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      The Guardian view on the US presidential debate: Kamala Harris’s triumph isn’t transformative, but it was essential | Editorial

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      If presidential debates don’t really matter, as some have contended, Kamala Harris would not have been on the stage in Philadelphia on Tuesday night. Yes, the spectacle can lead to excessive focus on their impact. But Joe Biden’s disastrous performance, which triggered his withdrawal from the race, showed how these choreographed political events can catalyse, if not create, voters’ sentiment about candidates.Only weeks before the nation makes its choice, Ms Harris’s success was critical. Debates are often remembered, as in Mr Biden’s case, when things go wrong. The vice-president didn’t merely clear the very low bar set by her boss – basic competence – but soared over it. Her desire to stick it to Donald Trump may not have elucidated matters for undecided voters who say they want to know more about her and her policies. She did mention a few, including measures to codify abortion rights and promote an “opportunity economy”, but was keener to focus on the broad messages.However, Donald Trump thought the 2024 election would be about his supposed strength against Mr Biden. In contrast, it was Ms Harris who dominated the debate, from the moment she took the physical initiative by crossing the stage to shake his hand – dispelling uncomfortable memories of him looming behind Hillary Clinton in 2016 – to her remark that Vladimir Putin “would eat you for lunch”.Mr Trump’s vanity made him incapable of resisting the obvious bait she laid out for him, especially her observation that supporters were so bored they were leaving rallies during his rambling, incoherent speeches. Her air of amused disdain for his lies gave her the air of, well, an experienced prosecutor listening to the desperate bluster of a felon. In hitting him on abortion, on healthcare, on democracy itself, she was clear and incisive. When he lied about Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets, she simply mocked him: “Talk about extreme.”Mr Trump’s claim was symptomatic of his reliance on rightwing memes, while Ms Harris sought to reach across the aisle, touting her gun ownership and talking of an America where “we see in each other a friend”. He is still struggling to navigate a position on abortion that will maintain his evangelical support without alienating other voters, but on Tuesday he ludicrously claimed that Democrats wanted to “execute the baby”.There was no doubt that this was the vice-president’s victory, albeit one facilitated by strong moderation. In a flash CNN poll, 63% of viewers said that Ms Harris had turned in the better performance, while 37% opted for her rival. Yet Ms Clinton was judged to outperform Mr Trump by a similar margin after their first debate in 2016 – and edged up less than 1% in the polls over the next week.A boost for Ms Harris is desperately needed because polls suggest the candidates are effectively deadlocked, with Mr Trump gaining some ground recently after her initial surge. Inflation has softened to the lowest level since February 2021, and the Federal Reserve is preparing to cut interest rates. But improvements in the economic picture may not feed through to voting intentions quickly enough to help the Democrats. Cumulative disgruntlement at the cost of living is not quickly dispelled even when price rises slow and are offset by wage growth.An extraordinarily turbulent race may yet have more surprises in store. Nonetheless, in a contest that comes down to a tiny fraction of the electorate, across a handful of battleground states, everything matters, be it debate success or – yes – Taylor Swift’s endorsement. Ms Harris’s campaign knew they needed a clear victory on Tuesday. But even as they celebrate, they know it is only one step along the way.

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      Melania Trump boosts conspiracy theory online about rally shooting

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      Former first lady Melania Trump has raised questions around the law enforcement response to the attempted assassination of her husband, in a video she published on Tuesday to promote her new book.In the 34-second video posted to her X account, Melania begins by describing the attempted assassination on her husband as a “horrible, distressing experience”. And now, she says in the video, which is overlayed with dramatic instrumental music, “the silence around it feels heavy”.“I can’t help but wonder why didn’t law enforcement officials arrest the shooter before the speech?” she asks in the video. “There is definitely more to this story and we need to uncover the truth.”The video then cuts to black and then ends with an image of the cover to her new memoir, Melania, and a link to buy copies.Donald Trump himself has recently, without any evidence, blamed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for the assassination attempt and accused them of making it difficult for the Secret Service to have the staffing to protect him. Conspiracy theories around the shooting have spread in some Republican and rightwing circles.There has been no evidence that the US president or vice-president were directly involved in or interfered with the Secret Service’s arrangements, or that there was any wider plot to attack Trump beyond the lone shooter, who was killed moments after opening fire.On Melania’s website, it states her memoir, which she describes as “the powerful and inspiring story of a woman who has defined personal excellence, overcome adversity, and carved her own path” is available to pre-order for $40.A signed edition is also available for $75, and a collector’s edition, which includes a signature, bonus photographs and a “digital collectable”, is on sale for $250.Since the assassination attempt on the former president on 13 July in Pennsylvania, where 20-year-old Thomas Crooks opened fire on Trump as he spoke at a campaign rally, the FBI and Secret Service have come under intense scrutiny and criticism over security issues at the event.Trump survived the shooting but sustained an injury to his ear, and one rally attendee was killed in the attack and two others were injured. The gunman was shot dead by a Secret Service officer at the scene.The remarks by the former first lady on Tuesday come as investigations are under way looking into what happened that day, as well as the decisions and actions of personnel leading up to the event.New details have emerged in the last two months regarding the lead-up to 13 July, apparent security and communication failings by and between law enforcement agencies, as well as new details on the shooter himself, such as his search history and preparations for the attack, but FBI officials have not yet uncovered a motive for the attack.In late July, the director of the Secret Service resigned after a hearing where she was criticized by lawmakers over the apparent security failures around the shooting, and of failing to answer some specific questions about what went wrong. A day later, the House voted to form a taskforce to investigate the failings around the rally security and in late August, at least five US Secret Service agents were placed on leave in relation to the 13 July rally. More

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      Trump will not prepare for debating Kamala Harris. He believes he’s perfect | Sidney Blumenthal

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      In a debate or otherwise, hot mic or not, the “issues” are of concern to Donald Trump solely to incite his politics of paranoia. Facts, too, whatever they are, are contemptible; facts aren’t facts at all. They are opinions to be wielded in a contest of strength to intimidate and overwhelm the weaklings who claim there actually are independent facts. Those whose opinions prevail can triumphantly brandish them as symbols of power.In the unusual setting when Trump is awkwardly questioned outside of the protective sphere of rightwing media, he understands that his glib retailing of make-believe and outright lying will glide him past the hazard of facts. The less he cares about them, the better he will do. His lies are so frequent they become elevator music.Journalistic moderators exist simply to serve as his foils and straight-men. He attacks them, often personally, to elide and distract from topics he would rather avoid, if the moderators have the nerve to raise them – his felony convictions, business fraud, alleged and adjudicated acts of sexual assault, attempted coup of January 6, promise of a “bloody” round-up of “millions” of undocumented immigrants, stated desire to be a dictator, to imprison his opponents including Democratic donors, and “terminate” the constitution. The presence of journalists who correct his splotched record proves his victimization.Any so-called debate involving Trump has nothing to do with illuminating the “issues”. Part of the problem with the plea of anxious Republicans that Trump stick to the “issues”, rather than mentally deteriorate before our eyes, is that the “issues”, as they conceive them, aren’t supported by the facts.The facts are these: inflation has substantially cooled and continues to fall. The economy is disinflationary. The Federal Reserve will cut interest rates this month on the basis of the decline in inflation. Job growth under the Biden administration increased by July to 15.8m, while under Trump 2.7m jobs were lost. Trump has falsely stated that “100%” of all new jobs created under Biden “have gone to illegal immigrants”. In fact, the number of native-born Americans in the workforce increased by 6% under Biden. The crime rate is down precipitously, violent crime reduced by 15.2% in just the last year, according to the FBI.The entry of migrants at the southern border between December 2023 and January 2024 fell by 50% as a result of actions of the Mexican government in cooperation with the Biden administration, and crossings fell even more, by 40%, to their lowest level in four years, as a result of Biden’s executive order on asylum policy in June. Immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans. And of immigrants arriving between 2020 and 2022, nearly half, 48%, have at least a bachelor’s degree, while 38% of native-born Americans have attained that educational status. The rest is demagogy.The other part of the problem about the “issues” is that Trump’s underlying motive has nothing to do with them. He still feels the sting that he never really made it as a celebrity in Manhattan. Despite his constant efforts to elevate himself, even pretending to be his own public relations agent, John Barron, he understands that he was ridiculed and rejected by the genteel class whose acceptance he most sought. When he was cast as the star of The Apprentice, its crassness and phoniness failed to win him the respect let alone the adoration of the Hollywood community. He bears the grudge that he was spat out from coast to coast. Arousing the fears and prejudices of the outer-borough petit bourgeoisie in white flight farther into Long Island decades ago writ large, he is a tuning fork of resentments.Trump always has his own facts to depict “a failing nation”. Pessimism is his calling card. If America isn’t collapsing, how can it be great again? Even more important, how can he be great again? As Trump posted this May after he was found guilty of 34 felony counts of business fraud for hush-money payments to an adult film star to influence the 2016 election: “I AM THE POLITICAL PRISONER OF A FAILING NATION, BUT I WILL SOON BE FREE, NOVEMBER 5TH, AND MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”This election, like all elections for him, is a turnout base election. He must scrape up every possible low-information voter from every cave with an appeal to grievance. He will never reach the lofty level of a 50% majority. He will certainly lose the popular vote by millions as he did in 2016 and 2020. His fundraising is half that of Kamala Harris’s. He has outsourced his ground game to political action committees with no experience at getting out the vote, headed by the conspiracist chatterbox Charlie Kirk (who called George Floyd “a scumbag”) and the Nazi-fascinated space cadet Elon Musk. Trump’s advisers, meanwhile, are locked into their own version of The Hunger Games.The knife’s edge polling makes his imperative to inflame his base more desperate. In 1996, Bob Dole campaigned as the Republican candidate by saying he had “nowhere to go but the White House or home”. Trump campaigns knowing he has nowhere to go but the White House or the jailhouse.Trump’s preparation for his only encounter with Harris consists of not preparing. He’s already perfect. He must repeat himself. He must double down. Then he will be more perfect. The more vehemently he lashes out, the more his masses embrace him. His irrationality, irresponsibility and ignorance billow in their minds as a towering image of strength confirming their preconceived notions of his acumen and decisiveness. Yet he must hope that his blasts don’t blow him into a corner where he has to ring up Republican officials as he did in Georgia in 2020 and for which he has been indicted for voter fraud: “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”Trump didn’t want, much less imagine, a debate with Harris. Not so subconsciously he still thinks he’s facing Joe Biden. “I can’t imagine New Hampshire voting for him,” he told the Fox News anchor Sean Hannity on 5 September. “Anybody in New Hampshire, cause they’re watching right now, but anybody in New Hampshire that votes for Biden and Kamala.” Trump confuses the faded Biden with the looming Harris. Either he feels Biden is his real opponent or he must make her into Biden to return to the race he expected. His template can’t be altered. Make Harris Biden again.Trump has announced he wants a new clause for the 25th amendment to impeach and remove Harris for engaging in a “conspiracy to cover up the incapacity” of Biden. At the same time, Trump complains that Harris has already ousted Biden. “They deposed a president,” he told a rally on 19 August. “It was a coup of a president. This was a coup.” Trump doesn’t know how to quit Biden.In his debate with Biden, Trump’s outrageous falsehoods were overlooked in the light of Biden’s shattered performance. Trump charged that the president would “rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month and kill the baby”. He has since repeated his canard about post-abortion executions in a convoluted effort to wriggle out of stating his position on Florida’s proposition for reproductive rights, which he finally conceded he would vote against.In his Biden debate, Trump claimed that he had never called fallen soldiers “suckers” or “losers”, though his former chief of staff, Gen John Kelly, says he did. Had Trump been in office, he says, Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine and Hamas wouldn’t have massacred Israelis. Immigrants, he claimed, are released from prisons and insane asylums to steal “Black jobs” and Social Security funds, which, he says, proves the racist replacement theory: “They’re taking the place of our citizens.” And so on.Trump, according to Trump, was the truth-teller in that debate. Biden was the liar. “I’ve never seen anybody lie like this guy. He lies – I’ve never seen it.” If only Biden hadn’t existed, all would have been well, just as it was. “It was perfect. It was so good. All he had to do is leave it alone.” And, then, poof!, to Trump’s consternation, Biden disappeared.Trump’s charges and boastful lies in that debate are undoubtedly a preview of most of what he will charge against Harris and claim about himself. But he will also accuse her of being Biden in disguise so he can continue to run against Biden. Trump will run “the same tired old playbook”, as Harris remarked in refusing to answer a question in an interview about his race-baiting claim that she decided to “turn Black”.On 6 September, Trump’s disjointed pre-debate attack on Harris reached a crescendo in his conflation of her with E Jean Carroll, a woman he defamed, after sexually abusing her in the Bergdorf Goodman dressing room, according to the judge and jury, for which he was held liable twice, and owes a penalty of $83.5m. He appealed the verdict. Before entering the New York courthouse, he held what he called a “press conference”, at which he answered no questions and ranted for nearly an hour.His stream of consciousness unraveled into an accusation that seamlessly traveled from an apparent reference to Harris to an old photograph of Carroll. “I’m not going to have a Marxist president. The people are getting it,” Trump said. “So we go down to court today to talk about this case is a scam. And all I can say is that I never met the woman other than this picture, which could have been AI-generated.”The photo in question was published in a 2019 New York Magazine article captioned: “Carroll, Donald and Ivana Trump, and Carroll’s then-husband, television-news anchor John Johnson, at an NBC party around 1987.” Of course, artificial intelligence, whose technology did not then exist, could not generate that photo.Trump blathered on: “The other thing is I was very famous then. If I would have walked into Bergdorf Goodman, the department store that she said, everybody would have said, ‘Oh, there’s Trump.’ And it would have been at that time on Page Six. Page Six was the equivalent of today’s internet.”With his ruminations about Page Six, the page in the New York Post for gossip on which Trump planted items about himself and his sexual prowess for years, he inadvertently let slip his true motive to recapture past glory: “I was very famous then.”Trump is frantic not to be dismissed as a has-been. His restless exploitation of his tawdry image had gained him notoriety but disrespect. The more vulgar he was in pursuing his fantasy of himself, however, the more his acceptance into society receded. His wish to return to his youthful days of celebrity now leads him to surround himself with the appearance of celebrity, but he can only attract cartoon characters, the likes of Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock. If Trump can only regain the presidency, he can use it for a last chance to make himself a great celebrity again.At his “press conference”, Trump played the star beset by groupies. Time and again, he asserted he didn’t know Carroll. “I have no idea who she is. She wrote a book and she made a ridiculous story up.” At his first defamation trial, Trump claimed she was “totally lying” because “she’s not my type”.Then, Trump spontaneously brought up other cases in which he had been accused of sexual assault. “It’s all fabricated,” he said.He attacked Jessica Leeds, who as a witness in the Carroll trial testified that he molested her in the late 1970s when he sat next to her on an airplane. “She said I was making out with her. And then, after 15 minutes – and she changed her story a couple times, maybe it was quicker – then I grabbed her at a certain part and that’s when she had enough,” Trump said, explaining his technique. “Think of the practicality of this: I’m famous, I’m in a plane, people are coming into the plane. And I’m looking at a woman, and I grab her and start kissing her and making out with her. What are the chances of that happening?”He added: “And frankly – I know you’re going to say it’s a terrible thing to say – but it couldn’t have happened, it didn’t happen, and she would not have been the chosen one. She would not have been the chosen one.” Once again, she wasn’t Trump’s type.Trump then tore into yet another woman who had testified in the Carroll case. Natasha Stoynoff, a reporter for People magazine, came to Mar-a-Lago in 2005 to write a story about Trump and his wife Melania. According to her account, he drew her alone into a room, shoved her against a wall, stuck his tongue down her throat and groped her before she broke loose. Six other women corroborated her story as contemporaneous confidantes to whom she told her story. At a political rally in 2016, singling her out, he told a crowd: “Take a look. You look at her. Look at her words. You tell me what you think. I don’t think so. I don’t think so.”“Think of this,” Trump continued explaining at his press conference, “a woman comes into Mar-a-Lago, interviews me about a love story, a story about my wife and myself. And during that interview, I attacked her and pushed her up against the wall, violently. Okay? And then she leaves, and she writes a perfect story. A perfect story. She doesn’t mention the event … There was no witness. There was nothing … I could go through many other stories outside of this. You know, it’s very funny. When you’re rich and famous, you get a lot of people come up with a lot of stories.” When you’re a star, you’re always innocent.Trump made it clear this outburst was his debate prep. “I’m going into very hostile territory shortly on a debate with ABC, George Stephanopoulos and that group,” he said. “And ABC, I think, is the worst of everybody. I think they’re the worst. They’re the nastiest. They’re as bad as you can be. They’re worse than NBC, which is saying a lot.”Then, he added, “And we have something coming.” But instead of explaining what that might be, he veered to attack Hillary Clinton as unfair in her debate with him in 2016. Then, he attacked the Carroll case again as a “hoax” and “a scam”. And he blamed the reporters he had gathered and whose questions he was not taking. “It’s a political witch hunt. And some of you should be ashamed of yourselves. Thank you very much, everybody.”

      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist More

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      US House clashes over Harris’s role in 2021 Afghanistan troop withdrawal

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      Partisan divisions over the chaotic 2021 pullout of western forces from Afghanistan have burst into the open ahead of Tuesday’s presidential debate in Philadelphia after a Republican-led congressional report attempted to implicate Kamala Harris in the episode.A 250-page report from the House of Representatives’ foreign affairs committee castigated the Biden administration for failing to anticipate the Taliban’s rapid takeover and neglecting to prepare for the orderly departure of non-combatant personnel.The decision led to a shambolic evacuation effort and numerous American civilians and US-allied Afghans being left stranded as the country fell to hardline Islamist forces that America and its Nato allies had spent 20 years trying to defeat.The report, written by the committee’s Republican chairman, Michael McCaul, zeroes in on the supposed role played by the US vice-president – mentioning her name 251 times, although no evidence has emerged that she was directly involved in the decisions leading to one of the most damaging foreign policy chapters of Joe Biden’s presidency.By contrast, a 115-page interim report issued by McCaul on the committee’s investigation on 2022 name-checked Harris just twice.Democrats seized on the contrast, accusing McCaul of inflating Harris’s part in the incident simply because she had replaced Biden as the party’s presidential nominee.“Vice President Kamala Harris was the last person in the room when President Biden made the decision to withdraw all US forces from Afghanistan; a fact she boasted about shortly after President Biden issued his go-to-zero order,” states the latest report, titled Wilful Blindness: An assessment of the Biden-Harris administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and the chaos that followed.The report’s front page carries a picture of Harris prominently displayed below that of Biden, and above an image of Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, who played a more prominent role in the withdrawal.“Despite warnings against withdrawing by senior leaders, Vice President Harris’ aide disclosed the vice president ‘strongly supported’ President Biden’s decision,” McCaul’s report goes on. “President Biden’s former Chief of Staff Ron Klain affirmed Vice President Harris was entrenched in the president’s Afghanistan policy.”Democrats accused the Republicans of trying to exploit the withdrawal for election purposes while overlooking the fact that the party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump, took the original decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan when he was president.“Republicans now claim [Harris] was the architect of the US withdrawal though she is referenced only three times in 3,288 pages of the Committee’s interview transcripts,” wrote Gregory Meeks, the Democrats’ ranking member on the committee in a 59-page rebuttal to McCaul’s report.Harris’s alleged role in the withdrawal seems likely to arise when she meets Trump for their only scheduled televised debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday.Sharon Yan, a spokesperson for the White House national security council, said the the report was “based on cherry-picked facts, inaccurate characterizations and pre-existing biases”.She added: “Ending our longest war was the right thing to do and our nation is stronger today as a result.”Harris’s campaign has tried to promote her role in Biden’s foreign policy decisions since she replaced at the top of the Democratic ticket. But she has said little about the Afghan withdrawal. The House report notes that she was on a trip to Singapore and Vietnam at the time and publicly pledged that the administration would protect Afghan women and children.It concludes: “Her promise has clearly not been fulfilled.”Democrats’ accusation of using the Afghan pull-out for campaign purposes echoes criticisms of Trump’s now notorious visit to Arlington national cemetery last month to mark the third anniversary of the event.The former US president’s campaign was rebuked by the US army after its staffers reportedly became embroiled in a confrontation with a cemetery worker when she tried to enforce rules against filming and photographing in a section reserved for service members killed in the Afghan and Iraqi conflicts.Pictures and footage subsequently emerged of Trump posing at the graveside of personnel killed in a suicide bombing at Abbey Gate, near Kabul airport – which resulted in the deaths of 13 US personnel and roughly 170 Afghans. Trump denied that his visit was a campaign event, pointing out that he had been invited by families of the fallen servicemen. More

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      in Elections

      Trial begins in alleged ‘Trump Train’ ambush of Biden-Harris bus in 2020

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      A jury trial opening in Austin, Texas, on Monday will seek to hold Trump supporters accountable for allegedly ambushing a Joe Biden-Kamala Harris campaign bus on the state’s main highway in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.Plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege they were terrorised and intimidated for more than 90 minutes as they took a bus tour canvassing for the Democratic ticket in the final days of the election.At least 40 vehicles flying Make America great again flags formed themselves into a so-called “Trump Train” and encircled the bus, trying to run it off the road and playing what the suit claims was a “madcap game of highway ‘chicken’”.The plaintiffs, who include the bus driver, a Biden campaign staffer and Wendy Davis, the former Texas senator and Democratic gubernatorial candidate, say they were forced to cancel campaign events for fear that the intimidation would be repeated. They are pursuing punitive damages under both Texas law and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, a federal statute from the Reconstruction period designed to end political violence and voter intimidation.Lawyers for the plaintiffs say the trial is a test of modern democratic safeguards.“The violence and intimidation that our plaintiffs endured on the highway for simply supporting the candidate of their choice is an affront to the democratic values we hold dear as Americans,” said co-counsel John Paredes, a litigator for Protect Democracy, one of the groups bringing the case.Monday’s case, Cervini v Cisneros, is one of the most substantial legal battles arising from acts of alleged political intimidation by Trump supporters in the 2020 election besides the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol. Hundreds of criminal prosecutions have been brought around the events of January 6; by contrast, the Texas trial is a civil lawsuit brought in pursuit of damages by the plaintiffs.But it is extensive in scale, with five named defendants and an unknown number of additional unidentified John and Jane Does alleged to have been involved in a conspiracy to terrorise the Biden-Harris campaigners.The suit accuses the defendants of using force to intimidate a political opponent, claims they engaged in civil assault as well as civil conspiracy designed to stifle the political voice of the Biden-Harris campaign, and calls for punitive damages and compensation.Trouble began almost immediately after the Biden-Harris campaign announced it was staging a three-day “soul of the nation” bus tour through Texas on 27 October 2020. The tour was to take Biden surrogates to a number of featured rallies and gatherings.By 28 October, chatter had begun on social media platforms among Trump supporters calling for the formation of “Trump trains” – gatherings of trucks and other vehicles to demonstrate support for the re-election of the then Republican president. One Trump train member in Alamo posted that day that they should “flood the hell out of them”, in a reference to the Biden-Harris bus.That afternoon the then president’s son, Don Trump Jr, posted on Twitter (now X) an invitation to Trump supporters to assemble. He wrote: “It would be great if you guys would all get together and head down to McAllen and give Kamala Harris a nice Trump Train welcome. Get out there. Have some fun. Enjoy it.”Flag-waving trucks driven by Trump supporters began to follow the Biden-Harris bus on 28 and 29 October. One of the vehicles was decked out as a “Trump hearse”, and said on its bodywork that it was “collecting Democratic votes one dead stiff at a time”.Larger numbers of cars convened on Friday 30 October, with some Trump supporters attracted to the melee because they thought, wrongly, that Kamala Harris would be onboard the Democratic bus that day (she was in fact campaigning in McAllen and Fort Worth). The suit claims a group of Trump supporters conspired to ambush the bus on a stretch of Interstate 35 between San Antonio and Austin.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe vehicles in the Trump train swarmed around the tour bus, coming within inches of it and forcing the driver to slow to a crawl. Several of the participants livestreamed their actions on social media, bragging about their aggressive driving, the plaintiffs allege.One of the defendants, Eliazar Cisneros, is accused of side-swiping an SUV being driven by a Biden-Harris campaign staffer behind the bus. The complaint says that Cisneros later boasted about “slamming that fucker”.The occupants of the bus pleaded with police to provide an escort but none appeared. A separate case, Cervini v Stapp, was settled in October with local law enforcement admitting that they had fallen short of their standards and agreeing to pay compensation to those whose safety they failed to protect.The suit claims that the plaintiffs have suffered “ongoing psychological and emotional injury”. The bus driver, Timothy Holloway, was so traumatised that he gave up his tour bus business and has stopped driving buses.Wendy Davis, who is best known for the 11-hour speech she made in the Texas senate in 2013 to filibuster an anti-abortion bill, said she suffered “substantial emotional distress”. She feared speaking publicly about her experiences in the bus as it might put her at risk of physical harm from Trump supporters.At the trial, lawyers for the plaintiffs will make the case that while free speech is protected under the first amendment of the US constitution, intimidation and threats against people with different political beliefs is not. “Where groups are permitted to terrorize those with whom they disagree into forgoing their constitutional rights, the functioning of our democracy demands accountability,” the lawsuit says. More

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      in US Politics

      Election outcome may depend on whether Harris or Trump can rebrand themselves as ‘new’

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      When Kamala Harris sat down for her first interview as the Democratic presidential nominee, she praised Joe Biden for his intelligence, commitment, judgment and disposition. But twice she used the phrase “turn the page”. And twice she used the phrase “a new way forward”.This was no accident. US voters are yearning for a shift in direction, with two in three saying the next president should represent a major change from Joe Biden, according to a national poll conducted by the New York Times and Siena College. Yet in November they face a choice between two known quantities: Harris, the sitting vice-president, and Donald Trump, a former president with an inescapable four-year record.Just 25% of voters think Harris signifies a major change, the poll found, while 56% believe she represents “more of the same”. When it comes to Trump, 51% think he would offer major change, whereas 35% consider him more of the same. Victory in the race for the White House might be decided by which of these quasi-incumbents can rebrand themselves as a breath of fresh air for a weary, divided nation.Despite the polling, Democrats are convinced that Harris has the momentum. “The American people are looking for not just new faces but a new message,” said Donna Brazile, a former acting chair of the Democratic National Committee. “They’re looking for somebody who can heal our divisions and close our partisan divides. To the extent she’s running on a message of bringing the American people together, it helps her become a change agent.”Since 1836, just one sitting vice-president, George HW Bush in 1988, has been elected to the White House. Those who tried and failed include Richard Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and Al Gore in 2000. Gore’s decision to distance himself from his popular but scandal-plagued boss, Bill Clinton, may have proved costly in his narrow defeat by George W Bush.Harris, a former senator, California attorney general and local prosecutor, became the first woman and person of colour to serve as vice-president after Biden selected her as his running mate in the 2020 election. Like most vice-presidents, she gained relatively little public attention for three and a half years.And when she did, some of the headlines were negative, for example those regarding her role in tackling the root causes of immigration and apparent discontent in her office. Axios reports that of the 47 Harris staff publicly disclosed to the Senate in 2021, only five still worked for her as of this spring.But after the president’s feeble debate performance against Trump on 27 June, everything changed. Biden bowed to pressure, dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris. The Democratic party quickly rallied around her with a combination of relief and energy bordering on ecstasy.Speakers at the recent Democratic national convention in Chicago dutifully paid tribute to Biden’s service but then pivoted to looking forward to a new era under Harris. Her acceptance speech, and a biographical video, did not dwell on her vice-presidency but rather introduced her life story as if for the first time.Brazile, a Democratic strategist, said: “People see don’t see her as vice-president in large part because they rarely see the vice-president as leading the country. But she’s campaigning on a platform that includes bringing people together, ensuring that most Americans can make ends meet.“Donald Trump is a prisoner of the past. She’s a pioneer of a future. That’s the message that brings people in line with her values versus what he campaigns on every day, which is all about attacks, insults and derogatory statements.”On the campaign trail, Harris has been walking a political tightrope, embracing her boss’s achievements while keeping his unpopular baggage at arm’s length. Whereas Biden touted jobs and growth numbers, Harris has acknowledged the rising cost of living and proposed a federal ban on grocery price-gouging.Larry Jacobs, the director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “She wants it both ways. She wants to take credit for the improvement in the economy, the number of jobs, the successes of bringing inflation down. But she doesn’t want to be blamed for voters’ continuing frustration that they’ve been hurt because of inflation.He added: “She’s been trying to run as the change candidate, which is very strange because the change motif is for the challenger, not the incumbent party.”The switch from Biden, 81, to 59-year-old Harris instantly removed the Democrats’ biggest vulnerability – age – and weaponised it against Trump who, at 78, is the oldest major party nominee in US history.At the first debate in June, he came over as more engaged and vital than Biden, who stumbled over answers and stared into the distance with mouth agape. At the next debate on Tuesday, it is Trump whose age will be thrown into sharp relief by a rival nearly two decades younger – who would become the first female president in the country’s 248-year history if she wins.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “We went from a generic where we had two candidates who were pushing 80, so anytime that you add in a new element and someone who is generationally younger, that’s a change without even having to say a word. The fact that we are going from two old white men to a woman of colour – that screams change. It creates the tangible illustration of past versus future.”Trump has been wrongfooted by the Democrats’ abrupt change of nominee and still complains bitterly about it. Nicknames such as “Crooked Joe” and “Sleepy Joe”, as well as criticism of alleged Biden family corruption, now ring hollow. He has continued to repeat his false claim that Democrats stole the 2020 election as he makes his third bid for the White House. Still promising to “Make America great again”, he has lost the mantle of a disrupter taking on the status quo.Bardella, a former spokesperson and senior adviser for Republicans on the House oversight committee, added: “Any time that you’re the candidate whose slogan uses the word ‘again’, that doesn’t scream change. That screams going backwards. Clearly voters want something that’s more forward-facing and, frankly, more optimistic as well. I don’t think we can overestimate the tone difference.“One campaign is saying, it’s a disaster, everything is terrible, America will be destroyed if Kamala Harris is president. The other campaign is saying we can do better, we can be better, our best days lie ahead. It’s much more optimistic and for voters coming out of Covid, January 6, the sense of weariness they have with both Biden and with Trump, that idea of turning the page and having a fresh start is a very appealing sentiment.”The Trump campaign has unleashed countless attacks tying Harris to Biden’s record on immigration, inflation and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan but with little tangible effect, at least so far. Instead, Harris continues to wear her vice-presidency lightly and cast herself as the candidate of the future.Whit Ayres, a political consultant and pollster, said: “She’s not pulling it off because of particular policy positions, but her race and gender create an image of change without ever stressing it or mentioning it.“The idea that a Black, Asian American woman could be president of the United States says change all by itself. That’s how she has created this impression that she is the change candidate in a change election, even though she’s the incumbent vice-president.”Trump would be wise to contrast his White House record with that of the Biden-Harris administration, Ayres argues. “Emphasising the economy and immigration is an obvious place for him to go. And then painting Harris as a San Francisco liberal – and there are plenty of issue positions that she has taken, in the past at any rate, that allow him to do that. If he could actually focus on that rather than using schoolyard bullying name-calling, he could win the thing.”Trump represented the shock of the new in 2016, running as an anti-establishment outsider, rattling the foundations of the Republican party and defeating the Democratic stalwart Hillary Clinton. But eight years, four criminal cases and two impeachments later, many Americans say the act has gone stale and the novelty has worn off.Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist, said: “He feels diminished to me. He feels smaller, less relevant, he’s not breaking through. In part it’s because she’s rising above and talking about where she wants to take the country; she’s not engaging him. He’s using this old formula of creating chaos and fighting with his opponents and she’s not playing, and it’s hurting him.”He added: “There’s only one Trump. This Trump isn’t working the way it used to and they don’t have a plan B, and the Trump campaign’s in trouble. He’s singing the same songs and they’re not connecting the way they used to. It’s a real problem for him.”But the latest New York Times and Siena College poll – in which Trump is up by one percentage point at 48% to Harris’s 47% – makes Republicans sceptical of the notion that she has become synonymous with change in the minds of the electorate.Lanhee Chen, who was the policy director for the 2012 Mitt Romney presidential campaign, said: “There’s no question that if you look at the media narrative, that’s how she’s been framed. But with voters it could be a very different picture. As we get a little bit more data, we’ll be able to get a firmer sense of whether this framing is one that’s taken hold or if it’s just an inside-the-Beltway creation. Hard to say at this point.” More

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      Dick Cheney confirms he will vote for Kamala Harris, saying no ‘greater threat’ to US than Donald Trump – live

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      Dick Cheney has confirmed that he will be voting for the Democratic ticket in the US presidential election. The statement from the Republican former vice-president came hours after his daughter Liz Cheney, the former Republican representative for Wyoming, told a crowd that her father would be supporting Harris.His pronouncement comes days after Liz told a North Carolina crowd that she would also be voting for Harris.The Georgia bureau of investigations (GBI) has announced that threats directed at other Georgia schools in the wake of Wednesday’s mass shooting have been deemed non-credible.In a press release on its website, the GBI says that an increase in threats and subsequent tips from concerned people are common after these types of shootings, and that those who make these threats will be “investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law”.The White House has condemned Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, over his interview with Darryl Cooper, a Holocaust revisionist and podcast host who, during an interview released on Monday, argued that the Holocaust was the result of Germany not knowing what to do with prisoners of war.The interview drew the ire of Jewish leaders, and in a statement to the New York Times, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said:
      Giving a microphone to a Holocaust denier who spreads Nazi propaganda is a disgusting and sadistic insult to all Americans, to the memory of the over six million Jews who were genocidally murdered by Adolf Hitler, to the service of the millions of Americans who fought to defeat Nazism and to every subsequent victim of antisemitism.
      In a now-deleted tweet, Elon Musk described the interview between Carlson and Cooper as: “Very interesting. Worth watching.”A 15-year-old student has been shot and injured at Joppatowne high school in Maryland, about 24 miles north of Baltimore. The shooting appears to have stemmed from a fight on campus, and a 16-year old student has been arrested, ABC News reports.The injured student was airlifted to a local trauma unit and is in serious condition, authorities say. Deputies responded within two minutes and at least 100 other officers showed up to the scene.“It showed our response – as if it was one – is ready. I pray we never have to test that system,” Jeff Gahler, sheriff of Harford county, said during a press conference.The shooting on Friday comes days after two students and two adults were killed and nine others were injured during a mass shooting at Apalachee high school in Georgia.Here is video of the moment Liz Cheney revealed that her father, Dick Cheney, will be voting for Kamala Harris:
      Think about the moment that we’re in and you think about how serious this moment is … My dad believes … there’s never been an individual in our country who is as grave a threat to our democracy as Donald Trump is and that’s the moment that we’re facing and so I think recognizing that, Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris,” Cheney said.
      Dick Cheney will vote for Kamala Harris in November, the former vice-president’s daughter Liz Cheney said on Friday.In an interview on Friday at the Texas Tribune Festival, Liz Cheney said: “Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris,” NBC reports.Earlier this week, Liz Cheney addressed an audience at Duke University, where she said: “Because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.”During her interview on Friday, Liz Cheney also said that she will support the senatorial bid of Colin Allred, Texas’s Democratic representative.Speaking of Allred, who is challenging Ted Cruz, the Republican incumbent, Cheney called him a “tremendous, serious candidate”, adding: “We need people who are going to serve in good faith … We need people who are honorable public servants, and in this race, that is Colin Allred, so I’ll be working on his behalf.”Tim Walz has responded to JD Vance’s comment following Georgia’s deadly school shooting in which he said school shootings are “just a fact of life”.Walz, who has previously voiced support for an assault weapons ban, said in response to Vance’s comment:
      This is pathetic. We can’t quit on our kids – they deserve better.
      Republicans have repeatedly criticised and rejected calls for gun safety reforms including increased background checks and red flag policies, and have instead pointed to mental health issues as a chief reason for mass shootings across the country.Before Donald Trump’s trip to North Carolina today, the Fraternal Order of Police issued the following statement of endorsement of him:
      In every election cycle, the FOP pays close attention to which presidential campaign highlights the issues most vital to the men and women of the FOP, including the challenges faced by the rank-and-file law enforcement officers, the real issues in public safety, and the problems in our criminal justice system …
      The National FOP endorsed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. He led our nation through some very tough times. He provided our nation with strong, effective leadership during his first term, and now that he is seeking election to a second term, we intend to help him win it.
      In his decision, Judge Juan Merchan wrote that the “court is a fair, impartial and apolitical institution”.He went on to add that delaying Trump’s sentencing should “dispel any suggestion” that he tried “to give an advantage to, or to create a disadvantage for, any political party and for any candidate for any office”.Hello, US politics blog readers. It’s a very busy news day even though the election campaign trail itself is rather quiet.Kamala Harris is in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, behind closed doors preparing for her historic debate next Tuesday with her opponent for the White House in November, Donald Trump. But she has been given good news in the form of her latest fundraising and polling results.Trump, meanwhile, has been dealing with legal troubles in New York. First, he appeared in civil court at a hearing in which he is appealing a civil judgment against him that he sexually abused the writer E Jean Carroll, before holding a press conference uptown and then getting a vital judicial decision in his New York criminal case.Here’s where things stand:

      The judge in the New York criminal case in which Donald Trump was convicted earlier this year of election-related fraud over hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels and a cover-up has delayed sentencing of the former president until after the election.

      Donald Trump launched an angry tirade against E Jean Carroll, the Biden administration, Kamala Harris, news networks including ABC and CNN, and Iran and China in a long and aggressive press conference filled top to bottom with outlandish claims and personal attacks.

      More than 90 business leaders, including the heads of Yelp and Chobani, endorsed Kamala Harris’s presidential bid, in a new letter. It was also signed by current and former top executives including the former CEOs of PepsiCo, Ford Motor, Yahoo! and 21st Century Fox, and said: “Harris has a strong record of advancing actions to spur business investment in the United States and ensure American businesses can compete and win.”

      Trump’s lawyers argued at an appeal hearing in civil court in New York that the trial spurred by a lawsuit brought forth by the writer E Jean Carroll, where a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse, consisted of improper evidence.

      Kamala Harris’s election campaign brought in $361m in contributions the last month, nearly tripling the $130m raised by Trump’s campaign during the same period. The campaign of Harris and Tim Walz, her running mate and the governor of Minnesota, called it the biggest grassroots fundraiser in presidential campaign history.

      Joe Biden is due to arrive in Ann Arbor, Michigan, soon, where he will speak about his administration’s economic agenda.

      JD Vance sparked a political row after calling school shootings an unwelcome “fact of life” and saying schools need stronger security, while Democrats, led by Biden and Harris, want stronger gun control, especially a ban on assault-style rifles, including the semi-automatic gun that was used in the school shooting in Georgia earlier this week.
      Donald Trump and his legal team had asked Justice Juan Merchan to push back the former president’s criminal sentencing date until after the presidential vote on 5 November.Merchan moments ago announced the sentencing would be pushed back from 18 September to 26 November (a Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving).Here’s a fuller quote from Merchan’s response to both sides’ legal teams, picked out from the official decision by Reuters:
      This matter is one that stands alone in a unique place in this Nation’s history. Unfortunately, we are now at a place in time that is fraught with complexities rendering the requirements of a sentencing hearing, should one be necessary, difficult to execute,.
      Trump’s lawyers earlier this month had argued there would not be enough time before the original sentencing date for the defense to potentially appeal Merchan’s forthcoming ruling on Trump’s request to overturn the conviction due to the supreme court’s landmark decision on presidential immunity. Merchan had been scheduled to rule on that motion on 16 September.He wrote today that he now plans to rule on that motion on 12 November.The supreme court’s 6-3 ruling, which related to a separate criminal case Trump faces – the federal election meddling case – found that presidents cannot be criminally prosecuted for their official acts, and that evidence of presidents’ official actions cannot be used to help prove criminal cases involving unofficial actions. More

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      The mainstream press is failing America – and people are understandably upset | Rebecca Solnit

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      The first thing to say about the hate and scorn currently directed at the mainstream US media is that they worked hard to earn it. They’ve done so by failing, repeatedly, determinedly, spectacularly to do their job, which is to maintain their independence, inform the electorate, and speak truth to power. While the left has long had reasons to dismiss centrist media, and the right has loathed it most when it did do its job well, the moderates who are furious at it now seem to be something new – and a host of former editors, media experts and independent journalists have been going after them hard this summer.Longtime journalist James Fallows declares that three institutions – the Republican party, the supreme court, and the mainstream political press – “have catastrophically failed to ‘meet the moment’ under pressure of [the] Trump era”. Centrist political reformer and columnist Norm Ornstein states that these news institutions “have had no reflection, no willingness to think through how irresponsible and reckless so much of our mainstream press and so many of our journalists have been and continue to be”.Most voters, he says, “have no clue what a second Trump term would actually be like. Instead, we get the same insipid focus on the horse race and the polls, while normalizing abnormal behavior and treating this like a typical presidential election, not one that is an existential threat to democracy.”Lamenting the state of the media recently on X, Jeff Jarvis, another former editor and newspaper columnist, said: “What ‘press’? The broken and vindictive Times? The newly Murdochian Post? Hedge-fund newspaper husks? Rudderless CNN or NPR? Murdoch’s fascist media?”These critics are responding to how the behemoths of the industry seem intent on bending the facts to fit their frameworks and agendas. In pursuit of clickbait content centered on conflicts and personalities, they follow each other into informational stampedes and confirmation bubbles.They pursue the appearance of fairness and balance by treating the true and the false, the normal and the outrageous, as equally valid and by normalizing Republicans, especially Donald Trump, whose gibberish gets translated into English and whose past crimes and present-day lies and threats get glossed over. They neglect, again and again, important stories with real consequences. This is not entirely new – in a scathing analysis of 2016 election coverage, the Columbia Journalism Review noted that “in just six days, The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election” – but it’s gotten worse, and a lot of insiders have gotten sick of it.In July, ordinary people on social media decided to share information about the rightwing Project 2025 and did a superb job of raising public awareness about it, while the press obsessed about Joe Biden’s age and health. NBC did report on this grassroots education effort, but did so using the “both sides are equally valid” framework often deployed by mainstream media, saying the agenda is “championed by some creators as a guide to less government oversight and slammed by others as a road map to an authoritarian takeover of America”. There is no valid case it brings less government oversight.In an even more outrageous case, the New York Times ran a story comparing the Democratic and Republican plans to increase the housing supply – which treated Trump’s plans for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants as just another housing-supply strategy that might work or might not. (That it would create massive human rights violations and likely lead to huge civil disturbances was one overlooked factor, though the fact that some of these immigrants are key to the building trades was mentioned.)Other stories of pressing concern are either picked up and dropped or just neglected overall, as with Trump’s threats to dismantle a huge portion of the climate legislation that is both the Biden administration’s signal achievement and crucial for the fate of the planet. The Washington Post editorial board did offer this risibly feeble critique on 17 August: “It would no doubt be better for the climate if the US president acknowledged the reality of global warming – rather than calling it a scam, as Mr Trump has.”While the press blamed Biden for failing to communicate his achievements, which is part of his job, it’s their whole job to do so. The Climate Jobs National Resource Center reports that the Inflation Reduction Act has created “a combined potential of over $2tn in investment, 1,091,966 megawatts of clean power, and approximately 3,947,670 jobs”, but few Americans have any sense of what the bill has achieved or even that the economy is by many measures strong.Last winter, the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has a Nobel prize in economics, told Greg Sargent on the latter’s Daily Blast podcast that when he writes positive pieces about the Biden economy, his editor asks “don’t you want to qualify” it; “aren’t people upset by X, Y and Z and shouldn’t you be acknowledging that?”Meanwhile in an accusatory piece about Kamala Harris headlined When your opponent calls you ‘communist,’ maybe don’t propose price controls?, a Washington Post columnist declares in another case of bothsiderism: “Voters want to blame someone for high grocery bills, and the presidential candidates have apparently decided the choices are either the Biden administration or corporate greed. Harris has chosen the latter.” The evidence that corporations have jacked up prices and are reaping huge profits is easy to find, but facts don’t matter much in this kind of opining.It’s hard to gloat over the decline of these dinosaurs of American media, when a free press and a well-informed electorate are both crucial to democracy. The alternatives to the major news outlets simply don’t reach enough readers and listeners, though the non-profit investigative outfit ProPublica and progressive magazines such as the New Republic and Mother Jones, are doing a lot of the best reporting and commentary.Earlier this year, when Alabama senator Katie Britt gave her loopy rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union address, it was an independent journalist, Jonathan Katz, who broke the story on TikTok that her claims about a victim of sex trafficking contained significant falsehoods. The big news outlets picked up the scoop from him, making me wonder what their staffs of hundreds were doing that night.A host of brilliant journalists young and old, have started independent newsletters, covering tech, the state of the media, politics, climate, reproductive rights and virtually everything else, but their reach is too modest to make them a replacement for the big newspapers and networks. The great exception might be historian Heather Cox Richardson, whose newsletter and Facebook followers give her a readership not much smaller than that of the Washington Post. The tremendous success of her sober, historically grounded (and footnoted!) news summaries and reflections bespeaks a hunger for real news.

      Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility More