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      Kamala Harris on Trump: ‘No previous US president has bowed down to a Russian dictator before’

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      Kamala Harris on Saturday criticized Donald Trump’s cajoling of Russia to attack Nato allies of the US who don’t pay their dues, saying the American people would never accept a president who bowed to a dictator.The vice-president’s comments, in a wide-ranging interview on MSNBC’s The Weekend, represent some of the strongest criticism to date of Trump’s apparent allegiance to Russian president Vladimir Putin.The Joe Biden White House has previously called the remarks by the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination – made last week at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania – “appalling and unhinged”.“The idea that the former president of the US would say that he – quote – encourages a brutal dictator to invade our allies, and that the United States of America would simply stand by and watch,” Harris said. “No previous US president, regardless of their party, has bowed down to a Russian dictator before.“We are seeing an example of something I just believe that the American people would never support, which is a US president, current or former, bowing down with those kinds of words, and apparently an intention of conduct, to a Russian dictator.”Harris, who was interviewed in Germany, where she is attending the Munich Security Conference, also attacked House Republicans who are stalling the Biden administration’s $95bn foreign military aid package.The bill includes money for Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion. But it has been disconnected from US border security measures that Republicans insisted they wanted – then voted down.“We need to do our part [to support Ukraine], and we have been very clear that Congress must act,” she said.“I think all members of Congress, and all elected leaders, would understand this is a moment where America has the ability to demonstrate through action where we stand on issues like this, which is, do we stand with our friends in the face of extreme brutality or not?”She said she was confident the $95bn Ukraine and Israel package, which passed the Senate on Monday on a 66-33 vote, would also win bipartisan support in the Republican-controlled House. So far, however, Republican speaker Mike Johnson has refused to allow a vote, and the chamber is in recess.“One point that gives me some level of optimism is we are clear in the knowledge that there is bipartisan support, both in the Senate, which we’ve seen a demonstration of, and the House,” she said.“So let’s put this to a vote in the House, and I’m certain that it will pass. We are working to that end, and we’re not giving up.”Harris was also questioned about Biden’s increasingly tougher approach to Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with the president warning this week against an escalation of the military onslaught in Rafah without a safety plan for up to 1.5 million trapped Palestinian civilians.“We have been clear that we defend Israel’s right to defend itself. However, how it does so matters,” she said.“Far too many Palestinians, innocent Palestinian civilians, have been killed. Israel [needs to take] concrete steps to protect innocent Palestinians.”But she refused to say whether the US would restrict or halt weapons supplies to Israel if Netanyahu ignored Biden’s urging and pressed ahead with operations in Rafah without civilian safety rails.“We have not made any decision to do that at this point, but I will tell you that I am very concerned that there are as many as 1.5 million people in Rafah who for the most part are people who have been displaced because they fled their homes, thinking they would be in a place of safety,” she said.“I’m very concerned about where they would go and what they would do.” More

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      ‘She’s part of the plan’: Kamala Harris makes critical pitch as South Carolina primary kicks off

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      Joe Biden’s closing argument on Friday to South Carolina, the state that rescued his White House dreams four years ago, was not made by Joe Biden. Instead it was Kamala Harris who strode out under a brilliant blue sky to the thunderous cadence of South Carolina State University’s drumline.It was because South Carolina’s voters showed up in the middle of a historic pandemic that Biden became president, she told a modest but enthusiastic crowd in Orangeburg, “and I am the first woman and first Black woman to be vice-president of the United States”.Harris was making her final pitch on the eve of the official kick-off of the Democratic presidential primary. At Biden’s behest, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) altered the electoral calendar so that racially diverse South Carolina holds the first nominating contest instead of Iowa and New Hampshire, which are about 90% white.It could not be described as a cliffhanger. Biden is assured of victory in the state that revived his seemingly doomed campaign in 2020. That formality was underlined by his write-in win in last month’s unsanctioned New Hampshire primary when his name did not even appear on the ballot. But Democrats are still working for a strong turnout to validate both Biden and South Carolina’s elevated status.Biden did visit the Palmetto state last weekend but it was Harris who came to Orangeburg on Friday, meeting faith leaders to discuss issues such as gun violence, prescription drug prices, student debt forgiveness and national unity. She then spoke in a balmy open-air courtyard at South Carolina’s only public historically black college and university (HBCU).The trip signalled that, despite a tenure clouded by negative headlines and approval rating that often lags behind Biden’s, Harris remains critical to the president’s re-election campaign because of her ability to galvanise Black voters and her sharp messaging on abortion rights, a potentially decisive issue. Many Democrats regard her as an asset rather than a liability.View image in fullscreenThe 59-year-old can also expect closer scrutiny than past vice-presidents because her boss is 81, the oldest commander-in-chief in American history. On Friday Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor battling Donald Trump for the Republican nomination, set up a mobile billboard at the edge of the university campus that said: “We’re going to have a woman president. It will either be Nikki Haley, or it will be Kamala Harris. Trump can’t beat Biden, and Biden won’t finish his term.”Harris spoke against the backdrop of a giant blue banner that said “First in the nation”, and checked off administration accomplishments such as job creation, increasing access to high-speed internet in rural areas, cancelling billions in student loan debt and capping insulin costs.But she became most animated when discussing reproductive freedom in the aftermath of the supreme court’s decision to end the constitutional right to abortion. And just as Biden has begun using the name “Trump” frequently as he increasingly draws a contrast, Harris did not shy away from attacking the likely Republican nominee as a profound threat to democracy.“He openly says that he is ‘proud’ that he overturned Roe v Wade,” Harris said. “‘Proud’ that he took the freedom of choice from millions of American women. For years the former president has stoked the fires of hate and bigotry and racism and xenophobia for his own power and political gain.”There were cries of “Yes!” from the audience. Harris went on: “He accused immigrants of ‘poisoning the blood of our country’ and, after neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, he said there were ‘very fine people on both sides’. The former president openly talks about his admiration for dictators and has vowed that he will be a dictator on day one.”Harris went on to summarise the threat of Trump’s authoritarianism in stark terms: “Understand what dictators do. Dictators put journalists in jail. Dictators suspend elections. Dictators take your rights and, as the great Maya Angelou once said, ‘When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time.’”The speech, lasting only 14 minutes, struck a chord with Black women young and old. Morgan Mack, 22, a student at the university, said: “She was amazing and she hit on some good points that are going to affect my generation the most, so we just need to go out there and vote.”Mack added: “She’s definitely an asset to Joe Biden and an asset to not just Black women, but women everywhere and HBCU students like myself.”Laura Keith, a teacher who gave her age only as “old”, said Harris has done an “excellent job” as vice-president. “Very intelligent, expresses herself well, stepping out there among the people, speaking to people and giving them a vision of this administration.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOther spectators were similarly positive about Harris’s contribution. Shane McCravy, 23, a screenwriter, said: “She helps keep him in touch with just the minorities. She offers a voice, especially as a Black woman, not just for minority groups but she’s an inspiration for the next generation.“She’s inspiring people, the boys, the girls, whatever colour, that you can choose to do what you want to do and this helps get through that message America is for everyone, no matter who you are.”Pastor William Johnson, 64, added: “She’s part of the plan. We started out three years ago and this is just a continuation of not just making America great but bringing America back. Saving the soul of America.”Harris, herself a graduate of an HBCU – Howard University in Washington – served as the junior senator from California from 2017 to 2021. Her own campaign for president collapsed two months before the first contest but she was chosen by Biden as running mate. Critics mock her speeches as “word salads” and question her management style; defenders say she has been the victims of racism, sexism and the thanklessness of the vice-presidency.Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist based in South Carolina, insisted: “She brings the experience of being a Black woman in America who knows what it’s like to be counted out and knows what it’s like to be at the bottom when you know you have the ability to lead at the top.”Biden and Harris are also boosted by a strong economy including news that the US added 353,000 jobs in January, smashing expectations. A Quinnipiac University national poll this week found Biden with 50% support among registered voters, ahead of Trump on 44%. Yet the president faces discontent over inflation, a border crisis and his handling of the war in Gaza.View image in fullscreenSaturday’s turnout may offer some clues, although it is bound to lower in a year when an incumbent president is running without serious challengers (in 2012, President Barack Obama gained 866,000 votes in the primary here). Biden’s challengers Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson are not expected to make much impact.Seawright, a Democratic strategist based in South Carolina, said: “People feel proud to be a South Carolinian, the fact that we’re first in a nation. People feel grateful and thankful to President Biden for having the steel spine and the political will and courage to recommend South Carolina going first.“People understand the need and the urgency to display their support and unity around President Biden and Vice-President Harris, because we know that this fight ahead will be a lot different than the fight behind.”Elaine Kamarck, who as a member of the DNC voted for South Carolina to go first, thinks this year’s result will have little meaning but that will not be the case next time around. She said: “They are the most loyal base in the party and they ought to have the first say. It’s not going to be a big deal this time but in 2028 it’ll be a very big deal.” More

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      ‘You singled us out’: women accuse Biden-Harris staff of Islamophobia for barring them from event

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      Two women have accused Biden-Harris campaign staffers of Islamophobia, claiming they were profiled and disinvited from a campaign event because they were wearing hijabs.Staff with the campaign have since countered that the women were barred after disrupting other events held by Democratic leaders.The incident was captured on video and shared to X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday by an account named Nevadans for Palestinian Liberation.The viral video, which has garnered over 2m views, shows an unidentified staffer for the Get the Vote Out event in Las Vegas on Saturday telling the women that they are not allowed to enter the venue.“We are choosing who’s going in and out of the event. I’m sorry,” the staffer said.Off camera, one woman responds: “Why are you choosing us not to go in when we have an invite?”A separate woman, also off camera, says: “You specifically singled us out.”The women then accuse the staffer of being “racist” and asks if they were prevented from attending because they are wearing hijabs.As the women and the staffer talk, the staffer allows others to enter the event venue.“They’re disinviting us because we have hijabs on our heads. That’s why,” one woman shouts to attendees as they enter the venue.When a separate attendee asks the staffer if the women can enter, he says: “No, I’m sorry.”Nevadans for Palestinian Liberation accused the Biden-Harris campaign of “explicitly turning away Muslim constituents from attending campaign events” in a statement shared to X.“It is shameful to see the Biden-Harris staff and [Nevada] Dems staff use post-9/11 racist tactics to target Muslims and Arab Americans in 2024,” the group said in a statement.A spokesperson with the Biden-Harris campaign said that the women were specifically barred after staff discovered that they had disrupted previous events with Democratic lawmakers.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“These individuals were among the group of people not allowed to attend Saturday’s event after previously disrupting and shutting down events with Democratic elected officials,” Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for the campaign, said in a statement shared to X.A spokesperson with the Clark County Democrats in Nevada forwarded the Biden-Harris campaign’s response to the Guardian when asked for comment.A source close to the Biden-Harris campaign added that the women had previously protested during a speech by the Nevada senator Jacky Rosen earlier this month.After being disinvited from Saturday’s event, the women reportedly continued to protest across the street from the event, the source added.The government affairs director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), Robert McCaw, said in a statement issued on Tuesday that “the American people deserve to know whether these women were profiled and barred from an event featuring Vice President Harris because they were visibly Muslim”.“Throughout her term, Vice President Harris has been respectful in her interactions with American Muslims, even during a time of intense disagreement. We encourage Vice President Harris to take appropriate action to address this apparent incident of profiling,” he added.Harris was notably in attendance at the event on Saturday.Also on Tuesday, Cair released new civil rights data showing that it has received 3,578 complaints in just the last three months of 2023 – marking a 178% increase in complaints compared to a similar period the previous year. More

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      The search for Trump’s running mate: ‘like auditions for The Apprentice’

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      The last person who occupied the job of US vice-president ended up the target of a violent mob calling for him to be hanged. Even so, as Donald Trump closes in on the Republican nomination for 2024, there is no shortage of contenders eager to be his deputy.It is safe to assume that Mike Pence, who was Trump’s running mate in 2016 and 2020, will not get the job this time. His refusal to comply with his boss’s demand to overturn the last election caused a permanent rift and made Pence a perceived traitor and target of the January 6 insurrectionists.Undeterred, Trump’s campaign surrogates in the recent Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, both of which he won handily, have been trying to outdo each other with extravagant displays of fealty. “It’s very clear he’s holding these open auditions like it’s The Apprentice,” said Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist. “He will flirt with everyone. He will make them dance. They will all debase themselves and humiliate themselves and jockey for that spot.”When he first ran for president in 2016, Trump understood that he needed a vice-presidential pick who could help shore up support among Republican evangelicals and social conservatives, who were suspicious of the thrice-married reality TV star. Pence, the then Indiana governor and fierce social conservative, was from what Trump likes to call central casting.This year Trump’s allies and Republican strategists believe that he needs help attracting suburban swing voters in a handful of battleground states, where November’s election will likely be decided. Many commentators therefore predict that he will choose a woman or a person of colour, especially since the demise of the constitutional right to abortion.Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, said one of the factors important to Trump is “just how much of a sycophant they would be, not just in terms of ‘Oh, I love you, Donald Trump’, but do you love me enough when I tell you to violate your oath of office in the constitution that you’ll do it?’ And that person for me is Elise Stefanik.”Stefanik, 39, the highest-ranking woman in the Republican conference in the House of Representatives and one of the first members of Congress to endorse Trump, appears to have timed her run perfectly.She gained national prominence last month after embarrassing the heads of three top universities about antisemitism on their campuses during a congressional hearing, which prompted two of them to later resign. Stefanik claimed victory and declared: “I will always deliver results.” Trump reportedly described her as a “killer”.Since then she has outdone even the notoriously obsequious Pence. Soon after Trump described those convicted of crimes in the insurrection as “hostages”, she parroted the same term on NBC television’s flagship Meet the Press programme. When Trump confused rival Nikki Haley with former House speaker Nancy Pelosi while discussing January 6, Stefanik brazenly denied what everyone had heard.Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “She’s running flat out for it. That’s the only explanation for the things she says and does. I’m embarrassed for her but she’s not embarrassed because she only has one career goal. She says whatever she thinks he’ll like. He does like it.”In what is currently Washington’s favourite parlour game, the smart money is currently on Stefanik. Bill Whalen, a former media consultant for politicians including the former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, said: “Just based on what she did at that congressional hearing, what could make Trump more pleased than watching her take apart the Ivy League presidents? That would be very appealing for him to put her on the ticket.”Another contender is Kristi Noem, serving her second term as South Dakota’s governor after a landslide re-election victory in 2022. She gained national attention after refusing to impose a statewide mask mandate during the coronavirus pandemic. Noem campaigned for Trump at several events in Iowa earlier this month.Then there is the South Carolina senator Tim Scott, who is African American and could help Trump make inroads among Black voters. Scott was a one-time Republican rival to Trump but dropped out of the race in November. He has since endorsed Trump and told him during his victory speech in New Hampshire: “I just love you!” He also just announced his engagement to be married.Other potential running mates are Trump’s former White House press secretary and current Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders; Ben Carson, who was Trump’s housing secretary; Kari Lake, who narrowly lost a gubernatorial bid in Arizona in 2022 and is now running for the Senate there; Florida congressman Byron Donalds; Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene; and Ohio senator JD Vance.There appears to be broad resistance to picking Haley, Trump’s former UN ambassador and his last rival for the Republican nomination. On 19 January she said being a running mate was “off the table” while Trump said he would “probably” not pick her. Since then relations between the two have soured with Trump using insults such as “birdbrain” and Haley critiquing his age and mental acuity.In addition, Haley’s hawkish views on foreign policy, including military aid for Ukraine, are anathema to Trump’s “America first” base. Rightwing broadcaster Tucker Carlson vowed recently: “I would not only not vote for that ticket, I would advocate against it as strongly as I could.”Trump has publicly said he has already made up his mind, but he is reportedly still calling friends, supporters and donors for advice on whom he should pick. The stakes are unusually high this time and the oft-quoted old saw from Franklin Roosevelt’s deputy John Nance Garner – “The vice-presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss” – may not apply in 2024: Biden is 81 and Trump is 77, meaning that a vice-president’s ability to assume command has never been more pertinent.Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution thinktank at Stanford University, said: “A wary, sceptical voter is going to be thinking: ‘OK, what happens if … ?’ It makes the choice of the running mate all the more important.“We talk about this every election and we then dismiss it as voters don’t really think that way. But it’s on the table in this election in ways it hasn’t been in the past because you are focusing on the candidate’s health and their mental faculty, and the chance that one or both could not finish out a term.“That does lead to a different calculation with Trump in this regard. It’s not so much about picking up some electoral votes or reaching out to a group. It is the question of picking somebody who credibly can say they’re ready to lead from day one. You would think their chops would be more important than just their demographic.”Trump may not be in a hurry to make a final decision. The longer he dangles the prospect of the vice-presidency, the more that aspirants will genuflect and make elaborate attempts to get in his good graces.Wendy Schiller, a political scientist at Brown University, agreed. She said: “He doesn’t think he needs anybody to win this election so my guess is he’ll require lots of prominent people to come and pay homage to him. Then he’ll wait for the convention [in July] to announce it because he wants to make clear that VP – that they’re irrelevant. Generally, we worry more who his VP will be than he does.” More

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      Biden hopes abortion will keep him in the White House. But has he done enough to protect rights?

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      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has made a big bet that outrage over abortion will keep the president in the White House come November.Over the last several days, the Biden administration has unleashed a blitz of ads and events to spotlight the devastation wrought by the overturning of Roe v Wade. Biden met with a reproductive health task force, while his vice-president, Kamala Harris – who he has entrusted to lead this effort – embarked on a national tour to talk about abortion. They even devoted their first joint campaign stop of 2024 to the issue. From the podium, Biden promised to sign any bill that would codify Roe’s protections into law and to fight back efforts by Congress to diminish abortion access.“Donald Trump and Maga Republicans, including the speaker of the House, are hellbent on going even further,” Biden said, a reference to the hard-right Republican speaker, Mike Johnson. “As long as I have power of the presidency, if Congress were to pass a national abortion ban, I would veto it.”Congress is unlikely to ban or protect abortion anytime soon. Not only is Congress largely frozen – it passed just 27 bills last year – but both political parties seem wary of tackling national legislation around a third-rail topic like abortion.Now that Roe is gone, the question of if and how to regulate abortion access is largely up to state governments to answer. But the executive branch of the US government still maintains several powers to protect abortion access – and undermine it.What has Biden done to protect abortion access?The Biden administration’s ability to enforce remaining federal laws that touch on abortion is perhaps its greatest weapon in the fight over the procedure. Shortly after Roe’s demise, the Biden administration announced that it believed a 1986 federal law that protects people’s access to emergency care at hospitals also applies to emergency abortions. The administration later sued Idaho, arguing that the state’s near-total abortion ban flew in the face of that law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (Emtala).That case has now made its way to the US supreme court. The supreme court justices are also set to hear arguments in a case involving the availability of a major abortion pill – a case in which the Biden administration is, once again, arguing in favor of abortion access.“Being a check on the supreme court is pretty significant,” said Mary Ziegler, a University of California Davis school of law professor who studies the legal history of reproduction. The US supreme court is dominated 6-3 by conservatives. “If the supreme court says that you can or should enforce rules against abortion providers, I don’t think a Biden administration is going to do that.”Since Roe fell, anti-abortion activists have also begun to argue that the federal government could enforce a de facto national abortion ban through the Comstock Act, a 19th-century anti-obscenity law that bans the mailing of abortion-related materials.However, the Biden administration has issued guidance declaring that they do not believe the Comstock Act can or should be used to enforce a national abortion ban. According to the Biden administration, as long as someone does not intend to break the law when they mail abortion-related materials, they are not violating the Comstock Act.What more could Biden be doing?The answer depends on who you ask. Abortion rights advocates have long been dissatisfied with Biden’s approach to the procedure; Biden has supported Roe’s protections but also said that, as a Catholic, he is personally not “big on abortion”. During his campaign and the first several months of his presidency, he seemed wary of even saying the word “abortion”, leading reproductive justice advocates to launch a website devoted to answering the question “Did Biden Say Abortion Yet?” (He has now said it multiple times.)The Biden administration has pursued several cases under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or Face Act, a federal law that penalizes people for threatening, obstructing, or injuring someone who is trying to access a reproductive health clinic, or for vandalizing a clinic. But abortion providers have long complained that the law is not being enforced enough.Abortion rights supporters have also proposed a litany of other, experimental ways to protect abortion access, such as by leasing federal land to abortion providers or advocating for the repeal of the Comstock Act. Biden could also loosen regulations around abortion pills, although Ziegler cautioned that such actions run the risk of politicizing the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to a dangerous degree. Abortion rights advocates have also said that the Biden administration could take steps to lessen the impact of the Helms Amendment, a decades-old law that has been used to block the use of federal funding to pay for abortions. Advocates have accused Biden of inappropriately over-enforcing the Helms Amendment, to the point that the US Agency for International Development in 2021 cancelled a conference session on the provision of safe telemedicine abortion.However, in Ziegler’s view, the threat of the supreme court tamps down on Biden’s ability to innovate. Rather than pursuing novel, national ways to protect abortion access and run the risk of litigation, the administration may want to stay out of federal court entirely.“I think Biden has been really cautious,” Ziegler said. “But I do also think that had he not been as cautious, it could have ended up the same or worse anyway, just because the supreme court is so conservative.”What could Donald Trump do to further restrict abortion?If Trump wins the presidency in November 2024, he may reverse course on many of the Biden administration’s decisions around how and if to enforce federal abortion law. He could try to implement the Comstock Act to ban abortion in some form, including in states that haven’t passed bans. He could also decrease Face Act prosecutions, or tighten regulations on mifepristone.Unlike Biden, he likely wouldn’t worry about politicizing the FDA, Ziegler said. “There’s a lot of asymmetry that hurts Democrats, but also Democrats do value some of these institutional separations that Republicans don’t.”Trump’s first four years in the White House also offer a blueprint for how he may further dismantle access to both abortion and contraception if he returns to power.Since the 1980s, whenever a Republican becomes president, he has implemented what is known as “the Mexico City policy” or the “global gag rule”, as abortion rights supporters call it. This policy typically blocks foreign NGOs that receive US family planning funding from providing abortion-related services or even advocating for increased access to the procedure. (Historically, whenever a Democrat replaces a Republican as president, he has rescinded the Mexico City policy.)Trump, however, turbocharged the Mexico City policy during his presidency. Rather than stripping funding only from family planning assistance, in 2017 his administration expanded it to apply to all US global health assistance. Rather than impacting $600m worth of funding, by 2018 it impacted $12bn, according to estimates by the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights.As president, Trump also implemented a “domestic gag rule”, which blocked members of Title X, the nation’s largest family planning program, from even referring people for abortions. Rather than comply with this rule, a quarter of Title X-funded health centers simply left the program. Six states were left with zero Title X providers, who offer low-cost access to family planning services like birth control.If Trump wins in 2024, he will likely reinstate this rule, said Robin Summers, vice-president and senior counsel for the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association. And that’s just the beginning of Summers thinks he might do.“I think it only gets worse,” Summers said.Trump could, Summers suggested, legally label certain forms of hormonal birth control – such as IUDS – as abortifacients, suggesting that they cause abortions. (Medical experts widely believe that they do not.) The US supreme court has previously supported a similar move. In a 2014 decision, issued when the court’s makeup was far less conservative, the justices ruled that a corporation did not have to cover certain forms of birth control for employees because the corporation’s religious owners believed them to be abortifacients.“The bottom line here is that advocates sounded the alarm for years that Roe was at significant risk of being overturned. And we were dismissed by many as catastrophizing the whole thing,” Summers said. “And look where we are.” More

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      Kamala Harris kicks off abortion rights tour on 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade

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      Kamala Harris kicked off her much-vaunted abortion rights nationwide tour in Wisconsin on Monday as Joe Biden convened a meeting of his taskforce on reproductive healthcare access, in a tag-team effort to double down on what is likely to be a key campaign issue this year.The vice-president chose the 51st anniversary of the Roe v Wade ruling to begin the Reproductive Freedoms Tour, announced in December, in the battleground state of Wisconsin, which the president won in the 2020 presidential election by just over 20,000 votes.Roe v Wade, the supreme court decision that enshrined the federal right to abortion, was overturned in June 2022 after then president Donald Trump nominated three conservative justices to the nation’s highest court.The decision was a major blow to supporters of reproductive rights, but since the ruling seven states – including the conservative strongholds of Kentucky, Kansas and Montana – have held ballot referendums where voters chose to protect abortion rights. The issue also appeared to hurt Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections.Wisconsin is a notable starting point for Harris’s reproductive freedoms tour. Last year, abortion rights propelled a Democratic victory in a critical election for the state supreme court.In the first of many similar scheduled events, Harris is expected to announce support for increased access to abortion and contraceptives through the new emergency care law, Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (Emtala).She will also denounce Trump, the runaway frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, for his hand in overturning the federally protected right to abortion.“Proud that women across our nation are suffering?” Harris will say, according to excerpts from her speech obtained by the Associated Press. “Proud that women have been robbed of a fundamental freedom? That doctors could be thrown in prison for caring for patients? That young women today have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers?”The following day, Harris will be joined by Biden for another abortion-focused event, along with their spouses, Jill Biden and Doug Emhoff.Biden’s re-election campaign also rolled out a new campaign ad Sunday, titled Forced, which aims to tie Donald Trump directly to the abortion issue.In Dobbs v Jackson, the 2022 supreme court case that overturned Roe, a Mississippi law that banned most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy with certain medical exceptions was upheld, negating the constitutional right to abortion and overruling the precedent set by Roe more than half a century ago.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a statement on the 51st anniversary of Roe V Wade, Biden said: “Fifty-one years ago today, the Supreme Court recognized a woman’s constitutional right to make deeply personal decisions with her doctor – free from the interference of politicians. Then, a year and a half ago, the Court made the extreme decision to overturn Roe and take away a constitutional right.“As a result, tens of millions of women now live in states with extreme and dangerous abortion bans. Because of Republican elected officials, women’s health and lives are at risk.”When announcing her tour in December, Harris said: “Extremists across our country continue to wage a full-on attack against hard-won, hard-fought freedoms as they push their radical policies – from banning abortion in all 50 states and criminalizing doctors, to forcing women to travel out of state in order to get the care they need.“I will continue to fight for our fundamental freedoms while bringing together those throughout America who agree that every woman should have the right to make decisions about her own body – not the government.” More

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      Kamala Harris warns US freedom is under ‘profound threat’ in MLK Jr day speech

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      Kamala Harris issued a plea to Black voters on Martin Luther King Jr Day to join with Democrats to win the 2024 election and to stave off what she said were threats to US democracy posed by Republicans who look set to overwhelmingly back Donald Trump at their first state nomination contest today in Iowa.The US vice-president, the headliner at the NAACP’s annual King Day at the Dome event in Columbia, South Carolina, said that freedom in the country is under “profound threat”, and cited the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade, long lines for voting, Republican-backed book bans and the prevalence of gun violence.“Freedom is never truly won. You earn it and win it in every generation,” she said, quoting King’s late widow, Coretta Scott King, and urging voters to “roll up our sleeves”. “We were born for a time such as this,” she said.Protesters were awaiting Harris at the venue, some waving Palestinian flags – the latest sign of dissent from typically Democratic-leaning voters that the Biden administration’s staunch backing of Israel in its attack on Gaza is angering some core supporters.South Carolina, home to a hugely influential Black voting bloc in the Democratic presidential primary, will hold its contest on 3 February. But there are signs that economic anxiety and policy disappointments are also stressing Black support: an Economist/YouGov survey recently found that only 67% of Black US adults had a favorable view of Biden.In her address, Harris said: “Today we are witnessing a full on attack on hard-fought, hard-won freedoms.” Speaking in the state once governed by Nikki Haley, a contender for the Republican presidential nomination, she passed comment on Haley’s recent gaffe when she failed to cite slavery as a cause of the civil war.“They even tried to erase, overlook and rewrite the ugly parts of our past,” Harris said, hours after the Biden-Harris re-election campaign said it had raised almost $100m in the last quarter of 2023 for election spending.Earlier Monday, the Guardian quoted a former top aide to Harris during her 2020 nomination campaign, from The Truce, a soon-to-be published critique of her political skills.“A lot of us, at least folks that I was friends with on the campaign, all realised that: ‘Yeah, this person should not be president of the United States”, the aide remarked to authors Hunter Walker and Luppe B Luppen, adding that her nomination campaign was “rotten from the start”.The authors wrote that the problems Harris experienced with staff morale in 2020 had continued throughout her time as vice-president.“Harris saw heavy staff turnover, with aides describing a toxic climate riven with factionalism and mismanagement. One source who worked for the vice-president declined to go on record or even discuss matters anonymously, due to the heated atmosphere around the office,” the authors wrote. “It was, they said: ‘Game of Thrones’.”Biden meanwhile marked the holiday by volunteering for Philabundance, a hunger relief group in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The US president loaded packages with fresh fruit and milk on to a conveyer belt in a warehouse.In a radio interview with Black civil rights advocate the Rev Al Sharpton on SiriusXM, Biden said Trump was a motivating factor in his decision to seek re-election, saying: “Trump is just saying things that are off the wall.”Reuters contributed reporting More

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      ‘This person should not be president’: Kamala Harris takes hits in book on Biden

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      Considering Kamala Harris’s fitness to take over from Joe Biden should the need arise, a top aide to the former California senator’s 2020 campaign said: “This person should not be president of the United States.”The withering assessment, given after Harris was picked for vice-president in 2020, is reported in The Truce: Progressives, Centrists and the Future of the Democratic Party, by the reporters Hunter Walker and Luppe B Luppen. The book will be published in the US on 24 January 2024. The Guardian obtained a copy.Harris ran for president in 2020, but withdrew a month before the first vote. Her campaign, Walker and Luppen quote the unnamed aide as saying, was “rotten from the start.“A lot of us, at least folks that I was friends with on the campaign, all realised that: ‘Yeah, this person should not be president of the United States.”Another unnamed aide, identified as a “senior staffer”, is quoted as saying Harris’s backstory, as the child of Indian and Jamaican immigrants who became the first woman and woman of colour to be vice-president, is “a lot of the reason people support her.“But you’ve got to back that up with: ‘What are you going to do?’”In fact, Harris made a strong start to the Democratic primary in 2019, landing memorable blows on Biden in the first debate when she brought up the veteran senator and former vice-president’s historic opposition to “busing”, a way of compelling racial integration in public schools.“There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools,” Harris said, onstage in Miami, “and she was bused to school every day, and that little girl was me.”But Harris failed to capitalise with policy proposals or further profitable attacks and though Biden forgave her, overruling reported opposition among aides and from his wife to pick Harris as his running mate, reports of tension and Harris’s frustrations as vice-president have been a feature of their time in power.The White House has repeatedly denied such reports concerning Biden and Harris’s working relationship and alleged dysfunction in Harris’s office.Biden and Harris are set to form the Democratic ticket again this year.Polling, however, shows widespread concern that at 81, Biden is too old to properly prosecute a potentially historic campaign, with Donald Trump seemingly set to be the Republican nominee once more.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPolling also shows low approval numbers for Harris. Republicans, particularly Trump’s closest challenger, Nikki Haley, have made the prospect of her taking power a central campaign theme.Walker and Luppen report speculation that Harris could line up a 2028 bid on a ticket with Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary who won the Iowa caucuses in 2020.A former Buttigieg staffer is quoted as saying Harris has established “a personal relationship with Pete in a way that she doesn’t with other people”.But alleged people problems, familiar from reports about Harris’s campaign and her time as vice-president, also surface in Walker and Luppen’s book.“The problems Harris and her team had experienced on her campaign had persisted during her time as vice-president,” the authors write.“Harris saw heavy staff turnover, with aides describing a toxic climate riven with factionalism and mismanagement. One source who worked for the vice-president declined to go on record or even discuss matters anonymously, due to the heated atmosphere around the office.“They refused to characterise the experience of working for Harris, apart from offering a three-word assessment. It was, they said: ‘Game of Thrones’.” More