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      Hurricanes, the Middle East, and Covid-19 tests to Putin – podcast

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      It’s less than a month before the US presidential election. Donald Trump is pushing conspiracy theories over the federal response to hurricanes battering several states, and denying he gave Covid-19 test machines to Vladimir Putin during the pandemic. Joe Biden is in talks with Benjamin Netanyahu over growing tension in the Middle East. Kamala Harris rattled through a media blitz, with some criticising her campaign strategy. And Melania Trump has written about being pro-abortion and pro-immigration in her new memoir.
      Jonathan Freedland and the veteran political strategist David Axelrod discuss what all of this means for the election

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

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      Barack Obama to campaign for Harris; Trump insults Detroit in visit to Detroit – US politics live

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      As former president Barack Obama is hitting the campaign trail for Harris this evening, former first lady, Michelle Obama, through her national, non-partisan voting initiative When We All Vote has relaunched Party at the Polls, the organization’s program to increase voter turnout.In a news release announcing the relaunch, When We All Vote said that during the month of October and into November, the organization’s partners and volunteers will host nonpartisan celebrations near early voting locations across the country in order to “increase voter turnout and bring their communities together to cast their ballots”.The parties are free to attend and open to everyone in the community, it added.Tempe, Arizona police announced today that an office for the Democratic National Committee was shot at in the early hours of Sunday morning, the Washington Post reports. According to police, it’s the third time an unidentified individual has shot at the campaign office since 16 September. Fortunately, given the late hour (each of the three shootings has occured between midnight at 1am), no one was in the building.Police have released images of a 2008-2013 Silver Toyota Highlander they believe may be involved in the shootings and offered a $1,000 reward for any information that leads to an arrest.Kamala Harris’s campaign event in Las Vegas has concluded, and the vice-president will be en route to Phoenix shortly. Harris is expected to speak again this evening at 6.30pm Arizona time (9.30pm ET) – just after former president Barack Obama is scheduled to deliver remarks on behalf of Harris’s campaign in Pittsburgh.For those who were unable to attend the Las Vegas town hall, the event will air on Univision this evening at 10pm.A day after Donald Trump insulted them, the hosts of The View are reacting to the former president.“Donald Trump, I want to thank you for personally telling so many lies and committing so many alleged crimes and providing us with material on a daily basis,” said co-host Sunny Hostin. “You help us do our jobs and I’m so appreciative.”Trump spoke about Hostin, and her co-host Whoopi Goldberg, at a campaign event in Pennsylvania yesterday. He called Hostin “dumber than Kamala” and Goldberg “demented”, adding that she had a “foul mouth”.Goldberg told the Associated Press she was proud of her reputation. “I was filthy and stand on that fact. I have always been filthy.”Kamala Harris is campaigning today at a Univision town hall in Las Vegas, in hopes of strengthening her support among Latino voters. She’ll be stopping in Arizona later in the day.At the town hal, – which was hosted by the US’s largest provider of Spanish-language content – the vice-president answered questions about immigration, Medicare and Hurricane Milton.In response to one woman, who spoke of her mother’s recent death and asked Harris about her plan for those who “live and die in the shadows”, Harris referenced the Biden administration’s proposals to create a pathway to citizenship, the New York Times reports. And in response to another, who shared her own story of contracting long Covid, Harris said she had advocated to define the post-viral illness as a disability under federal law.Meanwhile, speaking about the disinformation surrounding the federal government’s hurricane response, she reiterated the refrain she has held to in the past days that “this is not a time for people to play politics.”For more on Harris’s supporters (and detractors) within the Latino electorate, check out reporting from the Guardian’s Joseph Contreras and Melissa Hellmann.With the fifth circuit court of appeals hearing arguments today on a case that could determine the future of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), the Obama-era law protecting immigrants who came to the US as children from deportation, members of Congress are speaking up.Representatives Greg Stanton of Arizona, and Salud Carbajal and Lou Correa of California – who are affiliated with the New Democrat Coalition Immigration and Border Security task force – have released the following statement:
      Once again, the fate of the DACA program is in the courts – just the latest attempt by anti-immigrant judges and politicians to upend the lives of Dreamers and their families.
      It’s unacceptable that many of our colleagues across the aisle, for so many years, have failed to join Democrats in passing the American Dream and Promise Act. These talented young individuals are American in every way but legal status, yet they live in constant fear and uncertainty. If the courts were to strip away DACA protections without a legislative solution in place, the negative effects would reverberate across the country.
      Dreamers are embedded in the fabric of American communities. They work and pay taxes, attend our colleges and universities, and serve in our military. Ending the DACA program would mean pushing hundreds of thousands of talented people out of the workforce – a blow the U.S. economy can’t afford.
      The vast majority of Americans, of all backgrounds, believe Dreamers deserve a pathway to citizenship. New Dems call on our colleagues to work across the aisle to pass legislation years in the making to finally end this legal limbo.”
      Here’s some Guardian coverage of the ongoing challenges faced by Daca recipients:More Michigan politicians are speaking up in defense of the city of Detroit today after Donald Trump insulted the manufacturing hub while speaking there.“Detroit is the epitome of ‘grit,’ defined by winners willing to get their hands dirty to build up their city and create their communities – something Donald Trump could never understand,” Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer wrote on Twitter/X.Michigan congressman Shri Thanedar added: “keep Detroit and our people out of your mouth.”And Michigan state representative Joe Tate chimed in: “This is the greatest city in the country & we’ve bounced back after Trump killed our jobs, closed our businesses, & tried to throw out our votes.”Detroit’s Democratic mayor, Mike Duggan, had this to say about Donald Trump insulting the city during his visit today:Once the fifth largest city in the country with a population that topped 1.8 million in the 1950s, Detroit’s economy has struggled in decades and the city went bankrupt in 2013. Its population is now about 630,000, but last year, it began adding residents once again.In addition to insulting his host city, Donald Trump used his speech at the Detroit Economic Club to propose making interest on car loans fully deductible.Such a policy, he argued, would spur Americans to buy vehicles made by Detroit’s automakers:The former presidenthas made cutting taxes a cornerstone of his economic policies, including exempting taxes on tips – a policy that Kamala Harris says she also supports.Donald Trump outlined his economic proposals in a speech to the Detroit Economic Club this afternoon, and could not stop himself from insulting the most populous city in swing state Michigan.Referring to Kamala Harris, Trump said: “Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she is your president. You’re going to have a mess on your hands.”The former president’s speech was yet another barnburner. It lasted for about an hour and 45 minutes, and he’s now sitting down for a Q&A.Joe Biden grew salty this afternoon at the White House, when reporters covering his speech on the response to hurricanes Milton and Helene asked him if he planned to talk to Donald Trump about the misinformation he has been spreading about the storm.“Are you kidding me?” the president replied. Then, addressing Trump himself, Biden said: “Mr president Trump, former president Trump, get a life, man. Help these people.”Asked if he planned to call Trump, Biden replied: “No!”You can see the moment here:Trump and his supporters have been making an array of untrue claims about the government’s response to the hurricanes that have devastated swaths of the south-eastern US, outraging emergency officials.Here’s more:As former president Barack Obama is hitting the campaign trail for Harris this evening, former first lady, Michelle Obama, through her national, non-partisan voting initiative When We All Vote has relaunched Party at the Polls, the organization’s program to increase voter turnout.In a news release announcing the relaunch, When We All Vote said that during the month of October and into November, the organization’s partners and volunteers will host nonpartisan celebrations near early voting locations across the country in order to “increase voter turnout and bring their communities together to cast their ballots”.The parties are free to attend and open to everyone in the community, it added.President Joe Biden has just been speaking at the White House about the federal response to Hurricane Milton in Florida.You can read about that in our Hurricane Milton live-blog here:Democratic vice-presidential candidate and governor of Minnestoa, Tim Walz, is scheduled to campaign in Wisconsin on Monday.The Harris campaign said on Thursday that Walz will campaign in Green Bay and Eau Claire, and that this will be his fifth visit to the state since becoming the vice-presidential candidate.This comes as a recent Quinnipiac university poll published this week showed Kamala Harris trailing Trump by two percentage points in Wisconsin.Bernie Sanders will also be campaigning on behalf of Vice-President Harris.Sanders will hold events in key battleground state Michigan, in Traverse City and Marquette.The senator “will discuss the most pressing issues facing working class residents of the Great Lakes State. The Senator will focus in particular on the Harris campaign’s plans to lower costs for working families, protect Social Security, and expand Medicare.”Bill Clinton is going to hit the campaign trail for Kamala Harris, focusing on battleground states in the south.A spokesperson for the Harris campaign confirmed the news about the former US president and husband to Hillary Clinton on X, writing “The Harris campaign unleashes the Big Dog.”Clinton will travel to Georgia on Sunday and later make a stop in North Carolina. More

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      Trump insults Detroit during speech … in Detroit

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      Donald Trump attacked the city of Detroit in a speech he was giving while stumping for votes in Detroit.The former US president and Republican nominee was speaking on Thursday at the Detroit Economic Club in the city, which is the biggest city in Michigan – one of the most crucial swing states in the 2024 US election.But Trump, whose speeches are frequently rambling and lengthy discourses rather than set piece deliveries, could not stop himself from lambasting the city in which he was speaking by pointing to Detroit’s recent history of economic decline from its heyday as the home of American car production.As he was speaking about China being a developing nation, Trump said: “Well, we’re a developing nation too, just take a look at Detroit. Detroit’s a developing area more than most places in China.”He later returned to the theme, warning of an economic disaster if his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, wins in November’s election.“Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president. You’re going to have a mess on your hands,” Trump said.Michigan polling shows Harris and Trump still caught up in a very tight race.Democrats in the state reacted angrily to the insults and saw a chance to score political points.Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer posted on Twitter/X: “Detroit is the epitome of ‘grit,’ defined by winners willing to get their hands dirty to build up their city and create their communities – something Donald Trump could never understand. So keep Detroit out of your mouth. And you better believe Detroiters won’t forget this in November.”Detroit has struggled in the face of the decline of American manufacturing. Just over a decade ago the city became the largest municipality in the country to file for bankruptcy.But Detroit has also been touted as a symbol of an American post-industrial city in recovery with numerous projects aimed at revitalizing its downtown and attempts to repair and reinvest in its housing stock. In May the city reported a population rise for the first time in decades.That sense of recovery was the theme of Detroit mayor Mike Duggan’s response. He posted: “Detroit just hosted the largest NFL Draft in history, the Tigers are back in the playoffs, the Lions are headed to the Super Bowl, crime is down and our population is growing. Lots of cities should be like Detroit. And we did it all without Trump’s help.” More

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      Trump plan for Madison Square Garden rally compared to infamous Nazi event

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      Donald Trump’s decision to hold a rally in the heart of Manhattan on 27 October, nine days before election day, has been slammed by New York Democrats, with one comparing the booking to an infamous Nazi rally held at the same venue in the lead-up to the second world war.But it has also triggered a backlash to such sentiments, with Republicans saying such rhetoric heightens tensions even more in a presidential election campaign which has already seen two attempts on Trump’s life.The Democratic state senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, whose district includes much of the west side of Manhattan where a date on Trump’s “arena tour” rally has been booked at Madison Square Garden, called on venue owners to cancel the event.“Let’s be clear,” Hoylman-Sigal wrote on X. “Allowing Trump to hold an event at MSG is equivalent to the infamous Nazis rally at Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939.”Hoylman-Sigal was referring to a pro-Hitler rally, organized by the German American Bund, that was attended by more than 20,000 people and featured a portrait of George Washington flanked by swastikas. Many attendees came from Yaphank, Long Island, where the Bund was headquartered and had a summer camp teaching Nazi ideology.In 2019, Hillary Clinton used a speech at the same venue to decry “an assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our democracy”, referring to the infamous Bund rally.But New York Republicans denounced the comparison.“Referring to a peaceful rally for the leading candidate for President of the United States as a ‘Nazi Rally’ is not only a disgusting comparison, it is a gross escalation of the dangerous rhetoric in the wake of two direct attempts on President Donald Trump’s life,” state senator Rob Ortt said in a statement.In his post, Hoylman-Sigal tried to downplay the comparison he had made. “I’m not calling anyone a Nazi,” he said. “I’m pointing out a historic similarity.”The state senator added: “I was talking about the venue and many of his followers who are white supremacists and have demonstrated hatred and vitriol toward minority groups, including Jews, people of color and the LGBTQ community.”Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, told Politico that Trump had refused to condemn white supremacy, incited rightwing extremists to engage in an insurrection, and aligned with and dined with Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis.“If ever there was a moment to make such a comparison, it’s now, which is why the vast majority of American voters are opposing Donald Trump in this election,” Soifer said.View image in fullscreenThe dispute comes as the major political parties are locked in an expensive battle for control of New York’s suburban districts that flipped Republican in 2022, depriving Democrats of a majority in Congress.But it also comes as Jewish voters in New York City weigh their traditional Democratic alignment over the widening Middle East conflict. Trump has said Jews who vote for Vice-President Kamala Harris “should have their head examined”.Members of Democrats’ progressive wing have been accused of antisemitism over their statements criticizing Israeli actions and for their support of pro-Palestinian protests at university campuses across the city.Earlier this week, Trump held a remembrance event to mark the first anniversary of the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israelis on 7 October 2023. He called the attack on Israel a “nightmare” and went on to say that the rise of antisemitism in the US was a result of Democratic leadership.Trump has previously said he had hoped to hold a rally at Madison Square Garden, home to sports teams such as the New York Knicks and the Rangers, and the most prestigious rock venue in the country.“We’re going to be doing a rally at Madison Square Garden, we believe,” Trump said in April. “We think we’re signing Madison Square Garden to do. We’re going to have a big rally honoring the police, and honoring the firemen, and everybody. Honoring a lot of people, including teachers by the way.”The dispute over a Trump rally at the venue comes as Democrats have broadly toned down their comparisons between Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement and Nazi ideology.In May, Joe Biden accused Trump of using “Hitler’s language” in May after the former president temporarily shared a video referencing a “unified reich” to Truth Social.The Trump campaign press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said comments by Hoylman-Sigal “is the same type of dangerous rhetoric that led to two assassination attempts on President Trump’s life and has divided our country” and called on the senator to resign.The Republican state senate candidate Vito LaBella said on X that Hoylman-Sigal’s comments would alienate voters. “All polls show about half this country supporting this man. It’s OK that you hate Trump. You just called 150 million voters Nazies [sic]. Shame on you.” More

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      Trump and his allies are whipping up a whirlwind of lies about the hurricanes | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Whipping up hurricanes to merge with great replacement theory took hardly a week, about the time it takes for hurricanes themselves to form. The overheated atmosphere warmed the waters that were drawn up into the winds to churn them into a menacing storm.After Hurricane Helene hit, Donald Trump unleashed a whirlwind of humid lies: the federal government was deliberately preventing aid and even water from reaching areas that held Republican voters, “not getting anything”; Kamala Harris “spent all her Fema money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants”; and Fema was offering only $750 in disaster relief – all false, all debunked by the Republican governors in the affected states. The Republican congressman Chuck Edwards of North Carolina felt compelled to issue a statement to his constituents not to listen to “untrustworthy sources trying to spark chaos by sharing hoaxes, conspiracy theories, and hearsay about hurricane response efforts” and the “outrageous rumors spread online”.Undoubtedly, he had in mind Elon Musk, who accelerated the circulation of the lies on his platform X: Fema “actively blocked” aid and “used up its budget ferrying illegals into the country instead of saving American lives. Treason.” The Fema administrator, Deanne Criswell, called the calculated spread of disinformation “absolutely the worst I have ever seen”, and announced that Fema for the first time had established a webpage for “Hurricane Rumor Response”.“No money is being diverted from disaster response needs,” Fema stated. “Fema’s disaster response efforts and individual assistance is funded through the Disaster Relief Fund, which is a dedicated fund for disaster efforts. Disaster Relief Fund money has not been diverted to other, non-disaster related efforts.”“Yes, they are literally using YOUR tax dollars to import voters and disenfranchise you!” Musk tweeted.Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right representative from Georgia, leaped in to tweet: “Yes they can control the weather.” She added: “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”In 2018, she infamously blamed a California wildfire on “space lasers” controlled by “Rothschild Inc, international investment banking firm”, a classic antisemitic trope. Now, on 5 October, following up on how “they can control the weather”, she tweeted: “CBS, 9 years ago, talked about lasers controlling the weather.”Republican leaders instantly fell into line in a demonstration of Trump fealty. The congressman Steve Scalise, of Louisiana, the number two in the Republican leadership of the House, campaigning for Trump on 8 October, repeated his lie: “They use that money helping illegals here that they brought into America.”By now, Trump’s lies were a typhoon. JD Vance, his running mate, was sent out to stir it up further with an op-ed planted in the Wall Street Journal on 9 October – Rupert Murdoch again predictably handing over his paper to Trump – to echo that Fema funds were being diverted to help illegal immigrants. Vance added a new wrinkle to the conspiracy theory, suggesting that Fema was giving “special treatment” to gay and trans people over ordinary Americans because it held a seminar in 2023 on how those communities can prepare for disasters.As Hurricane Milton barreled down on Florida, Joe Biden, in a TV briefing on Wednesday afternoon, felt compelled to condemn Trump’s “onslaught of lies” that is “undermining confidence in the incredible rescue and recovery work that has already been undertaken and will continue to be undertaken”.View image in fullscreenThe political effect of the hurricanes on Trumpism has been to congeal free-floating elements into the racist replacement theory and Hitlerian rhetoric. Trump’s lies set in motion an antisemitic wave in North Carolina blaming Jewish local officials there and Fema administrators for taking the money for illegal immigrants. Of the falsehoods after Hurricane Helene, “30% of the posts on X contained overt antisemitic hate, including abuse directed at public officials such as the mayor of Asheville, North Carolina; the Fema director of public affairs; and the secretary of the department of homeland security. These collectively garnered 17.1m views as of October 7,” reported the non-profit Institute for Strategic Dialogue.Vance’s inclusion of gay and trans people into the overarching replacement theory fits the intensive Trump negative advertising campaign. Trump has spent more than $15.5m on TV commercials linking Harris to support for trans prison inmates – his most aired ad. In fact, in 2019 she stated she supported gender-affirming care for state prison inmates, according to the law, and responded similarly to an ACLU questionnaire about federal inmates. The Senate Republican political action committee has also invested tens of millions into anti-trans ads against Democratic candidates. Trump’s tagline: “Kamala’s for they/them, President Trump is for you.”Now, Vance implies, “they/them”, presumably in league with Greene’s “they”, are stealing the funds from the rest of us folks as a nefarious subplot of the great replacement. Adherence to every aspect of the theory proves loyalty to Trump. Vance and Scalise showed how to bend the knee.Trump’s transition chief on 7 October insisted on this unquestioning fealty to the leader. The self-described adults in the room, or “normies”, of the first term, who saw their mission to be curbing Trump’s lunatic or criminal impulses, will not be tolerated in the second. “Those people were not pure to his vision,” Howard Lutnick, the head of the Cantor Fitzgerald investment firm and the co-chair of Trump’s transition team, recently told the Financial Times. He explained that the “establishment” did not understand Trump’s “objectives” or “intuition” and “thought they knew better”. In the second term, “loyalty” and “fealty” would be the first qualification for consideration.Both Trump and Vance have stated that the senior federal civil service will be fired for their disloyalty. Consistent with Trump’s “vision”, his appointees would be required to swear an oath of loyalty to the leader above the constitution and laws of the United States. This oath was known as the “Führereid” in Nazi Germany, where public servants had to pledge: “I swear: I will be faithful and obedient to the leader of the German reich and people, Adolf Hitler, to observe the law, and to conscientiously fulfill my official duties, so help me God!” All soldiers had to take a similar oath. Some of those who failed to swear the Hitler oath were executed.Trump’s Hitlerian rhetoric and threats have ramped up with each passing day closer to the election that will decide whether he will be the president or perhaps a prisoner. When Harris appeared on The View, a daytime TV talkshow with an all-female panel, he demeaned her as a “dummy” and the other women as “dumb” and “degenerates”. Women should be subordinate and submissive. According to his running mate, Vance, women who do not have natural children are essentially worthless, not truly women, unqualified to be teachers, and women over 50 years old have value principally for childcare. “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” – children, kitchen, church – was the policy slogan for the proper place of women in the Third Reich.The concept of “degenerate” – “entartete” – was a central category in Nazism. Modern art and music were deemed “Entartete Kunst”, or degenerate art, and banned. “Degenerates” constituted a broad swath of people, some of whom were infected with “poison in the blood”, as Hitler classified Jews and Trump counts certain types of immigrants, which is the basis of the replacement theory embraced by both Hitler and Trump. The degenerate also included disabled people, gay people (who wore pink triangles in concentration camps), Gypsies, psychiatric patients and the mentally ill (“behinderte”). Under the program beginning in 1939 of “Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens” (“destruction of unworthy lives”), Aktion T4, the mass murder of “degenerates” was launched, officially called “Gnadentod”, or “mercy death”.Trump openly entertains fantasies of violence and vengeance. He called on 29 September for “one really violent day … One rough hour. And I mean real rough.” He was speaking about shoplifters. He promises the roundup of 11 million undocumented people and camps. In late August, he reposted under a headline “How To Really Fix The System” an image of his perceived enemies in orange prison jumpsuits – Harris, Biden, Hillary Clinton, Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, Hunter Biden and Jack Smith. He called for the indictment of the congressional members of the January 6 select committee and military tribunals for Barack Obama and others.View image in fullscreenOn 5 June, the Fox News host Sean Hannity gave Trump an opportunity to soften his threat of retribution. “People believe that you want retribution and will use the system of justice to go after your political enemies,” said Hannity. Trump doubled down, saying: “I have every right to go after them.” On 7 October, the Fox News host Laura Ingraham tried again. “A lot of people will say: ‘Well, he’s just going to do to them what he – they did to him back at them.’” Trump replied: “A lot of people say that’s what should happen, right?” Or as Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: “We had declared one of our principles thus: ‘We shall meet violence with violence in our own defense.’”Trump’s rhetoric eerily continues to paraphrase Hitler’s, which eludes American audiences. His first wife, Ivana, claimed that a book of Hitler’s speeches was on his bedstand. Trump’s language just happens to be extraordinarily resonant.Campaigning on the debunked myth that Haitian immigrants in the town of Springfield, Ohio, are “eating the dogs … eating the cats … eating the pets”, Trump used unusual language for him to make his bogus point on 16 September. “Allowing millions of people, from places unknown, to INVADE and take over our Country, is an unpardonable sin,” he tweeted. His reference to “sin” in the context of his racist replacement theory, was, knowingly or not, an echo of Hitler, to convey exactly the same meaning. “The sin against blood and race is the hereditary sin in this world and it brings disaster on every nation that commits it,” Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf.Lately, Trump has used over and over in speech after speech the same metaphor conflating personal and national humiliation. On 12 August, Trump tweeted: “Kamala has no ideas, and would be an absolutely horrible, RADICAL LEFT, President, laughed at all over the World. We’ve had enough of that!”On 22 August, Trump continued the “laughed at” meme: “She stands for Incompetence and Weakness – Our Country is being laughed at all over the World!” On 16 September, he tweeted: “THE WORLD IS LAUGHING AT US AS FOOLS, THEY ARE STEALING OUR JOBS AND OUR WEALTH. WE CANNOT LET THEM LAUGH ANY LONGER.” Trump has used variations of this “laugh” meme to highlight national dishonor dozens of time on his Truth Social account.On 30 September, at two rallies, one in New York City and the other in Walker, Michigan, Trump said: “Boy, what a group of people we have. It’s a joke. We’re laughed at all over the world for our leadership. Because this country has never been laughed at [like] a bunch of dopes. It’s never been laughed at like it is right now.”On 1 October, in Erie, Pennsylvania, Trump said: “What a miserable few years. It’s just been horrible. And people all over the world, especially the leaders, are laughing at how stupidly our country is run.”On 30 January 1939, Hitler delivered his notorious “prophecy” speech calling for “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe”. The most memorable image he evoked was of Jews laughing at him and at Germany. “During the time of my struggle for power it was in the first instance the Jewish race which only received my prophecies with laughter when I said that I would one day take over the leadership of the state, and with it that of the whole nation, and that I would then among many other things settle the Jewish problem. Their laughter was uproarious, but I think that for some time now they have been laughing on the other side of their face.”After Hitler ordered the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”, he returned to the imagery of Jews laughing in a speech that referenced his “prophecy”. “In Germany too the Jews once laughed at my prophecies,” he said on 30 September 1942. “I don’t know whether they are still laughing, or whether they have already lost the inclination to laugh, but I can assure you that everywhere they will stop laughing.”The Nazis underscored Hitler’s speech by producing a propaganda poster depicting caricatures of laughing Jews surrounding Franklin D Roosevelt, with the slogan: “Das Lachen wird ihnen vergehen!!!” – “Their laughter will disappear!!!”On 7 October, Trump returned for a rally at Butler, Pennsylvania, to revisit the site of his near assassination. “And we want to get respect like we had it four years ago, the entire world respected us, they respected us,” he said. “They respected us more than they’ve ever respected us, and now they laugh at us. We can’t have them laugh at us, can we?”

      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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      Fulton county brawl with Georgia state election board escalates as election approaches

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      The legal brawl between Georgia’s Donald Trump-oriented state board of elections and Fulton county’s election office continues to intensify, a warm-up for the post-election cavalcade of 2020 redux lawsuits expected in November.Fulton county filed a lawsuit on Monday to prevent the board from placing 2020 election denialists on a monitoring team for the November election. In response, state board members voted to subpoena a wide range of records from the 2020 election in Fulton county.The lawsuit asks for a judgment establishing that the state board of elections does not have the authority to force the county to accept appointments to their monitoring team. Fulton county and the state board came to a voluntary agreement in May to hire a monitoring team for the 2024 election after the state board found that it may have double-scanned as many as 3,000 ballots in a recount of the 2020 election. The state board reprimanded the county for the mistake in May.Fulton county then agreed to implement a third-party monitoring system, in part to assuage critics like those on the board of elections. The monitors would observe election processes for training, ballot preparation, programming voting machines and other processes.“Since that time, the SEB has repeatedly provided conflicting information and failed to take action related to monitors,” said Sherri Allen, the Fulton county board of registration and elections chair.“State Election Board members have stated in meetings with Fulton County BRE members that the State Election Board would ‘disavow’ the Fulton County BRE if the Fulton County BRE did not accept the monitors proposed by the State Election Board,” the lawsuit states. “Any such adverse action would directly conflict with multiple provisions of the Election Code.”An advisory letter sent to the state board last month by Georgia’s attorney general, Christopher Carr, also told the board that it did not have the authority to force Fulton county to accept its monitors.“Let’s make it clear that this is a closed case under the law, as determined by the attorney general’s office,” said Sara Tindall Ghazal, a Democratic appointee to the state election board, in dissent. Ghazal noted that the county was only legally obligated to retain the 2020 documents – volumes of absentee ballot data, scanner tapes, poll pad data, ballot images and other information – for two years.But Janice Johnston, a Republican member of the state board praised by Trump as a “pit bull”, said she had been assured that the documents were available because of pending litigation. “If Fulton county cannot or does not have the documents, then the place to go is to the clerk of the court where they should be … available for completion of the investigation of Mr Rossi and Mr Moncla’s complaint.”Joe Rossi, a teacher at a technical college in Macon, and Kevin Moncla, a Texan and the director of the Election Oversight Group, are prominent activists who have continued to press a case in court and before the state elections board over the 2020 election.The county appointed a monitoring team led by Ryan Germany, former general counsel for Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state. But Trump-aligned members of the state board, at odds with Raffensperger over his handling of the 2020 election, want to add their own members to Germany’s team.Those members include Heather Honey, who worked on the Maricopa county, Arizona, audit of the 2020 election with the Trump-campaign funded Cyber Ninjas investigation, and Frank Ryan, a former US representative who as a state senator in Pennsylvania made false claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election and rejected the state’s electoral count.At the rancorous board meeting on Tuesday, the Georgia state representative Saira Draper, a litigant in a suit to block recent changes to election rules, sparred with Janelle King and Johnston, two Republican members of the state board, over the board’s investigation of some county election boards’ decision to reject voter challenges.“What we’ve seen since 2021 is a targeting of certain counties,” Draper said, responding to a report from Mike Coan, the board’s executive director who investigated how elections offices around Atlanta, Savannah, Columbus, Athens and other large counties had responded to voter challenges.“We haven’t seen the mass voter challenges across Georgia any more. We have seen them against Democratic centers … counties with large numbers of Democratic voters, and that’s a nakedly partisan ploy,” she said. “There are people who are sore losers, who have brought frivolous voter challenges targeting Democratic counties, and those challenges have been appropriately dismissed. And now they want a second bite at the apple, both in the courts and here at the state elections board one week before early voting starts.”“Was Stacey Abrams a sore loser?” King asked Draper. Abrams never conceded her 2018 loss to the governor, Brian Kemp, and suggested that Kemp as secretary of state had manipulated the election apparatus to his advantage.“I wish she had conceded,” Draper replied.Fulton county is also contending with a lawsuit from the Georgia Republican party, alleging that the county’s election office hasn’t hired enough Republicans as poll workers for the 2024 election.The suit states that Georgia law requires counties to hire poll workers from a list parties provide in equal measure. Republicans submitted the names of 74 workers to Fulton county elections director Nadine Williams to hire, but out of the 800 or more elections hires, only nine have been hired for early voting and six for election day, according to the suit. Williams has instead given hiring authority to temporary staffing agencies and precinct managers, who have not given preference to names on the Republican list, it states.Williams’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the hiring of poll workers.The Fulton county board of registration and elections will meet on Thursday at 11am. Among the items on the agenda are an update on the monitoring team and the terms of the proposal, a review of the state board’s new rules and the impact to operations, and an executive session to discuss litigation and personnel matters. More

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      Can ex-governor’s anti-Trump stance swing key Senate seat for Republicans?

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      At a conservative thinktank on 14th Street in Washington DC, awaiting Larry Hogan, the Republican candidate for US Senate in Maryland, one staffer turned to another. “It’s nice having something to vote for, for a change,” the staffer wryly said. Shortly after, the former governor arrived for his speech at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (Jinsa), part of his campaign to win in a state that hasn’t elected a Republican senator since 1980.When he left the executive mansion in Annapolis last year, Hogan told his friendly audience, he had governed for eight years as a popular moderate but had not been looking for another job – “And frankly, I didn’t yearn to be a part of the divisiveness and dysfunction in Washington,” he said.“But when I saw a bipartisan package to secure our border and to support Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan and other American allies fail because people were told [by Donald Trump] to vote against a critical [immigration] bill that they claimed to be for, it made me frustrated enough that I knew I had to step up and try to do something about the mess in Washington.”Washington is not Maryland but the Old Line State is just a few miles up 14th from Jinsa. There, Hogan faces the Prince George’s county executive, Angela Alsobrooks, for an open seat in November – a race in which the Democrat, who if she wins will be only the third Black woman ever elected to the US Senate, enjoys significant polling leads.The race has become potentially decisive in determining Senate control, and a test of anti-Trump sentiment on the right. Significant spending and endorsements are pouring in. Highly regarded as a local leader and “tough on crime” Democrat, Alsobrooks defeated a DC establishment candidate, the congressman David Trone, in her primary and is now piling on praise from party grandees. She recently released an ad featuring Barack Obama and secured support from the Washington Post.On Thursday night, the two candidates will meet for a high-stakes debate.In practical terms, it takes 51 votes – or 50 if your party holds the presidency – to control the Senate. Democrats currently hold it 51-49 but face tough contests to hold seats in Republican-leaning states such as Montana and Ohio. It means Maryland counts this year, and Hogan’s toughest challenge may lie in persuading enough Democratic voters they can trust him should Republicans retake the chamber with him as the 51st vote. In turn, Democrats know that if they cannot hold so deep blue a state as Maryland, they will in all likelihood lose control of the Senate.Hogan is therefore seeking to depict himself as an antidote to Trump – and his rival as too far left. At Jinsa, talking foreign policy, he criticized Trump but he also knocked Alsobrooks, including for “repeatedly demand[ing] that Israel enact an immediate and unilateral ceasefire, and [for calling] for cutting off critical military aid”.As popular as Hogan is – he stepped down as governor with a 77% approval rating – polling suggests that message is not landing. According to 538, since one tied poll in August, Alsobrooks’s lead has ranged from five to 17 points.Hogan begged to differ. “I think it’s a very close race,” he said. “I’ve always been an underdog in every one of my races.“There are people out there that we’ve still got to convince,” he added, “and we’ve got [then] 34 more days to do it, and I feel confident we’re going to win the race. It’s tough, though. I mean, we’re a very blue state, and we’re overcoming a huge deficit at the top of the ticket.”Trump has been called many things, but “huge deficit” may be a new one. Hogan has said he won’t vote for Trump (or Kamala Harris), but must nonetheless fend off persistent questions about the man who rules his party. One recent ad from Hogan’s campaign deplored the “horror” of January 6. And yet, as Republicans from Trump and the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, on down know, sometimes a candidate must be allowed away from the party line.In Maryland, Hogan is free to be Hogan. That’s to his advantage. To his disadvantage, Democrats from the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to Alsobrooks on down know Hogan has a bigger problem.View image in fullscreenIn June 2022, in the case Dobbs v Jackson, the US supreme court to which Trump appointed three hardliners removed the federal right to abortion. Two years on, Hogan insists he will not let his party go further.“[Alsobrooks’s campaign] want[s] to focus on making it a cookie-cutter Democratic talking points race but it’s not, because I have a different position than most Republicans,” he said at the Jinsa event. “And so, you know, I’ve promised to be a sponsor to codify Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that previously safeguarded abortion rights, so that nobody comes between a woman and her doctor in any state in America, and to sponsor a bill to protect IVF.”He also insisted that “most people are concerned about the economy. They’re concerned about affordability, inflation, they’re concerned about crime in their communities, and they’re concerned about securing the border and fixing [the] broken immigration system.”Among Democratic rejoinders: while a member of the executive committee of the Republican Governors Association, Hogan worked to elect allies in states that now have stringent abortion bans. In his own state, in 2022, he vetoed a bill to expand abortion access. The same year, he said Trump “nominated incredible justices to the supreme court”, a comment Democrats have brought back to haunt him. Hogan says he was not referring to Dobbs but Alsobrooks is happy to keep the spotlight on the issue. As she recently said: “I think my opponent’s record is very clear where abortion care is concerned.”Many Americans fear a national abortion ban, should Trump be president again. Hogan said he had been against that for decades “and I’ll be the one of the ones standing up, regardless of who the president is or who’s in control of Senate”. But he also said he would not support reform to the filibuster, the Senate rule that requires 60 votes for most legislation, in order to codify Roe.“I think it’s a terrible idea, because it’s actually something that … my opponent and Donald Trump both agree on. They want to be able to jam things through on a 51-vote [majority]. ”Right now, [the Senate is] a deliberative body where we actually have to find bipartisan cooperation and common sense and kind of common ground for the common good. That’s what I did in Maryland with a 70% Democratic legislature. We got things done.”A few days after Hogan’s event at Jinsa, about 40 miles (65km) north-east in Baltimore, Democrats gathered at a canvassing hub. Once a wedding venue, the Majestic Hall of Events was surrounded by less-than-majestic auto shops and down-at-heel churches. Inside, Alsobrooks addressed a crowd organized by D4 Women in Action, linked to Delta Sigma Theta, one of the Divine Nine Black women’s sororities, to which Alsobrooks belongs.View image in fullscreenIn her speech, Alsobrooks spoke about her links to Baltimore and “the number one issue across our state, and the thing that people most desire to have: economic opportunity”. She also took shots at her opponent. “What did he do [as governor] when he had the opportunity to stand up for all of our families in Baltimore? He sent back $900m to the federal government.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat was a reference to a 2015 decision to scrap a light rail project, a call that attracted lawsuits. But Alsobrooks also looked to the national stage, and the issue she wants foremost in voters’ minds.“This race is bigger than both of us,” Alsobrooks told the Guardian. “Bigger than Larry Hogan the person. It’s bigger than Angela the person. It’s about issues and about the future. It is about reproductive freedom.”Alsobrooks listed other policy priorities – “sensible gun legislation … economic opportunity” – as part of a platform “that really does favor hard-working people, middle-class families, and that is about preserving freedoms and democracy”. But protecting abortion rights was a theme to which she returned.At Jinsa, Hogan said Democrats were trying to turn a state race into a national contest. Alsobrooks embraced the charge: “The former governor thinks he’s running to go back to Annapolis. We’re actually running to go to Washington DC, and we would represent Marylanders there.”She added: “This [Republican Senate] caucus is led by people like Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Rick Scott, Mitch McConnell, and they … have really proclaimed war on the reproductive freedoms of women. They have very clear records, and [Hogan has] aligned himself with the party whose policies do not align with the average Marylander.”Much has been made of the warm relationship Hogan and Alsobrooks enjoyed when Hogan was governor. Asked about an unearthed Hogan comment – that Alsobrooks was a better Prince George’s county executive than his own father, the late congressman Lawrence Hogan – Alsobrooks said: “He has become, in a lot of ways, the kind of politician he says he despises, one who’s very disingenuous.“But I think that people see through it. Marylanders are very savvy and they have seen how he has changed … and I think they will see through the disingenuous nature of his campaign, and will again vote to keep Maryland Democratic.”Keeping Maryland Democratic will require turning out the vote. At the canvassing hub, one phone-banker wearily said: “Put in two shifts this morning.” A friend smiled back: “Only a hundred more to go.”The same Jinsa staffer who earlier had said it was “nice to have something to vote for” with Hogan also said that he hadn’t felt so good about a Senate race since 2006 – which was still a defeat – in which “getting more than 40% felt like a moral victory”.Back then, Ben Cardin, the Democrat retiring this year, beat Michael Steele, a Hogan-esque GOP moderate. Steele went on to chair the Republican National Committee, then became an MSNBC host and Never Trumper. Asked for his view of the current Maryland race, Steele was not as convinced of an Alsobrooks win as many other observers.“This race was not a competitive race until Larry got into it,” Steele said. “He is a popular two-term governor who left, I think, an important mark on how politics play out in Maryland for Republicans and made this very competitive out of the gate, largely because people had come to trust his style of governance.“It’s open, it’s compassionate, it’s concerned … I think a lot of people remember that.”Steele said Hogan had a good chance of attracting split-ticket voters – rare beasts, precious to any campaign, in this case prepared to back Harris for president but Hogan for Senate.It all added up to a warning for anyone expecting a comfortable Democratic win.“I think the latest polling has Alsobrooks up by 11,” Steele said. “I don’t believe that, largely because when I’m out in neighborhoods talking to people, and from everything I can piece together, this race is a lot tighter than the traditionalists who look at Maryland think it to be.”

      This article was amended on 11 October 2024. It originally stated that Larry Hogan chaired the Republican Governors Association. He was actually a member of its executive committee. More

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      Could young voters in Michigan hand the state to Kamala Harris?

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      So few students wanted to join the campus Republican party when Abigail Sefcik began studying at Saginaw Valley State University (SVSU) that she was rapidly voted in as its president.“The group was only four or five people. Nobody else wanted to do it,” she said.Four years later, Sefcik has turned her back on the Republicans and is supporting Kamala Harris for president.“In 2020, I voted for Donald Trump. I was being sucked into his void and I said some really disparaging things about other people. I did some things that I would just really call shameful when I think of them,” said the political science student in her final year at university.“But after a couple of years, I decided that there wasn’t a lot that the Republicans stood for that I really cared about.”Rejecting Trump and the Republicans was one thing, but Sefcik found little to inspire her in Joe Biden’s run for re-election. Then the president dropped out the race in July and Harris rapidly became the de facto Democratic candidate.“I couldn’t identify with Joe Biden as a good leader. When we were looking at a ticket with Biden and Trump, of course I was going to vote for Biden. But I would do so unwillingly because we know what the alternative would be,” she said.“Kamala Harris provides a way out for a lot of voters. Her youth, for one thing, has inspired a lot of young people.”A recent Harvard Kennedy School poll gives Harris a two-to-one lead over Trump among voters aged 18 to 29. Harris has the support of 64% of younger voters to 32% for Trump principally because of significantly higher approval ratings on the issues of the climate crisis, abortion rights and healthcare. Harris also scores much better with younger voters on empathy, reliability and honesty.View image in fullscreenThe Kennedy School polling director, John Della Volpe, said the findings showed “a significant shift in the overall vibe and preferences of young Americans” in favour of Harris compared with Biden.“In just a few weeks, Vice-President Harris has drummed up a wave of enthusiasm among young voters. The shift we are seeing toward Harris is seismic, driven largely by young women,” he said.The challenge for the Harris campaign is to translate that enthusiasm into votes where it matters.SVSU is one such place. The university has about 7,000 students. The vast majority can vote in Michigan, a battleground state that Trump won by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2016.With polls showing the former president and Harris closely tied in Michigan, student votes potentially carry significant weight in a state that the vice-president’s campaign sees as a key part of her clearest path to victory alongside two other Rust belt states, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.Leah Craig is campaigning for Harris on campus and registering her fellow students to vote. She did not volunteer for Biden’s campaign even though she would have voted for him. But Harris prompted Craig to get involved.“It was reinvigorating, to say the least. When Biden was the candidate, I wasn’t really passionate about it and it just felt like I was going into another election of the-lesser-of-two-evils kind of a thing. But the Harris campaign brought a new level of attention to a lot of issues that people of my generation are really passionate about,” she said.“We now have an easier candidate to embrace, an easier candidate to advocate for, an easier candidate to appeal to young people.”Many students at SVSU talk about Harris’s relative youth. Although at 59 she is old enough to be a grandmother to the students, they see a sharp contrast in energy and spirit compared with Biden and Trump. Noah Johnson, president of the SVSU Democrats, also credits a determined social media campaign for drawing in younger voters.“A lot of it is due to a big initial social media push. I saw it definitely resonate with some people, like Charli xcx when she tweeted out the Kamala brat thing. That was effective with young people. And similarly, like the coconut tree meme,” he said.“It’s like a permission structure. It wasn’t cool or popular to be a fan of Biden. Students were like: ‘Sure, I support his policies.’ But it was very rare to find a young person that was actively a fan of him. It was more: ‘I’ll vote for him, especially because I like him more than Trump.’ But I’ve definitely seen, especially from my less politically engaged friends, they’re actively excited to go out and vote for Kamala even if they’re not doing anything else.”Still, the Harvard youth poll found a significant gender gap, with the vice-president garnering 17% more support among young female voters than those who are male, although a majority of young men say they will vote for Harris. Sefcik said she saw that at SVSU, where the small membership of the campus Republican party is mostly male while a majority of the college Democrats are women.Trump held a rally at SVSU last week but said little to directly address younger voters or their concerns, perhaps because relatively few students attended and the former president failed to fill the 4,000-seat sports hall.A student who did attend and said he supported Trump didn’t want to give his name. Asked why not, he replied: “There’s no problem at SVSU. I feel like people are respectful of each other’s views. I have friends on both sides. But it’s not like that outside. Saying you vote for Trump could cost you a job.”Many of SVSU’s students come from rural and small-town Michigan, and grew up in Republican neighbourhoods and homes. Sefcik’s disillusionment with Trump went hand in hand with questioning her upbringing in a religious and politically conservative family. But she also became more dismayed with the Republican party as she experienced it from the inside.Sefcik said that as president of the campus Republicans, she would attend fundraising events where the donors expected to hear how she was suffering at the hands of “woke” students and liberal professors.“They want to hear about how hard it is to be a conservative college student and how the system is just not benefiting you anymore. And so you sort of learn these two or three talking points to reinforce that. But in my experience, it wasn’t hard, because people who identified as Democrats were kind and most welcoming people I ever met,” she said.The SVSU Republicans declined a request for an interview.Two days after Trump’s rally, a different student crowd turned out to hear Bernie Sanders speak in support of Harris on the campus.Sanders hit all the right notes for a young audience. Abortion rights, the housing crisis, the US moving ever closer to becoming an oligarchy. He gave a discourse on the dangers of electing Trump again, warning that if he is returned to the White House the world will have “lost the struggle” against the climate crisis.But Sanders also illustrated the gap with Harris as he called for universal public healthcare – “Medicare for all” – in contrast with her much weaker proposals for drug price controls and greater regulation of medical providers.Some of Harris’s more active supporters on campus say that she falls short on some policies but they see other strengths. Although Harris has avoided putting her race and gender at the fore of her campaign, Craig said it was important to some students.“From what I’ve observed around campus, it makes people of our demographic feel more heard and seen and that’s a really big thing, too,” she said.Several students see Harris as a break with being raised in an age of apprehension. Sefcik said people her age “grew up with the fear after 9/11 and have never known a world where we were sort of safe”. She said Trump exacerbated that with his attacks on minority groups and by packing the supreme court to strip women of control over their bodies.Craig described students who recently began at university as spending their teenage years living in the “Trump era of American carnage”.“This is all they’ve ever known. The Biden years are pretty much scrambling to undo what had been done and fix things. I feel like there’s a certain level of despondency whereas, as Harris herself said, she is about bringing joy to people, making it a little more positive and upbeat as compared to the same old. It’s a new approach,” she said.Still, the challenge of making sure students actually vote remains. There are reasons for the Democrats to be optimistic on that score. Four years ago, a historic high of 66% of American college students voted in the presidential election, a huge leap from 2016, when just 52% turned out.The Institute for Democracy & Higher Education called the increase “stunning” and attributed it to a range of factors, including student activism on “racial injustice, global climate change, and voter suppression”. Revulsion with Trump also drove a lot of people to the polls.Harris’s supporters also note that nearly half of SVSU students voted in large numbers in the midterms two years ago, just months after the US supreme court threw out the constitutional right to an abortion by overturning Roe v Wade – a larger turnout than in the rest of Saginaw county.Craig is pushing a widely heard message among Democrats that Trump’s victory in Michigan in 2016 by 10,704 votes is equivalent to just two ballots in each of the state’s election precincts.“We are telling them, all it takes is taking a couple of people with you. Talk to your friends, reach out on social media. You don’t have to go knocking door to door, you don’t have to be standing out here with a clipboard. You don’t have to go do anything terribly crazy. You just have to get two people to vote,” she said. More