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      White House blasts Elon Musk for X post about Biden and Harris assassination

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      The White House lambasted Elon Musk for tweeting on Sunday, “Why they want to kill Donald Trump? And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,” alongside an emoji face with a raised eyebrow.The president’s office issued a statement Monday that read: “Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about. This rhetoric is irresponsible.” The statement added that there should be “no place for political violence or for any violence ever in our country”.The Secret Service also said on Monday it was aware of a post by the billionaire on the X social network. Musk, who owns the platform, formerly known as Twitter, made the post after a man suspected of apparently planning to assassinate Donald Trump at his golf course in West Palm Beach was arrested on Sunday.Musk, himself a Trump supporter, was quickly criticized by X users from the left and right, who said they were concerned his words to his nearly 200m X followers could incite violence against Biden and Harris.The tech billionaire deleted the post but not before the Secret Service, tasked with protecting current and former presidents, vice-presidents and other notable officials, took notice.“The Secret Service is aware of the social media post made by Elon Musk and as a matter of practice, we do not comment on matters involving protective intelligence,” a spokesperson said in an email. “We can say, however, that the Secret Service investigates all threats related to our protectees.”The spokesperson declined to specify whether the agency had reached out to Musk, who seemed to suggest in follow-up posts that he had been making a joke.“Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on X,” he later wrote. “Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text.”Harris, a Democrat running against the Republican nominee Trump in the 2024 election, and Biden both issued statements on Sunday night expressing relief that Trump had not been harmed. More

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      Should we take Elon Musk’s and Taylor Swift’s political endorsements seriously? | Siva Vaidhyanathan

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      What should we make of the fact that the richest person in the world has joined forces with Donald Trump and promises now to serve the United States as some sort of czar of government “efficiency”? And what should we make of the world’s biggest pop star endorsing Kamala Harris for president?Why should it matter that these mega-celebrities tell us what they want from politics and government?The morning after Taylor Swift endorsed Harris for president, Elon Musk defended his new buddy, Trump, in the most disturbing and bizarre fashion, referring to the Republican obsession with women who have chosen not to have children and have cats. “Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life,” Musk, who has impregnated at least one of his employees and has reportedly propositioned others, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.Swift, in contrast, has declared over the past four years that she cares deeply about women’s issues and has motivated her followers around the world to register to vote and get active in politics. Her engagement has been serious and sincere. Swift, more than any other celebrity, has the opportunity to assume the role of the champion of democracy in America. She writes and sings about the personal yet connects the personal to the political through the descriptions of power and mistreatment in relationships. To many, the connections between power imbalances and mistreatment in personal relationships and those in society at large are strong yet implicit. Swift has moved in recent years to make them explicit.So Swift’s endorsement is not so much about swaying undecided voters through her charisma. That’s a myth. Rather her endorsement is about harnessing all the activist energy she has been building over the years and focusing it on getting young people registered to vote and willing to volunteer for a cause. She is expanding the electorate and infusing it with optimism and purpose. That’s a blessing to anyone who cares about the fate of democracy in the United States.In stark contrast, the other billionaire in this spat has done everything he can to undermine belief in government by the people and for the people. His long hostility to safety and securities regulation makes sense, given his role as a corporate leader. His deep-seated racism and sexism have become even more vocal since he found common cause with Trump and other Republicans. Musk wants a smaller set of political actors in the world. They should be his buddies, all men, and all who assume they know what’s best for the world. It does not help that he is neither smart nor serious about policy nor politics.Yet the nominee of one of the two major American political parties has declared he wants Musk to assume a powerful role in the next government. We could approach this question by examining Musk’s record as a corporate leader, which is spotty at best. We could address Musk’s habits of exaggeration and prevarication, which are significant. We could wonder how a person who is supposed to be running five companies already might have the time to also head up a major government initiative.Or we could just conclude that neither Musk nor Trump are serious people with any idea how to execute policy, let alone devote time, energy and thought to the process. That’s not a reason to suspend concern about this partnership. Musk’s threats to the United States go far beyond any potential office he might hold in the future.Policy is not for amateurs. We learned this the hard way during the first Trump administration, when the few veteran policymakers who were willing to keep the government operating were one by one pushed out of power by Trump or his cronies.To change the way any federal government office operates, one must generate a feasible proposal and seek affirmation and criticism from stakeholders. Those stakeholders might include corporations and their lobbyists, unions and their lobbyists, and public interest groups that range from the National Rifle Association to the Sierra Club. They also include elements of the executive branch who might have to implement that policy. And, of course, plenty of lawyers and economists must weigh in. Often, if generated by an office of the executive branch, the public must be invited to submit comments on a draft of a policy statement.And, once all of that happens, policy changes are subject to court scrutiny if an interested party decides to sue over it. In other words, it takes a long time and a lot of effort to change even small things that the government does. It takes skill, knowledge, diligence and a whole lot of patience to enact policy.It’s not work appropriate for the flippant, unserious or easily distracted.Now, that’s how it’s done in normal times. We can assume that normal times would come to a permanent end in the United States if 78-year-old Donald Trump takes the oath of office again on 20 January 2025. He has promised radical change in the basic workings of government, down to promising to ignore or “terminate” the constitution if he does not get his way.How he would do this is unclear. We can assume that he would have some elements willing to use force to wrest control of the government away from processes and the limits of law. And we know that Trump has managed to turn the federal courts into instruments of his own interests. All of that would take work, of course. The only thing that saved the government from complete breakdown during Trump’s term in office was his inability to focus and follow through on his indignation and ambition. The friction of bureaucracy turned out to be one of the last bastions holding up the fragile republic.The best Trump can hope to accomplish is chaos and breakdown along with massive corruption that would flow as the failsafes of oversight and accountability collapse.That’s what makes the whole Musk partnership so absurd. Assume for a moment that Musk were a serious, committed, competent leader and manager. Under the Trump style of administration, what possibility would there be for him to discipline a sprawling federal agency such as the Department of Health and Human Services or the Department of Defense?It would not matter. Again, it’s folly to take this effort seriously as an effort to do what Trump or Musk say it would do. Musk, like Trump, is only interested in how any effort could smooth the way for his own benefit. Over the past decade or more, Musk has found his various companies, especially Tesla, entangled with regulators over issues ranging from safety to securities violations.His leadership of SpaceX and its subsidiary Starlink, which provides satellite internet access to many millions of people around the world including essential elements of the military and government of Ukraine, has come under scrutiny as Musk has grown closer to the Russian view of the invasion of Ukraine. SpaceX is a major defense contractor. The United States government already depends on SpaceX way too much, and SpaceX depends on the United States government for much of its revenue.Having Musk involved at the highest levels of a government that is supposed to be curbing his excesses and protecting the public interest from the worst externalities of his companies is beyond a conflict of interest. It’s naked corruption. And that is the point. It’s positively Putinesque.Musk is, of course, unlikely to even assume such an office or hold a meeting if he did. He does not have the ability to focus these days. His incessant tweeting at all hours is increasingly unhinged from reality. His drug use, according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal, has reached a concerning level at which investors in Tesla are worried about his ability to protect their interests. He seems not to be putting in the time to do his current jobs well, even the one at Tesla that supplies him with most of his wealth.Musk’s closeness to Trump is itself a cause for concern. Even without Musk in office, Trump would probably order his cronies to suspend regulatory scrutiny of SpaceX and Tesla. Musk depends on the goodwill of the Xi regime in China to keep parts flowing for Tesla and to keep China open as a market for the cars. Musk needs the new extremely rightwing government of Argentina to remain friendly to the United States to maintain access to new lithium mines for Tesla batteries. And Musk infamously owes the Saudi royal family for funding his disastrous purchase of Twitter.This level of entanglement with troublesome and oppressive foreign governments makes Musk a security risk to the United States whether inside or outside government, whether Trump or Harris runs the government.The choice for America’s future could not be starker, especially when we contrast the roles, goals and personalities of the two highest-profile celebrities active this fall. Swift offers a serious and sincere opportunity for engagement. Musk offers snark and selfishness. Yet for some reason, too many people consider Musk, with his wealth, worthy of pontification on matters of public policy. Maybe it’s time we took Swift and her followers more seriously. The future is theirs.

      Siva Vaidhyanathan is a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and the author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy More

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      Violence and instability have become a feature, not a bug, of US political life

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      It has happened again. Another serene and sunny weekend. Another lone suspect wielding a rifle. Another apparent bid to assassinate Donald Trump. And a nation hurtling into uncharted territory 50 days from a presidential election.On Sunday, Secret Service agents opened fire after seeing a man with a rifle near Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club in Florida while the Republican candidate was playing. The suspect fled in an SUV and was later apprehended by local law enforcement.The FBI discovered in the bushes two backpacks, an AK-47-style firearm with a scope and a GoPro camera – suggesting a plan to kill Trump on his own golf course and film it for all the world to witness.The incident was the latest shocking moment in a campaign year marked by unprecedented upheaval and fears of violence and civil unrest. It came nine weeks after Trump was shot during an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a bullet grazed his ear and a supporter was killed. The former president’s bloodied, defiant response, urging supporters to “Fight!”, prompted headline writers to ask: Did Donald Trump just win the election?But a week later, Joe Biden withdrew from the race and was quickly replaced by Kamala Harris. The assassination attempt faded from a hectic news cycle and earned only a passing mention at Tuesday’s debate. Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump aide, complained at the recent Moms for Liberty conference: “We’re seven weeks away and it’s as if it never happened. It’s been memory-holed, more effectively than George Orwell could ever have imagined.”It is true that what happened that day in Pennsylvania should be remembered, not for partisan reasons, nor as evidence that Trump is protected by God, but because of what it resurfaced: a nation with a long history of political violence bracing for what has been dubbed “a tinderbox election”.Danger and instability have become a feature not a bug of US political life. A white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to the death of a civil rights activist. A mob of angry Trump supporters storming the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. A hammer attack on House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul in their home. Countless threats of violence to members of Congress and judges.A new documentary film, The Last Republican, features sinister voicemails left for congressman Adam Kinzinger, a Trump critic who sat on the House January 6 committee. One says: “You little cocksucker. Are you Liz Cheney’s fag-hag? You two cock-sucking little bitches. We’re gonna get ya. Coming to your house, son. Ha ha ha ha!”As the election draws near, the temperature only rises. False accusations that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbour’s cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, have led to bomb threats and school closures. Just as at Trump’s rally nine weeks ago, innocent people are the collateral damage of reckless propaganda.The normalisation of violence crosses partisan boundaries. In 2017 a man with anti-Republican views opened fire during a practice session for the annual congressional baseball game, injuring five people including House majority whip Steve Scalise. There is more support for violence against Trump (10% of American adults) than for violence in favour of Trump (6.9%), according to a survey conducted in late June by the University of Chicago.But only one of the two major parties is actively fanning the flames. Trump encouraged strongarm tactics against protesters at his rallies. He mocked Pelosi over the hammer attack. He called for shoplifters to be shot and disloyal generals to be executed for treason. He warned of a “bloodbath” if he is not elected and claimed that undocumented people in the US are “poisoning the blood of our country”.It is enough to fill any concerned citizen with foreboding about the coming election – and what comes next in a nation that has more guns than people. Trump, a convicted criminal with more cases looming over him, is in a desperate fight to stay out of prison. Having never acknowledged his 2020 loss, he has refused to commit to accepting the outcome in 2024, promising “long-term prison sentences” for anyone involved in “unscrupulous behavior”.With Republicans focused on “election integrity” efforts, poll workers could face intolerable levels of violence and intimidation. Opinion polls suggest that the election will be perilously close, giving plenty of scope to sow doubt, likely to be turbocharged by Elon Musk’s X social media platform.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs the Axios website recently noted: “A perfect storm has been brewing for years now – fueled by extreme polarization, election denial, political violence, historic prosecutions and rampant disinformation. Mayhem is bound to rain down in November.”A Reuters/Ipsos poll in May found that more than two in three Americans say they are concerned about extremist violence after the election. Last month Patrick Gaspard, a former White House official, told reporters at a Bloomberg in Chicago that the US faces “multiple January 6th-like incidents” at state capitols if Harris ekes out a narrow electoral college victory.Biden and Harris rightly condemned both attempted assassinations and said they were glad Trump is safe. Even his harshest critics should not condone such actions. But it is inescapably also true that, like a one-man Chornobyl, Trump has polluted the political atmosphere and created a permission structure for violence.His response to Sunday’s close call? Emails and text messages declaring: “I will not stop fighting for you. I will Never Surrender!” – and asking his supporters for money. More

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      Former Ronald Reagan staffers endorse Kamala Harris for president

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      More than a dozen former Ronald Reagan staff members have joined dozens of other Republican figures endorsing the Democratic nominee and vice-president, Kamala Harris, saying their support was “less about supporting the Democratic party and more about our resounding support for democracy”.In a letter obtained by CBS News, former Reagan aides and appointees – including Ken Adelman, a US ambassador to the United Nations and arms control negotiator, as well as a deputy press secretary, B Jay Cooper – said they believed that, if alive today, Reagan would have supported Harris.“President Ronald Reagan famously spoke about a ‘Time for Choosing.’ While he is not here to experience the current moment, we who worked for him in the White House, in the administration, in campaigns and on his personal staff, know he would join us in supporting the Harris-Walz ticket,” the group wrote.“The time for choosing we face today is a choice between integrity and demagoguery, and the choice must be Harris-Walz,” the group added. “Our votes in this election are less about supporting the Democratic party and more about our resounding support for democracy.”The letter comes as more than 230 former Republican administration officials have also backed Harris. Karl Rove, George W Bush campaign strategist and senior adviser, wrote “there’s no putting lipstick on this pig” after Donald Trump’s debate performance. Bush has said he has no plans to endorse any 2024 candidate.While there are more Republican-for-Harris defectors than vice-versa – Trump has gained the support of the Democrat outcasts Robert F Kennedy Jr. and former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard – natural alignment resets are increasing.The conservative columnist George Will floated in the Washington Post last week that “a Harris presidency, tempered by a Republican-led Senate, might finally revive a more normal politics.”Will wrote that the outcome required the removal of Donald Trump – “that Krakatau of volcanic, incoherent, fact-free bombast” – from public life and the rekindling of genuine liberal-conservative debate.The Reagan staffers said they were looking to convince former colleagues to back their stand for Harris and the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as “the only path forward toward an America that is strong and viable for our children and grandchildren for years to come”.Other Republicans backing Harris include former vice-president Dick Cheney and daughter Liz Cheney, a former congresswoman, Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham, former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger and former Georgia lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan. The latter three accepted speaking slots at the Democrats’ convention in August.But few Republicans endorsing Harris over Trump are in the political game.Trump’s nomination rival Nikki Haley has not backed Harris and said she agrees with Trump’s policies. But challenged last week to go further, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, failed to say she thought Trump was a good candidate.“I think he is the Republican nominee,” Haley replied. “Do I agree with his style, do I agree with his approach, do I agree with his communications? No.”Olivia Troye, a former adviser to Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, said before the Harris-Trump debate in Philadelphia last week that “many people who have worked for Donald Trump have said that they do not support Donald Trump coming back to the presidency. And I think that speaks volumes, because we know him.” More

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      ‘It’s such a dramatic contrast’: Harris turns North Carolina into a toss-up

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      Landon Simonini found himself standing in the middle of a Charlotte highway lane at 2.30 in the afternoon, stuck in an artificial traffic jam while drivers waited for Kamala Harris’s plane to land and the motorcade to clear for the rally later that day.He was out of his car, because why not? He wasn’t going anywhere soon. His red Make America great again cap stood out among others cursing the traffic gods.Simonini, born and bred in Charlotte, builds houses. His livelihood depends to some degree on Charlotte’s tremendous growth. But not all growth is great, he said.“This is a traditionally southern state,” Simonini said. “Over 100 people move to Charlotte a day. That is changing the election map. I am born and raised in Charlotte, for 33 years. I have lived here my entire life. I went to school at UNC Charlotte. This is my city. It is a conservative city and I want to keep it that way.”But in America’s nail-biting 2024 presidential election, North Carolina is now in play. It rejoins a select list of crucial swing states whose voters will decide if Harris becomes America’s first woman of color to win the White House or if Donald Trump returns to the Oval Office from which he wreaked political chaos for four years.Up until about two months ago, the odds didn’t look like this.Though the margins in North Carolina have been close for decades in presidential races, Obama in 2008 was the last Democrat since 1976 to win the state, eking out a win by three-tenths of a percentage point. Biden’s weakness earlier this year threatened to turn North Carolina into an also-ran contest. Every poll through June had Trump beating the president by at least two points, with an average around six.Party affiliation can only tell so much in a state with a storied history of split-ticket voting. Almost four in 10 of North Carolina’s 7.6 million registered voters choose not to affiliate with a political party. But between August 2020 and August 2024, Republicans added about 161,000 new registered voters in North Carolina while Democrats lost about 135,000 registered voters.Trump won the state by about 75,000 votes in 2020, a margin of about 1.3 percentage points, his closest winning state, before losing the election. Biden won the four states with closer margins – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia.Biden’s withdrawal and Harris’s ascent scrambled the math. North Carolina’s secretary of state, Elaine Marshall, described the reaction as euphoric.“It’s such a dramatic contrast from that venom, that poison, that hatred that’s coming from Republican events,” she said. “That contrasts so strongly with the hope and the expectations of the future from Democratic party events.”The Trump campaign reportedly abandoned its efforts to mount a serious contest in New Hampshire, Minnesota and Virginia recently. That leaves seven states in the political battleground – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and now North Carolina.Counting electors aside from the remaining non-battleground states, Harris starts with 226 and Trump with 219. North Carolina can deliver 16 electoral votes to the victor. A candidate must have 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. Only Pennsylvania has more electors among the remaining battleground states.A re-energized Democratic electorate has been visible in polling data, which now shows the state as tied. Part of that is the roughly 20% of North Carolinians who are Black; increased African American voter turnout helped Obama win the state in 2008.But the enthusiasm is far more widespread, and was visible this week, when Harris drew 25,000 people to two rallies this week, one in Charlotte and another a few hours later in Greensboro. It was the vice-president’s 17th trip to North Carolina and her ninth just this year.If Harris wins North Carolina and holds in Michigan and Wisconsin, she need only win one of the four other swing states to clinch the presidency. But if Trump wins North Carolina, he can win the presidency with Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin even while losing elector-rich Pennsylvania and Michigan.Melissa Benton waited on one foot for traffic to clear on Tuesday night outside the Greensboro coliseum. Her right knee rested on a scooter, keeping her broken ankle off the ground. She came up from Charlotte for the event, she said.Benton is an Atlanta-area transplant. She left Georgia out of frustration with how her community had changed with growth. The irony is not lost on her.Locals complain about the rising cost of living, and soaring housing costs are first on the list. Even people who have weathered the slow-motion collapse of the furniture industry over the last 30 years are being saddled with property tax increases as their homes rise in value.“Every time I meet a native Charlottean, I’m always like, ‘Listen, I’ve been where you are right now,” Benton said. “I swear I’ll be a great citizen, because I understand what it’s like for new people to come in.” She has a keen eye on municipal problems, services and infrastructure. “But it’s also keeping Charlotte Charlotte, and we’ve lost sight of that in some big cities.”Affordable housing is a crisis in Charlotte, much like it is in Atlanta and Greensboro and most large cities in the US. But in North Carolina, it’s not just an urban problem. Lenoir – pronounced “len-OR” – up at the edge of the Brushy mountain range of the Appalachians, is in one of 73 rural counties in the state, and it has a problem with market rate housing too. About a third of North Carolina’s voters live in rural counties.The Democratic party has a field office in Lenoir. The lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, held a campaign event there on Wednesday for his gubernatorial run. Marshall, the secretary of state, held a discussion there last week. No part of the state can escape battleground politics today.View image in fullscreenDemocrats have long expected a brutal fight in North Carolina, and have been investing time, money and personnel into the state for the last year.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The Democratic party is certainly trying to reach young people,” Marshall said. It’s also trying hard to connect with young women who may have abortion politics on their mind. “They’ve got Sunday school, and they’ve got work, getting the kids fed and kind of stuff. So suburban mom, working professional women, you know.”Harris’s visit to North Carolina for her first rallies since the debate is no accident. North Carolina is that important. Trump has planned a rally in Wilmington on North Carolina’s coast next week. JD Vance, his running mate, will be in Raleigh next week as well. The Republican campaign has been sending surrogates to local events regularly. Two weeks from now, the former housing secretary Ben Carson will speak at the Salt and Light conference of the North Carolina Faith and Freedom Coalition.The Democratic party has 26 field offices in North Carolina with 240 paid staff, according to the campaign. The choices of placement for some of the offices, such as rural Wilson county in the state’s “Black belt” and Lenoir in western mountain country, speak to movement away from a focus on high-density urban territory that’s friendly to Democrats.Democrats are also using their significant financial advantages in fundraising to swaddle broadcast and social media in a blanket of Harris advertising. Organizers say they have been on the air with ads for a year. The ad tracking firm AdImpact notes that Democrats have reserved about $50m in ad buys through the end of the cycle, with particular attention paid to Black and Spanish-language media outlets. Trump only began advertising in earnest in August.But Republican campaign leaders view much of that effort as artificial.“We feel like, from our standpoint, that the race is a toss-up, but we feel like we still have an advantage,” said Matt Mercer, director of communications for the North Carolina GOP. “One of the big reasons is our leadership. You know, we didn’t abandon a ground game at any level in 2020. What you’re seeing from Democrats is an effort to catch up.”The Republican campaign is decentralized, Mercer said, accommodating far-flung efforts in a state that’s 560 miles wide from Manteo in the east to Murphy in the west. “You win statewide by going across the entire state, and that means going west of I-77 and east of I-95.”“For every person that’s moving to Charlotte or Raleigh, you’ve also got retired couples moving to the coast, or you’ve got military deciding to stay in the state,” Mercer said. “You know, I think Democrats kind of fall into this trap where they think growth is all going to benefit them, and they’re just missing it.”The GOP dominates North Carolina’s legislative branch, which has enough Republicans to override a gubernatorial veto. But North Carolina’s governor, Roy Cooper, is a Democrat and the state has elected a Democratic governor for most of the last 30 years, even as it has delivered wins to Republican presidents.Josh Stein, North Carolina’s attorney general and the Democratic nominee to succeed Cooper, has maintained a consistent lead over Robinson throughout the year. Robinson is an unusually controversial candidate even by standards set in the Trump era, with a litany of offensive and antisemitic attacks made on social media or in public statements.View image in fullscreenRobinson has tried to keep a low profile over the last few months, even as Stein has used his financial edge to batter Robinson with ads drawing primarily on the lieutenant governor’s own words. In recent weeks, Robinson has taken to the campaign trail, meeting with small groups in small towns far away from urban centers, haranguing the media and calling Stein’s ads deceptive. “Josh Stein is a liar,” he said, demanding that a news reporter convey that message to his opponent, along with a demand for a debate.Stein has, so far, declined.James Adamakis watched a Robinson speech, from a seat at Countryside BBQ in the small town of Marion, North Carolina, on Tuesday. It’s a popular stop for politicians in North Carolina’s rural mountains. A picture of Barack Obama’s visit in 2011 hangs proudly on the wall next to the cash register.Adamakis works in juvenile justice. The military veteran supports Republicans because they’re tougher on crime he said. But he acknowledges that even people who share his political values may vote in peculiar ways in North Carolina.He described the conversion of one of his friends into a Republican. “It was the economics, where he just kept seeing the inflation and buying groceries and everything,” Adamakis said. “He was like, why is the media and Biden saying that it’s good when it’s not? I think that the economy cuts across lines.“Everybody you meet in western North Carolina still may vote Democrat, but they still don’t like that.”But political diversity is about more than race in North Carolina. The economy of a place like Research Triangle Park near Durham is fundamentally different from the banking sector in Charlotte, or the tourism of the southern coast, or mountain towns struggling to reinvent themselves.“It might be easier in my job if there were just one [swing voter], but there’s not,” Mercer said. “And I think that dynamism is what makes the state so interesting and so hard to win, and why you truly need to understand the entire state.” More

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      Real v fake: how the Harris-Trump debate laid out different takes on AI

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      In their first, and likely only debate, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump argued about artificial intelligence. They spoke of China, chips and “domestic innovation”. The country learned how Harris, Trump and their allies would – or intentionally wouldn’t – use artificial intelligence for their own ends.But the real lessons were in the aftermath. The online furor over the IRL confrontation revealed that Republicans use AI to illustrate their political points. Democrats do not.View image in fullscreenThe RepublicansRepublicans’ excitement over AI focused on a debunked claim by their nominee. During the debate, Trump said that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were “eating the dogs – the people that came in, they’re eating the cats”. The statement was not true. ABC’s moderators fact-checked him in real time with information from the city’s animal control commissioner, who has not received any calls about such grisly crimes. Immigrants in the city are now facing real violence over the false statement.Absent real images of such bestial violence, Trump and company have turned to images created by artificial intelligence. Before the debate had even begun, Donald Trump Jr tweeted images of his father astride a giant cat and holding a gun. The ex-president’s son wrote: “Save our pets!!!” A post made by Trump Jr during the debate reads: “They know who they’re rooting for tonight” and shows three cats and a duck or a goose watching the candidates face off on TV.The images bear the hallmark sheen of AI-generated material, a sign Republicans may be using Elon Musk’s AI image generator Grok. Midjourney and OpenAI’s Dall-E have advanced beyond that telltale uncanny lighting, but both also limit the manipulation of public figures’ images to tamp down misinformation. Grok has few such safeguards.Two days after the debate, Trump jumped on the same train as his son. The former president posted an image of himself on a plane surrounded by cats and geese, a picture of a cat holding a sign reading “Kamala hates me” and a depiction of him speaking at a “Cats for Trump” rally, all on Truth Social and Facebook, where AI-generated images are extremely popular.The Republican members of the House judiciary committee have tweeted an image of Trump cuddling animals in water captioned: “Protect our ducks and kittens in Ohio!” One bizarre image posted by the committee stitches ducks and cats together into hybrid beasts as they float on a pond under a red, white and blue flag that might fly over the island of Dr Moreau. “Save them!” the committee cries. Elon Musk joined in by tweeting screenshots of Trump’s posts on Truth Social accompanied by a crying-laughing emoji, the billionaire’s favorite. The CEO of X has endorsed Trump for president and hosted an online event with him.The DemocratsIn the hours after the debate ended, it was not Kamala Harris who struck back at the Republicans’ use of AI; it was the most famous woman on the planet. Taylor Swift endorsed Harris and took explicit aim at AI-made images of her boosting Trump. Swift wrote on Instagram: “Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter.”Swift has been the victim of sexualized deepfakes of her that have been seen by millions. In response, US lawmakers have proposed new legislation that would empower people who have their own likenesses weaponized against them.Trump has posted faked images of Swift’s endorsement on “his site”, Truth Social. He disclaimed responsibility for what may have been an enormous political mistake: “I don’t know anything about them, other than somebody else generated them. I didn’t generate them.” The images originated from a small Texas foundation that aims to bankroll rightwing tweeters.Harris herself has not posted any images made by AI, debate-related or otherwise. Instead, in the days following the debate, her campaign has posted childhood photos of her visiting her grandparents in India and happily posing on a stoop. The choice is notable because AI has difficulty replicating the balance between fuzziness and detail that imbues old photos with authenticity and charm. Harris’s images stand in deliberate contrast with the synthetic glow of Trump’s.Harris boasts extensive familial and professional ties to Silicon Valley from her time as a senator and the state’s attorney general, but as a candidate, she projects an image of low tech. One of the most famous videos of her – “We did it, Joe” – shows her talking to the president via wired Apple headphones. She has been seen using them many times since. She believes Bluetooth to be a security risk. (Trump, by contrast, uses an Android device that experts have deemed extremely vulnerable to foreign incursion.)Her campaign may boast about its TikTok operation staffed by extremely online members of gen Z, but the technology she carries on her person connotes an attitude of wait and see, not early adoption. She loves to be filmed making calls with the phone to her ear, the original use of the device. During her vice-presidency, Harris didn’t spend much time showcasing who she was. The choices she’s made in the crafting of her image as a candidate demonstrate an emphasis on realness.Trump has made himself into the candidate of generative artificial intelligence. Whether he is allied with AI companies is a separate question. He has adopted the aesthetic of AI as his own, perhaps because he has seen how popular AI-generated images are on Facebook, where older people hang out online. Harris has eschewed AI image generation, and by doing so made a powerful ally in Taylor Swift.She wants voters to see her as authentic, so she’s making all her images the old-fashioned way. More

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      Trump ‘likelier winner’ unless Harris tackles two failings, says ex-ambassador

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      Donald Trump will remain the “likelier winner” of the US presidential election on 5 November unless the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, addresses key failings in her campaign, a former British ambassador to Washington says on Sunday.Kim Darroch says that despite clearly getting the better of Trump in last week’s televised head-to-head debate, Harris risks making two crucial mistakes in the final weeks of campaigning, which mean the former Republican president is still the favourite.View image in fullscreenWith a Trump return to the White House on the cards, Lord Darroch says it is important that the prime minister, Keir Starmer, who met US president Joe Biden and other leading Democrats in Washington on Thursday, should also now be seeking a meeting with Trump and his team before polling day, so he has built links with both sides.“It is important that if Starmer meets one, he meets both,” Darroch says in an article for the Observer. “It will be noticed and resented by the Trump team if he doesn’t.”Darroch was UK ambassador to the US from 2016 to 2019, when he resigned in a row over leaked confidential emails in which he criticised Trump’s administration as “clumsy and inept”. Darroch’s position became untenable after Boris Johnson, then involved in the Tory leadership contest to succeed Theresa May, failed to give the ambassador his unequivocal backing.Darroch, who remains a respected figure in diplomatic circles on both sides of the Atlantic, says Trump is now “a less formidable campaigner” than in 2016, “down on energy, more liable to become confused, with a mind cluttered with grievances. And he remains a policy-free zone.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“But,” he adds, “he is still capable of connecting with the ‘left behind’ to a level few others can match, a talent which ensures a devoted and enduring support base in a country where one in three workers say they live paycheck to paycheck.”Darroch argues that the Democratic campaign is at risk of making two hugely important errors. Urging Harris to be “laser-focused” on voters in the key swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin won by Biden in 2020, Darroch warns that they may drift back to Trump unless Harris is able to offer “some crisply worded, specific, targeted policies to bring jobs and hope back to these blighted neighbourhoods”.The second error is that Harris appears to be hiding from the media, repeating a mistake made by Hillary Clinton. “Back in 2016, Trump was ever-present. He would accept any and every invitation. He would even, unbidden, phone the morning news shows to offer his views on the day’s issues. By contrast, Hillary Clinton locked the media out – and lost.”Harris, he claims “seems to have adopted the Clinton playbook”.View image in fullscreenDarroch says the UK embassy in Washington will no doubt be advising Starmer to try to meet Trump, perhaps taking time out from a meeting of the UN general assembly this week to do so.“There is a lot to discuss with him, starting with his views on Ukraine. And however badly Trump performed in the debate, however visible his personal decline, he remains for many of us the likelier winner.” Last week, Starmer’s former pollster Deborah Mattinson met Harris’s campaign team in Washington to share details of how Labour pulled off its stunning election win by targeting key groups of “squeezed working-class voters who wanted change”, further strengthening contacts with the Democratic side. More

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      Biden, Harris address Congressional Black Caucus: ‘The baton is in our hands’

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      President Joe Biden and vice-president Kamala Harris spoke on Saturday at the Congressional Black Caucus’s Phoenix Awards dinner, bringing a message that its members were in a “battle for the soul of the nation”.Biden highlighted his relationship with the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), and Black voters.“In 2020, I ran for president to redeem the soul of America, to restore decency and dignity to the office of the president,” he said. “I ran to rebuild the backbone of America, the middle class. And I ran to unite the country and remind ourselves when we’re together there’s not a damn thing we can’t do.”The spectre of Trump, Maga Republicans and the threat Democrats say they pose to the country loomed over Biden’s remarks, and his call to action for those CBC members gathered.“The old ghosts in new garments [are] trying to seize your power and extremists coming for your freedom making it harder for you to vote and have your vote counted, closing doors of opportunity, attacking affirmative action,” he said. “My predecessor calls the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6 ‘patriots’, but when peaceful protesters marched for justice for George Floyd, Trump wanted to send in the military, but they wouldn’t go.”Biden continued by pointing to the juxtaposition between his and Harris’s tenure in the White House and that of their predecessor’s. On the theme of unity, Biden once again condemned Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, who, in recent weeks, has led a rallying cry of baseless, racist accusations toward Haitian-American immigrants in Ohio.“It’s wrong. It’s got to stop,” he said. “Any president should reject hate in America and not incite it. Folks, to win this battle for the soul of the nation, we have to preserve our democracy and speak out against lies and hate.”Towards the end of his remarks, Biden spoke about his time in Congress, during which he served with Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to run for president.CBC attenders were jubilant when Harris, also the Democratic candidate for president, walked on to the stage to Beyoncé’s Freedom after the president introduced her as “Kamala Harris, for the people”.Members of Harris’s sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha gleefully greeted her with their trademarked “Skee-Wee” call.Harris began by highlighting the importance of the caucus. For a November win, she said, the support of the CBC was necessary.“The Congressional Black Caucus has served as the conscience of the Congress and of our nation, and as a proud former CBC member, I know first-hand America relies on the leaders in this room, not only for a conscience, but for a vision,” Harris said.Harris said the CBC’s vision for the future was under “profound threat” and went on to point out the differences between her and Trump while also reiterating her platform, including reproductive rights, building an “opportunity economy”, healthcare and “not going back”.“We actually have a plan for healthcare, not just ‘concepts of a plan,’” she said, referencing Trump’s comments during Tuesday night’s debate.Towards the end of her speech, Harris returned to “joy” and hard work, two of her campaign themes.“Now the baton is in our hands,” she said. “I truly believe that America is ready to turn the page on the politics of division and hate, and to do it, our nation is counting on the leadership in this room.”Harris called on and thanked members of the CBC for their work registering voters and mobilising people to vote. She and Biden spoke during the 53rd Annual Legislative Conference (ALC) or, “CBC week” in Washington, during which Black political and social leaders convene on public policy. The Harris campaign has been working to increase the enthusiasm of Black voters, particularly in key battleground states.“We know what we stand for, and that’s why we know what we fight for,” Harris said. “And when the CBC fights, we win.” More