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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

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      New York mayor Eric Adams pleads not guilty to federal corruption charges

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      Eric Adams, the embattled Democratic mayor of New York City, who was indicted on federal criminal charges in an unprecedented scene for a sitting mayor of the city, pleaded not guilty in court in Manhattan early on Friday afternoon.The mayor arrived at court on Friday morning hours ahead of a scheduled arraignment, accused of accepting illegal campaign contributions and free overseas trips from foreign actors seeking influence.“I am not guilty, your honor,” Adams said, looking solemnly at Judge Katharine Parker.Adams was released on the condition that he not contact any witnesses or people described in the indictment. Prosecutors said they would provide his lawyer with a list of names.Adams is allowed to speak with members of his family and staff but not about anything pertaining to the allegations, Parker said, warning he could face additional charges and punishment if he were to engage in witness tampering or intimidation.Adams left the courtroom without commenting. He smiled at a court officer but ignored the rows of reporters he passed on his way out. Afterwards, Adams stood silently outside the courthouse while his lawyer, Alex Spiro, railed against the charges to a crowd of cameras and onlookers who exchanged shouts of “Free Eric!” and “Lock him up!”“This isn’t even a real case. This is the airline upgrade corruption case,” Spiro said.Adams, 64, is due back in court on Wednesday for a conference before US district judge Dale E Ho, who will preside over the case going forward.In court for about 18 minutes, Adams sat stoically with his hands folded in his lap as Parker read the charges aloud, her sturdy delivery underscoring the gravity of the case.An indictment unsealed on Thursday included five criminal counts. US prosecutors allege that before and during his term as mayor, Adams “sought and accepted improper valuable benefits, such as luxury international travel, including from wealthy foreign businesspeople and at least one Turkish government official seeking to gain influence over him”.The charges include conspiracy to commit wire fraud and to receive campaign contributions by foreign nationals, wire fraud, and solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national.The complaint focuses on trips Adams and his partner took to Turkey, India and Ghana on Turkish Airlines, sometimes staying in luxury hotels, that as an elected official he should have disclosed to the government, and campaign contributions made by Turkish officials through a system of “straw” donors.Adams “did not disclose the travel benefits he had obtained in annual financial disclosures he was required to file as a New York City employee”, the government alleges. “Sometimes, Adams agreed to pay a nominal fee to create the appearance of having paid for travel that was in fact heavily discounted.”In return, prosecutors said, Adams did favors for his patrons. That included helping Turkey get fire department approvals to open a new diplomatic tower in Manhattan, despite concerns about its fire safety system, prosecutors said.Adams says he is innocent. His lawyer has said it was neither unusual nor improper for a government official to accept some travel perks. The mayor has denied ever knowingly accepting an illegal campaign contribution and said any help he gave people navigating the city’s bureaucracy was just part of doing his job.Meanwhile, the local news outlet PIX11 reported that investigators had raided the home of Adams’s chief adviser, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, on Friday and confiscated electronic devices. PIX11 said Lewis-Martin had her phones seized by the Manhattan district attorney’s office when she arrived back from Japan at JFK airport also on Friday morning.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      This is the beginning of Eric Adams’ fall from power as New York mayor | Ross Barkan

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      For the first time in the modern history of New York City, a sitting mayor has been indicted.Eric Adams will now know the fate of Donald Trump – to be indicted and possibly convicted in a Manhattan courtroom. Damian Williams, the US attorney for the southern district, has unsealed a 57-page indictment that accused Adams of performing favors for Turkish foreign nationals after accepting more than $100,000 in international plane tickets and accommodations, as well as soliciting illegal donations from them. These donations generated public matching funds for his mayoral campaign in 2021.This indictment, it should be noted, was related to one of at least four possible federal probes into the Adams administration. His police commissioner and top counsel have already resigned, and his schools chancellor – FBI agents seized his phone recently – announced that he is stepping down at the end of the year.City hall is in chaos. All of this, given Adams’ history, was arguably foreseeable.Before Adams was a mayor, he was a Brooklyn borough president and state senator who courted controversy. Corruption clouds followed him. Until now, he was never indicted. Until now, he always found a way to survive.If he and Trump have much that separates them – Adams, a Democrat, is a child of the Black working class – there are also striking commonalities. Both grew up in Queens, an outer borough of New York City. Both talk tough, revel in political combat and enjoy, even more, playing the martyr. In their political and personal conduct, they are remarkably brazen.They do not give in. They do not apologize.Neither care terribly about governing, either. To this day, Trump cannot explain any federal policy adequately. He was not able to sketch the outlines of a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act during his debate with Kamala Harris. He only wants to gut federal bureaucracies, not manage or bolster them.As mayor, Adams has preferred the prestige and the glitz of the office to the actual work of formulating policy initiatives. The municipal government has bled top talent and agencies are stuffed with patronage hires. His achievements, at best, are small bore.His recent predecessors – Bill de Blasio and Michael Bloomberg – could boast of great changes they brought to New York City, like a new universal prekindergarten program or popular waterfront parks. They left behind tangible legacies. They had, above all, governing visions.Unlike Trump, Adams cannot survive an indictment. Either he will resign or he will lose in the Democratic primary next year. His poll numbers, long before the indictment came, were cratering, and they are only bound to fall more. His base has shrunk and Democrats want him gone.Kathy Hochul, the New York governor, has the power to remove him from office but probably won’t. She remains something of an Adams ally and will probably fret the optics of a white governor dragging a Black mayor from office – especially when he hasn’t yet been convicted of a crime.What will happen, instead, is that Adams will drag this out as long as possible. He might eventually cave to pressure from the US attorney’s office and cut a deal with Williams to dodge prison time. Or he’ll battle on to a trial, and force New Yorkers to endure the spectacle of their mayor in a courtroom. Trump had the presidency to protect him from many criminal charges. Adams enjoys no constitutional privileges or loopholes.If Adam does resign soon enough before the Democratic primary next year, there will be a non-partisan special election to replace him. There has never been a mayoral special election before. It will not be restricted to registered Democrats; ranked-choice voting, where voters can pick up to five candidates, will be employed.The disgraced former governor, Andrew Cuomo, is a rumored candidate, hoping to seek redemption from the sexual harassment scandal that forced him from power. Other prominent Democrats in New York City include Brad Lander, the city comptroller, and Jumaane Williams, who as public advocate would become acting mayor if Adams resigns. A Republican or two may try for city hall as well.They will all hope to forget the Eric Adams years ever happened.

      Ross Barkan is a writer based in New York More

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      Biden and Harris joined by Parkland school shooting survivor at event on addressing gun violence – US politics live

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      Donald Trump said he would meet with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday morning at Trump Tower.Yesterday, the former president attacked Zlenskyy directly and accused him of “refusing” to negotiate a peace deal with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. “The president of Ukraine is in our country. He is making little nasty aspersions toward your favourite president, me,” Trump said. “We continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal: Zelenskyy.”A fued between Trump and Zelenskyy has escalated in recent days, as my colleague Andrew Roth reports:US and European officials have noted with varying levels of alarm the potential for a Trump administration to sharply reduce US aid to Ukraine in order to force Zelenskyy to accept terms for a ceasefire.Asked if the Democrats wanted to “Trump-proof” aid to Ukraine before a potential Trump presidency, a senior state department official said, “I don’t ever talk in those terms” but that the primary goal was to make sure Ukraine “has all the equipment it needs to keep fighting and manpower and other things”.“At the end of the year, regardless of who wins our election in December, as at the end of this fighting season, Zelenskyy and Putin need to look at the battlefield and say, here’s what we think next year will look like,” the official said.“And the primary factor there is, do I think the other side has all the equipment it needs to keep fighting and manpower and other things?”On Wednesday, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, a Republican, accused Zelenskyy of election interference and demanded he fire his ambassador to Washington over a visit to an ammunitions factory in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. Johnson claimed the Ukrainian ambassador had failed to invite any Republicans to the event and called it a “partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats”.Zelenskyy sought to reduce tensions on Thursday as he thanked the US for the new arms package and praised political leaders’ “strong bipartisan support” in “Ukraine’s just cause of defeating Russian aggression”.“I am grateful to Joe Biden, [the] US Congress and both parties, Republicans and Democrats, as well as the entire American people for today’s announcement of major US defence assistance for Ukraine, totalling $7.9bn and sanctions against Russia,” Zelenskyy wrote.Donald Trump said he would meet with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday morning at Trump Tower.Yesterday, the former president attacked Zlenskyy directly and accused him of “refusing” to negotiate a peace deal with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. “The president of Ukraine is in our country. He is making little nasty aspersions toward your favourite president, me,” Trump said. “We continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal: Zelenskyy.”A fued between Trump and Zelenskyy has escalated in recent days, as my colleague Andrew Roth reports:The joint appearance of Biden and Harris today highlights Harris’s role overseeing the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.“Over the years, I’ve held the hands of far too many mothers and fathers to try and comfort them after their child was killed by gun violence. And let us all agree, it does not have to be this way,” Harris said. “We know how to stop these tragedies, and it is a false choice to suggest you are either in favor of the second amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away.”The president today is marking the roll-out of an executive order that includes several gun-related measures, including the creation of a task force to assess the threat of machine gun conversion devices.Joe Biden took the podium to chants of “Thank you Joe.”The audience at the White House is full of survivors and the families of those killed by gun violence. Biden was also introduced by Birmingham mayor Randall Woodfin, whose city was rocked by gun violence on Saturday in the Five Points entertainment district. Four people were killed and 17 injured.“I know the scream of a mother when her child is killed. I know that because I heard it from the voice of my own mother when my brother was killed by gun violence,” Woodfin said. “I heard that scream again this past Saturday.”The president and vice president are speaking from the White House, and were introduced by a student who was 15 when a gunman on students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.We’ll follow their remarks.In a characteristically rambling news conference, Donald Trump ripped into Kamala Harris for visiting the border – and unleashed a slew of fiction and fear-mongering about the border and immigrants.Among his claims was that the CBP One app, which people arriving at the US southern border must use to schedule appointment for an asylum screening, was being used by “virtually unlimited numbers of illegals to press a button schedule their illegal immigration appointment at our ports of entry”.Using the app to schedule an asylum screening, is, of course one way to legally immigrate to the US. Seeking asylum is legal.Trump also repeated his fictitious claim about migrants contributing to increased crime, and that crime overall was “up” – dividing ABC’s presidential debate moderators for fact-checking his claims.Here’s my colleague Edward Helmore with more on the actual stats:
      Murder dropped by more than 11% from 2022 to 2023, the largest single-year decline in two decades, according to FBI data released on Monday.
      Meanwhile, the broader category of violent crime nationwide decreased about 3%, said the data, which is audited and confirms earlier reporting from unaudited statistics.
      Monday’s release of audited data contradicts a talking point that Donald Trump has made on the campaign trail as the Republican presidential nominee seeks a return to the White House during the 5 November election: that crime has been rampant and out of control without him in power.
      In its annual Crime in the Nation summary, the FBI said rape decreased by an estimated 9.4%, property crime dropped 2.4% and burglary fell by an estimated 7.6%.
      Some more background:After the 2020 election, Newsmax aired several false claims about the company, whose voting machines were only used in Los Angeles county in 2020. The network repeatedly aired false claims from Trump allies that the software was widely used across the country and that it had been hacked to change votes.Smartmatic sued Newsmax, Fox, One America News Network (OANN) and others for broadcasting their false claims. It settled the case with OANN earlier this year and the Fox case is still pending in New York.Smartmatic said in a statement: “We are very pleased to have secured the completion of the case against Newsmax. We are now looking forward to our court day against Fox Corp and Fox News for their disinformation campaign. Lying to the American people has consequences. Smartmatic will not stop until the perpetrators are held accountable.”First amendment scholars were closely watching the case and several others like it to see whether libel law can be used as an effective tool to police misinformation.The case was set to be a kind of sequel to the defamation litigation between Dominion, another voting machine company, and Fox over 2020 election lies. That case settled just before the trial was set to begin, with Fox agreeing to pay Dominion $747.5m. Eric Davis, the judge who oversaw the Fox case, also was overseeing the Newsmax case.Read the full story here:The voting machine company Smartmatic and the conservative outlet Newsmax have settled a closely watched defamation lawsuit days before it was scheduled to go to trial in Delaware.A spokesperson for the Delaware courts said the case had settled on Thursday. He did not offer additional details.Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Kamala Harris made an appearance together after meeting.Harris emphasized: “Nothing about the end of this war can be decided without Ukraine.”She also referenced, without explicitly mentioning, Donald Trump, who has said that Ukraine should have made concessions to Russian president Vladimir Putin before Russia’s attack:“There are some in my country who would instead force Ukraine to give up large parts of its sovereign territory,” she said. “These proposals are the same as those of Putin. Let us be be clear. They are not proposals for peace. Instead, they are proposals for surrender.”Here’s a look at where things stand:

      New York City mayor Eric Adams was charged in a 57-page federal indictment with crimes relating to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal program bribery and receiving campaign contributions by foreign nationals, wire fraud, solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national and bribery. He has maintained his innocence.

      Federal prosecutors called Adams’s alleged misconduct a grave breach of public trust. The US attorney for the southern district of New York Damian Williams strongly criticized the mayor at a press conference a little earlier.

      Williams vowed to continue to investigate the mayor’s case and to “hold more people accountable”. Charges against Adams include bribery, wire fraud and acceptance of illegal foreign campaign contributions including from Turkish government officials. Williams said the mayor “kept the public in the dark”.

      The indictment against Adams includes many luxury trips that were not put in annual disclosure forms, prosecutors say. Trips cost many thousands of dollars and included visiting Turkey and flying via Turkey while visiting countries such as China, India, France, Hungary and Ghana.

      Federal agents raided Adams’s official residence, Gracie Mansion, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in the early hours today, as reports emerged of the mayor being hit with a federal indictment. The raid reportedly included a group of nearly a dozen people in suits entering the property, with several carrying briefcases, backpacks or duffel bags.

      Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskyy are meeting at the White House as the Ukrainian president attempts to shore up support for his country’s war aims in its fight against Russia. Before the meeting, Zelenskyy thanked the US president for his support, saying: “Your determination is incredibly important for us to prevail … We must restore normal life, and we greatly value your leadership.”

      Before their meeting, Biden released a statement, saying: “I am proud to welcome President Zelenskyy back to the White House today.” As part of the US’s “surge” in security assistance to Ukraine, Biden has directed the defense department to allocate all of its remaining security assistance funding that has been appropriated for Ukraine by the end of his term. More

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      ‘A true friend of Turkey’: Eric Adams bribery indictment reveals years of flights and favors

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      US federal prosecutors have accused members of the Turkish government of pulling off a years-long influence campaign to cultivate and secure favors from Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City.In an indictment unsealed on Thursday morning, the US attorney of New York’s southern district alleged that government officials and business leaders with ties to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president, showered Adams with thousands in illegal foreign campaign donations and free or heavily discounted luxury hotel stays and flights around the world.In exchange, the indictment claims, Adams executed various favors for the Turkish government, including pressuring a local fire official to bypass safety regulations and greenlight the opening of a consular building, so it could be ready before a visit by Erdoğan.After that alleged intervention, a Turkish government official messaged the soon-to-be mayor calling him “a true friend of Turkey”, according to an exchange cited in the legal filing. Adams allegedly responded by calling the Turkish official “my brother”,Adams, a 64-year-old former police officer and state lawmaker, now faces charges of wire fraud, bribery and soliciting campaign donations from foreign nationals.“The conduct alleged in the indictment, the foreign money, the corporate money, the bribery, the years of concealment, is a grave breach of the public’s trust,” Damian Williams, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, said in a press conference on Thursday.Despite calls from a growing chorus of elected officials, Adams has vowed not to resign. The Democrat, who ran on a law-and-order message, is the first sitting mayor of New York to be indicted on federal corruption charges.“It’s an unfortunate day. And it’s a painful day. But inside all of that is a day when we will finally reveal why, for 10 months, I’ve gone through this. And I look forward to defending myself,” he said on Thursday.Turkey’s ministry of foreign affairs did not respond to requests for comment.The indictment is the product of just one of four apparent federal investigations led by US attorneys for the southern and eastern districts of New York into Adams associates. Other inquiries are reportedly scrutinizing police officials and senior city government officials with ties to other foreign nations.This case focuses almost exclusively on Adams’s longstanding ties to Turkish government and business officials, a relationship that prosecutors say goes back as far as 2015 when the then borough president of Brooklyn twice visited Turkey as part of a trip arranged by government officials there.Over the next three years, Adams visited Turkey again as well as France, Sri Lanka and China, accepting free business class tickets from Turkish Airlines that were worth more than $35,000 as part of an influence campaign organized by a Turkish government official, prosecutors assert.Throughout this period, according to text messages cited in the case, Adams’s staffers actively solicited campaign contributions which they knew came from illegal foreign sources. And in some cases, prosecutors allege Adams, then a mayoral hopeful, was himself aware of the illegality.In 2018, a Turkish entrepreneur, who helped arrange one of Adams’s early trips to Turkey, texted with his liaison about giving Adams an illegal donation through a straw donor with US citizenship, according to the indictment: “We’ll make the donation through an American citizen in the US … A Turk … I’ll give cash to him in Turkey … Or I’ll send it to an American … He will make a donation to you.”The Adams liaison expressed concerns that the future mayor would not get involved in “such games”, but afterwards, the liaison asked Adams if she should pursue the illegal donations, and he directed her to do so, prosecutors allege.Later that year, Adams met with a wealthy Turkish businessman who owned a Turkish university. Though he was a foreign national, Adams texted his liaison that the businessman was “ready to help” and didn’t “want his willing to help be waisted [sic]”.Before Adams’s election in 2021, New York City campaign finance regulators flagged and repeatedly asked Adams’s campaign team to explain who had bundled together numerous suspicious donations for his election run, including a cluster of contributions from a fundraiser hosted by a Turkish American construction business, as the news outlet the City previously reported.Adams’s campaign ignored the regulators’ requests and failed to disclose its bundlers.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAccording to the indictment, however, one of the individuals coordinating contributions for the fundraiser behind the scenes was a Turkish government official, who even sent his driver to deliver donations to the event.Vito Pitta, Adams’s campaign counsel, and Evan Thies, a consultant who worked on Adams’s 2021 campaign, did not respond to requests for comment about the indictment.The indictment also details how Adams received lavish benefits from Turkish nationals.The mayor allegedly had an arrangement with Turkish Airlines in which he was upgraded to business class for free on several flights around the world. The arrangement became so routine for Adams that when his partner told him she wanted to go to Easter Island in Chile, Adams told her to check to see if Turkish Airlines flew to the country.Adams is also alleged to have accepted free or significantly discounted stays in opulent hotels in Turkey, including the cosmopolitan suite at the St Regis hotel in Istanbul. During the same 2018 trip, Adams is also alleged to have accepted “free transportation, meals, and entertainment, including a car and driver, a boat tour to the Princes’ Islands in the Sea of Marmara, a Turkish bath at a seaside hotel, and at least one meal at a high-end restaurant”.Prosecutors also appear to have obtained text messages that brazenly discuss the scheme. In June of 2021, for example, a Turkish airline manager asked an Adams staffer how much to charge for a last-minute flight to Turkey. The manager proposed $50. The staffer replied to charge around $1,000 to make it seem “somewhat real.“We don’t want them to say he is flying for free. At the moment, the media’s attention is on Eric,” the staffer wrote.During the same trip, the staffer also inquired where Adams and his partner could stay in Turkey and the staffer suggested the Four Seasons, a luxury hotel. The staffer said it would be too expensive and the manager replied: “Why does he care? He is not going to pay. His name will not be on anything either.” The Adams staffer simply replied: “super.”At a press conference on Thursday, US attorney Williams said the investigation was not yet concluded.“We continue to dig and we will hold more people accountable,” he told reporters. “And I encourage anyone with information to come forward and to do so before it is too late.” More

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      Where will abortion be on the ballot in the 2024 US election?

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      This November, abortion will be on the ballot in 10 states, including the states that could determine the next president.In the two years since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, abortion has become the kind of issue that decides elections. Outrage over Roe’s demise led Republicans to flounder in the 2022 midterms, and abortion rights supporters have won every post-Roe abortion-related ballot measure, including in red states such as Ohio, Kentucky and Kansas.This year, most of the ballot measures are seeking to amend states’ constitutions to protect abortion rights up until fetal viability, or about 24 weeks of pregnancy. Because a number of the measures are in states that have outlawed abortion, they could become the first to overturn the post-Roe ban. Others are in states where abortion is legal, but activists say the measures are necessary to cement protections so they can’t be easily overturned if Republicans control the government.These are the states slated to vote on abortion this election day.ArizonaAbortion rights supporters in Arizona, a key battleground state in the presidential election, are vying to pass a measure that would enshrine the right to abortion up until viability in the state constitution. A provider could perform an abortion after viability if the procedure is necessary to protect the life or physical or mental health of a patient.Arizona currently bans abortion past 15 weeks of pregnancy. Earlier this year, the state supreme court reinstated a 19th-century near-total abortion ban, generating nationwide outrage that prompted the state legislature to quickly repeal it in favor of letting the 15-week ban stand.ColoradoColorado’s measure would amend the state constitution to block the state government from denying, impeding or discriminating against individuals’ “right to abortion”. This measure also includes a one-of-a-kind provision to bar Colorado from prohibiting healthcare coverage for abortion – which could very well pass in the deep-blue state.Because Colorado permits abortion throughout pregnancy and neighbors five states with bans – Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, Utah and Nebraska – the state has become a haven for people fleeing abortion bans, especially those seeking abortions later in pregnancy.FloridaOnce the last stronghold of southern abortion access, Florida in May banned abortion past six weeks of pregnancy, which is before many women know they’re pregnant. Its measure, which needs 60% of the vote to pass, would roll back that ban by adding the right to an abortion up until viability to the state’s constitution. Providers could perform an abortion after viability if one is needed to protect a patient’s health.Florida Republicans’ tactics in the fight against the measure has alarmed voting rights and civil rights groups. Law enforcement officials have investigated voters who signed petitions to get the measure onto the ballot, while a state health agency has created a webpage attacking the amendment.MarylandLegislators, rather than citizens, initiated Maryland’s measure, which would amend the state constitution to confirm individuals’ “right to reproductive freedom, including but not limited to the ability to make and effectuate decisions to prevent, continue, or end the individual’s pregnancy”. Like Colorado, Maryland has become an abortion haven because it permits the procedure throughout pregnancy. It is also relatively close to the deep south, which is blanketed in bans. MissouriAbortion opponents went to court to stop Missouri’s measure from appearing on voters’ ballots, but the state supreme court rejected their arguments and agreed to let voters decide whether the Missouri constitution should guarantee the “fundamental right to reproductive freedom, which is the right to make and carry out decisions about all matters relating to reproductive healthcare, including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion care, miscarriage care, and respectful birthing conditions”.Missouri, which was the first state to ban abortion after Roe fell, only permits the procedure in medical emergencies. If the measure passes, it is expected to roll back that ban and permit abortion until viability.MontanaIn the years since Roe fell, Montana courts and its Republican-dominated legislature have wrestled over abortion restrictions and whether the right to privacy embedded in Montana’s constitution includes the right to abortion. Abortion remains legal until viability in Montana, but the measure would amend the state constitution to explicitly include “a right to make and carry out decisions about one’s own pregnancy, including the right to abortion” up until viability. Providers could perform an abortion after viability to protect a patient’s life or health.NebraskaNebraska, which bans abortion past 12 weeks of pregnancy, is the lone state with two competing ballot measures this November. One of the measures would enshrine the right to abortion up until viability into the state constitution, while the other would enshrine the current ban. If both measures pass, the measure that garners the most votes would take effect.NevadaAlongside Arizona, Nevada is one of the most closely watched states in the presidential election. Its measure would amend the state constitution to protect individuals’ right to abortion up until viability, or after viability in cases where a patient’s health or life may be threatened. Nevada already permits abortion up until 26 weeks of pregnancy.New YorkNew York state legislators added a measure to the ballot to broaden the state’s anti-discrimination laws by adding, among other things, protections against discrimination on the basis of “sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive health”.Although sky-blue New York passed a law protecting reproductive rights in 2019, advocates say this measure could be used to defend abortion rights against future challenges. However, the ballot language before voters will not include the word “abortion”, leading advocates to fear voters will not understand what they are voting on. Democrats pushed to add the word “abortion” to the description of the measure, but a judge rejected the request, ruling that the amendment poses “complex interpretive questions” and its exact impact on abortion rights is unclear.South DakotaSouth Dakota’s measure is less sweeping than other abortion rights measures, because it would only protect the right to abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy. Under this measure, South Dakota could regulate access to abortion “only in ways that are reasonably related to the physical health of the pregnant woman” in the second trimester of pregnancy. In the third trimester, the state could ban abortion except in medical emergencies. Right now, South Dakota only allows abortions in such emergencies.Although this measure will appear on the ballot, there will be a trial over the validity of the signatures that were collected for it. Depending out the outcome of the trial, the measure – and any votes cast for it – could be invalidated. More

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      Harris calls out Trump again for ‘looking for an excuse’ to avoid a second debate

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      Kamala Harris laid down another challenge to Republican rival Donald Trump to meet her for a second debate before November’s presidential election, telling supporters in New York that her opponent “seems to be looking for an excuse” to avoid a second confrontation.On Saturday, the vice-president and Democratic nominee said she had accepted an invitation from CNN to debate the former president, but Trump said it was already “too late”.In her remarks at a New York fundraiser, Harris doubled down in her taunting of Trump over the issue, saying: “I think we should have another debate.”“I accepted an invitation to debate in October, which my opponent seems to be looking for an excuse to avoid when he should accept,” she added. “He should accept because I feel very strongly that we owe it to the American people, to the voters, to meet once more before election day.”The question of the US’s high stakes presidential debates has hung over the candidates since Joe Biden dropped out of the race following a disastrous performance in June. The single scheduled debate between Trump and Harris, earlier this month, was widely viewed to have gone Harris’s way and been a serious blow to Trump.But it did not move the polls as much as the Harris campaign hoped and her campaign is still tasked with introducing her to US voters. Last week, Harris went on Oprah to help smooth the introduction along.This week Harris is due to reveal a set of new economic policies. Polls show she is steadily gaining trust on the key issue of the economy, which often favors Trump and the Republican party.On Sunday, Harris returned to the key themes of the message Democrats wish to underline – a threat to democracy they perceive a second Trump terms represents and the knife-edge that polls suggest the race remains balanced upon.“This is a man who said he would be a dictator on day one … just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails,” Harris said in New York. “This race is as close as it could be. This is a margin of error race … and I am running and we are running as the underdog.”Harris called Trump an “unserious man”, but said the consequences of putting him back in the White House were “very serious”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHead-to-head polls tend to show Harris with a narrow but solid lead over Trump, though the situation is more mixed in the crucial swing states that will decide the race to the White House. That is a reverse of the situation when Biden was in the race, where Trump had established a firm lead over the US president. More