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      Young men on being Republican in New York: ‘It caused all types of consternation among my friends’

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      In New York City, Republicans are something of a rarity. Only 10% of New Yorkers are Republicans, according to 2021 voter registration data, and the state is polling bright blue for Kamala Harris. But the Republican party has not called it quits.“You live in a blue city, but it’s going red very, very quickly,” Donald Trump claimed at a Bronx rally in May. Step into the suburbs, and Republican candidates have enough momentum to turn multiple House elections – and ultimately, control of the House – into nail-biters.It’s an interesting time for the New York Young Republicans Club (NYYRC). The club brings together conservative New Yorkers 40 and under to socialize, campaign and discuss policy; recent events have included debate watch parties and a self-defense course in light of “illegal military-age male immigrants flooding our country, the threat of World War III, and New York’s insistence on stripping our Second Amendment rights”. It’s using this momentum in New York to branch out to other Republican youth organizations around the country.This year, the photographer Paola Chapdelaine spent time with four male members of NYYRC and one male member of the nearby Connecticut Young Republicans, who represent a nationwide trend of young men increasingly embracing the right. Here, they explain how they found their way to the Republican party as young men in a liberal city and what they think of political polarization in America.Frank Filocomo, 27: ‘Community cannot be politically monolithic’View image in fullscreenWhen I was an undergrad, I saw a woman on the train with a button on her backpack that said “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”. I remember completely disagreeing with that. This move towards dissolving the family, or saying that we don’t need each other and we could just be these totally individualized, autonomous beings with no connection to family, with no connection to our history, I reject that idea. I think we’re all connected to something greater. I guess that’s what makes me a conservative.Recently, I thought I had a great rapport with a date – lots of laughter, great chemistry. Then, the morning of the second date, she [texted]: “Hey, I did some thinking, and never mind. I would not like to go on a date with you.” I immediately knew that she Googled me. I’m not a rightwing vigilante, but I write for conservative publications.If I start immediately in a relationship by saying: “Hi, I’m Frank, I’m a conservative,” then I’m setting myself up for failure. I say: “Hi, I’m Frank, I have a cat that I love. These are my hobbies. I play guitar.” That’s not to say you should be deceptive about your beliefs, but it is to say that you should be cognizant of the political polarization in this country. I think it was Muhammad Ali who said that he judges people based on how they treat waiters at restaurants. Similarly, how do you treat animals? I think squabbling over the tax code, or the right number of immigrants we should have per year, or how you feel about foreign policy ultimately mean nothing to me in a relationship. What I care about is how you treat me and how you treat others.I sound like a hippy, but I also totally believe in this idea of community, and that community cannot be politically monolithic. It has to have Democrats in it, has to have liberals. The second we go to the “me versus them” or “us versus them” mentality, we’re doomed.Born, raised and currently living in Brooklyn, Filocomo is program manager at the conservative non-profit National Review Institute. He serves as policy chairman of NYYRCJude Somefun, 41: ‘My politics caused all types of consternation among my friends’View image in fullscreenIt was 2008 and I was a political free agent. This was when everybody was like, “Obama, Obama, Obama.” He was the hope and change guy. But he was saying stuff like: “These billionaires and millionaires have made too much on American people. It’s time for them to spread the wealth” – like socialists. And I was like: “I can’t vote for this guy.”That’s when I leaned on biblical faith and started researching the political parties. Growing up in New York, most Black people are implicit Democrats or explicit Democrats. My friend Ben, who was a socialist, illustrated to me what it takes to be courageous and not fall into the trend, to express your opinion. I don’t necessarily agree with socialism, I just felt like he was very courageous.I felt like the Republican party was more in alignment with freedom, more in alignment with business, more in alignment with marriage, more in alignment with life in the womb. I was like, “OK, I could get down with that.” It caused all types of consternation amongst my friends, my girlfriend at the time. People were having interventions. My dad kind of renounced me as a son. It was very, very tough.In this election, I believe we should promote the interests of America first. A lot of people are hurting now economically. I don’t see the benefit in sending money over to Ukraine, a bunch of foreign aid, a border that’s open, when we have to take care of our citizens.Somefun is philanthropy chairman of NYYRC. He was born and raised in Harlem and currently lives there. He is a life insurance agentMatthew Carrier, 22: ‘From the outside, I’m a raging conservative, but biodiversity concerns me’View image in fullscreenI got started with the College Republicans my sophomore year. There were four of us, so, like, something had to change. So we made it a very conversation-centric group. Our first topic was the Afghanistan pullout, because that was timely. Veganism was a recent [topic] we did, but the conversation was very good. We had a transgenderism and athletics meeting that was probably our most contentious.The club is College Republicans, there’s no hiding from that, and still, we’ve gotten a very dynamic group of people that are willing to have conversations. We have respect for ourselves. We have respect for the campus, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. It’s something I see where other college Republican groups falter.From the outside, I’m a raging conservative, but biodiversity concerns me [as a farmer]. Still, I don’t share the same concerns [as environmental activists] with GMOs and stuff, because I see there’s a need when you have a world of 8 billion people to feed. I try not to criticize farmers that are at a much larger scale than me by saying: “Just let there be more ladybugs and your crops will be fine.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion

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      Republicans are very much a party of clean air, clean water. When you want to talk about global warming and such, that’s where you lose us. I’m much more appreciative of the climate change conversation if folks I’m talking to are willing to rank their issues. That’s a hard thing to do, and maybe a very cold way of thinking. But what’s the biggest issue, carbon in the atmosphere or plastic on the ground? Biodiversity? I think there’s a lot of benefits to nuclear [power], but no one wants to be the guy that stakes a claim to nuclear out of concern that things go bad.Carrier is the former president of College Republicans at University of Rochester and current statewide chairman of the Connecticut Young Republicans, as well as a political consultant and small scale farmer and beekeeper. He is from Enfield, ConnecticutLucian Wintrich, 36: ‘We’re in an economically terrifying situation’View image in fullscreenSo many younger people in New York are conservative, but they’re scared to actually come out and say that they’re conservative. [There’s also] a quarter of the party, and it tends to be these younger, reactionary kids, who will regurgitate whatever certain conservative influencers say, rather than reading and thinking for themselves.I was the only gay guy and the only pro-Bush guy in fourth grade. To me, conservatism is about actual individuality and autonomy and the understanding that the only real authority that we should appreciate and look towards is God, versus the government and elected officials. I mean, I fully believe in community. Most public schools, before the [federal government] took over and established the failing Department of Education, were run by communities. The more you involve the [federal government], the less control communities have, individuals have, and the worse off we are.[In 2024], I think we need to stop funneling all this money to Israel and Ukraine and honestly, every other country that we’re funneling money to. Actually, Israel is a little trickier than Ukraine. I do think it’s a stabilizing country [in the Middle East], but still we’re hemorrhaging money while our debt is going up. We’re in an economically terrifying situation right now.Wintrich lives in New York’s East Village. He is a media strategist and PR consultant and serves as press chairman of NYYRCKwasi Baryeh, 24: ‘It seems like political violence is becoming normalized’View image in fullscreenOne of the biggest problems I see with New York and other cities that lean liberal is that there’s a degradation of property rights. There’s potential for squatters. Tenants have the right to not pay and stay within the property. It’s also landlords abusing their position by not following their legal responsibilities. When people don’t pay rent or don’t abide by their contracts, that’s probably a gateway to people refusing to obey laws, refusing to follow established norms and conventions. It prevents people from living as moral people.I support the party. I support Trump. Trump did the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. A couple months ago, I filed my tax return, and I saw I got a little extra money from that. He also [signed a bipartisan bill] funding HBCUs, which my mother, who’s a college professor, was really grateful for. He met with Kanye to see what could be done to remedy the injustice of more Black people being in prison – reducing the incarceration problem. The First Step Act, allowing the formerly incarcerated to re-enter society, was bipartisan, and it was passed. But with the [current] political environment, it doesn’t seem feasible that anyone is going to get much done.[I’m also concerned about the] two recent assassination attempts on Trump. It seems like political violence is becoming more normalized in our society, which makes things much more unstable as things get close to election day.Baryeh is a financial analyst. He lives in the Bronx and is a board member of the NYYRC Catholic caucus

      These interviews have been edited for clarity More

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      Trump plan for Madison Square Garden rally compared to infamous Nazi event

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      Donald Trump’s decision to hold a rally in the heart of Manhattan on 27 October, nine days before election day, has been slammed by New York Democrats, with one comparing the booking to an infamous Nazi rally held at the same venue in the lead-up to the second world war.But it has also triggered a backlash to such sentiments, with Republicans saying such rhetoric heightens tensions even more in a presidential election campaign which has already seen two attempts on Trump’s life.The Democratic state senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, whose district includes much of the west side of Manhattan where a date on Trump’s “arena tour” rally has been booked at Madison Square Garden, called on venue owners to cancel the event.“Let’s be clear,” Hoylman-Sigal wrote on X. “Allowing Trump to hold an event at MSG is equivalent to the infamous Nazis rally at Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939.”Hoylman-Sigal was referring to a pro-Hitler rally, organized by the German American Bund, that was attended by more than 20,000 people and featured a portrait of George Washington flanked by swastikas. Many attendees came from Yaphank, Long Island, where the Bund was headquartered and had a summer camp teaching Nazi ideology.In 2019, Hillary Clinton used a speech at the same venue to decry “an assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our democracy”, referring to the infamous Bund rally.But New York Republicans denounced the comparison.“Referring to a peaceful rally for the leading candidate for President of the United States as a ‘Nazi Rally’ is not only a disgusting comparison, it is a gross escalation of the dangerous rhetoric in the wake of two direct attempts on President Donald Trump’s life,” state senator Rob Ortt said in a statement.In his post, Hoylman-Sigal tried to downplay the comparison he had made. “I’m not calling anyone a Nazi,” he said. “I’m pointing out a historic similarity.”The state senator added: “I was talking about the venue and many of his followers who are white supremacists and have demonstrated hatred and vitriol toward minority groups, including Jews, people of color and the LGBTQ community.”Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, told Politico that Trump had refused to condemn white supremacy, incited rightwing extremists to engage in an insurrection, and aligned with and dined with Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis.“If ever there was a moment to make such a comparison, it’s now, which is why the vast majority of American voters are opposing Donald Trump in this election,” Soifer said.View image in fullscreenThe dispute comes as the major political parties are locked in an expensive battle for control of New York’s suburban districts that flipped Republican in 2022, depriving Democrats of a majority in Congress.But it also comes as Jewish voters in New York City weigh their traditional Democratic alignment over the widening Middle East conflict. Trump has said Jews who vote for Vice-President Kamala Harris “should have their head examined”.Members of Democrats’ progressive wing have been accused of antisemitism over their statements criticizing Israeli actions and for their support of pro-Palestinian protests at university campuses across the city.Earlier this week, Trump held a remembrance event to mark the first anniversary of the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israelis on 7 October 2023. He called the attack on Israel a “nightmare” and went on to say that the rise of antisemitism in the US was a result of Democratic leadership.Trump has previously said he had hoped to hold a rally at Madison Square Garden, home to sports teams such as the New York Knicks and the Rangers, and the most prestigious rock venue in the country.“We’re going to be doing a rally at Madison Square Garden, we believe,” Trump said in April. “We think we’re signing Madison Square Garden to do. We’re going to have a big rally honoring the police, and honoring the firemen, and everybody. Honoring a lot of people, including teachers by the way.”The dispute over a Trump rally at the venue comes as Democrats have broadly toned down their comparisons between Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement and Nazi ideology.In May, Joe Biden accused Trump of using “Hitler’s language” in May after the former president temporarily shared a video referencing a “unified reich” to Truth Social.The Trump campaign press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said comments by Hoylman-Sigal “is the same type of dangerous rhetoric that led to two assassination attempts on President Trump’s life and has divided our country” and called on the senator to resign.The Republican state senate candidate Vito LaBella said on X that Hoylman-Sigal’s comments would alienate voters. “All polls show about half this country supporting this man. It’s OK that you hate Trump. You just called 150 million voters Nazies [sic]. Shame on you.” More

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      Former aide to Eric Adams arrested on charges of witness tampering

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      A former aide to Eric Adams was arrested Tuesday on charges of witness tampering and destroying evidence in relation to a federal investigation that has spawned FBI raids, a string of resignations and bribery charges brought against the New York mayor.Mohamed Bahi, who ran the mayor’s community affairs office, had already stepped down when he was charged on Tuesday with instructing multiple witnesses to lie to federal investigators about a December 2020 fundraiser for Adams’ victorious mayoral election campaign.Federal prosecutors in New York allege that Bahi, 40, deleted Signal, an encrypted messaging app that he used to communicate with the mayor from his phone, when he realized the FBI was on his trail.“The charges unsealed today should leave no doubt about the seriousness of any effort to interfere with a federal investigation, particularly when undertaken by a government employee,” Damian Williams, US district attorney for the southern district of New York, said in a statement.At least three federal corruption investigations are focused on Adams and his aides. Prosecutors charged the mayor in September with five counts of public corruption, including bribery and violating campaign finance laws.Adams has pleaded not guilty to the charges and has petitioned the court to drop the bribery count.“I am going to serve my term and run for the election,” Adams said Tuesday, adding: “I think when both sides of this come out, people are going to have a second look at this entire event that’s taking place.”The ongoing raids and resignations, including that of his chief legal adviser, have raised questions about Adams’ ability to simultaneously lead the city, run for re-election and defend himself from the allegations.The New York governor, Kathy Hochul, the only elected official with the power to remove Adams from office, has not called for him to step down. If he did, the city would be run by Jumaane Williams – a progressive Democrat who serves as public advocate for the city – until elections are held.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut with tight congressional elections in the suburbs of New York City on 5 November, and Hochul facing her own re-election in 2026, it is not believed that the governor is willing to risk political discord by removing Adams as mayor.Hochul has reportedly told Adams to clean house and to work to regain the trust of New Yorkers. “I’ve talked to the mayor about what my expectations are, and I don’t give out details of private conversations,” Hochul said recently. More

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      In the US, rats could soon have better birth control access than women | Arwa Mahdawi

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      The fight for rat-productive rightsEric Adams, we recently learned, seems to have spent the bulk of his time as mayor of New York trying to wangle criminally cheap business class tickets from Turkish Airlines. But while Adams may have made history by becoming the first sitting mayor of New York to be indicted on federal corruption charges, the fact that he has a slightly wonky moral compass is old news. Even before being appointed mayor, there were questions about Adam’s truthfulness, including a long-running debate about whether the swagger-obsessed candidate lived in Brooklyn, as he insisted he did, or New Jersey.Still, let’s give the mayor his due, shall we? It would be unfair to say he’s spent the entirety of his time in high office trying to live the high life. Adams, who appointed New York City’s first “rat tsar” last year, has also spent a lot of time thinking about the city’s rodent problem. “I don’t think there’s been a mayor in history that says how much he hates rats,” he grandly proclaimed during New York City’s inaugural Rat Summit in September. “I dislike rats.” Adams added that he was confident New York could “look forward to a new paradigm in urban rat management”.Wheelie bins are part of that exciting new paradigm in urban rat management. There was much mirth on social media over the summer when it transpired that New York City had paid McKinsey over a million dollars to figure out whether it might be a good idea to put loose rubbish in a bin. (Or, in management consultant speech, “containerize” it.) Now the brainiacs in Adams’s orbit have come up with an exciting new paradigm shift: the city council recently greenlit pilot schemes to deploy ContraPest, a type of rodent birth control.The irony that New York is investing in rodent contraceptives at a time when women’s access to reproductive services across the US is under fire hasn’t gone unnoticed. Social media has been filled with wry observations along the lines of “it’s easier to get reproductive rights as a rodent in New York than it is for a woman to get reproductive rights in most of the country”.Because pedants never take a day off I will note that quip isn’t strictly true. At least for the moment it isn’t. But if Donald Trump wins the election and the extremists backing him have their way then it might very well be true that rats will soon have better access to birth control in the US than women. Over the past few years, rightwingers have started to speak more openly about the possibility of banning birth control. In 2022, for example, an Idaho Republican leader suggested he’d consider banning certain forms of birth control, including the morning-after pill. Around the same time the governor of Mississippi refused to rule out future contraception bans during an interview on NBC.This isn’t just all talk. Over the years the right has managed to undermine access to birth control in a number of alarming ways. In 2022, for example, an appeals court ruled that federally funded family planning centers in Texas must receive parental consent before prescribing birth control to teenagers. (Previously federal courts had found that the national title X program guaranteed minors the right to access birth control without parental involvement.) Then, this summer Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have recognized a legal right to contraception.Perhaps most importantly, anti-abortion activists have also been doggedly trying to argue that certain birth control methods, such as Plan B and certain intrauterine devices (IUDs), are abortifacients because they may prevent the implantation of fertilized eggs. While it’s unlikely that we’ll see any sort of direct push to outlaw access to contraceptives, expect to see anti-abortion laws sneakily widen to restrict access to birth control. As advocates have noted, Roe was not toppled in a day–and access to contraceptives won’t be overturned imminently. But anti-abortion extremists have made clear what their endgame is. And when these people tell you who they are, you’d better believe them.‘I’ve never worn trousers up a mountain, and I never will’I find cycling in a dress awkward. Meanwhile, Cecilia Llusco, one of Bolivia’s first female Indigenous mountain climbers, scales icy peaks in a pollera: a traditional voluminous floral skirt. Don’t miss this wonderful Guardian feature on the Cholita climbers of Bolivia–it has some incredible photographs.Melania Trump wants you to know she is passionately pro-choiceIn her new memoir the former first lady writes, “Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body.” Good question Melania! Ever tried asking your husband that? Speaking of which, Melania’s decision to speak out about abortion rights a month before the election feels part of a calculated strategy by the Trump campaign to soften its rhetoric on abortion.Prominent Palestinian journalist Wafa Aludaini killed in an Israeli airstrikeWafa was killed alongside her husband, her five-year-old daughter and her seven-month-old son. As Reporters Without Borders recently noted: “At the rate journalists are being killed in Gaza, there will soon be no-one left to keep you informed.”India’s government thinks criminalizing marital rape would be “excessively harsh”One in 25 women in India have faced sexual violence from their husbands, the BBC reports. And, of course, nothing happens to most of these men because marital rape is not a criminal offence in India. For years now, campaigners have been petitioning India’s supreme court to try and change this but have faced enormous resistance from the government, religious groups, and men’s rights activists. An affidavait submitted by India’s Interior Ministry on Thursday argued criminalizing marital rape “may seriously impact the conjugal relationship and may lead to serious disturbances in the institution of marriage.” It also said that while a man “does not have any fundamental right to violate the consent of his wife” including marital rape under anti-rape laws would be “excessively harsh” and “disproportionate”.Mexico’s first woman president announces reforms to battle gender discriminationOn her second full day in office, Claudia Sheinbaum said her government had proposed reforms to broaden women’s rights, including a constitutional guarantee of equal pay for equal work.EU court rules gender and nationality enough to grant Afghan women asylumAn important ruling by the European court of justice recognizes Afghan women as a persecuted group.The week in podtriarchyIn 2012 Melania Trump famously posted a photo of a smiling beluga whale with the caption “what is she thinking?” Despite the fact that entire podcast episodes have been devoted to this question, we still don’t know. Scientists have recently discovered, however, that bottlenose dolphins ‘smile’ at each other to communicate during social play. The open-mouth expression is meant to signal fun and avoid conflict. So, in other words, dolphins have better social skills than many politicians. More

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      ‘Show me the money’: how Eric Adams made it to the top – and fell back down

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      Last week, on a grey September morning, the New York City mayor, Eric Adams, was struggling to get ahead of federal prosecutors.News had already leaked that Adams, a former police officer who won in 2021 with a law-and-order message, was about to become the first mayor in city history to be indicted on federal corruption charges.Just minutes before the US attorney for the southern district of New York – an office known for taking on white collar criminals and the mafia – formally announced charges of bribery, wire fraud and the solicitation of campaign contributions from foreign nationals, Adams held his own press conference, in which he painted himself as the victim of a 10-month-long campaign of “leaks”, “commentary” and “demonising”.“We are not surprised,” Adams said solemnly, standing at a small wooden podium. “We expected this.”Behind the mayor stood a line of Black clergy members, an obvious gesture suggesting Adams was part of the long lineage of courageous Black leaders targeted by the white power structure.View image in fullscreenBut as one heckler in the audience that morning made clear, Adams – who had attempted to cut school budgets, raised rents for rent-stabilised tenants and cozied up to the city’s largely white corps of business leaders – might have a harder time projecting himself as a victim of the deep state.“This is not a Black thing. This is a you thing,” the protester shouted, as Adams grinned awkwardly.“You are a disgrace to all Black people in this city,” the heckler continued. “The things that you have done are unconscionable. You hurt our schools. Our streets are dirty. Our children are harassed by the police.”After a few minutes, Adams was able to speak and took questions from reporters, who had just got their hands on the freshly unsealed indictment against the mayor.The sprawling, 57-page filing alleged that for years in the run-up to his mayoral election Adams knowingly sought out and accepted illegal campaign contributions funneled to him by people part of or close to the Turkish government – not to mention luxury hotel stays and more than $100,000 worth of free or discounted flights going everywhere from France to Sri Lanka to China.The day after the indictment’s release, Adams had to go to court. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.This was not the future Adams had imagined for himself three years before when it became clear he was going to become the mayor of the US’s largest city by population.Back then, the candidate’s greatest support seemed to come from beyond.View image in fullscreenGod had previously told Adams, he recalled, that he was “going to be the mayor”, and, indeed, in 2021, right before the pivotal Democratic primary, everything seemed to fall into place for the once obscure Brooklyn politico.New York City’s progressive camp cannibalised itself. One of Adams’s top centrist rivals collapsed in the polls due to decades-old harassment allegations. And after months of protests over the police killing of George Floyd and a temporary rise in shootings, Adams rode a tough-on-crime backlash into office, eking out a victory over a former garbage commissioner with less campaign cash and little name recognition.“Look at me and you’re seeing the future of the Democratic party,” Adams told supporters at the time. “If the Democratic party fails to recognise what we did here in New York, they’re going to have a problem in the midterm elections and they’re going to have a problem in the presidential election.”And it wasn’t just Adams who was predicting big things.A chorus of national political columnists, consultants and analysts heralded his coming reign. Even the political forecaster Nate Silver had high hopes for the former Republican cop turned mayor.“It’s probably foolish to think a NYC mayor will successfully translate into being a national political figure, but I still think Eric Adams would be in my top 5 for ‘who will be the next Democratic presidential nominee after Joe Biden’,” Silver tweeted a few days after Adams took office.Today, as he faces federal charges, historically bad polls and a growing pool of mayoral challengers smelling blood, Adams looks more like a future one-term mayor than the future of the Democratic party.This was not an outcome that national commentators predicted. But former Adams staffers, aides, local lobbyists and elected officials – the kind of people who know how the Empire state runs – say they’re not surprised.Adams came to power through the backrooms of New York machine politics, a seedy but powerful subculture built more on favour-trading and loyalty than any strong ideological convictions. Over two decades, Adams attached himself to influential state lawmakers and party bosses from Brooklyn, cultivated some of the borough’s top real estate and legal titans, and developed a close-knit coterie of advisers and staffers who rose with him for years from the fringes of Brooklyn politics.View image in fullscreen
      This political network and Adams’s own unceasing work ethic helped the candidate build a campaign war chest that proved large enough to get him past the finish line in 2021 – a fact he well understood.“You win the race by raising money. Have to raise money. Everything else is fluff,” Adams texted a close supporter ahead of the election, according to messages cited in the indictment. “I have a 7 million dollar race. I have a clear plan to raise it and each night we are out executing the plan.”But it was this exacting drive, prosecutors allege, that caused him to cross ethical and legal lines in the pursuit of campaign cash and the power that comes with it.In the indictment, former Adams staffers, who appear to have cut deals with prosecutors as they built their case, claimed that their boss personally solicited illegal donations from foreign businessmen and approved of “straw donor” schemes, which used American residents as pass-throughs to mask the money’s true origin. One text message exchange cited in the indictment shows Adams personally pushing a staffer to seek “help” from a Turkish businessman, now accused of funneling him straw donations.Fabien Levy, a spokesperson for Adams, did not provide the Guardian with a comment for this story. Vito Pitta, Adams’s campaign counsel, and Alex Spiro, Adams’s criminal defence attorney, did not respond to requests for comment.Last Friday, after Adams formally pleaded not guilty, he stood outside federal court with Spiro, his attorney, who predicted the charges would be dismissed and accused prosecutors of bringing the case because they were excited by the “spectacle”.How aware, how involved the mayor was in these alleged schemes, may soon be left up to a jury to decide. But for years before the mayor was summoned to stand before a federal judge in lower Manhattan, political insiders say, there were signs that Adams was unafraid to skirt up to the edge of the law on his way to the top.The racetrack scandalWhen Adams first became a state senator from a working-class part of Brooklyn in the mid-2000s, he had a reputation as a reformer.During his early days as a cop, the Queens native publicly clashed with the department’s white ethnic brass. As a young lawmaker, Adams marched with Occupy Wall Street demonstrators and spoke out against the NYPD’s notorious “stop-and-frisk” program, an initiative that pushed cops to search young Black and Latino men en masse in the off-chance that they had a knife or a gun.But while his rhetoric as a press-hungry lawmaker could at times be progressive, Adams – whose long-term ambition was always to become mayor – showed more interest in cultivating alliances than passing landmark pieces of legislation.And some of the causes he did champion were obviously in his self-interest. In 2007, Adams, then a moustachioed freshman lawmaker, stood on the Senate floor and shouted about the need for lawmaker raises. “Show me the money,” declared Adams, wagging his finger to the chamber. “Show me the money. That’s what it’s all about.”Two years later, Adams found a way to raise more in campaign funds, if not personal ones.In 2008, Adams helped broker a deal that made his good friend, the state senator John Sampson, chair of the chamber’s Democratic majority – one of three positions at the time that in effect dominated the New York legislature, which was then considered by some to be a finishing school for political corruption.The following year, as chair of the senate racing and wagering committee, Adams got to work with Sampson to decide which company they would recommend for a multibillion-dollar video slot machine contract at a state-owned thoroughbred racetrack in Queens.New York’s inspector general later concluded that the selection process was tainted by favouritism.Investigators found that Sampson, for example, leaked “one or more confidential internal senate analyses of the competing bids” to a lobbyist working for AEG, the company that eventually landed the contract.View image in fullscreenAnd Adams and Sampson both met New York’s then governor David Paterson over dinner and pushed him to approve the contract for a company called AEG, Patterson later told investigators.The same month, Adams received more than $6,000 from AEG-linked contributors.Adams would later insist to investigators that he did not meet for dinner, contrary to the claims of the governor and his good friend Sampson. Adams said he just so happened to momentarily bump into the governor, Sampson and an AEG representative at the restaurant.“I just said hello to them and I moved on,” he told investigators, a claim that they said strained “credulity”. Four days after the contract was awarded to AEG, Adams and Sampson decided to attend a $1.5m “victory celebration” at the home of the company’s lobbyist.After the scandal came to light, the contract was rescinded. But federal prosecutors never brought any charges against Adams, who insisted long after that he upheld the “highest” of ethical standards throughout the episode. Sampson, who was also not charged for the AEG scandal, was subsequently indicted on embezzlement charges stemming from a separate incident a few years later. In the years after he was released from prison, the former lawmaker benefited from his association with Adams, as the Guardian previously reported.‘A true friend of Turkey’Since he was an NYPD officer in the mid-nineties, Adams had quietly harboured ambitions to become mayor, and, in 2013, he took the next step towards his goal, becoming borough president of Brooklyn. The position had few major responsibilities, but it served as an excellent launching pad for his long-planned mayoral bid.Once in office, Adams began using the post to boost his profile. He hung a large banner of himself on the columns at the front of borough hall. He plastered his image on advertisements for free concerts his office was organising. And soon he began flying to countries around the world – cultivating relationships with foreign government officials and business leaders, which frequently preceded suspicious clusters of campaign donations from members of those nations’ diasporas back in New York City.In his second year in the new post, Adams found time to take two trips to Turkey, arranged by a Turkish government official and businessmen with ties to the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, according to federal prosecutors.In 2016, the Turkish government official connected Adams to a manager at Turkish Airlines, which is partially state-owned. And in the years that followed, prosecutors allege, the airlines provided Adams and members of his inner circle more than $100,000 worth of free or discounted airfares to India, France, China, Hungary, Ghana and Turkey, where the borough president enjoyed free dinners, a boat tour of the Princes’ Islands in the Sea of Marmara and a Turkish bath at a seaside hotel, among other perks. In 2021, with Adams at this point officially running for mayor, the Turkish government official personally helped him harvest illegal campaign cash, according to the indictment. In one case, a New York City-based Turkish construction owner, acting at the behest of the Erdoğan official, held a fundraiser for Adams, prosecutors allege. The government official sent his driver to deliver campaign checks to the event, and the construction owner had several of his employees act as straw donors each giving $1,250 to Adams, having received the exact same lump sums earlier from their boss.Two months later, Adams won New York City’s Democratic primary, in effect making him the mayor-in-waiting.That September, the Turkish official, having cultivated Adams for almost six years, asked his friend for help, prosecutors allege.Erdoğan’s was visiting New York City for a United Nations meeting, and the Turkish consulate needed to ensure the president’s trip would coincide with the opening of a $300m glass skyscraper, slated to serve as the headquarters of multiple Turkish diplomatic missions, according to prosecutors. But the building still had numerous fire safety defects, which Turkish officials feared would prevent their leader from being able to preside over its inauguration.So the Turkish government official began reaching out to Adams’s eastern Europe Muslim countries liaison, the federal indictment alleges, telling her that Turkey had supported Adams and now it was “his turn” to support Turkey.View image in fullscreenThe next day, Adams sent his liaison a message saying he would contact the fire department, prosecutors allege. And in the days that followed, Adams repeatedly contacted the fire commissioner to fast-track the process, even as one department employee warned higher-ups that the site’s fire alarm system had “major issues”, according to messages cited in the filing.“In my opinion, this document does not take any liability that we would be comfortable with,” wrote the department official on 9 September, referring to a letter from a consulate contractor describing the state of the alarm system, according to an email included in the indictment. “I believe it actually tells us this building is not safe to occupy.”The next morning, Adams pushed the fire commissioner for an inspection, messages cited in the indictment show. “They really need someone … by today if possible,” Adams wrote. That afternoon after additional department outreach from Adams, one of the commissioner’s direct subordinates told the agency’s fire prevention chief that if he did not clear the bureaucratic hurdles for the Turkish consulate, they would both lose their jobs, prosecutors allege. The fire prevention chief then bypassed standard department procedure and issued a letter clearing the way for the building to open, an action he later described as “unprecedented”, according to prosecutors.At 2.17pm, Adams got word and messaged the Erdoğan official minutes later, according to an exchange cited in the indictment: “From the commissioner: Letter being drafted now. Everything should be good to go Monday morning.”“You are Great Eric, we are so happy to hear that 🙏🙏,” the Turkish government official wrote, the legal filing states. “You are a true friend of Turkey.”At a press conference last Thursday, federal prosecutors said the investigation into Adams’s ties to Turkey remained ongoing. (Federal authorities are also currently investigating another longtime Adams liaison linked to separate clusters of alleged straw donations, first revealed by the Guardian US in collaboration with the news sites The City and Documented.)The same morning, outside in the rain, Adams watched as protesters repeatedly interrupted his own press conference, calling him a “disgrace” and an “embarrassment”.Between their shouts, Adams asked the public to withhold judgement.“Everyone that knows me knows that I follow campaign rules and I follow the law,” he said. “That is how I live my life. I don’t see coming into the 60s at my age to all of a sudden change what I’ve done all the time.” More

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      Walz and Vance embrace an endangered US political species: agreement

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      There was a strange feeling as the vice-presidential debate got under way in the CBS News studios on Tuesday night that only intensified as 90 minutes of detailed policy discussion unfolded: was the United States in danger of regaining its sanity?After weeks and months of being assailed by Donald Trump’s dystopian evocation of a country on the verge of self-destruction, amplified by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s dire warnings of democracy in peril, here was something very different. The two vice-presidential nominees were embracing that most endangered of American political species: agreement.“Tim, I actually think I agree with you,” said JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, addressing his opposite number Tim Walz during the discussion on immigration.“Much of what the senator said right there, I’m in agreement with him,” said Walz, the Minnesota governor and Democratic nominee, as they turned to trade policy.It wasn’t true, of course. The two men were no closer to agreement than their bosses, who in their own presidential debate last month showed themselves to be worlds apart.But on Tuesday it was as if the CBS News studio in midtown Manhattan had been transported back to a prelapsarian – or at least, pre-Maga – times. To an era when politicians could be civil, and to get on you didn’t have to castigate your opponent as an enemy of the people.For Vance the metamorphosis was especially striking. He is, after all, running mate to the architect of “American carnage”.For his own part, the senator from Ohio has spread malicious untruths about legal-resident Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating people’s cats and dogs. Not to mention that he’s the “childless cat-ladies” guy.An unrecognisable Vance emerged on the New York stage. This one listened respectfully to his debating partner, spoke in whole and largely measured sentences, and went so far as to admit his own fallibility – three qualities that the former president rarely emulates.Vance had reason to present himself differently from Trump, perhaps. At 40, to Trump’s 78, he has the future to think about – his own future.But his affable demeanor was also artifice. When it came to the content of what he said, the Republican vice-presidential nominee was as economical with the truth as his overseer.He lied with abandon, in fact. He just did it with a silken tongue.He talked about the vice-president presiding over an “open border” with Mexico when numbers of border-crossers are actually at a four-year low. He claimed he had not supported a national abortion ban – oh yes he did, repeatedly during his 2022 senatorial race.On the Middle East crisis, he accused the “Kamala Harris administration” of handing Iran $100bn in the form of unfrozen assets – not true. It was $55bn, and it was negotiated under Barack Obama.Perhaps most egregiously, he said Trump had “salvaged” the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Obama’s wildly popular healthcare insurance scheme commonly known as Obamacare. “Salvaged” was an interesting choice of word to apply to Trump, who tried 60 times to destroy the ACA without offering any alternative.Yet it would have taken an attentive viewer to see behind Vance’s smooth comportment to the lies he was purveying. The former tech investor and bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy looked comfortable on stage and in his own skin, presenting himself as the reasonable Trump, a Maga lion in sheep’s clothing.Walz by contrast had moments in which he came across as tense and uneasy, the pre-debate nerves that had been reported by CNN appearing to have been genuine. While Vance beamed his piercingly-blue eyes direct to camera, the Minnesota governor frequently looked down at his notes.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe folksy, aw-shucks “Coach Walz” who has taken the US by storm since he was plucked out of Minnesota obscurity to be Harris’s running mate was largely absent.He stumbled on occasion, garbling his words to refer to having become “friends” with school shooters rather than their victims’ families. And he mishandled a question about why he had wrongly claimed to have visited China during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, woodenly trying to dodge the issue by calling himself a “knucklehead”.But when push came to shove, Walz came through. On the subjects that matter most to Harris in her bid to become the first female president, and the first woman of color in the Oval Office, he hit Vance hard – civilly, but hard.On abortion he followed his running mate’s lead and spoke movingly about the personal impact of Trump’s effective evisceration of Roe v Wade. He invoked the story of Amber Thurman, who died as she traveled in search of reproductive care from Georgia to North Carolina.That even extracted one of the most surprising “I agree” remarks of the evening from the staunchly anti-abortion Vance: “Governor, I agree with you, Amber Thurman should still be alive … and I certainly wish that she was.”There was only one point in the evening when the kid gloves came off, and the cod display of gentility was discarded by both parties. It came when Vance had the audacity to claim – silkenly, naturally – that Harris’s attempts to “censor” misinformation in public discourse posed a far greater threat to democracy than Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election on January 6.“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance deflected when Walz asked him directly whether Trump had lost that contest. “That is a damning non-answer,” the Democrat shot back, his face pained.In the last analysis, both men were only there playing the role of side-kick. They may have raised hopes that civility could make a comeback to US politics, but let Trump have the last word.“Walz was a Low IQ Disaster – Very much like Kamala,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social site shortly after the debate had ended. And just like that, it was business as usual. More

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      Walz v Vance: two midwesterners miles apart in politics ready for debate

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      The football coach and the “Yale law guy” go head-to-head in New York City on Tuesday night, as two midwesterners with very different styles and vastly diverging messages slug it out over the future of the US.Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, faces the Republican senator from Ohio, JD Vance, in a vice-presidential debate that promises to be unusually significant in this white-hot election year. They will joust for 90 minutes under the moderation of CBS News as they seek to give their respective running mates – Kamala Harris and Donald Trump – a leg up to the White House.Walz has been prepping for the debate in Minneapolis with the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, masquerading as Vance. (Buttigieg may have been suffering deja vu – he posed as Mike Pence during Kamala Harris’s prep sessions ahead of the 2020 VP debate.)Vance has been holding mock debates with the Republican whip in the US House, Tom Emmer, standing in as Walz. Emmer is a fellow Minnesotan, so has the benefit of having studied Walz up close.The two running mates bring contrasting strengths to the gladiatorial ring. Vance is an experienced debater who will relish confrontation under the glare of the TV lights.“Look, he’s a Yale law guy,” Walz has said about his opponent. “He’ll come well prepared.”Walz by contrast will be able to lean on skills learned in the school classroom. Walz spent 17 years as a public school teacher, so he knows how to think on his feet – and deal with a disruptive kid.“I expect to see a very heated debate,” Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign manager, told CBS News.One of the big questions of the night is likely to be whether Vance can redeem himself after a troubled start to his candidacy. Will he be able to get past all the “weirdness”, as Walz has framed it, and bring consistency to the messaging of an often chaotic Trump campaign?From awkward encounters with doughnut shop workers, to the ongoing furor around his “childless cat ladies” remark, Vance has been the subject of online mockery that has at times appeared to engulf him. He also seems to be stuck on the same culture war issues that consume Trump.“Vance does not seem to have drawn additional voters to the Trump ticket, as the controversies he gets into are exactly the same as those the former president gets into,” said Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.Most egregiously, Vance has doubled down on the false and racist narrative that Haitian immigrants are eating family pets in Springfield, Ohio, despite categorical denials from local authorities. He recently confessed to CNN that he was willing to “create stories” if it meant that he attracted media attention.Such comments have sunk Vance underwater in the opinion of the voting public – his unfavorability rating is 11 points higher than his favorable, according to FiveThirtyEight.Walz by contrast is basking in the glow of a positive four-point gap between his favorability ratings, which poses him with a completely different set of challenges on debate night. He will need to parry Vance’s attempts to frame him as the misinformation candidate based on misrepresentations Walz made about his military record, defuse his rivals claims that he is dangerously liberal, and refuse to be knocked off track.“Walz just needs to get in and out of the debate without causing trouble for his ticket,” Burden said.John Conway, director of strategy for Republican Voters Against Trump, said that Walz was best advised to follow Harris’s playbook. He organised focus groups the day after Harris’s debate with Trump, involving voters from five battleground states who backed Trump in 2016 but switched to Biden in 2020.The focus group attendees were enthusiastic about Harris’s dual approach to the debate – attack Trump for his lies and felony convictions, but also lay out a positive plan for the future of the country. “That’s the blueprint Walz must follow,” Conway said, “attack when appropriate but also be substantive on the issues.”There have been several memorable made-for-TV moments from the VP debates since the first in 1976 between senators Bob Dole and Walter Mondale. Most celebrated is the 1988 incident when the Democrat Lloyd Bentsen chastised George H Bush’s running mate, Dan Quayle, for comparing himself to John F Kennedy.“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”“That was really uncalled for, senator,” Quayle wailed.More recently, John McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, ribbed Joe Biden, the Democratic VP candidate running with Barack Obama, in 2008, by telling him: “Aw, say it ain’t so, Joe.”Those were neat soundbites that entered the lexicons. But it is notable that neither Bentsen nor Palin were rewarded where it matters – at the ballot box.In fact, vice-presidential debates have tended to be underwhelming in terms of the lasting imprint they have left on US elections. Larry Sabato, professor of politics at the University of Virginia, pointed out that even after the dynamic presidential debate between Harris and Trump earlier this month, which was watched by 67 million TV viewers and which Harris was widely judged to have won, the race remains essentially neck-and-neck in the critical battleground states.Sabato said that given the lack of consequences from the debate at the top of the ticket, he expected Tuesday’s vice-presidential tussle to be equally inconclusive. “I don’t expect the vice-presidential debate to make any impact,” he said.Yet this is no ordinary election. Joe Biden’s departure and the sudden elevation of Harris, together with Trump refusing to participate in a second debate with her, has raised the stakes.Tuesday’s spectacle will probably be the final debate before election day on 5 November. “This is really the last main national moment in the campaign, so I do think it is important,” Mook said.Apart from the economy, immigration and foreign wars, which are certain to be addressed during the debate, a more amorphous struggle is likely to play out on stage: who will own the mantle of “authentic midwesterner”? Will it be Nebraska-born Walz, or the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy, Ohio’s Vance.The rivalry goes beyond mere aesthetics or regional loyalties. It resonates heavily in those states where the election could be decided – the three so-called “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.“I don’t know if the word ‘midwestern’ will be used in the debate, but feelings about the midwest will come through,” Burden said.The candidates offer a diametrically opposed vision of the heartlands. Walz’s midwest is folksy and homely, a world where neighbors look after each other, where football coaches double up as local heroes (Walz coached the sport at Mankato West high school from 1997), and where joy fills the air.Vance’s is a much darker picture of drug addiction, broken families and the threat of immigration. His is the midwest of Trump’s “American carnage” dystopia.Two utterly contrasting visions. Two tough and determined candidates. Gentlemen, shall we begin? More

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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