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      US reacts to major prisoner swap with Russia: ‘feat of diplomacy’ and ‘joyous’

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      The White House celebrated a “feat of diplomacy” on Thursday after a major prisoner swap between Russia and the west that included the release of the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US marine Paul Whelan, among others.Both are US citizens accused by Russian authorities of espionage, charges they and the US government have denied, and a possible exchange had been mooted for months.The exchange on Thursday occurred at Ankara airport in Turkey, and involved people held in seven different countries including the US, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway, Russia and Belarus. The Turkish presidency said 10 prisoners were relocated to Russia, 13 prisoners to Germany and three to the US.Among the prisoners returning to Russia was the assassin Vadim Krasikov, who had been held in a German prison since 2019 for murdering a Chechen exile in Berlin in broad daylight.Joe Biden said in a statement immediately following the news that the three American citizens and one American green card holder were “unjustly” imprisoned in Russia – in addition to Gershkovich and Whelan, the other two are Alsu Kurmasheva, a US-Russian journalist, and Vladimir Kara-Murza – “was a feat of diplomacy”.“All told, we’ve negotiated the release of 16 people from Russia – including five Germans and seven Russian citizens who were political prisoners in their own country. Some of these women and men have been unjustly held for years. All have endured unimaginable suffering and uncertainty. Today, their agony is over.”Biden added he was grateful to the allies of the US who “stood with us throughout tough, complex negotiations to achieve this outcome”.He said: “This is a powerful example of why it’s vital to have friends in this world whom you can trust and depend upon. Our alliances make Americans safer.”Shortly afterward, Biden delivered remarks from the White House, surrounded by family members of the freed prisoners.“This is a very good afternoon,” the president said, adding that he and the family members had been able to speak to the released prisoners on the phone.He also asked the room to sing happy birthday to 12-year-old Miriam, daughter of Kurmasheva, who he said is turning 13 on Friday.The swap is likely to be considered a political coup for Biden in the waning months of his presidency, and a blow to Donald Trump, who has claimed on the 2024 campaign trail that he would free Gershkovich if re-elected.Trump has frequently voiced admiration for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and said in May on his social media site, Truth Social, that if he won the November election, Gershkovich would be “released almost immediately after the election, but definitely before I assume office”, adding that Putin would “do that for me, but not for anyone else”.Kamala Harris, the vice-president and frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for president, echoed Biden’s words on Thursday and added: “I will not stop working until every American who is wrongfully detained or held hostage is brought home.”On Thursday, White House’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Biden and Harris would welcome the released US citizens at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, and that Gershkovich, Whelan and Kurmasheva were expected to arrive on US soil on Thursday night.Emma Tucker, the editor of the Wall Street Journal, described the event as a “joyous day” for friends, family and colleagues of Gershkovich, and the “the millions of well-wishers in the US and around the world who stood with Evan and defended the free press”.Current and former US government officials and press freedom groups similarly rejoiced at the news.Barack Obama described the exchange as a “tremendous diplomatic achievement” and noted the “skill and persistence” of Biden, Harris and US allies.Jodie Ginsberg, the chief executive of the Committee to Protect Journalists, welcomed the news but said “it does not change the fact that Russia continues to suppress a free press”. Reporters Without Borders said they were “relieved” but said more than 40 other journalists remain detained in Russia.On Thursday afternoon, Trump criticized the swap on Truth Social, calling it a “bad” deal. “So when are they going to release the details of the prisoner swap with Russia? How many people do we get versus them? Are we also paying them cash?” he asked.Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, said that no money was exchanged. He said no sanctions were loosened to facilitate the deal.The swap comes a year and a half after the Biden administration secured the release of US basketball star Brittney Griner in late 2022, who had been held in Russian jail for almost 10 months on drug charges and was freed in exchange for the arms dealer Viktor Bout. At the time, Biden expressed regret that the deal did not include Whelan, who had been detained since 2018.Earlier in 2022, the Biden administration also secured the release of former US marine Trevor Reed, who was arrested in 2019 after Russian authorities said he assaulted an officer while being driven by police to a police station after a night of heavy drinking. Reed was released in exchange for a convicted Russian drug trafficker who was serving a long prison sentence in the US. More

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      Who is Mark Kelly, the potential vice-presidential pick from Arizona?

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      Mark Kelly’s resume stands out in the sea of lawyers that dominate Washington.The Arizona senator was a US navy pilot who served multiple deployments. He was on Celebrity Jeopardy. He is a steadfast partner to his wife, former US representative Gabrielle Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt at a public event in Tucson in 2011 and has worked alongside Kelly to limit guns since.Oh, and he’s been to space multiple times because he was an astronaut, along with his twin brother, Scott. He even wrote a children’s book about it, called Mousetronaut.“An astronaut! Who doesn’t like astronauts, except for Flat Earthers, right? But they’re very small in quantity,” Arizona pollster Mike Noble said. “So, outside of Flat Earthers, I’m trying to think of what’s more American than astronauts. Astronaut takes everybody. I’ve been to space, what have you done?”Kelly is on Kamala Harris’s shortlist for vice-president, and his background certainly helps make his case.He first ran for office in 2020, winning a special election against Republican Martha McSally to take a Senate seat. He won again in 2024 in the regular Senate election against Blake Masters, a well-funded Peter Thiel acolyte.To win the Senate seat in a purple state, Kelly has struck a centrist tone and proven himself a prolific fundraiser. He hasn’t inspired the intra-party ire that Arizona’s other senator , now-independent Kyrsten Sinema, has. He polls at the top of Arizona politicians for favorability.His presence on the presidential ticket could help Harris’s prospects in Arizona, where Trump is polling ahead, though the benefit of a VP pick may be greater in other swing states where she’s closer to Trump in the polls. Kelly could also help her improve how she’s viewed on immigration issues.Harris is expected to choose a running mate in the coming days, then blitz through battleground states with them.Kelly has a couple vulnerabilities, but the biggest drawback is what Democrats stand to lose – his Senate seat, in a swing state, at a time when the balance of the Senate is in contention.Arizonans have endured a series of special elections, expensive and exhausting endeavors, for Senate seats since the late Senator John McCain’s death. Kelly’s vacancy would require another one, “giving the state a Senate election every even year from 2016 through 2030”, the Washington Examiner pointed out. The cycle has made Senate elections, with their longer six-year terms, more akin to congressional races, with their two-year terms. If Kelly becomes the vice-president, Arizona’s Democratic governor would appoint a Democratic successor, then a special election for the seat would be called in 2026.If the state’s Republican party decides to end its lean into hard-right Maga politics, Republicans could win it back. Democrats face a widening gap in voter registration compared to Republicans and independents. But the current Senate race, in which Ruben Gallego, a Democrat, faces Trump favorite Kari Lake, shows Gallego with the lead – a sign that the Republican candidates often remain out of step with the broader electorate there.Still, Democrats in Arizona are excited by the prospect of one of their own on a presidential ticket. The Arizona Democratic party’s executive board issued a letter formally endorsing Kelly as a VP, praising his work in the Senate and saying Kelly and Harris would “build a winning coalition” to beat Trump.“The road to the White House runs through Arizona in this election,” the board’s letter said. “We are united behind Vice-President Kamala Harris and Senator Kelly because our democracy is on the line.”Kelly hasn’t been as ubiquitous on TV or the campaign trail as the other Democratic contenders lately, and he’s not a bombastic debater ready to lob insults at the other side. He isn’t an attack dog like vice-presidents often can be. He isn’t as tested in the trenches – he hasn’t had to address much controversy or endure combative interviews, Noble said, but he has a great relationship with Harris.Kelly has praised Harris on social media in recent days. In one video posted this week, he shows footage driving a Jeep through the Arizona desert juxtaposed with rockets flying into space.“I’ve been on a lot of missions, but never once did I do it alone. I always had a really good team behind me, and that’s what @KamalaHarris, @RubenGallego, and Democrats are going to need to win in November,” he wrote.After Biden stepped aside, Kelly said he “couldn’t be more confident that Vice President @KamalaHarris is the right person to defeat Donald Trump and lead our country into the future”, giving her his full support.Kelly could use his proximity to the US-Mexico border to counter some of the right’s push to brand Harris as a “border czar”. In a TV appearance this week, he attacked Trump and Republicans over the demise of a bipartisan Senate border bill. That bill aligned more with Republicans than with Democrats, he said.“On their side of the field, we realized, we’ve got to get operational control over the border. I realized this, Kamala Harris realizes this, and this legislation was going to do that,” he said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “And our goal here was to get this legislation passed and then start working on comprehensive immigration reform. But this was stopped dead in its tracks by Donald Trump because he wanted to have this as an election issue. Like a lot of other Republicans, they don’t actually want to solve this problem.”If he’s chosen as running mate, some of his past liabilities could come back to haunt him. Perhaps the biggest line of attack he faced in his Senate races revolved around a space balloon company he co-founded and its ties to China. An odd turn slinging vitamins in China could come up, too.The right is also likely to hit him on his record advocating for gun control alongside his wife and her group, Giffords. After the shooting of elementary school kids in Uvalde, Texas, he said, “it’s fucking nuts not to do anything about this”.His personal story showcasing the toll of gun violence should eclipse this attack, Noble said. “That crosses party lines.”Another liability was foreclosed this week after he said he was in favor of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, a pro-union bill that he previously had not signed on to support.It’s a “huge honor” to have an Arizona Democrat on the list for the presidential ticket, said Stacy Pearson, a Democratic consultant in Arizona. “We’ve tried many, many times at this point, with Barry Goldwater and John McCain. Maybe it’ll take a Democrat to get there.”The last time an Arizona Democratic elected official ended up in a presidential administration – when Janet Napolitano left the governor’s office after she was tapped by Barack Obama to be Homeland security secretary – was more than 20 years ago.After Napolitano’s exit, Republicans held the governor’s office until Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, won it back in 2022 – a sign of the potential difficulty in maintaining power if Kelly heads to DC.“As much as they love to see Mark Kelly promoted to a position that important for our country, there is fear that the seat could be lost,” Pearson said. More

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      Harris campaign has enlivened voters, say Black organizers: ‘The energy is palpable’

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      Black grassroots organizers who played a critical role in mobilizing voters in the last presidential election say they are seeing an uptick in interest in their groups and a jolt of energy after Kamala Harris took Joe Biden’s place at the top of the Democratic ticket.“I hear nothing but enthusiasm,” said Helen Butler, a longtime voting rights organizer who runs the nonpartisan Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda. “More people are calling to volunteer. The young people are saying, ‘What can we do?’ All of our activities are nonpartisan. So we’re training them to just talk about civic engagement and why public policy matters.”The observations from organizers come as the Harris campaign has intensified its momentum in the race. It solidified the support of the Democratic party, earned enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee and has seen colossal fundraising numbers.Harris’s campaign says it has raised more than $100m, including a staggering $81m in the first 24 hours after Joe Biden left the race. That total was accrued from more than 500,000 grassroots donors who gave for the first time in the 2024 cycle, the campaign said.Grassroots groups played a critical role in 2020, mobilizing nonwhite voters – who tend to support Democrats – at record levels. Overall, turnout in the 2020 election was at its highest since 1900.Initial polls show Harris in a neck-and-neck race with Donald Trump, but there are indications of significant shifts in the race. A CNN poll released last week found that 50% of Harris backers said their support of her was more pro-Harris than anti-Trump. In a June CNN poll, just 37% of Biden’s supporters said their support was about backing the president rather than being against Trump.“It does change the energy, and to a certain extent, it changes the messages,” said Cliff Albright, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, which is supportive of Harris’s candidacy. “The full toolbox is open. We can go anti-Trump, or we can go pro-Kamala, or we can talk about some aspects of her record more, and the administration more, so it just expands the tools that we have at our disposal.”The first week of Harris’s candidacy has been bolstered by a groundswell of support. 44,000 people joined a Zoom call led by Black women on Sunday evening in the first hours after Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, which raised more than $1.5m. A call the next evening hosted by Black men reported 53,000 participants and raised more than $1.3m. A call hosted by white women Thursday evening had more than 160,000 people on it and reportedly raised $8.5m. A similar south Asian women call for Harris had more than 10,000 people and raised more than $300,000. A “white dudes for Harris” call on Monday raised around $4m.“I think the energy is palpable,” said Angela Lang, an organizer with Black Leaders Organizing Communities (Bloc) in Milwaukee. She said that many on her team had said they would support Harris, while others were waiting to see how she reconciled her record as a prosecutor.“I think folks understand that people are allowed to change and evolve. We’ve seen other presidential candidates change and evolve their stances on gay marriage, for example, so I think folks are curious to see how she reconciles that,” she said. “But I don’t know if [her record will] be that big of a factor in the grand scheme of things, because I think the urgency of a second Trump presidency outweighs it for some folks.”That’s not to say that it will be a cakewalk for Harris. Those who helped organize the “uncommitted” vote in the primary in protest of the Biden administration’s position on the war in Gaza have warned that the vice president needs to earn their vote.Albright predicted that this campaign would be much different for Harris than her presidential primary – when she entered the race as a top tier contender and then flamed out before the Iowa primary.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Some of it was just about the overall positioning that you had during the primary. You had the clearly progressive candidates talking about Medicare for All and other really progressive policies, and then you had those that were viewed as being more moderate, including Kamala Harris and Joe Biden,” he said. “I think what we’ve seen now over the past four years is that some of those concerns that we had about how progressive either one of them would have been were proven to not be valid.”Both Lang and Albright have gotten a chance to speak personally with Harris and see how she approaches issues.Albright has met with her several times to discuss the push for federal voting rights legislation – one of the key issues that was in Harris’s portfolio as vice-president.“We’ve obviously been impressed by her leadership and the sincerity that she [has], the dedication that she takes to some of these issues,” he said.Lang said that she briefly spoke to Harris in 2021 in Milwaukee when she had a chance to take a picture with her. She said she used the brief interaction to speak about the need to fix lead pipes in Milwaukee and emphasize that it was a social justice issue since exposure to lead has been linked to behavioral and emotional issues in children.“It didn’t feel like she was blowing me off or she was just saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, to agree,” Lang said. “She immediately connected the dots and felt just as passionate as I did.” More

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      Kamala Harris needs to mobilise people around class not race | Dustin Guastella and Bhaskar Sunkara

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      How things can change in a matter of weeks. In early July, populism seemed to rule the day in American politics.Donald Trump selected JD Vance, a figure who’s been trying on producerist rhetoric in recent years, as his pick for vice-president and invited the Teamsters president, Sean O’Brien, to speak at the Republican national convention. Joe Biden, facing a flagging campaign and internal pressure to step down, met with Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to lay out a pro-worker agenda for a potential new term.Everyone was trying to claim the mantle of an American working class once maligned as politically expendable or morally corrupt.It was a pivot to politics at its most basic: make promises to people, win, deliver on them and reap the rewards of their loyalty. Democrats, once the party of the working class, seemed in need of a reminder of who their base was. A recent study by the Center for Working-Class Politics found that less than 5% of TV ads by Democrats in competitive 2022 congressional races mentioned billionaires, the rich, Wall Street, big corporations or price gouging.Still, congressional progressives were getting concessions from an unpopular president who had little chance of winning re-election and Donald Trump remained committed to the Republican party’s traditional pro-corporate, pro-tax cut agenda. The populist moment seemed like it would stick around, but more in the realm of rhetoric than policy.Then came Kamala Harris’s rise as the presumptive Democratic nominee. The energy around the Harris for President campaign has put into doubt the inevitably of Trump’s election and given hope to millions. For leftwing populists, however, the problem might be less Harris and her most stalwart supporters.Economy or identityInstead of thinking that all politics is identity politics, many on the left have traditionally argued that the best appeals tap into universal concerns that all workers share. When Gallup regularly asks “what do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?”, the responses are remarkably consistent across different ethnic groups. It’s the economy. It’s wages. It’s the rising cost of living. “Speaking to issues that people of color care about” generally means speaking to issues that all working-class people care about.The emerging Harris platform seems to have digested this idea. Her campaign promises aren’t too different than those pushed by Joe Biden. Her early ads highlight the need to bring down insulin prices, take on the power of the big banks, corporate price gouging and other concerns that most ordinary working Americans can relate to. That’s all for the good. It demonstrates that Harris has learned some of the lessons that prior generations of Democrats have long known: that speaking to workers’ economic interests is a path to the White House.But there is a danger that all of that political acumen could be drowned out by the hubris of her more well-to-do supporters. A number of grassroots efforts to rally Harris activists have caught fire. Among the most prominent of these efforts, White Women: Answer the Call demonstrates everything wrong with the political instincts of liberals today and it threatens to lead Harris’s campaign down the same path as Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated 2016 effort.Of course, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with supporters gathering to support their candidate by forming some kind of affinity group to express their shared commitment. In fact, it’s often a mark of a successful campaign (think Veterans for Bernie Sanders). But when these groups are organized around the narrow, misguided, notion that racial affinity is paramount, the results will not be good. The star-studded “White Women for Kamala” call – which garnered more than 200,000 attenders and raised millions for the candidate – featured actors, social-media personalities, liberal philanthropists and activists for various causes. Also prominently featured was a strange, navel-gazing and antiquated version of identity politics.One call organizer counseled attenders: “If you find yourself talking over or speaking for Bipoc individuals or, God forbid, correcting them, just take a beat and instead we can put our listening ears on.” This kind of condescending racialism should raise red flags for Democrats. Is this what Kamala Harris is about? Does the campaign really think it’s good to head down the path of Clinton’s inscrutable summoning of “intersectionality”? It’s not just that these supporters use language that makes ordinary voters cringe, it’s also that they embrace an ideology predicated on the idea that we are each essentially different. Such a political theory can only result in more fractiousness amid our already roiling culture wars.Shortly after the White Women: Answer the Call there was a White Dudes for Harris follow-up featuring Pete Buttigieg, Josh Groban and Lance Bass (it’s good to see the voices of blue-collar America so well represented). While many of the “dudes” chuckled about the “rainbow of beige” represented on that call, few seemed to notice the strange spectacle of the call itself: liberals organizing people into groups on the basis of skin color and gender. After that, a South Asian Zoom was organized, later a Latina Zoom and most recently a call for Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders for Kamala (AANHPI for short), all also divided on the basis of gender.A subset of Harris’s supporters are doubling down on the idea that says we can only unite if we embrace our racial and gender differences.Instead, progressives should insist that working people have a lot at stake in this election regardless of their skin color, nationality or ethnic heritage and that our shared class interest ought to be the basis for our political appeals. The fact that this narrative – one the official Harris campaign seems at least slightly sympathetic to – was so quickly and enthusiastically overshadowed by an emphasis on identity politics says a lot about the Democratic party’s contemporary base.The Democratic party needs working-class voters more than ever, but unfortunately the party increasingly represents well-heeled white-collar professionals primarily concentrated in and around big cities. It’s these voters who crave appeals to identity over appeals to shared class grievances. Ironically, the wild popularity of the white affinity group fundraisers mentioned above demonstrates just who is most motivated by appeals to race and gender. While there were plenty of calls for various other race-based affinity groups, none came close to the attendance and fundraising power as the Zoom event mobilizing white female voters. Identity politics is, after all, a class politics. A political style embraced by the professional class.Then the question becomes, is that a set of political appeals that can win? The answer is: maybe.That should be worrying for those of us who care about working-class politics. On the one hand, Democrats ought to do what it takes to win the election. But, on the other hand, winning with a political ideology and program that largely appeals to six-figure-income deep-blue counties will be a pyrrhic victory. If Democrats win the election but again lose a majority of the working class, they will fail in one important part of their duty and they will have paved the way for the right to make deeper inroads into blue-collar communities. Further, if liberals continue to insist that workers ought to focus more on their race, gender, nationality, ethnic heritage or whatever else than on their shared class interests, they will have given the right wing all the ammo needed in the culture war while making it that much harder to unite workers across those cultural divides.In that sense, there may not be a right way to lose, but there could be a wrong way to win.

      Dustin Guastella is a research associate at the Center for Working-Class Politics and the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623

      Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of the Nation, founding editor of Jacobin and author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequalities More

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      ‘It was the same old show’: Kamala Harris responds to Trump’s attacks on her racial identity

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      Kamala Harris has shrugged off Donald Trump’s questioning of her racial identity, saying that it was “the same old show” and that “America deserves better”, at a rally in Texas.On Wednesday, in an appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), Trump antagonised senior Black journalists and questioned Harris’s race, saying, “She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black.”His interview, which was meant to last an hour, according to Axios, was cut short after 34 minutes.In Houston, Harris appeared unruffled and kept her remarks on Trump’s comments brief.“This afternoon,” she said, pausing for boos from the crowd. “Donald Trump spoke at the annual meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists.”“And it was the same old show: the divisiveness and the disrespect. And let me just say, the American people deserve better. The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth. A leader who does not respond with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts. We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us – they are an essential source of our strength.”The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee was speaking at the Sigma Gamma Rho’s 60th International Biennial Boulé, the Black sorority’s gathering of its entire membership in Houston, Texas. Harris said she was there “as a proud member of the Divine Nine” – a group of the most historically powerful Black fraternities and sororities in the US. Harris is an alumna of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.The Harris campaign said in a statement: “The Donald Trump America saw at NABJ is the one Black voters have known for years.”On Wednesday evening, Trump spoke at a rally in Pennsylvania, his first in the state since the assassination attempt against him last month.Trump said of Harris, “Don’t forget. Four weeks ago she was considered, like, the worst,” and that she had had a “personality makeover … All of a sudden she’s considered the new Margaret Thatcher”.View image in fullscreenAs supporters waited for Trump at the rally, which started an hour late, giant screens displayed a 2016 Business Insider headline referring to Harris as the first “Indian-American US senator”.On Wednesday evening in Maine, Harris’s husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff – who was himself subjected to attacks from Trump this week – said Trump’s remarks in Chicago reflected “a worse version of an already horrible person”, the Washington Post reported. “He should never be near the White House again.”“The insults, the BS – it’s horrible, it’s terrible, it shows a lack of character,” Emhoff said.White House Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was speaking to journalists as Trump made his remarks on the NABJ panel. Asked about the comments, which a journalist read out to her, she at first said she would be “super careful”, then changed her mind. “Wait. No, no, no,” she said.“As a person of colour, as a Black woman who is in this position,” she said, referring to her role, “What he just said, what you just read out to me is repulsive. It’s insulting.”Harris was the only person qualified to say what her identity was, she continued.“And I think it’s insulting for anybody – it doesn’t matter if it’s a former leader, a former president – it is insulting.” More

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      Harris campaign calls Trump’s heated interview with Black journalists ‘a taste of chaos and division’ – live

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      Kamala Harris’s campaign team has released the following statement in response to Donald Trump’s combative NABJ interview:
      The hostility Donald Trump showed on stage today is the same hostility he has shown throughout his life, throughout his term in office, and throughout his campaign for president as he seeks to regain power and inflict his harmful Project 2025 agenda on the American people.
      Trump lobbed personal attacks and insults at Black journalists the same way he did throughout his presidency – while he failed Black families and left the entire country digging out of the ditch he left us in. Donald Trump has already proven he cannot unite America, so he attempts to divide us.
      Today’s tirade is simply a taste of the chaos and division that has been a hallmark of Trump’s Maga rallies this entire campaign. It’s also exactly what the American people will see from across the debate stage as vice-president Harris offers a vision of opportunity and freedom for all Americans. All Donald Trump needs to do is stop playing games and actually show up to the debate on September 10.
      The US was not aware of or involved in the apparent killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, the US representative to the UN says.He calls UN security council members with direct influence over Iran to increase pressure on it to “stop escalating its proxy conflict against Israel”.
      Every member of this council should call on Iran to stop arming, advising and financing terrorist groups and to rein in the actions of proxies and partners who threaten regional peace and security.
      He warns that it is a “dangerous” moment, and that it is “imperative” for members to work together to reduce tensions in the region.Follow more live updates on the situation here:JD Vance has responded to Donald Trump’s chaotic NABJ interview…The United Auto Workers union has endorsed Kamala Harris for president.In a statement released on Wednesday, UAW president Shawn Fain said:
      Our job in this election is to defeat Donald Trump and elect Kamala Harris to build on her proven track record of delivering for the working class …
      We stand at a crossroads in this country. We can put a billionaire back in office who stands against everything our union stands for, or we can elect Kamala Harris who will stand shoulder to shoulder with us in our war on corporate greed.
      This campaign is bringing together people from all walks of life, building a movement that can defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box. For our one million active and retired members, the choice is clear: We will elect Kamala Harris to be our next President this November.”
      Here is video of Donald Trump questioning Kamala Harris’s ethnicity during his interview at the NABJ conference in Chicago:Throughout the years, Trump has also questioned the birth origins of Barack Obama, Ted Cruz and Nikki Haley.Kamala Harris’s campaign team has released the following statement in response to Donald Trump’s combative NABJ interview:
      The hostility Donald Trump showed on stage today is the same hostility he has shown throughout his life, throughout his term in office, and throughout his campaign for president as he seeks to regain power and inflict his harmful Project 2025 agenda on the American people.
      Trump lobbed personal attacks and insults at Black journalists the same way he did throughout his presidency – while he failed Black families and left the entire country digging out of the ditch he left us in. Donald Trump has already proven he cannot unite America, so he attempts to divide us.
      Today’s tirade is simply a taste of the chaos and division that has been a hallmark of Trump’s Maga rallies this entire campaign. It’s also exactly what the American people will see from across the debate stage as vice-president Harris offers a vision of opportunity and freedom for all Americans. All Donald Trump needs to do is stop playing games and actually show up to the debate on September 10.
      When asked by Fox News journalist Harris Faulkner whether JD Vance would be ready for day one, Donald Trump said:
      I’ve always had great respect for him … but I will say this, and I think this is well-documented historically, the vice-president in terms of the election, does not have any impact. I mean, virtually no impact.
      You’re voting for the president, and you can have a vice-president who’s outstanding in every way. And I think JD is, I think that all of them would have been but, but you’re not voting that way. You’re voting for the president. You’re voting for me.
      Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, responded while at the podium in the daily media briefing to Donald Trump’s comments about Kamala Harris’s identity at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention.Jean-Pierre, speaking in real time in the west wing in Washington DC while Trump was being quizzed by three political journalists in Chicago, called his words “repulsive”.The former president said that he didn’t know Harris was Black until a few years ago when she “happened to turn Black”.Jean-Pierre said: “It’s insulting, and no one has any right to tell someone who they are, how they identify.” Jean-Pierre is the first Black and first openly LGBTQ+ American to serve as White House press secretary.She continued, of Harris: “Only she can speak to her experience.”Harris grew up in Berkeley, California, near San Francisco; her mother was an immigrant from India and her father immigrated to the US from Jamaica.“I think it’s insulting for anybody, it doesn’t matter if it’s a former leader, a former president, it is insulting,” Jean-Pierre said, adding: “She is the vice-president of the United States. Kamala Harris. We have to put some respect on her name. Period.”Donald Trump’s NABJ interview shocked the audience and ended up being cut short, apparently by his team. Here are some of the things the former president claimed in the heated Q&A:

      He claimed that he has been the “best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln”, adding that a “Black job” is “anybody that has a job”.

      He questioned Kamala Harris’s ethnicity, saying: “She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black.”

      He refused to condemn the white police officer who shot and killed 36-year-old Sonya Massey, a Black woman, in her home in Illinois, saying: “Sometimes very bad decisions are made. They’re not made from an evil standpoint.”

      He repeated the abortion lie that Democrats are allowing abortions in the ninth month, saying: “They’re allowing the death of the baby after the baby is born.”

      In response to what he would do on his first day in office, he said that he would “close the border” and “drill, baby, drill”.

      Throughout the interview, which appeared to have been ended by his team after 40 minutes, Trump’s responses drew multiple gasps and shouts from the crowd.
      The interview with Donald Trump at the NABJ conference is now over, with Trump giving a few fist pumps and shaking hands with the interviewers before walking off stage.The interview, which lasted around 40 minutes, got off to a rocky start, with Trump accusing interviewers of asking “rude” questions and calling their networks “fake news” before blaming the conference’s speakers for his lateness.In addition to multiple tangents on how he is allegedly persecuted by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and a supposedly “weaponized” justice system, Trump refused to condemn the January 6 insurrectionists, continued to espouse the lie that Democrats are “executing” babies after birth, and vowed to close the borders on his first day in office if he becomes president.Throughout the interview, Trump’s responses drew multiple gasps and shouts from the crowd.He also defended JD Vance’s comments about “childless cat ladies” said he “didn’t know [Harris] was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black,” and described a “Black job” as “anybody that has a job”.The interview was cut short after Trump’s team apparently asked interviewers to end the Q&A. ABC’s Rachel Scott told the audience: “I think we have to leave it there, by the Trump team. That is the last word.” Trump reacted with a bemused expression before getting off the stage.In response to a question on what he would do on his first day as president if he wins, Donald Trump responded:
      I close the border. And I do two things, because I can do a lot of things. I close the border. And we don’t want people coming. We want people to come in … but they have to be vetted. They have to be checked. They have to come in legally …
      And I drill. Drill, baby, drill. I bring energy way down. I bring interest rates down. I bring inflation way down. So people can buy bacon again, so people can buy a ham sandwich again, so that people can go to a restaurant and afford it because right now people can’t buy food.
      One of the next questions asked of Donald Trump is whether he believes the Republican party is getting “too judgy about people’s lives”.In response, Trump touted several false statements, saying that Democrats are “radical on abortion because they’re allowing abortion in the ninth month. They’re allowing the death of the baby after the baby is born.”Trump’s lie was swiftly fact-checked on the spot, with the interviewers saying: “That’s illegal in all 50 states.”He nevertheless continued with the false statement about abortions, saying: “Most Republicans believe in the exception, but they don’t want to see an abortion in the ninth month or the eighth month.”We are more than 15 minutes into the NABJ interview with Donald Trump, and the former president has already butted heads multiple times with the interviewers.In addition to frequently interrupting them, Trump has blamed the conferences’s speakers for his lateness, accused the interviewers’ questions of being “rude” and their networks, including ABC, of being “fake news”.At one point, when one of the interviewers told Trump she would like to move on to other questions following his tangent on his alleged political persecution, Trump replied: “You’re the one that held me up 35 minutes.”Donald Trump was asked about Sonya Massey, the 36-year-old Black woman who was shot and killed in her home by a white police officer in Illinois on 6 July.Specifically, the question was about Trump’s previous comments on police officers needing to have immunity and why someone like the officer, who has been charged with murder in the case of Sonya Massey’s killing, should get immunity.Trump responded:
      I don’t know the exact case, but I saw something, and it didn’t look, it didn’t look good to me. It didn’t look good to me …
      I’m saying if I felt, or if a group of people would feel, that somebody was being unfairly prosecuted because the person did a good job … or made a mistake, an innocent mistake, there’s a big difference between being a bad person and making an innocent mistake. But if somebody made an innocent mistake, I would want to help that person …
      Sometimes very bad decisions are made. They’re not made from an evil standpoint.
      Trump then went on a tangent of being “prosecuted because I’m a political opponent of two people that have weaponized our justice system”.In response to what Donald Trump’s message is today and why he chose to appear at the conference, Trump touted his typical anti-immigration rhetoric, saying:
      My message is to stop people from invading our country that are taking, frankly, a lot of problems with it. But one of the big problems, and a lot of the journalists in this room, I know, and I have great respect for a lot of the journalists in this room are Black … They’re coming in, and they’re coming in, they’re invading. It’s an invasion of millions of people … The first group of people, the Black population, is affected most by that and Kamala is allowing it to happen.
      Trump was also asked what a “Black job” is, to which he said:
      A Black job is anybody that has a job. That’s what it is.
      In response to a question on whether he believes Kamala Harris is only on the ticket because she is a Black woman, Donald Trump said:
      So I’ve known her a long time indirectly and she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know. Is she Indian or is she Black?
      In response to a question on why Black voters should trust Donald Trump following his track record of inappropriate comments towards Black communities, Trump said:
      First of all, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question so horrible manner. First question, you don’t even say hello. How are you? Are you with ABC? Because I think they’re a fake news network, a terrible network, and I think it’s disgraceful that I came here in history. I love the Black population of this country …
      I think it’s a very rude introduction. I don’t know exactly why you would do something like that.
      I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln.
      Donald Trump has just walked on stage.The interviewers also said that the interview will be live-fact-checked live.The NABJ interview with Donald Trump is about to begin.Interviewers Kadia Goba of Semafor, Rachel Scott of ABC News and Harris Faulkner of Fox News have just walked on stage.Donald Trump has fired off another post on Truth Social, blaming the conference’s speakers for his lateness:
      I’ve been waiting for a half hour. The speaker equipment at the NABJ is not working properly. Don’t blame me for being late. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump repeats lies and attacks Kamala Harris’s racial identity at panel of Black journalists

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      During a contentious and chaotic panel hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) on Wednesday, Donald Trump parroted disinformation about immigration and abortion, questioned Kamala Harris’s race and accused a panel moderator, Rachel Scott – the senior congressional correspondent for ABC News – of being “rude” and presenting a “nasty question” when she asked him: “Why should Black voters trust you?”The appearance – which received backlash earlier this week from Black journalists citing the former president’s anti-Black, anti-journalist and anti-democracy history – received a mix of jeers, laughter and interruptions from attendees as Trump evaded several questions asked by moderators.On multiple occasions, audience members at the annual convention in Chicago attempted to fact-check Trump in real time, including when he falsely claimed that Harris did not pass her bar exam to be a lawyer, and when he defended pardoning people who were convicted for their actions on January 6.Trump arrived more than an hour late to the panel, which was moderated by Scott; Harris Faulkner, the Fox News television host; and Kadia Goba, the Semafor politics reporter. According to HuffPost, Trump demanded that NABJ organizers not go through with live fact-checking during the discussion, and was in a “standoff” with organizers before the event took place. A live fact-check of Trump’s comments was still featured as planned.The conversation opened with Scott asking why Black voters should trust Trump given his repeated, inflammatory comments about Black people.“Well, first of all, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner,” Trump said, before asking whether Scott was with “fake news network” ABC News. (When he levied a later attack on Scott, one audience member shouted back in her defense.)Trump added: “I think it’s disgraceful that I came here in good spirit. I love the Black population of this country. I’ve done so much for the Black population of this country … I think it’s a very rude introduction.“He continued: “I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln,” which received a mix of boos and applause.Despite promoting his attendance at NABJ on Wednesday morning, by the afternoon panel Trump was claiming to have been invited under false pretenses. The former president said he had been told that Harris would be present at the convention and was instructed to attend in-person. (A source close to the Harris campaign said on Tuesday that she was unable to attend due to the ongoing search for her running mate and the funeral of the representative Sheila Lee Jackson. )Throughout the panel conversation, Trump relied on many of his previous talking points with Black voters.He repeated the unsubstantiated claim that undocumented immigrants were planning on taking “Black jobs”, an assertion that many have condemned as racist.When asked by Scott to clarify what Black jobs were, Trump replied: “Anybody that has a job – that’s what it is. They’re taking the employment away from Black people.”Scott then asked Trump about Republicans claiming that Harris is a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) replacement for Joe Biden.In response, Trump claimed that Harris suddenly “became a Black woman” and had previously only been identifying with her Indian heritage. “Is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump said, as the audience audibly gasped. “I respect either one but she obviously doesn’t because she was Indian all the way and then all of sudden she became a Black woman.”Scott replied that Trump’s assertion was untrue, that Harris has always identified as Black, and that she attended Howard University, a historically Black college in Washington DC.Reaction to the panel was mixed among journalists in the room.At least two Black attendees sporting Trump hats frequently cheered for the former president, especially as he reiterated that he faced “political persecution” after being convicted of 34 felonies.Others were critical. “Ultimately, the conversation was a non-starter,” said Michael Liptrot, South Side weekly reporter. “The moderators did their best to lead a productive conversation and dive deeper and, ultimately, attempts to flip the question led to a stalemate in many ways.”Laura Washington, a political analyst at ABC 7 in Chicago, said Trump “came out very hostile” from the very beginning of the panel: “That was a very difficult thing for the [moderators] to manage because he didn’t answer the questions and was sort of trying to turn their questions back on them and make them the bad women in the room.”Still, Liptrot and Washington agreed that the panel should have taken place, noting the NABJ tradition of inviting Democratic and Republican presidential candidates and the need to hold Trump accountable.Jasmine Harris, the Black media director for Kamala Harris’s campaign, hit back at Trump’s NABJ remarks in a statement, emphasizing the former president’s lies and attacks on members of the press.“Not only does Donald Trump have a history of demeaning NABJ members and honorees who remain pillars of the Black press, he also has a history of attacking the media and working against the vital role the press play in our democracy,” Harris said.“We know that Donald Trump is going to lie about his record and the real harm he’s caused Black communities at NABJ – and he must be called out,” she added.Members of the Biden administration were also critical of Trump’s attack on Harris’s racial identity. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, called Trump’s remarks “repulsive” and “insulting” during a Wednesday White House briefing.“I think it’s insulting for anybody. It doesn’t matter if it’s a former leader, a former president, it is insulting,” she said. “She is the vice-president of the United States. Kamala Harris. We have to put some respect on her name. Period.” More