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      ‘Cognitively impaired’? Trump’s confused attacks on Biden start to backfire

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      Donald Trump has long attacked Joe Biden, his likely opponent at the polls next year, as “Sleepy Joe”, portraying the 80-year-old president as too old and too mentally fogged to occupy the Oval Office. As recently as Friday, the former president attacked his successor for being unfit to deal with Russia and the threat of nuclear war.But Trump’s tactics rebounded when he said Biden threatened to lead the US into “world war two” – and suggested that he, Trump, thought he had beaten Barack Obama for the presidency back in 2016.There have been two world wars. The first ended in 1918, the second in 1945. The cold war, the nuclear stand-off between the US and the Soviet Union that often threatened a third world war, ended with the fall of the communist regime in Moscow in 1991.Obama was president, and Biden vice-president, from 2009 to 2017. In the 2016 election, Trump beat Hillary Clinton.Mockery of Trump’s stumbles was immediate and sustained. But it also pointed to an increasingly stark issue on both sides of the aisle: the advanced age of many American leaders, and polling that shows most voters want generational change.At 80, Biden is the oldest president ever. Should he win re-election and serve a full term, he will be 86 on leaving office. Polling has shown more than 75% of Americans think he is too old for a second term.Trump is 77 but polls show significantly fewer voters think he is too old to return to power. Whether gaffes like those he made in Washington move the needle remains, of course, to be seen.Addressing the Pray, Vote, Stand summit, a rightwing event, Trump said Biden was “cognitively impaired, in no condition to lead and … now in charge of dealing with Russia and possible nuclear war”.Under Biden, he added: “We would be in world war two.”On Monday, the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, laughed as he said: “It’s almost like it’s the summer of 1939 all over again. You know, [Trump’s] father’s going to a Nazi rally or something, or a Klan rally. I don’t know which rally he did or didn’t go to.”Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was arrested after a Klan riot in Queens, New York, in 1927. Donald Trump has reportedly expressed sympathy for Nazism and Adolf Hitler.“But yeah,” Scarborough said. “You think they may want to take out the ‘cognitively impaired’ part of his speeches from now on.”Jonathan Lemire, his fellow host, said: “That’s an attack line the Republicans and Trump love to use [against Biden] but, man, that does seem like he was looking in the mirror just there.“I mean … we see these polls that suggest that voters are more concerned about President Biden’s age than Donald Trump’s age. Trump is only three years younger and anyone watching Trump day in, day out says he’s changed too.”Biden says he is fit to serve. So does Trump, telling NBC in an interview broadcast on Sunday “there should be a competency” test for presidents, of the sort he “aced” while in the White House. That prompted memories of previous national mirth, when in summer 2020 Trump, then 74, bragged about successfully recognising “person, woman, man, camera, TV” in a cognitive exam.But, again, the issue remains a serious one.Democrats protest that disproportionate attention is paid to Biden’s age than that of Trump. Last week, Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist, told CBS News: “Joe Biden is getting older, we all know that. But the other guy he’s probably going to be running against is getting older, too. And in the focus groups that I’m doing, old and steady still beats old and crazy.”Nonetheless, on Sunday, a new poll from CBS and YouGov said only 34% of voters thought Biden would complete a second term if elected. Asked the same question about Trump, 55% said they thought he would complete a full four years.Asked if the two men had the necessary mental and cognitive health to be president, 26% said only Biden did, 44% said only Trump did and 23% said neither did.Ninety-one criminal charges and assorted civil lawsuits notwithstanding, Trump leads Republican polling by wide margins. His challengers have made age and cognitive ability an issue but such is Trump’s dominance, they have mostly directed their fire at Biden.Ron DeSantis, the hard-right Florida governor who is a distant second to Trump, said last week age was “absolutely a legitimate concern” when electing a president.“The presidency’s not a job for someone that’s 80 years old,” DeSantis told CBS.He did not say if he thought the same about someone who was 77, and who the former Republican party chair Michael Steele called a “dumbass”, over his Washington remarks.But DeSantis added: “Obviously, I’m the governor of Florida, I know a lot of people who are elderly, they’re great people, but you’re talking about a job where you need to give it 100%, we need an energetic president.”Concern about the age of many US party leaders has spread beyond the presidency, particularly given public health scares suffered by Mitch McConnell, the 81-year-old Republican leader in the Senate, and Dianne Feinstein, the 90-year-old Democratic senator from California.DeSantis said: “I think that if the founders could kind of look at this again, I do think they probably would’ve put an age limit on some of these offices.” More

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      US and Iran expected to complete $6bn prisoner swap deal

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      The US and Iran are expected to pull off a controversial prisoner swap on Monday involving the unfreezing by the Biden administration of $6bn (£4.8bn) of Iranian oil money held in South Korea since 2018.Tehran and Washington are due to swap five prisoners each, including the conservationist Morad Tahbaz, a British-American citizen.In an elaborate and delicate diplomatic deal, months in the making, the five Americans are due to be flown from Tehran to Qatar before transferring to flights to Washington.Republicans and some former Iranian political detainees have accused Joe Biden of striking a deal with the world’s No 1 terrorist state that will only encourage Iran to keep hostage taking as a central part of its diplomatic arsenal. The state department says the money that is being released is Iranian-owned oil money frozen by the Trump administration in 2018 when the US left the Iran nuclear deal.Last week three European countries including the UK accused Iran of building stocks of highly enriched uranium that could have no possible civilian purpose.The US says the prisoner swap’s mediator, Qatar, will ensure that the unfrozen money is only spent on goods – primarily food, agricultural goods and medicine – that are not subject to sanctions. Critics say it will be impossible to police, and that the US threat to pull out if Iran breaks the agreement is bogus.The path to the swap reached a turning point when the state department agreed a waiver facilitating the release of the cash from South Korean banks to accounts in Switzerland and Doha.The five Americans have already been transferred out of Evin jail in Tehran to various hotels in the capital. They are due to be flown initially to Doha before flying to the US for a homecoming.Tahbaz was left in Iran when the British Iranian dual nationals Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori were released as part of a deal negotiated by the then UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss.The identities of five Iranians that are being granted clemency in the US have all been made public by Tehran. It is not clear that all of them want to return to Iran. Most of them were jailed for breaches of US sanctions.The deal is a coup for Qatar, which has acted as a mediator between two countries that deeply distrust one another. The Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, due to speak to the UN general assembly on Tuesday in New York, is likely to laud the deal as another sign of US weakness.Michael McCaul, the Republican chair of the House foreign affairs committee, has accused Biden of being naive and returning to the mistakes of the past .The Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis described Biden’s decision as outrageous, adding that it “has sent a signal to hostile regimes that if you take Americans, you could potentially profit … A rogue regime should know that if you touch the hair on the head of any American, you will have hell to pay.”Richard Ratcliffe, the husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, has criticised the timing of the release, so close to the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death in Iranian police custody.It is not clear if the deal will lead to a wider diplomatic breakthrough, or a new, less ambitious route to constrain Iran’s civil nuclear programme in which Tehran agrees to lower its stocks of highly enriched uranium.Iranian Americans, whose US citizenship is not recognised by Tehran, are often pawns between the two nations. In the last week there have been reports that three dual nationals were arrested in Iran and it was confirmed two weeks ago for the first time that Johan Floderus, an EU diplomat based in Iran, has been jailed since April 2022. More

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      Congressional Biden ally dismisses Republicans’ impeachment strategy

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      One of Joe Biden’s key congressional allies has rejected the notion that Republicans can bait the president’s fellow Democrats into embracing an impeachment inquiry as an opportunity for him to be cleared over questions about his son’s business affairs.“What the American people want is for us to fund government and solve their issues,” the California congressman Ro Khanna said on Fox News Sunday, referring to how some hard-right Republicans have made a Biden impeachment inquiry a condition for them to support new funding that would avoid at least a partial federal government shutdown after 30 September.Khanna, a leading progressive who sits on the US House’s oversight committee and is a member of Biden’s re-election advisory board, added: “There is no grounds for an impeachment inquiry, and this is why” Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy lacks the votes necessary to have already called one.The comments from Khanna to the Republican-friendly news program came after host Maria Bartiromo suggested that going along with a Biden impeachment could afford the president a chance to demonstrate – once and for all – that allegations of corruption stemming from his son Hunter’s foreign business deals are unfounded.Bartiromo said Republican congressman Scott Perry – Khanna’s fellow House oversight committee member – had previously advanced a similar line of argument to support impeaching Biden. And Bartiromo also alluded to Fox News polling which showed a percentage of voters believed Biden had done something unethical, if not illegal, as far as Hunter’s business dealings were concerned.But Khanna countered by pointing Bartiromo and her viewers to a Washington Post opinion piece by Colorado’s Republican House member Ken Buck, which asserted that there was no evidence to justify a Biden impeachment.Buck said that was his position even as he strongly condemned the Democrat-led impeachment of Biden’s Republican presidential predecessor, Donald Trump, in 2019. That impeachment concerned attempts by Trump to find dirt on his political rivals, including Biden, pertaining to politics and business in Ukraine.It was separate from Trump’s second impeachment stemming from his supporters’ violent attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 after his electoral defeat to Biden. Both impeachments resulted in Trump’s acquittal.Khanna said it was also telling that other Republicans have publicly shared Buck’s opinion that Biden’s impeachment would at best be a fruitless distraction. That reality contrasts sharply with the generally united front which Democrats presented when voting to impeach Trump, Khanna argued.“I mean, when we impeached President Trump, every Democrat voted for it,” said Khanna, though two House members belonging to his party opposed the 2019 impeachment. The GOP House speaker, Khanna said, “simply doesn’t have the votes on his side”, and a substantial number of Republicans in the chamber have expressed their preference to focus on avoiding a government shutdown.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Fund the government; solve people’s problems,” those Republicans say, according to Khanna.Bartiromo conceded that there were “definitely Republicans saying they don’t want to go down this road” of impeaching Biden.As ultra-conservative rhetoric about impeaching Biden swirled, the president’s son was indicted on Thursday on federal firearms charges which can carry up to 25 years in prison. The charges were brought against Hunter Biden after the collapse in August of a plea deal that also involved two separate misdemeanor tax charges.Since last year’s midterm elections, Republicans have held only a thin majority in the US House, which has the power to draw up articles of impeachment. Democrats hold a thin majority in the Senate, where two-thirds of the members need to vote to convict – and, as a consequence, remove from office – an impeached official. More

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      The old story: Biden team veers from humour to hardball to tackle age issue

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      Joe Biden began his press conference at the JW Marriott Hotel Hanoi in Vietnam at 9.09pm local time. “Good evening, everyone – it is evening, isn’t it?” he said, prompting laughter. About 25 minutes later, the 80-year-old US president had another quip: “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go to bed.”Headline writers pounced. The Daily Beast website declared: “Biden Wraps Up G20 Conference by Announcing ‘I’m Going to Bed’”. But unusually, the White House fired back. Ben LaBolt, its communications director, retorted sarcastically on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “Presidents shall never sleep. Not even at night after days of marathon meetings overseas. Sage guidance from the Daily Beast. Next up in the series: presidents shall never eat.”The riposte, combined with sharp pushback from LaBolt’s colleagues, suggested a newly pugnacious approach from Biden’s communications team over that most delicate of subjects: his age.A recent opinion poll by SSRS for the CNN network found declining shares of Democratic-aligned voters see Biden as inspiring confidence or having the stamina and sharpness to serve effectively as president. Asked to name their biggest concern about his candidacy in 2024, nearly half directly mentioned his age.As a white man with a blue-collar background, Biden has effectively neutralised many familiar Republican attack lines on race, gender or class elitism. But the prospect of him being 86 at the end of a second term has provided fodder for critics. Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor running for the Republican presidential nomination, has called for mental competency tests for candidates over 75 and warned that Biden will almost certainly be replaced by Vice-President Kamala Harris before the end of a second term.This week, David Ignatius, a venerable foreign affairs columnist for the Washington Post newspaper, lavished praise on Biden’s legislative achievements before contending that he and Harris should not run again. He wrote: “It’s painful to say that, given my admiration for much of what they have accomplished. But if he and Harris campaign together in 2024, I think Biden risks undoing his greatest achievement – which was stopping Trump.”Biden’s age is a problem that poses a unique challenge for the White House and the president’s re-election campaign. Some have advised them to embrace it as evidence of his experience, knowledge and wisdom. Jeffrey Katzenberg, a film producer and media proprietor, remarked earlier this year: “President Biden’s age is, in fact, his superpower.”But Frank Luntz, a consultant and pollster who has advised numerous Republican campaigns, described that as the “single dumbest political advice I have ever seen”. He explained: “Americans just say 80 is too old for being an effective president. The key is that Democrats are saying enough already, thank you for your service but don’t run for president, we need somebody else.”Biden’s likely rival in next year’s election, former president Donald Trump, is just three years younger, but Luntz counsels Democrats against emphasising that point. “They can’t do that because Trump may be 77 but he acts seven.”Biden’s Asia excursion illustrated the messaging opportunities and pitfalls around the issue. The White House points out that he “literally” travelled around the world – more than 18,000 miles – in under five days and met 20-plus foreign leaders. It gleefully quoted Peter Doocy, a reporter at the conservative Fox News network, who said from Hanoi: “He has basically been working all through the night. The equivalent of an all-nighter.”But the climactic press conference was interpreted by some as feeding into an existing narrative seen in Franklin Foer’s recent book, The Last Politician, which reported that Biden holds strikingly few morning meetings or public events before 10am and occasionally admits feeling tired.A report on CNN’s website said the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, had “abruptly” ended the session and foregrounded Biden’s comment about “going to bed”. It did not go unanswered. Olivia Dalton, principal deputy press secretary, set out Biden’s very long day on X and demanded: “What will be enough?” LaBolt targeted the author of the article, adding: “The desk jockey who wrote this utter BS was not present at the press conference or the trip.”It was an unusually personal, bare-knuckle approach from an administration that has condemned Trump’s frequent attacks on “fake news” and pledged to defend the freedom of the press.Robyn Patterson, an assistant White House press secretary, defended the responses to negative coverage, saying via email: “At the conclusion of the trip, President Biden held a press conference in the standard format. The President was scheduled to take five questions – he ended up taking seven.“He gave detailed answers on questions ranging from the US-China relationship, to his Indo Pacific strategy and climate change. When we see unfair spin that omits or downplays key facts and narratives ripped straight from right-wing Twitter, it’s our job to call that out.”Political analysts contend that calling out individual members of the media is unlikely to win friends in the long term.Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “I don’t think it’s wise. When you make things personal like that it doesn’t serve any positive purpose. No journalist who gets called out is going to all of a sudden go, ‘Oh, you’re right, I see it your way now, let me bend to your will.’ If anything, it makes the White House look overly defensive and overly concerned and a little touchy.”Reporters are not the problem but YouTube videos and TV coverage are, argues Charlie Sykes, editor of the Bulwark website and a former conservative radio host.“It is out there. The question of Joe Biden’s age comes up in every single conversation with every voter in America and that’s not going to go away and you can’t just simply spin that by beating up on reporters. People are watching Joe Biden very carefully.”The White House does need to rebut rightwing media claims that Biden is senile, Sykes added, because there is no evidence that he is unable to do the job. “But it seems naive to me to not recognise how the visuals undermine their message. The visuals of someone with a very stiff and wandering gait who sometimes loses the thread of conversation in these unstructured environments clearly is going to hurt them.“What really haunts me is what if we’re having this conversation in September or October of 2024. What if there is a Mitch McConnell-like episode [the Senate minority leader has frozen twice at press conferences] with the president in the fall of 2024, especially when Joe Biden may be the only thing that stands between this country and the constitutional disaster of a second Trump term?”Before Biden and Trump, the oldest American president was Ronald Reagan. When, at a debate in 1984, the moderator reminded him of this fact Reagan, then 73, replied: “I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Even his Democratic opponent, Walter Mondale, laughed at the line. Reagan won re-election in a landslide.Biden himself appears to have borrowed from the Reagan playbook, deploying self-deprecating humour and taking a less combative approach than his aides. He has joked about serving in the Senate 180 years ago and knowing “Jimmy” Madison, who was president in the early 19th century. At this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner he made fun of his age several times.Chris Whipple, a journalist and author of The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House, believes this is a more fruitful way of handling the issue than going on the offensive. He said: “The answer is humour, not anger. It makes them look desperate when they get angry. The communications people in the White House should take a page from the boss and just try to keep a sense of humour.”The challenges facing Biden, who turns 81 in November, were underlined this week when Republicans in the House of Representatives announced an impeachment inquiry into unproven allegations of corruption and his son, Hunter, was indicted on three criminal counts related to his alleged illegal possession of a gun.His re-election effort will also include more travel and voter interaction than during the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns of 2020. Last week his campaign team released a video about his surprise visit to Ukraine, referencing that it was a near 40-hour journey that started at 4am and involved a nine-and-a-half-hour train journey to Kyiv. They can also point to Biden’s triumphant verbal sparring with Republicans at this year’s State of the Union address.But there will have to be enough to drown out the many clips circulating on rightwing media of Biden falling off a bike near his Delaware beach house last year or tripping over a sandbag at the Air Force Academy commencement a few months ago. The president’s gaffes, a hallmark of his long political career, now tend to be seen through the prism of a fading octogenarian.Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington and former White House official, noted that Biden had been making his case in speeches across the country and called for a sense of perspective. “His age will only be a liability if he’s running against somebody young,” she said. “It’s not going to be a liability running against Trump. You’ve just got to look at the guy.“All that’s happened is so far the Republicans have been more aggressive on the age issue. But this is people throwing stones at glass houses. Trump is a walking heart attack, he looks a mess, he’s overweight and he talks in frequently incoherent babble. I don’t know if it’s dementia or just plain old stupidity. At least Joe Biden says things that make sense.” More

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      Does Wile E Coyote explain US voters’ gloom amid buoyant economy?

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      Strolling past the colorfully restored Victorian homes of the Fourth Ward, watching the barman hand-carve blocks of ice for old fashioneds at the jam-packed bar of The Crunkleton, it’s easy to fall for Charlotte’s ample southern charms. And yet, people are not happy – at least according to the polls.Consumer sentiment in North Carolina is now lower than it was at the height of the pandemic, according to High Point University’s confidence tracker. “People are just not feeling particularly good,” said Martin Kifer, director of the university’s survey research center.North Carolina is not alone. Official figures suggest the US pulled off an astonishing recovery from the Covid pandemic and recession.More than 20 million people in the US lost their jobs in April 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic shuttered the world’s largest economy. The unemployment rate rose to 14.7%. But the rebound was just as dramatic. Unemployment has hovered near 50-year lows since January 2022 and is now 3.8%. In North Carolina, it’s just 3.3%. More than 100 people are moving to the city every day.But as an exclusive Guardian/Harris Poll survey found this week, two-thirds (68%) of Americans report it’s difficult to be happy about positive economic news when they feel financially squeezed each month.Across the country, poll after poll shows people are not feeling it. That’s not good news for the Biden administration, particularly in a potential swing state where the perceived success – or failure – of “Bidenomics”, as Biden has dubbed his economic strategy, will be one of the key issues in next year’s election.The election is still a way out, and Biden has proven pollsters wrong in the past. Nevertheless, the economy – or voters’ perception of it – will be a defining issue in one of the most consequential elections in US history.Americans are deeply divided on the economy. The Harris poll shows over half (53%) of Americans believe the economy is getting worse. Some 72% of Republicans share that view compared with 32% of Democrats. But the unhappiness runs deep on both sides. Only a third of Democrats believe that the economy is getting better.Even when Americans say they are doing OK financially, they believe the economy is in trouble. According to the Federal Reserve’s annual survey of economic wellbeing, 73% of households said that they were “at least doing OK financially” at the end of 2022. In 2019, that figure was 75% of households. But back then, 50% said the national economy was good or excellent. By 2022, that number had fallen to just 18%.Some heavyweight voices share the gloom. Both the former Treasury secretary Larry Summers and Bill Dudley, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, have speculated that having shot out of the pandemic like a coyote chasing a roadrunner, the US may be in a “Wile E Coyote” economy and, like Warner Brother’s cartoon canine, the US economy may be heading off a cliff. “Falling back to earth will not be a pleasant experience,” Dudley has warned.Partisanship explains much of the seeming disconnect between economic data and sentiment. But not all of it. Large forces are reshaping the US economy and may explain the nation’s vertigo.Many low-wage workers, have been living with that fear of falling for a long time.Ieisha Franceis’s wages have shot up from $12.50 to $17 since the Durham, North Carolina, resident made the shift from working in fast food to a job at a senior living facility. Wages are – finally – running ahead of inflation overall but for Franceis, “everything looks the same. Inflation’s not gone down, it’s just not going up,” she said. “These days $17 an hour is looking a lot like $12.50,” said the low-wage activist.Franceis used to buy her family’s side dishes, boxes of macaroni and cheese, mashed potato, at Dollar General. The Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (“the good stuff”) has gone. “Now they only carry a cheaper brand with the powdered cheese.” At the average grocery store, that Kraft Mac and Cheese is over $2.“The Dollar Tree went from everything being $1 to everything being $1.25. Now they even have a $5 section and a $10 section. Huh? This was a dollar store,” she said. “Bidenomics” means little to Franceis. “What we need is higher wages and more unions,” she said.Even entrepreneurs are finding the new, post-Covid economy taxing.Cocktail queen Tamu Curtis saw her business boom during lockdown. A Los Angeles transplant, she started giving cocktail classes online and saved enough to open her bricks-and-mortar shop. The Cocktailery – nestled between an Anthropologie and Warby Parker inside an old streetcar station – opened in September 2021 when the vaccines started rolling out. “I thought, OK everybody is going to run and get the vaccines. We are saved! Of course, it didn’t work out that way,” she said ruefully. “That was a plot twist.”Up and running now for over a year, business has been strange. “This has been the craziest summer. It’s so slow,” she said.Retail sales have collapsed but classes have boomed. “People will spend money on experiences. On travel. We spent two years filling our houses with stuff. Maybe we just don’t need that any more.”On top of that, she said, “inflation is killing me.” An order of cocktail bitters that used to cost her $700 shot up to $1,500. “There’s only so much you can pass on. I can’t sell a bitter for $42. There’s a max people will pay.”At the same time, rent is high and financing is getting tougher as interest rates rise. “It’s difficult,” she said. And more so for a minority, woman-owned business. She hasn’t been able to get a traditional bank loan yet or a line of credit from her bank, Charlotte-based Bank of America. “Now the banks aren’t lending the way they were.”Post-Covid has been an easier ride for other local business people but still, existential questions remain, ones that may point to a wider national malaise.Desmond Wiggan and his partner Aubrey Yeboah launched their business, BatteryXchange, in 2019, just before the pandemic. The company sets up battery charging stations for mobile devices and the idea had originally been to target people at conferences or out on the town. “Suddenly there were no people,” said Wiggan.BatteryXChange retooled and now rents its equipment to healthcare providers and others who use the service to help keep their customers online. It worked and business is booming, as is Wiggan’s profile. He has just returned from a business symposium on swanky Martha’s Vineyard. A copy of Propel, a local Black business magazine, sits on his office table. Wiggan’s headshot is above a message from Michelle Obama: “Success isn’t about how much money you make, it’s about the difference you make.”But Wiggan has some wider concerns. He spent two years living in China and has seen firsthand that other countries think on a longer timescale. Back in the US, he said, it’s all about the next election cycle. On top of that another likely hot election issue worries him. “The age gap of our leaders. They are old. The torch has got to be passed.“These other countries are starting to sniff us out,” he said. Foreign students were getting their education in the US then going home because they see their country looking to the future, he said. “They are thinking 2060 not every four, eight years when we go back and forth.”****Why people feel so bad about an economy that – technically – appears strong is a question that is vexing not just the White House but Nobel economic laureates. Historians will have a better answer. For now, the reasons look manifold.As HPU’s Kifer points out “the perception of the economy is not the economy.” The disconnect between the official figures and how people feel may be temporary. Nor is it unusual for the hangover of a recession to outlast what looks like the beginning of a recovery. High Point’s own consumer confidence index started in 2010, two years after the peak of the 2008/2009 recession. It wasn’t until September 2011 that confidence started rising.The US’s pandemic recession began in February 2020 and ended two months later, making it the shortest recession on record. The body blow it dealt to confidence is, however, proving hard to shift. And things are different this time. For one, there is relatively high inflation – something never directly experienced by Americans under 40. Slowing increases have done little to calm people’s nerves and most people in North Carolina expect inflation to get worse next year, according to another HPU poll.The mood of economic despondency is fueled by other fires, too, illustrated by life in North Carolina and felt across the country.Politics plays a huge role. The University of Michigan’s national consumer confidence index shows Republican confidence soared under Trump and dropped under Biden while Democrats’ did the opposite.But it’s not the only factor. While people may not have lost their jobs, America’s middle class has lost $2tn in wealth since 2020 thanks to inflation and the fastest increase in interest rates since the 1980s, according to data compiled by economists at the University of California, Berkeley.That fall comes after outsized gains from stimulus cheques, rising house prices and other assets for those who rode out the pandemic with little financial cost. Still, the psychological pain of losing is about twice the pleasure of winning, according to Nobel-winning psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman. Losses loom larger than gains.Then there are the epochal issues of our day – ones that will spread far beyond North Carolina and the Biden presidency.North Carolina has been voted the best state for business for two consecutive years and business is still good. But there are signs of a slowdown. According to the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance, the Charlotte area expects businesses to invest $2.3bn in the region this year and create 7,200 jobs. That’s down from $8bn in investment and 20,000 jobs last year.Uncertainty is a large part of that drop, said Danny Chavez, chief business recruitment officer of the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance. Concerns about the direction of interest rates and political change are part of it – businesses waiting to see what happens next year, a natural part of the cycle. There is also something more.The number of jobs created per investment is also decreasing as tech takes jobs. Financial services and manufacturing are extremely important to the region. They remain so, said Chavez. “But in terms of jobs, both those industries are highly vulnerable to automation and AI,” he said.While Charlotte is better positioned than most to ride out that change, Chavez said the region – and the rest of the US – is also increasingly competing with global players. India and China are challenging the US’s rank as the world’s largest economy.Biden’s economic plans are playing to the long term and America has proved resilient to big shocks before. The president also has a track record of beating expectations. If hiring stays steady and inflation keeps receding, maybe Americans will hear the good news soon. That may or may not happen before the 2024 election.But the polls may also reflect a wider anxiety about the existential challenges the US (and other economies) face. Perhaps those challenges explain some of the national mood. It’s hard to measure existential dread.Longer term, neither Bidenomics – nor Trumponomics – are likely to fix America’s broken healthcare and childcare systems or the climate crisis. Nor do they offer clear solutions to the global trade winds that threaten American exceptionalism or the challenges presented by AI and automation.Little wonder then that so many in the US feel like Wile E Coyote, running off the cliff, treading air, waiting for the fall. More

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      Prosecutors warned Trump’s knowledge of Twitter search warrant could ‘precipitate violence’, court filings show – as it happened

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      From 4h agoFederal prosecutors secretly argued that informing Donald Trump about their efforts to access his Twitter account could “precipitate violence”, according to newly unsealed court filings.Prosecutors working for special counsel Jack Smith worried that Trump would publicly announce the search warrant or his Twitter feed, as he did on his Truth Social platform when his Mar-a-Lago estate was searched by the FBI last year.Informing Trump about the Twitter search warrant “could precipitate violence as occurred following the public disclosure of the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago,” the prosecutors warned. The news was first reported by Politico.Prosecutors argued for keeping Trump in the dark about the Twitter search warrant was necessary because they said the former president presents a “significant risk of tampering with evidence, seeking to influence or intimidate potential witnesses, and ‘otherwise seriously jeopardizing’ the Government’s ongoing investigations.”“These are not hypothetical considerations in this case,” the prosecutors wrote.
      Following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, the former President propagated false claims of fraud (including swearing to false allegations in a federal court filing), pressured state and federal officials to violate their legal duties, and retaliated against those who did not comply with his demands, culminating in violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
      In response, Twitter said the prospect of violence was “facially implausible” and argued that Trump already knew many details about Smith’s investigation. US district court judge Beryl Howell ultimately rejected the social media company’s arguments.The new filings also show Twitter turned over at least 32 direct messages from Trump’s account, @realDonaldTrump, to prosecutors. Prosecutors also obtained data that could show his location at the time certain tweets were sent, or if anyone else was accessing his account.It’s 4pm eastern time. That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, and the US politics live blog today.Here’s a recap of today’s developments:
      Americans do not trust the government’s economic news – or the media’s reporting of it – according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian that presents the White House with a major hurdle as it pushes Joe Biden’s economic record ahead of next year’s election.
      Prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith urged the judge overseeing his federal 2020 election interference criminal case to deny a request by Donald Trump to recuse herself from the case. There is “no valid basis” for US district judge Tanya Chutkan to remove herself from the case, Smith wrote.
      Twitter gave the special counsel prosecuting Donald Trump for alleged election subversion access to at least 32 of the former president’s private messages. The company, now known as X, turned over the messages after receiving a search warrant, citing newly unsealed filings to the US circuit court of appeals.
      Federal prosecutors secretly argued that informing Donald Trump about their efforts to access his Twitter account could “precipitate violence”, according to the newly unsealed court filings. Prosecutors worried that Trump would publicly announce the search warrant or his Twitter feed, as he did on his Truth Social platform when his Mar-a-Lago estate was searched by the FBI last year.
      Joe Biden spoke out in support of auto workers as they launched a historic series of strikes after their union failed to reach an agreement with the US’s three largest vehicle manufacturers. “No one wants a strike, but I respect workers’ rights to use their options under the collective bargaining system, and [I] understand their frustrations,” the US president said in a brief, unscheduled appearance at the White House.
      Joe Biden has declared a state of emergency in Maine as Hurricane Lee rapidly approaches the north-easternmost US state amid the likelihood of a landfall there or more likely in Canada over the weekend.
      Donald Trump’s October trial in a civil case brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, could be delayed because the former US president has quietly sued the judge Arthur F Engoron.
      Donald Trump said he would testify under oath denying he asked a staffer to delete surveillance footage at the center of an investigation into whether he mishandled classified documents. In an NBC interview, the former president said it is “very unlikely” he would pardon himself if he is re-elected in 2024.
      The House oversight committee announced it will be launching a Republican-led investigation into the Biden administration’s response to the deadly wildfires in Hawaii, which killed at least 115 people last month.
      The former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said he would drop out of the Republican presidential primary if he does not show well in New Hampshire.
      A lawyer for Hunter Biden, who was indicted on Thursday over illegally possessing a firearm, said he expected the case “will be dismissed before trial”. The president’s son was indicted by special counsel David Weiss on three felony gun charges after a plea agreement he struck with prosecutors imploded in recent months.
      Three men were acquitted in the final trial connected to a scheme to kidnap the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, a pandemic-era plot steeped in extremist politics and domestic terrorism that saw others imprisoned for lengthy terms.
      About half of Americans are interested in getting an updated Covid-19 vaccine, according to a new poll, after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a series of Covid-19 booster vaccines amid rising coronavirus cases around the country.
      The House oversight committee announced it will be launching a Republican-led investigation into the Biden administration’s response to the deadly wildfires in Hawaii.A joint statement by James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee, and Pete Sessions, the subcommittee chair, reads:
      The deadly wildfire in Maui shocked the nation and left many, especially those directly impacted by the tragedy, with serious questions that remain unanswered today. President Biden built his entire reputation on empathy and compassion but failed to deliver an appropriate response when it mattered most.
      At least 115 people were killed in last month’s wildfires on the island of Maui. The fire nearly destroyed the town of Lahaina, and caused more than $5.5bn in damage, according to estimates by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.The House oversight committee’s investigation into the fires is separate from a hearing by the energy and commerce committee, which will feature testimony from Hawaii utility and energy officials.Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis has subpoenaed former justice department official Jody Hunt for an upcoming hearing to transfer Jeff Clark’s case to federal court.From my colleague Hugo Lowell:About half of Americans are interested in getting an updated Covid-19 vaccine, according to a new poll, after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a series of Covid-19 booster vaccines amid rising coronavirus cases around the country.The Reuters/Ipsos nationwide poll found that almost 30% of respondents were “very interested” in getting the vaccine and another 24% were “somewhat interested”.On Monday, the FDA approved Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines that target a recently circulating Omicron subvariant of the coronavirus.The results of the poll suggest that more Americans are willing to get a booster shot than a year ago. According to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in six Americans opted for an updated shot.About 14% of those who said they were not interested in getting the booster said it was because they had Covid-19 already, while another 14% said they believed their previous vaccinations provided sufficient protection.The former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said he would drop out of the Republican presidential primary if he does not show well in New Hampshire.“I can’t see myself leaving the race under any circumstances before New Hampshire,” he told the New York Times. “If I don’t do well in New Hampshire, then I’ll leave.”As the Times pointed out, Christie is following the playbook he used in 2016, when his run for the Republican nomination focused on New Hampshire … and ended after it, after he finished sixth in the primary.Christie then became the first major figure to endorse Donald Trump in his insurgent run to the White House.Christie planned the transition at Trump Tower, only to be brutally (if of course metaphorically) defenestrated by Jared Kushner, whose father Christie put in jail back when he was a prosecutor in New Jersey. That didn’t stop Christie supporting Trump, and nor did Trump’s part in Christie ending up in the ICU with Covid. It took January 6 to finally propel Christie away from Trump, whose unfitness to govern the former governor is now dedicated to exposing.As the Times reported, Christie is portraying the Republican primary as an existential matter for the country:
      ‘The future of this country is going to be determined here,’ Mr Christie told a crowd this week at a local brewery, clutching an IPA. ‘If Donald Trump wins here, he will be our nominee. Everything that happens after that is going to be on our party and on our country. It’s up to you.’”
      The Times also noted the current state of play in primary polling:
      Though Mr Christie has improved in recent polls, he still trails Mr Trump in New Hampshire by double digits, and by much more in national polls and surveys of Iowa, the first nominating state.
      Christie told the Times he wanted to emulate John McCain, the Arizona senator who “broke late” in New Hampshire in 2000, ending up winning the state.McCain, of course, did not win the Republican nomination in 2000. George W Bush did. McCain did win it in his second attempt, eight years after his first. He was then heavily beaten in the general election, by Barack Obama.An exhaustive manifesto for the next conservative US president produced by Project 2025, an initiative led by the hard-right Heritage Foundation, uses “dehumanising language” about LGBTQ+ Americans too extreme even for candidates currently seeking the Republican presidential nomination, a leading advocate said.“The dehumanising language is consistent with the way the right talks about LGBTQ+ people overall,” said Sasha Buchert, director of the Non-Binary and Transgender Rights Project for Lambda Legal.“They’re never talking about transgender people or gay and lesbian people, it’s always referring to them as an ideology of some kind, or an ‘ism’. There’s no humanity involved … Not even the presidential candidates in the Republican debates are embracing this kind of rhetoric.”Donald Trump is the clear leader of that Republican race, despite facing 91 criminal indictments and multiple civil suits. Primary candidates have eagerly embraced anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, particularly over state anti-trans laws and the place of LGBTQ+ issues in public education. This summer, however, Trump’s closest polling rival, Ron DeSantis, was forced on to the defensive over an online video that used harsh imagery and language to accuse Trump of being too soft on LGBTQ+ issues.By its own description, Project 2025 is the work of “a broad coalition of over 70 conservative organisations”, aiming to shape the presidential transition should a rightwing candidate beat Joe Biden next year.In the words of Paul Dans, its director, Project 2025 is “systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army, aligned, trained, and essentially weaponised conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state”.Such language may echo conspiracy-tinged rants by Trump and his supporters, but that “army” has produced something solid: Mandate for Leadership: the Conservative Promise, a 920-page document that sets out policy wishes across the breadth of the federal government.Read on…As the old saying goes, “where there’s smoke there’s fire”: the Colorado Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert’s claim not to have been vaping during a theatrical performance in Denver from which she and a male companion were ejected has been proven false.In an episode that generated widespread headlines, the far-right controversialist was escorted out of a performance of the Beetlejuice musical at the Buell Theatre last weekend.Speaking on condition of anonymity, a woman who sat behind the congresswoman told the Denver Post: “These people in front of us were outrageous. I’ve never seen anyone act like that before.”The woman, who is pregnant, said she asked Boebert to stop vaping.Boebert said simply: “No.”Boebert and her companion were eventually escorted from the theatre. Boebert’s office confirmed the incident but denied the congresswoman had been vaping, even though such behaviour was detailed in a widely cited incident report.Surveillance footage obtained by 9News, an NBC affiliate, disproved Boebert’s claim.More:Donald Trump has widened his lead in the Republican presidential primary in the three weeks since the first GOP primary debate – in which he did not take part, according to a new poll.The Fox News poll showed 60% of potential Republican primary voters support Trump, up from 53% in a survey taken before the 23 August debate in Milwaukee. The report said:
      Some of Trump’s biggest gains come from women (+10), voters under age 45 (+9), White evangelicals (+8), and White men without a college degree (+8).
      Trump’s closest rival, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, has seen his support drop since the debate, the results showed. The survey found 13% of GOP voters back DeSantis in the primary, down three points. Vivek Ramaswamy held his third-place slot at 11%Melania Trump, Donald Trump’s wife, may be back on the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign trail with him “pretty soon”, he said.In an interview with Meet the Press, moderator Kristen Welker asked the former president, “we’ll get her on the trail soon?” Trump replied:
      Yes. Soon? Yeah, pretty soon. When it’s appropriate, but pretty soon. She’s a private person, a great person, a very confident person and she loves our country very much.
      He added:
      Honestly, I like to keep her away from it. It’s so nasty and so mean.
      The former first lady was a prominent fixture in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and throughout his presidency, but she has rarely been spotted by her husband’s side since leaving the White House. Most notably, she did not appear at any of his court appearances.Joe Biden appeared to support the auto workers strike in strong comments made during his White House address this afternoon. He said:
      No one wants a strike, but I respect workers’ right to use their options under the collective bargaining system.
      “I understand the workers’ frustration,” he added.
      Record corporate profits … should be shared by record contracts for the UAW.
      My colleague Maya Yang is covering the strike on our dedicated UAW strike blog.The team of special counsel Jack Smith obtained a search warrant in January directing Twitter, now known as X, to produce “data and records” related to Donald Trump’s Twitter account as well as a non-disclosure agreement prohibiting Twitter from disclosing the search warrant.Court filings last month showed Twitter delayed complying with the warrant, leading to a federal judge holding the company in contempt and fining it $350,000.The filing said prosecutors got the search warrant after a court “found probable cause to search the Twitter account for evidence of criminal offenses”.The court found that disclosing the warrant could risk that Trump would “would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation” by giving him “an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior”, according to the filing.Federal prosecutors secretly argued that informing Donald Trump about their efforts to access his Twitter account could “precipitate violence”, according to newly unsealed court filings.Prosecutors working for special counsel Jack Smith worried that Trump would publicly announce the search warrant or his Twitter feed, as he did on his Truth Social platform when his Mar-a-Lago estate was searched by the FBI last year.Informing Trump about the Twitter search warrant “could precipitate violence as occurred following the public disclosure of the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago,” the prosecutors warned. The news was first reported by Politico.Prosecutors argued for keeping Trump in the dark about the Twitter search warrant was necessary because they said the former president presents a “significant risk of tampering with evidence, seeking to influence or intimidate potential witnesses, and ‘otherwise seriously jeopardizing’ the Government’s ongoing investigations.”“These are not hypothetical considerations in this case,” the prosecutors wrote.
      Following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, the former President propagated false claims of fraud (including swearing to false allegations in a federal court filing), pressured state and federal officials to violate their legal duties, and retaliated against those who did not comply with his demands, culminating in violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
      In response, Twitter said the prospect of violence was “facially implausible” and argued that Trump already knew many details about Smith’s investigation. US district court judge Beryl Howell ultimately rejected the social media company’s arguments.The new filings also show Twitter turned over at least 32 direct messages from Trump’s account, @realDonaldTrump, to prosecutors. Prosecutors also obtained data that could show his location at the time certain tweets were sent, or if anyone else was accessing his account.Twitter handed over at least 32 direct messages from Donald Trump’s account to special counsel Jack Smith earlier this year in the justice department’s investigation into the 2020 election subversion case, according to newly unsealed court filings.In the new filings, Smith’s team revealed “the materials Twitter produced to the Government included only 32 direct-message items, constituting a minuscule proportion of the total production”.From Politico’s Kyle Cheney:A prominent New York progressive is warning that mayor Eric Adams’s hostile comments about the rising number of migrants in the city are “dangerous” and risk inciting violence against the new arrivals and other immigrants.Tiffany Cabán, aiming for re-election to the city council this November and long endorsed by leading leftwing figures, including US senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, attacked as “irresponsible” the mayor’s remarks last week that the sharp increase in migration to New York would “destroy” the city.Cabán told the Guardian:
      The idea that new arrivals would destroy New York City is absurd to me. New arrivals, immigrants, made our city.
      “I think there’s a real possibility of his rhetoric fomenting violence, and that’s the last thing we need,” Cabán, a former public defender, added.New York and other Democratic-led cities have received hundreds of thousands of people who crossed the US-Mexico border to request asylum since last year.More than 110,000 migrants have arrived in New York, most making their own way but many also bussed by Texas authorities, without liaison. Officials say they are struggling to provide for nearly 60,000 migrants currently in the city’s care. More

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      UAW strike: Joe Biden calls for resolution but understands workers’ frustrations – video

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      The US president said on Friday that no one wanted the United Auto Workers’ union to strike in its labour dispute with the big three US carmakers – but workers should get a share of the profits those companies are making.

      Biden told reporters at the White House that he understood the workers’ frustration, adding: ‘Record corporate profits … should be shared by record contracts for the UAW’ More

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      US economy going strong under Biden – Americans don’t believe it

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      Americans do not trust the government’s economic news – or the media’s reporting of it – according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian that presents the White House with a major hurdle as it pushes Biden’s economic record ahead of next year’s election.The US has roared back from the Covid recession by official measures. But two-thirds of Americans are unhappy about the economy despite consistent reports that inflation is easing and unemployment is close to a 50-year low. And the poll suggests many are unaware of or don’t believe the positive economic news the government has reported.The results illustrate a dramatic political split on economic views – with Republicans far more pessimistic than Democrats. But unhappiness about the economy is widespread.
      Two-thirds of respondents (68%) reported it’s difficult to be happy about positive economic news when they feel financially squeezed each month (Republicans: 69%, Democrats: 68%).
      Two-thirds of Americans (65%) believe that the economy is worse than the media makes it out to be rather than better (35%).
      In August the unemployment rate was 3.8%, close to a 50-year low. But the poll found that 51% wrongly believe that unemployment is nearing a 50-year high rather than those who believe it’s actually low (49%).
      The lack of confidence in the economy has many academics and politicians puzzled. Some have blamed the US’s polarized politics and this was illustrated in the poll. But Harris’s data also shows that fears are widespread – and reinforced by disbelief of or ignorance about official figures and a mistrust of the media’s reporting of them.Some 82% of Republicans and 66% of independents believe the economy is worse than the media’s portrayal. But nearly half of Democrats (49%) also said the media viewed the economy too favorably.Overall, the poll found widespread despondency about the state of the economy. More than half of Americans (53%) believe the economy is getting worse instead of better or staying the same. Republicans and independents are more likely to think it’s getting worse (72% and 58%, respectively, v Democrats: 32%), while more Democrats think it’s getting better (32% v Republicans: 8%, independents: 13%).The results paint a difficult picture for Joe Biden, who is making “Bidenomics” – his economic policy record – a central plank of his re-election platform.The views of those familiar with Bidenomics showed a perhaps unsurprising party split. Some 60% of Democrats believe his plans are improving the US economy overall compared with 12% of Republicans.There is a widespread belief that Bidenomics is good in theory but isn’t being implemented well – something both Democrats and Republicans agree with (62% v 58%).Biden supporters have just launched a $13m advertising campaign extolling the president’s economic achievements, which include a landmark $1.2tn infrastructure and climate bill, massive investment in domestic microchips production and green energy solutions. His legislative actions are predicted to create 1.5m jobs per year for the next decade.That message may be hard to sell given the widespread disbelief of and ignorance about the health of the US economy highlighted by the poll.As well as being wrong about the unemployment data, respondents were unaware of, or chose to mischaracterize, other major economic data points.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe widest measure of economic growth – gross domestic product – increased at a 2.1% annualized rate last quarter and has been steadily improving since the Covid downturn. But more respondents (59%) believe that the US economy is shrinking this year than those who believe it is growing (41%). More Republicans (72%) and independents (63%) believe the economy is shrinking than do Democrats. But still, a sizeable 44% of Democrats believe the economy is shrinking.The S&P 500 stock market index is up 16% so far this year. But 59% of respondents wrongly said they believe the S&P is down for the year compared with those who said they believe it is up (41%). The majority of all those asked said the S&P was down whether Republican (66%), independent (60%) or Democrat (52%).US wages are, finally, growing faster than inflation. But 75% of those polled wrongfully believe that wages aren’t keeping up with inflation. That view is held by the majority of Republicans (84%), independents (75%) and Democrats (67%).There was some good news for Biden. The poll found that 75% of respondents support at least one of the four main branches of Bidenomics: improving infrastructure, attracting high-tech electronics manufacturing, building clean energy manufacturing facilities and attracting more high-paying union jobs.Still, 51% of Americans believe that government spending under the current administration is having a negative impact on the US economy (Republicans: 72%, independents: 54%, Democrats: 30%) rather than a positive impact (21%) or no impact (28%). And only just over a third of Democrats (35%) believe it’s having a positive impact (Republicans: 11%, independents: 16%).“All these perceptual-reality gaps underscore Biden’s difficulty in claiming credit for economic gains. Americans either view the economy through their politics or aren’t feeling it in real life, or both,” said John Gerzema, the CEO of Harris Poll.
      This survey was conducted online within the US by the Harris Poll from 1 to 3 September among a nationally representative sample of 2,055 US adults, where 1,063 were familiar with Bidenomics. More