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    How Nancy Pelosi became the Democrat Trump hated most

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    Nancy Pelosi arrived in Congress in 1987 aiming to spur a reluctant Washington into taking action against the Aids epidemic that was then ravaging the gay community in her home town, San Francisco.Nearly four decades later, she will exit the House of Representatives after a historic career in which she has made her influence felt nationwide. A Democrat who was the first woman ever to serve as speaker of the House, her fingerprints are on landmark legislation passed during Barack Obama’s and Joe Biden’s presidencies that affect millions of Americans and today remain among the most contentious topics in the Capitol.In a country that grew increasingly polarized during her time in Congress, it should be no surprise that reactions to her departure are textbook examples of America’s partisan extremes.“Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi will go down in history as the greatest speaker of all time. Her tenure has been iconic, legendary, historic and transformational,” said Hakeem Jeffries, her successor as House Democratic leader.“The retirement of Nancy Pelosi is a great thing for America. She was evil, corrupt and only focused on bad things for our country,” Donald Trump told Fox News.Taking office near what turned out to the tail end of four decades of Democratic control of the House, Pelosi was there to see Congress fulfill her hope of addressing Aids through the passage of the Ryan White Care Act, in 1990. In the years that followed, she climbed the ranks of party leadership until becoming speaker in 2007, following blowout election victories for Democrats the year prior.Under Obama, she oversaw passage of the Affordable Care Act, which transformed the nation’s healthcare system, as well as his efforts to revitalize the economy after the 2008 recession. When Biden’s election brought the Democrats back into power in 2021, Pelosi was by his side, wrangling a slim House majority to pass laws that addressed the climate crisis and revamped the nation’s infrastructure and critical industries.Her collaboration with the two Democratic presidents gained her a reputation as one of the country’s best-known liberals, and a modern trailblazer for female politicians. Perhaps it was inevitable that Trump, who beat two different Democratic candidates to win the presidency and has his own history of sexist comments and troubling conduct, would become her principal antagonist.Pelosi had clashed with George W Bush along with John Boehner and Paul Ryan – the Republicans who succeeded her as speaker after Democrats lost their House majority in the 2010 elections – but her feud with Trump was like few others in Washington.Shortly before she returned as House speaker in 2019, Pelosi and the top Senate Democrat, Chuck Schumer, met with Trump in the Oval Office for what turned into a prolonged, televised squabble. When they got together months later to discuss a volatile situation in Syria, the White House released a photo showing a standing Pelosi pointing her finger at the president. “Nervous Nancy’s unhinged meltdown!” Trump tweeted, though the speaker’s supporters saw plenty to like in her defiant stance.She rolled her eyes and did a mocking slow clap at the president’s State of the Union address that year. He refused to shake her hand when they crossed paths in the House chamber for the annual address in 2020, and she tore up his speech at its conclusion. It was no surprise that some of the violent Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6 talked about killing her, but, with Pelosi whisked to a military base, could do no more than sack her office. The following year, a man broke into her San Francisco home, looking to take her hostage and interrogate her over the investigation into the first Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. The speaker was not home, and he ended up brutally injuring her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPelosi would oversee Trump’s two impeachments, first for his attempt to spur Ukraine into meddling in the 2020 election, then again for the January 6 attack. It was these dishonors that Trump made a point of mentioning when news broke that she would be stepping down.“I’m very honored she impeached me twice and failed miserably twice,” he said, having earlier added that “she was rapidly losing control of her party, and it was never coming back”.It’s worth dwelling on the last point, considering Pelosi’s last great act in Congress was orchestrating a pressure campaign that ousted Biden, another of Trump’s enemies. Regarded by many in her party as a master tactician even after stepping down and taking the rare title of speaker emerita in 2023, she saw Biden as unelectable and a liability to down-ballot Democratic candidates after his terrible performance in a debate against Trump.Pelosi wanted a competitive process for finding another Democratic nominee, but Biden instead endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris, who would go on to decisively lose to Trump, paving the way for his return to power. Her relationship with Biden, meanwhile, was left in tatters.The Democratic party went into a tailspin after Harris lost and their candidates failed to hold either chamber of Congress. A year later, the party swept off-year state elections, raising the party’s hopes that its mojo was coming back and Democrats would retake the House in 2026.However it goes, Pelosi will not be there. Two days before announcing her retirement, she held forth to CNN about Trump, calling him “a vile creature, the worst thing on the face of the earth”.But she also had some words for the next generation of lawmakers who will arrive in Washington soon enough: “Treat everyone as your friend, but know who your friends are.” More

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      George Clooney says replacing Joe Biden with Kamala Harris ‘was a mistake’

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      George Clooney has said he feels it was a “mistake” for Kamala Harris to replace Joe Biden in the 2024 US presidential election, adding that he had no regrets about the New York Times opinion piece in which he called on the Democrats to find a new presidential nominee.Speaking on CBS’ Sunday Morning, the actor and activist, who is a prominent financial donor to the Democratic party, said he would write his op-ed again if given the chance, and that he wished the Democrats had held a new primary to elect a presidential candidate. Instead, Harris was nominated by a virtual vote of party delegates.“We had a chance,” Clooney said. “I wanted there to be, as I wrote in the op-ed, a primary. Let’s battle-test this quickly and get it up and going. I think the mistake with it being Kamala is she had to run against her own record. It’s very hard to do if the point of running is to say, ‘I’m not that person’. It’s hard to do and so she was given a very tough task.“I think it was a mistake, quite honestly. But we are where we are. We were gonna lose more House seats, they say. So I don’t know. To not do it would be to say, ‘I’m not gonna tell the truth’.”Clooney’s op-ed, headlined “I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee”, was a prominent example amid a growing wave of dissent among Democrat voters about Biden’s ability to continue as US president, after he performed poorly during his first presidential debate with Donald Trump.“We are not going to win in November with this president,” Clooney wrote at the time. “On top of that, we won’t win the House, and we’re going to lose the Senate. This isn’t only my opinion; this is the opinion of every senator and congress member and governor that I’ve spoken with in private. Every single one, irrespective of what he or she is saying publicly.”In July, Biden’s son Hunter Biden gave a profanity-laced, three-hour interview to the US outlet Channel 5 in which he attacked Clooney for writing the op-ed.“Fuck him!” Hunter Biden said of Clooney. “Fuck him and everybody around him. I don’t have to be fucking nice.”He questioned why anyone listened to Clooney, saying: “What do you have to do with fucking anything? What right do you have to step on a man who’s given … his fucking life to the service of this country and decide that you, George Clooney, are going to take out basically a full-page ad in the fucking New York Times.”Asked by CBS if he saw Hunter Biden’s reaction, Clooney laughed wryly and said, “Yeah, I saw it”. Asked what he made of it, he said, “I could spend a lot of time debunking many of the things he said … but the reality is, I don’t think looking backwards like that is helpful to anyone. Particularly to him. I don’t think it is helpful to the Democratic party. So I’m just going to wish him well on his ongoing recovery and I hope he does well and just leave it at that.“I have many personal opinions about it but I don’t find it to be helpful to have a public spat with him.”Since her failed presidential bid, Harris has been critical of Biden’s initial decision to run for a second term. In her book 107 Days, published in September, she wrote that she was “in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out” because “I knew it would come off to him as incredibly self-serving if I advised him not to run. He would see it as naked ambition, perhaps as poisonous disloyalty, even if my only message was: don’t let the other guy win.” More

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      Why Trump’s White House is using video game memes to recruit for ICE

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      Just days after Microsoft announced Halo: Campaign Evolved, the next game in its famous science-fiction series, the White House shared an interesting picture on X. The image, which appears to be AI-generated, shows President Donald Trump wearing the armour of Halo’s iconic protagonist, Master Chief, standing in salute in front of an American flag that’s missing several stars. In his left hand is an energy sword, a weapon used by the alien enemies in the Halo games. Posted in response to a tweet from US game retailer GameStop, the text accompanying the image reads “Power to the Players” in reference to the store’s slogan.GameStop and the White House exchanged another Halo meme or two, and then, on 27 October, the official Department of Homeland Security X account joined in – using Halo imagery of a futuristic soldier in an alien world to encourage people to join its increasingly militaristic Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Stop the Flood, this one reads, equating the US’s immigrant population with the parasitic aliens that Master Chief eliminates.“Yet another war ended under President Trump’s watch – only one leader is fully committed to giving power to the players, and that leader is Donald J Trump,” said White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai over email, when I asked for the official line on this post. “That’s why he’s hugely popular with the American people and American gamers.” (Microsoft has not replied to any requests for comment.)View image in fullscreenThis spate of sharing video game imagery may seem odd, but Trump and his various allies have been leaning into gamer culture for nearly a decade. Trump has courted gamers – a demographic that includes a significant subsection of disaffected young men – since his first presidential campaign. Media executive Steve Bannon joined that campaign as chief strategist and senior counsellor in August 2016, bringing with him a wealth of knowledge of video game culture and the online behaviour of its biggest fans.Bannon had previously worked with and secured funding for Internet Gaming Entertainment, a Hong Kong company that paid Chinese workers low wages to farm gold in the multiplayer game World of Warcraft. According to Joshua Green’s book on Bannon (Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency), it was during this time that Bannon learned that “these guys, these rootless white males, had monster power”. In 2014, Bannon watched as Gamergate, an amorphous online army massing in the darker corners of the web, routinely targeted women and other people marginalised in the video game industry. He saw how the movement’s behaviour led to real-world actions, such as organised harassment and doxing (the sharing of private information with the public).Once Bannon joined the Trump campaign, he leveraged his understanding of gamer culture to push Trump’s presidential campaign to previously untouched places. “You can activate that army. They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned on to politics and Trump,” Bannon told Green.That army was ready to engage in memetic warfare at any given moment, and it did. Throughout the campaign, Trump’s meme army monitored then candidate Hillary Clinton’s every move, sharing fabricated allegations of health problems with the hashtag #HillaryHealth. It regularly produced memes supporting Trump based on internet in-jokes and nerdy pop culture references. Arguably, Trump defeated Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign with the help of this army.When Trump failed to beat Joe Biden in the 2020 election, he turned to his own social media platform, Truth Social, to regularly lambast Biden and the Democrats throughout Biden’s four-year term. He continued to court gamers and the online reactionary right, before winning the presidency again. The second Trump administration still utilises the tactics and frameworks of online agitators (or trolls), but there’s one major difference this time around: Elon Musk.View image in fullscreenThe South African entrepreneur bought Twitter in October 2022 and quickly reinstated Trump’s account and a host of others that had been banned. Musk, who regularly invokes gamer culture and posts memes on his own X account, and spent a few weeks earlier this year embroiled in a ridiculous fight over whether he was faking his gamer credentials (he was), loosened the restrictions on hate speech on the platform and boosted the exact kind of toxic gamer culture that the White House is now courting.Since Trump’s January inauguration, the White House and various federal institutions have taken up meme posting. Last month, the Department of Homeland Security’s official X account and the White House’s official TikTok account shared a video of ICE raids set to the Pokémon theme music, interspersing imagery from the animated show with clips of agents arresting people and using the “Gotta catch’em all” slogan from the franchise. The Pokémon Company International told the BBC that “permission was not granted for the use of our intellectual property”. The video is still up at the time of writing.The video game industry at large has long remained silent when it comes to the reactionary politics and ideologies spreading among its communities. For millions of Americans who play games, but are massively embarrassed by an administration that is warning pregnant women against taking Tylenol, or pushing the narrative that immigrants are parasites, or that diversity, equity and inclusivity movements result in unqualified workers, watching this unfold is incredibly frustrating. The more the administration leans into video game iconography and internet memes, the more video game companies find themselves associated with the divisive and reactionary politics of the right – whether they want it or not. More

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      Biden’s ex-press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre: ‘Why are Democrats not fighting back?’

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      When CJ Cregg exits the White House for the last time, a passing tourist asks her if she works there. “No,” she replies in the final episode of The West Wing, “No, I’m sorry I don’t.” The former press secretary casts a wistful glance back at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, knowing life will never be the same.The evanescence of power is now familiar to Karine Jean-Pierre, who in real life served as White House press secretary for two and a half years under the presidency of Joe Biden. She was the first Black person, first out gay person and – born in the Caribbean to Haitian parents – first immigrant to hold the title.But the old saying that all political lives end in failure applies to their spokespeople too. Jean-Pierre spent her final months in the West Wing parrying questions about Biden’s mental acuity, an exercise that increasingly came to be seen as defending the indefensible. She watched as her boss’s legacy was undone, his numerous accomplishments eclipsed by his failure to prevent the return of Donald Trump.That the whole experience ended on a sour note is made clear by the publication of Jean-Pierre’s memoir Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines. Its front cover offers an image of the White House, seen not through Cregg’s rose-tinted gaze but rather a cracked lens.The book explains Jean-Pierre’s decision to leave the Democratic party after two decades and declare herself a political independent. It was driven by profound disillusionment with a party leadership that she argues betrayed Biden, failed to strategically support Vice-President Kamala Harris and has responded in a “shockingly weak manner” to the authoritarian threat posed by Trump.In an interview at the Guardian’s office in Washington, Jean-Pierre explains that she was spurred to write by conversations with strangers unnerved by Trump’s power grab. “Some were Democrats, some Republicans, some I don’t even know what their party affiliation was and they would say to me, ‘What are we going to do? Why are Democrats not fighting back? Where’s their soul? We’re losing here. I’m scared, I’m worried.’“It was a constant me trying to reassure people or trying to give some words of encouragement or listening to what I was hearing and it made me think, oh wait, maybe there’s a way that I can have a voice in this moment.”View image in fullscreenThe fallout from the June 2024 presidential debate between Biden and Trump in Atlanta was the catalyst for Jean-Pierre’s political evolution. She writes that Biden’s “faint and hoarse” voice and bumbling performance were due to a cold. Within minutes her phone began “to blow up” with texts from reporters asking if the president had Covid-19 or was sick.That soon morphed into a narrative about his age and mental fitness, which Jean-Pierre argues the media had been building for a year while failing to apply the same standard to Trump. She ardently rejects what has now become almost conventional wisdom in Washington: that Biden was in inexorable decline and, by accident or design, White House aides tried to cover up his condition.“That night completely took me by surprise,” she insists. “Everything that I’ve said at the podium was true then and it continues to be true now. This is someone – President Joe Biden – that I saw day in and day out. Now, did he age? Yes. He aged. People saw what they saw and I saw what I saw.“Of course he aged. I’ve aged, we’ve all aged. We never denied that he was older and he was in his 80s. That’s something that we actually tried to own up to and did. His mental acuity for me never, ever came into question. I always thought this man was more than fit to serve.”View image in fullscreenIn Jean-Pierre’s view, the Democratic party, which had nominated Biden for re-election, lost its nerve on the basis of one debate and went into full panic mode. She describes a three-week “wrenching” ordeal where she witnessed the party “tear itself apart”. She felt “enraged” and “heartbroken” by the way in which a man who had given 50 years of public service was now being hung out to dry.She says: “When I saw the way Democratic leadership was behaving and treating him, it stuck out. I thought to myself, you have a whole different party – the Republican party – who are standing behind their guy 200%. It doesn’t matter what record he may have. They are saying to themselves, this is our guy – Project 2025, authoritarianism, the way they’re going to treat vulnerable communities – we’ll take that, we’re fine with it and we’re going to hold him up.”Jean-Pierre asserts that the former House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom Biden considered a friend, led the charge against him. She learned from members of Congress that Pelosi was on group texts claiming that Biden needed to step aside. She writes that this was a significant “about-face” from Pelosi’s public praise for Biden’s record just months earlier.Jean-Pierre adds in the interview: “She wasn’t quiet about it; she was very vocal about it and she’s a force in the party. Look: 2023, coming out of the midterms, there was no red wave. It wasn’t as bloody or as horrible as people had thought it was going to be. No one publicly or privately said for him not to run. They gave him the space to make that decision.“If anything, leadership like Nancy Pelosi said he should run. There was support for him and so to do what was done to him, I thought, what’s going on? He had the right to make that decision. Every incumbent president has an opportunity to make that decision, especially coming from a successful presidency and a successful – in historical terms – midterm elections.”View image in fullscreenBut opinion polls showed widespread public concerns about the mental and physical fitness of Biden, the oldest president in US history, who in May this year was diagnosed with an aggressive prostate cancer. Only diehard loyalists still think he could and should have served a second term, which he would have completed at the age of 86. Is Jean-Pierre among them?The ex-press secretary sidesteps the question and turns the focus on Trump. “I’m not going to go back in time. What happened, happened. He made his decision. We are where we are and my focus is truly on how do we move forward, what is the roadmap for getting out of this very much authoritarian regime that we seem to find ourselves in?“Looking at Project 2025, everything that they said very loudly and clearly that they’re going to do is now happening. Families are in danger, individuals are in danger, vulnerable people are in danger. I’m not brilliant for saying this because it’s been said in history: if they come after one group of people, they’re going to come after everybody. Everyone’s lives now and everyone’s livelihood is at stake.”Jean-Pierre does not watch her successor at the podium, Maga evangelist Karoline Leavitt, but is aware that her briefings contain a new battalion of rightwing influencers and Trump cheerleaders. “It’s not supposed to be ‘Dear Leader’ and only who he wants in the press briefing. If we did that, my goodness!”She is scathing about Democrats’ failure to meet the moment. She points, for example, to the disorganised Democratic response during Trump’s joint address to Congress, where members wore different colours and used different slogans, as evidence of a party that cannot even unite on messaging.Jean-Pierre urges: “Democrats need to do more. Democrats need to behave as the opposition party in this time. It has been seen and shown in history, when you are the opposition party, there are things that could happen that could benefit the country. There’s a reimagining that they could lean into and try to think about: OK, how do we do this different and better? In 2024 millions of people who came out and voted in 2020 for Joe Biden didn’t come out. There’s a problem.”Jean-Pierre accepts that, as the spokesperson for the leader of the Democratic party, she too should be held accountable. But she warns against taking the wrong lessons from the election. She argues that Democrats take Black women’s votes for granted while chasing “moderate white Republicans” and contends that, after elections, Black women’s concerns are often dismissed as “identity politics”.Democrats such as Rahm Emmanuel are taken to task for labelling the party’s brand as “toxic” and “weak and woke”. By using Republican talking points, she argues, Democrats betray their base and appear to lack the courage of their convictions.“One of the problems the Democratic party has is that we take whatever Republicans give us and we go down a rabbit hole,” she says. “So what they’re talking about woke? Don’t take the bait. You say, look, this is a big tent party, we care about everybody, everybody has a voice here. Don’t even say the word ‘woke’.View image in fullscreenJean-Pierre succeeded Jen Psaki as press secretary in May 2022 after previously serving as deputy press secretary and also working as a senior adviser during Biden’s victorious 2020 campaign. During Barack Obama’s first term, she was a regional political director.Independent also reflects on the barrier-breaking nature of her appointment. She states that she could not respond to critics with the same force as her predecessors for fear of being labelled an “angry Black woman”. She had to consciously “keep it cool” in the face of what she perceived as disrespect and undermining of her credibility.She also recounts being the target of negative stories planted in the press by her own colleagues. She claims a senior female White House official who “should have been my mentor” orchestrated a campaign in outlets such as Politico and the New York Post to push her out of her job because she asserted her autonomy. This hostility, she writes, was worse than anything she faced from the press corps.View image in fullscreenShe says in the interview: “To come after you in that way is sad and heartbreaking and disappointing. I focused on the job. I didn’t fight back in any stories. I didn’t even defend myself and so I thought it was an opportunity to lay out what I was experiencing and what it was like in my role as a first.”Jean-Pierre is making up for lost time with her young daughter and has no plans to run for elected office herself. But she hopes that her declaration of independence will help spur an essential conversation about the future course of the Democratic party and the country.“How do we move forward in a way that everybody feels like they’re being engaged, they’re being heard and they’re understanding that elections have consequences?” she asks rhetorically. “You have to come out and vote. You lose your voice if you don’t come out to vote. One of the problems that’s happening right now is people are fearful and that’s how dictatorship begins. That’s how authoritarian regimes start. They create this chaos and then this fear and we cannot be fearful in this moment.” More

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      Joe Biden receiving radiation therapy for prostate cancer

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      Joe Biden is receiving radiation therapy for his prostate cancer that was diagnosed in May, a spokesperson for the former US president said on Saturday morning.“As part of a treatment plan for prostate cancer, President Biden is currently undergoing radiation therapy and hormone treatment, the spokesperson said. The news was first reported by NBC.The new round of treatment was expected to be spread over a five-week period, the spokesperson for Biden said to NBC, and marks a new point in the former president’s care. He had already been taking hormone medication in pill form, as he had previously mentioned in public when questioned in the spring about his illness.Biden was diagnosed in May with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer that had spread to his bones, his personal office had announced. The Democrat had left the White House in January after Republican Donald Trump became the 47th president of the United States, following his 2024 election victory.Biden first spoke out in public about his diagnosis later in May, saying he was optimistic about his prognosis and that “the expectation is we are going to be able to beat this”.The president returned to his home in Delaware after his single term in office concluded, and he turns 83 next month.In September he underwent a procedure known as Mohs surgery to remove cancerous cells from his skin.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Kamala Harris’s election memoir shows just how deluded the Democrats still are | Nesrine Malik

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      Watching the Kamala Harris presidential campaign unfold last year, I remember thinking, and writing, about how striking it was that she had been rehabilitated almost overnight into a political titan. Authoritative accounts of her before that moment portrayed a lo-fi vice-president, who, even according to people who had worked to get her there, had “not risen to the challenge of proving herself as a future leader of the party, much less the country”. Another striking feature of her campaign was how it leaned into vibes and spectacle rather than substance, or building faith in Harris as a clean break from an unpopular and visibly deteriorating Joe Biden. Her new book, 107 Days, a memoir of the exact number of days she had to win the presidency, goes a long way in explaining why that was. In short, Harris – and those around her, including supportive media parties – got high on their own supply.This was not the intention, but 107 Days is a hilarious book. The kind of “you have to laugh or else you’ll cry” type of hilarity. As the second Trump administration unfolds in ever-more disastrous ways, Harris and the other timeline that was possible had she won take on a calamitous, mythical quality. Here she comes, alerting us to the fact that her defeat was no fateful tragedy, but a farce. There was no hidden, better version of Harris that was muzzled and limited by circumstance. There was only a woman with a formidable lack of self-awareness and a propensity to self-valorise.The book reveals a politician who is all about the machinery of politics, rather than one with conviction spurred by a sense of duty, or a coherent and specific set of values that differentiate her. The “not a thing that comes to mind” answer she gave when asked during the campaign if there was anything she would have done differently to Biden was not caution, but the truth. There is no sign here that she would have liked to meaningfully diverge on Gaza, for example, other than to introduce more parity in the rhetoric of compassion. Or any indication that she would have liked to grasp the nettle on economic policy and make more of her accusation that Donald Trump’s economic agenda “works best if it works for those who own the big skyscrapers”.This dearth of a unique Harris agenda explains why she often seemed so vague, skittish and rambling. How does she receive the news she will be the candidate? By reminding herself (and us) that she had the best “contact book” and “name recognition”, as well as the “strongest case”. She tries to cloak her ambition, saying “knew she could” be president, but only because she “wanted to do the work. I have always been a protector.” It’s fine to have ambition to be the president of the United States! Every cardinal dreams of becoming pope, as Cardinal Bellini of Conclave said. Even he did himself, to his shame, when he lamented upon the discovery of his ambition: “To be this age and still not know yourself.”My abiding feeling reading was: oh God, this was all just as bad as it looked. The celebrity-packed campaign roster was not, in fact, panicked desperation, but the preference of the candidate and her team. They thought that such a range of characters would show that Harris was “welcoming everyone into the campaign” – as if the power of celebrity could do the unifying work of coalition-building, rather than her own programme and politicking. The immersion in the filmic, the celluloid of US politics is so complete that there is a line about Jon Bon Jovi performing for her and it being a good omen, because he performed for a candidate who won in The West Wing. The media loved her. “And behold,” Harris quotes a Washington Post writer, praising her approach to Gaza, “she had her boat through the impossible strait.” Jon Favreau said Harris was “a sight to behold” at the Democratic convention.I lost count of the number of descriptions of crowds exploding, roaring, on fire. The audience applause to Harris’s Saturday Night Live appearance was some of the loudest ever heard. She replays her greatest hits, revealing a politician captured by the reverie of rapturous self-selecting crowds and buzzy studios, fatally unable to connect to the voters outside the bubble, who had soured on the Democrats and were checking out, or voting for Trump.View image in fullscreenBiden pops up often, a self-involved and petty figure, snapping at her heels and distracting her. But she is loyal, she tells us – often. So loyal that she couldn’t disparage him in the way that people needed her to (“People hate Joe Biden!” she is told by a senior adviser). But not so loyal that she doesn’t more artfully disguise that she wants you to know the man was a real drag who mentioned her too late in his speeches, and then called her before her big debate with Trump to unsubtly threaten her if she bad-mouthed him. But what is most telling, and alarming, is what she reveals about the Democratic establishment, and therefore what hope there is of an awakening among its ranks. One that could pose a meaningful challenge to Trump now, and Trumpism in the future. The 107 days were short, but they were a concentration of a process in which the party and its candidate had to dig deep quickly to unearth the most compelling and defining vision for the American people. The result was to take no risks, offer continuity and scold dissenters as Trump enablers, but with style. It wasn’t enough, and will never be.The answer to the question “what went wrong” isn’t “we didn’t have enough time” to establish Harris. It was that Harris, even now, with all the time to reflect and be honest with herself, is a politician who invests too much in presentation, and entirely exculpates herself of failures because she was dealt a bad political hand. What can you say besides, “to be this age and still not know yourself”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion

      Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist More

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      Trump hangs autopen photo instead of Biden portrait in new presidential gallery

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      President Donald Trump has added a “Presidential Walk of Fame” to the exterior of the White House, featuring portraits of each of the previous commanders-in-chief – except for one.Instead of a headshot of Joe Biden, the Republican incumbent instead placed a photo of an autopen signing the Democrat’s name – a reference to Trump’s frequent allegation that the former president was addled by the end of his term in office and not really the one making decisions.The snub is the latest attempt by Trump to delegitimise a predecessor he routinely belittles, including in front of more than 100 world leaders on Tuesday at the UN general assembly gathering. Trump has never acknowledged his own defeat to Biden in the 2020 election, instead falsely chalking up the outcome to voter fraud.Trump had previously signalled he would represent Biden with an autopen on the walkway. Trump has alleged without evidence that Biden administration officials may have forged their boss’s signature by using the autopen and taken broad actions he was not aware of.He has also cast doubt on the validity of pardons and other documents that Biden signed with an autopen, even though other presidents before him have also relied on the device to sign key papers. A Republican-led House committee is investigating the Biden administration’s autopen use.White House staff sent out a burst of social media posts on Wednesday afternoon gleefully promoting the finished project. The media may get its first in-person glimpse of the display when Trump hosts a dinner on Wednesday night on the new Rose Garden patio that sits adjacent to the West Wing Colonnade on which the portraits hang.The addition is the latest in a series of design changes he has made at the White House since resuming office. The president also added gold flourishes to the Oval Office walls, installed massive new flagpoles on both lawns, replaced the grass in the Rose Garden with patio stone and started construction on a large new ballroom. More

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      Donald Trump says Charlie Kirk has died after being shot at university event – latest updates

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      Charlie Kirk, a Trump ally and rightwing activist, has been shot and killed at an event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, on Wednesday. Here’s what we know so far:

      Kirk, 31, died after being shot during a presentation on campus. Donald Trump first announced the death in a Truth Social post.

      Donald Trump wrote: “The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us. Melania and my Sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika, and family. Charlie, we love you!”

      Campus police are investigating the incident. The university said the suspect is not in custody. A person arrested earlier has been released and is no longer a suspect.

      Kirk, the executive director of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), was shot at about 12.10pm local time while appearing at an event. In video posts circulating on social media, Kirk can be seen getting struck while speaking and sitting beneath a tent. Kirk was there as part of the American Comeback tour, which is hosted by the TPUSA chapter at Utah Valley. Video footage shows students on campus running away from the sound of gunshots.

      Kirk was about 20 minutes into a presentation when a shot was fired from a nearby building, the university told CNBC. The university has said a “single shot” was fired towards Kirk.

      Political leaders in the US immediately condemned the attack. Joe Biden, the former US president, tweeted: “There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now. Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones.”

      Senior Democrats and Republicans also condemned the shooting. Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Chuck Schumer and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were among Democrats who condemned the attack. JD Vance, Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth paid tribute to Kirk and asked the public to pray for him.

      The House speaker, Mike Johnson, told reporters in the Capitol: “Political violence has become all too common in American society. This is not who we are. It violates the core principles of our country.”

      In an internal email to staff members that was posted online on Wednesday, the Turning Point USA COO, Justin Streiff, said: “It is with a heavy heart that we, the Turning Point USA leadership team, write to notify you that earlier this afternoon Charlie went to his eternal reward with Jesus Christ in Heaven … However, in the meantime, Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action will be closed for business until Monday, the 15th – likely longer.”

      The White House lowered its flag to half-staff in Kirk’s honor.
      Former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and the former vice-president Kamala Harris, have all condemned the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk in posts on social media.While the motive of the person who shot Kirk remains unknown, as police hunt for a suspect, all three Democrats argued that political violence must be condemned.“We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy,” Obama wrote. “Michelle and I will be praying for Charlie’s family tonight, especially his wife Erika and their two young children.”“There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now,” Biden wrote on social media. “Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones.”“I am deeply disturbed by the shooting in Utah”, Harris wrote before news of Kirkj’s death was announced by Donald Trump. “Doug and I send our prayers to Charlie Kirk and his family. Let me be clear: Political violence has no place in America. I condemn this act, and we all must work together to ensure this does not lead to more violence.”The newly installed flag on the north lawn of the White House was lowered to half-staff on Tuesday afternoon, after Donald Trump announced the death of Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot while debating students at Utah Valley University on Tuesday.Trump wrote on social media that he was ordering all American flags to be lowered across the country until Sunday evening.A spokesperson for Utah Valley University, Ellen Treanor, tells the Guardian: “A suspect was in custody, but they are no longer a suspect.”In a statement, Treanor added:
      It is with the tremendous sadness and shock that Charlie Kirk, who was invited by the student group TPUSA, was shot at about 12:20 when he began speaking at his planned event on the Utah Valley University Orem Campus. Kirk was immediately transported by his security team to a local hospital.
      Campus was immediately evacuated. Campus is closed and classes have been canceled until further notice. We are asking those still on campus to secure in place until police officers can safely escort them off campus.
      The incident is currently being investigated by four agencies: Orem Police, UVU Police, FBI, and Utah Department of Public Safety.
      Among those coming to terms with the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk on Wednesday is the progressive streamer, Hasan Piker, who was scheduled to debate Kirk at Dartmouth College in two weeks.On his Twitch live stream, Piker expressed horror at the shooting, and urged his followers not to celebrate it, but told viewers to stop writing in to tell him to wear a bulletproof vest or hire security for his public appearances.“I don’t have any security,” Piker told his viewers. “It shouldn’t be like this.” He went on to argue that only gun control could prevent mass shootings.“In a moment like this, a reasonable government would say: ‘Alright, enough is enough,’” Piker said. “If we had a responsible government and not a bunch of fucking psychopaths running the show,” he added, the US would already have had serious gun control following the massacre at at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.“I need to really reconsider the way I do everything outside, for the forseeable future,” Piker said.“Before people say: ‘Wear a bulletproof vest,’ again, he got shot in the neck,” Piker said. “A bulletproof vest would not have saved Charlie Kirk.”“The only thing that could have potentially saved Charlie Kirk,” he added, “was if our administrations, prior to this one and this one as well, actually had reasonable gun control as a policy position, in the aftermath of, I don’t know, a hundred other school shootings.”The House speaker, Mike Johnson, told reporters in the Capitol a few minutes ago: “Political violence has become all too common in American society. This is not who we are. It violates the core principles of our country.”Writing on his social network, Donald Trump just announced the death of Charlie Kirk.Trump wrote:
      The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us. Melania and my Sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika, and family. Charlie, we love you!
      A White House correspondent for the New York Post reports that she just spoke with Donald Trump on the phone about Charlie Kirk.“He’s not doing well,” Trump told Diana Nerozzi. “It looks very bad.”She then asked Trump how he was feeling. He replied: “Not good. He was a very, very good friend of mine and he was a tremendous person.”Videos circulating on social media showed an attender at the student event on Wednesday asking Charlie Kirk: “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?”In response, Kirk said: “Too many,” as the crowd clapped.In a follow-up question, the attender asked: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?”Kirk replied: “Counting or not counting gang violence?”Seconds later, Kirk could be seen struck in the neck as he falls back in his chair.A spokesperson for Utah Valley University has retracted an earlier claim that a suspect in the shooting of Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist, is in custody.In a statement provided to Deseret News in Utah, university spokesperson Scott Trotter said: “We can confirm that Mr Kirk was shot, but we don’t know his condition. The suspect is not in custody. Police are still investigating Campus is closed for the rest of the day.”Trotter told the New York Times that police had taken someone into custody earlier but have determined that he was not the gunman.Kirk’s event in Utah today was the first of a 15-stop tour at universities across the country. Titled “The American Comeback”, the 31-year-old activist was due to speak at Colorado State University on 18 September.

      Charlie Kirk, a Trump ally and rightwing activist, has been shot at an event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.

      The university said in a statement that Kirk was taken away by his security. Law enforcement have told the AP he is in hospital and in a critical condition.

      Campus police are investigating the incident. There are some conflicting reports about the detainment status of the suspect.

      Donald Trump has asked for prayers for Kirk. Trump wrote on Truth Social: “We must all pray for Charlie Kirk, who has been shot. A great guy from top to bottom. GOD BLESS HIM!”

      Kirk, the executive director of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), was shot at about 12.10pm local time while hosting an event. In video posts circulating on social media, Kirk can be seen getting struck while speaking and sitting beneath a tent. Kirk was there as part of The American Comeback Tour, which is hosted by the TPUSA chapter at Utah Valley. There is also video footage of students on campus running away from the sound of gunshots.

      Kirk was about 20 minutes into a presentation when shots were fired from a nearby building, the university told CNBC. The university has said a “single shot” was fired towards Kirk.

      FBI director Kash Patel has said that his agency is “closely monitoring” the situation.

      The shooting sparked immediate condemnation from Republicans and Democrats. Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro and Chuck Schumer condemned the attack. JD Vance, Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth paid tribute to Kirk and asked the public to pray for him.

      Spencer Cox, Utah’s governor, said that he has been “briefed by law enforcement following the violence directed at Charlie Kirk during his visit to Utah Valley University today.” Cox added that “those responsible will be held fully accountable,” and uged “Americans of every political persuasion” to condemn the shooting. He offered his prayers to Kirk, his family and all those affected.

      Shortly before shots rang out, Kirk tweeted: “WE. ARE. SO. BACK. Utah Valley University is FIRED UP and READY for the first stop back on the American Comeback Tour.”
      Charlie Kirk is in critical condition at a hospital, after being shot at a speaking event at Utah Valley University, a law enforcement official tells the Associated Press.The university said earlier that a suspect was in custody, and the college campus has closed, and classes have been cancelled.Eva Terry, another Deseret News reporter who was also at the event, described the direction of the shot, saying: “It looks like it came from the middle to the right side of the audience.Describing the suspect, Terry said: “It looks like he was an older gentleman, probably in his late 50s to 60s, wearing what looks like a worker’s uniform.”Kirk was being asked a question about mass shootings when he was shot in the neck, according to eyewitnesses.Speaking to the Guardian, Deseret News reporter Emma Pitts who was at the event said: “He was on the second question and it was regarding mass shootings and the person he was debating had asked about if he knew how many mass shootings had involved a transgender shooter to which Kirk responded. Then he asked how many mass shootings had been in total in the last couple of years, I believe.“And then before he could even answer, we heard a gunshot and we just saw Charlie Kirk’s neck turn to the side and it appeared that he had been shot in the neck. There was blood, immediately a lot of blood,” Pitts added.“After the shots were fired, everyone immediately took to the ground … we were just trying to stay hidden. I don’t know how quickly it was, probably within a minute, everyone started running away … Since then the university has been completely evacuated,” said Pitts.Utah Valley University, based in Orem about 40 miles south of Salt Lake City, has closed its campus and is cancelling classes “until further notice”, according to statement.“Police are investigating. Leave campus immediately,” the university added.We’re also hearing from several leading Democrats across the country, condemning the shooting at Utah Valley University.Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro said in a post on X that “the attack on Charlie Kirk is horrifying and this growing type of unconscionable violence cannot be allowed in our society.” Shapiro added that “Political violence has no place in our country.”Similarly, California governor Gavin Newsom described the shooting as “disgusting, vile, and reprehensible.”On Capitol Hill, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said that he was “praying” for Kirk and his family, while echoing statements denouncing political violence.Alongside the president, several members of his cabinet have offered their prayers to Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist and Turning Point founder, who was shot during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University.Vice-president JD Vance asked his followers to “say a prayer for Charlie Kirk, a genuinely good guy and a young father”, and attorney general Pam Bondi wrote that “FBI and ATF agents are on the scene. PRAY FOR CHARLIE.”Meanwhile, Kristi Noem, secretary of the Department for Homeland Security, said that she and her husband “are lifting up Charlie, Erika, and their family in our prayers right now”.Defense secretary Pete Hegseth added that Kirk was “an incredible Christian, American, and human being”. More

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      Joe Biden to begin fundraising to build presidential library in Delaware

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      Former US president Joe Biden has decided to build his presidential library in Delaware and has tapped a group of former aides, friends and political allies to begin the heavy lift of fundraising and finding a site for the museum and archive.The Joe and Jill Biden Foundation this past week approved a 13-person governance board that is charged with steering the project. The board includes former secretary of state Antony Blinken, longtime adviser Steve Ricchetti, prolific Democratic fundraiser Rufus Gifford and others with deep ties to the one-term president and his wife.Biden’s library team has the daunting task of raising money for the 46th president’s legacy project at a moment when his party has become fragmented about the way ahead and many big Democratic donors have stopped writing checks.It also remains to be seen whether corporations and institutional donors that have historically donated to presidential library projects – regardless of the party of the former president – will be more hesitant to contribute, with Donald Trump in the White House for a second term, maligning Biden on a daily basis and savaging groups he deems left-leaning.“There’s certainly folks – folks who may have been not thinking about those kinds of issues who are starting to think about them,” Gifford, who was named chair of the library board, told the Associated Press. “That being said … we’re not going to create a budget, we’re not going to set a goal for ourselves that we don’t believe we can hit.”The George HW Bush library’s construction cost was about $43m when it opened in 1997. Bill Clinton’s cost about $165m. George W Bush’s team met its $500m fundraising goal before the library was dedicated.The Obama Foundation has set a whopping $1.6bn fundraising goal for construction, sustaining global programming and seeding an endowment for the Chicago presidential center that is slated to open next year.Biden’s library team is still in the early stages of planning.Construction and support for programming for the libraries are paid for with private funds donated to the non-profit organizations established by the former presidents. More