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      Trump calls union leader who endorsed Kamala Harris ‘a stupid person’

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      The United Auto Workers’ decision to endorse Kamala Harris’s presidential run has apparently gotten under the skin of Donald Trump, who has responded by insulting the union’s leader as “a stupid person”.In a new interview with Fox News on Sunday, as reported by the Hill, the former president said of union chief Shawn Fain: “Look, the United Auto Workers I know very well – they vote for me. They have a stupid person leading them, but they vote for me. They’re going to love Donald Trump more than ever before.”Trump’s remarks allude to the harsh 100% tariff he has proposed on imported cars. Economists have warned that such a tariff would raise product costs for Americans, but Trump has insisted on it, saying it reflects how he would prioritize the auto industry if returned to White House in November’s election.“We’re going to take in a fortune but we’re going to tariff those jobs,” Trump said.“We’re bringing back the automobile industry and we’re going to do that with tariffs,” Trump said.Fain and the UAW – one of the US’s largest and most diverse labor unions – nonetheless gave their coveted endorsement to the vice-president, saying in a statement that Harris had a “proven track record of delivering for the working class”.Trump’s comments about Fain and the UAW come just days after Fain announced that the union – one of the country’s largest and most diverse – is endorsing Harris for president.“We can put a billionaire back in office who stands against everything our union stands for, or we can elect Kamala Harris who will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with us in our war on corporate greed,” said the statement announcing the UAW’s endorsement for November’s White House election.Trump and the UAW have frequently traded barbs, with Trump calling for Fain to be “fired immediately” during his speech at the Republican national convention in July.In response, the UAW called Trump a “scab” – a derogatory term for someone who abandons or refuses to join a labor union – as well as a corporate businessman whose main interest is protecting the wealthy.When the UAW endorsed Joe Biden before the president quit his re-election campaign in July, Trump took to his Truth Social platform to attack Fain, calling him a “dope” and urging autoworkers to defy the union’s endorsement by voting for him instead.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Sunday, Fain appeared on CBS News’s Face the Nation and elaborated on his union’s decision to endorse Harris.“When you put Kamala Harris and Donald Trump side-by-side, there’s a very telling difference in who stands with working-class people and who left working-class people behind,” Fain said.He continued: “Trump’s been all talk for working-class people.“One of the biggest issues facing this country is inflation. It’s not policy-driven. It’s driven by corporate greed and consumer price gouging and that’s what Donald Trump stands for. The rich get richer and the working class gets left behind.” More

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      Trump exploits the end of the American dream | Letters

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      Stephen Reicher says Trump implies that the people need him as their saviour, to buck “the establishment” (Donald Trump is a misogynistic, billionaire felon. Here’s why Americans can’t stop voting for him, 26 July). It appears to me that he is exploiting the collapse of the American dream. Most “ordinary” people have realised that neither they nor their children will be better off in the future; that the dream is an illusion. And here comes the man promising to revitalise it, claiming that he is the incarnation of their dreams and that he, who has been successful as an establishment outsider, is the one person who can offer them hope again. This appears to be irresistible to all those who feel that the promise that hard work would guarantee a better life has not been upheld.Finally, they see others – in their view, less hard-working people – being supported and promoted, often by way of equality-enhancing measures or dismantling white male privilege, which they themselves have perceived as well-deserved entitlements. Their messiah confirms it, exploiting latent racism. It’s a message that they love to believe, regardless of whatever their leader does in reality. Emotions trump rationality, and Trump sets them free. Frightening, in particular for a German aware of how German democracy lost out to agitators a century ago.Dr Joachim H SpangenbergCologne, Germany While much of Stephen Reicher’s arguments regarding Donald Trump’s success is true, he fails to recognise the key issue – that US revolutionary fervour is politically agnostic. In much the same way that Barack Obama’s initial promise of “fundamental transformation” identified a problem with the system and its structures, Trump also primarily focuses on his supposed intent to bring genuine societal change.Unfortunately, what unites these two American icons is that neither had or has any intention of doing anything of the kind. The problem then, given the rules of the US electoral process, is that a substantial (or majority) demographic that craves meaningful change is only permitted to choose between candidates selected by the only two political parties possessing the financial backing of economic interests that do not want change.Dr Clive T DarwellManchester I appreciate Stephen Reicher’s analysis, especially the dynamic of how every violation of law by Trump demonstrates that he is a victim. Victimhood supersedes rule of law, because laws are a product of the establishment, government, etc, out to control people’s freedom. Yes, but let’s acknowledge that Trump has never won a popular majority, even in 2016. It’s only because of the electoral college that a few swing states control the outcomes.Also note the increased activities of Republicans to disenfranchise people of colour. Trump’s distorted, destructive views don’t work with the majority of American voters, which is why they’re hellbent on depriving people of the vote. Maga supporters will continue to be stoked by fear, but many more Americans are waking up to how to think rather than be consumed by fear. Gratefully, Kamala Harris can lead us into the future. And even then, the US will be plunged into violence of great proportion.Margaret WheatleyProvo Canyon, Utah Prof Reicher states his case cogently, but misses two points. First, within the hearts of many, there lies a deep desire for a simple answer to complex problems. Second, I and mine have done no wrong, it was the others who got us into this mess. Harness those who desperately want to believe these points to your populist cause and you are well on your way to elected office.David HastingsBalbeggie, Perth and Kinross More

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      This Texas border city is tired of being a ‘pawn’ in Trump’s ‘political games’

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      Just a few blocks from a riverbank park in Eagle Pass that’s been turned into a no-go militarized zone by Texas troops, local pastor Javier Leyva was attempting a normal Sunday.He was cultivating fellowship with congregants of his First United Methodist church and other residents downtown, on the US-Mexico border. But, as so often, events were to intrude. A fringe, rightwing group was headed to town.His small city is under unwanted global scrutiny because of people migrating here and the forces that want to stop them.People sporadically cross the Rio Grande from Mexico after being denied legal entry into the US because of tight government restrictions. Sometimes there are tragic consequences, sometimes migrants are detained by US federal agents, other times they run afoul of the $11bn Texas border security plan known as Operation Lone Star, designed to deter migration.Leyva is tired of the heavy-handed and expensive law enforcement presence, that has transformed the picturesque riverbank and not only skews perceptions of Eagle Pass but is costly, while he sees local services suffer.“It’s all a political show and they’re using Eagle Pass as a pawn for their political games,” Leyva said. “I’m for border security, but if they would use that money for the infrastructure here, we’d be in hog heaven,” he said.About 23% of Eagle Pass residents are estimated to live below the federal poverty line, more than double the national rate, according to the US Census Bureau.Colonias, a Spanish word to describe low-income neighborhoods, are found along the border and often have street drainage issues or lack running water and sewer connections.Leyva says more infrastructure investments in the colonias are one of the ways the community would greatly benefit from taxpayer funds being spent by the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, on Operation Lone Star, which has blighted Eagle Pass and caused a clash with the federal government.The border town with a population of 28,000 has experienced many ups and downs in the spotlight of immigration issues.View image in fullscreenMigrants seek asylum sometimes in large numbers, but recently in very low numbers. At times, dozens of journalists descend upon the remote town 140 miles south-west of San Antonio. Year round, hundreds of military and law enforcement officers are deployed to the city from in-state and around the US.And within the last year, far-right groups have homed in on Eagle Pass as a destination for aggressive demonstrations against immigration and in favor of Donald Trump.While Leyva was delivering his sermon at church last weekend, a so-called Take Our Border Back Convoy was en route from Dripping Springs, Texas, to Eagle Pass, roughly a 200-mile (322km) drive, aiming to protest on both sides of the border.In response, the local police, Texas department of public safety (DPS) troopers and national guard soldiers deployed by Texas were on high alert and prominent in the quiet streets of Eagle Pass.A previous convoy by the same group in February rolled dozens of trucks and hundreds of outsiders into town, many armed, and led to a border patrol facility being evacuated after extremist threats.Last weekend, police once again set up roadblocks leading to Shelby Park, the municipal park on the Rio Grande that has been taken over by Operation Lone Star and militarized. And the city braced as several police and trooper units were called in to stake out different parts of downtown or to patrol, in a city that is already policed out of proportion to the local population.But, in the event, fewer than 10 vehicles arrived, with US flags flying and Trump bumper stickers, and stopped in a pawn shop parking lot.One participant told the Guardian they had come “to pray on both sides of the border”. In fact, the small group of about 20 people walked across the international bridge on to the Mexican side and used a megaphone to shout in the general direction of Mexico: “We don’t want the illegals coming across our border destroying America,” and: “We declare these borders closed in the name of Jesus Christ.”View image in fullscreenThe group’s flyer features a picture of retired army officer Michael Flynn. But there was no sign of him in Eagle Pass last Sunday. He was then president Trump’s first national security adviser, who was disgraced and pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with a Russian official. Trump pardoned him and Flynn said Trump should deploy the military to “re-run the 2020 election” in the swing states Joe Biden won.Despite the small turnout this time the uninvited visitors heightened the sense for ordinary residents that their city has become a battleground and that Christian faith is being usurped.“The convoy has been deceived,” Leyva said. “God didn’t send you here, you sent yourself using God as justification.”He added: “They think they’re trying to do the right thing, the patriotic thing. But they’re taking the law into their own hands and that’s not how this country runs.”Locals typically spend weekends shopping with family, dining at restaurants, and attending church services. Residents from the Mexican sister city, Piedras Negras, regularly cross the international bridge to shop downtown. People talk of experiencing peace in border living – a reality that the wider world doesn’t see or hear much about.Several blocks away from the Methodist church is immigration attorney Cesar Lozano’s law office where he specializes in cases dealing with asylum and deportation. Lozano is an immigrant himself and came to the US with his family from Durango, Mexico, as a child. He recalled the natural anxiety and nervousness that immigrating to a new country brings and is something he relates to among clients.With Eagle Pass in the spotlight, he said: “One side says it’s attention for us and there’s a lot of people that have benefited from the economic activity” – brought by multiple law enforcement agencies basing themselves in the area.“On the other side, it’s sad to see that we are on the map for the wrong reasons. We are used as props, no one used to care about us until now, we continue to be a venue for marches and convoys,” he said.Safety is the ultimate concern for residents whenever anti-immigrant groups or hostile individuals target the region, Lozano said, rather than when migrants arrive.A Tennessee man affiliated with a militia was arrested earlier this year by the FBI for plotting to travel to Eagle Pass while aspiring to kill both migrants and federal agents.During the February convoy, a friend of Lozano’s who works for the Mexican consulate in Eagle Pass was told to go home early because the authorities didn’t know what to expect from all of the people descending upon the region.Trump and his supporters talk of “open borders” and migration as spreading crime. Meanwhile, gaining entry to the US is difficult on many levels, whether people are undocumented or not.View image in fullscreen“The borders are not open and this is just political rhetoric,” Lozano said. “That’s ridiculous and insulting because my clients are going through a system where they’re vetted, must have a sponsor, have to go through background checks, and all the info submitted on applications is verified.”He questioned Operation Lone Star’s legality, as immigration enforcement is the exclusive responsibility of the federal government, which is in a long legal battle with the state.Meanwhile, downtown, Yocelyn Riojas is leading a group exhibition in Eagle Pass of more than 40 artists who have created works on the theme of “The Border is Beautiful.”“It’s meant to connect us with different perspectives of what our lives are like at the border,” Riojas said. “A lot of the artwork is nostalgic of earlier days, before this militarization.”Riojas said locals dislike the city’s lack of willingness to openly discuss political issues concerning things like the controversial buoys placed by Texas in the river and the mayor in effect signing away Shelby Park to the state.And she added: “If you don’t live here, then you have no understanding of what’s going on. Before anybody speaks for the community, they need to come learn and educate themselves on what is actually happening and how locals actually feel about the issues.” More

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      Jackson isn’t just Mississippi’s capital. It’s America’s murder capital

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      Jackson, Mississippi, knows the blues.There’s the old men at sunset carting old amps through a full parking lot to the back of an otherwise nondescript bar, to deliver a fearless late-night symposium in the oldest school of blues.And then there’s the Jackson that wakes up in the morning wondering how many young men got killed somewhere else that night. Jackson isn’t just Mississippi’s capital. It’s America’s murder capital, two years running.Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba is perfectly, painfully aware that his city has a murder problem. And he wants to do something about it.“Our residents aren’t against police,” he said. “Our residents are supportive of having more law enforcement to cover gaps and show presence. But they want a police force that is accountable to them.”But who do those police officers answer to? In a city where 83% of residents are Black and 90% of its voters are Democrats, the only person who lives there with the power to hire or fire the capitol police chief is the white Republican living south of Smith Park in the governor’s mansion. This is a democracy problem. .The response of Mississippi’s predominantly white conservative state legislators and Republican governor, Tate Reeves, to violent crime in the state capital last year was to expand the jurisdiction of the Mississippi capitol police department, a state-controlled agency. House Bill 1020 expanded the footprint of the Capitol Complex Improvement District to much of north-east Jackson, while creating a parallel court system to handle cases brought by the capitol police, bypassing the district attorney and locally elected judges.Jackson’s murder problem is real. The national homicide rate per 100,000 people in the United States was about 5.5 in 2023. Jackson’s high-water mark in 2021 was a staggering 99.5. Last year Jackson’s rate was 78.8..Though violent crime has been falling across the country, Mississippi overall had a homicide rate of 19.4 per 100,000, the highest of any state. Jackson is a fraction of that: only about one out of 20 of Mississippi’s roughly 3 million residents live in Jackson. Take Jackson’s 138 murders out of the state’s 2022 calculation, and Mississippi still has a murder rate of 14.6, about three times the national average.Poverty incubates violence. Mississippi has the highest poverty rate in the country and most of Jackson’s murders are in its poorest neighborhoods.But the section of Jackson covered by the capitol police is not where you find most of Jackson’s murder problem. It is where most of Jackson’s white people live.“If it’s a notion about how we make it safer, then please justify why they are in the areas with the lowest crime?” Lumumba asks rhetorically. He surmises that it is one more extension of white conservative contempt of the state’s largest city, a Black-majority city viewed as unable to act in its own interest on how to operate a police department.“Someone from north Mississippi certainly doesn’t have a greater interest or desire for safety within our communities than we have for ourselves,” Lumumba said. “And so, it’s paternalistic. I think it is underpinned in partisanship. Also quite frankly, and honestly, it reeks of racism.”Over a chicken biscuit and coffee in middle-class north Jackson, Dr Anita DeRouen, a high school English teacher and former college professor, recounted a drive-by shooting at an empty house last year, up the street from her own in midtown.“I was outside packing up my car and I hear what sounds like three pow pow pow,” she said. The city cops responded, eventually, she said. Little came of it; no one had been hurt.Her house is just inside the footprint of the Capitol Complex Improvement District now. She has a doctorate in English and still does a thing that’s characteristic of Black people talking about race in Mississippi. Rather than refer to it directly, she points to the brown skin on the back of her hand when she means Black people.If she has to call the police now, the capitol police respond first. “What I’ve noticed is, I do see more police in my neighborhood when there’s a reason to call the police. Right? Do people feel more confident calling the police? I don’t know. I just see them around.”DeRouen’s concern about the capitol police district is about who they will police, and to whom they will be accountable.“As a person living in Jackson, I was more concerned about the court situation that came along with that. Because we elect our judges, and they weren’t going to be elected judges,” she said. “The thing that struck me about the district as a whole was that it was so carved out to protect as many white people as they can.”The police chiefs of each agency talk to each other regularly, and talk in public about trying to coordinate their efforts. A police officer responding to a call in the CCID in Jackson’s north is one fewer to answer a call in the south, after all.But Joseph Wade, chief of the Jackson police department, has found himself telling the public that his cops haven’t been replaced. “I tell the citizens all the time; we’re still going to maintain a footprint within the CCID,” he said to the Jackson city council in May. “We’re not vacating … but it gives us an opportunity to deploy our resources to higher-crime areas in Jackson.”Wade came to the job less than a year ago with a community-oriented policing strategy to address the city’s violence. He holds regular community meetings where he shares crime data and solicits feedback from the public. The city established an office of violence prevention and trauma recovery last year, which works to intercept people who are likely to commit an act of violence – or to be a victim of violence – before they add to Jackson’s statistics.The Jackson city police department fields about 275 officers. The capitol police have about 200 and are staffing up to get to 225, chief Bo Luckey said in public comments in May.Neither agency is unblemished. Even as the legislature was considering a plan to expand the authority of the capitol police, the department was under scrutiny for a series of questionable shootings. In one case, an officer fired into an apartment building while chasing a suspected car thief, shooting a woman asleep in her bed. In another, police appear to have shot through the windshield of a car, killing 25-year-old Jaylen Lewis.People around Jackson are touchy about policing right now after the revelations of the Goon Squad torture case in neighboring Rankin county. The federal investigation resulted in convictions for six white Rankin county deputies who sexually humiliated and abused two Black men, shooting one in the mouth. The trial surfaced a pattern of misconduct that still has the community reeling.Local law enforcement in Jackson bristles at any comparison between their policing and that of the Rankin sheriff’s office.Jackson police are still digging out from criticism for failing to notify Bettersten Wade that her son Dexter Wade, had been killed by an off-duty police officer and – despite having ID and her phone calls to the coroner’s office – was buried in an anonymous pauper’s grave behind the county jail. The city and county remain at odds over who should take blame; meanwhile Jackson reformed its notification processes in the wake of public scrutiny.View image in fullscreenIn comparison, two years after the Lewis shooting, Mississippi public safety officials have remained unwilling to reveal basic details about the event to Lewis’s family, citing a continuing “investigation”.State officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.The mayor noted that the city’s clearance rate for homicide investigation’s is above 70%, an indication that the public is willing to work with city police to solve crime. The national average is around 50%.Lumumba insists that the violence in Jackson is not a product of poor policing, drawing a contrast in approach with the capitol police. “But the fact that new problems surface, new interpersonal conflicts take place means that there’s a gap that we’re not filling,” he said. “And I only say that to say that this is absent in the consideration of the state, as they try to approach a safer environment for Jackson from a paternalistic standpoint. They don’t engage community.”Downtown Jackson has been losing population for a generation. You can drive long vacant stretches between buildings before finding signs of life inside. Depopulation isn’t just a Jackson problem – when you look at the list of shrinking communities in America, Mississippi towns like Greenville, Clarksdale and Vicksburg top the list, all expectations of Sun belt growth be damned. People are fleeing poverty.The emptiness creates problems for those who remain: squatters and unobserved spaces nurturing crime. Loss begets a vicious cycle.But people live in this town. Many are thriving.An hour before blues time at Hal and Mal’s, Jackson’s resident drag queen Penny Nickels was finishing up trivia night at the other end of the bar. It’s a monthly event held by Mississippi Capital City Pride. They’re worried about how the police will handle anti-queer harassment.“I’ve had protesters outside protesting, just me. I’m just one queen,” Nickels said. “I’ll be getting out of the car in the parking lot, and they will be coming out. Like they will be yelling directly after me.”The city’s Pride festival is a major event in Jackson, and has long had administrative support from the city government, said Chris Ellis, chair-elect of Mississippi Capital City Pride.“The governor vacates the premises while we’re around,” Ellis said. “I’m sure if he was there, he would ignore us, pretend we don’t exist, or outright claim that we’re, you know, degenerates, and all that good stuff.”Jackson’s LGBTQ+ activists fought for protections from bullhorn-wielding protesters during Pride, and the city responded with an ordinance limiting how amplified sound can be used in public.Alas, the capitol police do not enforce Jackson city ordinances.That complicates the coordination Jackson’s police department hopes to achieve with the capitol police. For the moment, a single 911 system handles all calls for the city, regardless of type. “When a citizen dials 911, they don’t know if it’s a city ordinance or a state law,” Wade said.The legislature anticipated this problem. Reeves vetoed a bill extending local ordinance enforcement authority to the department, because he doesn’t like the city’s politics.In a Facebook message explaining his veto, Reeves said capitol police should not be obligated to uphold local laws restricting police from pursuing immigration violations, describing Jackson as a so-called sanctuary city.“I believe, if this bill were to become law, the capitol police could not assist ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] in deporting illegal aliens that live in this community,” Reeves said. “Any time or attention – from an already under-resourced police force – on dealing with city ordinances [of which there are hundreds and none of which have been contemplated, much less approved, by the state] and code enforcement is an unnecessary diversion of personnel from their mission of finding and arresting the criminals.”Reeves did sign legislation requiring any protest next to state property in Jackson to obtain the written permission of the Mississippi public safety director or the capitol police chief. That legislation has been blocked in federal court.Jackson’s annual Pride march – which is held in an area that is now covered by the CCID – is nonetheless caught between the governor and his politics, Ellis said.“We’ve always done a march around Jackson as part of our festivities every year,” Ellis said. “And we’re talking about not doing that because it’s in the purview of the capitol police.”“The reason he even stopped me was because I had my white girlfriend in the car.” Just after leaving an arraignment hearing at the Hinds county courthouse in Jackson, a Black man in his 30s nervously, described the reasons he ran from a traffic stop from a capitol police officer in an unmarked car earlier this year. As the Jacksonian talks jackrabbit fast, he’s reliving the event. He requested anonymity to help prevent reprisals.“So he profiled me. I was driving her car,” the young man said, explaining how the officer pulled him over because his girlfriend was with him.“He gets out. I just see him waving the gun.“I instantly take off, police or no police. This is supposed to be a traffic stop. I’m not wanted for anything. And I haven’t did anything. But I’ve been assaulted by the police. I’ve been beat for nothing. They were supposed to be taking me to jail, instead they put gloves on, beat me and they just dropped me off in a neighboring neighborhood.”In his recollection, Jackson city police tuned him up in an alley some years ago. But it was capitol police that went after him recently.Jackson is depressing, he said.“Corrupt politicians, corrupt government system, corrupted … everything is fucked up. The streets have potholes. There are great people, but living under these circumstances, it creates chaos. The poverty contributes to crime, There’s no resources for our kids for anything to do. You can even have a degree, but you still have to know someone. Yeah, and this is being real.“If you can make it here, you can make anywhere. But if you didn’t make it out of here, then really, it was all against you anyway.”An afternoon in a courtroom at the Hinds county courthouse will break your heart. On a random Monday in July, two dozen men and women – mostly men, almost exclusively Black men shackled together – passed before the bench.The state’s initial legislative plan called for the establishment of a parallel court system for cases brought by the capitol police, bypassing Hinds county superior court. Chief justice Michael K Randolph, a white conservative Republican, would have appointed the judge for this court. Its prosecutors would be appointed by the attorney general, Lynn Fitch, also a white conservative Republican.A fifth circuit federal court approved the basic concept in affirming the law last year. But Mississippi’s state supreme court also ruled last year that the court’s judges could not be appointed and hear felonies under the Mississippi constitution.So now the plan is for the court to be restricted to misdemeanor cases, said Hinds county superior court judge Johnnie McDaniels.“The idea was that court was created to alleviate the backlog of cases in Hinds county. But I’m not sure we have a backlog of cases in terms of misdemeanor cases,” he said. “My position has always been that the state legislature should simply fund two other circuit court judges for Hinds county, so that we can address the real backlog of the number of cases we have. We have a a number of murder cases, a number of all types of cases. And our judges work extremely hard.”Almost all of the defendants had court-appointed attorneys because they were too poor to afford private counsel. Most stood accused of relatively minor crimes. Probation violations, because they didn’t want to show up in front of a probation officer without money to pay their fines. Drug possession. Running from the cops.But four faced murder charges.Senior judge Winston Kidd said what came through court that day was fairly normal. The murder problem is real.“And I acknowledged that when [SB] 1020 came out,” he said, referring to the bill that expanded the capitol police department’s power. “I acknowledged this problem. But no one could tell us why do we need this bill? The only thing I could go back to was the fact that all four circuit judges are African American, and in no other jurisdiction in this state had they tried something of that nature.”In 2017, the Mississippi legislature created the Capitol Complex Improvement District as a vehicle to fund infrastructure issues in Jackson. The state and the city have been feuding over control of its ageing water system. Bit by bit, the state’s eye has wandered over other Jackson assets – a baseball field here, the airport over there.Jackson needs the means to alleviate long-term problems of poverty. Instead, the state looks at taking what the city has left.“I’m more than just looking over my shoulder,” Mayor Lumumba says. “I’m anticipating and expecting it … In Mississippi, we’re also dealing with not what they don’t give us right. But an effort to take what we do have away from us.” More

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      Sofa so bad for JD Vance as Trump’s VP pick faces swirling speculation

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      It all started with a tweet about a couch. Within hours of Donald Trump announcing the Ohio senator JD Vance as his running mate in the presidential race, a rather lurid accusation cropped up on social media.The user of a since-deleted X account wrote last month, “can’t say for sure but he might be the first vp pick to have admitted in a ny times bestseller to fucking an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions (vance, hillbilly elegy, pp. 179-181).”The fake page citation from Vance’s bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy lent credibility to what turned out to be a baseless claim, as detailed in a now-removed fact check from the Associated Press. Soon, the internet was awash in memes mocking Vance’s relationship with various pieces of furniture. “I did not have sectional relations,” one X user joked, paraphrasing Bill Clinton’s infamous quote about his extramarital affair. Another user added: “Who hasn’t been excited by the thrill of the chaise?”Even Kamala Harris’s newly launched presidential campaign appeared to get in on the fun, tweeting: “JD Vance does not couch his hatred for women.”The couch debacle only underscored Vance’s overall dismal introduction to the country after his somewhat forgettable speech at the Republican national convention last month, prompting some to wonder if Trump should make the historic decision to ditch his running mate just three months before election day. Vance enters the final 100-day stretch of the election season as one of the most unpopular running mates in recent history. According to a CNN analysis, Vance is the least liked non-incumbent vice-presidential nominee since 1980.And the backlash goes deeper than couch memes. Critics have dug up his past comments supporting a nationwide abortion ban and attacking women without children. In a clip from 2021 that has circulated widely over the past two weeks, Vance told the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the US was managed by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too”.That comment struck many Americans as so out of touch that it sparked censure from some surprising figures, including the generally apolitical celebrity Jennifer Aniston. “Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day,” Aniston wrote in an Instagram post. “I hope she will not need to turn to [in vitro fertilization] as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too.”The Harris campaign cast an even brighter spotlight on the controversy with a statement titled, Happy World IVF Day To Everyone Except JD Vance.The turmoil has intensified questions over whether Trump might replace Vance as his running mate, a strategy that has not been pursued since 1972. One unnamed House Republican told the Hill last week: “I think if you were to ask many people around this building, 9 out of 10 on our side would say he’s the wrong pick … He’s the only person who can do serious damage.”View image in fullscreenBut many of Vance’s vulnerabilities were apparent well before he joined Trump’s ticket. Vance won his Senate seat in 2022 after emerging victorious from a heated and closely contested Republican primary in Ohio. Vance only won the primary by eight points, even after securing Trump’s crucial endorsement. The endorsement surprised many, as Vance had sharply criticized Trump in the past. Vance’s primary opponents repeatedly attacked him as a fake Trump supporter, reminding voters that he once described the former president as “America’s Hitler”.After advancing from that ugly primary fight, Vance went on to defeat the Democrat Tim Ryan by six points, even though Trump had carried Ohio by eight points just two years earlier. (In comparison, Mike DeWine won re-election as Ohio’s governor by 25 points that same year.) Ryan was able to keep the race competitive enough to force outside Republican groups to spend tens of millions of dollars in Vance’s defense. The Senate Leadership Pac, which has close ties to the top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell, spent more than $32m in the race, according to OpenSecrets.Since joining the Senate last year, Vance has become one of Trump’s most loyal supporters in Congress and embraced the former president’s agenda on everything from foreign policy to election denialism. In one illuminating interview with CNN in May, Vance suggested pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses should face criminal charges.“So you agree that people who break in and vandalize a building should be prosecuted?” asked the CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins.“Exactly,” Vance said.Collins replied, “I’m just checking because you did help raise money for people who did so on January 6.”All of this baggage has come to the forefront right as Vance is trying to introduce himself to a much larger audience of voters, and the search for a Democratic vice-presidential nominee has only exacerbated his troubles. The Democrats vying to become Harris’s running mate have taken to publicly lambasting Vance at every turn, offering a preview of a potential vice-presidential debate.The Kentucky governor, Andy Beshear, who is reportedly on Harris’s shortlist of options, has accused Vance of caricaturing Appalachian residents in Hillbilly Elegy. In the book, Vance leaned into his family roots in eastern Kentucky, even though he was raised in an Ohio city near Cincinnati.“I want the American people to know what a Kentuckian is and what they look like, because let me just tell you that JD Vance ain’t from here,” Beshear told MSNBC last week.The governor added at a fundraiser in Des Moines, Iowa, last weekend: “This is somebody who exploited us – who used to come for weddings or funerals or a couple weeks in the summer to see his kin, and I respect that. But to claim that you know our culture and then to insult our people is just wrong.”Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, who is also on Harris’s shortlist, has mocked Trump and Vance as “weird”, an attack line now echoed by other prominent Democrats.“The fascists depend on us going back, but we’re not afraid of weird people,” Walz said last weekend at a Harris campaign event. “We’re a little bit creeped out, but we’re not afraid.”View image in fullscreenAs of now, Trump has given no public indication that he intends to drop his running mate, and Vance is trying his hardest to shake off the damage of the past two weeks.“I knew that when I came out of the gate there was going to be a couple of days of positive media coverage and then immediately they would go and attack me over everything that I had ever said in my life,” Vance told NBC News on Tuesday. “The price of entry of being on the national ticket and giving me an opportunity to govern is you have to … take the shots, and so I sort of expected it.”But in a less than stellar review of Vance’s performance so far, Trump reminded voters that elections are not generally decided by the vice-presidential nominee.“This is well-documented, historically, the vice-president in terms of the election does not have any impact, virtually no impact,” Trump said on Wednesday during his contentious interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention. “You can have a vice-president that is outstanding in every way, and I think JD is, I think all of them would have been, but you’re not voting that way. You’re voting for the president. You’re voting for me.”Trump’s best hope for the moment is that voters will start forgetting about Vance. And after the month he’s had, Vance might not mind some obscurity either. More

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      Republicans beware: weaponising pets is a political minefield | Stewart Lee

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      The Ohio senator JD Vance has attacked “childless cat ladies”, going so far as to suggest infertile cat owners, or cat owners choosing life without children, should enjoy reduced voting rights. Donald Trump has already alienated Elvis Presley fans (“Elvis didn’t have 50,000 people and he had a guitar… I don’t have a guitar”) and the wind (“I never understood wind … I’ve studied it better than anybody”). Now Vance is politicising pets. The MP for Clacton, Nigel Farage, has called Vance a “top man”. Farage fuels violence, as we saw in the moving cocaine-and-cider vigil in Southport last week. Should Clacton cats, and Clacton cat ladies, fear the fist of Farage?Rightwingers aiming to weaponise pets should remember the old showbiz adage: “Never work with animals and children.” Especially if, as the American alt-right theorist Jack Psobiec suggests they should, the Republicans sign up the Trumpanzee rock star Ted Nugent. The blood sports enthusiast, and author of the song Jailbait, already has demonstrably poor history with both wildlife and the young.In 2019, the then prime minister Boris Johnson acquired a jack russell cross called Dilyn to try to seem normal. But the dog savaged the stuffed lemur of an award-winning boy, spaffed up random visiting dignitaries’ trousers, and sexually assaulted a stool made from the foot of an elephant killed by Roosevelt, disrespecting the special relationship and endangered species simultaneously. The journalists outside Chequers looked from dog to man, and from man to dog, and from dog to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.The former prime minister David Cameron’s disputed student friendship with an accommodating pig has become legendary, largely because no one can prove it ever happened. The story was allegedly sourced by the Brexit idiot Isabel Oakeshott from the then Westminster Conservative MP Mark Field, but he denies everything. Piggate aside, Field is most famous for grappling a Greenpeace protester at a Mansion House banquet in 2019 while shouting: “This is what happens when people like you disturb our dinner.” If Field had been at the Oxford feast where Cameron befriended the pig, the Mansion House banquet wouldn’t have been the most disturbed dinner he ever attended, so he would definitely have remembered it.We all know that Alastair Campbell, when Tony Blair was on the verge of first admitting the sheer depth of his religious convictions, told him: “We don’t do God.” What’s less well known is that the spinmeister general also advised “We don’t do pets,” when Blair suggested winning back old Labour’s northern heartlands by releasing video of himself and his wife, Cherie, dressed as prize whippet and a racing pigeon respectively.But in choosing to denigrate cats and their owners, are the Republicans on to something? In 2021, researchers revealed that US voters with conservative beliefs tended to dislike cats. The former Washington Post reporter Christopher Ingraham summarised the findings: “Conservatives hold strong anti-cat biases, likely stemming from cats’ disregard for social hierarchies, their general lack of loyalty, and their refusal to submit to authority.” Are cats instinctively left of centre? Can it be mere coincidence that Rishi Sunak’s memorably soggy election date announcement was further sabotaged by the Downing Street cat, Larry, shuffling about on the No 10 steps, like Eric Morecambe in the background of an excruciating Ernie Wise song?I do not wish to make light of postal workers’ suffering, but can it also be mere coincidence that, during the decade in which the Conservatives’ dismantling of Royal Mail escalated, attacks on mail delivery people by presumably right-leaning dogs have also increased, with more than 1,000 post-persons losing a finger or part of one in the past five years? The Royal Mail’s Lizz Lloyd was rightly angry to see “postman-flavour” dog treats for sale at a stately home. It is as wrong as if the JoJo Maman Bébé line were to make costly leotards emblazoned with the face of Trump’s rock-star supporter Ted Nugent.I allow two cats to live with me: one rescued from a litter in a back garden where foxes slaughtered its siblings; the other found in a cardboard box outside the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Kingdom Hall on Stamford Hill. As an adoptee, I relate to them, and am fascinated as I watch their abandonment issues develop. Archie, at only a year old, drinks far too much cat milk, while Winged Ear Fingerling, a year older, I estimate, has retreated into a solipsistic world of narcissistic fantasy. And yes I, a cat man, didn’t vote for Reform.As if to prove the point, Adolf Hitler, arguably the most rightwing person who has ever lived, of course had a dog, which was given to him by his personal secretary, the Nazi Martin Bormann, another known rightwinger. Hitler named the German shepherd Blondi, which was rather on the nose given his passionate belief in Aryan supremacy. It’s as if Nigel Farage had instead named his two dogs, Pebble and Baxter, after what he believed in: Money and Nothing.But today Blondi seems a better pet name, politically, than that favoured by the Dambuster airman Wing Commander Guy Gibson, whose dog’s name cannot be mentioned now because of the wokeness gone mad, those wokies and that wokery. Indeed, the dog’s Scampton gravestone was replaced by the RAF in 2020, at a cost of £675. This was fortunate, as the former RAF base’s fences are now used to contain asylum seekers, and an actual grave bearing a racial slur would make them paranoid. The Conservative party leadership contender and Disney-mural desecrator Robert Jenrick would doubtless have had the original grave reinstated, a deterrent even more powerful than Rwanda. I think all politicians should play by 70s swimming pool rules. No petting! Stewart Lee’s Basic Lee is on Now TV. He will preview new material at Stewart Lee Introduces the Legends of Indie at the Lexington, London, in August with guests Connie Planque (12 August), Swansea Sound (13) and David Lance Callahan (14)Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk. More

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      Name-calling and hyperbole: Trump continues fear-mongering fest at Georgia rally

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      Donald Trump addressed a fully-packed venue in downtown Atlanta on Saturday, with thousands of people waiting in the Georgia heat outside to enter, or to protest his appearance in a city he has condemned repeatedly.His remarks were consistent with the tenor and comportment of restraint and probity Atlantans are used to hearing at this point.“She happens to be a really low IQ individual. We don’t need a low IQ individual,” Trump said of the vice-president Kamala Harris. “They love dealing with low IQ individuals … She’s Bernie Sanders but not as smart.”Trump highlighted a handful of recent murders in the city, saying “Atlanta is like a killing field, and your governor should get off his ass and do something about it.”Trump rattled off a set of crime statistics in Atlanta that bear no resemblance to the actual change in crime over the last two years. Crime spiked in Atlanta in the last year of Trump’s term and peaked in 2022. It has subsequently fallen back to 2019 levels.But crime – and particularly crime involving immigrants – has been central to his appeal to Republican voters. Trump invoked the murder of Laken Riley, a college student murdered on the campus of the University of Georgia. Police have charged an undocumented immigrant with her murder.“Laken’s blood is on Kamala Harris’s hands,” Trump said, “as though she was standing there watching it herself.” Trump is trying to tie this to Harris’s role as “border czar” early in the Biden administration. “Harris should not be asking for your votes. She should be begging Laken Riley’s family for forgiveness.”Trump made a point of highlighting the work of three Republican appointees to Georgia’s board of elections, who have been entertaining changes to election rules that critics say are setting the stage for a legal contest in case of a Trump loss in November.Of President Joe Biden and the debate that led to his withdrawal from the race, Trump said “He was choking like a dog! He was choking. And that was the end of him … they did a coup, but he doesn’t know it.”Trump said, without any evidence, that “40 or 50 million illegal aliens” will enter the United States if Harris wins, he said, claiming that suburbs will be overrun with “savage foreign gangs”. He also claimed, falsely, that Harris wants to replace all gas cars with electric cars, to ban meat, to increase taxes by 70 to 80% and more claims that can only be taken as hyperbole because they are so far divorced from fact. He also reiterated claims that the 2020 election was stolen.Trump repeatedly called Harris a “lunatic”.Trump’s appearance in Atlanta is at the same venue Harris filled on Tuesday in her first Georgia rally since Biden’s dramatic withdrawal from the race and her ascension as the presumptive Democratic nominee.The contrast between Trump and Harris in the space was stark. Harris’s multiracial crowd Tuesday was peppered with the pink and green of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority sisters. Red Maga hats and Trump mug shots – or the now-iconic shot of his fist in the air after the assassination attempt – dominated the mostly white sea of support for Trump.Trump opened up his appearance in Atlanta lying about the Harris event in the same place, falsely claiming that people left the event early and that there were empty seats. Both events packed the room.Notably, the upper stands began to empty out about an hour into Trump’s comments.The refrain, repeated by speaker after speaker at the rally, was that Trump took a bullet for Republican voters, and they should return the favor with powerful turnout in Georgia.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“He took a bullet for you, and in that moment, we found out who Donald Trump is,” said Marjorie Taylor Greene, a representative, in a speech before 10,000 Trump supporters at the Georgia State Convocation Center. “He stood up, put his fist in the air and said ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ And that’s what we will do.”JD Vance, Republican vice-presidential nominee, took note of the emerging Democratic labeling of Republicans as “weird” as he warmed up the crowd.Weird is how “Kamala Harris comes to Atlanta and speaks with a fake southern accent even though she grew up in Canada”, Vance said. “Go watch the clips; she sounds like a southern belle.”Vance also linked the people who tried to “bankrupt” and “impeach” Trump to the attempted assassination.“America is never going to elect a San Francisco liberal who is so far out of the mainstream,” Vance said.Despite this assertion, polls increasingly suggest that Harris may be ahead of Trump today, with the Democratic national convention coming in two weeks. Before Biden’s withdrawal, Trump had been consistently ahead of Biden, so much so that political discussion here had been about whether the Biden campaign would capitulate in Georgia in order to focus its resources on Rust Belt races.Too few polls measuring Harris and Trump in Georgia have been conducted to read the race here, but both campaigns have begun treating Georgia as a battleground state once again.“The road to the White House runs through Georgia,” Greene said, almost word for word what Rev Raphael Warnock, a Georgia senator, told Harris supporters five days earlier.In long, rambling comments, Trump lambasted Brian Kemp, the governor, and Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, for disloyalty: “In my opinion, they want us to lose. If we lose Georgia, we lose the whole thing and our country goes to hell.” More

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      Trump says he would debate on Fox News – but Harris insists on ABC

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      Donald Trump says he would be willing to debate Kamala Harris on the friendly environs of Fox News in September – but the vice-president has not signed on to what would be a switch-up.Trump had previously agreed to appear on ABC News and debate Joe Biden a second time this year before the president ended his re-election campaign.In a statement on his Truth Social platform, Trump said the debate would be held on 4 September in Pennsylvania. The former president said that there was a conflict of interest at play after filing a defamation lawsuit against ABC and network host George Stephanopoulos over the anchor’s assertion that Trump had been “found liable for rape” in the E Jean Carroll case.Trump earlier this year was ordered to pay $83m for defamatory statements he had made about the magazine columnist after an earlier case found him liable for defamation and sexual abuse.“The Debate was previously scheduled against … Biden on ABC, but has been terminated in that Biden will no longer be a participant, and I am in litigation against ABC Network and George Slopadopoulos, thereby creating a conflict of interest,” Trump wrote.The former Republican president added that the site of the debate on Fox News – which is generally welcoming to the GOP – had not been determined. But he said the moderators would be Fox News’ Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, and the rules would be similar to his 27 June debate with Biden – except that this time there would be a studio audience.But on Saturday, in a statement that invoked Trump’s previous challenge to debate Biden at any time or place, Harris’s campaign made clear she did not agree to the terms of the proposed Fox News debate. And she particularly rejected using that debate to replace the ABC one.“Donald Trump is running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to and running straight to Fox News to bail him out,” Harris campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler said in a statement shared on X by NBC News political correspondent Yamiche Alcindor.“He needs to stop playing games and show up to the debate he already committed to on [10 September]. The vice-president will be there one way or the other to take the opportunity to speak to a prime-time national audience. We’re happy to discuss further debates after the one both campaigns have already agreed to.“Mr Anytime, anywhere, any place should have no problem with that unless he’s too scared to show up on the 10th.”In a post on X, Harris herself added: “It’s interesting how any time, any place’ becomes ‘one specific time, one specific safe space.’”The vice-president said in July that she was “ready” to debate Trump and accused him of stepping back from the previous agreement involving ABC.In a post on Saturday, Trump alleged that Harris was “afraid” to “do a REAL debate” against him. He added: “I’ll see [Harris] on September 4th or I won’t see her at all.”Democratic party alarm at Biden’s June debate performance on CNN set in motion his dramatic withdrawal from the race, with polls indicating he was likely headed for a blowout electoral defeat.Trump and Harris are now polling neck-and-neck.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe political dance over presidential debates is now set to escalate. Earlier this year, Biden and Trump agreed to sidestep the typical arrangement of three debates, typically held in the fall and organized by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates.Democrats said reducing the number to two and moving them up to June and September reflected changes in the “structure of our elections and the interests of voters”.Biden said he had won two debates with Trump in 2020 and challenged him to two this year. “I hear you’re free on Wednesdays,” Biden said, referring to a weekly off-day during the New York criminal trial that saw Trump convicted of falsifying business records in connections with hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels.But that decision ultimately backfired for Biden.The latest twist in the 2024 debate drama comes after Trump said he would not face Harris because she was not the party’s official candidate. On Friday, Harris secured enough Biden delegates to officially become her party’s nominee.At a rally in Atlanta on Tuesday, Harris said she welcomed a debate against Trump, who days earlier had called her a “bum”.“As the saying goes, you got something to say, say it to my face,” Harris said. More