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      Trump and his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month – podcast

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      Not so long ago, Donald Trump was riding high in the polls; the mood music was positive for his presidential campaign. Then Joe Biden dropped out of the race. After months of campaigning against his old foe, Trump now seems to be missing him and struggling to come up with a fresh attack against his new opponent, Kamala Harris.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Susan Glasser of the New Yorker about Trump’s challenges as he tries to turn things around after a less than stellar month on the campaign

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

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      Biden and Harris celebrate landmark deal to lower medication prices

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      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on Thursday cast themselves as the champions of American seniors in a David-and-Goliath fight against big pharmaceutical companies, at a joint event touting a landmark deal to lower the cost of prescription drugs.“We finally beat big pharma,” the US president declared, sharing the stage with his vice-president for the first time since he abandoned his re-election bid in late July and Harris replaced him as the Democratic nominee.The event, which came after a morning announcement about new lower drug prices for beneficiaries of Medicare, a government health insurance plan for seniors, was an opportunity to persuade voters that their administration has helped ease costs after years of high inflation. Healthcare, particularly the high cost of prescription drugs, is a top concern for US voters. Biden had held a slight lead over Donald Trump for his platform throughout the year before he dropped out of the race.Harris spoke first, calling Biden “our extraordinary president”, as the crowd, packed into the gymnasium at Prince George’s Community College, rose to its feet to applaud the president. “Thank you, Joe,” they chanted in appreciation of – according to several attendees – his record and his decision to step aside and pass the torch to Harris.Biden called Harris an “incredible partner” and said she would “make one hell of a president”.“We finally addressed the longstanding issue that for years was one of the biggest challenges on this subject, which was that Medicare was prohibited by law from negotiating lower drug prices, and those costs then got passed on to our seniors,” Harris said. “But not any more.”The 10 drugs subject to negotiations, among them widely used blood thinners and diabetes medications, are expected to save $6bn for Medicare, which is a major government health insurance program covering Americans older than 65, and those with certain disabilities, the administration said. Seniors should save $1.5bn directly in out-of-pocket costs.The negotiated prices, which take effect in 2026, were authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act, that Biden emphasized passed without a single Republican vote. The vice-president cast the tie-breaking vote in her role as president of the Senate.“We pay way too much for prescription drugs in America,” the health and human services secretary, Xavier Becerra, said.Before Biden and Harris spoke, administration officials and Maryland politicians celebrated the deal while thrilling the crowd with discreet references to Harris’s candidacy.“President’s a good title for her,” the retiring Maryland senator Ben Cardin winked in his remarks, crediting Harris for helping to pass the Democrats’ sweeping health and climate change bill.Biden, who simultaneously touted his record in office and played pass-the-torch, warned that if given a second term, Trump – who the president mocked as “the guy we’re running against, what’s his name? Donald Dump?” – would repeal Medicare’s authority to negotiate drug prices. He named the sweeping conservative policy agenda, Project 2025, that Trump has sought to distance himself from.“Let me tell you what our Project 2025 is: beat the hell out of them,” Biden said, drawing loud applause.Republican lawmakers have been highly critical of the Biden administration’s move, arguing that government-negotiated drug prices will stifle innovation and result in fewer lifesaving drugs being brought to market.In a joint statement, House Republicans accused Biden of “price-fixing”.“Make no mistake, price fixing has failed in every sector and in every country where it has ever been tried,” the statement by the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the Republican leadership team said. “The Biden-Harris administration says it wants to lower prices for families, but their prescription drug price fixing scheme has accomplished just two things: driving up health care costs and crushing American innovation in medicine.”View image in fullscreenThe double act attracted a raucous audience, with hundreds of people waiting in the summer heat to glimpse the president’s final act and the vice-president’s ascent.“I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long, long time,” Biden said, noting that the first time he introduced legislation to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices was as a freshman senator shortly after he was elected, in 1972.“For the longest time I was too damn young because I was only 29 when I got elected,” he said. “Now I’m too damn old.”The negotiated prices, which take effect in 2026, are expected to save billions of dollars for the taxpayer-funded Medicare program. But they will lead to direct out-of-pocket savings for only a subset of the millions of older Americans who take the drugs subject to negotiations. Healthcare costs in the US have been rising for several decades, and Americans spend upwards of $13,000 a year on medical services and medications.The law already caps out-of-pocket costs for insulin at $35 a month for Medicare patients. It also calls for a $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket drug spending.Earlier this week, Harris and Biden participated in a Situation Room meeting to discuss the situation in the Middle East. They also appeared together on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews to welcome home US citizens wrongfully detained in Russia.On the campaign trail, the economy and cost of living remain top issues for voters, as Democrats seek to convince them that the president’s economic policies have had an impact on their pocketbooks. Democrats cheered news on Wednesday of easing inflation. Consumer prices rose 2.9% July, falling below 3% for the first time since 2021, new government data showed. But Americans continue to be squeezed by the high cost of rent and groceries.On Friday, Harris will travel to North Carolina to deliver an economic policy speech, during which her campaign said she would call for a federal ban on price gouging on groceries. Though Trump had held an advantage on the economy over Biden, recent polling suggests Harris has erased much of his early lead.Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland, introduced Biden and Harris, referring to them as the 46th and 47th president of the United States, which prompted chants of “48” – a promising sign for the charismatic Democratic rising star.Linda Hunt, 80, said she rarely attended political events, but came to witness history.“I came to pay him respect – that’s primary but I also wanted to see and hear her in person,” she said. “It was historical.” More

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      Can Kamala Harris win over disenchanted Latino voters?

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      The abrupt substitution of Kamala Harris for Joe Biden as the Democratic party’s presidential nominee has energized two of the party’s bedrock bases of support – pro-choice women and African Americans – along with millions of young voters who felt dismay at the Hobson’s choice posed by two old white guys in the presidential contest.But the country’s estimated 36 million eligible Latino voters could be another story.Their importance in presidential races has been steadily growing over the past 50 years, and Latinos are projected to represent nearly 15% of eligible voters nationwide by November.Historically, Latinos have ranked among the Democratic party’s most reliable sources of votes, in about the same league as Black and Jewish voters. But the party’s once commanding advantage has been shrinking. Hillary Clinton trounced Donald Trump among Latinos nationwide in 2016 by a factor of 81% to 16%, yet four years later the former president upped his share to one out of every four votes cast by Latinos.A slew of prominent Latino politicians and trade unionists have endorsed the vice-president since the president’s withdrawal from the race on 21 July. They include some progressive Democrats who had condemned the terse message Harris had for would-be Latin American immigrants to the United States during a 2021 press conference in Guatemala City: “Do not come.”But it remains unclear whether Latino voters overall will give Harris a big boost in her bid to defeat Trump. For starters, they are diverse in national origin as well as the circumstances and histories of their communities’ immigration.Most southern California Chicanos reflect their state’s liberal tendencies and have little in common ideologically with the majority of Miami’s right-leaning Cuban Americans. Phoenix-based pollster Mike Noble notes that Latino voters whose roots go back to Colombia, Venezuela and other South American countries have been gravitating towards the Republican party over the past four years.Latinos are not yet digging deep into their pockets to support Harris. Two Zoom fundraising calls with Black women and men held on consecutive nights right after Biden bowed out brought in a total of $2.8m. Similar Zoom calls with Latinas and Latinos for Kamala on 24 and 31 July, respectively, posted a combined net haul of $188,000.Axios Latino has been tracking US Latinos’ views of Harris in conjunction with Noticias Telemundo and the Ipsos market research and public opinion firm since the first year of the Biden administration. By the end of 2021, Axios Latino found that 48% of Latinos had a favorable opinion of Harris – but that figure had slumped to 39% by last March. A different survey of Latinos in 10 states found that sentiment persisted in Arizona and Nevada even days after Biden’s fateful debate performance in late June.But a more recent survey of 800 Latino voters living in seven swing states brought Harris and the Democrats some very welcome news. Carried out by the pollster Gary Segura on behalf of the Washington-based Somos Political Action Committee in the immediate aftermath of Biden’s bombshell announcement, the survey gave Harris an impressive 18-percentage-point lead over Trump and surprisingly high favorability ratings among Latino voters in Arizona and Nevada, which have the highest percentage of eligible Latino voters among those swing states.In a separate poll by Equis Research released Wednesday, Harris is still a few points short of Biden’s support from Latino voters in the 2020 election, but is still leading Trump by 19 points among registered Latino voters in the seven most competitive states.Harris and her newly selected running mate, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, addressed rallies in Phoenix and Las Vegas late last week, and a new 30-second TV spot aimed at Latino voters has started airing in both English and Spanish.“Throughout her career, she’s always worked to earn the support of Latino voters and has made core issues like healthcare, childcare and fighting gun violence her focus,” said the campaign’s Hispanic media director, Maca Casado. “Vice-President Harris’s campaign knows Latinos’ political power, and we won’t take their votes for granted.”In Harris’s performance at the polls among Latinos in her native California, she garnered a majority of the Latino vote in both of her successful campaigns for the office of state attorney general, in 2010 and 2014.But Latinos are not expected to play a decisive role in the Golden state or any of the other three states where they are most numerous. Both California and New York are widely considered to be a lock for Democrats, and the same is true of Texas and Florida for Republicans.That leaves Arizona and Nevada, and the outlook for Democrats remains cloudy.CNN exit polling in November 2020 showed Biden beating Trump handily among Arizona Latino voters by a 27-percentage-point margin, thanks in part to folks like Matthew Sotelo. The 37-year-old leader of a non-profit community organization in Phoenix is a registered Democrat who thinks that Biden has done a “solid” job as president. But Sotelo senses a welcome change in the political climate since Harris became the party’s standard bearer.“The energy is different, and despite what the polls say about Harris being in a dead heat with Trump, the momentum is swinging to her side,” says the Arizona-born Mexican American.During Harris’s abortive run for the presidency in 2019, Sotelo did have some reservations about her track record as a prosecutor in San Francisco who sought prison terms for people arrested for possession of small amounts of controlled substances. But he sees her as an open-minded politician.“Do I think she has done a perfect job [on the border]? Absolutely not,” says Sotelo. “But I understand there has been an opportunity for Harris to grow as a leader, and she’ll continue to learn and grow.”One seasoned Latino pollster warns that Republicans have made major inroads in Arizona. “The Democrats have been losing ground there, and a lot of it has to do with the border,” says Eduardo Gamarra, a Florida International University professor of political science who oversaw last month’s poll of Latino voters in 10 states.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFelix Garcia concurs. Born in the Mexican state of Sonora and a resident of Phoenix since 2000, the 42-year-old business consultant has spent his entire life on either side of the US-Mexican border.“We have so many people from different countries on the border every day, and Kamala has never tried to fix the situation on the border,” says the registered Republican, who describes himself as a moderate in the mold of the late Arizona senator John McCain.Garcia’s issues with Harris do not end with immigration. “We have so many problems with the Biden administration – inflation, Ukraine, Russia, Israel – and she is part of this administration,” he says.During a campaign rally in Arizona last Friday, Harris drew attention to the years she served as California’s attorney general. “I went after the transnational gangs, the drug cartels and human traffickers,” she declared. “I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won.”Mike Noble, a former consultant and manager of Republican legislative campaigns in Arizona, found that many Latino voters in Arizona and Nevada are focused on pocketbook issues like inflation and housing affordability. Those anxieties are not likely to favor Harris.“She’s done a little better in places like the midwest and Pennsylvania, but in the sun belt, Harris is basically starting off in the same position as Biden was,” he says.The ascent of Harris has left David Navarro unmoved. The 27-year-old native of Las Vegas is a registered Democrat who supported Bernie Sanders’ presidential bids in 2016 and 2020 and voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election. But he says he is done with both major political parties and will vote for Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein in the fall.“I don’t support their views or any of their policies towards Israel and Gaza, and neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are doing anything to address the causes of inflation, which are corporations and their price increases,” says the systems engineer whose father immigrated from El Salvador. “They don’t value us as Americans, and I don’t want a presidential candidate who is run by the major donors who are billionaires and the corporations.”A scholar from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV) cautions that many Latinos in that state, like millions of Americans across the country regardless of their race or ethnicity, do not know all that much about Harris at this juncture beyond her name and current job title.“People know Biden and Trump, but when it comes to Harris, she has a lot more opportunity to shape the narrative, introduce herself and recalibrate things,” says Rebecca Gill, UNLV associate professor of political science. “She has the potential to move her numbers more than Trump or Biden.”In a volatile election cycle already punctuated by an assassination attempt, a debate debacle of historic dimensions, and the nomination of the first Black female presidential candidate of a major political party, Latino voters could spring surprises of their own even in swing states with relatively small Latino populations.“The Hispanic vote is large enough in virtually every state in the US that it could make the difference between winning and losing, including Pennsylvania and Georgia,” notes Fernand Amandi, a Miami-based Democratic pollster who specializes in tracking voting trends in the Latino community.“It’s the very reason why so many people are hyper-focused on the Hispanic vote.” More

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      Tim Walz agrees to vice-presidential debate against JD Vance on 1 October

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      Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor and Kamala Harris’s running mate, said he would be willing to debate JD Vance, Ohio senator and Donald Trump’s running mate, on 1 October.Walz, in a post to Twitter/X, was responding to a CBS News statement that said it had invited both vice-presidential candidates to participate in a debate in New York City.CBS said it had presented both campaigns with four dates as options: 17 September, 24 September, 1 October and 8 October.“See you on October 1, JD,” Walz wrote.A statement from the Harris campaign said: “Harris for President has accepted CBS’ invitation to a Vice Presidential Candidate Debate on October 1. Governor Walz looks forward to debating JD Vance – if he shows up.” Vance has not said whether he would accept the date.Walz last week said he “can’t wait to debate the guy — that is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up”, in a reference to the baseless but much-shared claim that Vance admitted to having sex with a couch in his memoir.In May, the Biden campaign said the vice-president – then Joe Biden’s running mate – would be willing to debate the eventual Republican vice-presidential nominee on either 23 July or 13 August.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt the time, the president had not yet stepped aside from the race and endorsed Harris to succeed him as the Democratic candidate for president in this election, and JD Vance had not been announced as Trump’s running mate.Vance’s campaign then declined to commit to a vice-presidential debate before the Democratic national convention on 19 August.Harris and Trump have agreed to participate in their first debate on 10 September, hosted by ABC News.The network said the debate will be moderated by David Muir, the World News Tonight anchor and managing editor, and Linsey Davis, the ABC News Live Prime anchor. More

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      Trump addresses North Carolina rally after Vance claims Harris has been ‘acting president’ under Biden – live

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      Trump says that if he is re-elected, he will sign an executive order on his first day back in the Oval Office to direct “every cabinet secretary and agency head to use every tool and authority at their disposal to defeat inflation and to bring consumer prices rapidly down”.As the New York Times points out, Trump has so far not outlined a plan on how to tackle inflation and bring prices down, other than to boost oil and gas production in the US. It adds:
      The country is already currently producing significantly more crude oil today than it did under the Trump administration.
      Hours before his rally speech,, the latest inflation figures also showed the US annual inflation rate dipped below 3% in July for the first time since 2021.Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have agreed to participate in one debate on 10 September, hosted by ABC News.ABC News confirmed in a statement last week it will “host qualifying presidential candidates to debate on September 10 on ABC. Vice-President Harris and former President Trump have both confirmed they will attend the ABC debate.”The network said the debate will be moderated by World News Tonight anchor and managing editor David Muir and ABC News Live Prime anchor Linsey Davis.In May, the Biden campaign said Kamala Harris – then Joe Biden’s running mate – would be willing to debate the eventual Republican vice-presidential nominee on either 23 July or 13 August.At the time, Biden had not yet stepped aside from the race and JD Vance had not been announced as Donald Trump’s running mate.After Vance was named as Trump’s running mate, his campaign declined to commit to a vice-presidential debate before the Democratic national convention on 19 August.The Trump Vance campaign has not yet agreed to the 1 October debate hosted by CBS News in New York.A Harris Walz campaign spokesperson said the Democratic vice presidential presumptive nominee “looks forward to debating JD Vance — if he shows up.”Walz last week said he “can’t wait to debate the guy — that is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up,” in a reference to the baseless, but much-shared claim, that Vance admitted to having sex with a couch in his memoir.Tim Walz, Minnesota governor and Kamala Harris’s running mate, said he would be willing to debate JD Vance, Ohio senator and Donald Trump’s running mate, on 1 October.Walz, in a post to X, was responding to a CBS News statement that said it had invited both vice-presidential candidates to participate in a debate in New York City.CBS said it had presented both campaigns with four dates as options: 17 September, 24 September, 1 October and 8 October.“See you on October 1, JD,” Walz wrote.A statement from the Harris campaign said:
      Harris for President has accepted CBS’ invitation to a Vice Presidential Candidate Debate on October 1. Governor Walz looks forward to debating JD Vance – if he shows up.
      Vance has not said whether he would accept the date.Trump says the US will “drill, baby, drill” for fossil fuels to “bring energy prices down”.Trump has vowed to accelerate oil and gas production, already at record levels, in the US, however, repeating the mantra “drill, baby, drill” at rallies.Trump aims to undo Joe Biden’s policies aimed at lowering carbon emissions, which he has called “insane”, and has directly sought $1bn in campaign donations from oil and gas executives in order to fulfill this agenda as president.But as NBC News’s Sahil Kapur notes, under Biden’s tenure, the US has continued to produce and export the most crude oil out of any country:Trump notes that Kamala Harris previously opposed fracking, and claims that she will ban fracking if she is elected in the November election.Harris “will absolutely ban fracking”, Trump says.Harris had previously, as a candidate for the 2020 presidential nomination, vowed to ban fracking, as well as back a Green New Deal, a progressive resolution to shift the US to 100% renewable energy, and new government dietary guidelines to encourage people to reduce their meat eating.But her campaign has said she will not seek to ban fracking if she becomes president. Since becoming vice-president, Harris has followed the Biden administration approach that allows fracking, although the Environmental Protection Agency has drawn up rules to limit the emission of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that often escapes during fracking.Trump says that if he is re-elected, he will sign an executive order on his first day back in the Oval Office to direct “every cabinet secretary and agency head to use every tool and authority at their disposal to defeat inflation and to bring consumer prices rapidly down”.As the New York Times points out, Trump has so far not outlined a plan on how to tackle inflation and bring prices down, other than to boost oil and gas production in the US. It adds:
      The country is already currently producing significantly more crude oil today than it did under the Trump administration.
      Hours before his rally speech,, the latest inflation figures also showed the US annual inflation rate dipped below 3% in July for the first time since 2021.Trump says his interview with Elon Musk “was one of the most successful shows ever done”.The interview on Twitter/X, which is owned by Musk and began more than 40 minutes late, was plagued by technical issues that initially prevented many users from watching the conversation.Here’s a review of that interview by our Washington DC bureau chief, David Smith:Trump says the US was respected before but that now “we’re disrespected all over the world.”He says the Russian president Vladimir Putin, Chinese president Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un all respected the US. Now “we’re being laughed at,” he says.Trump says that as president, he “passed the largest tax cuts in history, the largest regulation cuts in history”.In reality, Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was not the largest tax cut in US history and workers barely benefited from them. More

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      As Harris soars, Trump sulks

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      Hello there,Who knew that all Democrats needed to do was kick their ailing incumbent president off the ticket? Well, plenty of people. But few could have predicted just how successfully Kamala Harris and Uncle Tim have been relentlessly saturating the key swing states, speaking to huge crowds and rising in the polls.Trump, for his part, is floundering, trapped somewhere between rage and inertia. The former president held just one campaign event in the last seven days, and seems to spend most of his time complaining on his Truth Social website, with a breather to repeat his talking points to a wealthy idiot on X. More about Trump’s bad week after the headlines.Here’s what you need to knowView image in fullscreen1. Conventional thinkingThousands of Democrats will sweep into Chicago next week for the party’s national convention, where Harris will be officially anointed as their nominee for president. Despite Democrats’ checkered history of holding conventions in Chicago, the event will probably have a celebratory feel as Harris lays out her vision for the US to what will be a very friendly crowd. Barack Obama will be among the speakers, and the Guardian will be there with live updates.2. Abortion on the ballotA constitutional amendment protecting the right to abortion will be on the ballot in Arizona in November, something that could increase Democratic turnout in the swing state. “Democrats are hoping that enthusiasm for the measures will boost turnout among their base,” my colleague Carter Sherman writes. In total, voters in at least seven states (also including Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Nevada and South Dakota) will decide referendums on abortion rights this year.3. A Squad saveIlhan Omar, the Minnesota congresswoman and member of the progressive group “the Squad”, won her primary on Tuesday night, and will probably be re-elected to the House in November. Omar defeated Don Samuels, a former Minneapolis council member, and avoided the fate of fellow Squad members Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, both of whom lost their primaries this year. Pro-Israel lobbying groups spent millions to defeat Bush and Bowman after they criticized Israel’s war on Gaza, but despite Omar also being a critic of Israel’s actions, those groups stayed out of the Minnesota primary.The strategy of being angry on the internetView image in fullscreenHow about that Harralz momentum, huh? Kamala Harris and Tim Walz hit the ground running last week, and they’ve barely stopped since, holding events in five states, continuing to call people weird, and generally reinvigorating a previously weary Democratic base.There’s evidence that the Harris vibes tour is yielding results, because for the first time in absolutely ages, we’re seeing polling that shows Trump not winning the election. Before Biden dropped out, Trump was leading him by 3.1% nationally, and the Republican was ahead in every swing state. Harris now has a slight lead nationally, and has closed the gap on Trump in places like Michigan and Wisconsin. Each party typically experiences a popularity boost after their convention, so the momentum is likely to continue – for a little bit, anyway.
      Trump held just one campaign rally, in a state that will have no impact on the election
      Judging by how sulky Trump is being, it is clear he is worried. But it’s less clear what Trump is actually doing to combat the Harris surge. While Harris and Walz have been bounding across stages in front of thousands of people, Trump seems to have been mostly just sitting in the Florida private members’ club that he calls home.In the past week, the one-term former president has held a waffling conversation with Elon Musk on X, hosted a confusing press conference in Florida, ranted incessantly on Truth Social, and held just one campaign rally, in a state that will have no impact on the election. Oh, and it also emerged that Trump has been traveling around the country on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s former airplane, which if a Democratic candidate had done would be all the Republicans would talk about.Trump’s chat with Musk on Tuesday was supposed to give his campaign a shot in the arm – a cosy natter with a friendly ally. But once the conversation began – after a 40-minute delay due to technical difficulties – people’s main takeaways were a) this is very boring and b) why is Trump slurring his words? He did indeed seem to be struggling to pronounce the “s” in a number of words, with the term “groceries” proving particularly problematic. His campaign initially denied there was any problem – “must be your ears”, a spokesperson said – although Trump later blamed “modern day equipment, and cellphone technology”. Still, for a man who has a long history of mocking perceived physical weakness, the discussion will have been unwelcome.
      The strategy of being angry on the internet hasn’t typically proven to be a winner in elections
      Worse still, Trump’s admiring comments about Musk firing workers prompted the United Auto Workers labor union to file a federal labor charge. Trump didn’t address that in the more than 20 messages he posted to his own social media website on Tuesday, although he did describe Harris as “a joke”, complained about polling, and at one point declared: “I absolutely HATE the fake news media.” The strategy of being angry on the internet hasn’t typically proven to be a winner in elections, with the notable exception of 2016.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut Harris’s supporters will be aware that there is a long way to go until election day on 5 November (even if, in some states, people can begin voting in September). The momentum surely cannot last. She and Walz are fresh faces at the moment, but Republicans will spend hundreds of millions to attack them, and Trump will surely emerge from his bunker eventually.Harry Enten, a polling expert at CNN, pointed out on Tuesday that Trump was underestimated in surveys in 2016 and 2020, and said Trump’s favorability among Americans was higher than it was in those two elections. So nothing is decided yet – but Democrats at least have several reasons to be optimistic.Out and about: New OrleansView image in fullscreenThe Guardian joined Joe Biden on Air Force One on Tuesday en route to New Orleans, where the president doled out millions in new research grants for a policy program he created after the death of his eldest son, Beau, from brain cancer at age 46.“We know that all families touched by cancer are in a race against time,” Biden told a crowd at Tulane University.Now that Biden is no longer running for re-election, he seems to be devoting the final months of his presidency to his passion projects, including promoting his “moonshot” cancer-fighting initiative.Lie of the week: Sea level rise is fineView image in fullscreenThe sea will only “rise one-eighth of an inch in the next 400 years”, and in any case create “more oceanfront property”, Donald Trump claimed to Elon Musk on Tuesday.He was certainly wrong on the first count. According to Nasa the global average sea level has risen a total of about 4in in the past 30 years alone. And the rate of increase is accelerating.And while more oceanfront property may indeed by created, lots of current oceanfront property will not survive: rising sea levels hit low-lying coastal areas the hardest. More

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      FBI told Harris campaign it was targeted by foreign hackers; Walz defends military service in first solo campaign event – live

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      Kamala Harris’s campaign said it has received a warning from the FBI that it had been targeted by foreign hackers, but they have not detected any breaches of their systems.“In July, the campaign legal and security teams were notified by the FBI that we were targeted by a foreign actor influence operation. We have robust cybersecurity measures in place, and are not aware of any security breaches of our systems resulting from those efforts. We remain in communication with appropriate law enforcement authorities,” a campaign official said.Earlier this week, the FBI said it was investigating a leak of documents from the Trump campaign that is being blamed on hackers tied to Iran. Here’s more on that:In the further annals of Republicans who broke with Donald Trump returning to the fold, former North Carolina senator Richard Burr said he will vote for the ex-president in November.Burr, who declined to seek re-election and left the Senate in 2022, was one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump after he was impeached by the House of Representatives in response to the January 6 insurrection.The conviction ultimately failed to receive the necessary two-thirds majority in the Senate required to be approved, and North Carolina’s GOP censured Burr for his vote.In an interview with Spectrum News, Burr said:
      Maybe someone will have a hard time squaring with it. I don’t have a hard time squaring with it because I firmly understood why I voted for impeachment. And l like I said, that’s not a disqualifier as to whether you can serve. It’s a bad choice I thought a president made one time.
      Donald Trump’s campaign is facing accusations of racism over this post on Twitter/X earlier today:It appears to be in line with the former president’s messaging around undocumented people, who he has baselessly blamed for causing crime, and sparked a wave of condemnation from users of X:Tim Walz is set to become one of the most prominent Democrats in the country – at least for the next three months, as he campaigns alongside Kamala Harris. Here’s a look at his record in Minnesota, from the Guardian’s Rachel Leingang:Tim Walz must be having the wildest month of his life.After the Minnesota governor was announced as Kamala Harris’s pick for running mate, the progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and independent senator Joe Manchin both put out statements praising him, an indication of his appeal across Democratic constituencies.“Dems in disconcerting levels of array,” Ocasio-Cortez joked on X.In the week since his name catapulted from relative obscurity – Walz flew up the shortlist of second-in-command possibles in a matter of two weeks, buoyed by clips of his TV appearances and memes about his dadliness – camo caps with orange writing have flown off the campaign merch shelves, a nod to Walz’s dressed-down midwestern attire.But beyond the appearances, his record in politics shows an evolution – a shift from a moderate Democrat winning over a Republican-leaning district to a governor who delivered a laundry list of progressive policy wins that has his critics fuming.Is he a progressive darling? Is he a moderate in progressive clothing? A centrist? Is this a bait-and-switch?Well, he’s Tim Walz.When you talk to people who know Walz, they all call him real, genuine, authentic, an everyman. There’s no reason to believe he’s putting on an act.Speaking of the Harris campaign, the vice-president’s newly minted running mate, Tim Walz, today made his first solo campaign appearance at a convention of union members.The Minnesota governor gave a wide-ranging speech in which he attacked Donald Trump and cheered the power of organized labor, while also taking time to respond to attacks from the former president and his supporters, who say Walz has exaggerated his military service.Here’s what he said in response, at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees’s annual convention:The attacks on Walz’s military service, from Trump allies including his running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance, have centered on the timing of his decision to retire after 24 years of army national guard service. Here’s more on that:Kamala Harris’s campaign said it has received a warning from the FBI that it had been targeted by foreign hackers, but they have not detected any breaches of their systems.“In July, the campaign legal and security teams were notified by the FBI that we were targeted by a foreign actor influence operation. We have robust cybersecurity measures in place, and are not aware of any security breaches of our systems resulting from those efforts. We remain in communication with appropriate law enforcement authorities,” a campaign official said.Earlier this week, the FBI said it was investigating a leak of documents from the Trump campaign that is being blamed on hackers tied to Iran. Here’s more on that:Democrats in Arizona received some good news yesterday, when the secretary of state approved a ballot measure that would protect abortion rights, the Guardian’s Carter Sherman reports. The party hopes the initiative will bring out voters who will also cast ballots for Kamala Harris in a state that could prove decisive to her hopes to winning the White House:Arizona voters will decide this November whether to add abortion rights into their state constitution, a prospect that could turbocharge voter turnout in a critical battleground state in the 2024 election.Late Monday, the Arizona secretary of state’s office announced that it had validated an estimated 577,971 signatures in support of a ballot measure, the Arizona For Abortion Access Act, to establish a constitutional right to abortion in the state.On X, the office called the measure “the largest petition effort in Arizona history”. The measure will be listed on the ballot as Proposition 139.Arizona is not the only state to face the prospect of an abortion-related ballot measure this November. So far, states including Colorado, Florida and Nevada – another key battleground state – are also set to hold similar ballot measures. Tuesday also marks the deadline for the state of Missouri to determine whether to add its own abortion-related measure to its ballots.Since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, ballot measures that protect or preserve abortion rights have successfully passed even in red states such as Ohio, Kansas and Kentucky. However, they have never been tested during a presidential election. Democrats are hoping that enthusiasm for the measures will boost turnout among their base, especially since the vice-president, Kamala Harris, one of the Democrats’ most effective messengers on abortion rights, became the party’s nominee.Arizona’s Republican former governor Doug Ducey has endorsed Donald Trump’s re-election bid, after he was censured by the state GOP near the end of his term for not being sufficiently loyal to the former president.Ducey cited his support for tougher immigration policies and a continuation of Trump-era tax cuts in his endorsement:Three years ago, the state Republican party reprimanded Ducey after it was taken over by rightwing officials who retaliated against politicians from the state that had clashed with Trump:Donald Trump’s campaign is out with a new statement claiming that the former president’s interview with Elon Musk last night “breaks the internet”.It says 25 million users on X have listened to the entire two-hour-plus interview as of noon today, and that the conversation generated 9.6m posts, among other statistics. It also hit out at Kamala Harris for not having done any interviews since launching her campaign.“While weak, failed, and dangerously liberal Kamala Harris has avoided answering questions for 23 days, President Trump delivered his message directly to the people in a historic, two-hour interview that generated millions of posts and impressions related to President Trump and Elon Musk’s unfiltered conversation,” the statement reads.Here’s more, from the Trump campaign communications director, Steven Cheung:
      President Trump will do everything he can to bring his unscripted message directly to the people, something the fake news media refuses to do. While Kamala Harris enjoys the luxury of hiding from the press, President Trump accepted Elon’s invitation to have an unfiltered conversation about his America First policies with voters and people around the world. The media can lie, but the numbers don’t: Americans are eager to hear from President Trump and his momentum is only growing as we get closer to November 5.
      The prominent progressive senator Bernie Sanders has warned that Donald Trump is preparing to once again dispute the results of the 2024 election, should he lose.Trump has never publicly conceded his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, and engaged in a months-long effort to prevent the Democrat from taking office that culminated in the violent January 6 insurrection.In a just-released statement, Sanders cites the former president’s recent language to argue that he is preparing to do the same this year:
      Donald Trump may be crazy, but he’s not stupid. When he claims that “nobody” showed up at a 10,000-person Harris-Walz rally in Michigan that was live-streamed and widely covered by the media, that it was all AI, and that Democrats cheat all of the time, there is a method to his madness. Clearly, and dangerously, what Trump is doing is laying the groundwork for rejecting the election results if he loses. If you can convince your supporters that thousands of people who attended a televised rally do not exist, it will not be hard to convince them that the election returns in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and elsewhere are “fake” and “fraudulent”.
      This is what destroying faith in institutions is about. This is what undermining democracy is about. This is what fascism is about.
      The former Colorado clerk Tina Peters, the first local election official to be charged with a security breach after the 2020 election as unfounded conspiracy theories swirled, was found guilty by a jury on most charges last night.Peters, a one-time hero to those denying that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, was accused of using someone else’s security badge to give an expert affiliated with the My Pillow chief executive, Mike Lindell, access to the Mesa county election system and deceiving other officials about that person’s identity, the Associated Press reports.Lindell is a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to “steal” the election from Trump. His online broadcasting site has been showing a livestream of Peters’ trial. Prosecutors said Peters was seeking fame and became “fixated” on voting problems after becoming involved with those who had questioned the accuracy of the 2020 presidential election results.The breach Peters was charged of orchestrating heightened concerns over potential insider threats, in which rogue election workers sympathetic to partisan lies could use their access and knowledge to launch an attack from within.Peters was convicted of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failing to comply with the secretary of state. She was found not guilty of identity theft, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation and one count of criminal impersonation.She will be sentenced on 3 October.Sea level rise will help create “more oceanfront property”, carbon pollution is only a problem once it starts causing “headaches and nausea” and we should be more worried about “nuclear warming” than global warming.Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s conversation on X, which Musk owns, last night featured several incoherent and baseless statements on the climate crisis, prompting both confusion and derision among environmental advocates.Bill McKibben, co-founder of the climate group 350.org, labeled it the “dumbest climate conversation of all time.”Trump, the Republican presidential nominee in this election, said that rising seas will help create “more oceanfront property” and complained that “people talk about global warming or they talk about climate change, but they never talk about nuclear warming,” in reference to potential nuclear war.During the often disjointed exchange, Trump also said it is a “disgrace” that Joe Biden’s administration hadn’t opened up the Arctic to oil drilling and baselessly claimed that “you have farmers that are not allowed to farm anymore and have to get rid of their cattle” because of climate edicts.Musk, meanwhile, said that he is “helping the environment” by making electric cars via Tesla but said that he didn’t want people to “vilify” the oil and gas industry that is driving the climate crisis and that the real dangers were, he felt, an increase in CO2 that will cause “headaches and nausea” and the world potentially running out of oil.“We don’t need to rush and we don’t need to like, you know, stop farmers from farming or, you know, prevent people from having steaks or basic stuff like that,” Musk said about the urgency of climate change. “Like leave the farmers alone.”Scientists are clear that the world needs to rapidly move away from fossil fuels to avoid worsening and disastrous climate impacts such as heatwaves, flooding and droughts.The exchange did little to assuage concerns that a second Trump term will only help accelerate dangerous global heating. More

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      Exonerated Central Park Five councillor to speak at Democratic convention – report

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      Yusef Salaam, a New York City councillor who was wrongly jailed for a notorious rape in the city’s Central Park, has reportedly been invited to address next week’s Democratic national convention in Chicago in a move that could highlight Donald Trump’s key role in the case and history of racially charged rhetoric.Salaam was one of the “Central Park Five”, a group of Black and Hispanic teenagers who were convicted of attacking and raping Trisha Meili, a 28-year-old investment banker, while she was jogging in April 1989.He could be joined at the convention by other members of the group, according to Semafor, which broke the story but said Salaam’s appearance had yet to be confirmed.Salaam served seven years but was later exonerated and released along with the other four after a convicted serial rapist and murderer, Matias Reyes, admitted to the crime, a confession confirmed by DNA evidence.The case became a major cause célèbre, largely due to an intervention by Trump, then an up-and-coming property magnate, who took out full-page adverts in four New York papers calling for the return of the death penalty at a time when the crime had captured media attention.The five defendants, who were all minors, had already been arrested, paraded in public and had their names and addresses published when Trump took out the advert.In a style that was to become familiar in his social media posts of a later era, the advert – carrying Trump’s signature – blared in block capitals: “Bring back the death penalty and bring back our police!”Trump, who did not specifically call for the execution of the five defendants, wrote: “I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyse or understand them, I am looking to punish them.”In a 2016 interview with the Guardian, Salaam said Trump’s high-profile intervention had been a major factor in the teens’ wrongful convictions.“He was the fire starter,” Salaam said. “Common citizens were being manipulated and swayed into believing that we were guilty.”Trump has declined to apologise for his perceived role in the wrongful convictions. After the men were awarded $41m in damages in a civil case in 2014, Trump wrote an article for the New York Daily News calling the award “the heist of the century”.He took a similarly hard line while he was president, telling journalists at the White House in 2019 that “you have people on both sides of that. They admitted their guilt.”He added: “If you look at some of the prosecutors, they think that the city never should have settled that case, so we’ll leave it at that.”His comments were triggered by the release of a four-part Netflix dramatisation of the case, When They See Us, directed by Ava DuVernay, which Kamala Harris – then a Democratic senator and presidential hopeful, and now vice-president and Trump’s opponent in the forthcoming presidential election – urged him to watch.Salaam won election as a Democrat representing New York’s Harlem district in November last year.Months before, Salaam trolled Trump after the former president was indicted by a Manhattan court on 34 felony charges – on which he was subsequently convicted – for document falsification relating to the payment of hush money to an adult film actor.“For those asking about my statement on the indictment of Donald Trump – who never said sorry for calling for my execution – here it is: Karma,” Salaam posted on X, then known as Twitter, in February 2023.Salaam’s proposed convention appearance follows attempts by Trump to focus on Harris’s racial identity. Two weeks ago, Trump falsely told the National Association of Black Journalists that the vice-president, who has mixed heritage, had only recently identified as Black after previously emphasising her Indian ethnicity.It also comes after the Republican nominee has been making efforts to woo Black voters. Mike Tyson, the former world heavyweight boxing champion and a prominent Trump supporter, told Semafor that the Central Park Five case played to an image of the former president as racist among Black celebrities.“The only thing they can say is that he’s a racist. Central Park Five,” he said. “Other than that, they can’t bring up anything else.” More