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      Kamala Harris and Donald Trump neck and neck in new poll – live

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      Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are neck and neck in the presidential race, according to a new Reuters and Ipsos poll.The poll, which was completed on Sunday, showed that the vice-president was supported by 43% of registered voters while the former president was supported by 42%.Last week, a Reuters and Ipsos poll showed that Harris was leading by 44% to Trump’s 42%.Reuters and Ipsos’s latest poll was conducted among 1,025 adults, including 876 registered voters, from 26 to 28 July.Kamala Harris will announce her vice-presidential pick as early as Monday before embarking on a multi-state battleground tour with her new running mate later in the week, two sources familiar with the planning said on Tuesday, Reuters reports.The high-stakes decision on who will run with the current vice-president as the wingman on her presidential ticket has taken center stage since she became the Democratic frontrunner for the 5 November election.Kamala Harris is expected to announce who will be her running mate in her campaign for president as early as Monday, the Reuters news wire is reporting this evening, as an exclusive, citing sources but as yet giving no more detail.This echoes what Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, said yesterday, that Harris would choose and announce “in the next six, seven days”, as we blogged earlier.But anything that echoes or strengthens that prediction is fascinating, so we’ll watch closely.Harris is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president in this election, after Joe Biden withdrew from his re-election campaign nine days ago and anointed Harris as his chosen successor at the top of the ticket.At this rate, she can expect to be officially voted in as the nominee at the party’s national convention next month, in Chicago.Kamala Harris will not attend the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) conference in Chicago, according to a source familiar with her schedule, citing logistical challenges getting to Chicago days after launching her campaign.The vice-president is heading to Houston this week to attend the funeral of the late Texas congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee as well as conducting a rapid search for her running mate.The source said Harris’s campaign offered to participate in a virtual fireside chat, or to host an in-person fireside chat with Harris at a later date, but the request was denied. The source said Harris’s team will continue to work toward a possible solution with the NABJ board.On the sidelines of the centrist WelcomeFest in Washington DC, Will Rollins, the Democratic nominee in a competitive California House district, said Republicans would have a “tricky” time trying to paint Kamala Harris as “dangerously liberal”.“Somebody who goes into law enforcement is not a leftwing ideologue,” said Rollins, a former prosecutor. Already he said she was having a positive impact on down-ballot races. His campaign alone raised a six-figure sum in the 48 hours after her ascent, he said.Rollins noted that when Harris came up in California politics, she was criticized by activists as too conservative, despite the image Republicans are portraying of her as far-left.“She in fact was branded as much too conservative for San Francisco. So I think as voters actually learned more about her actual record it’s going to work well for us,” he said.To underline the point, Rollins said he first met Harris when she was the state’s attorney general at an event with the then Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, whom he worked for at the time.“That kind of proves or disproves their attempt to paint her as an extremist. Here you have this Democratic statewide attorney general, who was working with a Republican governor in California at the time,” he said. “I actually think that’s one of the more underreported parts of her background, what she was able to do across party lines.”He also weighed in on who Harris might choose as her running mate. His choice was for fellow millennial, transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, who he called an “incredible communicator”.Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are neck and neck in the presidential race, according to a new Reuters and Ipsos poll.The poll, which was completed on Sunday, showed that the vice-president was supported by 43% of registered voters while the former president was supported by 42%.Last week, a Reuters and Ipsos poll showed that Harris was leading by 44% to Trump’s 42%.Reuters and Ipsos’s latest poll was conducted among 1,025 adults, including 876 registered voters, from 26 to 28 July.The departure of Paul Dans as the leader of Project 2025 could indicate the project’s work is winding down or at least will not be taking such a public role in the lead-up to the November election, though the policy ideas outlined in its extensive conservative roadmap remain public.Dans, a Donald Trump loyalist, worked in personnel-related roles in the first Trump administration, including as chief of staff at the office of personnel management.Although Kevin Roberts, the president of Heritage Foundation, claimed the change was always intended and followed a set timeline, the move underscores the unpopularity of Project 2025 for Trump, who has for weeks attempted to distance himself from it.Earlier this month, Trump claimed to “know nothing about Project 2025” and have “no idea who is behind it”. The disavowal from Trump came after Roberts said:
      We are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless, if the left allows it to be.
      At a recent rally in Michigan, Trump quipped about the project: “I don’t know what the hell it is” and “they’re seriously extreme.” But the project includes many former Trump administration officials and its aims often align with Trump’s policy ideas, albeit with far more detail.Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said he has “total confidence” in Kamala Harris’s running mate choice.Asked whether he would support Mark Kelly, the Arizona senator, as Harris’s running mate, Schumer said:
      I have total confidence that Vice President Harris will choose a great vice-presidential candidate.
      Asked whether he was concerned about the prospect of a special election in Arizona, CNN reports that Schumer replied:
      I have complete faith in Vice President Harris’ choice.
      Not even a day after audio of JD Vance telling donors that Kamala Harris was a threat and a “sucker punch” was leaked to the Washington Post, Vance continued to make headlines on Tuesday, as a previously unseen video of Vance was published by the Harris 2024 campaign.In the video, Vance can be seen telling an interviewer that not having “kids in your life” makes “people more sociopathic” and makes the US a little bit “less mentally stable”.This comes as Vance continues to face backlash over comments he made in 2021 that recently resurfaced where he criticized the vice-president and other Democrats as “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives”.On Monday evening, Donald Trump sat down with Laura Ingraham of Fox News and defended Vance’s comments, telling the host that his vice-presidential candidate was simply trying to show how much he values family life.Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, made headlines again on Monday evening, after an audio recording of Vance speaking privately to donors on Saturday about Kamala Harris was leaked to the Washington Post.Vance reporedtly told donors that Harris was a threat and “a bit of a political sucker punch” to the Trump Vance campaign.Vance also reportedly said:
      The bad news is that Kamala Harris does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden, because whatever we might have to say, Kamala is a lot younger. And Kamala Harris is obviously not struggling in the same ways that Joe Biden did.
      The comments contradict Donald Trump’s own statements on Harris since Biden withdrew from the race, as he has told reporters that he did not think switching out Biden for Harris “would make much difference”, adding: “I would define her in a very similar [way] that I define him.”Even Vance himself has told reporters that there was in effect no difference in running against Biden versus Harris.The Trump campaign has responded to the news of Project 2025 director Paul Dans’ departure. In a statement, it said:
      President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way.
      Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.
      The work of Project 2025 will continue despite its director, Paul Dans, stepping down from his role, Politico reported, citing a source.The report adds that the source said “the goal of Project 2025 was always to have their work done by the time of the Republican National Convention which ended in late July”.Here’s more on the news that Paul Dans, the director of Project 2025, has stepped down from his role at the Heritage Foundation.Kevin Roberts, the president of the conservative thinktank, has confirmed that Dans is leaving his post.Dans “built the project from scratch and bravely led this endeavor over the past two years” but is now “moving up to the front where the fight remains”, Roberts said in a statement.
      Under Paul Dans’ leadership, Project 2025 has completed exactly what it set out to do: bringing together over 110 leading conservative organizations to create a unified conservative vision, motivated to devolve power from the unelected administrative state, and returning it to the people.
      Dans informed staff at the thinktank this week of his decision to step down, the Wall Street Journal reported. More

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      ‘It puts everyone in a really bad position’: Black journalists react to Trump joining NABJ panel

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      On Monday night, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) announced that Donald Trump will participate in a panel discussion at the organization’s annual convention in Chicago, which starts on Wednesday.The announcement, which said that the Q&A would “concentrate on the most pressing issues facing the Black community”, was met with swift online backlash from some Black journalists. They decried the decision to invite a presidential candidate who has lambasted Black journalists, led a movement to squash diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and who is responsible for increased anti-journalistic sentiment, including the popularization of the term “fake news” to describe factual, but potentially unflattering, reporting.Tiffany Walden, a co-founder and editor-in-chief of The TRiiBE, a digital platform that focuses on Black Chicago, told the Guardian that NABJ’s decision was “irresponsible”.“We’ve watched Trump threaten to send the feds here when he was in office,” Walden said. “We’ve watched him use Chicago as a dog whistle in all of his campaign’s materials during his first run for office. He talked about Chicago having top gang thugs. So this puts the city of Chicago and its residents in a very vulnerable position. It also puts Black journalists in a very vulnerable position at a convention that’s supposed to be a safe space for them.”Ameshia Cross, a political analyst, echoed this sentiment on X: “The same Trump that attacked Black journalists from the stump. The same Trump who is attacking DEI, can’t get ahead of his own racism and sexism. And the guy who wants to dissolve journalism as we know it, that’s who is speaking at #NABJ24 w/ record attendance. C’mon yall.”Another journalist, Carron J Phillips, called the move “the single dumbest and worst decision in NABJ history”.The outcry led to the NABJ president, Ken Lemon, and others defending the decision, saying that Black reporters should have the opportunity to question a political candidate.“Every year, every presidential election cycle, we invite the presidential candidates to come,” Lemon said to NABJ student journalists on Tuesday. “We extend that to anyone who is a nominee and in this case we have two presumptive nominees. We invited both of them … This is an important hour. We have people whose lives are depending on what happens in November … This is a great opportunity for us to vet the candidate right here on our ground.”Kamala Harris is scheduled to speak elsewhere on Wednesday, when Trump will be at NABJ, but her confirmation to attend this year’s convention, which lasts through Sunday, is “pending”, according to NABJ.Tia Mitchell, the chair of NABJ’s political journalism taskforce and a Washington correspondent at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, wrote on X: “I helped make this call. And it’s in line with invitations NABJ has sent to every presidential candidate for decades. But continue to go off on your feed. I’ll continue to work to create opportunities for journalists to interview the potential next President.” (Mitchell, NABJ and NABJ’s Chicago chapter did not respond to requests for comment.)Wednesday’s panel will be moderated by Rachel Scott, a senior congressional correspondent for ABC News; Harris Faulkner, who anchors The Faulkner Focus and Outnumbered for Fox News; and Kadia Goba, a politics reporter for Semafor.“As journalists, we can never be afraid to tackle someone like Trump,” Jemele Hill, a contributing reporter for the Atlantic, wrote on X. “The reality is that he is running for president and needs to be treated as such. Being questioned by journalists is part of the job, and especially important in the company of Black journalists. Mainstream media keeps trying to convince us that he actually is gaining support among Black people. Let’s see if it’s true.”But the journalist Matthew Wright pushed back on the notion that there was anything productive in questioning Trump.“What does that serve?” Wright said to the Guardian. “We literally just watched him talk to Laura Ingraham [who] was trying to get him to answer different questions, but he practically played evasive of action even then. If a super conservative white woman can’t get straight answers out of him, what makes you think that three black women are going to get them?”In a statement about the NABJ appearance, Trump’s campaign wrote: “President Trump accomplished more for Black Americans than any other president in recent history.” Some journalists used this statement as evidence that NABJ’s decision to platform the former president was harmful, and would lead to further perpetuation of falsehoods.“This is the way 45 is touting his appearance before @nabj this week. Was this what you wanted [Tia Mitchell]? He is already lying and he isn’t even in Chicago yet. This is your legacy,” April Reign, a media strategist, wrote on X.The timing of the panel announcement – less than 48 hours before the convention’s start – also drew concern from NABJ members.Shamira Ibrahim, a culture writer, told the Guardian that she was shocked by the decision.“It puts everyone in a really bad position,” Ibrahim said. “You already paid your convention fees, you already paid for a hotel that’s likely not refundable at this point, flights are likely difficult to get replaced. Even if you have a moral opposition to it or an ethical opposition to it, you’re kind of already stuck in whatever plan you made.”NABJ’s annual convention has allowed Black journalists a space to fellowship and gather safely since the organization’s founding in 1975, with some reporters likening it to a family reunion. Inviting Trump, Ibrahim said, undermined that sense of community.“NABJ is primarily not just a place for journalists to get opportunities to interview politicians, but also a place for Black journalists to network, to have open conversations about things that are happening in the industry, to attend panels, and really get a sense of how to shift in a very, very volatile, fragile space,” she continued.“Inviting someone who, one, has made targeted attacks on Black journalists, two, has actively been responsible in defunding programs that help build Black journalists, and three, has publicly attacked the Black press flies in the face of any sort of fidelity convention.”On Tuesday afternoon, a coalition of organizations, including Chicago Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression and Anti-War Committee Chicago, announced plans to rally outside the convention to “tell Trump he’s not welcome in Chicago”. More

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      Harris and Trump release dueling ads as candidates refine their messaging

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      Kamala Harris and Donald Trump released dueling campaign ads on Tuesday, as the reshaped US presidential election began to grind into gear with 98 days to go.The US vice-president’s ad, Fearless, was her first since she became the de facto Democratic nominee, after Joe Biden halted his re-election campaign and endorsed her.“Donald Trump wants to take our country backward,” Harris said. “To give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and end the Affordable Care Act. But we are not going back.”The former president’s ad, I Don’t Understand, used a snippet of Harris answering a question about immigration policy to bolster a hardline message about drugs, crime, terrorism and the southern border.Showing footage of her dancing, Trump’s ad called Harris “failed, weak, dangerously liberal”.Harris’s campaign hit back against Trump, pointing to the Republican’s role in directing congressional Republicans to reject bipartisan border reform.“After killing the toughest border deal in decades, Donald Trump is running on his trademark lies because his own record and ‘plans’ are extreme and unpopular,” Ammar Moussa, a Harris campaign spokesperson, told reporters.Harris has been the presumptive Democratic nominee for little more than a week – but she has made an extremely strong start, reeling in more than $200m and appearing to make up ground in the polls.She is still considering her own vice-presidential pick. But on Monday, Trump’s Republican running mate, the hardline Ohio senator JD Vance, was revealed to have made a telling admission about the strength of Harris’s start.In remarks at a fundraiser in Minnesota last weekend, reported by the Washington Post and referring to Biden’s decision to give in to those who said he was too old for a second term, Vance said: “All of us were hit with a little bit of a political sucker punch.“The bad news is that Kamala Harris does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden, because whatever we might have to say, Kamala is a lot younger. And Kamala Harris is obviously not struggling in the same ways that Joe Biden did.”Biden is 81, and Harris is 59. Trump is 78, making him the oldest presidential nominee of all time. The language of Harris’s new ad pointed to Democratic determination to target Trump’s age – and to portray him as backward-looking and a thing of the past, now that their own old man is out of the campaign picture.The Harris campaign is also keen to point to its fundraising efforts, which as the new ad was released saw a “White Dudes for Harris” Zoom call featuring celebrities including the actor Jeff Bridges, who famously played Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski. The campaign said it raised $4m.Five years before Bridges made The Big Lebowski, he played the lead role in Fearless, a 1993 movie about a man whose behaviour is changed after he survives a plane crash.In a statement accompanying the Fearless ad, the Harris campaign chairperson, Jen O’Malley Dillon, saluted Democrats’ own dramatic shift in fortunes, from plummeting polls under Biden to soaring hopes under Harris.“Kamala Harris has always stood up to bullies, criminals and special interests on behalf of the American people – and she’s beaten them,” O’Malley Dillon said, echoing the ad’s citation of Harris’s work as attorney general of California, as well as her time as a US senator and vice-president.“This $50m paid media campaign, bolstered by our record-setting fundraising haul and a groundswell of grassroots enthusiasm, is one crucial way we will reach and make our case to the voters who will decide this election.”The Harris campaign plans to air its ad prominently over three weeks, including amid coverage of the Olympic Games in Paris.The Trump campaign is also reportedly focusing on Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan – the key battleground states. More

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      Celebrity-studded ‘White Dudes for Harris’ call raises $4m for vice-president

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      A Zoom call meant to rally “white dudes” in support of Kamala Harris’s run for the White House raised more than $4m from about 190,000 participants, including several Hollywood stars, in the latest success for her nascent bid for president.The fundraiser added to a series of positives for the Harris campaign on Tuesday, including the release of a new ad, an endorsement from the Republican mayor of a large city in in Arizona, and an admission from the Republicans’ vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, that Harris posed more of a threat to the Trump campaign than Joe Biden did.Guests on the “White Dudes for Harris” call on Monday evening not only included contenders for Harris’s vice-presidential running mate – the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz; the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker; and the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg– but also the actors Jeff Bridges (famous for portraying the Dude in The Big Lebowski) and Mark Hamill, who secured a $50,000 donation during the call by delivering his renowned Star Wars line: “I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m here to rescue you.”A news release from the organizers said the virtual gathering “shattered expectations”.“Over the course of the evening, speakers heard governors, senators, congressmen, actors and singers all speaking directly to white men around the need to organize and support Kamala Harris for president,” the press release said. “Speakers spoke truthfully and honestly about the path ahead, the importance for us to connect with one another and the important role we can play in getting other white men to turn their backs on the dangerous, dark path Donald Trump is trying to march us down.”Harris, a former California attorney general and US senator who is of Indian and Jamaican heritage, became the first woman to be elected vice-president when Joe Biden won the White House in 2020. She is now likely to become the first woman of color to lead a major-party presidential ticket after Biden halted his re-election run on 21 July and endorsed her.Democrats responded to Harris’s ascension with enthusiasm, illustrated by 170,000 people signing up to volunteer for her campaign as well as donating $200m for her political war chest in just the first week.But Trump – Biden’s presidential predecessor – and his Republican supporters, many of them white, have greeted her rise by disparaging her as a hire resulting from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.“Honestly, their dark vision for our future is just holding all of us back,” Brad Bauman, a Democratic party communications consultant who helped organize Monday’s call, told NBC News. “That’s why we decided to start White Dudes for Harris.”Other celebrities on Monday’s call were Mark Ruffalo, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Paul Scheer, Josh Gad, Sean Astin, JJ Abrams and Bradley Whitford. The call lasted over three hours.The Zoom fundraising call came in the wake of similar, well-attended gatherings for Black women, Black men and white women supporting Harris.There is also a “cat ladies for Harris” Zoom call being planned in response to comments from Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, in which he insulted the vice-president as a “childless cat” lady. And there is a similar call in the works titled “Latino Men for Kamala”. The AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, is hosting a Labor for Harris Zoom call with labor leaders and members around the US on 31 July.The white women for Harris call last Thursday raised nearly $8.5m for the vice-president and had more than 160,000 attenders.The Black women for Harris Zoom call attracted about 90,000 participants. And the Black men for Harris streaming event, moderated by the journalist Roland Martin, saw more than 53,000 people register.Those events also included appearances by numerous celebrities and Democratic officials.The calls come as Harris and Trump are polling closely to each other in crucial battleground states likely to determine the election. After Biden’s withdrawal from the race, the Republican-friendly Fox News poll conducted in three of the key states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – showed Trump and Harris were even.Trump had previously been enjoying relatively comfortable leads.The successful fundraising calls for Harris were anchored by news of an important endorsement in the battleground state of Arizona, as the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona’s third largest city, crossed party lines to endorse Harris.The Harris campaign also released its first video television advertisement, which describes the presumptive Democratic nominee as “fearless” and touts her bona fides as a prosecutor. The one-minute ad is the first of a $50m advertising campaign ahead of the Democratic national convention in Chicago on 19 August.Adding to her campaign’s sense of momentum since Biden declared last Sunday that he was stepping aside from the presidential race was an audio recording leaked to the Washington Post on Monday of Vance telling Republican donors that Harris taking over from Biden was a “sucker punch”.“All of us were hit with a little bit of a political sucker punch,” said Vance in the recording. “The bad news is that Kamala Harris does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden because whatever we might have to say, Kamala is a lot younger. And Kamala Harris is obviously not struggling in the same ways that Joe Biden did.” More

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      Kamala Harris is the worst nightmare of America’s far right | Robert Reich

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      When Joe Biden stepped down in support of Kamala Harris, he didn’t just pass the torch to another generation. He passed it from old white men to America’s future.Consider that women now compose a remarkable 60% of college undergraduates. And that by 2050, it’s estimated that America will consist mostly of people of color – 30% more Black people than today, 60% more Latinos and twice the number of Asian Americans.The power shift has already started.Many of the people who have demanded accountability from Trump constitute a Trump nightmare of strong and able women, including several of color – Letitia James and Fani Willis – along with E Jean Carroll and her lawyer Roberta Kaplan, Liz Cheney and Nancy Pelosi.And now, Kamala Harris.In naming JD Vance as his vice-presidential candidate, Trump feinted a torch pass – but backwards. Vance’s white male belongs in the early 20th century.During Vance’s bid for the Senate in Ohio in 2021, he called Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies”, offering as examples Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.“How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?” Vance asked, suggesting the only way to have a “direct stake” is by giving birth.Even before Vance said this, Harris was stepmother to two teenagers. Soon after, Buttigieg and his husband adopted infant twins.By this logic, no American male – including Vance and Trump – can have a “direct stake” in America.Trump himself – dog-whistling racist; alleged groper, fondler, and sexual harasser; and adjudicated rapist – is hardly respectful of women, especially women of color.Of Harris, he claimed: “They’re saying she isn’t qualified because she wasn’t born in this country.” (Harris was born in California.)Of Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, he charged – also without evidence – that “she ended up having an affair with the head of the gang or a gang member”.Trump has repeatedly denigrated women of color as “angry” or “nasty”.And he views female human beings as almost alien creatures. “There’s nothing I love more than women,” he has said, “but they’re really a lot different than portrayed. They are far worse than men, far more aggressive, and boy, can they be smart!” And, of course, his infamous: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”Trump misogyny has infected the entire Maga Republican party, whose recent convention was a celebration of testosterone – featuring the wrestling champ Hulk Hogan shouting: “Let me tell you something, brother … Trump is the toughest of them all, a gladiator!”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTo remind you, Hogan was the protagonist in a sex-tape video scandal. Hogan’s lawsuit over the circulation of the video, which put Gawker Media out of business, was underwritten by the tech billionaire Peter Thiel – the same man who gave JD Vance a lucrative venture-capital job, funded Vance’s senatorial campaign and introduced Vance to Trump.Other pop cultural “tough guy” icons at the Republican convention similarly attested to Trump’s virility. The conservative rocker/rapper Kid Rock performed his song American Badass.Instead of being introduced by his spouse, as have most candidates accepting their party’s nomination, Trump was introduced by Dana White, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship – known for its machismo culture and sanctioned violence.Trump, Vance, and their Maga allies are misogynists who want to control women by preventing them from controlling their own bodies – forcing them to have children. Vance is against abortion even in cases of rape or incest.Trump’s Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership” chillingly recommends that the Department of Health and Human Services “ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method”.What’s the underlying goal here? The same as in Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale – authoritarian fascism organized around male dominance.In this worldview, anything that challenges the traditional male roles of protector, provider and controller of the family threatens the social order. Strong women and LGBTQ+ people also weaken the heroic male warrior. Brutality, force and violence strengthen him.In their eyes, Kamala Harris could not pose more of a threat.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      Harris’s VP list: Gretchen Whitmer and Roy Cooper say they’re not in running

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      Two lawmakers seen as strong contenders in the race to become Kamala Harris’s running mate have announced that they are not in the running. On Monday, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and North Carolina governor Roy Cooper both said that while they support the vice-president, they will be staying in their posts in their respective states.“This just wasn’t the right time for North Carolina and for me to potentially be on a national ticket,” Cooper said in a statement posted to Twitter/X on Monday. “As I’ve said from the beginning, she has an outstanding list of people from which to choose, and we’ll all work to make sure she wins.”In an interview with CBS, Whitmer said that she has not been vetted by Harris’s office and expects Harris’s to announce her pick within the week, which would confirm the Democratic ticket at least two weeks before the Democratic national convention begins on 19 August in Chicago.“I have communicated with everyone, including the people of Michigan, that I’m going to stay as governor until the end of my term at the end of 2026,” Whitmer said.Others rumored to be potential running mates are all white men who govern in swing states that can decide the 2024 election. They include: Kentucky governor Andy Beshear; Minnesota governor Tim Walz; Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro; and Mark Kelly, a US Senator in Arizona.While all four have been asked about their willingness to serve as Harris’s running mate if tapped, all have signaled that they would step up if asked but none have hinted at their engagements with her campaign.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This is not about me. But I’ve always, always said when I’ve had the chance to serve, I think that’s very important to do,” Kelly told reporters on 25 July.“Being mentioned is certainly an honor … I trust Vice-President Harris’s judgement, she’ll make the best choice she’s going to,” Walz told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday. “But one way or another, she’s going to win in November and that’s gonna benefit everyone … Either way it’s gonna be a win.”During a campaign stop for Harris in Pittsburgh, Shapiro said: “It’s a decision she needs to make who she wants to govern with, who she wants to campaign with, and who can be there to serve alongside her.”And Beshear, who has also been stumping for Harris in red and purple jurisdictions, told the Des Moines Register newspaper: “I’m honored to be considered and, regardless of what happens, I’m going to work every day between now and Election Day to make sure that Kamala Harris is the next president of the United States.” More

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      US elections live: Biden takes the stage to talk about supreme court reform in speech marking Civil Rights Act anniversary

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      Joe Biden is expected to announce three proposed reforms to the US supreme court.In an opinion piece published in the Washington Post on Monday, the president called for three primary changes to the high court.

      Eighteen-year term limits

      A binding code of ethics

      A new constitutional amendment that would virtually reverse a supreme court decision in July granting former presidents broad immunity from prosecution for actions taken while in office
      Biden’s speech comes on the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.Hello, I’m Abené Clayton running the blog from Los Angeles. We’ll bring you the latest news and reaction.Biden just completed his speech and reaffirmed his proposed changes to the supreme court.One of his proposed changes is to reverse the recent immunity decision poses, which he says gives the president room to “violate our oath, flout our laws, and face no consequences”.On the issue of term limits, Biden argued that an 18-year cap would make the timing of nominations less “arbitrary” and limit the ability of the president to influence the makeup of the body.He is also seeking a new code of conduct that will replace the current one that is optional for justices. This new edict would require justices to disclose gifts, recuse themselves from cases that they or their spouses have an interest in, and “refrain from public political activity”, Biden said.Joe Biden is calling out supreme court decisions that he says have eroded civil rights.They include the 2013 Shelby County decision that gutted civil rights, the 2022 decision that overturned Roe v Wade, and most recently a decision that gives presidents broad immunity. These actions, Biden said, fly in the face of the notion that “there are no kings in America … No one is above the law.”“Extremism is undermining the public confidence in the court’s decisions,” Biden added.At the top of his speech Joe Biden emphasized his admiration for Lyndon B Johnson and reiterated the promises made by his signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.The president told the audience:
      In a great society no one should be left behind … It’s time for us to come to see that every American gets a decent break and a fair chance to make good.
      Joe Biden is now on the stage, he was introduced by Andrew Young, a former congressman and ambassador to the United Nations. Biden walked out to the song Glory, performed by John Legend and Common for the 2015 film Selma.The live stream is here.We are still waiting for Joe Biden to take the stage. Less than an hour ago, he arrived in Austin and was greeted by several local and state lawmakers.Currently, Mark Updegrove, the president and CEO of the Lyndon B Johnson Foundation, the group hosting the Civil Rights Act commemoration event, is giving a speech about the organization’s history and legacy.Watch the live stream here.As we await the arrival of Joe Biden on the stage, here are some of the images being sent to us on the newswires of the president arriving in Austin earlier today.He was met by Democratic state representatives Sheryl Cole and Donna Howard before heading to the LBJ library.There was music from the concert choir of Huston-Tillotson University, followed by the actor Bryan Cranston reading an excerpt from the 1964 Civil Rights Act.The event marking the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act is being held at the Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) library in Austin, Texas.It began with a short film showing previous presidents’ remarks on civil rights, including Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.Joe Biden is expected to announce three proposed reforms to the US supreme court.In an opinion piece published in the Washington Post on Monday, the president called for three primary changes to the high court.

      Eighteen-year term limits

      A binding code of ethics

      A new constitutional amendment that would virtually reverse a supreme court decision in July granting former presidents broad immunity from prosecution for actions taken while in office
      Biden’s speech comes on the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.Hello, I’m Abené Clayton running the blog from Los Angeles. We’ll bring you the latest news and reaction.A trial looming in a lawsuit challenging North Dakota’s abortion ban was canceled Monday as the judge in the case, state district judge Bruce Romanick, weighs whether to throw out the lawsuit. It was not immediately clear why the trial was canceled.The notice comes nearly a week after the state and plaintiffs, who include the formerly sole abortion clinic in North Dakota, made their pitches to the judge as to why he should dismiss the two-year-old case, or continue to trial, the Associated Press reports. The trial was due to begin late August.North Dakota outlaws abortion as a felony crime for people who perform the procedure, but with exceptions to prevent the mother’s death or a “serious health risk” to her, as well as for cases of rape or incest within the first six weeks.The plaintiffs, which include the Red River Women’s Clinic and doctors trained in obstetrics, gynecology and maternal-fetal medicine, alleged the abortion ban violates the state constitution because it is unconstitutionally vague about its exceptions for doctors and that its health exception is too narrow. They wanted the trial to proceed.Kamala Harris highlighted endorsements from mayors of border towns in swing state Arizona today as she looks to blunt the impact of Republican criticism of her handling of illegal border crossings.Harris’s campaign for president said she was backed by the mayors of Bisbee, Nogales, Somerton, and San Luis, as well as by Yuma county supervisors Martin Porchas and Tony Reyes, the Associated Press reports.Republicans say Harris did not do enough as US vice-president to clamp down on illegal immigration.
      I trust her to meet the needs of border cities and towns without taking advantage of us for her own political gain, like her opponent,” the Somerton mayor, Gerardo Anaya, said in a statement. Somerton is a city of about 14,000 people in the state’s southwestern corner.
      As vice-president, Harris was tasked with overseeing diplomatic efforts to deal with issues spurring migration in the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, as well as pressing them to strengthen enforcement on their own borders. The Biden administration wanted to develop and put in place a long-term strategy that gets at the root causes of migration from those countries.Border arrests have fallen from record highs last December.Read my colleague Lauren Gambino’s piece on Harris’s record on immigration policy, here.The Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, whose state borders Iowa, has also extended a welcome to Iowa residents who are in need of reproductive healthcare, as Iowa’s strict six-week abortion ban took effect on Monday.Walz, in a post to X, wrote:
      In Minnesota, we take care of our neighbors. It’s just what we do. As our neighbors in Iowa are stripped of their fundamental rights, my message is clear: Your reproductive freedom will remain protected in Minnesota.
      The House speaker, Mike Johnson, and minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, have announced the seven Republicans and six Democrats who will sit on the taskforce to investigate the assassination attempt against Donald Trump.The Republican chair of the panel will be the congressman Mike Kelly, who represents the Pennsylvania town of Butler where the shooting took place.The Democratic ranking member will be the Colorado congressman Jason Crow, who sits on the House intelligence and foreign affairs committee.Johnson, in a statement posted to X, said he and Jeffries “have the utmost confidence in this group of steady, highly qualified, and capable Members of Congress”.The Iowa ban, which takes effect today, permits abortions past six weeks in cases of rape or incest, or in medical emergencies.Fourteen other states, including much of the midwest, enacted near-total bans on abortion since the US supreme court overturned Roe.Three other states – Georgia, South Carolina and Florida – have banned abortion past about six weeks of pregnancy.Roe’s demise led to surge in support for abortion rights, even in red states. Sixty-one per cent of Iowans, including 70% of women, say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, a Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll found last year.A six-week abortion ban went into effect in Iowa on Monday, cutting off access to the procedure before many women know they are pregnant.The Republican-dominated Iowa state legislature passed the ban last year, but a lengthy court battle initially stopped it from taking effect. Last month, the Iowa supreme court ruled that the ban could be enforced, leading a lower-court judge to order the ban to take effect at 8am local time.Leah Vanden Bosch, development and outreach director of the Iowa Abortion Access Fund, said in a statement:
      The upholding of this abortion ban in Iowa is an absolute devastation and violation of human rights, depriving Iowans of their bodily autonomy. We know a ban will not stop the need for abortions.
      Up until Sunday, abortion had been legal in Iowa up to roughly 22 weeks of pregnancy. Now, abortion clinics in the state have indicated that they will continue offering the procedure to the legal limit.The closest options for Iowans who want abortions after six weeks of pregnancy will probably be Minnesota and Illinois, Democratic-run states that border Iowa and that have become abortion havens since Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022.The Iowa ban permits abortions past six weeks in cases of rape or incest, or in medical emergencies.Two Democratic state governors who are being considered by Kamala Harris’s campaign as her potential running mate, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and JB Pritzker of Illinois, have criticized the strict six-week abortion ban that went into effect in Iowa today.Shapiro directly blamed Donald Trump for the Iowa law, and urged voters not to re-elect the Republican former president.Pritzker, whose state borders Iowa, welcomed Iowa residents to visit Illinois if the new law blocks their access to “whatever care they need”. He added:
      Please know – as you work to maneuver around this dangerous and unjust law – we are here for you.
      Questions continued to mount about the political transformation of Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, after the release of emails from a former friend in which Vance called Trump a “morally reprehensible human being” and said: “I hate the police.”The messages between Vance and Sofia Nelson, who sent them to the New York Times, were largely dated between 2014 and 2017. In one, Vance sent Nelson a section of Hillbilly Elegy, his bestseller about his Appalachian boyhood. Vance wrote:
      Here’s an excerpt from my book. I send this to you not just to brag, but because I’m sure if you read it you’ll notice reference to ‘an extremely progressive lesbian’. I recognise now that this may not accurately reflect how you think of yourself, and for that I am really sorry. I hope you’re not offended, but if you are, I’m sorry! Love you, JD.
      Read the full story here: JD Vance calls Trump ‘morally reprehensible’ in resurfaced emails More

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      Former chief of staff says Democrats’ efforts to push out Biden were ‘nasty’

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      Senior Democrats’ successful efforts to push Joe Biden out of the presidential race were “unfortunate, nasty and public” and did the president a “disservice”, Biden’s former White House chief of staff said – even as the new nominee, Kamala Harris, continued to fundraise strongly, campaign vigorously and show signs of catching Donald Trump in polling.“I was disappointed that people in the party called for [Biden] to leave the race, and I thought they got out of control,” Ron Klain said.“I thought it was unfortunate, nasty and public, and shouldn’t have been … I thought they were doing him a disservice, but I think he handled it incredibly graciously and came up with a plan that is going to work for us in 2024.”The podcast host Kara Swisher released her conversation with Klain on Monday, a little over a week after Biden made history by saying he would relinquish power.Now 81, Biden was long subject to doubts about his fitness for office, but calls to quit accelerated after the first presidential debate in late June, during which Biden appeared frail and confused and failed to check Trump’s lies.Klain left the White House last year but helped Biden prepare to debate.He said: “I thought the debate was an opportunity for the president to put some of these questions [about his age and fitness] to rest, but obviously [it] did not go well that night and that is what it is. And so we took a gamble and the gamble didn’t work.“I thought it was a reasonable chance to take. I thought the president, as he showed in the days after the debate, was fully capable of making his case forcefully on the stump, fully capable of answering unscripted questions, as he did at his press conference [during a Nato summit in Washington]. I thought we would see that on debate night and we just didn’t, of course.”Klain said Biden had been “very kind” and “took responsibility in our conversations and said he’d had a bad night, and told me not to feel bad about it. I think … he just was off.”Few Democrats agreed. Amid sympathy for Trump after an assassination attempt, and with polling showing Biden in trouble in key states, calls for the president to stand aside surged, supported by party grandees including the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, who Biden served as vice-president.Eventually, Klain said, Biden “made a decision that he couldn’t keep the party unified” but also decided “to point the direction forward, and he pointed very clearly towards Vice-President Harris.“And so I think that was a wise decision, and I think he’s executed it extremely well. You see the vice-president emerging in very short order as the consensus nominee of our party with strong backing … I think that’s great.“… So I don’t really love how we got here, but I think we’re in a good place. We’re going to move forward. We’re going to win this year.” More