling location within the early voting time frame and cast a ballot. Most states begin counting those ballots on election day, and some require officials to wait until polls are closed to begin counting.Some states offer a version of early voting called “in-person absentee” voting, in which a voter can obtain and submit an absentee ballot in person at a polling place before election day.What about absentee voting?Most states allow for some form of absentee voting, in which a voter requests a ballot ahead of time, which officials then send to them in the mail to fill out and return by mail. Some jurisdictions offer voters the option of returning absentee ballots to a secured dropbox. Fourteen states require an excuse for voters to cast a ballot by mail, such as an illness or work-scheduling conflict. Eight states practice “all-mail” elections – in those places, all registered voters receive a ballot in the mail, whether or not they plan to use it.Federal law requires states to send absentee ballots to military voters and voters overseas.States regulate the “processing” and counting of absentee ballots; most states allow officials to immediately process ballots, which typically entails verifying the signature on the ballot with the voter’s signature from when they registered to vote. Other states require officials to wait until election day to begin processing ballots – which can slow the release of election results.One morning in February, 16-year-old Levi Hormuth took off school as his parents called out of work, and the three began a five-and-a-half-hour drive.The purpose of the 350-mile trip from their home in St Charles county, Missouri, to Chicago, Illinois, was a routine doctor’s appointment.Levi, a transgender boy, now 17 and in his final year of high school, had been a patient at the Washington University (WashU) Transgender Center since he was 13. The center, a short drive from home, had helped Levi in his transition, providing counseling and eventually hormone treatments at age 15. The testosterone had profoundly positive impacts, Levi and his parents said, helping him overcome significant mental distress stemming from his gender dysphoria.But in June 2023, Missouri’s Republican governor enacted a bill banning gender-affirming healthcare for youth under 18. The law had an exception for youth like Levi who were already accessing the care, but WashU, fearing legal liability, stopped prescribing medications to all trans youth.The best alternative for Levi and his family was to cross state lines.“The fact that I have to drive five hours both ways for treatment just shows our government in Missouri doesn’t care about things that are actually important,” Levi said one afternoon, sitting on his backyard deck with his parents in St Charles county, which is more conservative than neighboring St Louis. “We have potholes galore that should be fixed, we have horrible crime rates. It’s enraging that they’re not focusing on what matters and listening to our voices.”The stakes of the presidential election are enormous for people like Levi and the broader LGBTQ+ community.Donald Trump has promised aggressive attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, with a focus on trans youth, who have been a central target of the GOP’s culture war. The former president’s proposed “plan to protect children from leftwing gender insanity” includes ordering federal agencies to end all programs that “promote … gender transition at any age”; revoking funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to youth and subjecting them to US justice department investigations; punishing schools that affirm trans youth; and pushing a federal law stating the government doesn’t legally recognize trans people.Read more:A federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s federal election interference case will allow special counsel Jack Smith to submit a 180-page brief that could contain new evidence.The oversized brief contains legal arguments and evidence reflecting how the supreme court’s ruling regarding presidential immunity will affect the case against Trump, which include felony charges for his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.The supreme court’s ruling regarding presidential immunity affects the charges against Trump, who is facing four felony counts related to his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.Trump’s legal team called the request to submit the brief “fundamentally unfair” in part because it was so much longer than most opening briefs.Seeking to secure every last electoral vote he can get, Donald Trump had been pushing allies in Nebraska to change the state’s electoral system to a winner-takes-all system. The state currently awards its five electoral votes based on congressional district.But after a key Republican legislator declined to support the last-minute effort to change the state’s system, the state’s governor has said that he won’t be calling a special legislative session to make the changes.“My team and I have worked relentlessly to secure a filibuster-proof 33-vote majority to get winner-take-all passed before the November election. Given everything at stake for Nebraska and our country, we have left every inch on the field to get this done,” said Jim Pillen, Nebraska’s governor. “Unfortunately, we could not persuade 33 state senators.”Mike McDonnell, a Republican state senator, announced he wouldn’t support the change. “Elections should be an opportunity for all voters to be heard, no matter who they are, where they live, or what party they support,” McDonnell said in a statement. “I have taken time to listen carefully to Nebraskans and national leaders on both sides of the issue. After deep consideration, it is clear to me that right now, 43 days from Election Day, is not the moment to make this change.”Nebraska has awarded its electoral votes by congressional district since 1991, and since then, Republican candidates have usually secured all of the state’s votes. But in 2008, Barak Obama got the vote from the state’s second congressional district in the Omaha region, and in 2020, Joe Biden took that vote.Back at the United Nations, Ukraine’s president spoke before the security council, and suggested that negotiations to end Russia’s invasion would do no good.“This war can’t be calmed by talks. Action is needed, and I’m grateful to all the nations that are truly helping in ways that save the lives of our people,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.“Putin has broken so many international norms and rules that he won’t stop on his own. Russia can only be forced into peace, and that is exactly what’s needed, forcing Russia into peace as the sole aggressor in this war, the sole violator of the UN charter.”Zelenskyy is also using his visit to the summit of global leaders to press US lawmakers for continued aid that he says will give his military the edge over Russia in the conflict. Here’s more on that:Joe Biden will travel to Angola next month, the White House announced, marking the first trip by a US president to sub-Saharan Africa since 2015.Biden will visit the capital, Luanda, from 13 to 15 October, and meet with João Lourenço, the southern African nation’s president, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.“The president’s visit to Luanda celebrates the evolution of the US-Angola relationship, underscores the United States’ continued commitment to African partners, and demonstrates how collaborating to solve shared challenges delivers for the people of the United States and across the African continent,” Jean-Pierre said.Barack Obama was the last US president to visit sub-Saharan Africa, with a trip to Kenya and Ethiopia in July 2015. Biden welcomed Lourenço to the White House last year, and promised to visit Angola.Prior to arriving in Angola, Biden will visit Germany “to further strengthen the close bond the United States and Germany share as allies and friends and coordinate on shared priorities”, Jean-Pierre said.Local authorities in Tempe, Arizona, have said that someone fired shots at a Democratic party campaign office in a Phoenix suburb, causing damage but no injuries, according to the Associated Press.Tempe police told the Associated Press that the damage was discovered early on Monday and that the incident is being investigated as a property crime. Nobody was in the office at the time the shots were fired.On Tuesday, NBC News reported that the office is shared by staff for the Arizona Democratic party, the Kamala Harris campaign, and Senate and House campaigns.This comes as Harris is scheduled to visit Arizona later this week.New York’s Climate Change Superfund act was stripped from the state budget this year, but then it passed both chambers of the state’s legislature with bipartisan support in June.Modeled after the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program, it would require officials to work with scientists to figure out how much climate-related damage to people, ecosystems and infrastructure is attributable to big oil companies’ planet-heating pollution, then establish procedures to collect payments from big oil companies to fund those changes.At the rally on Tuesday outside the New York governor Kathy Hochul’s office, New Yorkers detailed their own experiences with climate disasters.Michael-Luca Natt from the New York chapter of the youth-led environmental group Sunrise Movement described how extreme city heat in the summer made it difficult to play outside as a youth.“It is time for the fossil fuel industry to be held accountable,” he said.If signed into law, the New York bill would be the largest policy of its kind in the nation. Vermont became the first state to pass a climate superfund bill in May.Dozens of climate activists gathered outside Kathy Hochul’s office on Tuesday demanding the New York governor pass the Climate Change Superfund act, which would force big polluters to help the state pay for damages caused by the climate crisis.“We are being played for suckers by the fossil fuel industry, and Governor Hochul is going along with it,” Bill McKibben, the veteran environmentalist who founded non-profits 350.org and Third Act, said at the rally.The activists from the fossil fuel accountability group Make Polluters Pay coalition, which includes environmental and human rights organizations such as Food and Water Watch, the New York Public Interest Research Group, Fossil Free Media, and Avaaz, carried large boxes filled with more than 127,000 petitions to Hochul’s office. They chanted: “What do we want? Climate justice,” and: “Make polluters pay.”A new poll of young voters published on Tuesday shows that among registered voters aged 18 to 29, Kamala Harris is 23 points ahead of Donald Trump, and 31 percentage points ahead among likely voters.The leader of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, a non-profit that represents the Haitian community of Springfield, Ohio, has filed criminal charges against Donald Trump and JD Vance on behalf of the group, according to an announcement from the law firm representing them.The group is charging the former president and Republican nominee for president, and his running mate and Ohio senator, with disrupting public service, making false alarms, committing telecommunications harassment, committing aggravated menacing and violating the prohibition against complicity per the press release.The Associated Press is reporting that the group has invoked its private-citizen right to file the charges in the wake of inaction by the local prosecutor.This comes as the city of Springfield has experienced an onslaught of disruption, harassment, chaos and threats since Trump and Vance began spreading false claims about Haitian immigrants there eating other residents’ pets.Last week, the mayor of Springfield issued an emergency proclamation following the continued rise in public safety threats.A new Reuters/Ipsos poll of registered voters published on Tuesday has Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump 46.61% to 40.48% in the upcoming 2024 presidential election.The Democratic vice-president’s six-point lead is a slight increase from the last Reuters/Ipsos poll from earlier this month, which had her five percentage points ahead of the former president. More

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      Haitian immigrant group calls for arrest warrants for Trump and Vance in Ohio

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      The Haitian Bridge Alliance, a non-profit organization that “provides migrants and immigrants with humanitarian, legal and social services”, filed criminal charges against Donald Trump and JD Vance over their inflammatory, racist remarks about Haitian immigrants. The rhetoric has led to threats of violence in Springfield, Ohio, including more than 30 bomb threats, forced evacuations of schools and government buildings and violence against Haitians in the city.The filing comes after both the Republican presidential candidate and his running mate made false statements about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, alleging that they were stealing and eating their neighbors’ pets. The charges include disrupting public services, making false alarms, two counts of telecommunications harassment, aggravated menacing, and complicity. Ohio law allows the public to file criminal charges in the same way a prosecutor would. In this case, the Haitian Bridge Alliance is asking the Clark county municipal court to affirm that there is probable cause that Trump and Vance committed the crimes, and to issue arrest warrants for them both.“Trump and Vance have knowingly spread a false and dangerous narrative by claiming that Springfield, Ohio’s Haitian community is criminally killing and eating neighbors’ dogs and cats, and killing and eating geese,” the affidavit reads. “They accused Springfield’s Haitians of bearing deadly disease. They repeated such lies during the presidential debate, at campaign rallies, during interviews on national television, and on social media.”Trump continued perpetuating the statements even after they had been confirmed to be false, while Vance recently remarked that he was willing to “create stories” for political gain.They continued to repeat what the filing calls an “orchestrated … campaign of lies” that “spread a false narrative that Haitians in Springfield are a danger”.“Many public institutions have been forced to evacuate, and vital local resources were diverted to investigate the barrage of threats to the community,” the filing reads.Despite the public nature of Trump and Vance’s claims, local prosecutors have failed to take any action. But because the criminal charges were filed by citizens, a prosecuting attorney will be obligated to make a public decision.Trump and Vance, the US senator from Ohio, have indicated that they may travel to Springfield. The filing asks the court to make a decision prior to their arrival.“This should be done before Trump fulfills his threat to visit Springfield – despite Mayor Rob Rue’s request that he not do so – so that he may be arrested upon arrival for his criminal acts,” the affidavit reads. More

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      Trump campaign’s suspected Iranian hack may still be happening

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      A suspected Iranian hack of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has continued within the last 10 days and may still be happening, according to a journalist who received illegally obtained documents from the Republican nominee’s election effort.Judd Legum, the publisher of the progressive newsletter Popular Information, revealed that he was sent a letter that Trump’s lawyer had written to the New York Times on 15 September from a source called “Robert”, as well as dossiers on three potential running mates, including JD Vance, the current GOP vice-presidential nominee.The letter was verified to be authentic. “Robert” appeared to be the same source who had leaked other Trump materials to Politico, the New York Times and the Washington Post in August. The FBI has said it is investigating that leak as a suspected Iranian hack. The source known as “Robert” has been linked by a Microsoft threat analysis to a group within the theocratic regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which sent out phishing emails to presidential campaigns.US intelligence agencies revealed last week that Iranian hackers passed sensitive information stolen from Trump’s campaign to Joe Biden’s now-defunct presidential campaign in June and July. Legum’s disclosure suggests that the breach may have been more extensive than previously known and could still be under way despite the efforts of US security agencies.Legum said that he received a message from “Robert” on 18 September containing the cover page of a dossier on Vance. “Robert refused to identify himself,” Legum wrote, except to suggest it was the same “Robert” from the previous leaks.Legum – whose own communications were made public after the 2016 Russian hack of Hillary Clinton’s then campaign chair John Podesta – described then receiving a 271-page file on Vance, along with thick dossiers on Doug Burgum, the South Dakota governor, and Marco Rubio, the Florida senator, both of whom were considered by Trump as possible running mates. All documents were marked “Privileged & Confidential”.He said he was also sent a dozen emails purporting to be from senior Trump advisers Susie Wiles and Dan Scavino and pollster John McLaughlin, dated from October 2023 until last August.Legum said he also received a four-page letter sent by a Trump lawyer to three individuals at the New York Times just nine days ago, further evidence that the breach had not been plugged.“The letter has not been made public by either the Trump campaign or the paper,” Legum wrote.Legum then provided a copy of the letter to Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of Semafor, who confirmed it as genuine after checking with a source at the New York Times who had already seen it. The letter complained about a Times article that questioned Trump’s validity as a successful businessman, Smith wrote in a separate piece.“The legitimacy of the letter proves that the person or people representing themselves as Robert has stolen electronic communications from people associated with the Trump campaign within the last 10 days,” Legum concluded.During a rally in New York last Wednesday, Trump referred to the disclosure of the breach from US intelligence agencies, saying: “Iran hacked into my campaign. I don’t know what the hell they found, I’d like to find out. Couldn’t have been too exciting.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe campaigns of Biden and Kamala Harris, as well as the media outlets that have received stolen Trump materials, have all declined to make them public – a stark contrast to the 2016 hack of Clinton, the results of which were published in multiple outlets, while Trump vocally encouraged Russia to continue hacking.Legum said he would stick to the current policy of non-publication.“It was tempting to use this opportunity to turn the tables on the Trump campaign and publish the stolen campaign materials provided to me by Robert,” he wrote. “But I believe that is the wrong approach.”A Trump campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, said the hack showed that Iran is “terrified of the strength and resolve of Donald J Trump”.Suspected Iranian-backed plots to kill Trump – who has already survived two assassination attempts during the campaign – prompted the Secret Service in July to step up additional security at his rallies. The following month, a Pakistani national with suspected links to Iran was arrested on suspicion of plotting political assassinations on US soil, including against Trump. More

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      Trump tells supporters at campaign rally ‘if we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole thing’ – as it happened

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      “Our entire nation is counting on the people of this great commonwealth,” Donald Trump said about Pennsylvania.“We got to take our country back from these horrible people because, if we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole thing,” he said.Thanks for reading. Rachel Leingang’s story from the Trump rally is here:

      Former president Donald Trump delivered a speech in Indiana, Pennsylvania, telling supporters: ‘If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole thing.’

      JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, refused to take a stance on the scandal involving North Carolina’s lieutenant governor during a Charlotte visit.

      A key Nebraska lawmaker rejected a Trump-backed effort to change state’s electoral vote rules.

      A government shutdown seems to have been averted, with Republican speaker Mike Johnson heading off the politically damaging disruption by agreeing to a spending deal that does not include measures against non-citizen voting, which Trump had demanded.

      Kamala Harris won the endorsements of hundreds of former national security and military officials, who said Trump “has proven he is not up to the job”.

      The White House laid out how Joe Biden will spend his final months in office, dubbing it the “sprint to the finish”.
      On Twitter, Kamala Harris’s campaign also reacted to Trump’s remarks on abortion and the overturning of Roe v Wade.“Trump: Nobody should want a federal law protecting abortion rights,” reads a tweet.Donald Trump has ended his 96-minute speech in Indiana, Pennsylvania.Kamala Harris’s campaign reacted on Twitter to Trump’s pledge to close the Department of Education.Trump later started using athletes in the Olympics to make anti-trans remarks and false claims. There were no transgender athletes who were competing outside of the gender they were assigned at birth at this year’s Olympic games.“We are going to keep men out of women’s sports,” he said. “It’s so demeaning to women.”“You will no longer be thinking about abortion,” Trump said to the women in the room. “It is now where it always had to be: with the states, and the vote of the people.”“Everyone wanted abortion out of the federal government and into the states,” he said. “Six brilliant and very brave justices of the United States supreme court were able to do that for you, and they did it.”Donald Trump turned his attention to women, claiming “women are poorer than they were four years ago.”He claimed women are less healthy, less safe, and more depressed than during his administration.“I am your protector,” he said. “As president, I have to be your protector.”Donald Trump attacked Kamala Harris for her history as a prosecutor and attorney general in California, as well as the environmental policies she plans to put in place.“She wants to ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles, which will destroy the Pennsylvania way of life,” he said.“As Attorney General, she destroyed San Francisco and she destroyed all of California,” Trump said. “Now she’s coming to destroy the United States of America, and we’re not going to let it happen.”Donald Trump brought Republican David McCormick to the stage. McCormick is running against the Democratic Senator Bob Casey in an uphill battle for the senatorial seat.“It’s a battle between common sense and these radical liberal policies,” McCormick said.Donald Trump continued making anti-immigrant remarks.“If Kamala Harris wins this election, she will flood Pennsylvania cities and towns with illegal migrants from all over the world, and Pennsylvania will never be the same, you will never be the same,” he said.“When I’m president, all migrant flights to Pennsylvania will stop immediately,” Trump said.He then claimed that Kamala Harris never worked at McDonald’s, a detail in her resumé she uses to win over a powerful bloc of working-class voters.“She never worked there, and these fake news reporters will never report it,” he said.After attacking Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, the crowd in Pennsylvania chanted “send them back!”Donald Trump later attacked Venezuelan migrants, generalizing the community and calling them “lawless gangs,” while blaming them for problems in the housing market and with crime.Donald Trump returned to his claim that the city of Aurora, Colorado, has been overrun by Venezuelan immigrants. Trump has been using Aurora and Springfield, Ohio, as examples of the Biden administration’s mistakes on immigration policies.“Harris has inundated small towns all across America with hundreds of thousands of migrants,” he said.He bragged about not using a teleprompter before asking: “Do you think Springfield will ever be the same?”Trump and JD Vance, his running mate, have falsely claimed that Haitian migrants were eating pets in Springfield – a statement that has been debunked.The former president also touched on the famed Pennsylvania steel industry.“We have to be strong and powerful again, and we must put tariffs on foreign predators,” he said. “We have to make US steel great again.”During Trump’s administration, he imposed several rounds of tariffs on steel, aluminum, washing machines, solar panels, and goods from China. He has said that, if elected, he will would impose 10% worldwide tariff and a 60% tariff on Chinese goods.Trump touched a nerve with fracking in Pennsylvania, saying Kamala Harris is planning to ban it.“If anybody here believes that she will let your energy industry continue fracking, you should immediately go to a psychiatrist,” he said.“I will get Pennsylvania energy workers pumping, fracking, drilling and producing like never before.”Donald Trump claimed that, during his presidency, foreign countries wouldn’t fight each other without his permission.“They would call me up to ask whether or not they could go to war with some other country,” he said.Trump took a stab at Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, calling him “the greatest salesman in history” and said “he wants them to win this election so badly”.Donald Trump says he promises to deliver tax cuts, attacking Kamala Harris for her plans to raise the corporate income tax rate.“Kamala Harris is the tax queen, and she’s coming for your money,” he said. “She’s coming for your pensions, and she’s coming for your savings, unless you defeat her in November.”Trump then focused his speech on inflation, pointing to higher prices for energy and groceries.“Vote Trump, and your incomes will soar,” he said. “Your net worth will skyrocket, your energy costs and grocery prices will come tumbling down, and we will bring back the American dream, bigger, better and stronger than ever before.”Former President Donald Trump once again falsely claimed that crime is going up, by 45 percent, despite recently released FBI statistics stating otherwise.Here’s more context: More

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      The Guardian view on Trump’s attacks on migrants: smirking racism is no less dangerous | Editorial

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      There is a humanitarian crisis involving Haitians and, despite JD Vance’s lies, it isn’t in Ohio. It’s in Haiti itself, where violence has reached terrifying levels. Five children a week are killed and injured and almost 5 million people – about half the population – face acute hunger. Little wonder families flee. Most of the 15,000 Haitian immigrants in the town of Springfield are in the US through the temporary protected status (TPS) granted to them because of the turmoil in their own country.Now they face fresh danger thanks to the vicious and baseless lies of Donald Trump’s campaign. In his debate with Kamala Harris, Mr Trump declared that “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats.” He had picked up on his running mate Mr Vance’s slanders on X that “pets [have been] abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country”.These were claims first spread by far-right groups and neo-Nazis. Promoting them had predictable results. Hospitals, schools and government buildings have been forced to close after bomb threats. The town as a whole has been endangered, though of course the Haitian population – or those who might be mistaken for them – are most at risk. Some say they are living in constant fear, and are too scared to leave their homes.The woman who first aired the pet-eating slurs has admitted they are baseless. The city’s Republican mayor, Rob Rue, has stressed that “your pets are safe”. Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, has dismissed the claims. A grieving father, Nathan Clark, asked Mr Trump and others to stop exploiting his 11-year-old child’s death in a bus crash involving a Haitian immigrant to stoke hatred in the town. The lies have led to an emergency order being issued in Springfield. When Mr Trump said he was planning a visit there, Mr Rue, backed by Mr DeWine, said it would be better if he stayed away.Mr Trump and Mr Vance continue to lie because it allows them to focus, in a hateful way, on immigration. The Republican vice-presidential nominee openly admits as much. The former president has already called migrants who enter the US illegally “animals” and “not human”, and accused them of “poisoning the [country’s] blood”. The claim about pets taps into old tropes about “savagery”, the threat of the sinister outsider, and associating foreigners with “weird” eating habits, evoking not only loathing but disgust.The current administration is not beyond criticism when it comes to Haiti – despite the TPS measures, it has continued to deport some Haitians. But that’s a world away from this cynical fomentation of hatred. As Joe Biden put it last week: “We don’t demonise immigrants. We don’t single them out for attacks. We don’t believe they’re poisoning the blood of the country. We’re a nation of immigrants, and that’s why we’re so damn strong.”Writing of the Trump presidency’s cruelties, the author Adam Serwer observed that “the cruelty is the point” and that “their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump”. Now Arizona Republicans run LoLtastic “EAT LESS KITTENS” hate posters and Mr Vance instructs his supporters to “Keep the cat memes flowing”. Smirking racism is no less lethal. Haitians in Ohio have not been singled out because they are a threat, but because the far right knows they are an easy target.

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Why Trump and Vance’s strategy is ‘say anything, make up anything’

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      JD Vance was holding court on CNN’s State of the Union programme. “The American media totally ignored this stuff,” he complained last Sunday, “until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes.”But it wasn’t just a meme, objected interviewer Dana Bash. The Republican vice-presidential nominee gave a telling response: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do, Dana, because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.”If ever there was a case of saying the quiet part out loud, Vance had perfected the art. The cat memes he referred to were prompted by baseless rumours about legal Haitian immigrants in his home state of Ohio eating house pets – rumours that led to bomb threats and evacuations of schools and government buildings in Springfield.But Vance’s willingness to “create stories” to grab attention before the November’s election hinted at a new frontier in post-truth America, where a lie is no longer slyly distributed but rather brazenly flaunted as a tactic to win political support and stir up social chaos.Some commentators draw a parallel with Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway’s coining of “alternative facts” when, on another Sunday politics show back in 2017, she sought to defend then White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s false statements about the crowd size at Trump’s inauguration.Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “It’s a logical continuation of what once was called ‘alternative facts’ by the same camp. It’s obvious that is a long-term mission statement, more than just an offhand comment.“Their entire strategy is to say anything, make up anything, invent false narratives to try and distract away from the very real consequences of their radical and extreme agenda that is so far out of the mainstream of the American people’s interests. They think they have a better chance of winning by making up insane stories about people eating pets versus having a subsequent conversation about the consequences of their policy agenda.”Dishonesty in politics is hardly new, from President Richard Nixon’s cover-up of the Watergate scandal to the false claim of weapons of mass destruction used as a pretext for the Iraq war. In 2004, the New York Times Magazine quoted an unnamed official in the George W Bush administration as saying: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”View image in fullscreenIt was fertile soil for Trump, who had spent years exaggerating his personal wealth and charity giving, misleading the public about ventures such as Trump University and even misrepresenting his own height and weight. From 2011, he was a leading promoter of the false conspiracy theory that Barack Obama had been born in Kenya and was therefore not eligible to be US president.From his inauguration on, Trump made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims during his four years in the White House, according to a count by the Washington Post. He memorably claimed to have presided over the biggest tax cut ever – in fact, Ronald Reagan’s was bigger – and repeatedly downplayed the coronavirus pandemic, telling the public that it would soon “disappear”.But perhaps the biggest lie of all came on the night of the 2020 presidential election when Trump claimed that he had won. He stuck to this position, arguing that it had been “stolen” from him through widespread voter fraud, ultimately leading to a deadly insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. He has since recast the rioters as martyrs and “patriots”.Now making his third consecutive bid for the White House, Trump’s mendacity has, if possible, shifted up a gear. He made more than 30 false claims during the presidential debate against Joe Biden in Atlanta, according to a fact-check by host network CNN, but escaped close scrutiny because of Biden’s feeble performance.In the debate against Harris in Philadelphia, he made false assertions about topics including inflation, immigration, tariffs, House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s role on January 6, Joe Biden’s role in the criminal cases against him and popular support for the overturning of the constitutional right to abortion.Astonishingly, he also plucked the racist Springfield conspiracy theory from the fever swamps of the internet and gave it a national platform before tens of millions of viewers when he said: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”Not for the first time that night, ABC News’s moderators were forced to step in with a fact-check. There is no evidence for such a claim. The Wall Street Journal newspaper reported that on the day Vance first promoted the rightwing rumours, Springfield’s city manager told his office that they were baseless.Vance’s team gave the Journal a police report in which a resident claimed her cat may have been stolen by Haitian neighbours. But a Journal reporter tracked down the resident and learned that her cat had been in the basement the whole time, prompting her to apologise to her neighbours.Yet still Trump and Vance persisted with the knowing falsehoods at rally after rally on the campaign trail, undeterred by warnings from the White House that they could stoke an ugly backlash against Haitians in Springfield. Then came Vance’s shocking admission that he would make stuff up and be proud of it.Days after the CNN interview, Vance continued to defend the comments while admitting that he had not fact-checked residents’ claims about the pets. “The media has a responsibility to fact-check,” he said at a rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, in an effort to shift blame.View image in fullscreenCharlie Sykes, a conservative author and broadcaster, said: “What JD Vance is saying is that the facts don’t matter and that I am completely unashamed to have peddled a false story.“It underlines the degree to which Trump and Vance and the Maga movement are addicted to these fake online internet memes and unshakeable in their attachment to them. Even when they are refuted, they stick with them, which is a dangerous thing because it means that no matter how much evidence you can provide, no matter how dangerous the lies turn out to be, they’re not going to back off.”Sykes warned: “They’re going to keep pushing. Extrapolate this to what’s going to happen in November and the election results. Extrapolate it to anything.”On Saturday, Vance is due to appear with conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson on the former Fox News host’s live tour in Hershey, Pennsylvania. This is despite Carlson having recently hosted Nazi apologist and Holocaust denier Darryl Cooper on his podcast, a decision roundly condemned by Jewish members of Congress.Trump, meanwhile, has been joined on the campaign trail by far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer. She turned up at the debate and then a day later in New York to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks.Loomer, who commands a following of 1.2m people on the X social media platform, has previously suggested that 9/11 was an inside job. At a rally in Las Vegas, Trump said he had heard that Harris had used a secret earpiece during their debate, a baseless conspiracy theory that Loomer has promoted on X.Loomer also posted on X that if Harris, who is of Indian descent, wins the election, “the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center”. Even far-right Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene denounced the comment as racist.Sykes, author of How the Right Lost Its Mind, regards Loomer as a symptom rather than a cause. “Run through a list of all the conspiracy theories that Donald Trump has embraced or pushed and it’s lengthy,” he said. “It’s not as if Laura Loomer is making Donald Trump into a conspiracist. Donald Trump has been one for years. He’s now finding people who will stroke and validate his darker impulses.”There is another reason for Trump and Vance’s sense of impunity. Their lies originate from and are legitimised by a rightwing media ecosystem that now includes X, formerly Twitter, owned by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who has endorsed Trump, hosted an interview with him and sought to portray his critics as enemies of free speech.Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at the watchdog Media Matters for America, said: “This is a rightwing media ticket. Donald Trump and JD Vance are both people who are fully immersed in the information ecosystem of the far right and they’ve adopted its complete lack of standards and willingness to use any means necessary to achieve their ends of political gain and political victory. What we’re seeing here is how these lies can spiral totally out of control. Springfield, Ohio, is experiencing some real chaos right now.”Heading into the final sprint of the election, where he could face prison if he loses, Trump is surpassing himself with a blitz of falsehoods. On Thursday, CNN’s fact-checkers produced a list of “12 completely fictional stories” that he has told in the last month, including Harris reintroducing the military draft, schools sending children for gender-affirming surgeries without their parents’ knowledge and Harris negotiating with Russian president Vladimir Putin in 2022 in an effort to prevent the invasion of Ukraine.Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, said: “There’s nothing worse than a desperate man. There’s nothing worse than a desperate racist man who cannot control the woman in front of him who happens to be African American. Cannot control the conditions around him that have changed – the tightening of the political race for the presidency.“Cannot control what people are saying about him, the fact that Republicans are now coming out and speaking against a second Trump term and are creating lanes in which we are willing to support the Democrat over Donald Trump because he is that bad and that dangerous. When he cannot control that, he becomes even more dangerous and more desperate and you need to be aware of that because there’s more of this coming between now and November.” More

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      Ohio residents flock to Springfield’s Haitian restaurants: ‘They are family’

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      The line down the center of the Rose Goute Creole restaurant on Springfield, Ohio’s South Limestone Street is halfway out the door. It’s been like this ever since former president Donald Trump falsely accused immigrants in Springfield of eating cats and dogs during a televised debate on 10 September.At the back of the restaurant, kitchen staff scramble to take orders and load plates of herring patties, rice and beans, and barbecued chicken legs on to serving trays. Outside, cars with plates from Georgia, Wisconsin and Indiana – diners who’ve stopped off a nearby highway to show support for the Haitian community – fill the parking lot.It’s a partly chaotic scene, as Dady Fanfan, a 41-year-old from Plaisance in northern Haiti, stands inside the door, greeting diners as they enter, before slipping away to clear nearby tables.“One day I came to the restaurant to buy something, and I saw there was a lot of people,” says Fanfan, who despite not knowing the restaurant owners personally is this week spending his free time helping his countrymen and women. “I just stayed a little bit to help them, and then the next day I came because they are family.”As Trump and JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate and Ohio senator, continue to spread false information about Haitians in Springfield, regular people from the city and beyond are taking it upon themselves to seize back the narrative around immigrants in the Ohio city.And the outpouring of support aimed at countering Trump’s damaging comments hasn’t been limited to volunteering.Many community healthcare centers and support organizations that have been assisting Haitians in Springfield for several years are reporting increased donations and contributions coinciding with the furor of the past 10 days.“In the last three days, we’ve taken cash donations about seven times the normal rate, and it’s specifically because of this polarization,” says Casey Rollins, executive director of Springfield’s Society of St Vincent de Paul. She says the money is then transferred to gift cards to be used by those in need at a local international grocery store.Unlike his party colleagues, Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, has come out in strong support for the Haitian community, urged Trump and Vance to end their “very hurtful” comments and pledged $2.5m over two years to assist healthcare organizations in Springfield.“I’m just trying to make it easier for them to go through the firestorm that they’re in,” says Sammy, who drove her Yamaha motorbike 176 miles (283km) from Cleveland last Saturday and pulled into the parking lot of the Haitian Community Help and Support Center without knowing a single person in town. Seeing the threats and hate for Springfield’s Haitians online and having served in the army, she wanted to help protect people she saw as innocent victims.“I believe that America does best when it is one community standing up for, protecting and in solidarity with another,” she says.Sammy, who asked not to be fully identified as she is a trans woman in the process of changing names, says she’s seen supporters bring fresh garden vegetables, perform yard work around the center, and drop off furniture and office supplies.“It’s been one of the most American experiences of my life,” she says.“It’s humbling.”As Sammy speaks, JoAnn Welland, 79, from the neighboring town of Enon, walks by the front of the center, asking where she can donate.“The people who are coming here [from Haiti] have sacrificed so much to come, and Springfield, in my opinion, is a lovely town,” she says. Welland says she was motivated to get into her car and drive to the Haitian community center to donate after hearing the lies on television about Haitians eating pets.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Then, I heard that the town hall got a bomb threat, the elementary school got a bomb threat. The hatemongering, that’s wrong. That’s ugly and negative and hateful. This is my way of standing up for truth,” Welland says.But even as Welland speaks, across town three supermarkets are abruptly evacuated and closed due to bomb threats, dozens of which have set the town on edge since Trump singled out Springfield during last week’s debate. One Springfield elementary school saw around 200 children absent from classes on Tuesday due to security concerns and bomb threats, which largely have been found to be hoaxes.Earlier this week, CultureFest, a fall festival beloved by locals, was canceled to “prevent any potential risks” to attendees. A debate involving local politicians up for election has also been canceled.Springfield’s Republican mayor, Rob Rue, has pleaded for both presidential candidates not to come to the town, saying it would place an extreme strain on the city’s already stretched resources. Despite that, at a rally in New York on Wednesday, Trump said he’d travel to Springfield in the coming weeks.Back at the Rose Goute Creole restaurant, the stream of customers keeps coming. Orders stack up as hungry Haitian workers wearing T-shirts depicting their employers dart over to the counter to collect their orders before scampering back out the door.And Fanfan isn’t alone. Amanda Payen hands out free bottles of water and asks diners if they’re being served. Her husband, Jacob, who’s from Port-au-Prince but lived in Florida for decades before coming to Springfield, thanks diners for coming in as they leave.None are employees of the restaurants, but as Haitians, they want to help.“I’ll come back again tomorrow,” says Fanfan, “and if I see they need help, I’ll stay.” More

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      Ohio’s Republican governor condemns Trump and Vance for Springfield claims

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      Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, on Friday criticized former US president Donald Trump and his election running mate, JD Vance, for repeating racist rightwing claims about Haitian immigrants eating other residents’ pets in the city of Springfield, Ohio.The conspiracy theories have caused uproar and led to an onslaught of threats and harassment.In a guest essay published in the New York Times on Friday, DeWine said it is “disappointing” that Springfield “has become the epicenter of vitriol over America’s immigration policy”, specifically calling out Trump and Vance for amplifying disinformation.“As a supporter of former President Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance, I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield,” DeWine wrote. “This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there.”DeWine said Trump and Vance were raising important issues about the “Biden administration’s failure to control the southern border”.But the governor, who said he was born in Springfield, added: “But their verbal attacks against these Haitians – who are legally present in the United States – dilute and cloud what should be a winning argument about the border.”DeWine’s comments have received mixed reactions from top Ohio Democrats.Some have supported DeWine’s essay amid vitriol aimed at Haitian immigrants in Springfield. Allison Russo, Ohio state representative and minority whip, celebrated DeWine’s essay in a post to X.“I applaud [DeWine] for this fair and very thoughtful op-ed about [Springfield, Ohio] and the Haitian immigrants who are working hard to build a future there,” she wrote.Meanwhile, Ohio state senate leader Nickie Antonio told the Guardian that she agreed with DeWine’s essay, but was “disappointed” that DeWine is still supporting Trump and Vance in the 2024 presidential election.“What the governor left out with his entire [essay], which I think was beautiful, is that Trump and JD Vance started this whole thing to begin with and they continue it,” Antonio said.“They are continuing to beat the drum, encouraging violence, hatred, discrimination of people who are legally in our country, in our state and in that community”.Antonio added that DeWine is a “fine and decent person” who has done positive things for Ohio, but added: “I don’t know how any reasonable person at this moment could put their partisan affiliation in front of decency and some kind of sense of the common good, because there’s none of that with these kinds of statements.”Trump said on Wednesday that he plans to visit Springfield “in the next two weeks”.Both DeWine and the mayor of Springfield, Rob Rue, also a Republican, spoke out against such a visit over security concerns.“A visit from the former president will undoubtedly place additional demands on our safety infrastructure,” said Rue during a Thursday press conference. “Should he choose to change his plans, it would convey a significant message of peace to the city of Springfield.”DeWine had previously questioned dehumanizing rumors targeting Haitian immigrants in Springfield.In an interview with CBS News last week, DeWine said that the rumor began on the internet, which “can be quite crazy sometimes”.DeWine added: “Mayor [Rob] Rue of Springfield says, ‘No, there’s no truth in that.’ They have no evidence of that at all. So, I think we go with what the mayor says. He knows his city.”Meanwhile, schools in Springfield received more than 30 bomb threats after the inflammatory rumors became national news, despite there being no evidence to support them, and Trump brought up the topic in the presidential debate against his Democratic rival for the White House, Kamala Harris.DeWine has since deployed Ohio state highway patrol to provide security.“Bomb threats – all hoaxes – continue and temporarily closed at least two schools, put the hospital on lockdown and shuttered City Hall,” he wrote. More