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    Why has the American center right disappeared from the ballot box? | Jan-Werner Müller

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    The blame game’s in full swing. Armchair campaign strategists just know that Kamala Harris should have thrown Joe Biden under the bus, or gone on Joe Rogan, or – the perennial favorite among self-declared centrists – trashed identity politics. Of course, it matters a great deal to find out why people who voted for Democrats in 2020 failed to turn out; of course, there needs to be an explanation (not freewheeling speculation) about Trump’s gains among Latino men in particular.Yet one larger question deserves at least as much attention: why does anything recognizable to international observers as a center-right option seem to have disappeared from our politics? Why was the only 2024 choice between the far right and a vaguely progressive (not progressive enough for progressives, to be sure) center party?This is another way of asking: why has never-Trumpism been such a failure? After all, among the self-exiled and the ejected, the movement featured creative political minds and, at least for a while, quite a bit of cash.Part of the answer is that such figures never faced up to a proper reckoning with the history of the post-second world war American right (which also made Harris’s embrace of the Cheneys such a politically and morally dubious choice). If in doubt, never-Trumpers would default into Ronald Reagan or John McCain idolatry: such apparent moral icons would seem to provide the maximum contrast with Trump; they also served as shorthand for the ideological mix that the center right think remains their unique political offering: pro-business, strong on defense, conventional family values (such that men, exhausted from competing in the market, would find a nice, but also disciplined, home in which to recover …).What is conveniently left out is the Republicans’ longstanding commitment to the “southern strategy”, which is to say appealing to those alienated (to put it politely) by the Democrats’ turn to civil rights promotion.It is largely forgotten that Reagan opposed both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Those people born after the 60s might not have liked Reagan, but probably remember a charming, almost avuncular figure who perpetually radiated optimism. Anyone looking at footage of Reagan as California governor will see a man seething with resentment and spouting rhetoric no different from what the far right says about “liberal institutions” today. Talking about order on campus, Reagan let it be known that: “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with.” Infamously, he kicked off his 1980 election campaign in Mississippi – close to the site where three civil rights activists had been murdered in 1964 – and endorsed “states’ rights”.McCain might be presented in history books as an upright defender of democracy and human rights internationally, as well as the unlikely person who saved the Affordable Care Act during Trump’s first term. But he’s also the man who brought us Sarah Palin, a Trumpista before there was Trump. The conceit has always been that rightwing elites could turn the rightwing populism – and, often enough, sheer racism – up or down as desired; they failed to understand that they eventually created something they couldn’t control. As one observer put it: Trump did not hijack the Republican party – he understood it.Today, seemingly moderate Republicans know that they cannot really win elections without Maga. Glenn Youngkin, former head of the Carlyle Group and apparently as old-style-business Republican as they come, presented conservatism with a human face when he ran for governor of Virginia; it turned out that the dirty work of riling up people with nonsense about critical race theory was just left to operatives on the ground. Admirers of Youngkin seem to think that the very strategy that already failed – give red meat to folks, but control the growth of a radical movement – can work; it’s the same old illusion that elite actors will always stay in charge.New, however, is the emergence of an at least partly anti-authoritarian rightwing youth culture. Why wear khakis and ties as a congressional intern, shoving around papers and pleasing boring old men, when you might be an influencer pushing frat boy-party lifestyles mixed with toxic politics (and get paid for praising products on the side)?The new online anti-authority culture has little to do with the libertarianism that the Reagan coalition could still incorporate. For the longest time, our assumption went that an anti-authority ethos was bound to be progressive; we are learning the hard way that there’s a distinctly rightwing version – one that is not in any sense “conservative” because its core consists of disrespecting institutions and trolling people who pontificate about inherited “norms”.Someone like Nikki Haley would in all likelihood have beaten Harris, given the discontent – justified or not – with incumbents in many countries; the fact that she ended up endorsing Trump was yet further evidence of the defeatism of traditional Republican elites. In the end, the self-declared center right has had no defense against Trump; it seems ultimately unwilling to abandon the double game that enabled Trumpism in the first place.The result is that many American citizens ended up voting for the far right without necessarily wanting to endorse a far-right mandate. To be sure, some are fully on board with the mixture of cruelty and thinly disguised corruption. But plenty are not. Needless to say, Trump will claim a full mandate anyway.

    Jan-Werner Müller is a professor of politics at Princeton University and a Guardian US columnist More

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      Who is running for president in 2024? Harris, Trump and the full list of candidates

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      The 2024 election season is well under way.The campaign was marked by a consequential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, followed by weeks of pressure on Biden following his debate performance, culminating in his announcement that he would drop out of the race.As Biden reconsidered his re-election, there was an attempted assassination against Trump, followed by the naming of the Ohio senator JD Vance as the Republican vice-presidential pick.After Biden’s surprise announcement, he backed his vice-president, Kamala Harris, as his choice to replace him on the party’s ticket. Harris quickly secured enough delegates to become the presumptive Democratic pick. She tapped the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate, and both were confirmed as their party’s nominees at the Democratic convention in August.Also in August, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the independent candidate with no shortage of wild stories, suspended his campaign and threw his support behind Trump.Here is the full list of candidates as of 27 August, including some long-shots who hope to challenge the major party candidates in November..gu-candidate-container.svelte-yah0vs.svelte-yah0vs{cursor:pointer;display:flex;flex-wrap:wrap;justify-content:center;width:80px}.gu-candidate-container.true.svelte-yah0vs.svelte-yah0vs{width:70px}.gu-candidate-container.true.svelte-yah0vs img.svelte-yah0vs{filter:grayscale(.8) opacity(.3) contrast(1.8);width:50px}.gu-candidate-container.true.svelte-yah0vs p.svelte-yah0vs{color:#707070}img.svelte-yah0vs.svelte-yah0vs{border-radius:100%;width:100%}p.svelte-yah0vs.svelte-yah0vs{color:#121212;font-family:Guardian Text Sans Web,Helvetica 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      The remaining candidatesView image in fullscreenDonald TrumpFormer president of the United States. Running mate: JD VanceDonald Trump accepted the Republican party’s nomination for president for the third consecutive time. At the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, the former president formally accepted the nomination on a night that was supposed to be filled with calls for unity but instead was marked by alarmist language and false claims.Trump announced Vance – once a vocal “never Trumper” – as his pick for the nomination for vice-president at the Republican convention.View image in fullscreenKamala HarrisVice-president of the United States. Running-mate: Tim WalzHarris officially accepted the Democratic party’s presidential nomination at the Democratic convention in August in Chicago, after a whirlwind tour of battleground states alongside her running mate, Walz.Harris’s campaign came after weeks of pressure following Biden’s disastrous June debate, and after Biden announced he would not accept his party’s nomination and endorsed her to replace him on the Democratic ticket.Immediately following Biden’s decision, Harris confirmed her intention to “earn and win this nomination” as a flood of Democrats endorsed her campaign, heading off a competitive race for the Democratic ticket.Harris made her first official campaign stop in Delaware on 22 July and has crisscrosed the country, stopping in swing state after swing state, since.View image in fullscreenJill SteinDoctor and activist. Running mate: Butch WareLeftwing environmentalist Jill Stein formally launched her third presidential bid in an online conversation in November 2023. Stein also stood as the Green party’s candidate in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections. Her candidacy follows the decision by Cornel West, the party’s original likely nominee, to leave the Green party and run as an independent.View image in fullscreenCornel WestProfessor and progressive activist. Running mate: Melina AbdullahThe progressive activist Cornel West announced in a video posted to Twitter that he was running for president as a member of the People’s party, a third party headed by a former campaign staffer for Bernie Sanders. West is currently a professor of philosophy at Union Theological Seminary and previously worked at Harvard but resigned, saying the school had an “intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of deep depths”.Dropped outView image in fullscreenJoe BidenPresident of the United States, dropped out 21 July 2024Joe Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election, winning all the party’s primary contests. However, following a disastrous debate performance in June against Trump, and weeks of pressure, Biden announced on 21 July that he would not accept the party’s nomination. Biden endorsed Kamala Harris to replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket. Biden served in politics for more than five decades, culminating in his 2020 victory over Donald Trump.Ryan BinkleyBusinessman and pastor, dropped out 27 February 2024Binkley, a Texas businessman, was a long-shot candidate who is also a pastor at Create church. The self-proclaimed far-right fiscal conservative criticized both Democrats and Republicans for not being able to balance the federal budget, and said he would focus on health costs, immigration reform and a national volunteer movement.View image in fullscreenDoug BurgumGovernor of North Dakota, dropped out 4 December 2023Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, announced his campaign in an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal on 6 June 2023. Viewed as a surprise, long-shot candidate, he touted his experience as a career businessman and leaned on his small-town roots in an announcement video titled Change. As governor, Burgum signed into law a near-total abortion ban, which makes the procedure illegal after six weeks, and only permissible in cases of rape, incest or medical emergency up to that point. He supported Donald Trump for president in 2016 and in 2020.View image in fullscreenChris ChristieFormer governor of New Jersey, dropped out 10 January 2024The former New Jersey governor has emerged as one of the harshest Republican critics of Donald Trump, whom he endorsed for president in 2016 after dropping out of that race. Christie says he broke ties with the former president after the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, claiming that he hadn’t spoken to Trump since then. Christie, a lawyer and a lobbyist who served as a US attorney appointed by George W Bush, announced he was running for president a second time on 6 June 2023 in New Hampshire during a town hall.View image in fullscreenRon DeSantisGovernor of Florida, dropped out 21 January 2024Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida was predicted to be the strongest contender for the GOP nomination against Donald Trump, consistently polling second among Republican primary voters. He made his formal announcement on Twitter, during a Spaces event attended by roughly 300,000 users that was riddled with technological glitches, on 24 May 2023. DeSantis, who has served as Florida’s governor since 2019 and handily defeated the Democratic challenger, Charlie Crist, in 2022, previously represented Florida’s sixth congressional district as a member of the US House from 2012 to 2018. As governor, DeSantis has signed a slate of laws banning minors from receiving gender-affirming care and restricting education on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools, and he has become an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist party.Larry ElderConservative radio host, dropped out 26 October 2023The rightwing political commentator and radio talkshow host announced his run for president on Fox News as a guest on the now-canceled Tucker Carlson Tonight on 20 April 2023. In 2021, Elder joined a list of Republicans seeking to replace Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, in a failed recall. The Los Angeles resident was an outspoken critic of the state’s mask mandates, calling them “a joke”.View image in fullscreenNikki HaleyFormer ambassador to the United Nations, dropped out 6 March 2024Haley, who got her start in politics as a member of South Carolina’s general assembly, was governor of the state from 2011 to 2017. She ended her second term early to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations under Donald Trump before announcing her resignation in 2018. She became the first Republican to announce a run against Donald Trump, even though she previously said she would not run against him. Haley vowed to “fix” the US immigration system by “stopping illegal immigration” and described herself as pro-life, but said a federal abortion ban was unrealistic. Haley, who is the daughter of Indian immigrants, would have been the first US president of Asian descent, as well as the first woman.Will HurdFormer congressman from Texas, dropped out 10 October 2023Former US Representative Will Hurd, of Texas, entered the crowded primary field as a moderate and critic of Donald Trump. Hurd announced his campaign in an interview on CBS. He followed that with a video posted online in which he called Trump a “lawless, selfish, failed politician” and laid out an agenda to curb “illegal immigration”, inflation, crime and homelessness. Hurd, who worked for nearly a decade in the CIA, served three terms in the House, from 2015 to 2021. He left office as the only Black Republican in the chamber.View image in fullscreenAsa HutchinsonFormer governor of Arkansas, dropped out 16 January 2024Hutchinson is the former governor of Arkansas, a post he held from 2015 to 2023. The relatively unknown politician announced his candidacy in an interview on ABC days after Trump was indicted in a Manhattan court, saying the ex-president should drop out of the race. Hutchinson is a businessman and lawyer who was appointed by Ronald Reagan to serve as a US attorney. He also served a stint in the US House of Representatives, winning a congressional seat in 1996 when he replaced his brother, Tim, who ran for Senate.View image in fullscreenPerry JohnsonBusinessman, dropped out 20 October 2023Johnson is a businessman who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Michigan in 2022 after providing fraudulent nominating signatures for that campaign. Originally from Illinois, Johnson founded dozens of companies, and lives in Michigan with his family. He has billed himself as Donald Trump “without the baggage” and has taken similar policy positions on curbing US debt and cracking down on the FBI.Robert F Kennedy JrLawyer and author, dropped out 23 August 2024Robert F Kennedy Jr, known for his work as an environmental lawyer and his anti-vaccine views, said he was running for president to end the “chronic disease epidemic”. Kennedy, who compared vaccine mandates during the Covid-19 pandemic to “Hitler’s Germany”, has promoted other baseless conspiracy theories such as telecom networks being used to control people. He is the nephew of John F Kennedy, the former Democratic president, who was assassinated in office, and is the son of 1968 Democratic presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy, who was assassinated on the campaign trail. He suspended his campaign on 23 August and endorsed Trump.View image in fullscreenMike PenceFormer vice-president of the United States, dropped out 28 October 2023Mike Pence officially launched his campaign for president on 7 June 2023, in a rare instance of a former vice-president challenging the president with whom he shared a ticket a few years ago. Pence joined a crowded Republican field in which he has consistently polled third, even before he officially announced his candidacy, though he trails far behind DeSantis and Trump. Pence was angling for a wide base among evangelical Christians and had vowed to ban abortion if he were elected. He denounced the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, and had used it as a talking point against Trump, who turned against him after he publicly refused supporters’ calls to overturn the results of the election.View image in fullscreenDean PhillipsRepresentative from Minnesota, dropped out 6 March 2024Dean Phillips, a three-term Democratic congressman from Minnesota, challenged Biden, saying the next generation should have the opportunity to lead the country. Phillips is the heir to a distilling company and once co-owned a gelato company. He entered public office spurred by fighting back against Trump.Vivek RamaswamyEntrepreneur and author, dropped out 16 January 2024The biotech entrepreneur and political newcomer announced his campaign in a video describing attacks on the “culture of free speech in America” and again on Fox News in an interview with now-fired Tucker Carlson. He is the author of Woke, Inc, a book that lobbies against “ESG” – a framework of corporate governance that encourages companies to consider the environment and social justice issues. Ramaswamy, who was the youngest candidate vying for the Republican nomination, had lobbied in favor of raising the national voting age to 25. Ramaswamy would have been the first president of Asian and Indian descent. He had also vowed to pardon federally indicted Donald Trump.Francis SuarezMayor of Miami, dropped out 29 August 2023Suarez, the mayor of Miami, was the first major Hispanic candidate seeking the Republican party nomination this election cycle. The son of Miami’s first Cuban-born mayor, Suarez had said he would broaden support for Republicans among Latino voters. He was the third candidate from Florida to join the crowded primary field, alongside frontrunners Trump and DeSantis. Suarez, who was first elected in 2017, filed paperwork to run the day after Trump appeared in a Miami court over federal charges and made his formal announcement on Good Morning America the day after that.View image in fullscreenTim ScottSenator from South Carolina, dropped out 13 November 2023In May, Scott became the second politician from South Carolina to run for the Republican nomination. He has served as a senator from South Carolina since 2013, when he was appointed by Republican challenger Nikki Haley to fill a vacancy. Scott, who is one of three Black members of the Senate and is the only Black Republican senator, said in his announcement speech that “America is not a racist country”. Scott joined fellow Republicans in opposing the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022. Scott served as a member of the House from 2011 to 2013 and before that spent stints in South Carolina’s general assembly and Charleston’s county council. During his 2010 campaign for the House of Representatives, Scott told Newsweek that homosexuality was a morally wrong choice.View image in fullscreenMarianne WilliamsonAuthorFailed 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, who also unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the US House of Representatives in 2014, became the first Democratic candidate to announce she is running for president as a challenge to Joe Biden. Williamson, an author of self-help books, launched her long-shot bid with campaign promises to address climate change and student loan debt. She previously worked as “spiritual leader” of a Michigan Unity church. She originally ended her campaign on 7 February 2024 but announced on 28 February she was “un-suspending”. More

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      Ex-Nikki Haley voters rally behind Kamala Harris: ‘I picked the side that had the least issues’

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      After the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley dropped out of the Republican primary earlier this year, some conservatives across the US continued to vote for her in subsequent primaries, casting ballots that indicated dissent within a party that has otherwise fully embraced Donald Trump.When Haley finally announced that she would be supporting the ex-president in the upcoming election, she said that it was on him to mobilize her loyalists.“Trump would be smart to reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me, and not assume that they’re just gonna be with him,” Haley said.But it was the Biden campaign, not Trump’s, that actively began engaging Haley voters. “I want to be clear: There is a place for you in my campaign,” Joe Biden wrote on Twitter/X alongside an ad targeting Haley voters.With the president out of the race now, some of those former Haley voters have organized behind Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in a political action group called Haley Voters for Harris.Craig Snyder, the campaign director for the Haley Voters for Harris Pac, told the Guardian that the impetus for the group came after seeing how other Haley supporters continued to support her even after she was no longer a candidate.“When we cast our votes in the primaries we weren’t really voting for her as an active candidate,” he said. “But we wanted to send a message that this was not the kind of Republican party that we wanted, that Trump’s period as the spirit-bearer of the party needed to come to an end.”Snyder wondered what would become of Haley voters in the general election, and homed in on those who have made the decision, however reluctantly, to support Harris.“For those of us in this group, our feeling has been that while we may disagree with the Democratic party on certain policy issues, the better choice is to continue our opposition to Trump by voting Democratic,” he said. “When President Biden made the decision to withdraw, we made the decision to continue along those lines and to support Vice-President Harris.”John “Jack” Merritt, a self-described “center-right” and “strict constitutional constructionist”, registered to vote as a Republican in 1972. He said that, as a “political junkie”, he subscribes to various-leaning political newspapers and watches all of the major news networks. Though he supported Haley in the primaries and has served as a committeeperson for the Republican party in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, Merritt has decided to vote for Harris in November.“I became incredibly disenchanted with the polarization of the two parties in the US,” Merritt said. “I picked the side that had the least amount of issues. I think [Harris and Walz] are more likely to ask for everything they want, but accept what they can get, especially if Congress turns out to be Republican this year. I’m looking for people who can truly govern, not just people who have ideological standards.”Former Haley voters, many of whom are in swing states, will be vital in determining the outcome of the election, according to Snyder. As a result, Haley Voters for Harris is primarily targeting center-right voters by engaging in direct communication and education on political issues.“We are developing the strongest arguments and factual accounts to give to voters to help them cross that last line,” Snyder, a registered Republican, said. “They’ve already taken their journey away from their Republican leaning. The question is: do they go the last mile and vote for the Democratic nominee? We want to get them across that last mile.”But Snyder understands the difficulty that lifelong Republicans might face in trying to stomach support for a Democrat. Still, he said: “There may be disagreements between these voters and a Harris-Walz administration on matters of policy, but they are not fundamental moral values disagreements.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn fact, some aspects of Harris’s history that may have dampened her appeal to progressives, such as her prosecutorial record, could work in her favor with Republicans.“Her greatest weakness to a lot of people turns out to be kind of a strength for winning over Republicans. [She’s] now been kind of leaning into the law and order persona. But I think it’s smart politics that she’s doing that,” said Emily Matthews, a ​co-chair of Haley Voters Working Group, a coalition of Haley supporters and volunteers.After Harris picked Walz as her running mate, Matthews said there was a lot of disappointment in the group, as they had favored Shapiro. But they’ve been focusing on Harris’s recent messaging as a bright spot.“The border is just really important to a lot of kind of more moderate Republicans and, well, Republicans in general,” she said. “We’ve seen a change in tone from Harris and that has been very welcomed.”Matthews is hoping Harris and Walz use this week’s Democratic national convention to share tangible policy shifts to the center, and to continue reaching out to disaffected Republicans and moderate voters. She said it’s important for the messaging to be clear about the Democrats’ more moderate and center successes.Synder agreed. “When our voters hear those kinds of facts – there’s been more oil production under the Biden-Harris administration than under the Trump administration, the Biden-Harris administration pushed forward a bill to increase the number of border agents far greater than what Trump ever proposed – that is the way to have people get over this obstacle,” he said. “There’s a whole variety of just plain facts about a more moderate kind of approach that Harris has shown compared to this crazy leftwinger that she’s going to be depicted as by the Republicans.”Last month, Haley’s lawyers sent a cease and desist letter to Haley Voters for Harris, urging the Pac to refrain from implying Haley’s “support for the election of Kamala Harris as President of the United States”.But the letter hasn’t deterred Snyder. “Our organization has formally responded through our attorneys, and as of yet nothing further has happened,” he said. “We are continuing our work. At no time have we misrepresented Governor Haley’s position on the race, which is well-known to be support for former President Trump. We are merely calling our group what we are: Haley voters who have decided to vote for Vice-President Harris.” More

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      Day two of the Republican National Convention: key takeaways

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      1. Confident in Trump’s victory, Republicans focused on winning control of the US SenateThe official theme of the Republican national convention’s second night was “Make America Safe Again”, with a focus on crime and border security. But as a series of Republican senate candidates got their turn in the spotlight on Tuesday, it was clear that a major theme of the night was helping the GOP win a majority in the US Senate. Among the featured speakers locked in competitive senate races were Kari Lake of Arizona, Eric Hovde of Wisconsin, Bernie Moreno of Ohio, Sam Brown of Nevada and Hung Cao of Virginia.Earlier on Tuesday, Chris LaCivita, the co-manager of Trump’s campaign, said the campaign was now very confident in Trump’s chances of victory. “We have nearly 20 paths to get to where we need to get,” LaCivita said. “[Democrats] have one, maybe two.” It’s a dramatic reversal just four years after Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to forcibly prevent the certification of Biden’s victory.If Republicans win a majority of seats in the US Senate and keep control of the US House, they will have achieved the trifecta of power in Washington. Republicans will effectively have majority control over all three branches of government, with even the increasingly partisan supreme court dominated by a majority of rightwing appointees.Leading Democratic members of Congress are also raising concerns about Republicans taking the Senate majority, with representative Adam Schiff reportedly telling Democratic donors that he believes Democrats will not only lose the presidency if Biden continues as the party’s nominee, but that they may “very well lose the Senate” as well.2. Republicans falsely claimed Democrats rely on ‘votes from illegals’Trump supporters were still chanting “build the wall”. Trump and his vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, have both said they support “mass deportations”, and multiple RNC speakers falsely suggested that Democrats were trying to win elections by encouraging undocumented immigrants to vote.Florida senator Rick Scott falsely claimed it was “easy for Democrats” to rig elections, saying they did so by allowing “all the non-citizens to vote”.“Democrats decided they wanted votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children,” Ted Cruz, the Texas senator, said in a speech in which he referenced several examples of women and girls who had been raped by undocumented immigrants. It’s an echo of the remarks that Trump made at his campaign launch in 2015, when he falsely said that many Mexican immigrants to the US were rapists.Kari Lake, the Arizona senate candidate, falsely claimed that Ruben Gallego, the Democrat she is running against, had voted to allow undocumented immigrants to cast ballots in the upcoming election, a claim that Gallego’s campaign labeled “a blatant lie”.It’s already illegal for non-citizens to vote, and there’s no evidence that it happens often: a Brennan Center study found just 30 instances of suspected non-citizen voting out of 23.5m votes cast in the 2016 general election.3. Trump’s criminal cases and convictions went unmentioned amid rhetoric on ‘crime’As Republicans portrayed themselves as the party of law and order, there was little mention of the fact that their candidate has been juggling multiple criminal cases throughout the campaign and recently made history as the only former president to be convicted of felonies, in being found guilty on 34 felony counts as part of a hush-money scheme to cover up an affair.“Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, they stand with the criminals,” Randy Sutton, a former police officer, said in his remarks Tuesday night. In reality, though both Democrats have supported some criminal justice reforms, Biden has been an enthusiastically pro-cop Democrat for decades, and Harris was a career prosecutor who literally served as California’s top cop in her role as state attorney general. Neither of them has a mug shot or is able to continue campaigning only because they can afford bail, as is the case with Trump.As one Republican after another linked undocumented immigrants to rape, crime and violence, they did not talk about how Trump had been found liable in 2023 of sexual abuse and defamation in a civil trial brought by magazine writer E Jean Carroll, after being accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women in alleged incidents that spanned decades.Trump is characteristic of a much broader trend: US citizens are much more likely to be arrested for crimes than undocumented people. A recent study using data from Texas found that US-born citizens were more than twice as likely to be arrested for violent crimes and more than four times as likely to be arrested for property crimes than undocumented immigrants.But in less explicit ways, Trump’s own legal troubles have lurked in the background of the RNC speeches, as Republicans have railed against progressive prosecutors and the media. Critical mention of Alvin Bragg, the New York district attorney who secured Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts in the hush-money case, prompted one of the loudest boos of the night. Bragg was accused of being a “soft-on-crime prosecutor” by a New York mother, Madeline Brame, whose son was murdered, and who accused Bragg of dismissing and reducing the charges faced by her son’s killers.4. In the name of ‘unity’, Trump’s Republican critics kissed the ring and urged others to fall in lineNikki Haley, one of Trump’s most determined rivals in the 2024 Republican primary, took the stage at the RNC, announcing, to cheers: “President Trump asked me to speak to this convention in the name of unity.”“Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period,” Haley went on, prompting chants of: “Trump! Trump! Trump!”Earlier this year, Haley publicly called Trump “unhinged” and “diminished” and said he was “not the same person he was in 2016”.But on Tuesday night, both she and Florida governor Ron DeSantis, another Trump primary campaign rival, proclaimed their loyalty to Trump. Haley, in particular, urged Republicans who did not agree with Trump to nonetheless fall in line behind him in the election.“You don’t have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him. Take it from me,” she said. “I haven’t always agreed with President Trump, but we agree more often that we disagree.”Another never-Trump critic, JD Vance, who once wondered whether Trump was “America’s Hitler”, was named Trump’s vice-presidential pick yesterday.5. Despite talk of ‘national unity’ at the convention, Republicans went on attack Republican speakers at the convention continued to frame Trump’s survival of an assassination attempt this weekend as a miraculous act of God, rather than blaming the attack on Biden or on broader Democratic rhetoric.“God spared President Trump from that assassin, because God is not finished with him yet,” Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.But by the end of the day Tuesday, any idea that Trump’s party might embrace a tone of broader national unity had evaporated, amid fierce attacks on Harris, comparisons of Biden to the corpse in the film Weekend at Bernie’s, and Lake’s renewed attacks on the media. Lake, a former television anchor, said: “I don’t welcome everybody … in this room. You guys up there in the fake news have worn out your welcome.”Joan E Greve and Alice Herman contributed reporting More

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      Former rivals Haley and DeSantis back Trump at Republican convention

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      Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, once Donald Trump’s biggest rivals in the Republican party, both gave full-throated endorsements to Trump’s presidential candidacy on Tuesday, a call for unity that served to underscore the former president’s control of the Republican party.On the second night of the Republican national convention, Haley and DeSantis, who both unsuccessfully sought the GOP nomination earlier this year, spoke back to back in the 8pm hour of the convention as Trump grinned and applauded from his box elevated above the floor of the Fiserv Forum, where the convention is taking place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.“I’ll start by making one thing perfectly clear: Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period,” Haley said. She said her speech was aimed at those “who don’t agree with Donald Trump 100% of the time”.“You don’t have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him. Take it from me. I haven’t always agreed with President Trump. But we agree more often than we disagree,” she said.Haley, who served as the governor of South Carolina and Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, rattled off what she saw as Trump’s foreign policy accomplishments.“When Donald Trump was president, Putin did nothing. No invasions. No wars. That was no accident. Putin didn’t attack Ukraine because he knew Donald Trump was tough. A strong president doesn’t start wars. A strong president prevents wars,” she said, receiving loud applause.DeSantis also immediately made it clear that he was backing Trump.“Let’s send Joe Biden back to his basement and let’s send Donald Trump back to the White House,” he said.Neither Haley nor DeSantis initially had speaking slots at the convention, but they were added after the attempt on Trump’s life on Saturday as Republicans sought to project unity.“President Trump asked me to speak to this convention in the name of unity. It was a gracious invitation and I was happy to accept,” Haley said.Trump could be seen on the Jumbotron grinning widely as both gave their speeches. And he had reason to do so: just months ago, Haley and DeSantis were the most prominent Republicans critical of Trump.“He’s made it chaotic. He’s made it self-absorbed. He’s made people dislike and judge each other. He’s left that a president should have moral clarity, and know the difference between right or wrong, and he’s just toxic,” Haley said of Trump during an interview on The Breakfast Club in January.Haley, who has also called Trump “thin-skinned and easily distracted”, didn’t say she was voting for Trump until May.Austin Weatherford, the Biden campaign’s national director for Republican engagement, highlighted Haley’s words in a statement after her speech Tuesday.“Ambassador Haley said it best herself: someone who doesn’t respect our military, doesn’t know right from wrong, and ‘surrounds himself in chaos’ can’t be president,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That’s why millions of Republicans cast their votes in protest of Donald Trump and his attacks on our institutions, our nation’s allies, and civility.”DeSantis endorsed Trump shortly after dropping out of the presidential race in January, but reportedly continued to privately criticize him. He needled him on the campaign trail, saying America didn’t need a president who had “lost the zip on their fastball”.DeSantis and Haley took slightly different tacks in their speeches on Tuesday, emphasizing their different approaches to campaigning.Haley spoke about the need to expand the Republican party in comments that were met with tepid applause from the delegates on the convention floor – many of whom represent some of the party’s most loyal base.“We must not only be a unified party, we must also expand our party,” she said. “We are so much better when we are bigger. We are stronger when we welcome people into our party who have different backgrounds and experiences.”DeSantis, by contrast, leaned into attacking Biden. “America cannot afford four more years of a Weekend at Bernie’s presidency,” he said. He touted the success that Republicans have had in recent years, saying “the woke mind virus is dead and Florida is a solid Republican state”.DeSantis went on to detail a rightwing policy wishlist, including severe restrictions on immigration and the destruction of the “administrative state”.Even though DeSantis’s Trump-like appeal was not enough to win him the Republican nomination, his hard-right talking points triggered a much more boisterous response from the delegates than Haley’s talk of unity and party outreach. More

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      Nikki Haley releases delegates and urges them to support Trump at convention

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      Nikki Haley is releasing the delegates she won during this year’s Republican primary so that they’re free to support Donald Trump at next week’s convention, a move that goes toward solidifying GOP support around the party’s presumptive nominee.Haley on Tuesday opted to release 97 delegates she won across a dozen primaries and caucuses earlier this year, according to her former campaign.In a statement, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador called for party unity at the upcoming Republican national convention in Milwaukee, also calling the Democratic president, Joe Biden, “not competent to serve a second term” and saying that the vice-president, Kamala Harris – whom Haley repeatedly intimated would end up as president in Biden’s stead – “would be a disaster for America”.“We need a president who will hold our enemies to account, secure our border, cut our debt and get our economy back on track,” Haley said. “I encourage my delegates to support Donald Trump next week in Milwaukee.”Haley won’t be in attendance in Milwaukee next week, according to spokesperson Chaney Denton.“She was not invited, and she’s fine with that,” Denton said. “Trump deserves the convention he wants. She’s made it clear she’s voting for him and wishes him the best.”Haley was the last major Republican rival standing against Trump when she shuttered her own campaign following Trump’s Super Tuesday romp, having accused him of causing chaos and disregarding the importance of US alliances abroad.Trump, in turn, repeatedly mocked her with the nickname “Birdbrain”, though he curtailed those attacks after securing enough delegates in March to become the presumptive Republican nominee.Trump’s campaign did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Haley’s move, which was first reported by Politico.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden’s campaign has been working to win over her supporters, whom they view as true swing voters. But Haley said in May that she would be casting her vote for Trump and left it up to the former president to work toward winning over support from her backers. More

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      Donald Trump looking for ‘fighter’ as Republican running mate

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      Donald Trump is looking for a “fighter” as his running mate in this year’s presidential election and regards factors such as their gender or race as irrelevant, according to sources close to the former US president.Conventional wisdom used to hold that Trump was likely to choose a woman or a person of color as his potential vice-president in an effort to broaden his appeal. But aides close to the presumptive Republican nominee currently say he will not take so-called identity politics into account.Instead, Trump, who is still trying to make up his mind, wants a candidate who is media-savvy and will fight for him on adversarial TV networks. “In short,” a Trump ally said, “he wants someone who is everything Mike Pence wasn’t.”Former vice-president was a valuable asset during the 2016 and 2020 campaigns – the Christian conservative who shored up support among Republicans suspicious of the thrice-married reality TV star. But Pence’s refusal to comply with Trump’s demand to overturn the 2020 election led to a falling out and made Pence a target of the January 6 rioters.Trump is seeking a “Goldilocks” running mate this time: strong but loyal, in tune with Maga but not over-rehearsed, telegenic but not likely to outshine him. His choice will go up against Kamala Harris, the first Black woman to serve as vice-president.But his campaign does not regard having a Black candidate – such as Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina – as intrinsically helpful, preferring to reach voters of color through community outreach and policy plans. A source said the campaign hears from Black voters that identity politics matter less to them than the economy and community safety.Biden is 81 while Trump turned 78 on Friday. Both candidates have already served one term, putting more focus on the vice-presidency than in a typical election year. Fifteen vice-presidents have gone on to be president, eight of whom succeeded to the office upon the death of the incumbent.View image in fullscreenJim McLaughlin, a former pollster for Trump, said: “It’s got to be somebody that he knows can be the president of the United States because – he hasn’t said this but other people are saying this – this could be a person that’s in the White House for the next 12 years, so he understands the importance of that.”Speaking on a panel in Washington organised by polling firm JL Partners, McLaughlin added: “I think it’s also somebody who definitely believes in his agenda. I don’t think he’s going to go for somebody to have some sort of an ideological or necessarily political balance.“He’s going to want an ‘America first’ Republican to be his nominee. I get calls a lot of times from candidates: ‘Can you help me with the Trump endorsement?’ My first question to them is: what kind of relationship do you have with him? Because loyalty is huge with him. It’s got to be somebody he is comfortable with as a person.”Earlier this month, ABC News reported that Trump’s campaign had started a process of formally requesting information from a small handful of potential running mates. It named Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota; JD Vance, a senator for Ohio; and Marco Rubio, a senator for Florida.Speculation around Burgum, a 67-year-old multimillionaire businessman, has been gathering momentum in recent weeks, culminating in an 1,800-word profile in the New York Times. The article included details such as Burgum having worked as a chimney sweep in college, wearing a black-top hat and tails to evoke Dick Van Dyke’s character in the film Mary Poppins.View image in fullscreenRubio, 53, a son of Cuban immigrants, could potentially help the former president peel away Latino voters from Biden and, as the top Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, brings foreign policy experience. The US constitution poses a headache, however, since it bans electors from selecting a president and vice-president from the same state – and both Trump and Rubio call Florida home.Vance, 39, rose to fame in 2016 with his memoir Hillbilly Elegy about growing up poor in Appalachia. That year, he was a fierce critic of Trump, at one point calling him “cultural heroin”. Since 2018, however, he has embraced the 45th president and befriended his son, Don Jr. Vance is seen as an intellectual standard bearer for the ‘America first’ ideology with a connection to blue-collar voters.Reed Galen, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “Vance tends to make the most sense. There’s the anti-Trump video that will be played a million times, but everyone’s got something like that now probably except for Ben Carson. But Vance seems to me to be the person who can bring youth to the ticket. He can lay back on that Hillbilly Elegy bootstraps bullshit that Republicans love.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe added: “Trump is certainly more dynamic on stage because he’s nuts – he’s a coked-up Tasmanian devil – but I would venture to say that, for a lot of Republicans, Vance reminds them of a Republican party that they want. Burgum’s boring but he’s got money. He’s not going to hurt you. He’ll do whatever he’s told. I think Vance would, too.”Other contenders include former housing secretary Ben Carson, the senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the representative Byron Donalds of Florida, the former Democratic representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, the Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and the representative Elise Stefanik of New York. Scott, of South Carolina, who is African American, challenged Trump in the Republican primary race but is now a staunch advocate.View image in fullscreenAsked by the Newsmax network recently whether he is close to choosing a running mate, Trump replied: “I thought Tim Scott didn’t run as good of a race as he’s capable of running for himself, but as a surrogate for me, he’s unbelievable. He’s been incredible. Governor Burgum from North Dakota has been incredible. Marco Rubio has been great. JD Vance has been great. We’ve had so many great people out there.”Trump has ruled out Nikki Haley, his former US ambassador to the UN, who eviscerated him during the primaries but now says she will vote for him. Another potential pick, Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, is widely seen has having disqualified herself after writing in a memoir that she shot dead an “untrainable” dog that she “hated” on her family farm.Trump is expected to make the announcement at next month’s Republican national convention in Milwaukee. Given his mercurial nature and flair for theatricality, anything is possible. The names circulated by Trump, his campaign and the media might yet be upstaged by an entirely unexpected nominee.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “It would not at all surprise me if Trump were to pull a name out of left and right field that he’s really been looking at and this is an entire misdirection.”Will it matter? Not much, if history is any guide. Olsen added: “If somebody is going to move the needle for Trump, it’s going to be somebody like a woman or a Black person. I guess I just won’t predict that because it’s quite clear going back decades that the identity of a vice-presidential nominee has a very limited and regional effect, if it has an effect at all.“You can be somebody who is callow and unprepared for office, like Dan Quayle, and George Herbert Walker Bush still comes from 17 points behind to win a comfortable seven-point victory. You can be somebody who clearly is out of her depth, like Sarah Palin – John McCain still rises or falls on his own merits, not Palin’s problems.” More

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      Why is Nikki Haley scrawling genocidal messages on Israeli bombs? | Moustafa Bayoumi

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      This past Sunday night, an Israeli assault struck displaced Palestinians sheltering in tents outside of Rafah, in northern Gaza. The barrage killed at least 45 people in a hellish blaze, according to medics and witnesses, with many of the dead children charred or dismembered beyond recognition. “We pulled out children who were in pieces,” Mohammed Abuassa, who rushed to the scene, told the Associated Press. “The fire in the camp was unreal,” he said. The strike provoked another round of international outrage at Israel’s actions in Gaza. (Israel says it’s investigating.)Not long after, on Tuesday, the former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was all over social media for a picture taken of her during a visit to Israel. In the picture, Haley – the one Republican who had been frequently lauded for her smarts on foreign policy – is seen squatting down in front of a row of Israeli artillery shells, likely provided by the United States, with pen in hand. “Finish them,” she wrote on one of the shells.The evidence indicates that Nikki Haley can write, but one must wonder if she can read. For months, report after report by international human rights organizations and jurists have documented one Israeli war crime after another. South Africa has petitioned the UN’s top court, the international court of justice, three times to compel Israel to stop its current campaign in Gaza on the grounds that Israel is committing the crime of all crimes, genocide. Each time, the court has generally (and overwhelmingly) ruled in South Africa’s favor, the latest ruling being a call that Israel cease its current campaign in Rafah.Meanwhile, the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court is also seeking arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Israeli minister of defense, Yoav Gallant, along with the Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh, for crimes against humanity.Rather than pursue the path of justice to bring about a sustained peace, a position that would befit a former US ambassador to the United Nations (which she is), Haley chooses to venerate the Israeli war machine by literally writing a sociopathic message on the weapons that have repeatedly been used to kill an estimated 15,000 Palestinian children over more than seven months.Haley is hardly unique, either. Hers is the position of the American ruling class. “Biden provides the shells. Republicans autograph them,” the Greek political commentator Yanis Varoufakis noted on X, also known as Twitter. “The US political class is united in its complicity with this genocide.”What makes this genocidal unity of Democrat and Republican all the more horrific and rage-inducing is that, despite the war-mongering messages emanating from America’s politicians and media pundits, all the polls repeatedly show that the American people want a ceasefire in Gaza, not a genocide. One of the latest surveys, a Data for Progress poll published in early May, found that seven out of 10 likely voters “support the US calling for a permanent ceasefire and a de-escalation of violence in Gaza”. This position was endorsed by majorities of Democrats (83%), independents (65%) and Republicans (56%).But you won’t hear such a position from either the Democratic or Republican leadership, even if their voters endorse it. Instead, we get the same tired politics and predictable genuflections to party at the price of basic morality. Why should we expect anything different? After all, Haley recently announced that she would vote for Donald Trump for president after having previously called him “unhinged” and “not qualified”. The Biden administration’s cynical support for Israel – while Biden’s so-called “red line” to Israel’s invasion of Rafah evaporates like disappearing ink – is even worse behavior.But principles still matter. To that point, the US-based Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention speaks more for Americans than the very politicians we have elected to represent us. On the same day that Haley was signing bombs as if they were love letters, the institute posted their own statement on social media.“Let us be clear: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza,” the institute said. “The US is complicit in genocide. These are not political statements. They are statements that are made from knowledge and experience. Nevertheless, you do not need a PhD, a law degree, or X-ray vision to see the genocidal dimensions of Israel’s carnage in Gaza.”The institute concluded their position this way: “Humanity has a choice: Either we decide that our children can all be killed whenever a superior force alleges that ‘terrorists’ are among us, or we decide that under no circumstances will we allow these superior forces to lay waste to our world any longer. We each must choose and act accordingly. The watershed moment is now.”The Lemkin Institute exhibits the kind of moral clarity that we must demand from our leaders. If we don’t, the Nikki Haleys of this world will be signing more than bombs. By endorsing the genocide that the people don’t support, these politicians are also signing the death certificate of our own democracy.
      Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Who does RFK Jr pose the bigger threat to: Joe Biden or Donald Trump? – podcast

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      Last week it was announced that Donald Trump and Joe Biden would finally hit the debate stage for a rematch. While voters contemplate which of the pair stands to lose more by going head to head, another candidate is working hard to try to join them – Robert F Kennedy Jr. The controversial independent candidate doesn’t even have the backing of his famous political family, but he’s polling nationally stronger than any third-party candidate has in decades.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to political analyst David Corn about which of the two frontrunners should be more worried by RFK Jr’s presidential campaign

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More