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      ‘I’ve lost friends’: in bitterly divided Georgia, can Democrats score another win?

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      Mary Holewinski lives in Carrollton, Georgia, home turf for the far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. But Holewinski is a Kamala Harris supporter and has a sign in her yard. It draws some nasty looks, she said. “I’ve lost neighbor friends.”It helps that Carrollton is a college town, and discussing politics is possible – to an extent. “I feel like the people I live around, you can sit down and have a conversation with them, and they are willing to listen … but not everybody. There are some people who don’t want to hear your side of it.”These tensions are ratcheting up, because for voters in Georgia, it can feel like the entire US election is on the line. The state went for Biden in 2020 by 11,779 votes, out of 5m ballots cast – the first time since 1992 that the state turned blue. Its 16 electoral college votes were a bulwark – psychological as well as practical – for Democrats, illustrating the nation’s rejection of Donald Trump, however slim.Georgia has personal significance for Trump, and his war on the 2020 election results. The former president still faces charges in an election interference case in Atlanta’s Fulton county, after he made what he described as a “perfect phone call” to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, asking him to “find” another 11,800 votes. A Georgia win would represent belated validation for the former president.Now the question is which Georgia will turn out in greater force this year: the Democratic-leaning Georgia represented by the burgeoning Atlanta suburbs, or the Georgia where conservatism holds sway in its smaller towns and rural regions. Polling suggests that Trump has a lead of one to two points, well within the margin of error.The election is already under way. About 7 million Georgians are registered to vote and about 3 million voters – more than 40% of the electorate – have already gone to the polls, setting early voting records each day.Both Harris and Trump may as well have leased apartments in Buckhead, an upscale part of Atlanta, for all the time they are spending in Georgia in the last-minute election push. Earlier this month, Trump rallied at a sports arena in the northern Atlanta suburb of Duluth, in the middle of one of the most diverse areas of the state. Harris appeared on Thursday with Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen.View image in fullscreenSuburban moderates in the Atlanta region turned on Trump in 2020, and he appears to have done little in the years since to win their favor. Much has been made of Republican hopes of targeting Black men – about 1 million of Georgia’s 7 million registered voters – as a potential swing bloc for votes. The difference between a Democrat winning 80% and 90% of their votes will probably be larger than the overall margin of victory.But Georgia is no longer a state defined by Black and white voters. Asian and Latino population growth has changed the political landscape in suburban Atlanta, which helped drive the Biden victory there in 2020. Turnout in that voting demographic has been a challenge for both parties.The politics of Georgia are a delicate dance of cooperation between Atlanta, which tends Democratic, and the rest of the state. More than half the state’s population lives in the metro area of Atlanta. Music by Atlanta’s hip-hop artists has long dominated the charts. Marvel films its movies on Atlanta’s streets. Dozens of Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in the Atlanta area, from Home Depot, UPS and Southern Company to mainstays Coca-Cola and Delta.

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      Outside Atlanta, Savannah and pockets of Black voters in south Georgia’s historic Black belt, Georgia is solidly conservative. The Republican governor, Brian Kemp, remains the most popular political figure in the state. Moderate liberals approve of how he handled Trump’s election interference claims. Even Maga Republicans grudgingly acknowledge that his resistance to pandemic closures and libertarian gun position matched their interests.Rural, conservative Georgia is more likely to be religiously fundamentalist, less diverse and occasionally reactionary. Georgia has a six-week abortion ban because even the business wing of the Republican party in Georgia, which is solidly in charge of the state’s government, crosses evangelicals on that issue at its peril.The party’s challenges are exemplified by Rabun county, in Georgia’s picturesque, tourist-friendly mountains on the border of North Carolina. Here, and elsewhere, it is attempting to heal the standing conflict between conventional conservative Republicans and the Maga insurgency on the right.Rabun county Republicans have hosted a range of events, from a traditional low-country boil to a firearm raffle and screenings of a Reagan biography at the last remaining drive-in, said Ed Henderson, secretary of the Rabun county Republican party. Local Republicans have established a detente between the Maga wing and traditional conservatives, he said.“We’re not imposing purity tests on candidates,” Henderson said. They also don’t view Democrats as an existential threat. “They’re not demons with horns on their head, or Satan worshippers. They’re the opposition.”People from traditionally Democratic areas began moving into Rabun county during the pandemic, attracted by its lower cost of living and extraordinary natural beauty. The area historically favors Republicans by about four to one.But in a close race, chipping away at that margin may make the difference, said Don Martin, chair of the Rabun county Democrats. “If we can get Republicans down to 70% here, we will win the state.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBoth parties now see early voting as key. Trump has reversed his skepticism of early voting and absentee ballots, a posture that may have made the difference between winning and losing in 2020. His repeated refrain on the road in Atlanta is for turnout to be “too big to rig”, falsely suggesting that Democrats stole the 2020 election and intend to steal this one.View image in fullscreenHistorically in Georgia, Democrats have been more likely to vote early than Republicans. But Trump has pointedly instructed his supporters to vote early in person in Georgia, and many appear to be doing just that. So far this year, there’s little difference in turnout between metro Atlanta counties with large Democratic voting majorities and Republican-heavy rural counties.Ralph Reed, director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and a venerable figure on the Christian political right, made a point of telling conservative voters to vote early at a recent faith town hall in Zebulon, about 90 minutes south of Atlanta.“We cannot and must not wait until election day to vote,” he said. “If you let them dominate the early vote for two or three weeks and run up a million- or a million-and-a-half-vote margin, then we are like a football team trying to score three touchdowns in the fourth quarter … If you want the texts and calls to stop, you need to vote, and you need to vote early.”And early concerns about Hurricane Helene disrupting the election appear to be unfounded so far. Turnout in areas affected by the devastating September storm is only slightly below that of the rest of the state.Gwendolyn Jordan lives in Grovestown, two and a half hours east of Atlanta and in the damage zone of Hurricane Helene. Two weeks ago, as early voting started, some residents were still without power, she said.Yet early turnout in her county is very slightly above the state average. Though Columbia county went almost two to one for Trump in 2020, Jordan is a Harris supporter. The role of the federal government and the competence of a presidential administration is no abstraction in the wake of a hurricane, she said.“I believe there’s going to be a big difference, because Kamala Harris is more for the people under the $400,000 income range, the people that really need the help,” Jordan said. “You know that’s who is struggling right now. We just had a hurricane that did a lot of damage to people.”In 2020, it took two weeks for Biden’s victory in Georgia to be confirmed. This year there was the prospect of other delays, after an effort by the Trump-aligned state board of elections to allow local elections officers the right to withhold certifications, to conduct open-ended investigations into poll irregularities and to mandate hand-counts of ballots on election night.But two superior court judges ruled the changes unconstitutional and the state’s superior court let the rulings stand pending appeal, which will not be heard until after the election.Georgia’s wounds from the fight over the election results in 2020 haven’t completely healed. And people are preparing themselves for a fresh round after voting concludes in November.“I could care less about whether you like [Trump] or not. It’s not a popularity contest,” said Justin Thompson, a retired air force engineer from Macon. “It’s what you got done. And he did get things done before the pandemic hit. And the only reason why he didn’t get re-elected was because the pandemic hit.” More

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      Kamala Harris to urge voters to ‘turn the page’ on era of Trump

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      With the presidential race deadlocked a week before election day, Kamala Harris will call on voters to “turn the page” on the Trump era, in remarks delivered from a park near the White House where the former president spoke before a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol in a last effort to overturn his 2020 loss.The Harris campaign has described the remarks as a major address that will underline the vice-president’s closing message, in a location she hopes will remind voters precisely why the electorate denied Trump a second term four years ago. She is expected to cast Trump as a divisive figure who will spend his term consumed by vengeance, leveraging the power of the presidency against his political enemies rather than in service of the American people.“Tomorrow, I will speak to Americans about the choice we face in this election—and all that is at stake for the future of this country that we love,” she wrote on X.Although the vice-president frames the stakes of the 2024 election as nothing less than the preservation of American democracy, her speech is anticipated to strike an optimistic and hopeful tone, standing in stark contrast to the dark, racist themes that animated Trump’s grievance-fueled rally at Madison Square Garden.In New York on Sunday, Trump repeated there that the gravest threat facing the US was the “enemy within”. In recent days, Harris has amplified warnings of her opponent’s lurch toward authoritarianism and open xenophobia. Her campaign is running ads highlighting John Kelly, a marine general and Trump’s former chief of staff, saying that the former president met the definition of a fascist. Harris has said she agrees.“Just imagine the Oval Office in three months,” Harris said, previewing her message at a rally in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on Saturday. “It is either Donald Trump in there stewing over his enemies’ list, or me, working for you, checking off my to-do list.”

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      In her remarks, Harris will attempt to balance the existential and the economic – focusing on the threat Trump poses to American institutions while weaving in the Democrat’s plans to bring down costs and build up the middle class. She is expected to cast Trump as a tool of the billionaire class who would eliminate what is left of abortion access and stand in the way of bipartisan compromise when it does not suit him politically.Polls consistently show the economy and the cost of living are the issues most important to voters this election. Protecting democracy tends to be a higher priority for Democrats and voters planning to support Harris.In the final stretch of the campaign, Harris has emphasized the breadth of her coalition, especially her endorsements from a slew of former Trump administration officials and conservative Republicans such as Liz Cheney and her father, the former vice-president, Dick Cheney.Trump has sought to rewrite the history of 6 January, the culmination of his attempt to cling to power that resulted in the first occupation of the US Capitol since British forces set it on fire during the war of 1812. Trump recently declared the attack a “day of love” and said he would pardon the 6 January rioters – whom he has called “patriots” and “hostages” – if he is elected president.Hundreds of supporters have been convicted and imprisoned for their conduct at the Capitol, while federal prosecutors have accused Trump of coordinating an effort to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. Trump maintains that he played no role in stoking the violence that unfolded, and still claims baselessly that the 2020 election was stolen from him.Harris’s campaign has sought to lay out the monumental stakes of the election while also harnessing the joy that powered the vice-president’s unexpected ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket.In an abbreviated 100-day campaign that Harris inherited from Biden after he stepped aside in July, the Democratic nominee has unified her party, raised more than a billion dollars, blanketed the airwaves and blitzed the battleground states. And yet the race remains a dead heat nationally and in the seven swing states that will determine who serves as the 47th president of the United States.After her speech, Harris will return to the campaign trail, where she will keep a frenetic pace until election day. More

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      Tuesday briefing: Some Democrats are grimly convinced that Trump is going to win. What does the evidence show?

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      Good morning. With a week to go until America votes, the polls consistently show Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in a statistical dead heat.The nerds who simulate the race hundreds of times to model the likelihood of each result are consistently finding extraordinarily even chances between the two. And nothing that happens – not assassination attempts, Kamalamentum, convention speeches, running mate selections, celebrity endorsements, multi-million-dollar political ads, the debate, erratic rally performances, or plausible accusations of fascist tendencies – seems to change anything for more than a minute. The election, in summary, looks too close to call.All of which prompts the question: why are some Democrats so gloomily sure that Trump is going to win? Today’s newsletter, with the Guardian’s Washington DC bureau chief, David Smith, is about what we actually know, what Democrats should be worrying about, and what can be written off as a terrible case of the jitters. Here are the headlines.Five big stories

      Budget | The government is expected to announce an increase of about 4% to NHS funding, an increase that could translate to about £7bn for the health budget in England. Chancellor Rachel Reeves said that the money would deliver more surgical hubs and radiotherapy machines in a drive to add 40,000 appointments each week.

      Middle East | Israel’s parliament has voted to ban the UN relief and works agency (Unrwa) from the country within 90 days. Alongside a decision to declare Unrwa a terror group, the move is expected to lead to the closure of Unrwa’s East Jerusalem headquarters and would effectively block the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza via Rafah.

      Crime | The far-right activist Tommy Robinson has been jailed for 18 months for contempt of court for repeating false allegations against a Syrian refugee, in breach of an injunction. Robinson had repeated his false claim that Jamal Hijazi, who had been filmed being attacked at a school in West Yorkshire, “violently attacks young English girls” despite losing a libel case.

      Justice | Prisoners serving controversial indeterminate sentences were given minimum terms of less than six months but have remained in jail for at least 16 years, newly released data shows.

      Wildlife | Hedgehogs are now listed as “near threatened” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list, after a decline in numbers of at least 30% over the past decade across much of their range.
      In depth: Democrats are afraid of underestimating Trump – againView image in fullscreenWhatever the polls say, some Democrats will not be swayed. They can feel it in their waters, and sniff it on the air: Trump is closing in on a second term in the Oval Office.We might hazily date this phenomenon to early October, when betting markets got ahead of the electoral models in their assessment of the odds of a Trump victory. Meanwhile, the leads Harris established after replacing Biden started to disappear.“After the incredible sugar high of Harris’ introduction, she inevitably was going to come down to earth a bit,” David Smith said. “And compounding that is the fact that Democrats are serial ‘bed-wetters’, as they’re sometimes known, often prone to panicking about things going wrong.”For many of the bed-wetters, it may come down to a set of intangible observations: Trump has been underestimated before. This matters so much – a classic confusion of stakes and odds. And we live in an era where, when an OK thing and a bad thing are in competition, there only ever seems to be one winner.One way to deal with all this is with an “emotional hedge”: work on the assumption that Trump is going to win, to soften the blow if it comes. The other is with information. I totally understand if you’re not in the mood for that, but here it is anyway.What do the national polls say?The headline national polling averages show an extraordinarily close race, with Harris ahead by 49% to 48%, by 47% to 46%, or by 48% to 47%, depending on who’s counting. Those results are within the margin of error, meaning they are not inconsistent with a victory for either candidate.The national polls have changed astonishingly little in historical terms: “This race is remarkable for its closeness but also the insane stability of polls here in the closing weeks,” Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster, told NBC News. “This race just doesn’t seem to budge.”That is in line with what David is told by pundits and analysts studying the numbers. “The thing I keep hearing is that it could go either way. Anyone who says with certainty that either Harris or Trump is going to win is either foolish or has godlike powers.”What about the battleground states?Because of the electoral college system, the popular vote is of secondary importance in deciding the final result (a majority voted against Trump in 2016, after all, but he still ended up in the White House). But in the seven states that will probably decide the outcome, there isn’t a lot more to hold on to: polling averages in each are either tied or within a couple of points.There is some evidence for the bed-wetters to point to here. A piece (£) by the election data expert Nate Silver (quoted in this piece by law) on Sunday looked at what his modelling shows in these seven states, and found that Trump is a strong favourite (with a 64% chance of victory or better) in three of them; Harris’ strongest shot is in Michigan, where she has a 56% chance, and the others are virtual ties.You can see why this would make the Harris campaign nervous, but the reality is that these remain knife-edge numbers, David said. “It’s still hard to say that one candidate or another is winning in the swing states. In Pennsylvania, for example, it was half a percentage point in 2020, and there’s every reason to believe it’s going to be just as close, or even closer, this time.”Are the polls reliable?One point often cited by those betting on a Trump win is that his support was significantly underestimated in key states in 2016 and 2020. Why wouldn’t the same thing happen this time?It’s perfectly possible, but pollsters have tried to correct for the errors that have led them down the wrong path in the past – namely, weighting their results to account for more voters without a college degree, which appears to have been the problem in 2016. The 2020 error has been harder to pinpoint, but many experts blame “nonresponse bias” – the theory that Trump supporters don’t trust pollsters and are therefore less likely to tell them what they think. Pollsters have attempted to address that problem in different ways.As the New York Times’ chief political analyst, Nate Cohn, explains, what it may come down to in the end is whether the less engaged voters who support Trump show up in greater numbers than the pollsters anticipate – and that’s certainly possible. On the other hand, it is also possible that pollsters have overcorrected in a way that means Harris is underestimated. The unsatisfying but sensible solution is to wait a week and see what happens.What are the vibes like?Oh, the vibes are frantic. Broadly speaking, Republicans are rubbing their hands and Democrats are wringing theirs. This piece on Axios from Friday, with the headline “Dems fear they’re blowing it”, gives you a flavour: they’re worrying about early voting trends in Nevada, agonising over whether calling Trump a fascist is helpful, and reflecting grimly on the hand Harris inherited from Joe Biden. “She is who she is,” is the best one strategist can muster. “Let’s hope it’s enough.”There is a long history of Democrats taking an Eeyorish view when the stakes are high. Still, it’s not a totally insane position. It’s unscientific, but it feels like most reporters visiting swing states – like Chris McGreal in Michigan – are finding voters edging towards Trump. There is plenty of polling suggesting that Trump has made inroads with Black men and Hispanic voters.High inflation has worked against incumbent governments all over the world this year; Trump seems to be immune from criticism for behaviour that would disqualify any other candidate. And many voters blame Harris for irregular immigration across the US’s southern border.Could the vibes be wrong?Absolutely. There are counterpoints to all of this, including evidence of Harris’s success with suburban white women, and recent polling that shows her improving among Hispanic and Black voters. There is evidence that a majority of voters see her as embodying “change” more genuinely than Trump does. And there is a sense that much of it is psychological anyway: Democrats got carried away by “Kamalamentum”, and so the return of the race to a more balanced state has had a disproportionate impact on their mood.As one source close to the Harris campaign suggested to ABC News: “Democrats … were hoping that she was going to pull away and are coming to the realisation that this race is much closer than they hoped.” They added: “The bed-wetting to me makes sense based on the stakes, but not so much based on the odds.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis dynamic may even be helpful to the Harris campaign, which has constantly reminded its supporters that they should avoid the complacency which some believe helped Trump beat Hillary Clinton. “The language you hear from Harris and the Democrats is, quite sensibly, ‘we are the underdog’,” David said. “That’s a big difference from 2016. The knowledge that Trump can win is part of motivating people to really knuckle down. Will it be enough? I have absolutely no idea.”In other words: Harris’s hopes are, still, more or less a coin toss. That is more than enough to worry about without insisting that her defeat is a done deal.What else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreen

      Cecilia Nowell’s dispatch from an abortion clinic in Phoenix – operating at the fringes of Arizona’s restrictive abortion laws – highlights the high stakes faced by healthcare providers in states with limited access to abortion care. Nimo

      Reporting from Gaza is always incredibly difficult – but the tightening Israeli siege in the north of the territory has been subjected to an almost complete blackout, and five reporters were killed in Israeli airstrikes over the weekend. Bethan McKernan and Malak A Tantesh, who is in Gaza, do a superb job of piecing together the chilling details available. Archie

      Technically, Microsoft Excel is a millennial. As the software celebrates its 40th birthday, Dan Milmo reflects on the fallout of some of the biggest blunders made by spreadsheet users. Nimo

      Things you never knew: there are 16 polar bears living in the UK. Patrick Barkham’s piece, and Joshua Bright’s photos, tell the remarkable story – and ask whether it really makes sense that they should be here. Archie

      “Games invite us to break free from the tyranny of efficiency. Play matters precisely because it’s unnecessary,” writes Tim Clare, who urges us to stop justifying our gaming time and simply enjoy it. Nimo
      SportView image in fullscreenFootball | Manchester United were closing in on Rúben Amorim (above) as the club’s new manager on Monday night after Erik ten Hag was sacked earlier in the day. Ten Had finally lost his job after the club continued one of its worst starts to a Premier League season with a 2-1 defeat at West Ham on Sunday.Football | Rodri and Aitana Bonmatí have been named winners of the 2024 Ballon d’Or at football’s annual awards ceremony in Paris. Real Madrid boycotted the ceremony after learning that Vinícius Júnior had been beaten to the men’s prize.Rugby | Tom Curry is poised to start his first Test at Twickenham in almost two years as England gear up for their showdown against New Zealand on Saturday. The flanker is back after a serious hip injury which threatened to end his career.The front pagesView image in fullscreenThe lead story today in the Guardian is “Budget vow to rebuild ‘broken not beaten’ NHS”. “Billions in budget still won’t cure NHS, admits Streeting” – that’s the Mail, and it’s on the front of the Times as well: “Tax rises won’t cure the NHS, Labour concedes”. The Telegraph takes it a bit further: “NHS will need more tax rises, signals Reeves”, while the Mirror has “Labour’s war on waiting lists” under the strapline “Hope for the health service”. “Budget NI hike will damage core services, charities warn” says the i. And the Daily Express says “Chancellor told ‘it’s not too late’ for U-turn on winter fuel”.The Financial Times goes offshore for its splash: “Volkswagen’s plan to axe 3 German factories sets up battle with unions”. Top story in the Metro is “Deepfake photo paedo – Geek jailed for turning child photos into AI pornographic images”. The Sun leads on a claim that Erik Ten Hag will receive a £15m payoff as he leaves Manchester United: “Erik Ten Swag”.Today in FocusView image in fullscreenThe Trump supporters who took over Georgia’s election boardWhat happens when an election board in a crucial swing state is infiltrated by supporters of Donald Trump? Justin Glawe reportsCartoon of the day | Ben JenningsView image in fullscreenThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badView image in fullscreenSchool attendance rates in England and Wales declined during the pandemic and have as yet failed to recover. Last year, 150,000 students in England were classified as severely absent. Many teachers are trying innovative tactics to get pupils back into class, including offering therapy dogs, prize vouchers, wellness sessions and even taxi rides. Mary Immaculate high school near Cardiff in Wales went further by opening a £1.7m wellness centre, and its attendance rates are now above the national average.“We know it’s working,” says Nadia Yassien, head of a pastoral support programme at the school. “Students with low attendance are coming in regularly, on time, and happy – and that’s key, because they won’t learn if they hate the place.”Bored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

      Quick crossword

      Cryptic crossword

      Wordiply More

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      US election live: Harris says Puerto Ricans ‘deserve better’ as outcry grows over ‘hateful’ Trump rally remarks

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      The Congressional Hispanic Caucus has released a statement condemning the “shameful rhetoric” displayed at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Monday, where speakers made racist remarks about immigrants, and one speaker described Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage”.In the statement, the caucus called the language and rhetoric at the rally as “not only divisive but dangerous”.
      Hateful rhetoric has real-world consequences. When political leaders, influencers, and those with a large social platform choose language that dehumanizes communities, families get hurt, and hate crimes rise.
      The statement continues:
      This type of language emboldens prejudice, encourages violence, and undermines the values of unity and respect that our country is built on. It’s deeply troubling to see Republican leaders celebrate this rhetoric instead of promoting unity and truth.
      Donald Trump faced mounting suspicion of hatching a plot to steal next week’s presidential election as Democrats and commentators focused on his references to a “little secret” at Sunday night’s tumultuous Madison Square Garden rally.The allusions initially attracted little notice amid the angry backlash provoked by racist jokes and incendiary rhetoric from a succession of warm-up speakers, including an offensive comment about Puerto Ricans that even Trump’s own campaign felt obliged to disavow.However, some observers and Democratic politicians believed the most telling remark of the night came from the Republican nominee himself after he introduced Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, on stage and alluded to a shared secret.“We gotta get the congressmen elected and we gotta get the senators elected,” Trump told the crowd, referring to the congressional elections at stake next week.“We can take the Senate pretty easily, and I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House. Our little secret is having a big impact. He and I have a little secret – we will tell you what it is when the race is over.”Read more:Kamala Harris’s campaign has seized on the racist remarks about Puerto Rico at Donald Trump’s New York rally on Sunday in a new campaign ad in which the vice-president argues “Puerto Ricans deserve better.”In the ad released on Monday, Harris also criticized Trump’s response to Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island and killed thousands of people in 2017. “He abandoned the island and offered nothing more than paper towels and insults,” she said.A report from 2021 found that the Trump administration delayed $20bn in aid to Puerto Rico after the hurricane.Donald Trump has pledged to gut the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Biden’s signature climate law, even though some of his closest allies have benefitted from it.At least seven of Trump’s associates and fundraisers – or the companies they run – have obtained incentives thanks to the climate law, Reuters first reported.The IRA increased consumer interest in clean energy loans from California-based financial technology company Mosaic, which counts Trump’s son-in-law and former White House senior advisor Jared Kushner’s private equity fund Affinity Partners as an investor. Another IRA beneficiary was carbon capture and sequestration project Summit Carbon Solutions, in which Trump ally Harold Hamm’s fossil fuel company Continental Resources invested $250m in 2022.Though its founder Elon Musk has attacked the IRA, Tesla has also received gargantuan subsidies from the IRA. Musk is one of Trump’s most consequential boosters.Vicki Hollub, the Occidental Petroleum CEO and a major Trump donor and fundraiser, has also benefited from the IRA’s carbon capture tax credit and other subsidies. And pipeline company Energy Transfer – headed by longtime Trump supporter Kelcy Warren – participates in carbon capture and hydrogen projects boosted by IRA tax credits.The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act represented the biggest green downpayment in American history. Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote for the law.Kamala Harris took another swipe at her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, during her visit to a semiconductor plant in Michigan.She attacked the former president again for the tone and content of his Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday, and defended the Chips and Science Act she said he wanted to abandon:
      We are eight days out from an election, so I’ve got to also talk about the contrast, because my opponent spends full time talking about, just kind of diminishing who we are as America, and talking down at people, talking about that we’re the garbage can of the world. We’re not.
      He just recently did a radio talk show and talked about how he’d get rid of the Chips act. That was billions of dollars investing in just the kind of work that’s happening here. And you know how we did it? We created tax credits to create the incentive for the private sector to do this work. That’s good work.
      When he was president, he sold advanced chips to China that helped them with their agenda to modernize their military. That’s not about what’s in the best interest of America’s security and prosperity, which should be two of the highest priorities for president of the US.
      There is a very serious choice presented in the next eight days. And as much as anything it is a question about what is the direction of the future that we want for our country.
      As Donald Trump’s campaign faces intense criticism over racist remarks from a speaker at the Republican candidate’s New York rally on Sunday, JD Vance has responded by saying that Americans need to “stop getting offended”.Tony Hinchcliffe, a podcaster and comedian who spoke ahead of Trump at Madison Square Garden, described Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage”. His comments have drawn widespread condemnation and outrage.Trump’s running mate said he had “heard about” the joke, and argued that Kamala Harris is painting the former president’s supporters as “Nazis”.“I think that it’s telling that Kamala Harris’s closing message is essentially that all of Donald Trump’s voters are Nazis and you should get really pissed off about a comedian telling a joke. That is not the message of a winning campaign.“I’m not going to comment on the specifics of the joke, but I think that we have to stop getting so offended at every little thing in the United States of America. I’m so over it.”The Puerto Rican singer Marc Anthony has just posted a stinging attack on Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, reminding voters how the then president “blocked billions in relief while thousands died” on the island after 2017’s Hurricane Maria.“I’m here to tell you that even though some have forgotten … I remember. I remember what it was like when Trump was president. I remember what he did and said, about Puerto Rico … About our people,” he posted on X to his 11m followers:
      I remember after Hurricane Maria devastated our island… Trump blocked billions in relief … while thousands died. I remember that when our families lacked clean water and electricity, Trump threw paper towels and called Puerto Rico ‘dirty’ and ‘poor.’

      But I was not surprised … because I ALSO remember … he launched his campaign by calling Latinos criminals and rapists. He’s told us what he’ll do. He’ll separate children from their families and threatened to use the ARMY to do it.
      This election goes way beyond political parties. Now let’s remember what the United States represents and stands for. It’s our name – United. Regardless of where we’re from. I’m Marc Anthony … I remember.
      Police say they have identified “a suspect vehicle” connected to incendiary devices that set fire to separate ballot drop boxes in Oregon and Washington state early on Monday, the Associated Press reports.Surveillance images captured a Volvo stopping at a drop box in Portland, Oregon, just before security personnel nearby discovered a fire inside the box, officials said.That fire damaged three ballots inside. Around the same time, a fire was set at a drop box in nearby Vancouver, Washington, on early Monday, and hundreds of ballots were destroyed.Authorities said at a news conference in Portland that enough material from the incendiary devices was recovered to show that the two fires Monday were connected, and were also linked to an incident on 8 October when an incendiary device was placed at a different ballot drop box in Vancouver.Read more:The Nevada supreme court on Monday upheld the state’s post-election deadline for mail ballots lacking a postmark, CNN reported. The ruling is a rejection of a lawsuit brought by Republicans and the Trump campaign.The lawsuit challenged Nevada’s acceptance of mail ballots that are missing postmarks up to three days after an election. The supreme court, however, said the plaintiffs had failed to make a convincing case.“Notably, the RNC [Republican national committee] presented no evidence or allegations that counting mail ballots without postmarks … would be subject to voter fraud, or that the election security measures currently in place are inadequate to address its concerns regarding these ballots,” the ruling said.According to CNN, a similar case was filed by Republicans in federal court, but the US ninth circuit court of appeals is unlikely to resolve that case before next Tuesday’s election.Kamala Harris has been touring a semiconductor plant in Saginaw county, Michigan, on Monday afternoon, and talking up the Chips and Science Act.The Democratic presidential nominee said that if she wins next week’s election she will be reassessing “on day one” which federal jobs require a college degree and which ones do not.The comment, at the Hemlock Semiconductor facility in Hemlock, is both a policy proposal and a political bridge, the Associated Press news agency said, reporting her visit.One of the clearest political divides in the nation over the past few presidential cycles has been between college-educated and non-college-educated voters, with Democrats acknowledging they need to cut into Donald Trump’s support among the latter group, it said.“One of the things immediately is to reassess federal jobs, and I have already started looking at it, to look at which ones don’t require a college degree,” Harris said. “Because here is the thing: that’s not the only qualification for a qualified worker.”Earlier in her speech, Harris said: “We need to get in front of this idea that only high-skilled jobs require college degrees.”Moms for Liberty, a rightwing activist group focusing on education, launched a video ad in four battleground states on Monday targeting a Biden administration rule protecting LGBTQ+ students from gender bias.The ad, titled That’s Not Fair, features a father comforting his athlete daughter after she lost a race. “Dad, it’s not fair! I had to run against a boy! It’s not right,” the girl tells her father, who replies: “I know.”The ad will air in North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin.In June, a federal judge in Louisiana appointed by Donald Trump blocked the Biden administration from enforcing an education department rule extending sex discrimination protections under Title IX to LGBTQ+ students in Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and Idaho. More

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      Is Kamala Harris alienating progressives as she courts anti-Trump Republicans?

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      As the daughter of a man who drove George W Bush’s invasion of Iraq, Liz Cheney seemed a strange political bedfellow for a Democratic candidate intent on reclaiming disaffected Arab support in one of the US presidential election’s key battlegrounds.But Cheney, the former third-ranking Republican in Congress before her career was derailed by her enmity with Donald Trump, was cast in precisely that role with Kamala Harris last week.The pair, whose ideologically conflicting views on abortion and a host of other issues would once have put them at loggerheads, appeared together in the vice-president’s trawl for votes in critical swing states, including Michigan. The state is home to a large ethnic Arab voting bloc that still remembers Dick Cheney’s controversial role as Bush’s vice-president but is now reassessing its traditional pro-Democratic sympathies amid anger over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza.Trump, who has suggested that Cheney should be tried by a military tribunal for her congressional role in investigating his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, mocked it as a political gift.“Arab Voters are very upset that Comrade Kamala Harris … is campaigning with ‘dumb as a rock’ War Hawk, Liz Cheney, who, like her father, the man that pushed Bush to ridiculously go to War in the Middle East, also wants to go to War with every Muslim Country known to mankind,” he posted on his Truth Social platform.The argument – however warped in its expression – summarises one part of Harris’s conundrum in Michigan. She faces a serious hurdle after the Uncommitted movement, a pro-Palestinian protest group that is calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza war and an arms embargo on Israel, declined to endorse her as she has sought to steer a careful middle path on the issue. The movement won more than 100,000 votes in Michigan when it contested last February’s Democratic primary against Joe Biden when he was still the party’s nominee.“I don’t think having Liz Cheney on the team helps at all, because she doesn’t bring a flock of votes with her,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab-American Institute and a member of the Democratic National Committee.Yet the endorsement from Cheney – along with that of her father, who has also publicly backed the Democratic nominee – highlights a broader aspect of Harris’s campaign; to win, she is relying on the public support of high-profile anti-Trump Republicans to persuade enough hitherto GOP voters to set aside old habits and vote for her on 5 November.To that end, Harris’s coalition tent has expanded to include a broad swath of anti-Trump Republican refuseniks, including members of his former administration who have pledged themselves to the Democratic nominee in the interests of stopping him.Among them are Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary, Olivia Troye, a national security adviser to Mike Pence, Miles Taylor, a former homeland security department chief of staff, as well as Adam Kinzinger, a former Illinois congressman who – like Cheney – served on the House of Representatives committee investigating the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol by a Trump-incited mob.Other Republican Harris-endorsers include Alberto Gonzales, the former attorney general in the Bush administration and a man generally acknowledged as a legal architect of the US torture programme used in the post-9/11 “war on terror”. And last week, Fred Upton a former Michigan congressman who served for three decades before retiring in 2022 after voting to impeach Trump over January 6.Harris’s campaign has welcomed them all, though few so warmly as Cheney.The strategy has been accompanied by Harris moving to the centre by jettisoning previously held leftwing positions such as Medicare for all and support for a fracking ban, while embracing a tougher stance on immigration, Trump’s most emblematic campaign theme.Prominent Democrat progressives like the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the outspoken House member for New York, have remained quiescent in the interests of maintaining a united front – until now.Sanders, who had previously defended the vice-president’s retreat from progressive policies as “pragmatic” and essential to “win the election” broke cover last week, warning that her embrace of Republicans risked “losing the working class”.“The truth of the matter is that there are a hell of a lot more working-class people who could vote for Kamala Harris than there are conservative Republicans,” Sanders – who has spoken at two dozen campaign events for Harris in October alone but, unlike Cheney, not appeared on a podium with her – told the Associated Press.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“She has to start talking more to the needs of working-class people.”Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, a leftwing group founded as a spin-off of Sanders’ 2016 presidential bid, told AP that Harris’s approach could cost her 10% of the progressive vote – with some possibly casting a ballot for Trump.Zogby agreed. “Having an entire campaign focus on winning over quote-unquote moderate Republicans – and Liz Cheney is not a moderate Republican,” makes voters anxious, he said. “When somebody hears Liz Cheney being considered for a cabinet position, that makes people go into the panic mode. It may actually cost votes.“There is an importance in reaching moderate Republicans. [But] the definition of a moderate Republican is not somebody who rejects Donald Trump. It’s somebody who espouses policies that are themselves moderate in terms of their economic and foreign policy agenda.”But Mark Bergman, a veteran Democratic operative who has liaised with Republicans who have offered Harris their support, said that such ideological distinctions overlooked the personal risk many were taking by publicly disavowing Trump.“These people were not asked by the campaign. They took it upon themselves to act,” Bergman said. “By speaking out, they are putting a target on their backs. They deserve our utmost respect. There are lists of people [to be targeted if Trump wins] floating around. These are real conversations.”John Conway, strategy director of Republican Voters Against Trump – a group canvassing conservative-leaning voters to back Harris on the grounds that a second Trump presidency would endanger democracy – said it was a “false choice” to cast Harris’s embrace of dissident Republicans as a trade-off with maintaining her Democratic base.“This election is going to be decided by what the independents and centre-right swing voters do,” he said. “If Kamala Harris can win enough of them, she can win Pennsylvania, Michigan [and] Wisconsin and reach 270 electoral college votes.”For the strategy to succeed, Conway argued, Harris needed the example of GOP grandees of Cheney’s stature to win over diehard Republicans repelled by Trump but fearful of crossing a psychological barrier by voting Democrat.“It’s really important that she get all the endorsements from the right she can. So when somebody like Liz Cheney says, ‘I feel the same way you do. I’ve been a Republican like you’ve been. I’m going to get there on Kamala Harris, because we need to make sure that Donald Trump can never be president again,’ I think that does help [persuade] reluctant Republican voters.” More

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      After a hurricane, Democrats try to snatch rare victory in swing state North Carolina

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      Eric “Rocky” Farmer is stoking a bonfire of what’s left of his life. Billows of smoke rise from a mound of debris burning in front of what he once called his home – a large two-storied house that is now a contorted mass of twisted metal and broken beams.When Hurricane Helene struck western North Carolina last month, the North Fork New River that runs beside his property broke its banks, rising more than 20ft. The raging waters lifted up a mobile home from upstream as effortlessly as if it were a rag doll, slamming it into the corner of his house and causing the structure to crumple.Farmer, 55, will have to dismantle the mess and rebuild it, largely with his own hands. “It’s a bad scene, but we’ll get back up,” he said, sounding remarkably serene.Farmer’s struggle has now become entangled in the painfully close and hyper-tense election in North Carolina. The state is one of seven battlegrounds that will decide the outcome of the presidential race on 5 November.Several tracker polls, including the Guardian’s, show the contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris to be neck-and-neck in the state.With polls so tight, the impact of Hurricane Helene has made a complicated election look as mangled as Farmer’s house. What the disaster does to turnout, and with that to the candidates’ chances, could tip the race.Amid the wreckage of his home, Farmer is taking a philosophical approach. “Politics is like mother nature,” he said. “You just watch what it does from the sidelines, then deal with the consequences.”Though he plans to vote on 5 November, he is still not sure whether that will be for Trump or Harris. “Guess I’ll go with the lesser of the two evils – they’re both evil as far as I’m concerned,” he said.View image in fullscreenThe hurricane that struck on 26 September hit the Appalachian mountain region of western North Carolina hard, killing at least 96 people. Many roads are still closed and thousands of people have been displaced or remain without power and running water.More than 1.2 million voters live in the stricken region – about one in six of the state’s total electorate. The obvious fear is that turnout will be depressed.“Nobody’s talking about politics here, because it doesn’t matter,” said Shane Bare, 45, a local volunteer handing out donated coats. “If you can’t flush your toilet or get to your mailbox, you could care less about the election.”Bare expects he will vote in the end, probably for Trump, whom he doesn’t much like but thinks has the edge on economic policy.Other voters are more upbeat about the election. Kim Blevins shared her passion for Trump as she was picking up free tinned food and bottled water from a relief station in Creston.“If Trump doesn’t get in, it’s going to be worse than the hurricane,” she said. “It’ll be world war three. Kamala Harris wants to make us a communist country.”Harold Davis, 68, a Harris supporter salvaging lumber from the side of the river, told the Guardian that he also cares more than ever about the election. “It’s so important. Maga is really Mawa – Make America White Again – and the sooner we can get back to treating everyone as equals the better,” he said.For Trump, the stakes in North Carolina could not be greater. For decades, the state has veered Republican, only backing Democrats twice in almost half a century (Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Barack Obama in 2008).If Trump can take the state, as he did four years ago by a razor-thin 75,000 votes, along with Georgia and Pennsylvania, he will return to the White House. Without it, his path is uncertain.“It’s very hard for us to win unless we’re able to get North Carolina,” Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, has said.Trump descended on North Carolina for two days this week, scrambling between Asheville in the storm zone to Greenville and Concord, and then Greensboro. He has been busily spreading lies about the hurricane response, accusing the Biden administration of refusing aid to Republican voters and falsely claiming that federal money has been redirected to house undocumented immigrants.His frenetic schedule and lies are perhaps indications of Trump’s anxieties about the impact of the hurricane on his electoral chances. Of the 25 counties hit by the disaster, 23 voted for Trump in 2020.“Outside the cities of Asheville and Boone, which are pretty Democratic, most of the hurricane area went strongly for Trump in 2020. So if turnout is down because of the disaster, it is likely to hit Trump most,” said David McLennan, a political scientist at Meredith College who runs the Meredith opinion poll.Republicans in the state have drawn comfort from the record-breaking early voting. In the first week of in-person early voting, almost 1.6 million people cast their ballots, surpassing the total crop of early votes in 2020.Four years ago, Republican early voting slumped in the wake of Trump’s false claims about rampant fraud. But this year’s record-smashing turnout suggests that the party has now put that behind it – Republicans and Democrats are virtually tied in their early voting numbers.“Despite all the challenges, people have shown they are determined to come and vote, a lot of them specifically against Kamala Harris,” said Matt Mercer, communications director for the North Carolina Republican party. “So we are feeling optimistic.”In the tranquil tree-lined suburbs on the north side of Charlotte, the effort to squeeze out every vote for Kamala Harris is entering its final heave. Here, sandwiched between the solidly Democratic city and the heavily Trumpian countryside, the suburban voters, women especially, could hold the key.Fern Cooper, 83, standing at the door of her detached suburban house, said she was powerfully motivated to vote because of her disdain for Trump. As a former New Yorker from the Bronx, she’s observed his flaws up close.She recalled how he was gifted huge sums of money from his real estate father; how he called for Black young men known as the Central Park Five to be executed for a rape they did not commit and for which they were later exonerated; how he treated his first wife, Ivana Trump, badly.“I know everything about Trump,” she said. “He’s not getting my vote.”Hannah Waleh, 66, is also all-in for Harris, for more positive reasons: “She will bring change, she is real, not a liar. She is for the poor and working-class people.”Waleh, a medical technician, has been urging her colleagues at her hospital and church to get out and vote early for the Democratic candidate: “I’m begging them. If everybody votes, I’m sure she will win.”View image in fullscreenShe might be right. The Meredith poll has tracked the extraordinary transformation in the race after Harris took over the Democratic nomination from Joe Biden.“Biden was losing North Carolina,” McLennan said. “Harris’s entry into the race returned the state to being 50-50 again – it’s back to being purple.”It is one thing bringing North Carolina back into contention and quite another to win. Part of the challenge is that, according to the poll, 2% of voters are still undecided, a tiny slice of the electorate that both campaigns are now frantically chasing.“I’ve never seen undecideds that low so close to the election,” McLennan said.They include Faith and Elizabeth, both 27, who have erected a 15ft Halloween skeleton on the lawn outside their house in the Charlotte suburbs. They told the Guardian that the most important issue, in their view, is abortion and the rights that women have already had taken away from them under Trump.And yet they still haven’t committed to voting for Harris. “We want to be certain,” Faith said.The Democrats are prioritising such suburban women, including those who formed part of the 23% of Republicans who backed Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary. They are doing so by focusing on abortion rights, with the Harris-Walz campaign warning that the state’s current restrictive 12-week abortion ban would be tightened under a Trump administration to a total nationwide abortion ban.They have also sought to tie Trump to extreme Republicans further down the ballot. The main target is the Republican candidate for governor, Mark Robinson, who has described himself as a “Black Nazi” and has been revealed to have made extreme racist remarks.During the past 18 months, Democrats have invested in the state, opening 28 offices with more than 340 staffers. They have even pushed into rural counties that previously had been assumed to be beyond the party’s reach.“The Democrats have prioritized getting the party’s message out in more rural parts – on the grounds that a vote from rural areas is just as useful as from the city,” said Jason Roberts, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Bolstering the party’s ground game is a vast alliance of non-profit progressive organizations such as the Black-led group Advance Carolina and Red Wine & Blue, which works with suburban women. The alliance, which playfully calls itself Operation We Save Ourselves, has a goal of knocking on 4m doors to promote candidates with progressive values – the largest independent program of its sort in North Carolina’s history.If hard work were all it took to win presidential elections, Harris would already have one foot inside the Oval Office. But anxieties continue to swirl around the Democratic ticket, led by concerns that early turnout from African American voters, who in past cycles have swung overwhelmingly Democratic, is lower this year than at the same stage four years ago (37% in 2020, compared with 20% today).As the months remaining until election day turn into days, and days into hours, the Harris-Walz campaign will be making last-ditch efforts to persuade Black voters to get out and vote – voters like Christian Swims, 21, a student at community college, who would be voting in his first presidential election.If he votes at all, that is.“I don’t follow the election much,” he said. “My friends don’t talk about it. People round here aren’t very political.”Or Joseph Rich, a Fedex worker, 28. “I don’t know too much about Trump and Kamala Harris,” he said. “I’ll read up on them, but now I’m not sure.”Time is running out for Democrats to connect with voters like Swims and Rich. Whether or not they succeed could make all the difference. More

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      ‘Expect war’: leaked chats reveal influence of rightwing media on militia group

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      Leaked and public chats from Arizona-based “poll watching” activists aligned with a far-right militia group show how their election paranoia has been fueled by a steady drumbeat of conspiracy theories and disinformation from rightwing media outlets and influencers, including Elon Musk.The materials come from two overlapping election-denial groups whose activists are mostly based in Arizona, one of seven key swing states that will decide the US election and possibly end up at the center of any disputed results in the post-election period.Chat records from a public-facing channel for the America First Polling Project (AFPP) were made available to reporters by transparency group Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDOSecrets). The activist who leaked those materials to DDOSecrets provided the Guardian directly with an archive of the Arizona 2022 Mid-Term Election Watch (A22) chat channel.The materials offer a window into the way in which the rightwing information environment – and the unverified, distorted or false information it proffers – erode faith in elections, and encourage those who would violently disrupt them.From the media to far-right conspiracyThe materials underline previously reported links between poll watching groups and the American Patriots Three Percent (AP3) militia, such that the militia provided “paramilitary heft to ballot box monitoring operations”.At least half a dozen pseudonymous activist accounts are present across all of the chats, and early posts in the AFPP chat show activists at “tailgate parties” that brought together election denial groups and militia members ahead of the 2022 midterms election.They also show the broad cooperative effort among a range of election denial groups, whose activities were fueled by disinformation from high-profile conservative activists.On 6 October 2022, in one of the first archived messages on the semi-private A22 chat, a user with the same name as the channel (Arizona 2022 Mid-Term Election Watch) announced to the group that they had “heard back from the cleanelectionsusa.org so I might try to coordinate between the two efforts”. They added: “In any case I will schedule a couple of zoom calls so we can connect.”Two days later, the same account updated: “There are 13 drop box only locations in Maricopa county of which only 2 are 24 hour locations,” adding: “We will need help with getting these watched. I have also been able to connect with cleanelectionsusa and am coordinating with those folks.”View image in fullscreenClean Elections USA, founded by Oklahoman Melody Jennings, is one of a number of election denial groups that sprang up in the wake of the 2020 election, after Trump and his allies mounted a campaign to reverse that year’s election result on the basis of false claims that the vote was stolen.During the 2022 election season, the organization was slapped with a restraining order over its ballot monitoring – some of it carried out by armed activists – that the federal Department of Justice described in its filing as “vigilante ballot security efforts” that may have violated the Voting Rights Act. That lawsuit was settled in 2023.The organization’s website has shuttered; however, archived snapshots indicate that the organizers were motivated by discredited information from long-running election denial organization True the Vote and 2000 Mules, the title of a conspiracy-minded book and accompanying documentary by rightwing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza.The book and film repeated True the Vote’s allegations that paid “mules” had carried illegal ballots to drop boxes in swing states in 2020. D’Souza’s publisher in June withdrew the book and film from distribution and apologized to a man whom D’Souza falsely accused of criminal election fraud.The “mules” falsehoods were treated as baseline reality in the A22 chat. On 9 November, a user named “trooper” sought to account for Republicans’ unexpectedly poor showing with the claim “275k drop-off ballots – meaning the mules flooded the system on election day while the disaster distraction was in play”, adding that “they swarmed the election day drop boxes like fucking locusts”.The pro-democracy Bridging Divides Initiative (BDI) at Princeton University recently published research indicating elevated worries about harassment on the part of local officials, including election officials. BDI’s research backed up findings from the Brennan Center indicating that 70% of election officials said that threats had increased in 2024, and 38% had personally experienced threats, up from 30% last year.Shannon Hiller, BDI’s executive director, said: “We continue to face elevated threats and risk to local officials across the board,” however in 2024, “there’s been a lot more preparation and there’s a clearer understanding about how to address those threats now.”Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) said that talk of election fraud using drop boxes had returned in 2024. “I can’t think of an election-denying organization, whether it’s Mike Lindell, True the Vote or more local outfits in various states that aren’t talking about patrolling drop boxes and watching voters while they’re voting,” she said.From disinformation to violent threatsBeirich’s warnings are reflected in ongoing AFPP Telegram chats, where any prospect of a Harris victory is met with conspiracy theories, apocalyptic narratives, and sometimes threats.The Guardian’s review of the materials found many instances in which disinformation or exaggerated claims in the media or from rightwing public figures led directly to violent rhetoric from members of the chat.On 13 March, a user linked to a story in the Federalist which uncritically covered a claim by the Mississippi secretary of state, Michael Watson, that the Department of Justice was “using taxpayer dollars to have jails and the US Marshals Service encourage incarcerated felons and noncitizens to register to vote” on the basis of Joe Biden’s March 2021 executive order aimed at expanding access to voting.A user, “@Wilbo17AZ”, replied: “If we don’t fight this with our every waking breath, we are done. Expect war.”On 24 June, a user posted an article from conspiracy-minded, Falun Gong-linked news website Epoch Times, which reported on the supreme court’s rejection of appeals from a Robert F Kennedy-founded anti-vaccine non-profit.The court declined to hear the appeals over lower court’s determinations that the non-profit had no standing to sue the Food and Drug Administration over its emergency authorization of Covid-19 vaccines during the pandemic.In response, another user, “cybercav”, wrote: “I do not see any path forward for our Republic that doesn’t include ‘Purge and Eradicate’ being the general orders for both sides of the next civil war.”In January, the @AFPP_US account posted a link to an opinion column on the Gateway Pundit by conspiracy theorist Wayne Allyn Root. Root characterized cross-border immigration as an invasion in the piece, and concluded by telling readers to “Pray to God. Pray for a miracle. Pray for the election in November of President Donald J Trump.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFueling paranoiaOver the summer, overseas events fueled the paranoia of chat members.On 6 August the @AFPP_US account posted a link to Guardian reporting on anti-immigrant riots that took place in the UK over the summer.The article described the riots as “far-right violence”; @AFPP_US captioned the link “‘Far Right’ = ‘Stop raping women and stabbing children’”.The next day, the same account apparently attempted to link the riots to UK gun laws, which are more restrictive than the US.The stimulus was a story on the riots by conspiracy broadcaster Owen Shroyer, an employee of Alex Jones who was sentenced to two months in prison for entering a restricted area at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.View image in fullscreen@AFPP_US wrote: “UK is a failed state and possession of the Calaphite [sic]. The imperialists have become the Imperiled. This is what just a few generations of disarmament and pussification hath wrought.”One major vector of bad information in the A22 chats is the Gateway Pundit, a pro-Maga website operated by Jim Hoft. That website has been a noted source of election disinformation for years. Earlier this month Hoft’s organization settled a defamation suit with two election workers that it had falsely accused of election fraud. Accountability non-profit Advance Democracy Inc reported in August that in the first nine months of 2024 Hoft had published at least 128 articles referencing election fraud and election workers.Gateway Pundit articles were shared many times in the chat.On 21 January, the @AFPP_US account shared a Gateway Pundit story by Hoft in which he claimed that liberal philanthropist and chair of the Open Society Foundation, Alexander Soros, had posted a coded message advocating the assassination of a re-elected President Trump.The basis was that Soros’s post carried a picture of a bullet hole and a hand holding $47. But those pictures came from a story in the Atlantic, about falling crime rates, that Soros was linking to in the post.‘Millions of illegals’On at least one occasion, the Gateway Pundit was quoted in the group because it was amplifying the claims of another major source of disinformation for A22: Elon Musk.The Gateway Pundit article posted to the chat in January was titled “JUST IN … Elon Musk Rips Mark Zuckerberg for Funding Illegal Voting Vans in 2020 Election”. It highlighted Musk’s false claim that Zuckerberg’s funding of county-level voting apparatuses in 2020 was illegal.As elections approached, AFPP members added more of Musk’s pronouncements into the stew of disinformation on the site, with a particular emphasis on anti-immigrant material.On 7 September, as rightwing actors stoked panic about Haitian immigrants, @AFPP_US posted a link to a Musk post quote-posting a video of Harris addressing the need to support Haitian migrants with the comment: “Vote for Kamala if you want this to happen to your neighborhood!”On 29 September, the AFPP lead account linked to a Musk post that claimed “Millions of illegals being provided by the government with money for housing using your tax dollars is a major part of what’s driving up costs”.On 1 October, the @AFPP_US account shared an X post in which Musk asserted that “if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election”, and wove that claim into a narrative resembling the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, claiming that “Democrats are expediting” the conversion of “illegals” to citizens in an attempt to make America a “one-party state”.The Guardian reported in 2021 that a separate AP3 website leak, which exposed the paramilitary organization’s membership list, showed that at that time members included serving military and law enforcement officers.In August, ProPublica reported on an earlier leak of AP3 materials from the same source, showing that AP3 had carried out vigilante operations on the Texas border, and had forged close ties with law enforcement officers around the country.Beirich said that chatter monitored by the organization has obsessively focused on the narrative of illegal immigrants voting in a “rigged” election. “Non-citizens voting is the big fraud that they’re talking up,” she said.Earlier this month, Wired reported that the current leak showed evidence of plans to carry out operations “coordinated with election denial groups as part of a plan to conduct paramilitary surveillance of ballot boxes during the midterm elections in 2022”. More

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      Do we have any idea who will win the US election? No. Uncertainty is sky-high | Cas Mudde

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      It is generally believed that Americans only start to care about presidential elections one month before election day. Hence, it is only in the last month that polls become meaningful. If that is true, the polls don’t tell us too much yet.Despite the fact that Donald Trump has become openly authoritarian and racist – promising to jail his “enemies” and referring to immigrants as “cannibals” – the race is still too close to call. Almost all national polls have Kamala Harris ahead of Donald Trump in the popular vote, but the difference is mostly within the so-called “margin of error” – meaning, in essence, that the difference is too small to be certain. So what should we look out for in the coming weeks?The polls: national v swing statesFirst of all, it is important to note that the US president is not directly elected. There is little doubt that Harris will win the popular vote – Democrats have won the popular vote in all but one of the presidential elections this century. But to become president, a candidate does not need to win the popular vote but the electoral college – ironically, given that the electoral college handed Trump the victory in 2016 and could do so again next month, the institution was introduced by the founders to protect the country from electing a “populist” president.So, rather than focusing on the national vote, we should focus on polls in so-called “swing states”. For the 2024 elections, these are expected to be the following seven states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Unsurprisingly, given that they are swing states, the polls are extremely close in all seven states. It is doubtful that this will change before election day on 5 November.The electoral coalitionTrump has the most homogeneous electoral coalition, consisting overwhelmingly of religious white voters. Over the last decades, predating Trump, the Republican party has become more evangelical, male and white. Although that demographic is decreasing as a percentage of the population, the enthusiasm for Trump within the group is high. Moreover, polls are indicating that Trump is picking up Hispanic and, to a lesser extent, (male) African American voters.The main worry for the Republican party are (suburban) white women, who have supported Trump in majority before. Since the Dobbs ruling put abortion back at the top of the agenda, and younger women are much more liberal than previous generations, white women could cost Trump the election – particularly if young white women vote in similar numbers as older generations.Although Harris has a larger potential electorate, it is also much more changing and heterogeneous as well as much harder to mobilize. Traditionally, the Democrats win large majorities of both African American and Hispanic voters as well as a large minority of white voters. Although Harris has brought back the enthusiasm lost under Joe Biden’s lackluster campaign and debate performance, and largely closed the gap with Trump, there are several groups that could cost her the elections.Hispanic voters have been moving to the Republican party for several years now, while a group of African American men seem unwilling to vote for a woman as president. And then there is Gaza, which has turned a lot of Arab Americans and Muslim Americans – as well as progressive white voters – off the Democratic party. In most of these cases, the question is not so much whether they will vote for Harris or Trump but rather whether they will vote for Harris or not vote at all.Election day will not be decision dayIf you think it is frustrating that the polls don’t give us a highly likely winner before election day, you will be even more frustrated to hear that you still will probably not know the winner on 5 November. Four years ago, most major networks only called the election on 7 November, four days after election day. It will almost certainly take even longer this year, as Republicans have introduced a host of measures to make it more difficult and slower to count the votes (such as hand counting).skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAnd once the votes are finally counted, and particularly if they don’t hand Trump a victory, we can expect several institutional challenges to the results. Since their failed attempt to challenge the 2020 election, Republicans have tightened their grip on electoral boards and state courts, including in some swing states like Georgia. No wonder election experts have raised alarm that the vote counting and certifying will not just lead to delays but also to chaos.Post-electoral violence?Even when all the votes are counted, and the final result is certified, it is doubtful that the country will move on – particularly if Trump loses the election. This is in itself not that surprising: both Trump and his vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, still do not recognize Biden’s election, while 57% of Republicans believe Biden’s election was “illegitimate”. Moreover, both Trump and Vance have indicated that they would not recognize a defeat in November, a position shared by almost half of Republican voters (and more than a quarter of Democratic voters).Unsurprisingly, there is a growing worry in the country about post-electoral violence, among both Democrats and Republicans. In fact, almost half of the population thinks it is “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that the country would slip into a civil war! While the combination of conspiracy theories and a large number of (semi-automatic) weapons makes some post-electoral violence highly likely, I doubt we will see another insurrection, let alone a civil war. That said, there is little doubt we are in for a very tense period, which will last well beyond 5 November.

      Cas Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, and author of The Far Right Today More