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    Who is running for president in 2024? Harris, Trump and the full list of candidates

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    The 2024 election season is well under way.The campaign was marked by a consequential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, followed by weeks of pressure on Biden following his debate performance, culminating in his announcement that he would drop out of the race.As Biden reconsidered his re-election, there was an attempted assassination against Trump, followed by the naming of the Ohio senator JD Vance as the Republican vice-presidential pick.After Biden’s surprise announcement, he backed his vice-president, Kamala Harris, as his choice to replace him on the party’s ticket. Harris quickly secured enough delegates to become the presumptive Democratic pick. She tapped the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate, and both were confirmed as their party’s nominees at the Democratic convention in August.Also in August, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the independent candidate with no shortage of wild stories, suspended his campaign and threw his support behind Trump.Here is the full list of candidates as of 27 August, including some long-shots who hope to challenge the major party candidates in November..gu-candidate-container.svelte-yah0vs.svelte-yah0vs{cursor:pointer;display:flex;flex-wrap:wrap;justify-content:center;width:80px}.gu-candidate-container.true.svelte-yah0vs.svelte-yah0vs{width:70px}.gu-candidate-container.true.svelte-yah0vs img.svelte-yah0vs{filter:grayscale(.8) opacity(.3) contrast(1.8);width:50px}.gu-candidate-container.true.svelte-yah0vs p.svelte-yah0vs{color:#707070}img.svelte-yah0vs.svelte-yah0vs{border-radius:100%;width:100%}p.svelte-yah0vs.svelte-yah0vs{color:#121212;font-family:Guardian Text Sans Web,Helvetica 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    The remaining candidatesView image in fullscreenDonald TrumpFormer president of the United States. Running mate: JD VanceDonald Trump accepted the Republican party’s nomination for president for the third consecutive time. At the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, the former president formally accepted the nomination on a night that was supposed to be filled with calls for unity but instead was marked by alarmist language and false claims.Trump announced Vance – once a vocal “never Trumper” – as his pick for the nomination for vice-president at the Republican convention.View image in fullscreenKamala HarrisVice-president of the United States. Running-mate: Tim WalzHarris officially accepted the Democratic party’s presidential nomination at the Democratic convention in August in Chicago, after a whirlwind tour of battleground states alongside her running mate, Walz.Harris’s campaign came after weeks of pressure following Biden’s disastrous June debate, and after Biden announced he would not accept his party’s nomination and endorsed her to replace him on the Democratic ticket.Immediately following Biden’s decision, Harris confirmed her intention to “earn and win this nomination” as a flood of Democrats endorsed her campaign, heading off a competitive race for the Democratic ticket.Harris made her first official campaign stop in Delaware on 22 July and has crisscrosed the country, stopping in swing state after swing state, since.View image in fullscreenJill SteinDoctor and activist. Running mate: Butch WareLeftwing environmentalist Jill Stein formally launched her third presidential bid in an online conversation in November 2023. Stein also stood as the Green party’s candidate in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections. Her candidacy follows the decision by Cornel West, the party’s original likely nominee, to leave the Green party and run as an independent.View image in fullscreenCornel WestProfessor and progressive activist. Running mate: Melina AbdullahThe progressive activist Cornel West announced in a video posted to Twitter that he was running for president as a member of the People’s party, a third party headed by a former campaign staffer for Bernie Sanders. West is currently a professor of philosophy at Union Theological Seminary and previously worked at Harvard but resigned, saying the school had an “intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of deep depths”.Dropped outView image in fullscreenJoe BidenPresident of the United States, dropped out 21 July 2024Joe Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election, winning all the party’s primary contests. However, following a disastrous debate performance in June against Trump, and weeks of pressure, Biden announced on 21 July that he would not accept the party’s nomination. Biden endorsed Kamala Harris to replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket. Biden served in politics for more than five decades, culminating in his 2020 victory over Donald Trump.Ryan BinkleyBusinessman and pastor, dropped out 27 February 2024Binkley, a Texas businessman, was a long-shot candidate who is also a pastor at Create church. The self-proclaimed far-right fiscal conservative criticized both Democrats and Republicans for not being able to balance the federal budget, and said he would focus on health costs, immigration reform and a national volunteer movement.View image in fullscreenDoug BurgumGovernor of North Dakota, dropped out 4 December 2023Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, announced his campaign in an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal on 6 June 2023. Viewed as a surprise, long-shot candidate, he touted his experience as a career businessman and leaned on his small-town roots in an announcement video titled Change. As governor, Burgum signed into law a near-total abortion ban, which makes the procedure illegal after six weeks, and only permissible in cases of rape, incest or medical emergency up to that point. He supported Donald Trump for president in 2016 and in 2020.View image in fullscreenChris ChristieFormer governor of New Jersey, dropped out 10 January 2024The former New Jersey governor has emerged as one of the harshest Republican critics of Donald Trump, whom he endorsed for president in 2016 after dropping out of that race. Christie says he broke ties with the former president after the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, claiming that he hadn’t spoken to Trump since then. Christie, a lawyer and a lobbyist who served as a US attorney appointed by George W Bush, announced he was running for president a second time on 6 June 2023 in New Hampshire during a town hall.View image in fullscreenRon DeSantisGovernor of Florida, dropped out 21 January 2024Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida was predicted to be the strongest contender for the GOP nomination against Donald Trump, consistently polling second among Republican primary voters. He made his formal announcement on Twitter, during a Spaces event attended by roughly 300,000 users that was riddled with technological glitches, on 24 May 2023. DeSantis, who has served as Florida’s governor since 2019 and handily defeated the Democratic challenger, Charlie Crist, in 2022, previously represented Florida’s sixth congressional district as a member of the US House from 2012 to 2018. As governor, DeSantis has signed a slate of laws banning minors from receiving gender-affirming care and restricting education on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools, and he has become an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist party.Larry ElderConservative radio host, dropped out 26 October 2023The rightwing political commentator and radio talkshow host announced his run for president on Fox News as a guest on the now-canceled Tucker Carlson Tonight on 20 April 2023. In 2021, Elder joined a list of Republicans seeking to replace Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, in a failed recall. The Los Angeles resident was an outspoken critic of the state’s mask mandates, calling them “a joke”.View image in fullscreenNikki HaleyFormer ambassador to the United Nations, dropped out 6 March 2024Haley, who got her start in politics as a member of South Carolina’s general assembly, was governor of the state from 2011 to 2017. She ended her second term early to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations under Donald Trump before announcing her resignation in 2018. She became the first Republican to announce a run against Donald Trump, even though she previously said she would not run against him. Haley vowed to “fix” the US immigration system by “stopping illegal immigration” and described herself as pro-life, but said a federal abortion ban was unrealistic. Haley, who is the daughter of Indian immigrants, would have been the first US president of Asian descent, as well as the first woman.Will HurdFormer congressman from Texas, dropped out 10 October 2023Former US Representative Will Hurd, of Texas, entered the crowded primary field as a moderate and critic of Donald Trump. Hurd announced his campaign in an interview on CBS. He followed that with a video posted online in which he called Trump a “lawless, selfish, failed politician” and laid out an agenda to curb “illegal immigration”, inflation, crime and homelessness. Hurd, who worked for nearly a decade in the CIA, served three terms in the House, from 2015 to 2021. He left office as the only Black Republican in the chamber.View image in fullscreenAsa HutchinsonFormer governor of Arkansas, dropped out 16 January 2024Hutchinson is the former governor of Arkansas, a post he held from 2015 to 2023. The relatively unknown politician announced his candidacy in an interview on ABC days after Trump was indicted in a Manhattan court, saying the ex-president should drop out of the race. Hutchinson is a businessman and lawyer who was appointed by Ronald Reagan to serve as a US attorney. He also served a stint in the US House of Representatives, winning a congressional seat in 1996 when he replaced his brother, Tim, who ran for Senate.View image in fullscreenPerry JohnsonBusinessman, dropped out 20 October 2023Johnson is a businessman who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Michigan in 2022 after providing fraudulent nominating signatures for that campaign. Originally from Illinois, Johnson founded dozens of companies, and lives in Michigan with his family. He has billed himself as Donald Trump “without the baggage” and has taken similar policy positions on curbing US debt and cracking down on the FBI.Robert F Kennedy JrLawyer and author, dropped out 23 August 2024Robert F Kennedy Jr, known for his work as an environmental lawyer and his anti-vaccine views, said he was running for president to end the “chronic disease epidemic”. Kennedy, who compared vaccine mandates during the Covid-19 pandemic to “Hitler’s Germany”, has promoted other baseless conspiracy theories such as telecom networks being used to control people. He is the nephew of John F Kennedy, the former Democratic president, who was assassinated in office, and is the son of 1968 Democratic presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy, who was assassinated on the campaign trail. He suspended his campaign on 23 August and endorsed Trump.View image in fullscreenMike PenceFormer vice-president of the United States, dropped out 28 October 2023Mike Pence officially launched his campaign for president on 7 June 2023, in a rare instance of a former vice-president challenging the president with whom he shared a ticket a few years ago. Pence joined a crowded Republican field in which he has consistently polled third, even before he officially announced his candidacy, though he trails far behind DeSantis and Trump. Pence was angling for a wide base among evangelical Christians and had vowed to ban abortion if he were elected. He denounced the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, and had used it as a talking point against Trump, who turned against him after he publicly refused supporters’ calls to overturn the results of the election.View image in fullscreenDean PhillipsRepresentative from Minnesota, dropped out 6 March 2024Dean Phillips, a three-term Democratic congressman from Minnesota, challenged Biden, saying the next generation should have the opportunity to lead the country. Phillips is the heir to a distilling company and once co-owned a gelato company. He entered public office spurred by fighting back against Trump.Vivek RamaswamyEntrepreneur and author, dropped out 16 January 2024The biotech entrepreneur and political newcomer announced his campaign in a video describing attacks on the “culture of free speech in America” and again on Fox News in an interview with now-fired Tucker Carlson. He is the author of Woke, Inc, a book that lobbies against “ESG” – a framework of corporate governance that encourages companies to consider the environment and social justice issues. Ramaswamy, who was the youngest candidate vying for the Republican nomination, had lobbied in favor of raising the national voting age to 25. Ramaswamy would have been the first president of Asian and Indian descent. He had also vowed to pardon federally indicted Donald Trump.Francis SuarezMayor of Miami, dropped out 29 August 2023Suarez, the mayor of Miami, was the first major Hispanic candidate seeking the Republican party nomination this election cycle. The son of Miami’s first Cuban-born mayor, Suarez had said he would broaden support for Republicans among Latino voters. He was the third candidate from Florida to join the crowded primary field, alongside frontrunners Trump and DeSantis. Suarez, who was first elected in 2017, filed paperwork to run the day after Trump appeared in a Miami court over federal charges and made his formal announcement on Good Morning America the day after that.View image in fullscreenTim ScottSenator from South Carolina, dropped out 13 November 2023In May, Scott became the second politician from South Carolina to run for the Republican nomination. He has served as a senator from South Carolina since 2013, when he was appointed by Republican challenger Nikki Haley to fill a vacancy. Scott, who is one of three Black members of the Senate and is the only Black Republican senator, said in his announcement speech that “America is not a racist country”. Scott joined fellow Republicans in opposing the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022. Scott served as a member of the House from 2011 to 2013 and before that spent stints in South Carolina’s general assembly and Charleston’s county council. During his 2010 campaign for the House of Representatives, Scott told Newsweek that homosexuality was a morally wrong choice.View image in fullscreenMarianne WilliamsonAuthorFailed 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, who also unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the US House of Representatives in 2014, became the first Democratic candidate to announce she is running for president as a challenge to Joe Biden. Williamson, an author of self-help books, launched her long-shot bid with campaign promises to address climate change and student loan debt. She previously worked as “spiritual leader” of a Michigan Unity church. She originally ended her campaign on 7 February 2024 but announced on 28 February she was “un-suspending”. More

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    Trump, without evidence, blames Biden and Harris for assassination attempt

    Donald Trump has blamed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for last month’s failed assassination attempt against him by accusing them of making it difficult for the Secret Service to protect him.The Republican presidential nominee’s claim – for which he offered no evidence – was made on the television talkshow Dr Phil, hosted by Phil McGraw, on Tuesday. The remarks follow disclosures that several Secret Service agents from the Pittsburgh field office had been placed on administrative leave after the 13 July shooting.At a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last month, Trump was grazed on the ear by a bullet after a 20-year-old gunman opened fire from the roof of a nearby building. One rallygoer, Corey Comperatore, was killed and two others were seriously wounded. The gunman was shot dead by a Secret Service officer at the scene.“When this happened, people would ask, whose fault is it?” Trump told McGraw. “I think to a certain extent it’s Biden’s fault and Harris’s fault. And I’m the opponent. They were weaponising government against me, they brought in the whole DoJ to try and get me, they weren’t too interested in my health and safety.“They were making it very difficult to have proper staffing in terms of Secret Service.”The Secret Service admitted in the days after the attempt on Trump’s life that the former president’s security detail had complained about a lack of security and personnel in the previous two years, acknowledging that they denied some requests.The agency’s protection of Trump has been stepped up since the episode, with agents being diverted from Biden’s previous campaign security detail.The agency’s director, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned after a heated Capitol Hill hearing in which Republican members of Congress assailed her for failing to adequately answer questions over possible security failings leading to the attempt against Trump.However, there has been no evidence that Biden and Harris, who both condemned the attempt, were directly involved in or interfered with the Secret Service’s arrangements.Biden, who was still the Democratic presidential nominee at the time of the shooting before later withdrawing, made several public statements in its aftermath and called for a cooling down of the political rhetoric.In his interview on Tuesday, Trump appeared to blame Biden and Harris for that rhetoric and suggested it may have inspired the attempt on his life.“They’re saying I’m a threat to democracy,” he said. “They would say that, that was standard line, just keep saying it, and you know that can get assassins or potential assassins going. That’s a terrible thing … Maybe that bullet is because of their rhetoric.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe FBI has said the gunman acted alone and that it has found no evidence that he was driven by ideological motives.Trump’s comments were his most direct yet about the Biden administration’s supposed responsibility for the episode. He previously wrote on a post in his Truth Social network that it failed in its duty to protect him.“The Biden/Harris Administration did not properly protect me, and I was forced to take a bullet for Democracy. IT WAS MY GREAT HONOR TO DO SO!” he wrote 10 days after the shooting.Trump previously made unfounded claims that Biden was weaponising the government against him, accusing the president of unleashing the justice department and orchestrating the multiple criminal investigations he has faced since leaving office.He also accused FBI agents of being “locked and loaded” and ready to kill him in a 2022 raid on his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida to retrieve classified documents. The bureau said the raid had been timed to ensure the former president was not present and that its agents had been armed in line with standard operation procedure.The Harris campaign has been contacted for comment. More

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    ‘Enough is enough’: the Muslim American officials who resigned over US’s Israel-Gaza policy

    When Maryam Hassanein joined the US Department of Interior as a Biden administration appointee in January, she hoped that Israel’s war on Gaza would soon come to an end. But when the US authorized a $1bn arms shipment to Israel in the spring, Hassanein decided to use her voice to affect change. She was inspired by the resilience of students involved in the anti-war movement at nearby George Washington University, where she had attended pro-Palestinian rallies.“Seeing the strength of the students who led that movement across the country really made me think about what I should be doing,” Hassanein said, “and how I can advocate far more for an end to the carnage in Palestine.”So last month, Hassanein joined the ranks of at least a dozen officials who have resigned from the Biden administration due to the US’s support of Israel’s war on Gaza, where more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October, according to the Gaza health ministry. Hassanein said she saw “value in making your voice heard on a public level when it’s not being heard while working there”.View image in fullscreenIn a Zoom call hosted by the civil rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) on Tuesday, Hassanein and Hala Rharrit, a former US state department diplomat who resigned in April, shared their experiences of witnessing the Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian animus that they say drives the Biden administration’s Middle East policies.Rharrit resigned after nearly two decades of working with the state department because she said she witnessed US officials continuously dehumanize Palestinians following Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel. Robust debate was once welcomed at the state department, Rharrit said, but that changed 10 months ago. “I never faced a situation personally where there was fear for retaliation, there was silencing, there was self censorship,” she said. “For me, personally, in the 18 years that I’ve served, this is the very first time.”When engaging with Arab media, Rharrit said she was directed to repeat a narrative that Israel had the right to defend itself. And when giving a presentation to other diplomats, she said that she was lambasted for wanting to include a picture of a Palestinian child dying of starvation. In a group chat where diplomats discussed Egyptian journalists, she said that one colleague expressed disbelief that the Egyptians had built the pyramids.“This is a failed policy,” Rharrit said about the US’s aid to Israel, “and we as Americans and as taxpayers that are sending these bombs and these weapons need to have a collective voice and say: enough is enough.”In her role at the interior department, Hassanein joined other staffers in signing letters, attending rallies and vigils, but soon recognized that her voice wasn’t being heard, she said. “What I realized is that I don’t want to just be a Muslim in a public service position for the sake of being a Muslim in a public service position,” she added. “I want my perspective and my background and the fact that I’m a representation for Muslim communities in the country to truly be considered.” She also disapproved of the Democratic national convention’s denial of a speaking slot for the Georgia state representative Ruwa Romman.Since her public resignation last month, Hassanein said that she has not received a response from her former employer. The interior department and state department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The Harris-Walz campaign is not doing enough to change course on Gaza policy, Hassanein said. She is undecided on whether she will vote for Harris in November and wants to see a marked shift in US’s Gaza policy before casting a ballot for her. In a call to action, Cair encouraged attenders to demand that the state department and the White House uphold US law by ending the transfer of weapons to Israel.“I hope that as horrific as all of this has been, that we eventually emerge from it with a sense of realization of the things that we need to do – the healing that we all need in order to treat each other with humanity, dignity and respect, regardless of background,” Rharrit said. More

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    Trump raising money by selling pieces of suit he wore in Biden debate

    Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he is selling a new collection of digital trading cards, and that supporters who buy 15 or more cards will receive a physical card adorned with a piece of the suit he wore for the presidential debate against Joe Biden in June.The announcement was made on Tuesday in a video posted on Truth Social.The cards, named the America First collection, features 50 new images of Trump, including him dancing, holding bitcoins and more.The digital cards cost $99 each, he said, and supporters who purchase 15 or more (at a cost of $1,485 or more) will receive the physical card.“People are calling it the knock-out suit,” Trump said in the video, adding: “I don’t know about that but that’s what they’re calling it.”He continued: “We’ll cut up the knock-out suit, and you’re going to get a piece of it and we’ll be randomly autographing five of them, a true collector’s item, this is something to give your family, your kids, your grandchildren.”Supporters who buy 75 digital cards, at a cost $7,425, will get to attend a gala dinner with the former president at Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, Trump said.“You know they call me the crypto-president,” Trump said. “I don’t know if that’s true or not but a lot of people are saying that, so don’t miss out, go to collecttrumpcards.com … and collect your piece of American history.”Perhaps unsurprisingly, the former president has released and sold digital trading cards in the past.In 2022, Trump introduced his first collection of digital trading cards, which included a picture of himself in a superhero costume. The cards sold out in less than a day, netting $4.5m (£3.39m) in sales.This is also not the first time Trump has sold parts of one of his suits. Last year, Trump began selling small cuts of the suit he wore when he was arrested and had his mugshot taken in an Atlanta jail. To receive a piece of that suit, supporters had to buy 47 digital trading cards, adding up to $4,653.The former Apprentice host also monetized the mugshot taken in the Atlanta jail last August, and sold it on coffee mugs, T-shirts and more items. More

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    The US diplomatic strategy on Israel and Gaza is not working | Daniel Levy

    The Biden administration remains in an intense phase of Middle East diplomatic activity working to avoid a regional war while optimistically spinning the prospects for a Gaza breakthrough deal.Following the latest round of provocative Israeli extrajudicial killings in Tehran and Beirut and the intensified exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah over the weekend, the region appeared to lurch further in the direction of all-out war. Preventing that is a worthy cause in itself.With a US election looming and policy on Gaza, Israel and the Middle East unpopular with the Democrats’ own constituency and a potential ballot box liability in key states, there are also pressing political reasons for a Democratic administration to avoid more war and to pursue a diplomatic breakthrough. Countering domestic political criticism with hope for a deal was a useful device to deploy at the Democratic convention in Chicago and will be needed through to 5 November.Team Biden is attempting a difficult trifecta. First, the Biden administration is trying to deter the Iranian axis from further responses to Israel’s recent targeted killings in Tehran and Beirut. Joe Biden no doubt has wanted to hold out the prospect of a ceasefire, which Iran would prefer not to upend, while he simultaneously bought time for the US to beef up its military presence in the region as leverage and a threat against Iran.The US is also trying to help a key regional ally, Israel, reclaim its deterrence posture and freedom of military operation after the balance of forces shifted against it during the current conflict.Second, the Biden administration is trying to reach election day on a positive note, by bringing an end to a divisive conflict – or, as a fallback, to at least avoid further escalation and a potentially debilitating regional explosion into which Israel could pull the US. Third, and more speculatively, the Biden administration might want to bring an end to the brutal devastation and killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, the humanitarian crisis there, and the hellish ordeal of the Israelis held in Gaza and their families. A ceasefire would also have the benefit of avoiding further damage to US interests and reputation as a consequence of Biden running political cover for and arming Israel throughout this war.Ordinarily, delivering on those first two goals – and merely scoring two out of three – might constitute an acceptable achievement. It is made more attainable by the Iranian-led axis of resistance not wanting to fall into the trap of all-out war. However, failure to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza risks everything else unravelling and keeps the region at boiling point. Regional de-escalation and domestic political quiet will be that much more difficult to sustain if the Gaza talks again collapse, especially against the backdrop of raised expectations.Sadly, that is the direction in which things are headed, exacerbated by the current US diplomatic push being exposed as clumsy or fraudulent or both.It should go without saying that putting an end to the unprecedented daily suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as bringing the Israelis who are held there home, is reason enough to throw everything at achieving a ceasefire. But the Biden administration has been singularly incapable of treating Palestinians as equals with the humanity and dignity accorded to Jewish Israelis – one of the reasons this has played so badly with the Democratic voting base.The staggering shortcomings in the Biden administration’s approach, exacerbated in secretary of state Antony Blinken’s latest mission, are highly consequential and worth unpacking. Alarm bells should have been set off when Blinken at his recent press conference in Jerusalem announced that Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted the US “bridging proposal” – when the Israeli prime minister himself declared no such thing. Within hours, it became clear that Israel’s chief negotiator, Nitzan Alon, would not participate in the talks as a way of protesting against Netanyahu’s undermining of the deal.That was followed by senior US and Israeli security officials anonymously briefing the press that Netanyahu was preventing a deal. Similar conclusions were also reached and made public by the main forums representing the Israeli hostage families. On his ninth visit to Israel since the 7 October attack, Blinken again failed – not just at mediating between Israel and Hamas, but even in closing the gaps between the competing camps inside the Israeli system. The US refusal to take seriously that there are Hamas negotiating positions which are legitimate, and which will need to be part of a deal (and with which the US ostensibly agrees to in substance – such as a full Israeli withdrawal and a sustainable ceasefire), has condemned US-led talks to repeated failure.Repackaging Israeli proposals and presenting them as a US position may have a retro feel to it, but that does not make it cool. And it won’t deliver progress (it can’t even sustain Israeli endorsement given Netanyahu’s constant shifting of the goalposts to avoid a deal). That the US has zero credibility as a mediator is a problem. That it has conspired to make its contributions not only ineffective but counterproductive is devastating. Even Itamar Eichner, a diplomatic correspondent for the Israeli Yedioth newspaper, describes Blinken’s visit as having displayed “naivete and amateurishness … effectively sabotaging the deal by aligning with Netanyahu”.This is a US government modus operandi with which Netanyahu is extremely familiar, and which falls very squarely inside his comfort zone. Netanyahu knows that he has won once the US mediator – whatever the actual facts – is willing to blame the Palestinian side (Arafat during Oslo, Hamas now). Despite having the US having changed its own proposal to accommodate Netanyahu, and Netanyahu still distancing himself from the terms and being called on it by his own defence establishment, Biden and senior US officials continue their public disinformation campaign of claiming that only Hamas is the problem and should be pressured.Even if US governments hold personal frustrations with Netanyahu, their policies serve to strengthen Bibi at home.From early in this war, Netanyahu’s bottom line has been that while internal pressures exist to secure a deal (and therefore get the hostages back and cease the military operation), the opposite side of that ledger is more foreboding: a deal would upend Netanyahu’s extremist governing coalition and bring an end to the most important shield Netanyahu has created for himself politically: his claimed mantle as Israel’s indispensable wartime leader.Netanyahu’s ideological preference is for displacing Palestinians and eviscerating their rights, alongside pulling the US more actively into a regional clash with Iran; his short-term political goal is to maintain an open-ended war which can accommodate varying degrees of intensity, but not a deal.So where might change ultimately come from? Given current tensions, something approximating an all-out regional war might yet unfold. Alongside the dangers and losses this would entail, a broader conflagration might belatedly produce a more serious external push for a comprehensive ceasefire.Israeli coalition politics could also throw a spanner in the works for Netanyahu, given tensions among his governing allies, and particularly with the ultra-Orthodox parties over the issue of military enlistment. But the surest way to de-escalate in the region and to bring the horrors of Gaza to an end continues to be via challenging the Israeli incentive structure in meaningful ways – through legal, political and economic pressure and sanctions, and especially by the withholding of weapons.Netanyahu is a loose cannon, which Kamala Harris should have no interest in reloading 10 weeks out from an election.

    Daniel Levy is the president of the US/Middle East Project and a former Israeli peace negotiator More

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    Tactical ad breaks and lies: rightwing coverage of DNC is exactly as expected

    As the Democratic party enjoys the afterglow of an exuberant national convention, the rightwing media has settled on consistent counter-programming: complaining about “joy”, hyping up pro-Palestinian protests and expressing a newfound concern for the treatment of Joe Biden.The coverage, which has at times avoided the more pointed Democratic criticisms of Trump by cutting to ad breaks, has also including the criticism of women both for smiling too much and not smiling enough, and the coining of a new name for Barack Obama: “Barack-Stabber”.There has also been the bizarre revival of the racist Obama birther conspiracy theory by a Fox News host, as well as the straight-faced claim by a Republican-supporting news host that it is “all vengeance at this year’s DNC [Democratic national convention]”.In short, it’s been days of coverage that will be unfamiliar to anyone lucky enough to be outside the rightwing media bubble, and depressingly recognizable to those who dip into conservative coverage.“The words that we hear on the ground over and over is [sic]: ‘Trump, Trump, Trump’, and that Harris and Walz are full of joy,” Daniel Baldwin, a reporter on the hard-right OANN news channel, reported on Tuesday.Baldwin, who seemed quite upset, added: “Guess what: vibes and joy don’t put fool … food on the table. They don’t bring prices down, they don’t clean up the streets, they don’t do any of that.”Others in the rightwing media complained that the joy was insincere. Sean Hannity, a staunch Trump supporter and one of Fox News’s most celebrated hosts, told his audience on Tuesday: “The convention has been full of a lot of hate, instead of the politics of joy, which you’ve been promised.”Laura Ingraham, another Fox News stalwart, sang from the same hymn sheet as she claimed that Kamala Harris’s “joyful branding is a cover for something far more sinister”.“I like to call it socialism with a smile. It’s a seething disdain for tens of millions of Americans who still support Donald Trump,” Ingraham said, adding that the DNC is not about “love or optimism: it’s about hatred and retribution”.“There’s not much joy in this convention hall, certainly not compared to what we say at the RNC,” Ingraham added.Ingraham’s analysis was apparently unironic, but the idea that the Republican national convention was happy and joyful will come as a surprise to anyone who was there.The Republican event saw Ted Cruz, the Texas senator, claim that Americans were being “murdered, assaulted, raped by illegal immigrants that the Democrats have released”, while Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, warned that “millions of illegal aliens” should not be allowed to “harm our country”, as attendees waved signs reading: “Mass deportation now.”When it came to joy, at times it seemed like conservative media didn’t quite know what line of attack they were supposed to be using.“Hillary Clinton, she’s the most joyless person I think who has ever walked on this earth,” Matt Schlapp, a Republican political operative, told Newsmax on Monday.But minutes later, Schlapp performed an about turn on how much happiness women should express.“Kamala Harris came out on the stage … all the laughing, it’s like she got into the sherry or something,” Schlapp complained, in comments highlighted by Desi Lydic on The Daily Show.As well as questioning joyfulness and levity, the right wing has focused on protests rather than what was going on in the convention hall. That caused problems for the likes of Fox News and Newsmax at the start of the week, when a smaller than expected group of people congregated peacefully in Chicago. Fox News still tried valiantly to make the protests seem more of a thing, but the channel was outshone by One America News Network.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn OANN, the host Kara McKinney claimed: “DNC protests are spiraling out of control” over footage of pro-Palestinian activists calmly holding a flag and a crowd standing quietly behind a fence.Away from the protests, a common feature was anguish at Democrats’ treatment of Joe Biden – a man who rightwing media has spent years accusing of ill-defined crimes and senility.On Newsmax, one guest complained that Biden was mentioned “maybe twice”, “as they shoved him out in the dark of the night on the first night”, while an OANN host claimed Biden had been “buried at the end of the night”.Fox News’s The Five took a similar angle, portraying senior Democrats as nefarious plotters. A chyron on the show dubbed Obama “Barack-Stabber Obama”, as the host Jeanine Pirro lamented that Biden spoke on the first day of the convention and then “was exiled to California”.Michelle Obama didn’t escape unscathed either. A chyron under one discussion of the former first lady: “Michelle Obama snubs Biden in her DNC speech”, while Nancy Pelosi was also criticized, just for good measure.As the week wore on, it became clear that one tactic for news channels was just to ignore certain things happening at the convention. When a video was aired at the DNC about about the January 6 insurrection, Fox News cut to an advert for a landline telephone.When three women, including one who had been raped as a child, took the stage to discuss their experiences with pregnancies, miscarriages and abortions, Fox News skipped the segment entirely, Media Matters reported. Instead, the network had its male chief political analyst, Brit Hume, pontificate on the issue, and offer more faux Biden outrage, on air.“What does it say about the modern state of the Democratic party that it could not ask these abortion speakers to stand aside to make room for the president of the United States to speak at a reasonable hour tonight?” was Hume’s take.Among the critical analysis of the term “joy”, the wailing over Biden’s speaking spot and the ongoing female smiling debate, at least Fox News offered something more familiar to its viewers: the revival of the more-than-a-decade-old Obama birth certificate conspiracy theory. The idea, which Trump pushed even before he was a presidential candidate, posits that Obama was not born in the US, and therefore should not have been US president.Ignoring the fact that Obama has published his birth certificate, and that he has not been president for eight years, Jesse Watters, a primetime Fox News host, declared on the channel that he was going to send someone called Johnny to investigate.Obama is “definitely going to interfere in this election”, Watters said.“That’s why we’ll be sending Johnny to Hawaii to get the truth about the birth certificate – this time we will dig deep and find out what really happened.” More

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    Is Trump OK? Unhinged reaction to rise of Harris worries supporters

    Even some of Donald Trump’s supporters are now asking the question that was the undoing of Joe Biden: is the former president fit for office?But while Biden’s run for re-election was largely sunk by a single disastrous televised debate before a national audience, Trump is ramping up doubts with each chaotic, disjointed speech as he campaigns around the country.While rambling discourse and outrageously disprovable claims, interspersed with spite and vitriol, may seem nothing new to many of Trump’s supporters and critics alike, the former president appears to have been driven to new depths by suddenly finding himself running against Kamala Harris a month ago.Trump has only grown more infuriated as his poll lead over Biden evaporated, with Harris opening up a clear, if narrow, lead. The vice-president’s tactic of mocking Trump more than arguing with him appears to have incensed him further.Since Harris assumed the mantle of the presumptive Democratic candidate, Trump has claimed to be better-looking than the vice-president, questioned whether she is really Black and attacked her laugh as that of “a lunatic”.The former president has also characterised Harris as both a communist and a fascist, and described Harris as “dumb” but then told CBS he didn’t mean it as an insult because it was “just a fact”.“I don’t think she’s a very bright person. I do feel that. I mean, I think that’s right. I think I am a very bright person, and a lot of people say that,” he said.Trump seems particularly obsessed with the size of the crowds at Harris’s rallies, drawing derision for falsely claiming she used artificial intelligence to fake the turnout.When he’s not worried about size, Trump is vexed by Harris’s looks. After the vice-president appeared on the cover of Time magazine, Trump compared her appearance to Sophia Loren and his wife, Melania, before drawing a comparison with his own features.“I’m a better-looking person than Kamala,” he declared to an audience of thousands who were more amused than convinced.Melania’s reaction to her husband’s implicit claim that he is better-looking than his wife is not known.Trump has sought to court Black voters in recent months as he attempts to win enough of their support to swing key states such as Michigan. But he will have done his own cause no good by questioning whether Harris, whose mother was born in India and father in Jamaica, is really Black – all while giving an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists, and to the astonishment of just about everyone in the room.View image in fullscreen“She was always of Indian heritage and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” he said. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black.”Trump also claimed to “have been the best president for Black Americans since Abraham Lincoln”.In a similar vein, the former president sometimes veers off the written script to have an open debate with himself about how to pronounce names, whether Kamala or the first name of the CNN presenter Dana Bash at a recent rally.At a rally in Pennsylvania a week ago, Trump went as far as rambling on about rambling.“I don’t ramble. I’m a really smart guy, you know, really smart. I don’t ramble. But the other day, anytime I hit too hard, they say he was rambling, rambling,” he told the crowd.Even some of Trump’s most loyal fans were disturbed by that performance. Joan Long travelled from New York with her husband, Billy, to see the former president speak.“I honestly can’t say I know why he starts talking about how to pronounce names. What does that have to do with the election?” she said. “And I wish he would stop talking about Kamala’s looks.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLeading Republicans are similarly disturbed. Senator Lindsey Graham pleaded with Trump to stay focused on the issues that play best for the former president, such as the economy.“His policies are good for America, and if you have a policy debate for president, he wins. Donald Trump the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election,” Graham told NBC’s Meet the Press.Nikki Haley, the Republican former presidential candidate who denounced Trump as unfit for office before supporting him, said he “is not going to win talking about what race Kamala Harris is” or by calling her “dumb”. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican former speaker of the US House of Representatives, told Fox News that Trump should stop making the race about personalities and “stop questioning the size of her crowds”.View image in fullscreenTrump, to no one’s surprise, has ploughed on regardless. He told reporters that he was “very angry” at Harris for calling him weird and was “entitled to personal attacks”.Harris also appears to have hit a nerve with Trump by comparing her history as a prosecutor with his recent status as a convicted criminal. “Some people say, ‘Oh, why don’t you be nice?’ But they’re not nice to me – they want me to be in prison,” Trump told reporters.All of this is a notable contrast to the weeks following Biden’s disastrous debate performance in June. Trump apparently listened to his advisers for once, as he took a step back from the relentless personal attacks and largely let the press and public opinion lead the questioning of the 81-year-old president’s fitness for office.The former president briefly looked as dignified as he was ever likely to. The attempt to assassinate Trump in Pennsylvania in July did no harm to his standing. Polls put Trump on the front foot, and his campaign advisers openly gloated about the prospect of a landslide win in November. But the energy unleashed by Harris’s entry into the presidential race drew out the old Trump again.View image in fullscreenWhen the focus was on Biden’s mental acuity, Trump said every presidential candidate should be required to take a cognitive test. Pressed this week by CBS News on whether he has done so himself, Trump claimed to have recently had a “perfect score” on two cognitive tests.“I got everything right. And one of the doctors said, ‘I’ve never seen that before, where you get everything right,’” he said.Many Americans are not so convinced. Earlier this week, a JL Partners poll for the Daily Mail showed the number of American voters who have confidence that Trump is able to fully digest national security briefings, maintain attention in meetings and remember the names of world leaders he is talking to – and who have confidence that he will still be alive in four years – has dropped sharply since March.In just a few months, concern about fitness for office has shifted from Biden to Trump, who is now the oldest US presidential candidate in history. More

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    Environmental activists urge Kamala Harris to go big on climate: ‘She’s got to seize the moment’

    As Donald Trump accuses Kamala Harris of waging “war on American energy”, some advocates are pressing the vice-president to embrace a bold climate message at the Democratic national convention this week.Harris will have a major opportunity to lay out her key platform as she accepts the Democratic party’s presidential nomination on Thursday evening. Some are hoping climate features heavily in her speech.“There’s a moment here and we think she’s got to seize it,” said Saul Levin, legislative and political director of the progressive advocacy group Green New Deal Network.Harris’s candidacy has excited much of the climate movement, with scores of green groups, including Levin’s, endorsing her presidential run. At a Wednesday meeting, influential climate hawks such as Ed Markey, the Massachusetts senator; Gina McCarthy, the former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator; and Robert Bullard, the esteemed environmental justice scholar and advocate encouraged climate voters to stand behind Harris.But Harris has yet to release an official plan to take on the climate crisis. Unlike Joe Biden, who placed climate at the heart of his 2020 presidential run, Harris has so far only mentioned the issue in passing on the campaign trail. And though the issue has been woven into Democratic national convention events, it has not yet been a central focus of the convention.“It’s a bit of a bummer that it hasn’t gotten more time,” said Cassidy DiPaola, spokesperson for the Make Polluters Pay Campaign, which focuses on climate accountability.Harris may find it difficult to make bold climate promises amid Trump’s attacks. At a campaign stop in Pennsylvania this week, the former president called Harris a “non-fracker”, though she has distanced herself from past support for a fracking ban, disappointing climate advocates.Trump has also repeatedly claimed Harris wants to ban red meat and “get rid of all cows”. In response, she said she enjoys eating the occasional cheeseburger but added that Americans should be incentivized to eat a lower-carbon, healthier diet.Amid this pressure from the right, some climate advocates have said they will stand behind Harris no matter how much she mentions climate.“Regardless of whether this issue is in the speech or not tomorrow night, we know Vice-President Harris is an environmental champion,” said Michelle Deatrick, who chairs the Democratic National Committee’ Council on the Environment and Climate Crisis. She said Harris’s record speaks for itself.Recent polling from progressive group Data for Progress and environmental organization Climate Power shows that a strong majority of US voters prefer Harris’s approach to climate.It’s an indicator that focusing on climate is “good politics”, said Stevie O’Hanlon, spokesperson for the youth-led environmental justice group the Sunrise Movement.“Climate is one of the issues where voters trust Harris the most over Trump,” she said. “To capitalize on that, she needs to talk about it.”An ‘existential threat’The 2024 Democratic party platform approved on Monday refers to the climate crisis as an “existential threat” and “a consequence of delay and destruction by people like Donald Trump and his friends in Big Oil”.It also includes a commitment to “making polluters pay”. It’s something DiPaola said she was “stoked” to see, though she added that she’d eventually like to see “less vague language about how they’re going to make climate accountability real”.Additionally, the platform underlines the creation of hundreds of thousands of clean-energy jobs and highlights the historic green investments spurred by the 2021 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).But Levin says he hopes Harris lays out plans to go beyond the IRA and increase investments in green jobs, public transit and renewable power. Though the bill constitutes the largest downpayment on climate policy in US history with hundreds of billions of dollars in green funding, experts say that is a fraction of what the US must ultimately spend.“We can’t just say, oh, we did the IRA, so we did climate and now let’s move to another issue,” said Levin. “The IRA made tremendous progress, but it was just a start.”He said some aspects of the platform, including pledges to double funding for public transit and cut down public subsidies for oil companies, inspired hope that a bolder climate platform will emerge.That platform and Harris’ rhetoric, said DiPaola, should lean “populist,” said DiPaola.“Voters are frustrated with corporate power and influence,” she said. “She can ultimately appeal to both climate-motivated voters as well as economically motivated voters … by highlighting the need to clamp down on big oil’s greed.”‘Big oil’s hold on our economy’Though the Democratic party platform rails against “big oil’s hold on our economy”, the Democratic convention itself has not been unfriendly to the industry. The American Petroleum Institute, the country’s largest fossil fuel lobby group, participated in several events this week.Oil major ExxonMobil sponsored two Wednesday panel discussions hosted by Punchbowl News on the sidelines of the convention, one of which featured the firm’s senior director of climate strategy and technology and a representative from gas lobby group the American Gas Association.Activists with environmental non-profits including Friends of the Earth, Oil Change International, and Climate Hawks Vote disrupted the event.“I am here because Exxon lied and people died,” chanted RL Miller, the Climate Hawks Vote founder and a former Democratic National Committee member, before being escorted from the room.Federal data shows Exxon has poured $111,500 into Republican congressional campaign committees. Collin Rees of Oil Change International, who took part in the protest, said if the party is looking to take on big oil, the company “should have no platform at the DNC”.War in GazaGaza solidarity protesters interrupted a meeting of the environment and climate crisis council at the convention on Wednesday, chanting “free, free Palestine”.“If you want to show some political courage, go and interrupt one of Donald Trump’s rallies,” responded Jamie Raskin, the Maryland representative, who had been speaking. “Anybody who interferes with that is objectively helping Donald Trump … so cut it out.”Some climate groups, however, are pushing for the Harris campaign to stop supporting Israel’s deadly war in Gaza by issuing an arms embargo. Among them is the Sunrise Movement.“Young people want a livable world for our generation and generations. We want everyone to have clean air and water and safe homes,” said O’Hanlon. “Everyone must have those rights and freedoms, including Palestinians.” More