Kamala Harris

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

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

      by

      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

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

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

      by

      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

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

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

      by

      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

    • 213 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Pennsylvania steel workers, wooed by Harris and Trump, remain skeptical: ‘I don’t trust either one of them’

      by

      The Monongahela River winds through the tight Mon Valley south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, creating a main artery in the nation’s industrial heart, where the steel and coal industries have driven the region’s economy and shaped political landscapes since the late 19th century.In the weeks preceding the election, the region is once again playing an outsize role in determining the nation’s political future. A controversial Biden-Harris administration plan to kill Pittsburgh-based US Steel’s proposed sale to Japan’s Nippon Steel is viewed in part as an election-year strategy to shore up critical union support in a must-win swing state.On the ground in and around the city, evidence suggests the move may just work – unions oppose the sale and the administration’s position is at the very least maintaining recent Democratic gains in the tug-of-war for swing voters in the nation’s steel capital.Anecdotal evidence and polling point to Harris gaining momentum here.“I’ve learned not to be comfortable with any election because we didn’t think Trump could win in 16 … but I think people are going to vote more common sense this year,” said Keli Vereb, a steelworker union rep and Lincoln borough council member.Unusually in these fractious times, both presidential candidates oppose the deal, backing United Steelworkers International union members across the political spectrum who are determined to thwart a deal they see as a job killer that puts their pensions at risk.Recent memories of supply chain issues have also hardened US resolve to protect vital industries such as steel.Still, politics are omnipresent, and the deal undoubtedly will play a role in determining the next president. It comes eight years after blue-collar workers here defected from the Democratic party en masse when then candidate Hillary Clinton said during a debate that she would put coalminers out of business.Some union leaders say the comment may have cost her Pennsylvania, which Donald Trump won by 0.7%. After four years of pro-labor policies from Joe Biden, the party has begun to win back some who left, and with Trump proposing to block the US Steel sale if he were elected, Democrats risk a 2016 repeat if it is allowed to proceed.“Trump would pounce on them if they let [the sale] go,” said Allen George, a lifelong Democrat who worked in unions adjacent to the steel industry.The companies are making a powerful argument that the deal is vital to US Steel’s survival. US Steel claims it will be forced to cut Pennsylvania jobs and move its headquarters out of Pittsburgh if Biden blocks Nippon’s $14.1bn bid, while it has promised to invest $2.4bn in its facilities if the sale goes through. The company’s “scorched earth” public relations campaign on the factory floors has at least some rank and file supporting the sale, said Bernie Hall, Pennsylvania director for USI.“Some are scared and think: ‘We should just take this and live to fight another day,’ and that’s natural,” Hall said.Many more, however, oppose the sale. The union’s contract is up in 23 months and they fear a Nippon-US Steel would cut jobs, or continue to send them to non-union states. They point to Nippon’s long history of “dumping” steel in the US, which has cratered prices and cost American jobs, and many fear the purchase is a ploy to continue the practice.US Steel’s record of closing factories and failing to keep promises has generated a deep mistrust and disdain for the company, workers told the Guardian on a recent Monday afternoon outside the Harvey Wilner’s pub in West Mifflin, just south of Pittsburgh. They rattled off a list of facilities that have closed over the decades.“Nippon can have at it,” said Barry Fez, who has worked in manufacturing in the region for decades, but, he says, in a few years he expects they will go back on their word.But that sentiment is colliding with Wall Street and Beltway support for the deal. The latter argue that the administration’s protectionist plan would run counter to international trade norms because Japan is an ally and close economic partner.The idea that trade decorum with Japan is more important than Pennsylvania union members’ security drew scoffs from some workers.“And then they’ll wonder why they lost an election,” said Mike Gallagher, a retired union member.‘They lie all the time’Banking legend JP Morgan created US Steel in a mega-merger in 1901. It grew to be the largest US producer, employing more than 340,000 people at its second world war peak. Today, it is a shadow of its former self, has closed many of its Mon Valley facilities, and now employs about 4,000 people, although the company says it indirectly supports 11,000 jobs and generates $3.6bn in economic activity annually.In the face of waning American steel power, the company has looked for a buyer, and many feel a US-Japan alliance makes sense in countering increasing Chinese domination of the industry.But the union is opposed, and in Pennsylvania, 25% of the electorate is unionized, making it a formidable bloc intensely courted by both political parties.Trump in January said he would stop the deal. Biden has said the same, including in a private meeting with steel workers in April, when the president insisted “US steel will stay US-owned”, according to Don Furko, president of Local 1557 in Clairton. “He said he ‘guarantees’ it.”The administration’s decision on whether the deal should be blocked largely lies with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, which is made up of Biden’s cabinet members and other appointees. It can veto mergers and acquisitions it finds present a national security risk.CFIUS was expected to issue an opinion on 21 September, but the administration punted until after the election. Union members say they aren’t worried.“President Biden and Vice-President Harris have been pretty clear and they will follow through,” Hall said.Harris has got the message: “US Steel should remain American-owned and American-operated,” she told a rally in Pittsburgh earlier this month.David Burritt, the CEO of US Steel, has warned of consequences if the deal is blocked. He says the company would “largely pivot away” from its blast furnace production in the region, and move its headquarters out of Pittsburgh.“We want elected leaders and other key decision makers to recognize the benefits of the deal as well as the unavoidable consequences if the deal fails,” Burritt said last month.That threat has further inflamed tensions. Furko said it reminds him of his young son flipping over the Monopoly board when he loses: “That’s really what’s going on here – if this deal doesn’t go through, then they’re going to flip over the Monopoly board.”Asked about US Steel’s claims that it will revitalize the region if the sale goes through, workers told the Guardian that there are no guarantees that the investment will be in Mon Valley. People would be “foolish” to believe that, Vereb said.That was echoed outside the Wilner’s pub. Fez recalled the pub’s heyday, when “you couldn’t get in there at 7am because it was so packed”, and the floor was littered with quarter wrappers from the slot machines.On a Monday afternoon around shift change time, a group of about a dozen retirees sat around the bar. They blamed US Steel for the region’s slowdown, and while they say they do not expect Biden or Trump to save the city, they have even less confidence that US Steel and a Japanese company will turn it around.“They lie all the time, and I don’t trust either one of them,” said Jack, a retiree who worked for US Steel for more than 30 years, who declined to use his last name.‘He gets credit for that’The political price that the Biden-Harris administration could pay for allowing the deal to go through can be seen in the 2016 election’s wake.Before 2016, the region was largely Democratic. But when Clinton made the comment about the clean energy industry putting coalminers and barons out of business, “Things turned on a dime,” Vereb said. Her borough of 900 was once about 80% Democrats. It’s now about 75% Republican, she estimates.About 75% of those working at US Steel’s Clairton Mill Works, several union leaders estimate, support Trump, and there is little Democrats can do to win back many of them.The situation is also complicated by US Steel’s intense campaign to convince workers that the sale will save their jobs. The company sends regular emails, holds meetings, takes out ads in newspapers and makes their case to reporters.“They say: ‘If you don’t support us, then we’re gonna shut this place down, and if that happens you can thank your union leadership,’” said Rob Hutchison, president of Local 1219. “When [rank and file] have that threat in their face eight to 12 hours per day, then it starts to become something they think about.”That also presents another political risk: if the Biden-Harris administration were to block the deal, and US Steel shuts down a plant, Democrats may again lose some voters.However, so far, the controversial move seems to be paying dividends.“I don’t know if the average Joe is thinking about CFIUS or is that in the weeds, but I think from a macro level, people see it, that it’s Biden supporting the union workers, and he gets credit for that,” Hall said. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Harris accuses Trump of playing ‘political games’ during US border visit

      by

      Kamala Harris accused Donald Trump of “playing political games” on immigration – his signature issue – as the vice-president sought to turn one of her biggest vulnerabilities into a political strength during a visit to the US-Mexico border on Friday.Speaking in the Arizona border town of Douglas, Harris declared the US both a “sovereign nation” and a “country of immigrants” and said as president, she would strengthen controls at the southern border, while working “to fix our broken system of immigration”.“I reject the false choice that suggests we must choose either between securing our border and creating a system that is orderly, safe and humane,” Harris said. “We can and we must do both.”She hammered Trump for derailing a sweeping bipartisan package that would have overhauled the federal immigration system, while providing additional resources to help hire more border patrol agents.“It should be in effect today, producing results, in real time right now,” Harris said, speaking on a stage framed by American flags and large blue posters that read “border security and stability”. “He prefers to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”After that bill collapsed, the Biden administration announced new rules to temporarily halt asylum processing at the US southern border. Since then, arrests for border crossings between ports of entry have plummeted. In July, arrests dipped below levels not seen since Trump’s final months in office in 2020, though they ticked up slightly in August.As president, Harris said, she would take “further action to keep the border closed”, including stiffening the punishments for those who cross between ports of entry. She emphasized her support for “humane” and “orderly” policies, reminding Arizonans of the measures Trump took during his first term to curb illegal immigration.“He separated families, he ripped toddlers out of their mothers’ arms, put children in cages and tried to end protection of Dreamers,” she said in Douglas, a blue dot in the overwhelmingly red Cochise county.Before her remarks, Harris walked a stretch of barrier constructed during the Obama administration. In the sweltering triple-degree heat, she received a briefing from customs and border protection officials on efforts to stop the flow of fentanyl across the border.She also stopped by the Raul H Castro port of entry in Douglas, across from Agua Prieta, Mexico, which is slated to be expanded and modernized with grants from the bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law by Joe Biden.“They’ve got a tough job and they need, rightly, support to do their job,” Harris said afterward.Speaking to supporters at a manufacturing plant in Walker, Michigan, Trump boasted that Harris was “getting killed on the border” and blamed the Biden administration’s border policies for fueling high levels of migration during the first three years of his presidency.“It’s a crime what she did,” he said. “There’s no greater act of disloyalty than to extinguish the sovereignty of your own nation.”In her remarks, Harris said she understood the unique challenges and needs facing border communities like the one in Douglas, having served as the attorney general of neighboring California. She recalled touring trafficking tunnels used by smugglers and touted her work prosecuting international gangs and criminal organizations that smuggle guns, drugs and people across the border.Republicans would rather discuss her more recent assignment, as vice-president during a period of record migration when she was officially tasked with addressing the root causes of people coming north from Central America. On Friday, Republicans misleadingly accused her of being an absentee “border tsar” whose policies led to the situation at the border.Voters in Arizona consistently rank immigration – Trump’s signature issue – as a top concern this election cycle, often second only to the economy. A sizeable share of voters trust Trump more on immigration and border security, but Harris’s campaign believes it has made progress softening Democrats’ deficit on an issue seen as one of their biggest electoral vulnerabilities.The campaign has blanketed the airwaves with ads designed to blunt Trump’s attacks over her immigration record. On Friday, it launched a new ad in Arizona and other battleground states highlighting her pledge to hire thousands more border agents and stop fentanyl trafficking and human smuggling. “We need a leader with a real plan to fix the border,” a voiceover says.Less than six weeks before election day, polls show a tight race in Arizona, one of seven battleground states that will likely decide the election and the only one that touches the southern border.A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll of swing states found Harris with a small lead in Arizona, while a New York Times/Siena College poll released on Monday found Trump opening a five-percentage point lead over Harris, marking a significant improvement from August when he trailed the vice-president by the same margin.Biden won Arizona by just over 10,400 votes in 2020, becoming the first Democrat to win the south-west state since Bill Clinton in 1996.Kris Mayes, the attorney general, who accompanied Harris throughout her visit on Friday, urged Arizonans not to sit the election out.“Races in Arizona can be close, take it from me,” Mayes said. In 2022, the Democrat won her race by 280 votes. More

    • 275 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Harris to call for tougher border action on Arizona visit; Trump threatens to prosecute Google for ‘bad stories’ – as it happened

      by

      Kamala Harris has arrived at the US-Mexico border in Arizona, where the vice-president was briefed by two customs and border protection officials.Harris stepped out of her motorcade on a dusty desert road outside Douglas, Arizona, and shook hands with two men, the Associated Press reported. Harris chatted with the uniformed agents as they walked along the rust-colored border wall in temperatures that neared 100F (38C).The section of the wall Harris is viewing was constructed during Barack Obama’s administration, in 2011-2012, according to the White House pool reporter.Harris’s conversation with the CBP officers was not audible to the pool reporter on scene. A White House official told him that Harris had “heard directly from CBP officials on their efforts to combat traffickers and transnational criminal organizations”.Kamala Harris delivered a speech on immigration policy, laying out the balance she wants to strike: what’s important to her about the US immigration system is that “it works in an orderly way, that it is humane and that it makes our country stronger”.Donald Trump threatened to prosecute Google for “displaying bad stories” about him. In the middle of a busy day of presidential campaign events in Michigan, a key swing state, Donald Trump posted on his social media platform that, if elected president, he plans to prosecute Google for, he alleged, “only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J Trump” while “only revealing Good stories about Kamala Harris”.And, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the state of Alabama for last-minute voter purges. The justice department is suing Alabama for what it alleges is an illegal attempt to remove voters from the rolls too close to November’s election.Here’s what else happened today:

      Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke after his meeting in New York with Donald Trump and said the two men had a “very productive” talk. Ukraine’s president said the two “thoroughly reviewed” the situation in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion more than two-and-a-half years ago, Reuters reports.

      In a video address on Friday, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, spoke of the indictment of three Iranian nationals for their role in a “wide-ranging hacking campaign sponsored by the government of Iran”. Wray said: “These individuals, employees of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, targeted a US political campaign, current and former US officials, and members of the American media, all in an attempt to sow discord and undermine our democracy.”

      Kamala Harris arrived in Tucson, Arizona, from Washington DC for election campaign events, including a visit to the US-Mexico border.

      Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are tied among voters in North Carolina, a new poll shows. The CNN poll, released today and conducted from 20 to 25 September, shows Harris and Trump both receiving 48% of support among likely voters in North Carolina.

      Eric Adams, the New York City mayor, pleaded not guilty to corruption charges when he appeared in court in Manhattan. He denies federal bribery and fraud charges. The mayor’s arraignment began just after noon local time at a federal courthouse in New York. It is the first time that a sitting mayor of the city has been charged with crimes.
      After Kamala Harris spoke about her policies related to the southern border during a speech in Douglas, Arizona, the National Border Patrol Council, the labor union representing the US border patrol, said that Harris “has ignored the border problem she created for over three years”.“She goes down there for 20 minutes for a photo op and decides to repeat some of the things the NPBC has said before. But again, where has she been the last 3 1/2 years?” the union wrote on X, repeating a Trump talking point.Google followed up on Donald Trump’s claim that the search engine is illegally using a system to only reveal bad stories about him and good stories about Kamala Harris by issuing a statement:
      Both campaign websites consistently appear at the top of Search for relevant and common search queries,.
      Following up on a report by Fox News, Google continued: “This report looked at a single rare search term on a single day a few weeks ago, and even for that search, both candidates’ websites ranked in the top results on Google.”Hugo Lowell in Washington dug into these claims:The progressive advocacy group Center for American Progress Action Fund reacted to Harris’s speech tonight.“Donald Trump’s failed leadership fanned the flames of hate and did nothing to actually fix the problems at the border,” the group posted on X.During her speech, Harris said Trump made the challenges at the border worse.“He separated families, he ripped toddlers out of their mothers’ arms, put children in cages, and tried to end protection of Dreamers,” Harris said.Here’s some more in-depth reporting from the Associated Press, capturing how the reality of what is happening at the border has changed dramatically in the past few months, even as the political rhetoric (Trump’s in particular) really hasn’t:
      As midnight nears, the lights of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, fill the sky on the silent banks of the Rio Grande. A few months ago, hundreds of asylum-seeking families, including crying toddlers, waited for an opening to crawl through razor wire from Juarez into El Paso.
      No one is waiting there now.
      Nearly 500 miles away, in the border city of Eagle Pass, large groups of migrants that were once commonplace are rarely seen on the riverbanks these days.
      In McAllen, at the other end of the Texas border, two Border Patrol agents scan fields for five hours without encountering a single migrant.
      It’s a return to relative calm after an unprecedented surge of immigrants through the southern border in recent years. But no one would know that listening to Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump talking about border enforcement at dueling presidential campaign events. And no one would know from the rate at which Texas is spending on a border crackdown called Operation Lone Star – $11 billion since 2021.
      Read the full Associated Press article here.If you’re looking to put both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris’s claims about what’s happening at the US-Mexico border in context, this article from August is a good place to start:Here’s how Hamed Aleaziz, a longtime immigration reporter, summed up the substance of Harris’s immigration policy today for the New York Times:
      In a sign of how the politics of immigration have changed, Harris is promoting a policy that resembles a Trump-era effort to ban asylum for those who cross the border illegally. Harris says that she understands that people are desperate to come into the United States, but that the system must be ‘orderly.’
      In the same speech, Harris slammed Trump for separating immigrant children from their families and putting “children in cages”, and called for a gentler rhetoric about immigrants, and a focus on solutions, rather than blame and attacks.Harris is getting big cheers from a Democratic audience as she shifts from talking about tough enforcement and Congress’s failures to pass immigration reform to talking about legal paths to citizenship for immigrants who have been in the US for years, the importance of helping “Dreamers” – undocumented young people who came to the US as children – and the many contributions of immigrant farm workers.Harris is repeating a central part of her immigration rhetoric: that Donald Trump deliberately torpedoed a bipartisan immigration reform bill because “he prefers to run on a problem than fixing a problem.”Harris’s campaign, like the Biden administration previously, is highlighting Mitch McConnell’s own remarks about Trump’s influence on the legislation.The White House has been using this approach to the immigration issue since early this year: “Congressional Republicans do not care about securing the border or fixing America’s broken immigration system,” Biden said in a statement in early 2024. “If they did, they would have voted for the toughest border enforcement in history.”As Kamala Harris begins her speech on immigration policy, she lays out the balance she wants to strike: what’s important to her about the US immigration system is that “it works in an orderly way, that it is humane and that it makes our country stronger”.Among the people who introduced Kamala Harris, who is beginning her remarks on immigration and border policy, was Theresa Guerrero, a woman from Tucson, Arizona, who has become an activist after her son, Jacob, died of a fentanyl overdose.Trump’s campaign also previously featured remarks, during the Republican national convention, from a parent of a child lost to fentanyl.The Harris campaign is already attacking Donald Trump using a video of his comments from Warren, Michigan, tonight, talking about tariffs and how prosperous the US was in the 1890s.Trump has been making the case for high taxes on imported goods, which Congressional Republicans who oppose tariffs hope they can “water down” if he’s elected, the Washington Post reported yesterday.Mark Kelly, the US senator from Arizona, has been shepherding Harris during her visit to the border town of Douglas on Friday.Kelly began his remarks by sending greetings from his wife, the former Arizona representative Gabby Giffords, setting off a round of cheers for the beloved former representative.He retold the story of negotiating the bipartisan border deal in Congress only to see Trump torpedo the package by pressuring Republican senators to reject it.“This is the most hypocritical thing I’ve seen in three-and-a-half years in Washington,” Kelly said, calling the plan “the deal that Arizona needs”. Harris has vowed to revive the bill, if elected, and said she would have signed it into law.Kelly ended his remarks by saying that the playbook for winning in November was simple: hard work.“This is not rocket science. If it was, I could help,” the former astronaut quipped, as he campaigned for the vice-president.Biden embraced a more Trump-like border policy. Trump still claims Harris is weak.Some context, as we wait for Harris to give a campaign speech in the border town of Douglas, Arizona, where she is expected to call for tougher action at the US border with Mexico:

      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris made criticism of Trump’s harsh immigration policies part of their bid for the White House in 2020. But the Democratic administration has increasingly moved right on immigration, leading to criticisms that, though Biden certainly does not verbally attack and revile immigrants as Trump does, Biden’s actual policy regarding the US-Mexico border made him a kind of Trump 2.0.

      This past June, Biden signed an executive order limiting the number of asylum seekers admitted at the US-Mexico border, a policy that that split Democrats, and that some advocates said “will only cause suffering.” The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups sued the Biden administration over the policy.

      Since June, migrant crossings have plunged, though Democrats are asking: at what price?

      Harris, who supported decriminalizing undocumented border crossings in 2019 during her brief presidential run, has moved away from that stance in her new campaign, also striking a more law-and-order tone, which she is expected to continue in her border policy speech today.

      In contrast with Biden or Harris, Trump’s current immigration policy is a pledge to carry out “mass deportations”, which he has promised will be the largest in US history. That is expected to include a legally dubious roundup of up to 11 million people, “deployments of military and police units, and the creation of vast detention camps along the southern border”.

      Trump has made political attacks against Harris, blaming her for the border crisis, a central part of his campaign against her. Polls have suggested US voters trust Trump more than Harris on immigration.

      The global picture: in the US, as in the UK and Europe, wealthy democracies have spent decades trying to deter immigrants from coming across their borders to seek a better life by making border crossings increasingly surveilled, militarized and deadly. This has not, broadly speaking, stopped people from continuing to migrate in hopes of finding safer lives for themselves and their families, particularly as wars, climate change and other crises provide reasons to seek asylum elsewhere. But deterrence policies do mean that children and adult attempting to migrate are more likely to die because of the conditions that wealthy countries create at their borders, in hopes of persuading people that it’s too dangerous to migrate.
      A Reuters/Ipsos poll last month found that 43% of voters favored Trump on the issue of immigration and 33% favored Harris, while 24% either didn’t know, chose someone else or declined to answer, Reuters reports.Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s town hall in Warren, Michigan, is running about an hour behind schedule, the New York Times reports. (The Detroit Free Press has a livestream here, should you wish to follow along.)PBS also has a livestream of Kamala Harris’s expected campaign remarks on border policy in Douglas, Arizona, that will go live in about a half-hour.Asked what she had learned from her conversation with customs and border protection officials, Kamala Harris told today’s White House pool reporter:
      They’ve got a tough job and they need, rightly, support to do their job. They are very dedicated. And so I’m here to talk with them about what we can continue to do to support them. And also thank them for the hard work they do. More

    • 238 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      It’s not just Trump v Harris: America’s men and women are also locked in battle now | Jonathan Freedland

      by

      I hesitate to give JD Vance any ideas, but if American women were denied the vote, Donald Trump would be restored to the White House in a landslide. Similarly, if men were removed from the franchise, Kamala Harris would be swept into the Oval Office in an even bigger earthquake. As it is, the two are clashing in an election marked by a gulf so wide, the phrase “gender gap” doesn’t do it justice. In ways that go deeper than mere politics, and with implications for the world beyond the US, the presidential election is increasingly looking like a war between men and women.The numbers are stunning. An NBC poll this week found men favour Trump over Harris by 12 points, 52% to 40%. Among women, Harris leads Trump by 21 points: 58% to 37%. Put the two together and you have a gender chasm of 33 points. Men may not be from Mars and women may not be from Venus, but when it comes to choosing a US president, they are on different planets.What explains it? The most obvious answer is that Trump’s record, including a court ruling that he had committed rape and his own admission of serial sexual assault, boasting that he grabbed women “by the pussy”, makes him repellent to tens of millions of women, none of that reduced by appointing a sidekick who speaks of “childless cat ladies”. Similar explanatory power attaches to the 2022 decision by the supreme court, in the Dobbs case, to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion. Since then, it’s been up to the 50 states whether to grant or withhold that right from women, and 22 of them have chosen to deny it. That shift is on Trump, who nominated three of the six supreme court judges who made the Dobbs decision, an achievement of which he has said he is “proud”.But while the move delighted Trump’s evangelical Christian supporters, it has cost him dear. Dobbs did not just anger American women, it mobilised them. In the midterm elections of 2022, as high inflation fuelled disaffection with Joe Biden, Republicans assumed they would ride a “red wave” to victory. That wave never came, in part because women, furious at the court’s ruling and Republicans’ part in it, turned out in big numbers to vote against them. And while Biden has never been fully comfortable speaking about abortion, Dobbs is widely regarded as the moment Harris found her voice as a national figure.Still, the long-running battle over abortion rights only explains one side of the gender divide. Less obvious is that, as much as women are pulling away from Trump, large numbers of men, especially young men, are drawn towards him.Here, the numbers are even more striking. Attitude surveys show that women between the ages of 18 and 29 are the most progressive group in US history. Meanwhile, a majority of men the same age back Donald Trump. A poll of six battleground states last month found among gen Z voters a gender gulf of 51 points.Part of it is explained by Trump’s trade in swaggering machismo, offering a kind of cartoonish manliness. In recent months that part of his act has only got louder. His supporters always wore T-shirts showing Trump’s face superimposed on a ripped, Rambo-style body, but now they have the image of his bloodied face, fist pumped in the air, seconds after the assassination attempt on him in July, as he urged his followers to “Fight, fight, fight!”There is nothing subtle about this. At his party convention in Milwaukee he was introduced by wrestler Hulk Hogan and the man behind the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Bear in mind that one study of young people around the world found that while young women were most concerned about issues such as “sexual harassment, domestic violence, child abuse and mental health”, young men were more focused on “competition, bravery, and honour”.In his own crude way, Trump speaks to that. I saw it for myself earlier this year in New Hampshire, where I encountered young male voters proudly declaring they were voting for “Donald J Trump”, all but saluting as they pronounced that middle initial.The performative masculinity includes a strong element of defiance. Trump’s disregard for the norms and etiquette that govern most politicians shows a contempt for strictures that are seen as constraining men in particular. When he breaks the rules, it’s often men who cheer because they feel those rules shackle them too – and they’re sick of being told off. As one 20-year-old Trump voter complained to the New York Times, US society no longer “lets boys be boys”. As he put it: “Men my age, from a very young age we were told, ‘You’re not supposed to do this, you’re not supposed to do that, you’re just supposed to sit here and be quiet.’” Trump is anything but quiet.Running alongside all this is the strong conviction that increased diversity and advances for women pose a threat to men. A third of men who back Trump believe that gains for women have come at men’s expense, a figure that rises to 40% among men under-50 who support the former president. This resentment surfaces in the casual misogyny that is a Trump tic, and which informs the “manosphere” that he is doing so much to cultivate: the realm of podcasters and social media influencers that delights in a blend of old school sexism and mocking humour that fits Trump perfectly.Toxic as those voices might be, they succeed because the resentment they feed on is real. If plenty of young American men feel they’re getting left behind, that’s because on multiple key measures they are. As the scholar Richard Reeves has set out, American boys are trailing behind girls whether in readiness to start elementary school or graduation from university. Men have lost their place as the default family breadwinner, and watched as many of the jobs they once regarded as their own, including manual work requiring no degree, have vanished. When it comes to finding a partner, or even just having friends, men lag behind.These are trends affecting all men, which might help explain why Trump has made unexpected inroads not only with non-graduate white men, but also with men of colour, especially the young in both groups. They feel beleaguered – and see in Trump someone who sees them.Now, there’s a good chance that the gender chasm will ultimately help Harris. Women tend to vote in greater numbers than men, and they’re with her. But polls have a habit of underestimating Trump and there could be an army of young men, out of pollsters’ reach, who feel that a woman in the Oval Office would be one feminist advance too many. The Taylor Swift endorsement is welcome, but the Harris campaign could do with a thumbs-up from someone with serious influence over young men. It doesn’t help that the “who we serve” page of the Democrats’ own website features a long list of groups, including women, but makes no equivalent offer to men.I don’t expect any of this came up when Keir Starmer met Trump this week, but there is a warning here that should sound far beyond America’s shores. As one US thinktank puts it: “History is littered with examples of nations suffering from the consequences of young men finding themselves idle without purpose.” The gender gap is becoming dangerously wide. It must not become an abyss.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

    • 188 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘She’s our vision of the future’: Black Nevadans rallying for Harris hope to make history

      by

      Las Vegas’s historic Westside has long been celebrated for its Black community’s entrepreneurship, activism and resilience. The neighborhood became “historic” when America’s first racially integrated casino, the Moulin Rouge, opened in 1955, employing Black card dealers and chorus line dancers, and welcoming singers such as Sammy Davis Jr and Ella Fitzgerald to not only perform, but to dine and gamble. Today, campaign organizers for Kamala Harris hope the community will play a history-making role again in November.The 2024 presidential election could hinge on how Nevada swings. To win the key battleground state, Democrats will have to run up the score in Las Vegas to overcome deficits in rural counties and the evenly divided electorate in Reno.About 10% of the state’s population identifies as Black or African American, a majority of whom live in the Las Vegas Valley. According to the Harris campaign, this subset is fired up, and turnout and enthusiasm in the critical Democratic constituency may make a difference.“It’s been pandemonium,” says Ishmael Carroll, the campaign’s regional political director focused on outreach to southern Nevada’s Black community. “I’ve been inundated with calls, texts, emails. It’s complete excitement. In previous elections I had to go find people. People are calling me now first thing in the morning, late at night – ‘How can I be involved? How can I participate? What can I do to help?’“I think they identify the importance of this moment in our history,” Carroll adds.Lya Harvey, a 52-year-old nurse practitioner, is one of those first-time volunteers. Though she always votes, she had never attended rallies, volunteered or donated to a campaign before, she said.“I’m really not that into politics, but given the situation right now between the two parties, I think it’s necessary to be out here getting involved,” she says. She’s tired of the “mean and nasty” attacks that have divided communities and contributed to dysfunction in Washington.View image in fullscreen“We’ve always had Democrats and Republicans and different views,” Harvey adds. “But right, I don’t think we can deal with any problems until we deal with [the division].”Nevada’s winner has gone on to the White House in 10 of the past 12 presidential elections. Democrats enjoy a winning streak in the battleground state that goes back four election cycles, to Barack Obama’s double-digit victory in 2008. But each of those wins was tighter than the last, and though Joe Biden narrowly defeated Donald Trump here in 2020, Trump held a significant lead in the polls of their expected rematch, contributing to Biden’s decision to end his re-election bid for lack of a viable path to victory.Harris’s Sun belt strategy to challenge Trump in North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada has its strongest chance of a win here, according to current polling estimates.Daniele Monroe-Moreno, a Nevada assemblywoman and chair of the Nevada state Democratic party, says the reasons for Harris’s appeal in the Westside community are multifold. It’s a diverse city with multicultural families that see themselves, their friends and neighbors in Harris’s narrative, she said, which matches their “vision of the future”.“We’re Black, Native American, Hispanic and AAPI all in my family,” Monroe-Moreno shares. “But we’re also straight, gay, bi, Christian, Jewish and Muslim, so when I talk about ‘the community’, I talk about all of us, because it takes all of us working together for a better future. And I believe the excitement we’re seeing with Kamala Harris is that there are so many families like mine that see her and Tim Walz, who is like that guy next door who mows the lawn for the senior who can’t do it any more … They see Kamala and Tim as people they know and can personally attach themselves to.”Volunteers say they’ve been encouraged by voters’ responses to Harris and Walz’s proposals. The anxieties that Las Vegas organizers and volunteers “hear at the doors”, as they say, are consistent all across Nevada. The state’s education system isn’t preparing children for success. Rent and home prices are through the roof. Essential items like food and gas are frustratingly expensive.Harris’s effort to distance herself from criticisms of the Biden administration’s handling of the economy has included plans that seem tailored for door-to-door canvassers to assuage skeptical voters. There is the promise to build 3m new homes over four years. Tax credits for parents and small business owners. A plan to investigate corporations that engage in price-gouging on groceries.There’s also clear excitement for a younger, vibes-ier candidate who provides a striking contrast to Trump. There’s fresh hope that she can actually win a race that once looked like a Democratic death march. And then there’s the opportunity to shatter what Hillary Clinton often referred to as the “ultimate glass ceiling”.Harris rarely acknowledges the chance to overcome centuries of biases and oppression that have prevented a woman of color from representing one of the two major political parties as the presidential nominee. She may fear hearing the same attack lines Clinton faced about being driven more by personal legacy than by the kitchen table issues voters ultimately prioritize. Still, to borrow a famous Bidenism: this is a big fucking deal.Being one ballot away from electing the first Black Indian American female president has those communities fired up, along with Democrats who value diverse representation in positions of power.“You can see she actually cares about people,” Harvey, the first-time volunteer, says, “and being a Black woman – and I’m a Black woman – she understands that it’s about a lot more than just being a politician.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHer T-shirt suggests a new slogan: “kaMALA: Make America Laugh Again”. If Harris succeeds, historians will note that joy and humor proved surprisingly effective in galvanizing support against the perceived threat of Maga authoritarianism.There are nonpartisan voters in Las Vegas’s historic Westside who would welcome courtship from Republicans. Brian Harris, 64, founder of the Independent Black Voters group on Facebook, says: “It’s not about the party, it’s about the agenda.”There’s one problem, however. “Until Republicans get rid of the white nationalism, I can’t support them,” he says. “If they stop being the party of Trump and become conservative, I’ll talk to them. And if there are good people, they may get endorsed by us, but it comes down to us picking what’s best for us.”What about the complaints that Democrats only show up every four years when they need the Black community’s vote?Carroll, the Democrats’ regional director, says he grew up in the historic Westside and has been organizing here for years. All the campaign’s outreach teams, he adds, are led by individuals with deep community ties and in partnership with neighborhood non-profits and small business owners who host events.Those include Souls to the Polls gatherings in the Baptist community, neighborhood block parties and a weekly roundtable discussion at the Westside Oasis bar and restaurant.A registered independent, Terry Adams, Westside Oasis’s owner, participates in these discussions in which voters air concerns, analyze the issues and share research on news-making items like Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s proposed agenda for a second Trump term.View image in fullscreenThough the event is called Black Voices of Las Vegas, Adams proudly shares that often a majority of the attendees are white women. “This is for everybody,” he says, adding that it’s his civic duty to provide space for the event. “It’s the principles of the United States of America that matter. That’s what everybody strives for.”Longtime Democratic activists are also turning out with excitement to rally support for a Harris presidency. La Toya Laymon, 49, volunteers in every election. She was raised to understand that if you don’t like the way things are, you need to step up and get involved, she said. Her mother was a freedom fighter in Mississippi who was arrested at age 14 for demonstrating for equal rights and detained for three days afterward in a boxcar.“How could I not fight?” Laymon says. “I am her walking dream.”As a human resources professional, she feels frustrated by efforts to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs. As a woman, she feels disturbed that the right to an abortion was won and lost during her lifetime.“A lot of people don’t understand the gravity [of elections] because they are reaping the benefits of people like my mother and my grandparents,” Laymon says. “This election is just because we didn’t do the job in 2016, and now everyone is like, ‘OK, who is going to get us back on track to democracy? Kamala Harris is that person.’” More