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      The electoral college has become a gun held to the head of US democracy | Lawrence Douglas

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      These are not easy days for supporters of American democracy. But what twists my innards is not the prospect that in three weeks’ time, the majority of voters could hand the reins of power to a vengeful authoritarian demagogue. Instead, I’m sickened by the prospect that the electoral college can do that for us – that Kamala Harris could win the national popular vote, but come up short where it counts.We know the popular vote winner has already twice lost in this young century, in 2000 and again in 2016. But few realize how narrowly we missed a catastrophic result in 2020 when Biden won the national popular vote by a substantial margin – over 7 million votes. In every other democratic nation, such a result would have settled matters. Not in the US. Biden’s margin of victory in three key swing states – Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin – was razor thin, with fewer than 44,000 votes combined.It was no accident that Trump trained his efforts – the stuff of outstanding state and federal indictments – to overturn Biden’s victory in these three states. Had Trump succeeded in pressuring Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” the votes necessary to overcome Biden’s state lead, had he succeeded in submitting bogus slates of electoral college votes from Arizona and Wisconsin, he could have recaptured the White House.Now, once again, our nation is held hostage to our manifestly defective means of electing the president. How did we arrive at this perilous point? The drafters of the constitution, exhausted by long days of toil in Philadelphia’s steamy Independence Hall in the summer of 1787, settled on the electoral college in something of an afterthought. Unable to decide between letting Congress elect the president or giving full power to the people, they ended up retrofitting a device used by the Holy Roman Empire to “elect” monarchs and emperors. By letting every state legislature choose a body of electors (equal to the state’s representation in Congress), the system was meant to find citizens of public standing capable of wisely choosing a chief executive.Almost from the get-go, the system did not function as designed. With the rise of parties, states realized they could best leverage their power over the national outcome by awarding all their electoral college votes to the statewide winner of the popular vote – the system we have now. (By defeating Al Gore by 537 votes in Florida, George W Bush captured all of the citrus state’s electoral college votes and, with them, the White House.)Those who nowadays defend the electoral college as a device designed to make sure the presidency isn’t always captured by “coastal elites” are offering a justification that has nothing to do with college’s original logic and ignoring the fact that the vast number of American citizens live in coastal states. An electoral system that awarded four votes to citizens of Wyoming and a single vote to citizens of California would be dismissed as a transparent violation of the constitutional principle of “one person, one vote”. And yet this is exactly what the electoral college does.Worse still is how the electoral college dramatically magnifies the vote of citizens in a handful of swing states. Tens of millions of voters in non-competitive states are essentially disenfranchised. Kamala Harris presently enjoys a 24-point lead over Donald Trump in California. Votes for Trump in California count, then, for nothing, while all votes for Harris over the bare majority needed to win are utterly wasted. In the key swing states, things look very different.The entire election will turn on what happens in seven states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona. Voters in the remaining 43 states are reduced to the role of spectator. And so we’re left holding our breath, wondering whether American democracy will survive based on whether Arab Americans in Michigan feel betrayed by the Democratic party or whether Black men in Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia will vote in sufficient numbers for Harris.A system that permits a national election to turn on the outcome in a handful of counties in a handful of states is tailor-made for a candidate intent on sowing electoral chaos. When Trump incited a mob to attack the Capitol on 6 January 2021, his effort to remain in power had already failed. Every state (and the District of Columbia) had already certified its result, thanks to the honest and tireless efforts of election officials of both parties. The insurrection simply promised to delay the inevitable.This time around, the Maga team knows better. This time, it will devote its efforts to monkeying with the state count. They have already succeeded in inserting a substantial number of Trump loyalists into key positions within the election infrastructure of the swing states. It doesn’t take much to muddy the outcome of a close state contest by targeting specific counties – especially when Trump has primed his supporters to reject any result that doesn’t result in his victory.Given the dangers and dysfunctions of the electoral college, it is unsurprising that since 1816 there have been over 700 proposed amendments to reform or simply abolish the system. And yet all have foundered on the constitution’s arduous amendment process, which throughout our history has frustrated vitally needed constitutional change and now leaves us stuck with an electoral process that no one would seriously consider if tasked with designing a fresh system.And so we face the ominous prospect that this defect of constitutional design may – against the wishes of the majority of American people – deliver a result that tolls the end of liberal democracy in America. Sickening.

      Lawrence Douglas is the author, most recently, of Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020. He is a contributing opinion writer for the Guardian US and teaches at Amherst College More

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      US presidential election updates: Trump’s insults draw laughs at Catholic charity dinner as Harris appears remotely

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      Donald Trump laid into Kamala Harris and other Democrats on Thursday in a pointed and at times bitter speech as he headlined the annual Al Smith charity dinner in New York. The Republican nominee repeatedly criticised his Democratic campaign rival over her decision to skip the event – a break with presidential electoral tradition, as she prioritised campaigning in the swing state of Wisconsin, rather than New York, a safe Democratic state. Harris recorded a video that was played instead.Trump questioned the mental fitness of Harris and the president, Joe Biden, commented on second gentleman Doug Emhoff’s extramarital affair during his previous marriage, and made jokes about transgender people. The dinner was emceed by the comedian Jim Gaffigan, who portrays the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Tim Walz, on Saturday Night Live.Harris, in her pre-recorded remarks – which featured the comedian and actor Molly Shannon, who reprised her long-running Saturday Night Live character Mary Katherine Gallagher, an awkward Catholic school pupil – mocked Trump for lying, a sin, about the results of the 2020 election, and comments he made in Michigan, saying that mocking Catholics in the video would be “like criticising Detroit in Detroit”.Here’s what else happened on Thursday:Kamala Harris election news

      A poll has revealed that Harris continues to lead Trump among Black likely voters in battleground states. The poll, conducted by Howard University’s Initiative on Public Opinion from 2 October to 8 October, surveyed 981 Black likely voters in the states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The results show that 84% of respondents said they planned to vote for the vice-president, while only 8% said they would support Trump for president in November, and another 8% remained undecided.

      With three weeks left, Harris is spending most of her days trying to shore up support in the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin as she tries to avoid a repeat of Hillary Clinton’s collapse there eight years ago. Her schedule reflects the Democratic nominee’s focus on her most likely path to victory over Trump. Harris visited Milwaukee on Thursday seeking support from college-age voters. She dropped by a business class at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and held a student rally at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, closing out the day with a rally in Green Bay.

      The Democratic governors of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin this week embarked on a swiftly organised bus tour, rolling through the autumn landscape to press the urgency of the case for Harris in must-win states where some Democrats worry she is struggling. Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro and Tony Evers descended on Flint on Thursday afternoon, joined by the chairman of the national Democratic party, Jaime Harrison.

      Harris and Walz will attend church on Sunday in the battleground states of Georgia and Michigan. Harris will also sit down for an interview with the Rev Al Sharpton that will air on Sunday night on his MSNBC programme, according to a Harris campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss schedule details not yet officially announced.
      Donald Trump election news

      Donald Trump’s transition team is reportedly preparing a blacklist of potential officials to be banned from a future administration, with special emphasis placed on those with links to the radical Project 2025 plan to overhaul the US government. The former president’s eldest son, Donald Jr, is spearheading the drive to compile the list of barred staffers, according to Politico, citing a former official in the first Trump administration.

      Trump was joined at the Al Smith event by his wife, Melania, who has been an infrequent presence on the campaign trail. The white-tie dinner raises millions of dollars for Catholic charities and has traditionally offered candidates from both parties the chance to trade lighthearted barbs, poke fun at themselves, and show that they can get along – or at least pretend to – for one night in the election’s final stretch.

      Gaffigan referenced allegations that the Trump Organization in the 1970s discriminated against Black renters in its buildings. “If vice-president Harris wins this election, not only would she be the first female president, a Black woman would occupy the White House, a former Trump residence,” Gaffigan said. “Obviously you wouldn’t be renting to her. I mean, that would never happen anyway. Maybe if Doug did the signing.”

      Elsewhere on the campaign trail, a Nevada man who was arrested with guns at a security checkpoint outside a Trump rally in the southern California desert has filed a lawsuit accusing the sheriff of falsely characterising his arrest as a thwarted assassination attempt, for the sheriff’s own personal gain.

      The Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, falsely told a reporter on Wednesday that there were “serious problems” in the 2020 election and suggested that the then president, Donald Trump, did not actually lose the race. “Did Donald Trump lose the election? Not by the words that I would use,” Vance said in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. “But look, I really couldn’t care less if you agree with me or disagree with me on this issue.”
      Other election news:

      The Nevada Democratic US Senator Jacky Rosen and Republican challenger Sam Brown painted each other as extremists on Thursday night in the presidential battleground state where the election could determine control of both the White House and the Senate. The election pits Rosen, a first-term senator seen as a political consensus-builder, against Brown, a retired army captain who bears scars from battlefield injuries and is endorsed by Trump.

      Senior Democrats in US cities are preparing to defend their communities in the event of Donald Trump’s return to the White House after the former president repeated threats that he would use presidential powers to seize control of major urban centres. Trump has proposed deploying the military inside major cities largely run by Democrats to deal with protesters or to crush criminal gangs. He has threatened to dispatch large numbers of federal immigration agents to carry out mass deportations of undocumented people.
      Read more about the 2024 US election:

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      Do Democrats have a ‘men’ problem? – podcast

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      The Harris campaign, which has been praised for how it has managed to reach out to women, is now having to balance their attention and pitch some policies that would appeal to men.
      But is it too little too late? Jonathan Freedland speaks to Richard Reeves, the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, and Gloria Oladipo, a breaking news reporter for Guardian US, about why men could decide this year’s election and why both campaigns might be taking them for granted

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Harris says Americans are done with Trump’s ‘gaslighting’ at Wisconsin campaign rally – US politics live

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      Meanwhile, in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, Kamala Harris slammed Trump’s performance at the Univision town hall yesterday, when he referred to 6 January 2021, when rioters stormed the capitol and injured over 140 police officers, “a day of love”.“The American people are exhausted with his gaslighting. Enough. We are ready to turn the page. We’re done,” she said.During the Univision town hall, a Republican voter told Trump the former president had lost his vote due to his response to the January 6 riots and the coronavirus pandemic. Trump responded: “Nothing done wrong at all.”“There were no guns down there. We didn’t have guns. The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns,” he said. “And when I say we, these are people that walked down – this was a tiny percentage of the overall which nobody sees and nobody, nobody shows. But that was a day of love.”

      Joe Biden has released a statement on Israel’s killing of Hamas’s chief Yahya Sinwar. In his statement, Biden called the killing a “good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world,” adding that he planned to speak to Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders.

      Kamala Harris also commented on Israel’s killing of Yahya Sinwar while on the campaign trail in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “This moment gives us an opportunity to end the war in Gaza,” the US vice-president and Democratic nominee for president in this election, said.

      Donald Trump told the audience at the Univision town hall last night that “we can’t destroy our country” in order to save the planet from the climate crisis. Answering a question from a veteran construction worker, who had seen first-hand “the devastating impacts of climate change”, whether he still believed global warming was a hoax, Trump launched into a lengthy tirade.

      At a rally in Durham, North Carolina, Tim Walz delivered a fiery criticism of Donald Trump.“When Trump is talking about bringing back stop-and-frisk policies, those are harassment that went on to the Black community, specifically Black males, and put a disproportionate number of them into incarceration,” he told supporters.

      Biden announced today further student debt relief for public servants – amounting to about $4.5bn. The action affects about 60,000 borrowers across the country, said the White House, touting the efforts of the US president and Harris to improve loan forgiveness since taking office.
      Surrogates for the Walz/Harris campaign, meanwhile, are questioning Trump’s cognitive abilities, pointing to his recent 40-minute musical interlude at a town hall where he was meant to be answering voters’ questions.Here’s Mark Cuban, the billionaire executive and TV personality who appeared alongside Harris in Wisconsin:Bill Clinton, who appeared with Walz in North Carolina, quipped: “Heck, I’m only two months younger than Donald Trump. But the good news for you is I will not spend 30 minutes swaying back and forth to music.”Meanwhile, in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, Kamala Harris slammed Trump’s performance at the Univision town hall yesterday, when he referred to 6 January 2021, when rioters stormed the capitol and injured over 140 police officers, “a day of love”.“The American people are exhausted with his gaslighting. Enough. We are ready to turn the page. We’re done,” she said.During the Univision town hall, a Republican voter told Trump the former president had lost his vote due to his response to the January 6 riots and the coronavirus pandemic. Trump responded: “Nothing done wrong at all.”“There were no guns down there. We didn’t have guns. The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns,” he said. “And when I say we, these are people that walked down – this was a tiny percentage of the overall which nobody sees and nobody, nobody shows. But that was a day of love.”At a rally in Durham, North Carolina, Tim Walz delivered a fiery criticism of Donald Trump.“When Trump is talking about bringing back stop-and-frisk policies, those are harassment that went on to the Black community, specifically Black males, and put a disproportionate number of them into incarceration,” he told supporters.Walz also slammed the idea that Trump “understood” the needs of voters. “If any of our relatives … tells us ‘Donald Trump understands us’, that’s bullshit. He does not understand us. He does not understand you,” Walz said, noting that the former president didn’t “give a damn” if social security checks cleared.He appeared at the rally alongside former president Bill Clinton.Senior Democrats in US cities are preparing to defend their communities in the event of Donald Trump’s return to the White House after the former president has repeated threats that he would use presidential powers to seize control of major urban centers.Trump has proposed deploying the military inside major cities largely run by Democrats to deal with protesters or to crush criminal gangs. He has threatened to dispatch large numbers of federal immigration agents to carry out mass deportations of undocumented people in so-called “sanctuary” cities.He also aims to obliterate the progressive criminal justice policies of left-leaning prosecutors.“In cities where there has been a complete breakdown of law and order … I will not hesitate to send in federal assets including the national guard until safety is restored,” Trump says in the campaign platform for his bid to become the 47th US president, Agenda47.Trump provoked uproar earlier this week when he called for US armed forces to be deployed against his political rivals – “the enemy within” – on election day next month. But his plans to use national guard troops and military personnel as a means to attack those he sees as his opponents go much wider than that, spanning entire cities with Democratic leadership.Mayors and prosecutors in several US cities are collaborating over strategies to minimize the fallout. Levar Stoney, the Democratic mayor of Richmond, Virginia, a city of more than 220,000, said he was aware how difficult it would be to resist Trump given the enormous powers at a president’s disposal.“It’s very difficult to autocrat-proof your city,” he said. “But you have to have backstops, and mayors are working in coalition to ensure they can be a backstop against these divisive policies.”Read more:Newly unsealed divorce records show Arizona congressman Ruben Gallego, the Democratic nominee for an open Senate seat, petitioned a court to end his marriage with Kate Gallego, Phoenix’s mayor, just before she gave birth to their son. But it contained none of the potentially damaging details conservatives had hoped to uncover.Gallego’s opponent, Kari Lake, has long alluded to the filings, making insinuations that their contents would tarnish his public persona. Ahead of the release, one of her advisers sought to distance the campaign from the effort to unseal the documents, an effort brought by the conservative outlet, Washington Free Beacon.The couple split in 2016 after six years of marriage. The congressman has previously said that his post-traumatic stress disorder from serving in Iraq contributed to the demise of their marriage.The Gallegos had fought the release, expressing concern that the public disclosure could endanger their son, Michael. The effort to keep the records sealed fanned rightwing speculation about what was in them.Kate Gallego has endorsed her husband’s Senate bid.In June, Yavapai superior court judge John Napper, who originally presided over the Free Beacon’s case, tempered expectations well in advance, according to a video obtained by 12 News.“Everyone’s going to be rather deflated with the results of it,” Napper said, adding: “I’m not a politician, and maybe this will be very, very important information but this looks to me like one of the most garden-variety divorce files I have ever seen.”The US has granted temporary protected status to Lebanese nationals amid Israel’s deadly war on the country. The Guardian’s Michael Sainato reports:The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a new “temporary protected status” allowing Lebanese nationals in the US to remain in the country and apply for work permits, as the “ongoing armed conflict” in Lebanon continues with Israel expanding its invasion and its attacks on Hezbollah.As of July 2024, around 11,500 Lebanese nationals were believed to be in the US on nonimmigrant visas for business, tourism, temporary work or other opportunities, with California and Michigan hosting the most. About 11,000 of them will probably now be eligible to apply for temporary protected status, as well as for deferred enforced departure – in other words, protection from deportation. An additional 1,740 students from Lebanon may also be eligible for special student relief.For the full story, click here:The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has also weighed in on Israel’s killing of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, saying in a statement on Thursday:
      Sinwar has the blood of countless innocents in Israel and Gaza on his hands and the world is a much better place without him …
      Sinwar in his beliefs and actions have caused so much pain to the Israeli and Palestinian people; and I pray that his elimination from the scene will clear a path to urgently and immediately bring home all the hostages – including the seven Americans – and negotiate an end to hostilities that will ensure the security of the Israeli people and provide full humanitarian relief and a new path forward for the people of Gaza.
      Schumer made no mention of Palestinians’ right to self-determination.The US will try to push forward a ceasefire and hostage-release proposal following Israel’s killing of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, Reuters reports.Speaking during a press briefing on Thursday, state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said: “Over the past few weeks, there have been no negotiations for an end to the war because Sinwar has refused to negotiate.”Joe Biden has released a statement on Israel’s killing of Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar.In his statement, Biden called the killing a “good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world”.Biden went on to add, “As the leader of the terrorist group Hamas, Sinwar was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Israelis, Palestinians, Americans, and citizens from over 30 countries.”“Over 1,200 people were killed on that day, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, including 46 Americans. More than 250 were taken hostage, with 101 still missing. That number includes seven Americans, four of whom are believed to still be alive and held by Hamas terrorists. Sinwar is the man most responsible for this, and for so much of what followed,” Biden continued in his statement.He added that he will be speaking soon with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders to “discuss the pathway for bringing the hostages home to their families, and for ending this war once and for all, which has caused so much devastation to innocent people.”Notably, Biden made no mention of the 42,400 Palestinians – including healthcare workers and journalists – that Israeli forces killed since October or the nearly 2 million survivors who Israeli forces have forcibly displaced across the narrow strip.Moments ago, Kamala Harris stepped up to a podium while on the election trail in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and commented on Israel’s stating that it killed Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, in a battle in Gaza today.“This moment gives us an opportunity to end the war in Gaza,” the US vice-president and Democratic nominee for president in this election, said.She said “justice has been served” over the reported killing of the leader of the Islamist militants that control Gaza.Harris reiterated the administration’s stance that “Israel has the right to defend itself and called for the remaining hostages held by Hamas since it led an attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, to be released.But she added that “the suffering must end” in Gaza and said it was “time for the day after to begin without Hamas in power”. Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not pledged a ceasefire.We are live blogging all the developments in Gaza, Lebanon and Israel, here.In the Middle East, the government of Israel has announced its military forces have killed Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, in a battle in Gaza. This comes less than three weeks after Israel also killed Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, during air strikes on the outskirts of Beirut in Lebanon.Confirmation on Sinwar’s death is awaited from the Palestinian side. If verified that means the heads of Iran’s two most powerful proxy forces opposed to Israel have been wiped out. We are following all the developments on this live in our international blog and you can find all that news here.Hello, US politics blog readers, it’s another lively day on the campaign trail with less than three weeks to go before the election. There’s a lot more news to come and we’ll keep up with developments as they happen.Here’s where things stand:

      Donald Trump told the audience at the Univision town hall last night that “we can’t destroy our country” in order to save the planet from the climate crisis. Answering a question from a veteran construction worker, who had seen first-hand “the devastating impacts of climate change”, whether he still believed global warming was a hoax, Trump launched into a lengthy tirade.

      Kamala Harris posted that “Donald Trump incited an attack on our nation’s democracy because he didn’t like the outcome of the election. If January 6 [2021] was a bridge too far, there is a place for you in our campaign.” This is further outreach from the Democratic nominee for president herself, including to hammer home facts about the insurrection at the US Capitol that day. It came a day after she did an interview with rightwing Fox News and led a rally attended by more than 100 prominent Republicans.

      Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, will campaign in Durham and Winston-Salem in North Carolina with Common today, to mark the first day of early voting in that important swing state. The Emmy-winning rapper and voting rights activist is to join Walz in Winston-Salem, in a push to get out the vote.

      Harris is on a swing through two vital “blue wall” states today, with campaign stops including Milwaukee, La Crosse and Green Bay in Wisconsin, then heading to Grand Rapids, Michigan.

      Joe Biden announced today further student debt relief for public servants – amounting to about $4.5bn. The action affects about 60,000 borrowers across the country, said the White House, touting the efforts of the US president and Harris, his vice-president and successor as presidential nominee, to improve loan forgiveness since taking office. More

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      Harris maintains lead over Trump among Black swing state voters – poll

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      A new poll has revealed that Kamala Harris continues to lead Donald Trump among Black likely voters in battleground states.The poll, conducted by Howard University’s Initiative on Public Opinion from 2 October to 8 October, surveyed 981 Black likely voters in the states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.The results show that 84% of respondents said they planned to vote for the vice-president, while only 8% said they would support Trump for president in November, and another 8% remained undecided.The survey also identified the most important issues for the respondents, with “democracy/voting rights/elections’” ranked as a top priority, followed by the economy and abortion rights.About 63% of respondents indicated that were “very excited” about voting in November.When asked their opinion of Harris, 61% of respondents expressed a “very favorable” opinion of the vice-president, while only 14% held a “very unfavorable” opinion of her.In contrast, 10% of respondents viewed Trump as “very favorable” and 74% reported a “very unfavorable” opinion of the former president.The margin of error in this poll is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.Harris’s support among Black likely voters in this poll is two percentage points higher than her support in a similar survey conducted in September by Howard University. In that poll, Harris received support among 82% of the respondents.

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      Trump received more support among Black likely voters in that September poll than in the new October poll. In September, 12% of the respondents indicated they would vote for him, compared with 8% this time. That poll also noted that Trump garnered support among Black men in battleground states under the age of 50, with one in five indicating at that time that they would vote for him (though Harris still leads that the group).A recent New York Times/Siena College poll also found that Trump had made gains among young Black and Hispanic male voters.The new poll from Howard University comes as Harris announced a plan this week to enhance economic opportunities for Black men.The plan includes offering forgivable business loans for Black entrepreneurs, creating more apprenticeships and mentorship programs, and more. More

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      Fox News’s interview of Kamala Harris was grievance theater, not political journalism | Margaret Sullivan

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      Bret Baier started off his Wednesday evening interview with Kamala Harris with a barrage of combative questions about immigration, designed less to elicit substantive answers than to prove what a tough guy the Fox host could be.His aggressive approach was understandable, in a way, since Baier had been under pressure for days from the Donald Trump faithful; they were convinced he was going to go easy on the Democratic nominee for president, and maybe even allow her campaign to edit the interview or see the questions in advance.So, Baier came out guns blazing, barely allowing the vice-president to finish a sentence before jumping in with objections and arguments.After 10 minutes of playing immigration “gotcha”, Baier pivoted to the obvious next subject, airing a video clip in which Harris expressed support for transgender people in prisons.Immigrant hatred. Transphobia. And later, Joe Biden’s age. Baier was running through the Fox News greatest hits playlist.This was grievance theater, not political journalism.But Harris got in her licks. She had her moments.Chiming in afterwards in what some saw as corporate damage control, Baier’s colleagues on Fox News gushed their approval. Martha MacCallum termed Baier’s performance “masterful”, while Dana Perino analyzed the interview as “super good”.I can’t imagine that too many viewers agreed. If they came to it expecting to learn more about Harris’s policies or get a true sense of her character, they would have been disappointed. That wasn’t the gameplan, and it wasn’t the result.But Harris accomplished something anyway.Merely by sitting down with a Fox host, she made a few statements.First, that she is unafraid and is willing to speak to all voters. It’s hard to imagine Donald Trump, these days, submitting to an interview with, say, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC; just this week, he turned away from a CNBC interview, and earlier canceled a CBS News 60 Minutes agreement.Second, Harris did manage to introduce a few snippets of reality to dedicated Fox viewers who probably haven’t been exposed to some of the most troubling criticisms of Trump.“That he’s unfit to serve. That he’s unstable. That’s he’s dangerous,” was how she characterized what millions of Americans are feeling. “And that people are exhausted.”She even was able to mention, at some length, the harsh view of the former commander-in-chief from Mark Milley, who served in two top military roles – including chair of the joint chiefs of staff – during the Trump administration.Milley has called Trump “fascist to the core” and has said that no one has ever been as dangerous to the United States.So maybe this was what one leading expert on Fox News, Brian Stelter, called the Harris campaign’s “Google strategy”. On CNN, Stelter speculated that viewers might hear these comments and go searching online for more, thus piercing the information bubble they’ve been living in.No doubt, the vast majority of regular Fox viewers have their minds made up – they’re sticking with Trump. No matter his mental decline. No matter his felony convictions. No matter the threats he makes or the threats he poses.But there may be a small percentage of the millions who tuned in who – despite all the noise and interruptions – managed to hear a reasonable, intelligent and stable alternative to Trump. Maybe some of them live in the key swing state of Pennsylvania, where the interview was recorded, or in Wisconsin or Michigan.In this coin flip of an election, even that tiny adjustment might make all the difference.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      Are Black voters abandoning the Democratic party? | Steve Phillips

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      Are Black voters gravitating towards Donald Trump in meaningful numbers? Recent polls and articles, most notably the New York Times/Siena College poll, have set off alarm bells across the country with their survey results finding the former president garnering historic levels of support among African American voters.The short answer is no, there is little credible evidence showing a meaningful shift in the levels of support Black voters give to Democrats. The longer answer is that the current chorus of media concern illuminates serious shortcomings in polling methodology, political interpretation of polling data, and the responsible communication of information to the public in an ostensible democracy.Ground zero for the latest round of articles and commentary is the 6 October New York Times/Siena College polling that found Kamala Harris attracting support from just 78% of Black voters. By contrast, the 2020 exit polls found that four years ago the Biden-Harris ticket was backed by 87% of African Americans. These recent poll results have spawned lengthy articles, extended podcast discussions and widespread water cooler conversation about just what’s going on with Black voters.There are four fundamental problems with relying on this single poll’s findings.First, the poll’s findings are contradicted by other contemporary polls sponsored by major news organizations. In the CBS News/YouGov poll conducted the week after the Times poll, Harris is backed by 87% of Black voters. NBC’s latest poll, concluded 8 October, pegs Harris’s Black number at 84%. The 8 October ABC News/Ipsos poll has Harris’s Black support at 82%.Second, there is a glaring methodological anomaly buried in the underlying data that raises serious questions about the cultural competence of those conducting the poll. When I was writing my first book Brown is the New White, I was guided by the data scientist Dr Julie Martinez-Ortega, who helped me grapple with the elemental, but actually quite complicated, question of which people in the population you include in the category of African Americans. The Census Bureau has two designations: “Black Alone” and “Black in Combination”. Martinez-Ortega schooled me to ignore the “in combination” grouping as it would yield a distorted picture of the Black population.Unfortunately, it appears that the New York Times received no such guidance, and their polling data includes truly astounding findings about the differences between Black Alone and Black in Combination. Among the Black Alone population, Harris receives the support of 80% of that group, but the Times finds that just 60% of the Black In Combination grouping supports Harris. Such a dramatic divergence of results from subsets of what are supposedly the same sector of the population raise profound questions about the entire data set.Which leads to the third problem: the lack of common sense. Good scientists look at the data they gather and then step back and try to make sense of it all. If a subset of data falls outside of the realm of decades of prior empirical findings, then one has to ask some basic questions.Is there a dramatic difference in the electoral behavior of African Americans and mixed-race Black people? Given that no Democratic presidential nominee has ever received less than 83% of the Black vote, how likely is it that Harris – a Black woman (and also an Asian woman) – is backed by a smaller share of the Black population than Michael Dukakis, John Kerry and a plethora of more mainstream Democratic presidential nominees? How do you reconcile these findings with the demonstrable and quantifiable Black enthusiasm for Harris in the form of the early Zoom calls that engaged tens of thousands of African Americans in a mere matter of hours; the 10,000 people who turned out to the early rally in heavily Black Atlanta, Georgia; and the historic fundraising numbers that have recently eclipsed $1bn? Which set of information is the outlier?Tied to the lack of common sense is the fourth problem: insufficient cultural competence. If someone who had deep and extensive experience with African Americans looked at the polling data, they could quickly spot the glaring anomalies. Black mixed-race people aren’t dramatically more pro-Republican than other African Americans. The enthusiasm and excitement demonstrated in the early Zoom calls flow from enduring a lifetime of disrespect and discrimination, and that excitement of finally having someone who shares your cultural experience in the White House isn’t going to dissipate over a few weeks.Now, to be sure, there are differences in Black voting behavior along gender lines. The most apt example to Harris’s situation occurred in Georgia when Stacey Abrams, an African American woman, won the Democratic nomination for governor. In both of Abrams’s runs, there was a nine-point difference between her support margins from Black women and Black men (97% from Black women in 2018 and 88% from Black men). And cultural competence and common sense would not find this surprising as sexism is embedded in the fabric of this nation and affects all racial groups.But even in Abrams’s case the vast, vast majority of African Americans backed the Black woman’s bid, and the pertinent and reliable data suggests that a similar phenomenon is unfolding in the 2024 presidential race. The overwhelming majority of Black Americans voted for Democrats in 2020 and in the 2022 midterms (86% according to the exit polls). That enthusiasm is only amplified for Harris.

      Steve Phillips is the founder of Democracy in Color, and author of Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority and How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good More

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      US presidential election updates: Harris appeals to Republicans on Fox as Trump doubles down on pet eating claims

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      Democratic presidential nominee and US vice-president Kamala Harris focused her campaign on Republican voters, with an appearance at a Pennsylvania rally with more than 100 former Republican officeholders and officialsLater, in a further appeal to right-leaning voters, Harris faced a tough interview on Fox news, with host Brett Baier pressing the vice-president on immigration, the economy and the Biden administration. “Let me be very clear,” she said, “my presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency.”Donald Trump meanwhile spoke at a town hall hosted by Univision, America’s largest Spanish-language network, where he doubled down on baseless claims he has made about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets.Kamala Harris news and updates:

      Surrounded by more than 100 former Republican officeholders and officials, Harris urged GOP voters on Wednesday to put “country first” and abandon Donald Trump. Trump is “unstable” and “unhinged” and would eviscerate democratic norms if given a second White House term, she said. “America must heed this warning”.

      In her interview on Fox News, Harris was asked about the Biden administration’s efforts to tackle illegal immigration at the southern border, and laid the blame on Republicans for failing to pass a border bill. Harris said Trump told Republicans to reject the bill because “he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”

      In the Fox interview, Harris singled out Iran when asked which foreign country she considers to be America’s greatest adversary. Baier questioned whether the Biden-Harris administration was “acting like Iran is the number one threat”.

      Of Trump, Harris said, “People are exhausted with someone who professes to be a leader and who spends full-time demeaning and engaging in personal grievances.” She added, “He’s not stable.”
      Donald Trump news and updates:

      Trump’s running mate, JD Vance answered “no” when asked if Trump lost the 2020 election, at a Pennsylvania rally. “What message do you think it sends to independent voters when you do not directly answer the question ‘Did Donald Trump lose in 2020?’” the reporter asked, eliciting boos from the crowd. Vance said, “No. I think there were serious problems in 2020”.

      Trump doubled down on his controversial comments about “the enemy from within” made over the weekend. Before an all-female audience in Cumming, Georgia, Trump mocked Kamala Harris and her allies as “sick”, “evil” and “a party of soundbites”. He said, “They’re very dangerous. They’re Marxists and communists and fascists,” Trump told the Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner. “They’re the threat to democracy.”

      The former director of Project 2025, a conservative plan to overhaul the US government, has blamed “violent rhetoric” from his former boss Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation thinktank, for the blueprint’s downgrading as Trump has sought to publicly distance himself from it.

      In Trump’s Univision town hall he was asked to name three virtues possessed by Harris, which he did, before again attacking her. He said that “she seems to have an ability to survive”, that “she seems to have some pretty longtime friendships” and that “she seems to have a nice way about her”. “I mean, I like the way some of her statements, some of her – the way she behaves, in a certain way. But in another way, I think it’s very bad for our country,” he said.
      Elsewhere on the campaign trail

      A Georgia judge has declared that seven new election rules recently passed by the state election board are “illegal, unconstitutional and void”. Fulton county superior court judge Thomas Cox issued the order on Wednesday after holding a hearing on challenges to the rules. The rules that Cox invalidated included three that had garnered a lot of attention – one that required that the number of ballots be hand-counted after the close of polls and two that had to do with the certification of election results.

      Jimmy Carter, the centenarian former Democratic president, has voted in the 2024 presidential election, his representatives confirmed on Wednesday. A statement from the Carter Center did not reveal who he voted for, but it is assumed the 100-year-old, who is in hospice care, cast his ballot for the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

      Alabama cannot remove thousands of people from its voter rolls on the eve of the presidential election, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday. The US district judge Anna Manasco, an appointee of Donald Trump, issued a preliminary injunction halting an effort by Alabama’s top election official to try to remove more than 3,200 people from the voter rolls who it suspected of being non-citizens until at least after the presidential election.

      The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin has called on the Department of Justice to investigate text messages they say targeted and tried to discourage young people from voting in the November election. The League of Women Voters says it initially learned of the alleged text campaign on 10 October, when the group received numerous complaints from voters who had received the text. Two people in their 20s who work with the League of Women Voters also received the message, which reads: “WARNING: Violating WI Statutes 12.13 & 6.18 may result in fines up to $10,000 or 3.5 years in prison. Don’t vote in a state where you’re not eligible.”
      Read more about the 2024 US election:

      Presidential poll tracker

      Harris and Trump policies

      What to know about early voting More