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    Veep cast reunites, with special guests, to raise money for Harris

    As soon as Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential election and threw his support behind Kamala Harris, people immediately started comparing the shocking turn of events to something that would unfold on HBO’s critically acclaimed political satire Veep. At the time, the US vice-president was seen as a Selina Meyers-esque figure, what with her penchant for public awkwardness, clunky turns of phrase and the perception of her as a perpetual also-ran.Since then, things have changed quite a bit, with Harris rising to the occasion and running a highly effective and exciting campaign that has seen her ascend to frontrunner in the race (even if her advantage remains razor-thin).Still, as I wrote in my article from July, her campaign and the Democrats as a whole would be wise to lean into comparisons to Veep. Despite how venal and vain the characters on the show were, the workplace comedy (which wrapped up in 2019) remains as popular and relevant as ever.When you consider this alongside the fact that the majority of the cast, including and especially its star, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, are outspoken liberals, it made all the sense in the world for some Democratic group to try to work with them to raise funds and awareness during this final leg of the campaign.That group ended up being the Wisconsin Democrats. A swing state that is likely to have a big hand in deciding not only who the next president is, but also which party controls the Senate, WisDems put together a live Zoom table read of a classic episode of Veep, featuring the majority of the cast, plus some big-name guest stars, to be livestreamed to the donors, with the money raised going towards presidential, congressional and assembly campaigns across the state.Fellow liberal comic and Veep super-fan Stephen Colbert took on hosting duties. Special guest stars included the Wisconsin senator Tammy Baldwin in her acting debut (not counting her childhood performance in a school production of Finian’s Rainbow), actor and comedian Kumail Nanjiani as a Syrian refugee (“I’m Pakistani, but I can play cat-eating immigrants from all over the world”), Seinfeld co-star Jason Alexander as a pompous feature writer, film-maker Kevin Smith as a reporter, and Larry David – who, in the most fitting turn of events imaginable, spent the first several minutes of the live stream trying to figure out how to work his Zoom – as Selina’s chief hatchet man, Ben Cafferty.View image in fullscreenReprising their roles from the show were actors Diedrich Bader, Nancy Lenehan, Gary Cole, Sam Richardson, Sufe Bradshaw, Timothy Simons, Reid Scott, Matt Walsh, Anna Chlumsky, Tony Hale and, of course, Louis-Dreyfus, while series regulars Clea DuVall and Sarah Sutherland took on other roles, since their characters don’t appear in this ep. (Patton Oswalt, who was also on the show, made a surprise appearance during the post-read Q&A.)The episode chosen was Crate, from season 3, which finds Selina and her cronies campaigning in New Hampshire ahead of the upcoming primaries. Various mishaps involving a pricey photo-op prop, an incriminating cellphone recording and the suicidal first lady, ensue. This episode is regarded as one of the very best in the show’s history, mostly due to one scene: Selina, having just learned that Potus will be resigning from office, effective immediately, shares a joyous freakout alongside her body man/closest confidant, Gary. It’s a bravura performance from both Louis-Dreyfus and Hale, one that probably secured them each an Emmy the following year.(It’s also fitting that this episode should be chosen, given that this intimate scene is immediately followed by Selina betraying Gary, a dynamic that repeats itself in the most devastating moment of the series finale.)For the read-through, the cast slipped back into their roles with ease. Everyone was on point, but Louis-Dreyfus and Hale were extra-dialed in, especially during their big scene. You got goosebumps watching them recreate it 10 years later, over Zoom, while still bringing all of the emotion they did during the actual filming.The guest stars all acquit themselves well, but it should come as no surprise that it was David who got the biggest laughs. While it’s impossible for him not to play himself, his singular delivery proved a perfect fit with Veep’s uber-cynical, profanity-laden screwball dialog.After the reading, we alternated between cast members interviewing a handful of state legislature candidates (with the major focus of the night revolving around abortion rights) and them fielding questions from viewers. Show creator Armando Iannucci joined in for this portion of the event.We got treated to a mini-Seinfeld reunion between Louis-Dreyfus, Alexander and David; Louis-Dreyfus sounded off on her hatred of AI; Smith talked about his favorite scene of the show (Selina accidentally getting high on St John’s wort, naturally); and David went off on a funny tangent about bald men looking better with beards (although he himself would never grow one because comedians can’t be stroking their beards).Someone asked the cast to give their favorite individual lines from the show. Louis-Dreyfus: “Jolly green jizz-face.” Simons: “[You’re] a meme, ma’am.” Walsh: “I’ve met [some] people … and a lot of them are fucking idiots.” Chlumsky: “[That’s] like [trying to use] a croissant [as] a [fucking] dildo. It doesn’t [do] the job and it [makes] a fucking mess!” Bradshaw: “[Get] the government out of my [fucking] snatch.” Colbert: “Danny Wah!”Iannucci seemed to confirm that Kent and Sue indeed hooked up at some point (“It probably involved algorithms”) and speculated on various characters’ outcomes (married politicos Amy and Bill are probably hosting a podcast with their dogs, while the “late” Andrew Meyer is living under a new identity on an island that he’s trying to buy with a view to it being recognized as its own country).When asked about the future of satire, Iannucci said it depended on who wins this election, as the entire premise of political comedy hinges on people holding politicians up to certain standards, standards Trump and his ilk have never shown the least bit of concern over.Colbert wrapped things up by having the cast read aloud their favorite insults of the show’s most despicable and hilarious character, noxious political aide and eventual veep, Jonah Ryan. These cruel gems include: “Childless cat-lady man”, “Disney plus extra chromosomes”, “Harry No-Styles”, “Rape-It Ralph”, “Moonsucker”, “Satellite licker”, “face-circumcised” and “stock photo for sperm-bank reject”.Right as Simons, the actor who played Ryan, broke the news that the fundraiser exceeded its stated goal of $600,000, Iannucci tossed out on final new Jonah barb that he’d come up with earlier in the day:“Jonah, even if you fell into the world’s most powerful castration machine, you’d still come out of it a dick.” More

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    Harris holds Las Vegas rally as Nevada becomes crucial swing state in election

    Kamala Harris held a rally in Las Vegas on Sunday night as the state, with six electoral college votes, becomes increasingly important in a presidential race that polls show is barely moving to favour either candidate.Both the vice-president and Donald Trump have been making frequent trips to Nevada, but Harris’s rally takes place two days after she visited the US-Mexico border, a vulnerable issue for Democrats that Harris is looking to defuse.Before the raucous Las Vegas crowd estimated at 7,500, Harris renewed her jabs at Trump over refusing another debate, saying, “the American people have a right to hear us discuss the issues. And as you say here in Las Vegas, I’m all in. I’m all in.”Harris offered her condolences for those affected by Hurricane Helene, and her campaign said she would visit affected areas as soon as doing so would not disrupt the emergency response to the storm that has hit the country’s southeast.“We will stand with these communities for as long as it takes to make sure that they are able to recover and rebuild,” Harris said on Sunday.On Friday, Harris walked alongside a towering, rust-colored border wall fitted with barbed wire in Douglas, Arizona, and met with federal authorities to discuss illegal border crossing and fentanyl smuggling.At a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania on Sunday, the former president attempted to blame Harris for the opioid epidemic. “She even wants to legalize fentanyl,” he said.Six out of 10 Americans rate immigration as “very important”, according to the Pew Research Center, and other polling suggests voters trust Trump can handle the issue more effectively than Harris can.In contrast, fewer than half of voters (40%) said abortion, the key Republican vulnerability, was a very important issue to their vote.In a speech in San Francisco on Saturday, Harris said the “race is as close as it could possibly be” and described it “a margin-of-error race”. The Democrat candidate added that she felt she was running as the underdog.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocrats have also begun testing a new strategy to appeal to younger voters, including visitors to Las Vegas with its long-crafted reputation for inebriation, with posts about what it calls “Trump’s tequila tax” that its says could come as a result of proposed import tariffs.Harris’s campaign swing through Las Vegas comes as both candidates have said they plan to end taxes on tips. Trump presented his proposal in the city in June; Harris used her own rally in August to make the same pledge.The issue resonates in Las Vegas, where there are approximately 60,000 hospitality workers. Nevada’s Culinary Union has endorsed Harris.Ted Pappageorge, the culinary union’s secretary-treasurer, told the Associated Press that the union favored Harris’s proposal because she pledged to tackle what his union calls “sub-minimum wage”.“That shows us she’s serious,” Pappageorge said.Trump was at the same Las Vegas venue that Harris is speaking at earlier this month. In that address, he called his opponent the “would-be the president of invasion”. More

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    Trump and Harris speak in swing states as running mates prep ahead of VP debate – live

    Kamala Harris is presenting herself as a change agent who will “turn the page” and offer “a new way forward,” a move far from embracing her role in Biden’s White House.Inflation has been tamed. Illegal immigration has stabalized. Violent crime is down. In theory it is a perfect recipe for electoral success. Yet it is a gift that the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, seems reluctant to accept.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “A new way? She’s been part of a very successful administration and she was chosen by Joe Biden as VP and then essentially chosen to be his successor.“But she has to pretend that she’s going to be forging a new path because she can’t afford to be too closely associated with Biden. I know one person on the inner campaign staff who cringes every time Harris and Biden have to appear together because the visual reinforces the tie they don’t want people to make. It’s nonsensical.”Harris, as the incumbent vice-president, will be hoping to avoid a repeat of the Republican president George HW Bush’s fate in 1992. Economic indicators improved over the spring and summer but too late to save him from defeat by Bill Clinton, whose lead strategist, James Carville, memorably summed up: “It’s the economy, stupid.”Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington DC, said: “When it comes to the economy people believe their own eyes and they will make their judgments on that basis. This is a lesson I have learned in the six presidential campaigns I’ve wandered in and out of: if you have statistics on the one hand and personal experience on the other, it’s no contest.”More on Harris distancing herself from Biden’s record:Donald Trump is slated to visit Valdosta, Georgia, on Monday, and receive a briefing on the damage caused by Hurricane Helene and “facilitate the distribution of relief supplies”, his campaign announced.The former president is expected to deliver his remarks at 2pm ET.During a speech in Erie County, Pennsylvania, Trump sent his condolences to the families affected by Helene, which killed at least 64 people.Robert F Kennedy Jr will participate in a “Make America Healthy Again” event with Dr Phil McGraw in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Monday, Trump’s campaign announced.Kennedy, who was staging an independent bid for the presidency, endorsed the former president after dropping out of the race in August.Kennedy has hopes of influencing federal health policy under a possible Trump administration. The former third-party candidate has questioned the safety of vaccinating children and promoted theories that suggest HIV is not the true cause of AIDS.Joseph Costello, a Kamala Harris campaign spokesperson, reacted to Donald Trump’s speech in Erie, Pennsylvania, picking on the former president’s comments about overtime pay.“As president, Trump took executive action to rip away overtime pay for *millions* of workers, including nearly 5 million workers without a college degree,” Costello said on Twitter/X.Costello attached a link to a paper by the Economic Policy Institute titled: More than eight million workers will be left behind by the Trump overtime proposal.Donald Trump wrapped up his speech in Erie, Pennsylvania, by summing up his proposals as a presidential candidate, pledging to end crime allegedly by migrants, strengthen the military, and “keep critical race theory and transgender insanity out of our schools”.Donald Trump repeated his plan to close the Department of Education if he’s elected as president in November.“Let the states run their own education,” he said.“We spend more money per pupil than any other nation in the world, by far, and yet we’re ranked at the bottom of every list,” Trump said. “So you know the expression: what the hell do you have to lose? Right?”Donald Trump claimed Butler, Pennsylvania, has become a tourist site after his attempted assassination in July.“Cars are riding by. They’re taking pictures. It’s become an amazing tourist site,”he said.Trump announced that the event in Butler will honor the firefighter who was shot and killed at the rally in July, Corey Comperator.During his speech, Donald Trump confirmed he will return to Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of the attempted assassination attempt in July. His visit is scheduled for 5 October.“We have a lot of people coming, and I really believe that will be the safest place on Earth,” said the former president.Donald Trump brought US Senate candidate David McCormick of Pennsylvania to the stage. McCormick, ex-CEO of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, is trying to unseat Democratic Senator Bob Casey, who is seeking his fourth term.“It’s a race between strength, a guy who says ‘fight’, and weakness,” McCormick said. “We need to bring law and order to secure that border and stop these illegal immigrants coming in and bringing crime and fentanyl into Pennsylvania.”Donald Trump reaffirmed his stance that workers’ tips should not be taxed.He was the first candidate to endorse this proposal during a rally in June. Months later, Kamala Harris also expressed support for the plan, prompting the former president to label her “Copy Cat Kamala” at other rallies.“We will have no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on social security benefits for seniors,” Trump said on Sunday.“When I win, we will get Pennsylvania energy workers, fracking, drilling, pumping and producing like they have never produced before,” Donald Trump said.“Kamala vowed to repeatedly ban fracking, and she imposed a natural gas export ban that was a killer, that is starving a state right now of your wealth and wealth that you deserve right now,” Trump said.Trump criticized Harris’s support for expanding access and manufacturing of electric vehicles in the US.“Her insane electric vehicle mandate will decimate Pennsylvania’s economy by abolishing gas-powered cars and trucks for American roads and destroying your fossil fuel industry,” he said. “And there are very few states that benefit like you do from fracking.”Donald Trump quoted the lyrics of a song supposedly warning against immigration during his speech in Erie, Pennsylvania.Trump read the lyrics of The Snake, which was written by civil rights activist Oscar Brown in 1963. The song was later a hit for soul singer Al Wilson five years later.In Trump’s interpretation, it serves as a cautionary tale about the alleged danger posed by immigrants. The former president recounted the allegorical tale of a woman who foolishly embraces a dangerous serpent.The former president once again called Kamala Harris “mentally impaired” during his speech in Pennsylvania on Sunday.“Joe Biden became mentally impaired,” Trump said, adding that Harris “was born that way”.“There’s something wrong with Kamala, and I just don’t know what it is, but there is definitely something missing. And you know what? Everybody knows it,” Trump said.He later played an ad against the vice-president, composed of a compilation of her comments regarding immigration.“Honestly, we could give you clips like that all day long. This is not your president. This president would destroy our country, worse than Biden. He’s the worst president in history,” the former president said. More

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    Top Republicans disavow Trump’s ‘mentally disabled’ attacks on Harris

    Senior Republicans distanced themselves Sunday from comments made by Donald Trump at campaign stops over the weekend that opponent Kamala Harris was born “mentally disabled” and had compared her actions to that of “a mentally disabled person”.Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, pushed back on Trump’s remarks, which came in what Trump himself admitted was a “dark” speech.“I just think the better course to take is to prosecute the case that her policies are destroying the country,” Graham said on CNN. “I’m not saying she’s crazy, her policies are crazy.”Graham’s comments came as immigration and border security remained the top domestic issue on Sunday’s political talk shows. Trump made his comments during a rally in Wisconsin on Saturday amid remarks on Harris’s actions on those issues as vice-president.“Kamala is mentally impaired. If a Republican did what she did, that Republican would be impeached and removed from office, and rightfully so, for high crimes and misdemeanors,” he said.Trump added: “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way. She was born that way. And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.”Minnesota Republican representative Tom Emmer, a member of JD Vance’s debate preparation team, told ABC News: “I think we should stick on the issues. The issues are, Donald Trump fixed it once. They broke it. He’s going to fix it again. That – those are the issues.”But Maryland governor Larry Hogan struck back, telling CBS News that Trump’s comments were “insulting not only to the vice-president, but to people that actually do have mental disabilities.“I’ve said for years that Trump’s divisive rhetoric is something we can do without,” Hogan added.Steven Cheung, the communications director for the Trump campaign, did not directly address Trump’s comments, widely criticized as offensive, but said Harris’s record on immigration and border security made her “wholly unfit to serve as president”.Trump’s comments joined a long list of personal attacks against opponents that supporters at his campaign eagerly lap up. Democrats have their own reductive articulations, calling Trump and Vance “weird”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the use of mental disability to describe Harris’s faculties has been widely seized upon. Democrat Illinois governor JB Pritzker told CNN that Trump’s remarks were “name-calling”.“Whenever he says things like that, he’s talking about himself but trying to project it onto others,” Pritzker said. Eric Holder, the former Obama administration attorney general, said Trump’s comments indicated “cognitive decline”.“Trump made a great deal of the cognitive abilities of Joe Biden,” he told MSNBC. “If this is where he is now, where is he going to be three and four years from now?”Maria Town, president of the American Association of People with Disabilities, pointed out that many presidents had disabilities.Town said in a statement to the Washington Post that Trump’s comments “say far more about him and his inaccurate, hateful biases against disabled people than it does about Vice President Harris, or any person with a disability”. More

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    ‘Running away from good news’: why is Harris distancing herself from Biden’s record?

    As Joe Biden walked on the set of The View, one of America’s most popular daytime television programmes, he was greeted by Hail to the Chief and a studio audience erupting in wild applause and cheers. “They love you!” said the co-host Joy Behar. The US president replied wryly: “It’s always better when you’re leaving.”During the ABC show, filmed live in a New York studio where digital screens showed images from Biden’s career, he claimed to be “at peace” with his decision not to seek re-election in November. Yet he also insisted that he could have beaten “loser” Donald Trump. And the co-host Whoopi Goldberg criticised the way Democrats forced Biden’s hand: “I didn’t like the way it was done publicly.”The wistfulness might be owed in part to Biden supporters’ faith that, for all the concerns over his age and mental acuity, his record should be viewed more as an asset than a liability. Their argument has been bolstered of late by trends that could neutralise three scourges of his presidency.Inflation has been tamed. Illegal immigration has stabilised. Violent crime is down. In theory it is a perfect recipe for electoral success. Yet it is a gift that the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, seems reluctant to accept. Far from embracing her role in Biden’s White House, the 59-year-old is presenting herself as a change agent who will “turn the page” and offer “a new way forward”.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “A new way? She’s been part of a very successful administration and she was chosen by Joe Biden as VP and then essentially chosen to be his successor.“But she has to pretend that she’s going to be forging a new path because she can’t afford to be too closely associated with Biden. I know one person on the inner campaign staff who cringes every time Harris and Biden have to appear together because the visual reinforces the tie they don’t want people to make. It’s nonsensical.”View image in fullscreenTravelling by motorcade, helicopter and Air Force One, the Guardian accompanied Biden for two days this week, from his daytime TV slot to a Ukraine event with the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, from a glamorous reception at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to a gun safety event with Harris where the audience chanted: “Thank you, Joe!”There were reminders of the 81-year-old’s struggles, which culminated in a career-ending debate performance against Trump in June. “Welcome to Washington!” he told a room full of world leaders, diplomats and journalists at the InterContinental New York Barclay hotel in New York, New York.But this was also a man seeking to cement his legacy, calling for a 21-day temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, pledging $8bn in military aid for Ukraine and signing an executive order to combat emerging firearms threats and improve active shooter drills in schools. That legacy will also include economic growth, low unemployment and a string of legislative wins.Biden’s tenure has been overshadowed, however, by inflation – in 2022 the prices of gas, food and most other goods and services surged by 9%, a 40-year high – insecurity at the southern border and fears over crime. His approval rating has hovered below 40%. But with less than four months left in office, there are clear signs of the tide turning.Inflation has returned to close to where it was shortly before the Covid pandemic, defying predictions of recession and giving the Federal Reserve confidence to cut interest rates. Petrol prices, always a key indicator of discontent, have been coming down for months; in August the national average for a gallon was $3.38 – about 47 cents lower than the same time a year ago.Border security, long Trump’s signature issue, is also improving. After the former president compelled Republicans in Congress to block a border security bill, Biden stepped in to partially suspend asylum processing. In July the number of people illegally crossing the southern border dropped to 56,400, the lowest level in nearly four years, according to government figures.View image in fullscreenMoreover, Trump recently claimed that crime was “through the roof” under Biden’s administration. But this week the FBI released statistics that showed violent crime in the US declined an estimated 3% in 2023 from the year before, part of a continued trend since the Covid pandemic. Last year witnessed the biggest ever decline in the homicide rate, now 16% below its level in 2020. And for all Trump’s rhetoric, violent crime is now at a near 50-year low.Yet in a polarised political atmosphere, with rightwing media constantly attacking him, Biden is receiving little credit. Opinion polls showed him trailing Trump badly when voters were asked which candidate they trust to handle the economy, immigration and crime (Trump has a narrower lead over Harris on these issues).Sabato said: “Everything’s getting better except the American public thinks we’re in a recession and there are thieves outside their door every evening and those immigrants are trying to eat their pets. It’s insane. A classic case of the failure of civic education. I know that’s basic and people laugh about the term but it’s absolutely the root cause of all this.”In this climate, Harris appears to have concluded that, whatever the headline economic figures say, people are not feeling it. She has acknowledged many families are struggling with the cost of living, including the price of groceries and the dream of buying a home. She has promised to focus on basics such as being able to save for a child’s education, take a holiday and buy Christmas presents without financial stress.View image in fullscreenWendy Schiller, a political scientist at Brown University, noted that in the last quarter of 2023 and first quarter of 2024, every state in the country had growth in real disposable income. “The problem for the Democrats is that inflation eroded the power of that income up until, you could argue, the late spring of 2024. Do consumers now feel like their wages are buying them something and that things are less expensive?”She added: “You can tell them things are better but, unless they’re feeling it, it won’t help the Democrats in November. There’s a disconnect between voter impression of the economy and personal voter feelings about the economy. But certainly having a series of indicators and the news feed going from negative to positive can help sustain Kamala Harris’s campaign message that she, in fact, will produce a good economy.”Harris, as the incumbent vice-president, will be hoping to avoid a repeat of the Republican president George HW Bush’s fate in 1992. Economic indicators improved over the spring and summer but too late to save him from defeat by Bill Clinton, whose lead strategist, James Carville, memorably summed up: “It’s the economy, stupid.”Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington DC, said: “When it comes to the economy people believe their own eyes and they will make their judgments on that basis. This is a lesson I have learned in the six presidential campaigns I’ve wandered in and out of: if you have statistics on the one hand and personal experience on the other, it’s no contest.”Galston, a former policy adviser to Bill Clinton, acknowledged that inflation, immigration and crime are heading in the right direction. “The political damage is done and I wouldn’t say that these developments are too little but I would say they are too late,” he added.View image in fullscreen“That’s especially true for immigration because, as far as I can tell, there’s nothing that President Biden did eight months ago that he couldn’t have done four years ago. I’m ever mindful of the fact that immigration is the issue that Trump rode to the presidency the first time in 2016.”Harris has accused Trump of killing the bipartisan Senate compromise that would have included tougher asylum standards and hiring more border agents, immigration judges and asylum officers. She says she would bring back that bill and sign it into law. Trump promises to mount the biggest domestic deportation in US history, an operation that could involve detention camps and the national guard.As for Biden, a memo released by the White House this week said he intended to “aggressively execute” on the rest of his agenda and hit the road to highlight the Biden-Harris record. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he delivered an address on the sidelines of the UN general assembly while surrounded by sculptures from antiquity; a moment, perhaps, to consider his own place in history.“I’ve seen the impossible become reality,” he told guests, recalling how he saw the fall of the Berlin Wall, end of South African apartheid and war criminals and dictators face justice and accountability for human rights violations.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “There’s a very strong argument that we will hear from historians about Joe Biden getting a bad break. He was a better president than was appreciated in his time. If Kamala Harris loses, one of the major critiques is going to be that the Democrats were too quick to turn on Biden and that Harris ran a campaign running away from the good news.” More

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    Trump leans into anti-immigrant rants and Harris barbs at Wisconsin rally

    Donald Trump spoke on Saturday in the battleground state of Wisconsin, escalating his anti-immigrant rhetoric and taking his personal insults against Kamala Harris up a notch.Trump’s speech in the small community of Prairie du Chien, where a Venezuelan in the US illegally was detained in September for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman and attacking her daughter, was unusually devoted almost entirely to undocumented immigrants. He wrongfully claimed that immigrants in the US are violent criminals, referring to them as “stone-cold killers”, “monsters” and “vile animals”.The Republican presidential candidate was flanked by posters of immigrants in the US illegally who have been arrested for murder and other violent crimes, and banners saying “End Migrant Crime” and “Deport Illegals Now”.Trump is locked in a close race with Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate and vice-president, before the 5 November election. Immigration at the southern border are one of the top issues for voters, according to opinion polls.Trump attacked Harris, who on Friday visited the US-Mexico border for the first time in her 2024 presidential campaign, calling her “mentally impaired” and “mentally disabled”.The former president blamed Harris and Joe Biden for allowing undocumented immigrants into the US, accusing some immigrants of wanting to “rape, pillage, thieve, plunder and kill the people of the United States of America”.At one point Trump admitted: “This is a dark speech.”“There’s no greater act of disloyalty than to extinguish the sovereignty of your own nation right through your border, no matter what lies she tells,” he said.“Kamala Harris can never be forgiven for her erasing our border, and she must never be allowed to become president of the United States and Wisconsin,” he added.A video intending to attack Kamala Harris was shown in the middle of Trump’s remarks.It was a compilation of Harris’s comments about immigration policy.“She is a disaster, and she’s not going to ever do anything for the border,” he said after the video. “She’s incompetent and a bad person.”“She’s a Marxist,” he added.JD Vance continued the attacks on Harris in a speech in Newton, Pennsylvania, taking the former president’s lead and making sure to continue the anti-immigrant claims.“The problem with Kamala Harris is that she’s got no substance,” Trump’s running mate said. “The problem with Kamala Harris is that she’s got no plan. And the problem with Kamala Harris is that she has been the vice-president for three-and-a-half years and has failed this country.”Vance claimed without proof that Harris played a role in worsening the economy by exacerbating inflation, then went on to link the country’s economic woes to immigration, blaming Harris for what he describes as an “invasion” amid a lack of border control.Vance claimed that the presence of immigrants in the US is contributing to rising housing costs.Some 7 million immigrants have been arrested crossing the US-Mexico border illegally during Biden’s administration, according to government data, a record high number that has fueled criticism of Harris and Biden from Trump and fellow Republicans.In her visit to the border on Friday, Harris outlined her plans to fix “our broken immigration system” while accusing Trump of “fanning the flames of fear and division” over the impact of immigrants on American life.Harris also called for tighter asylum restrictions and vowed to make a “top priority” of stopping fentanyl from entering the US.Before wrapping up his speech, Trump called to the stage the mother of Rachel Morin, a 37-year-old Maryland mother of five who was killed last year. After Rachel’s death, a native of El Salvador was arrested. Trump has used this case to support his remarks against immigrants from Central America living in the US.Studies generally find there is no evidence immigrants commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans and critics say Trump’s rhetoric reinforces racist tropes.Trump’s opponents accuse him of cynically exploiting grieving families to fuel his narrative that foreign-born, often Hispanic, arrivals are part of an invading army.But some of the families of the victims have welcomed Trump’s focus on the issue of violent crime and the death toll of teenagers caused by the opioid drug fentanyl, much of which crosses into the US over the southern border. More

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    Trump takes stage at Wisconsin rally and continues anti-immigrant rhetoric – live

    JD Vance accused Kamala Harris of flip-flopping on a series of major issues, such as fracking, Medicare for undocumented immigrants, private health insurance, and defunding the police.“Kamala, if you support fracking, if you support the police, if you support lower prices, and you want to close down the southern border, you’re welcome to endorse Donald J Trump,” Vance said. “All of us have done it, and you’re welcome to join the team.”JD Vance claims that Harris played a role in worsening the economy by exacerbating inflation.He linked the country’s economic woes to immigration, blaming Harris for what he describes as an “invasion” amid a lack of border control.Vance claimed that the presence of immigrants in the US is contributing to rising housing costs.He went on to make anti-immigrant remarks.JD Vance quickly touched a soft spot for the state of Pennsylvania: Natural gas.Vice President Kamala Harris says she doesn’t oppose fracking, despite prior assertions stating otherwise, but Republicans are still wielding her previous position to win over voters.“When Donald Trump is president, we are going to drill, baby, drill and bring back the great American energy economy,” Vance said during his speech. “She is the candidate of not buying oil and gas from Americans and Pennsylvanians. Kamala Harris wants us to buy energy from every tin pot dictator all over the world.”JD Vance attacked Kamala Harris, going back to her first solo interview on Wednesday, by saying she dodges questions on the economy by talking about her middle-class background and her former stint at McDonald’s.“The problem with Kamala Harris is that she’s got no substance,” he said. “The problem with Kamala Harris is that she’s got no plan. And the problem with Kamala Harris is that she has been the vice-president for three-and-a-half years and has failed this country.’”Senator JD Vance took the stage in Pennsylvania.“We have got a hell of a crowd here in the state of Pennsylvania,” he said at the start of his speech. “We’re gonna turn Pennsylvania red, send Kamala Harris back in and send Donald Trump back to the White House.”Senator JD Vance is expected to deliver a speech in Newton, Pennsylvania, in a few minutes.The event at the Newtown Sports and Event Center comes as polls show a neck-and-neck race for president in battleground Pennsylvania.We’ll be covering the Republican vice-presidential pick’s remarks.Donald Trump wrapped up his speech in Wisconsin just before 5pm ET.His remarks mostly revolved around his proposed border policies and an anti-immigrant framing of the country.The mother of Rachel Morin, a 37-year-old Maryland mother of five who was killed last year, took the stage briefly in Prairie du Chien.After Rachel’s death, a native of El Salvador was arrested. Trump has used this case to support his remarks against immigrants from Central America living in the US.“I do want to say vote for Trump, though, because I really believe that he’s going to close our borders,” said Patty Morin, Rachel’s mother.In his speech, Donald Trump shifted briefly from immigration to the economy.“Your towns, your cities, your country, is being destroyed,” Trump said. “This is bigger than inflation, which is killing you all, caused by Biden and Harris with their stupid energy policy.”He shifted again to making anti-immigrant remarks.“The only things that don’t get obsolete are the wheel and the wall,” he said about the barrier he started to build on the border during his presidency, which increased migrant deaths and devastating injuries.Donald Trump referred to Kamala Harris’s immigrant-focused speech last night in Arizona as “BS”.Fox News broadcasted her remarks, and Trump said “they shouldn’t be allowed to put it on”.“Everything she said is a lie,” the former president said.A video intending to attack Kamala Harris was shown in the middle of Donald Trump’s remarks.The video was a compilation of Harris’s comments about immigration policy.“She is a disaster, and she’s not going to ever do anything for the border,” he said after the video. “She’s incompetent and a bad person.”“She’s a Marxist,” he added.Donald Trump struggled to pronounce “Prairie du Chien”, the name of the town where he’s delivering his remarks.“You could have given me a little easier name than that, but I think we got it right,” Trump said.He continued to make anti-immigrant and racist comments half an hour into his speech.Donald Trump wrongfully claimed that immigrants in the US are violent criminals, referring to them as “stone-cold killers”.“There’s no greater act of disloyalty than to extinguish the sovereignty of your own nation right through your border, no matter what lies she tells,” Trump said.“Kamala Harris can never be forgiven for her erasing our border, and she must never be allowed to become president of the United States and Wisconsin,” he added.Donald Trump said Kamala Harris’s border policies should disqualify her from ever becoming president and urged voters in Wisconsin not to support her.“Kamala is mentally impaired,” Trump said. “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way.”Donald Trump claims that more than 40,000 people were outside, unable to get into the building because the room was at capacity.He then turned to criticize Kamala Harris for her role in border policies, claiming that her actions have led to widespread chaos, suffering, and a lack of national security.“I watched this show that she put on, four years of the most incompetent border anywhere in the world, in history,” Trump said.Donald Trump has taken the stage, starting his speech more than an hour after his scheduled start time in Prairie Du Chien, Wisconsin. More

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    ‘I see the apathy’: Saginaw city’s Black voters could be vital – if they vote

    The largest bloc of registered voters in the city of Saginaw has yet to make a choice between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and probably never will. A majority of Black residents of the biggest city in the most closely contested county of the battleground state of Michigan simply don’t vote.To the frustration of civil rights activists and Democratic politicians struggling to secure every ballot in a state that the Harris campaign sees as crucial to victory, more than half of Saginaw city’s population has long been unpersuaded that elections make much of a difference to their lives.Now, against the backdrop of the drama of the US’s knife-edge 2024 election, Black organizations and churches are once again making a determined push to turn out voters, helped by the first female Black candidate for president and changes to Michigan law making it easier to vote.But Terry Pruitt, president of the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) branch running voter education campaigns, said it was a struggle to generate enthusiasm in Saginaw.“I’ve been here all my life. I grew up on the east side of Saginaw and I see the apathy. This is not something that they put at the top of the priority list when they’ve got to figure out, can I get to work today?” he said.“My church is on the south side of Saginaw, probably the lowest socioeconomic district in Saginaw county other than a couple of rural areas, and when I walk through the neighborhood and talk to people about why they don’t vote, you’d be surprised how many of them say, ‘that’s not important to me.’ These folks are going to go ahead and do what they want to do. They don’t listen to me. They don’t want to hear what I have to say.”Black residents account for nearly half of Saginaw city’s 45,000 population with white people about one-third. Historically, a sharp racial divide was marked by the Saginaw river running through the heart of the city so that there were two downtowns on opposite banks.Neighborhoods on the east side are overwhelmingly Black. The west side was mostly white but the population has become more mixed in recent years as large numbers of white people moved to neighboring Saginaw Township.Voter turnout in the east of Saginaw city is consistently well below the other side of the river and anywhere else in the county. Many people are automatically registered to vote in Michigan when applying for a driving licence but do not do so.In the 2020 election, which saw the highest turnout of voters in Michigan history at 70.5% as sharp divisions over Trump drew more people to the polls, less than half of registered voters in Saginaw city cast a ballot. In most Black neighborhoods the figure was even lower, falling below 40% in some precincts.Even during Barack Obama’s first run for the White House in 2008, turnout in the east of Saginaw, where the man who would become the US’s first Black president picked up more than 95% of the vote in many precincts, was still much lower than elsewhere.But the number that some Harris supporters in Saginaw are focused on is Trump’s victory in Michigan in 2016 by fewer than 11,000 votes – only slightly more than the number of registered voters who did not cast a ballot in the city of Saginaw. Although Joe Biden narrowly won the state back four years later, Michigan is again on a knife edge. Michigan could help decide the whole US election, and Saginaw could help decide the whole of Michigan.Jeff Bulls, the president of the Community Alliance for the People in Saginaw, which is running a get-out-the-vote campaign, said the low turnout was not easily overcome.“The numbers are stupid. They’re really, really low. Some people, especially poorer people, they feel like their vote doesn’t count. Or people have become jaded with government. A lot of them feel like government doesn’t have any effect on their lives. That’s how people draw back from the process: ‘I’m going to go vote for what?’ A lot of people are disenchanted with the process. That’s not easy to change,” he said.Bulls said the sense of being overlooked by political leaders was especially evident in March, when Biden was still running for re-election. The president visited Saginaw city but failed to meet Black leaders or visit a Black church.“There was a lot of tension with people feeling like the president didn’t really care about the Black vote. His visit was specifically to come here and meet with Black leaders in the community and Black clergy to address that sentiment. When he got here, everything changed. He ended up meeting with white liberal Democrats and that pissed a lot of people off and set off a firestorm,” he said.Pruitt demanded an explanation from Biden’s campaign which, he said, apologized.“It left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths. It was clearly a mistake and, believe me, there were several of us who let him know that,” he said.Critics turned on the county’s Democratic party and its chair, Aileen Pettinger. She shakes her head in despair on being asked about the debacle.“Unfortunately, because I’m the party chair, I got the brunt of it. Honestly, we were only told the night before. In the past, they would ask our input. This time they did not listen to us at all,” she said.For some activists, the incident had echoes of Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 campaign when her staff arrived in midwestern towns waving data sets and riding roughshod over local advice, helping to cost her the election.Pettinger said the Harris campaign was a long way from that. Pruitt agreed.“I’m pretty sure that that would not happen with Harris,” he said.But Pruitt said the incident threw a spotlight on the alienation many in the city feel from established political parties.“There’s obviously the tendency for us who do vote to vote Democratic. But there’s a school of thought that the Democratic party takes that vote for granted and really doesn’t listen to what we really feel is important,” he said.Pettinger said she recognised the problem.“We have heard that on the doors but I’m seeing a huge shift out on the doors since Kamala has announced that she was running. It’s a huge difference. I haven’t seen hope like this since Obama, I haven’t seen this excitement,” she said.“I’m not losing hope. I feel very energised about it. We just have to make sure it carries over and make sure we get people to the ballot box.”Pruitt agreed that Harris had injected some enthusiasm into the election.“I don’t think it will drive it as much as Obama. I never had the slightest thought that I’d see an African American be elected president of the United States, so that phenomenon has already occurred,” he said.“But I see some people excited about the opportunity of a Black female being president and it will help drive our community to the polls. But in the end it’s the policies that matter to get people to vote. We have to help connect the dots for people. There has to be self-interest in voting which means you have to explain those two or three issues that you think are at the top of their list, and what we have to lose if we’re on the wrong side of voting on those things.”Pruitt said his get-out-the-vote campaign was focusing on the dangers Trump poses to “the social safety network”, including housing support, childcare assistance, and disability and social security payments.“As a national theme, abortion is out there and that’s what the parties are running with. That may be on the list for the average Black woman on the east side of Saginaw but it’s much further down the list. But if we start talking about losing the department of education and how that’s going to impact their children, that will hit home very quickly,” he said.Bulls said affordable housing was also a major issue in Saginaw even though the city’s population has dropped sharply over recent decades. Saginaw is dotted with grass-covered spaces where abandoned houses have been torn down, but rents for what remains are high and the quality often substandard.“In Saginaw city, almost 70% of our housing is over 60 years old. There’s a lot of blight, a lot of houses that have already been torn down or need to be torn down. There haven’t been any new builds in the city, en masse, probably this century. So we just have a huge need for new housing, whether it’s single family housing or apartments,” he said.Then there is policing in a city with one of the highest crime rates in the country. Bulls said some of the alienation comes from frustration at the political decision to bring the state police into Saginaw.“We’ve had a couple different community forums on it because people are really concerned. There’s a state programme called the secure cities partnership. It has largely brought a bunch of Michigan state police into the community. It’s been basically a stop-and-frisk program. They don’t answer 911 calls. They literally just patrol and pull people over. There’s a huge racial disparity on where they patrol and who they pull over. It’s been a very, very tense issue here, and it’ll continue to be until it’s dealt with,” he said.Still, campaigners see an opportunity in the introduction of nine days of early voting for this year’s presidential election which, they say, which will assist Black churches running “souls to the polls” initiatives to lead their congregations to vote after Sunday services.Pruitt has also looked to other places for advice, including to Stacey Abrams, the Georgia politician who created voting rights organisations that proved crucial in the Democrats winning two key seats in the US Senate four years ago.“We’ve had conversations with Stacey Abrams and people from Georgia because it was remarkable what she did. But when I started looking at how she did it, it takes an army of people and an awful lot of money to make it happen. That’s another side of this, the resources, because the frustration for people like me is marshalling the resources to get it done,“ he said.Bulls feels the same constraints, and laments what he sees as the tendency of white politicians to leave it to Black organisations to get out the vote in their community.“It shouldn’t be left to us but here we are. It’s important to us so we’ll do it anyway, but it shouldn’t be just us,” he said.Get in touchWe’d like to hear from Saginaw residents about the issues that matter to them this election. You can get in touch with us here. More