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      The California community caught between a powerful megachurch and far-right extremists

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      This is the third in a series of three stories on the run-up to the 2024 US presidential election in Shasta county, a region of 180,000 people in northern California that has emerged as a center of the election denial movement and hotbed for far-right politics. Read the first and second story.For years, an extremist far-right movement has worked to transform one of California’s most conservative regions. Since gaining a majority on Shasta county’s governing body, they have managed to spark an exodus of government workers, attempted to do away with the voting system and fought the state over policies pertaining to Covid-19 and the second amendment.Earlier this year, voters in the community of 180,000 – perhaps tired of Shasta’s national notoriety as a hotbed for extremist politics and election denialism – declared they had had enough. In a stunning rebuke, they voted out a far-right leader by an enormous margin, handing his seat to a political newcomer.Matt Plummer, a Yale-educated former college football player who owns a corporate training business, pledged to provide an alternative to the “hostility and division” tearing Shasta apart. Supporters view Plummer, with his focus on issues such as crime, roads and homelessness, as someone who can help the community chart a path out of the upheaval.But others are concerned about Plummer’s connection to another powerful and ultra-conservative force that has reshaped the region: Bethel church. The megachurch has more than 11,000 members, including Plummer, and a school of “supernatural ministry” that serves 2,000 students a year.View image in fullscreenBethel leaders once said that God wanted Donald Trump to have a second term and have claimed that Joe Biden won the 2020 election by “fraud”. Church members have become major players in local government – three of the five members on the city council in Redding, the county seat, attend Bethel. The city’s vice-mayor is a church elder.The church is involved in nearly every part of Shasta county, and is a cornerstone of the local economy, said Doni Chamberlain, a longtime local journalist and chronicler of the area.Shasta’s extreme political landscape has forced residents to choose between a toxic rightwing movement and a church that also has deeply conservative and extreme beliefs, she said.“This is the bind we’re in,” she said. “Shasta county is in this weird extremist sandwich where we have the rightwing pushing for guns and splitting the state. And there is the other extreme side of the sandwich that is Bethel church. Then the middle where people are trying to figure out how to survive in this place.”Before Shasta county garnered national attention for its fierce opposition to Covid-19 restrictions and efforts to institute a hand-count voting system favored by those who believe lies about election fraud, it was Bethel church that raised the region’s profile.There are churches – of which Shasta county has plenty – and then there is Bethel, a behemoth institution without parallel in the area. First established in a private home in 1952, it now has more than 11,000 members – more than 10% of the population in the city of Redding – where the church is based.Bethel’s transformation came under the direction of Bill Johnson, the son of a long-serving pastor who began leading the church with Beni, his wife, in 1996. The church has grown significantly, opening a school, a youth outreach program and Bethel Music, a record label that produces popular worship music and reported $18m in revenue in 2023. Justin Bieber is a fan and has filmed himself covering a song from a Bethel artist. Today several of Johnson’s children work as senior leaders in the church.But it’s Bethel’s school of supernatural ministry, which has been called a “Christian Hogwarts”, that is often credited with its growth. The program was founded by Kris and Kathy Vallotton, the senior leaders of the church, and teaches students that they can perform miracles and heal through prayer. “Students will learn how to read, understand, and ‘do’ the Bible, how to practice His presence, to witness, heal the sick, prophesy, preach, pray, cast out demons and much more,” the school website states.People travel to Redding from around the world, more than 100 countries, to attend the vocational program. Students have been known to approach people in the city, particularly those in casts or with walkers, to offer prayers for healing. The focus on “supernatural power” is fundamental to the church, which in 2019 asked members to pray for the resurrection of a two-year-old girl.Bethel has long believed in the power of healing people through prayer. Chamberlain joined the church as a child after her mother died and her siblings were adopted by a local couple who were members. When they learned that Chamberlain and her twin sister had a neurological disorder that caused involuntary movements, church elders came to treat their “demons” and the children were made to throw away their medications, Chamberlain recalled.“When you have a bunch of adults circling around you and putting their hands on your heads and shaking you, it was pretty intimidating,” she said, adding that they coached her on how to speak in tongues.“It’s like being waterboarded, you just give up and give in so they leave you alone. Then you’re in the club.”Since its founding in 1998, Bethel’s supernatural school has brought thousands of people to Redding. They are a visible presence around the city, in its grocery stores and the hip cafes and bakeries operated by Bethel members. And as the church’s footprint has grown, so too has criticism of its role.Supporters say the church has been a positive force in Redding and that it’s natural for a large institution to attract scrutiny but that members want to be a part of the community in which they live. They often point to local volunteer work or when the church donated money to fund police positions in Redding and began leasing the local auditorium when it appeared the city would have to close it down.Bethel did not respond to multiple requests for comment.View image in fullscreenBut other Shasta county residents argue the church has changed the fabric of the community and worsened an existing housing shortage by drawing thousands of students to the area while driving up costs.“If you look from the outside in, there seems to be positives. They’ve done good things, but I don’t feel like on balance what they’ve done is for the good of the community in general,” said Robert Sid, a Shasta county resident who supported Plummer. “Their Hogwarts supernatural ministry has really played into flooding the market and artificially pricing things that the regular Redding person can’t afford.”Critics have expressed discomfort with church members who hold key positions in local government voting on proposals from Bethel to expand. Some residents have joined a Facebook group to identify businesses connected to the church.“[The owners] tithe to the church. If you patronize a Bethel-affiliated business then now some of those profits are being tithed to the church. You’re kind of indirectly supporting the church by doing that,” said Rachel Strickland, who started the group. “People don’t want to do that.”And for some in this deeply conservative region, where Republicans outnumber Democrats two to one, the church’s political ties have been cause for concern as well. Religious experts have described it as closely related to the New Apostolic Reformation, a movement built around the idea of modern-day prophets and apostles that aims to have Christians transform society and rule over key political and cultural institutions, referred to as the “Seven Mountain Mandate”.Johnson co-authored a book, Invading Babylon: the 7 Mountain Mandate, which advises Christians to exert influence in seven core areas: church, family, education, government, media, arts and commerce.Matthew D Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish studies who has studied Bethel, argued that the church appears to be trying to implement the Seven Mountain Mandate in its community.“I think they very much intend to enact this bigger vision of Christian supremacy and Christian dominance in the Redding area. It doesn’t mean they are always overt about that,” said Taylor, the author of a book on the New Apostolic Reformation for which he interviewed Johnson.Bethel leaders endorsed Donald Trump, and in 2021 one apologized for incorrectly prophesying that he would win a second term. The church has come out against efforts to restrict conversion therapy. In 2019, several figures associated with the church attended an Oval Office event with Trump to pray over the president. Bethel has sought to distance itself from January 6, however, Taylor said.“They are trying to tone down public rhetoric and make themselves [seem] less extreme than they are but as far as I can tell they haven’t moderated their extremism. They are just trying to package it in a better way,” he argued.The church has long emphasized that the beliefs of individual church members are not necessarily reflective of the church’s positions. Chamberlain, who left the church as a young adult, argues it is important to distinguish between the church leadership and its members.“You have to separate the leaders of the church, the people who are millionaires and drive expensive cars, cars that cost as much as somebody might pay for a house. They have vacation homes and eat at The French Laundry,” Chamberlain said.They live a life of the rich and famous, she added, while some Bethel members, and students, leave their homes abroad and live in extreme poverty to be close to the church.Members point out that they are not a monolith.Matt Plummer’s journey to Redding began the same way thousands of others have – with Bethel. He moved to the city in 2016 with his wife and daughters to attend the church, and remains a member, he said in an interview with the Guardian.Plummer, who grew up in rural New Jersey where his first job was on a horse farm, was drawn to the region’s access to nature from hiking to swimming holes, he said, and the family has developed deep ties to the area.He decided to run for the board of supervisors after working in several political campaigns and seeing the intense polarization and problems that have plagued Shasta county.“We have tied basically for the highest suicide rate in the state. You have one of the highest rates of childhood trauma and one of the highest rates of kids being born with drug withdrawal effects,” he said. “This is a pretty cool community that has a lot to offer but at the same time if you look at all these dimensions of what makes a community thrive, we’re trailing.”View image in fullscreenHe had a tough race ahead of him seeking to unseat Patrick Jones, who previously served on the Redding city council and had been a supervisor for three years as well as a leader of the anti-establishment movement that has come to define local politics.Jones, a gun store manager, led some of the county’s most controversial efforts, including attempting to upend the voting system and moving to allow people to carry firearms in public buildings in violation of state law. He also spread conspiracy theories, telling a conservative national news outlet: “Elections have been manipulated at the county level for decades.”He once responded to a reporter’s query by telling them to “drop dead”.While polarizing, Jones was well-known and had been in politics for years, Plummer said, and had the backing of a Connecticut magnate who has poured millions of dollars into local elections.Plummer made up for that by making personal contact, and personally knocked on about 9,000 doors, he said (there are about 23,000 registered voters in his district).“People care if you show up and meet them,” he said.He sought to stay out of ideological debates and focus on what residents were worried about, primarily public safety, roads and homelessness. The number of unhoused residents has grown significantly in recent years from 793 in 2022 to 1,013 people in 2023.“My opponent had been on the board almost four years and he had been on city council for eight years, which had some jurisdiction over the same things. And they had all gotten worse,” he said.His affiliation with Bethel was a concern, he acknowledged, one he tried to address and alleviate. “I’m not speaking on stage and not this type of celebrity at Bethel. I just go there on a Sunday morning.”View image in fullscreen“One of the things I said is: ‘I’m not running to represent Bethel and so my job is not to defend Bethel’ and so when people would attack Bethel for things, I’d say OK, that’s fine. That’s actually not my priority here,” he said.Strickland, who has described Bethel as a cult, said the choice put the community in a tough position, but that even in her Facebook group people seemed to be leaning toward Plummer. “For me Patrick Jones is much more dangerous.”Plummer received the endorsement of Chamberlain’s publication, A News Cafe, drawing backlash from some readers who started referring to the outlet as Bethel Cafe.“It was a tough call. I have a problem with Bethel on a lot of levels, but just kind of putting on your thinking cap sometimes the Bethel candidates were the best choice for the positions,” she said.“Do we vote for Patrick Jones who is pushing guns and open carry? Or do we vote for Matt Plummer who is a Bethel member? He’s also articulate, educated and smart.”And in the current political climate in the county, Chamberlain mused, few people would want to subject themselves to running for office. “The Bethel people are kind of impervious to it. It’s scriptural.” More

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      What does JD Vance really believe? | Sidney Blumenthal

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      The world is on fire, but in Washington DC topic A is Olivia Nuzzi. Her suspension as a writer for New York Magazine for sharing “demure” nude photographs of herself and other indiscreet communications with Robert F Kennedy Jr has engendered gales of hilarity to relieve the tension of the razor-thin close campaign.Nuzzi’s relationship in journalistic terms fits the supreme court’s ruling on presidential immunity of the distinction between Donald Trump’s “private” and “official” acts involving the January 6 insurrection. In the spirit of the court and The Scarlet Letter, the blond bombshell has received more punishment for sexting than the blond bomber has for attempting a coup.In the hurricane of gossip the most notable public discussion of the Nuzzi affair was an exchange of two buddies giggling at their lowbrow humor. “There’s this weird sex scandal story going on right now,” says the first. “The media is obsessed with – I don’t think there was any actual sex in the sex scandal.” Hahaha. His pal snickers, “That’s how I’m sure it is.” They guffaw. “I think that’s right,” replies the first. They laugh together in a communion of their misplaced coolness, unclever witticisms and pubescent misogyny.This is not dialogue from an episode of Beavis and Butt-Head. It is not a cartoon. It is not a satire. The first jokester is the Republican candidate for vice-president, Senator JD Vance of Ohio. His interlocutor is Tucker Carlson, the erstwhile No 1 Fox News host, fired as a liability, financial and personal, and left to roam untethered in the social media wasteland.Vance appeared on stage with Carlson on his tour on 22 September, undeterred after Carlson had recently featured a Hitler apologist and Holocaust revisionist on his podcast. Vance preferred to talk about Nuzzi rather than the Nazis. After raising the kerfuffle unprompted, he swiveled without a skip to lay out a cascading conspiracy theory pinging from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris to the entire press corps with an inference to Nuzzi. Biden is “sleepwalking into world war three”, he declared, then jumping to “the reason why we have Joe Biden is because Kamala Harris lied about his mental fitness in office. If you actually care about the truth, ask those questions and leave this salacious bullshit to the tabloids. But they can’t do that. And if they did, Tucker, again, if they did, a lot of them would lose their jobs.”So, in translation, the Nuzzi affair is really the media’s way to avoid confirming Vance’s conspiracy theory. The third world war weighs on Vance’s mind. It is a meme, like the “cat meme” about the Haitians, as he called it. In the mode of Butt-Head impersonating a serious person, Vance told Tucker: “We’re worried about getting involved in world war three because we should be, because we have nuclear weapons now, and you have to be cautious about that stuff.” Tucker was gravely silent.Without missing a beat, Vance offered a new wrinkle in the great replacement theory. “If you look at the Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney view, their basic argument is, let’s flood the United States with millions upon millions of foreign laborers because that’s good for business.” Now it was the conservative endorsers of Harris who were to blame for the bogeyman of immigration. Vance was unconcerned that Liz Cheney had been ousted as chair of the House Republican conference for investigating January 6 and defeated in a primary for her seat, and that Dick Cheney had ceased serving as vice-president more than 15 years ago. It was their fault.“The third thing,” said Vance, “that I think really divides the parties, and it’s like me, Bobby Kennedy, Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump, we’re all on the same page on this is, do you think that the United States should ship its entire industrial base to foreign countries, some of which hate us?”First of all, “the third thing” wasn’t the third thing, but more about the second thing. Second, by embracing Bobby Kennedy, Vance didn’t seem aware he was back to another thing – “this weird sex scandal story”. Then, he returned to the subject of Springfield, Ohio, which is his warped example to prove the replacement theory, his first, second and third thing. “Amen,” said Tucker.Vance is Trump’s running mate in large part because of the influence of Carlson. For the past couple of years, he has been escorting Vance to introduce him to people hostile to Nato. At least one of them was nonplussed when, rather than sticking to the menace of Nato expansion, he expatiated on his many pathological stepfathers. Carlson notoriously appeared in Budapest under the auspices of the pro-Putin Hungarian authoritarian Viktor Orbán. Vance has been uniformly opposed to support for Ukraine. On the eve of Russia’s invasion, he said: “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”In the battle over who Trump would chose as his running mate, Carlson was pitted against Rupert Murdoch, who had fired him from his perch at Fox. Murdoch favored the wealthy businessman and North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum. “When your enemies are pushing a running mate on you,” Carlson told Trump about Murdoch, according to the New York Times, “it’s a pretty good sign you should ignore them.”Trump had to overcome his aversion to Vance for his remarks that he was an “idiot”, “unfit for our nation’s highest office” and a looming “American Hitler”. On 4 January 2021, two days before the assault on the US Capitol, Carlson wrote in a private text about Trump, “I hate him passionately,” but subsequently ingratiated himself back into his good graces. Now he played on Trump’s deepest fear. If Trump picked a “neocon”, a pro-Nato Republican like Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the Times reported, “then the US intelligence agencies would have every incentive to assassinate Mr Trump in order to get their preferred president”. Carlson was buttressed in waging his paranoid campaign to eliminate competitors to Vance by Donald Trump Jr, whom Carlson had recruited into the Vance inner circle.Trump put Carlson on the platform at the Republican convention in order to have Tucker hail him as the “kindest”, “bravest” man of “empathy” who “actually cares”, and most “wonderful person”. Carlson delivered his tribute seemingly unaware, or perhaps completely aware, that his speech was almost word for word a copy from the film The Manchurian Candidate of the brainwashed description of Raymond Shaw, the phoney Medal of Honor winner himself conditioned into becoming an assassin in a communist conspiracy to kill the party’s nominee for president and turn the country over to the Russians under a rightwing puppet. Maj Ben Marco, played by Frank Sinatra, who served with Shaw in Korea, breaks the code of the brainwashed idealization: “Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”Carlson and Vance have curiously parallel lives. One born to wealth, the other in poverty, both were partly abandoned children. Vance and Tucker are Lost Boys in their own Neverland who have signed up with Captain Hook.Carlson’s mother, heiress to one of California’s oldest and greatest fortunes, left Tucker at the age of six for life in a hippy commune, never seeing him again. After his father remarried to the heiress of the Swanson frozen food fortune, Tucker was sent off to boarding school.As Vance chronicled in his book, Hillbilly Elegy, his mother was suicidal and addicted to alcohol and heroin. “Of all the things that I hated about my childhood, nothing compared to the revolving door of father figures,” he wrote. He was abandoned to be more or less raised by his grandmother, who from the age of 13 had four children and eight miscarriages, possibly some of them abortions. She once tried to set her drunken abusive husband, Vance’s grandfather, on fire while he slept.Vance is a construct. The man known as “JD Vance” has existed for three years. His various name changes tell only a superficial part of his story. James Donald Bowman carried his father’s middle and last name. When his parents divorced he dropped the middle name “Donald” for “David”. He took his stepfather’s last name when he became James David Hamel. In high school he called himself “JD”. He graduated from Ohio State University and served in the military as James D Hamel. He was accepted to Yale Law School under that name. While at Yale, in 2010-2011, he blogged for David Frum’s FrumForum as JD Hamel.He implied in his 2016 memoir that he took the name of JD Vance upon his wedding in 2014, but in fact he assumed the name “Vance”, after his grandmother’s name, just before his graduation from Yale Law in 2013. Then, when he announced his candidacy for the Senate from Ohio in 2021, he removed the periods from his initials to become simply “JD”. which is how he is listed in his US Senate biography.Vance has had more mentors than name changes. One of them explained to me that his technique is to mirror them, one after another, to win approval and get ahead. His greatest skill is advancement through mimicry. A ruthless instinct for survival drives his hollow striving. He demonstrated his method in justifying Trump’s fabrication about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating cats and dogs. “I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it,” he told Dana Bash on CNN. His own self-creation involves a lot of creativity.From mentor to mentor, too numerous to mention without writing a small treatise, Vance has shape-shifted. Under the tutelage of the Yale Law professor Amy Chua, author of the terrifyingly strict parenting memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, he framed his story. She threw out his first draft of a memoir, then directed and edited the writing and its promotion. Chua had been the making of Brett Kavanaugh’s career, helping to place him in a clerkship on the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit, and she became a pipeline of clerks to him when he ascended to the US supreme court, advising her proteges that he preferred women who “looked like models”. She advanced Usha Vance, whose match to JD she encouraged, to become a Kavanaugh clerk, while telling Vance not to apply for the post but to stick to composing the book.Vance met Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire, at a Yale event. Thiel inducted him into his network, hiring him after graduation for his venture capital firm. In the 2016 campaign cycle, Thiel became the single largest donor to the Republican party. He was drawn to Trump’s darkness. Thiel is an anti-democratic, illiberal dystopian for whom Trump is a mere agent. When Vance ran for the Senate from Ohio in 2022, Thiel bankrolled him with $15m, a pittance for the potential investment.Thiel and his venture capital network are heavily sunk into cryptocurrency. On the day before Trump anointed Vance as his VP, he endorsed a federal strategic bitcoin reserve that would put the US government behind the essentially worthless commodity. That would trigger an explosion of cryptocurrency products. Vance as vice-president would be a guarantor of an unregulated market that would almost certainly lead to financial chaos, the fleecing of small investors and new avenues for international crime.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn 2019, Vance converted to Catholicism, embracing a particular strand of anti-liberal traditionalism. As a boy he had been a Pentecostal. At Yale, he was an avowed atheist. Through Thiel, he met a number of profoundly reactionary Catholic ideologues, including Patrick Deneen, author in 2023 of Regime Change, a manifesto for the “Party of Order” to defeat the “Party of Progress” to install “the post-liberal order”. At a panel about the book at the Heritage Foundation, Vance appeared with Deneen and Kevin Roberts, the rightwing thinktank’s president and an adherent of Opus Dei, a reactionary Catholic sect developed in Franco’s Spain that is at war with Pope Francis’s liberal openings. Vance proclaimed himself there a cadre of the “postliberal right” and “explicitly anti-regime”, a further confession of faith.At the time, Roberts was overseeing the publication of Project 2025, a far-right wish book of draconian policies for a second Trump term. Roberts wrote an accompanying book, Dawn’s Early Light: Burning Down Washington to Save America, for which Vance wrote the introduction. “We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets,” he wrote. But when Trump tried to distance himself from the controversial Project 2025, the book’s publication was stopped, retitled – “Burning Down” scrapped for “Taking Back” – and pushed back until after the election.Vance had also become close to another radical rightwing theocrat, Rod Dreher, a columnist for The American Conservative, a magazine founded by Patrick Buchanan, avatar of the America First movement. Dreher was present at Vance’s Catholic conversion ceremony. Yet Dreher had already left the Catholic church for Eastern Orthodoxy because, among other things, he felt Catholicism was controlled by a “Lavender Mafia” of gay priests. In 2022, he went into voluntary exile in Hungary, where he became the director of Orbán’s Danube Foundation “network project”, for which he facilitated the trip of Carlson while he maintained his close relationship with Vance.When Vance wants to impress the theoreticians of the quasi- and neo-fascist right, he mirrors by echoing their special language, showing he is one of them. But when he wants to prove himself to Trump, he no longer poses as the intellectual manqué but instead a standup insult comic.His awkward jocularity and lame jokes, if they are jokes, almost always bomb. Notoriously, there’s the sophomoric snark of “childless cat ladies”. There are his put-downs, such as: “I’ve actually got thoughts in my head – unlike Kamala Harris.” There was Vance’s misfired tweet intended to mock Harris by posting a 2007 video clip of Miss South Carolina Teen Caitlin Upton freezing in her answer to a question about finding the United States on a map – only to have it revealed that Donald Trump subsequently offered her a job and that she had been a Trump supporter. She condemned Vance for “online bullying”.Vance wore a different persona than the apprentice name-caller in his debate with Tim Walz. Now he was the trained attorney smoothly spreading an oil slick of falsehoods to defend his guilty client. Vance lied that he never supported a national abortion ban; that Trump saved the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – instead of trying to destroy it at every turn; and that “illegal immigrants” in Springfield, Ohio, had “overwhelmed” the community. When Margaret Brennan of CBS News corrected him that the Haitians there are legal immigrants, Vance revealed a glint of anger. “Margaret, the rules were that you guys weren’t going to factcheck,” he complained. Facts are not his friend. Then, Vance closed with his most breathtaking lie, that Trump “peacefully gave over power on January 20”, eliding January 6. With that, Vance could breathe easy that he had jumped the hurdle of the big lie.JD obviously feels most comfortable bantering with Tucker. Together on stage, on 22 September, they jammed to stroke Trump’s narcissism as a true man of the people. Tucker kicked it off. “It’s impossible,” he said, “to imagine Carmela, or whatever she’s calling herself, Harris, talk to the lady behind the counter about the differences in quality and weight and price between the quarter pounder and the Big Mac. He has such strong feelings about it. He’s really thought about it a lot.”JD chimed in. “Well, and again, this goes to his leadership style,” he said. “Donald Trump actually really cares of what people think. So, he has absolutely thought to himself, what is the better value between the quarter pounder and the Big Mac? He actually wants to know what the people who work there think about this question. And by the way, I have views about this. Obviously, the quarter pounder is a better deal.”“That’s absurd,” replied Tucker. “Without secret sauce, it’s not even worth going there. But whatever. Honest people disagree.”“You’ve allowed yourself to be manipulated by the elites,” JD ribbed him. “The secret sauce is not the thing that matters. It’s the amount of meat. You get way more meat with a quarter pounder.”Vance clinched his point with an anecdote about being interviewed by Trump at Mar-a-Lago to be his running mate. Trump told him he had asked the gardener whom he should pick. “I’m sitting there, sweating bullets like, ‘Well, sir, what did the gardener at Mar-a-Lago have to say about who should be the VP?’” Trump did not tell him. But, according to Vance, it proved “he actually likes to know what people think about things. That’s one of his secrets of success as a political leader.” Vance did not interpret the incident as Trump toying with him in a humiliating little game in which he dangled the gardener as a determining factor in his fate.Then Tucker and JD riffed about what JD called “the Kamala switcheroo” in full Beavis and Butt-Head style. “The switch-up, the disappearance of the president of the United States. Biden is still president, technically, correct?” says Tucker. “I don’t know,” answers JD. “I don’t either. I really don’t know. I don’t know what happened to him. He was pretty famous at one point, and then he’s just gone.” “I saw some clip on social media that Jill Biden was running a cabinet meeting,” says JD. “Was that real or was that – for sure.” “She’s a doctor, JD. Settle down. She’s got this. Anyone who hasn’t read her dissertation on community colleges in the state of Delaware really should see where the doctorate comes from. She literally is a part of it where she’s breaking down the proportion of bi-ethnicity of students … I’m like, I’m not good at math.” “Wait a second.” “No,” says Tucker, “you should read Dr Jill’s dissertation. It’s unbelievable. Anyway, she’s running the government, just so you know.” Hahaha.In an earlier conversation for Tucker’s podcast, on 18 September, Tucker and JD blithely talked about the agenda of a coming Trump administration. “If you guys win,” says Tucker, “and you start firing people who are acting against orders of their commander-in-chief and against the expressed will of voters, the New York Times will call it a fascist takeover.” “That’s exactly right,” replied JD. “The question is, do you care?” “Well,” JD answered, “I think we have to not care.” He wasn’t joking.

      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Man arrested near Donald Trump’s California rally with loaded guns, police say

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      A man armed with guns and false press and VIP passes was apprehended by authorities at a campaign rally in California on Saturday being held by Donald Trump.The suspect, identified as Las Vegas resident Vem Miller, was intercepted by police at a checkpoint about a half-mile from an entrance to the rally in Coachella Valley, California, soon before it began, police said Sunday.Police said Miller was carrying a loaded shotgun, handgun and high-capacity magazine and is believed to be a member of a rightwing anti-government organization.Miller was booked for possessing a loaded firearm and a high capacity magazine – and was released after posting $5,000 bail, police records show.“The incident did not impact the safety of former president Trump or attendees of the event,” the Riverside county sheriff’s office said in a press release.The Secret Service put out a statement saying it was apprised of the arrest: “The incident did not impact protective operations. The Secret Service extends its gratitude to the deputies and local partners who assisted in safeguarding last night’s events.”The US Attorney’s Los Angeles office, in a statement on Sunday, also said Trump was not in danger, citing the US Secret Service. The statement added that while no federal arrest had been made, an investigation was ongoing.Riverside county sheriff Chad Bianco said he believed at a press conference on Sunday that Miller was plotting to kill Trump, but acknowledged that was “speculation”. “What we do know is he showed up with multiple passports with different names, an unregistered vehicle with a fake license plate and loaded firearms,” the sheriff said at a news conference on Sunday afternoon.The suspect later told US media that he was a Trump supporter who bought the guns for his own safety and notified police at a checkpoint that they were in the trunk of his car. “These accusations are complete bullshit,” Miller said. “I’m an artist, I’m the last person that would cause any violence and harm to anybody.”He said he was surprised by his arrest, and had been detained for about eight hours.Miller holds a UCLA master’s degree, and in 2022 ran for Nevada state assembly. Bianco said Miller considers himself a so-called sovereign citizen, a group of people who do not believe they are subject to any government statutes unless they consent to them.Bianco said Miller’s identity card was enough to raise suspicion with local rally security. “They were different enough to cause the deputies alarm,” he said, according to the Riverside Press-Enterprise.Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt in July, when a gunman’s bullet grazed his ear during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. In September, another man was charged with trying to assassinate Trump after Secret Service agents discovered him hiding with a rifle near Trump’s Palm Beach golf course. He has since pleaded not guilty.Bianco said US Secret Service officials said his department went “above and beyond” in their efforts to protect Trump and others who attended the rally.Bianco also said the FBI is questioning another man after bomb-detecting dogs “repeatedly” identified him as possibly dangerous. That man was not allowed in the rally, Bianco said.Miller is scheduled to appear at the Indio Larson justice center on 2 January 2025, according to the Riverside county sheriff’s department inmate database.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      in US Politics

      Trump addresses Latino voters at Las Vegas event as Harris releases medical report – live

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      Speaking at a Pennsylvania rally earlier today, JD Vance again refused to say Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. The news came the same day The New York Times released an hourlong interview with Vance, wherein Vance refused five times to say the former president lost the election.“As I said in that interview, and I’m gonna say to you right now, I think the election of 2020 had serious problems,” Vance said.Trump’s roundtable in Las Vegas has concluded and he’s en route to a second event this evening in Coachella, California. Attendees waiting in near 100F temperatures are telling the Associated Press that they don’t expect Trump to win their state but were excited to see him all the same.The AP notes that while Trump may not win California, he’ll likely be able to drum up significant financial support in the state. Photos with the former president in Coachella were priced at $25,000, which comes with special seating for two. A “VIP Experience” was priced at $5,000.Kamala Harris is en route to North Carolina, where she’ll speak with Black churchgoers and aid in disaster relief efforts. Before her departure, she told reporters a bit about her decision to release her medical report this morning, saying it was in part to pressure Trump to do the same.“I think that it’s obvious that his team, at least, does not want the American people to see everything about who he is,” Harris told reporters before boarding a plane to North Carolina, says Reuters.The Hill reports much of the same:Speaking in Las Vegas this afternoon, Trump focused his remarks on immigration and inflation, arguing that the economic policies of the Biden-Harris administration have disadvantaged Latino families. The former president attempted to strike a tone of respect with members of the Latino roundtable, emphasizing their contributions to the US economy, as compared with the non-citizens he’s denounced at length in recent speeches.“I’ve had such great support from the Hispanic community, and from the Black community. The highest level ever. And there are those that say, we’ll end up breaking the 50% mark,” Trump said.According to a September Pew Research Center report, a majority of Latino-registered voters (57%) say they would vote for Kamala Harris and 39% would vote for Trump. Meanwhile, a recent New York Times/Siena Poll and an August Pew Research Center survey showed that more than three-fourths of Black voters have said they would vote for Harris.The roundtable is ongoing, with Trump about to hear from local Latino business-owners.Trump’s roundtable in Las Vegas has begun, with what appears to be a fairly small crowd. His campaign is more widely touting its event in Coachella this evening with a series of music festival-inspired ads on social media.Former Texas representative Mayra Flores has begun the Las Vegas event by introducing the other guests in attendance, which include Bob Unanue, CEO of Goya Foods, and Sam Brown, a military officer currently running for one of Nevada’s senate seats. Trump has yet to begin speaking.Ex-president Barack Obama will campaign in Detroit later this month for Kamala Harris. The Detroit News reports that Obama will visit the state on 22 October. The announcement of his visit comes just days after Donald Trump insulted the manufacturing hub while campaining there.Obama has begun campaigning for Harris in the final weeks before the 2024 election, hoping to drum up support in swing states. He made his first appearance on behalf of the nominee in Pittsburgh this week.Donald Trump will appear at a roundtable with Latino voters in Las Vegas shortly. We’ll be following along and will share any major takeaways with you – according to his campaign, Trump is expected to focus on inflation and his ”no tax on tips” policy.Meanwhile, JD Vance has been campaigning in Pennsylvania, where Trump’s running mate answered questions from reporters in front of a crowd of supporters.The New York Times published an hour-long interview with JD Vance this morning, covering the vice-presidential nominee’s stance on abortion rights, immigration, the economy and the 2020 election. Vance spoke at length about his Catholic faith and views on reproductive rights, refused to say Joe Biden won the 2020 election, and committed to a peaceful transfer of power – were Donald Trump to win the 2024 election. He also walked back his criticism of “childless cat ladies” before saying he thought it was “bizarre” and “sociopathic” not to have children because of fears around climate change.Our latest polling shows Harris and Trump are neck-and-neck, with Trump gaining ground on Harris in crucial swing states.Robert Tait reports: “the Guardian’s 10-day polling average tracker showed the vice-president and Democratic nominee with a two-point nationwide lead, 48% to 46%, over her Republican opponent as of 10 October – tellingly, down from a 4% advantage she registered two weeks ago.”Harris enjoys just three, fractional leads in Nevada and Michigan, and a slim one-point advantage in Pennsylvania. Trump has wafer-thin leads in the five remaining swing states – Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona.Despite Donald Trump’s claims that immigrants are taking “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs”, government data shows that immigrant labor has grown the economy and promoted new opportunities for native-born workers, the Associated Press reports. Mass deportations like those Trump has advocated for could cost taxpayers up to a trillion dollars, economists say.Giovanni Peri, a labor economist at the University of California, Davis, told the AP that, because native-born workers and non-citizens often have different language and skill sets, immigrant workers take jobs that citizens are often unwilling to fill, like agriculture and food-production roles. He also added that “we have many more vacancies than workers in this type of manual labor. In fact, we need many more of them to fill these roles.”Ethan Lewis, an economist at Dartmouth College, added: “There is a vast amount of research on the labor market impact of immigration in the US, most of which concludes the impact on less-skilled workers is fairly small and, if anything, jobs for US-born workers might by created rather than ‘taken’ by immigrants.”Since the non-citizen labor force makes up roughly 4% of US GDP annually, Peri estimates that mass deportation would result in a roughly $1tn loss.At a private dinner with several billionaire donors in September, Donald Trump expressed frustration that Republicans had not raised more money for his campaign, the New York Times reports.The likes of hedge fund manager Paul Singer, investment banker Warren Stephens, businessman Joe Ricketts and former education secretary Betsy DeVos were all in attendance at the Trump Tower soiree, where Trump conveyed his annoyance that his campaign had not drawn larger donations – despite tax policies he said were favorable to the wealthy.In the less than three months that she’s been in the presidential race, Kamala Harris has raised $1bn. That’s allowed her to focus on campaigning in the final weeks of the race, while Trump continues attending fundraisers. In July, August and September, the vice-president raised twice as much as Trump.Back in Washington, Christian nationalists are gathering on the National Mall today to fast and pray, and denounce gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth.The Guardian’s Alice Herman has the story:Less than a month before the presidential election, multilevel marketing professional-turned-Christian “apostle” Jenny Donnelly is summoning women to the National Mall to fast, pray and uphold “the Lord’s authority over the election process and our nation’s leadership”.It’s the first of a series of Christian nationalist gatherings in DC to rally believers to the Capitol ahead of the 2024 election.The pro-Trump influencer has billed the event as a rallying call for mothers concerned about changing gender norms in modern America, gathering women under pink and blue banners emblazoned with the anti-trans hashtag #DontMessWithOurKids. In her promotional materials, Donnelly casts the event at the Capitol as an opportunity for women to stand their ground and play a pivotal role in changing the cultural and political trajectory of the US.In the wake of recent reporting that Donald Trump sent Covid-19 tests to Russia at the height of the pandemic – and Kamala Harris’s criticism of that move – the Kremlin said today that Harris’s description of Vladimir Putin as a “murderous dictator” shows how politicians in Washington are seeking to impose their views on the world, Reuters reports.“The lofty political establishment of the United States of America, to all appearances, is infused with such a political culture,” Russian news agencies have quoted Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov telling a television interviewer.“This is probably the quintessence of the very model of international relations that they are trying to foist on the entire world, a model that most in the world are beginning to like less and less.”Tensions with Russia have been high in recent years, between the war in Ukraine and Russian election interference in 2016.Kamala Harris will travel to North Carolina for campaign events in Raleigh and Greenville today and tomorrow, according to her campaign.This evening, she will visit with local Black elected faith and community leaders in Raleigh, while also participating in a volunteer hurricane relief supply drive. Tomorrow, she’ll attend a church service in Greenville, just days after launching her campaign’s “Souls to the Polls” effort to turn out Black churchgoers.After campaigning in Las Vegas this afternoon, Trump will make a stop in Coachella, California. An agricultural town in southern California, Coachella is best known for hosting an internationally acclaimed arts and music festival.It’s not the first place many people expected Trump to campaign, but the Coachella Valley’s large community of migrant farm workers make it ripe for the former president to continue the anti-immigrant message he ramped up in Aurora, Colorado yesterday. Although Trump is unlikely to flip long-blue California, the rally will present an opportunity for him to rail against the state’s Democratic leadership – as he did in Aurora, Colorado, yesterday.Tim Walz is trading the campaign trail for the prairies of Sleepy Eye, Minnesota, this morning as he kicks off pheasant-hunting season there.The vice-presidential nominee and Minnesota governor has dramatically shifted his stance on gun rights over the years – going from garnering an A rating from the NRA to straight F’s as his children asked him to back gun-violence protections in the wake of several campus mass shootings.The Harris-Walz campaign has called for an assault weapons ban, while walking a fine line among gun owners in the United States. Both Harris and Walz have emphasized that they themselves are gun owners, with Harris saying on 60 Minutes this week that she owns a Glock.The biggest headline circulating this morning is Kamala Harris’s medical report, which declares her fit for the presidency. For a closer look, here’s the Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas:A senior aide to Harris, 59, said the vice-president’s advisers viewed the publication of the health report and medical history as an opportunity to call attention to questions about the Republican White House nominee Donald Trump’s physical fitness and mental acuity. The 78-year-old Trump has also not released any information about his health, though he would be the oldest president elected if Americans give him a second term in the Oval Office.The report – in the form of a two-page letter from the vice-president’s physician, Joshua Simmons – described Harris as being in “excellent health” and asserted that her medical history was notable for seasonal allergies and hives. Harris manages those conditions with over-the-counter medications such as Allegra, Atrovent nasal spray and Pataday eye drops, and she has also been on allergen immunotherapy for three years, the letter said.Otherwise, Harris is mildly nearsighted and wears corrective contact lenses as a result, had abdominal surgery when she was three years old and has a maternal history of colon cancer. “She has no personal history of diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cardiac disease, pulmonary disease, neurological disorders, cancer or osteoporosis,” said the letter from Simmons, who added that the vice-president’s most recent physical examination in April was “unremarkable”.The statement on Harris’s health came on Saturday as Trump has become increasingly incoherent at campaign rallies, something the Guardian US reported on earlier in October. He has been slurring, stumbling over his words, hurling expletives – and showing signs of cognitive decline consistent with someone approaching his 80s, according to medical experts.Good morning and thanks for joining us this Saturday. With election day just over three weeks away, we’ll be covering the latest developments as they happen.Here’s a quick summary of the latest news from yesterday and where things stand today:

      At a rally in Aurora, Colorado, yesterday, former president Donald Trump announced “Operation Aurora”, a plan to invoke the 1798 Alien Enemies Act if he is re-elected. The law allows the president to detain and deport non‑citizens in times of a declared war or presidentially proclaimed “invasion”.

      Meanwhile, speaking in Scottsdale, Arizona, Kamala Harris said she would create “a bipartisan council of advisers” if elected president. She’s drawn remarkable support over the past two and a half months from establishment Republicans, most notably Liz and Dick Cheney.

      Also yesterday, Vogue magazine released its newest issue, featuring Harris on the cover. The photograph of the vice-president stood in stark contrast to Harris’s first appearance on the magazine’s cover three years ago – an image that was widely criticized as unserious and disrespectful.

      This morning, Harris released a report on her medical history – in contrast to her opponent who has repeatedly promised and then refused to do the same. The report concludes that Harris “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency”.

      And Trump is scheduled to speak this afternoon at a Hispanic roundtable in Las Vegas. He’s expected to return to the anti-immigrant message that has defined his campaign.

      In a change of scenery, Tim Walz is taking a break from the campaign trail today to kick of Minnesota’s pheasant hunting season. He’s spending the day at the Governor’s Pheasant Opener – reiterating the Minnesota governor’s reputation as a hunter despite his firm stance on gun violence regulations.
      Let’s watch what happens. More

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      Winning over Trump voters could be key for Arizona Democrat in Senate race

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      The crowd gathered in Chandler for a meet-and-greet with Ruben Gallego on a recent Saturday afternoon was an almost perfect snapshot of the voters Democrats need to win statewide in once-ruby red Arizona. There were small business owners, Latino youth activists, a retiree in a “Comma La” T-shirt, a handful of veterans, disaffected Republicans, at least one California transplant and a former Trump voter.The diverse attendance was one sign of what polls, strategists, Democrats and even some Republicans acknowledge: the race for an open Senate seat is the 44-year-old Democrat’s to lose, a surprising position for a progressive congressman in a purple state running against Trump-endorsed firebrand Kari Lake.In brief introductory remarks, Gallego shared his insights after nearly two years of campaigning across the Grand Canyon state. He bragged about the Arizona’s economic boom – a new battery manufacturing plant, the new semiconductor fab.But he acknowledged many Arizonans were “still hurting”. At a gas station in south Phoenix, Gallego said he had noticed motorists weren’t filling up their tanks all the way. He recalled his family’s own financial struggles growing up, raised alongside his three sisters by a single, immigrant mother in a cramped apartment outside of Chicago.“That’s the kind of thing that I want to bring to the US Senate: a real understanding of what people are dealing with and what we should be doing to make their life a little better,” he said, “to just breathe a little bit easier and have a chance at the American Dream.”Across town, his opponent, the former TV news anchor Lake channeled Trump, whom she has molded herself after since her foray into politics two years ago. She had called an “emergency” press conference to discuss Kamala Harris’s visit to the Arizona-Mexico border the previous day, tying Gallego – who did not accompany the vice-president – to what she described as the administration’s “abject failure” on border security.She scolded the media for not doing more to hold Gallego responsible for migration, which has fallen sharply after reaching record highs last year. She accused Gallego of being “controlled” by the drug cartels because of his long-estranged father’s criminal history.“We need to be calling out what he is about,” she said. “I want to end the cartels.”The dueling campaign events underscored the very different paths the two candidates are charting as they vie to succeed Senator Kyrsten Sinema, the Democrat turned independent leaving the chamber.As early voting begins in Arizona, polling shows Gallego with a consistent edge in a contest that could be pivotal to determining which party controls the Senate. The Democrat is trouncing Lake in fundraising, giving him more local airtime and mailbox presence. And surveys and interviews suggest he is winning a sizable, perhaps decisive, chunk of Trump voters.View image in fullscreenLake has alienated some conservatives and independents with her attacks on the Republican establishment and her embrace of election denialism, including in her own failed bid for governor in 2022, which she claims – baselessly – was stolen.But it isn’t over yet: Lake delivered a polished performance during Wednesday night’s debate with Gallego, and could pull out more attacks on her opponent in the final stretch – including his divorce records from his split with the Phoenix mayor, Kate Gallego, which may be unsealed this month. After the debate, she got a boost from the only Republican who seems to matter.“The Trump-endorsed Senate Candidate in Arizona crushed her Liberal Democrat Opponent,” Trump wrote on Truth Social after the debate. “Kari will help me Secure our Border, Stop Inflation, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”But Trump, who lost Arizona in 2020 by less than 11,000 votes, is able to stitch together a coalition of loyalists and independents that even his most adherent Maga acolytes – and Lake is one of them – can’t always replicate. Paul Bentz, a pollster at Arizona public affairs firm HighGround, ran a recent poll that showed the presidential race essentially deadlocked. But in the Senate contest, Gallego led Lake 51% to 41%.The survey showed both Trump and Lake losing more Republican voters than Harris or Gallego are among Democrats, but Trump is losing fewer of them – and Trump is ahead of Harris with independents, unlike Lake, who lags Gallego with the group.Billboards financed by the Arizona Republican party that boast of “team unity” don’t include Lake – instead, Trump is alongside out-of-staters like JD Vance, Elon Musk, Robert F Kennedy, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tulsi Gabbard. Lake’s campaign bus, on the other hand, is wrapped in a photo of her and Trump. “Endorsed by President Trump” is written in larger font than Lake’s own name.“The vast majority of the money and the vast majority of the effort is in supporting Trump,” Bentz said. “It does not seem to be following the rubric that we’ve seen in past elections to help the down ticket that’s building a slate of support.“It’s not vote Republican, it’s vote Trump.”Even so, Lake supporters are hoping the polling numbers – which Lake herself has said differ from what she’s seeing internally – won’t bear out. A Republican operative involved in the effort to elect conservative candidates in the state said high turnout in a presidential election year with Trump at the top of the ticket could bring Lake over the line.Lake did not respond to a request for an interview, and Gallego was not made available for an interview.Building a coalitionYears of political upheaval – Arizona has had six senators in just over a decade – and the Republican party’s Trumpian turn, has created an opening for Democrats in the land of Barry Goldwater and John McCain. Waves of new residents, many coming from more liberal parts of the country, and a suburban shift away from Republicans, has changed Arizona’s political landscape.If Gallego wins in November, he will be the first Latino to represent Arizona in the Senate while Lake would be the first Republican woman elected to serve the state in the chamber.Gallego announced his campaign for Senate in early 2023, effectively daring Sinema to stay in the race after infuriating Democrats by blocking pieces of Joe Biden’s agenda. Without a primary opponent, he had ample time to introduce himself to voters across the vast state, from the tribal lands to the borderlands and the populous Maricopa county.He has a compelling personal story, repeated in television ads that have been airing for months: the son of a Mexican and Colombian immigrant, who was raised by his mother and worked odd jobs at meat-packing plants and pizza shops to earn extra money for his family.A Harvard graduate, he enrolled in the Marine Corps, and was deployed to Iraq as part of a unit that saw some of the heaviest casualties of the war. On the trail, he often recalls how combat training kicked in on January 6, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. Photos from the day showed Gallego directing his colleagues how to put on gas masks and helping them evacuate the chamber.By contrast, Bentz said Lake hasn’t spent much time trying to reintroduce herself to voters, perhaps confident that they know her from TV or from her 2022 bid. For more than a year following her defeat, Lake was in the news for her fruitless attempts to overturn the results. She was sued for defamation by the Republican election official, after he claimed she upended his life with her false accusations that he rigged the election against her. She ultimately declined to defend her statements in the case.During the debate, Lake repeatedly accused Gallego of undergoing an “extreme makeover” to blot out his progressive record in the House and cultivate a more moderate appeal. But Lake has struggled to paint Gallego as too far left.The Congressman has tacked more toward the ideological center in the past year, particularly on immigration. In a state where activists remember him marching for immigrant rights after a Republican-led crackdown on undocumented workers, he is now touting his support for a border security bill that would limit asylum and provide more resources to hire border agents.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBecky Wyatt, who hosted Gallego at Fuse Flex Space, the co-working space she just opened weeks before, called the choice in November a “no-brainer”.“There’s just such a character flaw difference between the two Senate candidates,” Wyatt said.This year, Lake has attempted to mend fences. The state’s former Republican governor, Doug Ducey, set aside their feud and endorsed her bid for Senate earlier this summer. Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, a hardline conservative seeking to replace Mitch McConnell as party leader, appeared as her surrogate after the debate.But her harsh words toward McCain Republicans still linger. During her campaign for governor, she told this subset of Republicans to “get the hell out” and claimed she “drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine”.Gibson McKay, a Republican lobbyist, was an aide to McCain. He donated thousands of dollars to Lake’s gubernatorial campaign, but her comments on his former boss soured him. He’s now one of the Trump-Gallego crossover voters who would be needed for both the former president and Democratic congressman to win the state.View image in fullscreen“John McCain was my friend. She can play that game with her Turning Point friends, and she’ll never have my support because of that,” he said. “It’s mean, it’s ugly, and it’s what’s tearing down on the fabric of American politics.”He’s friends – “a friend friend, not like a political friend” – with Gallego and his name was on a fundraiser for the congressman this year. A conservative, he aligns more with Lake on policy, but a few factors, including his personal friendship with Gallego, played into his decision to back the Democrat this cycle. He also believes Gallego is more authentic than Lake, just as he believes Trump is more authentic than Harris.McKay’s support for Gallego hasn’t gone over well with some of his Republican friends. McKay is an elected precinct committeeman, the foot-soldiers of political activism. Republicans in his legislative district censured him for supporting the Democrat, and there was an effort afoot to try to remove his duties in his elected role.McKay says he hasn’t seen evidence Lake is trying to make peace, and it wouldn’t ring true if she tried it. Earlier this year, McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain, rejected the idea, saying: “No peace, bitch. We see you for who you are – and are repulsed by it.”Debate gives Lake a boostOn Wednesday, Lake and Gallego met on stage for their only televised debate this cycle. From the jump, Lake, comfortable in front of the camera after decades anchoring the television news, attacked Gallego over immigration, her strongest issue.She claimed a red-eye flight out of Phoenix’s airport “looks like a migrant encampment” because migrants first come to Arizona before shipping out elsewhere.Gallego, stiff and sticking to talking points, pushed Lake on abortion and her shifting positions. (She had previously expressed support for Arizona’s pre-statehood abortion ban before the Supreme Court upheld the law, sparking a massive backlash. She backed the state GOP’s effort to repeal the law and reinstate a 15-week ban. Gallego has said he would support a federal law restoring Roe, which protects abortion until the point of fetal viability, roughly about 22 weeks of pregnancy.)The two issues typically top lists of importance for voters in Arizona, which shares a border with Mexico. An abortion ballot measure to increase access to the procedure beyond the current 15-week ban is also before voters in November, probably buoying turnout and expected to pass easily.Lake stumbled a bit on her reproductive health care responses, erroneously calling in-vitro fertilization “UVF” – it is abbreviated IVF – while repeatedly pointing out she was a woman who had many women in her family and attempting to pivot.“I’m astounded that he actually knows the difference between a woman and a man,” she cracked at one point, “because I thought there were, what, 147 different genders. I do care about women’s rights.”Lake also made it personal: she called Gallego a sexual harasser and brought up family ties to drug cartels, a charge Gallego ignored. He previously grew emotional while addressing the claims in a press conference, saying he’d worked his entire life to get away from his father’s misdeeds.Gallego repeatedly raised Lake’s refusal to accept her defeat in the 2022 race for Arizona governor. He called her dangerous, noting how her election lies led one election official to need private security because of increased threats.The debate ended with Gallego sharing his personal story, his biggest asset on the campaign trail. “I’m a very lucky man,” he said to the camera in a closing statement. “I’m just lucky to be born in the best country in this world. And by all counts, I shouldn’t even be here. My mom raised us alone, and with a real belief in the American dream, and a real want to succeed, I got to where I am.”Given the final word, Lake promised that as a senator she would usher in a “strong, secure border” and “strong Trump economy”. Then she echoed her opponent.“If there’s any kiddos watching, I don’t want you to worry,” Lake concluded. “I want you to dream really big. I want you to know that we’re going to turn this country around, and your American dream will become reality.” More

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      Trump intensifies nativist message with sweeping proposal to deport immigrants

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      Donald Trump intensified his politics of nativism and xenophobia on Friday by announcing a sweeping plan to deport Venezuelans he claimed have “infected” a once-peaceful city in Colorado.The Republican presidential nominee held a campaign rally in Aurora on a stage adorned with posters displaying mugshots of people in prison-orange uniforms with descriptions including “illegal immigrant gang members from Venezuela”.Trump told the crowd: “I’m announcing today that, upon taking office, we will have an ‘Operation Aurora’ at the federal level to expedite the removals of these savage gangs.” He pledged to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law that allows the president to deport any non-citizen from a country that the US is at war with.“We will send elite squads of Ice [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], border patrol and federal law enforcement officers to hunt down, arrest and deport every last illegal alien gang member until there is not a single one left in this country,” he continued as the crowd roared approval.If they return to the US, Trump said, they will serve an automatic 10 years in prison without parole. “I’m hereby calling for the death penalty for any migrant that kills an American citizen or a law enforcement officer. With your vote, we will achieve complete and total victory over these sadistic monsters. It’s going to go very quickly,” he said.The rally represented a detour for Trump, since Colorado is not a battleground state and looks certain to vote for his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris. But recent events offered him an opportunity to exploit a swirl of local rumours to push his anti-immigrant message.Aurora, a city of about 340,000 people near Denver, hit headlines in August when a video circulated showing armed men walking through an apartment building housing Venezuelan immigrants. Trump amplified the story and falsely portrayed the city as overrun by members of the Venezeulan gang Tren de Aragua, or TDA.Authorities say the incident happened in a single block and the area is again safe, noting that the local crime rate is actually declining. Aurora’s Republican mayor, Mike Coffman, called Trump’s claims “grossly exaggerated” and insisted: “The narrative is not accurate by any stretch of the imagination.”TDA traces its origins back more than a decade to a notorious prison. In July, the Biden administration issued a sanction against the gang, placing it alongside MS-13 from El Salvador and the mafia-styled Camorra from Italy on a list of transnational criminal organisations, and offering $12m in rewards for the arrests of three leaders.At Friday’s rally, Trump played a series of news clips, accompanied by dramatic music, describing TDA’s crimes and the murder of US citizens by undocumented immigrants, as well as some seemingly evasive answers by Harris, the vice-president, whom Trump branded a “criminal” and the “worst border tsar” in the country’s history.“My message today is very simple,” he said. “No person who has inflicted the violence and terror that Kamala Harris has inflicted on this community can ever be allowed to become president of the United States.”The former president promised that 5 November, when the election is held, will be “liberation day”, prompting chants of “USA! USA!” from the crowd.“I will rescue Aurora and every town that has been invaded and conquered. These towns have been conquered and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail or kick them out of our country and we will be very, very effective in doing it. It’s going to happen very, very fast. Gonna get them the hell out of our country,” he said.Trump added later: “We’re talking a lot about Venezuela, because Aurora is really infected by Venezuela, but they’re coming from all countries.”The remark recalled past dehumanising language in which Trump claimed undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country” and, earlier this week, suggested that those suspected in homicide cases “have bad genes”.View image in fullscreenIn similar fashion on Friday, Stephen Miller, a former top aide who is expected to take a senior role in the White House if Trump wins, pointed to the posters on stage as he addressed the crowd before Trump’s appearance.“Look at all these photos around me,” Miller said. “Are these the kids you grew up with? Are these the neighbors you were raised with? Are these the neighbors that you want in your city?” The crowd roared “no” in reply.The ex-president has long made immigration his signature issue and promised to stage the biggest deportation operation in US history if he returns to the White House. In recent months, he has targeted specific smaller communities that have seen significant arrivals of immigrants, with tensions flaring locally over resources and some longtime residents expressing misgivings about sudden demographic changes.More than 40,000 immigrants have arrived in the Denver metro area over the past two years, including many Venezuelan families fleeing poverty and violence. But Colorado’s Democratic leaders accuse Trump and other Republicans of overstating problems in Aurora.Representative Jason Crow told the Associated Press: “What is occurring is minimal and isolated. And to be clear, it’s never acceptable, right? We never say any level is acceptable. But it’s not a surge. It’s not a change. There is no takeover of any part of this city, of any apartment complex. It has not happened. It is a lie.”Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, also have spread falsehoods about a community in Springfield, Ohio, where they said Haitian immigrants had been stealing and eating pets. The disinformation campaign led to bomb threats, school closures and forced evacuations.Trump has said he would revoke the temporary protected status that allows Haitians to stay in the US because of widespread poverty and violence in their home nation.Democrats have condemned Trump for tanking a border security bill negotiated in the Senate by both parties because it could have neutralised immigration as an issue. Harris told a Univision town hall in Nevada on Thursday: “He would prefer to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.” More

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      Trump campaign asks for more security amid fears of Iran assassination attempt

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      Donald Trump’s team has asked for officials to provide him with a dramatic array of military protections as the presidential campaign wraps, including travel in military aircraft and vehicles, according to reports.Trump’s campaign has also requested ramped-up flight restrictions around his residences and rallies, and “ballistic glass pre-positioned in seven battleground states” for his team’s use, the Washington Post reported, citing internal emails and sources familiar with the requests. The New York Times first reported on these requests.The demands were both “extraordinary and unprecedented”, the Post noted, as not a single recent presidential nominee has been shuttled in military aircraft before an election. A source told the Times that these sorts of high-level, classified military resources are used solely for sitting presidents.Trump’s asks followed intelligence provided to his campaign staff that Iran is seeking to assassinate him and after his team expressed worry about drones and missiles targeting him. Trump was shot during a failed assassination attempt in Pennsylvania on 13 July, and a man was arrested in an alleged assassination attempt on 15 September; neither gunman is believed to have had Iranian ties.Susie Wiles, Trump’s campaign manager, reportedly emailed Secret Service head Ronald L Rowe Jr in recent days, expressing displeasure with the agency’s handling of safety. Wiles claimed in a missive that Trump had had to cancel a campaign rally at the last minute due to a “lack of personnel”, resulting in him being placed in a small room with journalists.Wiles claimed that campaign planning efforts were being stifled over threats, and said that Trump intended to host many additional events as the race nears its end. She further said that officials had not managed to give thorough enough plans to keep Trump safe.Michael Waltz, a Florida Republican representative and Trump supporter, also wrote to the Secret Service requesting military aircraft for Trump, or ramped-up safeguards for his private airplane, the Post said.Asked about reports that Trump’s campaign had requested additional safety measures such as military assets, the Secret Service said in a statement that Trump was receiving “the highest levels of protection”.“Assistance from the Department of Defense is regularly provided for the former president’s protection, to include explosive ordnance disposal, canine units and airlift transportation,” said Anthony Guglielmi, a Secret Service spokesperson.Guglielmi also said the Secret Service was placing short-term flight restrictions “over the former president’s residence and when he travels”, and “additionally, the former president is receiving the highest level of technical security assets which include unmanned aerial vehicles, counter unmanned aerial surveillance systems, ballistics and other advanced technology systems”.Kamala Harris, Trump’s presidential rival, is provided protection from the US marines as vice-president. She travels on Air Force Two, which is a military plane.The Trump campaign has already begun taking increased precautions with traveling. This has included sometimes splitting his motorcade, and placing him in airplanes that do not bear his name.Sources told the Post that some of Trump’s counselors believe, despite a dearth of evidence, that the two attempts on his life were Iran-backed.A Pakistani man was charged in August with allegedly wanting to hire assassins to kill an unidentified US politician. The man has ties to Iran, per reports.US intelligence officials said in September that Iranian hackers stole information from Trump’s campaign and sent it to media outlets, as well as Joe Biden’s one-time campaign. Documents unsealed in September alleged that three Iranian nationals had participated in a broad, multiyear hacking effort against Trump that also targeted one of his lawyers, one-time CIA members and an ex-US ambassador, the Post said.Additional campaign officials have been apprised that they too were targeted by Iranian hackers, per the newspaper. Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.When asked about the reports during a White House press conference on Friday, Biden said that he had told his administration to provide Trump “all that he needs”.“I’ve told the department to give him every single thing he needs,” the president said. Biden also said that when it comes to security, Trump should be treated “as [if] he were a sitting president”.“Give all that he needs, if it fits within that category, that’s fine,” Biden said. “But if it doesn’t, he shouldn’t.”Biden did offer a humorous quip when asked about Trump’s requests. “As long as he doesn’t ask for F-15s,” Biden said – before following up with: “No, I’m being facetious.” More

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      Roger Stone calls for ‘armed guards’ at polling spots in leaked video

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      The longtime Donald Trump ally and friend Roger Stone said Republicans should send “armed guards” to the polls in November to ensure a Trump victory, according to video footage by an undercover journalist.The video, first published by Rolling Stone, shows an embittered Stone, still angry about the 2020 election and ready to fight in 2024. Stone described the former US president’s legal strategy of constant litigation to purge voter rolls in swing states.“We gotta fight it out on a state-by-state basis,” said Stone. “We’re already in court in Wisconsin, we’re already in court in Florida.”When the journalist, posing as a member of a rightwing voter turnout organization, pressed Stone for details on efforts to make sure Trump wins in 2024, Stone told him that the campaign has to “be ready”.“When they throw us out of Detroit, you go get a court order, you come in with your own armed guards, and you dispute it,” said Stone. In Detroit in 2020, there was a chaotic scene at a ballot counting center when GOP vote challengers pounded on the walls of the center and demanded to be let in.Filmed at an August event in Jacksonville, Florida, called A Night with Roger Stone, the footage also reveals Stone’s lasting anger toward former attorney general Bill Barr, who he calls “a traitorous piece of human garbage”.While in office, Barr acted as a staunch Trump ally, even pushing for a lighter sentence for Stone, when the operative was found guilty of witness tampering and obstruction of justice in connection with a congressional inquiry into Russian interference during the 2016 election. Barr lost favor with the former president when he declined to publicly back Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, drawing outrage from Trump’s closest allies.“Once we get back in, he has to go to prison,” Stone exclaimed. “He has to go to prison, he’s a criminal.”Stone’s apparent lust for legal retribution echoes Trump’s own vow, which he has stated repeatedly to the press and at his rallies, to prosecute his political opponents. It is a promise that Trump could more likely make good on, given the supreme court’s rulings this year to expand the powers of the president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe journalist in the video was posing as someone involved with Lion of Judah, a rightwing effort to recruit election-skeptical Christians to enlist as poll workers in swing states in order to collect evidence of voter fraud.Joshua Standifer, who leads Lion of Judah, describes the effort as a “Trojan horse” strategy to get Christians in “key positions of influence in government like Election Workers”. In the video, Stone appeared unfamiliar with Standifer or his work. More