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      Elon’s politics: how Musk became a driver of elections misinformation

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      When Elon Musk took over as owner of Twitter, researchers and elections officials feared a rampant spread of misinformation that would lead to threats and harassment and undermine democracy.Their fears came true – and Musk himself has emerged as one of its main drivers.The tech billionaire has cast doubt on machines that tabulate votes and mail ballots, both common features of US elections. He has repeatedly claimed there is rampant non-citizen voting, a frequent Republican talking point in this election.Musk, the ultra-wealthy owner of Tesla and other tech companies, is scheduled to interview Donald Trump on Monday, where they are sure to find common ground on these election conspiracies. Musk is a vocal supporter of the former US president and current Republican nominee. He has restored the Twitter/X accounts of people banned under previous ownership, dismantling the platform’s fact-checking and safety features. Trump’s X account, which was suspended after the January 6 insurrection, was restored as well, though Trump has not returned actively to the platform.“Electronic voting machines and anything mailed in is too risky. We should mandate paper ballots and in-person voting only,” he wrote on X in July.Maricopa county recorder Stephen Richer responded, asking if he could give Musk a tour of the large Arizona county’s facilities and run through the mail voting processes.“You can go into all the rooms. You can examine all the equipment. You can ask any question you want. We’d love to show you the security steps already in place, which I think are very sound,” Richer said.It wasn’t the only time Richer has sought to correct election misinformation Musk had shared. He previously tried to fix misunderstandings of Arizona voter data and rules for proof of citizenship.Social media platforms overall have taken less aggressive stances on fact-checking election falsehoods after an ongoing campaign by Republican lawmakers and their allies to attack the ways information was flagged by elected officials and researchers and how platforms responded.“I think X really kind of sticks out as a place where that change has been striking, and for it to come from the very top kind of just shows how much of an issue it is,” said Mekela Panditharatne, senior counsel for the Brennan Center’s elections & government program.Musk shared a video that used an AI-generated voice for Kamala Harris, which raised concerns that it could fool some people into thinking it was real. Musk and the video creator defended it as parody.He has also written multiple times claiming that non-citizens are voting in US elections, which is illegal except in a few local elections. There are few instances of non-citizens voting, or even registering to vote. In late July, he shared a video of Elizabeth Warren talking about a pathway to citizenship for the millions of undocumented people living in the US. “As I was saying, they’re importing voters,” he said, a nod to “great replacement” theory.Grok, the platform’s artificial intelligence chatbot that Musk has billed as an “anti-woke” antidote to left-biased chatbots, has spread false information that ballot deadlines had passed in nine states, meaning the vice-president couldn’t get on the ballot in those places, which is untrue. Secretaries of state are urging Musk to fix this issue for the chatbot that doesn’t have election information guardrails that other chatbots, like ChatGPT, do.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It’s important that social media companies, especially those with global reach, correct mistakes of their own making – as in the case of the Grok AI chatbot simply getting the rules wrong,” Minnesota secretary of state Steve Simon told the Washington Post. “Speaking out now will hopefully reduce the risk that any social media company will decline or delay correction of its own mistakes between now and the November election.”Off the platform, a political action committee Musk created is mining personal information from voters in key states in what appears to users to initially look like a voter registration portal, CNBC reported. America Pac, a pro-Trump group backed by Musk’s enormous wealth, is targeting swing states voters. The data scraping is now being investigated by at least two states.Despite his endless claims about election fraud, Musk told the Atlantic this month he would accept the results of the 2024 election – with a caveat.“If there are questions of election integrity, they should be properly investigated and neither be dismissed out of hand nor unreasonably questioned,” he said. “If, after review of the election results, it turns out that Kamala wins, that win should be recognized and not disputed.” More

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      Trump and Vance are unmatched in ‘the Olympics of lying’, says Pete Buttigieg

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      The Republican presidential ticket of Donald Trump and JD Vance might be slipping in the polls, but remains unmatched in “the Olympics of lying”, according to transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg.The senior Democrat was responding Sunday, the final day of the Paris Olympics, to remarks by the Ohio senator criticizing Tim Walz for misstating his military service in an interview six years ago.The Minnesota governor, announced this week as running mate to Democratic candidate and vice-president Kamala Harris, served 24 years in the army national guard, but never in a combat zone, which he seemed to suggest in the 2018 interview.In an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Buttigieg assailed Vance, himself a former marine corps journalist, for disparaging Walz’s military record at a rally this week and moments earlier on the same show.“I watched that interview and watched JD Vance present himself as suddenly very particular about precision in speech and very concerned about honesty,” Buttigieg said.“He’s running with Donald Trump, somebody who has set records for lying in public life. He just gave a press conference where fact-checkers estimate that he told 162 distortions or lies. That, frankly, is just impressive in terms of being able to physically do that. It’s like the Olympics of lying.”It was quite the zinger from Buttigieg, a former intelligence officer in the US navy reserve who has established a reputation for eloquent takedowns of Republican political positions.“The fact a veteran wants to go out and disparage another veteran just goes against certainly everything I learned during my time in service,” he said.“The fact they have to go back to find a clip from 2018 to find the one time that he slipped up when he talks about the weapons of war that he carried and said something instead about carrying a weapon in war, it’s kind of an exception that proves the rule in terms of how hard you have to look to find Tim Walz saying anything that isn’t precise and accurate.”On State of the Union, Vance insisted he was not impugning Walz’s military service, but “the fact that he lied about his service for political gain”.“I think that’s what Tim Walz did. That’s what I was criticizing. And, yes, I do think it’s scandalous behavior,” he said.A statement from the Harris-Walz campaign on Saturday turned Vance’s earlier criticism around. “Governor Walz would never insult or undermine any American’s service to this country. In fact, he thanks Senator Vance for putting his life on the line for our country. It’s the American way,” it said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“He did handle weapons of war and believes strongly that only military members trained to carry those deadly weapons should have access to them, unlike Donald Trump and JD Vance who prioritize the gun lobby over our children.”Buttigieg, on CNN, also condemned Vance’s much-maligned commentary that senior Democrats were “a bunch of childless cat ladies”. As part of his clean-up effort for those remarks, Vance claimed Sunday he was not criticizing people for not having children, but for “being anti-child”.“I don’t know which part of that is worse, the lie that he just told when he says he never criticized people for not having kids, because of course he very much did, including Kamala Harris and me and a lot of other people, millions of Americans, in fact, who he disparaged as childless cat ladies,” said Buttigieg, who has two adopted sons with his husband.“The other part, just as troubling, is saying that anybody who disagrees with him is anti-child. It’s part of just who he is, right? He seems incapable of talking about a vision for this country in terms of lifting people up, or building people up, or helping people out.” More

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      The Guardian view on the politics of joy: Democrats are embracing the sunny side | Editorial

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      “Thank you for bringing back the joy,” Tim Walz told Kamala Harris in his first speech after agreeing to become her running mate. He has continued to invoke the emotion, describing himself and Ms Harris as “joyful warriors” against opponents who “try and steal the joy”. Donald Trump has attacked Ms Harris’s ready laughter, but the Democrats are embracing an upbeat coconut-and-brat-meme atmosphere while Republicans invoke American carnage.Rarely have two presidential campaigns had such contrasting moods. Asked by a reporter what made him happy, Mr Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, retorted that “I smile at a lot of things including bogus questions from the media”, and that he was “angry about what Kamala Harris has done to this country”. Mr Trump – along with other rightwing populists globally – has channelled fear and rage to extraordinary effect.“Visceral states and feelings appear at the forefront of the political conversation” in this era, writes Manos Tsakiris, director of the University of London’s Centre for the Politics of Feelings. Voters are less rational and more emotional than we like to believe. Feelings may also have different effects upon different parts of society. US research suggests that dissatisfaction with politicians is more likely to send white voters to the polls and minority voters to other forms of activism.In the past, Democrats have tried to counter lies and loathing with facts. Though fear of Mr Trump motivated voters in 2020, warnings about his return have not proved as effective. People can be indifferent or passive in the face of threats such as the climate crisis. (In contrast, deliberative democracy – such as citizens’ assemblies or community activism – can generate a sense of political agency and re-engage them.) Giving people something to fight for, not just against, may be potent. But there is more research on how emotions such as anger affect politics than there is on emotions such as hope.Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva beat Jair Bolsonaro’s dark vision of Brazil in 2022 with hope, and Rahul Gandhi walked the length of India with a message of love and solidarity, an appeal that cost India’s divisive prime minister, Narendra Modi, his parliamentary majority this year. In Britain, the joy of the Liberal Democrats’ successful election campaign bubbled over. But critiques of “cruel optimism” and “hopium” note that invoking positive emotions can sometimes encourage people to feel good about bad political choices. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos won the Filipino presidency in 2022 with a feelgood social media campaign glamourising his family and his father’s dictatorship.In the US, Ronald Reagan’s sunny “morning in America” advert won plaudits, but Hubert Humphrey’s “politics of joy” didn’t win the Democrat the presidency. For Ms Harris – like Humphrey, a vice-president aspiring to the top job – urging voters to get happy when they’re worrying about bills could be counterproductive. The wrongfooted Trump campaign appears to be pivoting towards attacking her record.Ms Harris seems to recognise the problem, tempering the buoyant mood by acknowledging that grocery prices are too high, for instance. But if a recession hits, striking the right note will be even tougher, and policy will be still more pressing. The Democrats are hoping for the best – but even in a short campaign, vibes will only carry them so far. More

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      ‘Maybe I’ve gotten worse’: Trump’s attempt at discipline unravels

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      His name was spelled out in bright lights reminiscent of a Broadway show. Donald Trump thanked God for sparing him from an assassin’s bullet. To thousands of devoted fans, the carefully stage-managed Republican national convention felt like the coronation of a man poised for victory over an ageing, ailing incumbent.But Trump’s long and grievance-filled address that night hinted at trouble to come. For months his US presidential election campaign had been praised as tighter, smoother and more professional this time around. Then, when Democrats upended the race by replacing Joe Biden with Kamala Harris as their nominee, the wheels came off.For the past three weeks the former president has been lashing out, pushing lies, hurling insults, trialling nicknames, trafficking in racism and trotting out nonsense as he struggles to regain the narrative from Vice-President Harris.“The campaign is disciplined; their candidate is not,” said Frank Luntz, a consultant and pollster who has a long track record of advising Republican campaigns. “Their candidate is single-handedly destroying his chance for re-election. This is the weakest Democratic nominee in terms of record in a long time but [Trump’s] insistence on making the attacks personal and vicious are blunting their impact and, in fact, backfiring on him.”Although Trump has amply demonstrated his inability to change, he seemed easier to rein in when times were good. The leaders of his third consecutive White House campaign, the veteran operatives Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, earned applause from Republicans as the former president steamrollered opposition during this year’s primary elections.The new sense of command and control seemed to hold as Trump, 78, held a consistent edge over 81-year-old Biden in opinion polls. The Republican nominee’s preposterous riffs about sharks and Hannibal Lecter on the campaign trail raised eyebrows but did nothing to blunt his momentum.Even criminal charges and convictions were rapidly turned into opportunities to raise money and galvanise his base. When Trump survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania last month, and responded by raising his fist and urging supporters to “fight”, headline writers asked: “Did Donald Trump just win the election?”Some wondered if the brush with death would produce a softer, more contemplative candidate. But seasoned Trump watchers pointed out that there have been many false dawns and, ultimately, Trump is always Trump. His 92-minute convention address in Milwaukee recycled old false claims and recriminations and was by the far the longest of any nominee in history.Three days later, everything changed. Bowing to pressure from fellow Democrats, Biden announced that he would not seek re-election and threw his weight behind 59-year-old Harris, around whom the party quickly coalesced. A Trump campaign that had been honed to target Biden’s age was suddenly wrongfooted and trying to define a new opponent. His running mate JD Vance described it as “a political sucker punch”.John Zogby, a pollster and author of Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read Polls and Why We Should, said: “The campaign was much more disciplined than last time and so disciplined that it had its message perfected, which was ‘Sleepy Joe’ and ‘Crooked Joe’. It was all based on Joe Biden. To a large degree Vance was correct when he said they were sucker-punched because this is a whole new situation.“Age and mental acuity are off the table. It’s all going to be about Kamala Harris’s record but she’s in a much better position to control that message than Biden would be. You do see Donald Trump flailing here and being reduced much more to those one-liners – and you wonder if people are getting tired of hearing them.”LaCivita and Wiles appeared to lose control of their candidate. Trump tossed around strange nicknames for his rival such as “Laffin’ Kamala Harris” and “Kamabla”. He unleashed a tirade on his Truth Social platform, describing her as too “low IQ” and “dumb” to debate him. His speeches have become increasingly unhinged.At a rally in Atlanta, he castigated Brian Kemp, the Republican Georgia governor whose support he needs in the swing state. Speaking to evangelicals in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump said: “Christians, get out and vote just this time. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”At a gathering of the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago, Trump turned on his interviewers and falsely questioned Harris’s mixed race heritage, saying: “She was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAnd at a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Thursday, Trump again demeaned Harris’s intelligence, falsely claimed that no one died at the US Capitol insurrection on 6 January 2021 and asserted he had a bigger crowd that day than Martin Luther King when he spoke at the 1963 March on Washington.The Republican also insisted that he continues to lead Harris but polls suggest otherwise as the Democratic nominee and her running mate, the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, ride a wave of voter energy and enthusiasm. She raised $310m in the month of July alone, comfortably ahead of Trump’s $138.7m.Luntz said: “Right now she’s the frontrunner. Right now I think Trump’s gonna lose because he’s incapable of sticking to a message about inflation or immigration. His administration is considered much more successful on the two issues that matter to people yet he’s now tied with or losing to the vice-president of that administration. Why is that? It’s he himself.”The withdrawal of Biden following his dismal debate performance in June did not take Republicans entirely by surprise. Speakers at the convention often referred to the “Biden-Harris” administration in their speeches and the Trump campaign had prepared anti-Harris videos to swap in just in case Biden stepped down sooner.Their central argument is that Harris carries the baggage of Biden’s biggest failures on border security – she was tapped to lead efforts to tackle the migration challenge – as well as inflation and foreign policy. It is a message that needs to be prosecuted with scalpel-like precision. But Trump has come at the problem with a jackhammer.Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist based in Columbia, South Carolina, said: “In the words of Britney Spears, oops! he did it again. While all these people want to remake who Donald Trump really is, he consistently shows us who he is and we should learn that old lesson from the south: there’s no education in the second kick of the mule.”The new Trump turns out to be the same old Trump. Reflecting on the assassination attempt during a recent rally in Minnesota, the former president commented: “They all say, ‘I think he’s changed since two weeks ago. Something affected him.’ No, I haven’t changed. Maybe I’ve gotten worse, actually.” More

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      Democrats’ joy is unconfined as Harris and Walz take upbeat message on tour

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      When Kamala Harris and the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, stepped onstage together for the first time on Tuesday, Philadelphia’s Liacouras Center glittered red, white and blue as Beyoncé’s Freedom blared and the crowd pulsed.Walz, who was plucked from relative obscurity just hours when he accepted the vice-president’s offer to join the Democratic presidential ticket, placed his hand over his heart, almost bewildered by the reception. He waved. He bowed. He pointed to the crowd, and back to Harris. He grinned and laughed and bowed again.When it was his turn to speak, Walz turned to Harris: “Thank you, Madam Vice-President, for the trust you put in me but, maybe more so, thank you for bringing back the joy.”It was a remarkable moment in a remarkable election cycle that would have been unimaginable just a few weeks ago, when the Democratic party appeared all but resigned to the prospect of a second, and even more devastating defeat to Donald Trump in November.But then Joe Biden abandoned his bid for re-election, and Democrats, with unusual speed and certainty, embraced his vice-president as their standard-bearer. Harris’s ascendance – and her choice of Walz as a partner, which drew plaudits from Democrats across the ideological spectrum – have transformed the party.“All of a sudden, an election that felt like it was slipping away from us, we are now in command,” said Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist and the relentlessly optimistic author of the substack, Hopium Chronicles. “In every way imaginable I would much rather be us than them.”​The Philadelphia debut was the first stop of a multi-day, battleground state tour through the Rust belt – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan – and the Sun belt – Arizona and Nevada – designed to introduce “Coach Walz” and energize Americans for the three-month sprint to election day. (Stops in North Carolina and Georgia were postponed as tropical storm Debby churned through the mid-Atlantic last week.)Along the way, Harris and Walz cast themselves as “joyful warriors”. Unlike Biden’s campaign, which had framed the contest as an existential choice between a president who would defend US democracy and a former president who would destroy it, Harris has sought to present the race as a choice between her vision for a “brighter future” and Trump’s “backward agenda”. At events, crowds chant the campaign’s rallying cry: “We’re not going back!”“Do we want to live in a country of freedom, of compassion, of rule of law?” Harris said in the rural Wisconsin city of Eau Claire on Wednesday. “Or a country of chaos, fear and hate?”View image in fullscreenLater that day, the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, introduced Harris to a crowd of thousands at an airport hangar outside Detroit, declaring: “We need a strong woman in the White House. It’s about damn time.” If elected, Harris would be the first female president.At a union hall the next day, Shawn Fain, president of the United Automobile Workers, said Americans faced a “‘which side are you on’ moment” – and he was siding with the “badass woman who stood with us on the picket line”.At a rally near Phoenix, Harris drew her largest crowd yet, more than 15,000, according to an estimate by the campaign. Speaking ahead of Harris, John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona, asked his fellow Republicans and independents to “please join me in putting country over party and stopping Donald Trump”.The introductory tour concluded on Saturday evening at an arena in Las Vegas, where thousands braved triple-degree heat to see the Democratic ticket. There Harris marveled at the rise of their new Democratic ticket: a daughter of immigrants raised by a single mother in Oakland and a “son of the Nebraska plains” who grew up working on a farm.“Only in America is it possible that the two of them would be running together all the way to the White House,” she said.Recent polls reflect a stunning turnaround for the Democratic ticket, now locked in a highly competitive battle for the White House. Harris’s weeks-old campaign has regained lost ground with younger and more diverse voters who were turned off by the 81-year-old president. She has also significantly narrowed – and in several new surveys overtaken – Trump’s lead in the battleground states Democrats need to win.Last week, the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election, adjusted its outlook in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada – three states that seemed to be slipping out of reach forDemocrats – from “leans Republican” to “toss-up”.Harris maintains that they are the “underdogs”. And in an email to supporters on Friday, the representative Pramila Jayapal, acknowledged the excitement but cautioned against taking anything for granted.“That’s the most dangerous thing we could possibly do right now,” the Washington Democrat wrote.Harris raised $36m in the first 24 hours after naming Walz as her running mate, adding to her record-shattering haul in the past three weeks, since Biden stepped aside. On Wednesday the Harris campaign said supporters had purchased $1m-worth of camouflage hats with Harris/Walz in orange print, an apparent nod to the Midwest Princess hat sold by the pop star Chappell Roan.The boom in fundraising has been matched by a surge in volunteer sign-ups, while down-ballot Democrats, organizers and activists report similarly dramatic increases in donations and support.On social media, young people shared their excitement for the new Democratic ticket with coconut tree memes and big dad energy jokes.“We’re obsessed with coconut,” a young volunteer told Harris, during a visit to a campaign office in north Phoenix on Friday.View image in fullscreen“Some people say it’s just vibes, but you know what vibes are important because vibes open up the door for the wider conversation,” said Cliff Albright, a co-founder of the Atlanta-based Black Voters Matter Fund, which has noticed a groundswell of support for the Democratic ticket since Harris became the nominee.“While we need to warn about the challenges and the dangers that Trump poses,” he said, “we also agree that it’s OK to laugh, right? It’s OK to bring some joy and some culture into into this voter mobilization.”As Harris and Walz crisscross the country, they are also racing against Republicans’ efforts to brand her running mate as a “far-left radical”. In their telling, Walz’s folksy persona conceals a liberal governing record that Democrats view as a blueprint for the country.Yet in Walz, the Nebraska-born former social studies teacher and high school football coach, many Democrats believe they finally have a credible ambassador to rural America, where white voters who once helped elect Barack Obama have since abandoned the party in favor of Trump.“Rural voters have entered the chat,” said Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic party, who supported Walz’s selection. “This new ticket really does expand the map for Democrats beyond the swing states and the east and west coast.”Nebraska is not usually considered a swing state in the traditional sense and it is not a part of the Democrats’ battleground state tour. But in a quirk of the electoral process, a single electoral college vote from the state’s second congressional district could be decisive in a close race. Kleeb expects a visit after the Democrats’ convention later this month.But Kleeb said Walz does not fit neatly in a political box, rather he embodies the midwestern ethos of neighborliness and, to borrow the governor’s phrase, minding your damn business.“In Minnesota, we respect our neighbor’s personal choices,” Walz said in Wisconsin. “Don’t like a book? Don’t read it!”View image in fullscreenRepublicans are deeply skeptical that Walz’s folksy demeanor will translate into support from rural voters who have shown fierce loyalty to the former president.“There’s no way in the world, despite [Walz’s] supposed affinity with blue-collar white voters, that he’s going to get any of those people,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican political consultant and pollster. “They’re Trumpies.”While Democrats have enthusiastically embraced Walz, Republicans too have celebrated, convinced Harris made a grave tactical mistake in passing over Josh Shapiro, the popular governor of swing state Pennsylvania.“She had a blindingly obvious right choice if she wanted to beat Donald Trump and she went the opposite direction,” Ayres said. “She could have thrown a bone to the Trump-skeptical Nikki Haley Republican voters, and she refused to do that.”Amanda Stewart Sprowls, a lifelong Republican from Tempe, Arizona, who backed Nikki Haley in the primary and will not vote for Trump in November, had hoped Harris would choose Shapiro. With Walz on the ticket, she’s not sure what she will do in November. “Your more informed voters in suburbia are just a little shocked and disappointed,” she said.Stewart Sprowls is not sure she can support someone who has championed the very progressive policies she believes are driving people toward Trump’s movement. But she intends to continue engaging with the Harris campaign, pushing for something “tangible” – like a commitment to name a Republican or independent to her cabinet – that might persuade her to vote for a Democrat for the first time in her life.“I think both camps need us,” she said. “And I think they both need to move to the center, for sure. But I think she has the greater potential to do it.”There were other criticisms. Walz ​was forced to address scrutiny over how he presented his military service, while Harris is under pressure to ​a​llow for more extensive questioning of her record and agenda.Two events were interrupted by activists protesting Biden’s handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict. In Detroit, Harris affirmed their right to protest, but when the shouting didn’t stop, she replied curtly: “If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”In Phoenix, she tried a different tack, telling them: “I have been clear: Now is the time to get a ceasefire deal, and get the hostages home.”View image in fullscreenIn Michigan on Wednesday, Harris met briefly with the leaders of the “uncommitted” campaign – an anti-war movement that could prove influential in the state – who said in a statement afterward that they “found hope” in the vice president’s willingness to open a dialogue with them.From his Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump on Thursday attempted to seize the national attention that has eluded him since the vice-president’s elevation, a phenomenon the former president’s top pollster called the “Harris Honeymoon” and predicted would be short-lived.In a rambling, hour-long press conference, Trump lashed out at his new rival, calling Harris “barely competent” amid a litany of outlandish claims and outright falsehoods. The former president also brushed off questions about his relatively light footprint on the campaign trail as “stupid”.There was one potentially significant development, however: Trump committed to participating in a presidential debate with Harris on 10 September.In a brief exchange with reporters later that day, Harris reaffirmed her participation in the ABC debate and said she would be “happy” to discuss additional ones raised by Trump.On Friday night, Trump held a rally in Montana, a state he won handily four years ago that is home to a critical Senate contest. Still testing nicknames for Harris, Trump vowed: “We’re going to evict crazy Kamala.”Meanwhile, Trump’s running mate, the Ohio senator JD Vance, was dispatched to follow the Harris-Walz tour, hosting a series of rival events near their stops. On Wednesday, the candidates nearly crossed paths when the senator’s plane landed on the same tarmac in Wisconsin as Air Force Two. Vance, flanked by an entourage of staffers and aides, approached Harris’s plane, moments after she climbed into her motorcade.“I just wanted to check out my future plane,” he told a group of assembled reporters. He also taunted Harris for not yet holding a news conference or sitting for an unscripted interview, as questions swirl about her vision for the economy, the US-Mexico border and her foreign policy.In brief exchanges with the press, Harris told reporters she would release a policy platform later this week, and would schedule a sit down interview by the end of the month.View image in fullscreenAt an event in Detroit, Vance waved off the notion that the excitement surrounding Harris’s campaign would translate electorally.“I think most people in our country, they can be happy-go-lucky sometimes, they can enjoy things sometimes,” he said, “and they can turn on the news and recognize that what’s going on in this country is a disgrace.”In the final stretch before election day, Democrats hope their message of uplift will serve as an antidote to the darker themes animating Trump’s campaign. The former president, who opened his first term in office with a sinister depiction of the country as “American carnage”, has threatened to use a second term to seek “retribution” on his political enemies.“All the things that make me mad about those other guys and all the things they do wrong, the one thing I will not forgive them for is they tried to steal the joy from this country,” Walz said in Detroit. “But you know what? You know what? Our next president brings the joy. She emanates the joy!” More

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      Latinos in once true-blue Texas border zone are getting on the Trump train

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      Anna Holcomb is preparing her Ram pickup truck for the big event on Saturday, festooning it in Make America Great Again (Maga) flags that flap restlessly in the searing hot Texas wind.Holcomb is gearing up for a show of strength by Donald Trump supporters in the Rio Grande valley, the region of south Texas that flanks the Mexican border. From 8am on Saturday morning, thousands of similarly decked-out vehicles will form convoys along a 300-mile stretch, from Brownsville on the Gulf of Mexico all the way north to Eagle Pass.They will converge on the fair grounds in Holcomb’s small town of Zapata, where the number of cars is expected to exceed the local 5,000-strong population. There will be a carne asada cook-off, prizes for the most lavishly decorated Maga vehicle, and a joining of hands in prayers for Trump.The convoys are known as “Trump Trains”, and though they have appeared in other states they have taken off in the Rio Grande valley. They symbolize the political drama that is unfolding in this overwhelmingly Hispanic community that has for generations been umbilically tied to the Democratic party: the seemingly unassailable rise of Trump.Presidential election results in Zapata county starkly tell the story. In 2012, the Republican candidate Mitt Romney was trounced by Barack Obama 28% to 71%.When Trump made his first bid for the White House in 2016 he barely improved on Romney’s record, attracting 33% of Zapata’s votes to Hilary Clinton’s 66%. But then in 2020 he sent shockwaves through the valley, winning the county by 53% to Joe Biden’s 47%.It was the first time in 100 years that a Republican presidential candidate had won Zapata. This rugged community of cattle ranches dotted with prickly pear cactus plants, which is 95% Hispanic and has been unswervingly Democratic since 1920, had fallen for the Apprentice star turned US president.View image in fullscreenHolcomb, 58, is part of the wind of change blowing through the valley. She is an American-born Hispanic woman whose mother immigrated from Old Guerrero on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande river.Holcomb, who worked in the local oil business, has been politically active since she turned 18. The politicians she canvassed for were invariably Democratic – it was the only party that ever fielded candidates.“We believed the Democratic party was the party for the working class. That’s what I understood it to be,” she said.Then Trump came along. She vividly recalls his 2015 speech after descending the escalator of Trump Tower announcing his presidential bid, in which he talked about some Mexican immigrants being “rapists” and others bringing in drugs and crime. Within minutes of the speech ending her phone began ringing as several of her first cousins – she estimates she has more than 40 in the Zapata area, all of Mexican descent – shared with her their alarm.She had a different response. “I liked his speech. I liked that he said he was going to be stricter with the influx of immigrants. He got me thinking, my country first. I am American. Sure I have Hispanic blood, but I am red, white and blue American.”Her cousins told her that anyone in Zapata who voted for Trump was crazy given his disdain for Mexicans. She replied: “Call me crazy, I’m voting for him.”She did vote for Trump in 2016, though she did so surreptitiously, telling no one. “Back then it felt like a sin to be a Republican,” she said. By 2020, she felt confident enough to join a Trump Train that did a victory loop around town after the county results came in.Now Holcomb is preparing to fight for Trump again and she expects him to win even more handsomely in Zapata this time. She guesses that her 40-plus first cousins are evenly divided this year between those who are pro-Trump and those who still virulently oppose him.Holcomb’s story is repeating itself throughout the Rio Grande valley. Trump has marched through the area, winning 14 out of 28 counties in 2020 that previously had been presumed Democratic.An opinion poll from April conducted by the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation (TxHPF) found that Trump was leading his then presumptive rival Biden in South Texas by 44% to 36%. That was an astounding statistic given the region’s previously lock-tight Democratic record, its Hispanic roots and Trump’s often unrestrained hostility towards immigrants from Mexico and Central America.View image in fullscreen“Trump is doing better in south Texas and the Rio Grande valley than he is in the big urban counties, and that’s of note because historically Texas Democrats relied on the RGV as their reservoir of votes,” said Mark Jones, a professor of political science at Rice University.Analysts caution against drawing national conclusions from the valley, given its unique fusion of Texan and Mexican history and culture. Local people tend not to call themselves Hispanic, Latino, or Mexican American – they identify as “Tejanos”.It would be equally foolhardy, however, to ignore Trump’s surge. Hispanic Americans are among the fastest-growing voting bloc in the country, the Pew Research Center has found, accounting for 36 million eligible voters – 15% of the total – in November.Nationally, although most Latino voters continue to vote Democratic, the margins are falling – from 71% Democratic support in 2016 to 63% in 2020. The rate at which Trump is making inroads varies greatly by state, turning the country into a patchwork of contrasting loyalties.Biden did well in 2020 among Latino voters in Arizona, who were critical to his victory. His success came on the back of years of intensive grassroots organising by Democratic groups. They harnessed the backlash to the harsh anti-immigrant bill SB 1070 passed by state Republicans a decade earlier.By contrast, Trump did well in Florida, building on the longstanding Republican affinities of Cuban Americans around Miami. Trump also capitalised on voters’ feelings towards immigration, but in this case he did so in a diametrically opposed direction – he emphasised his own harsh attitude towards undocumented immigrants, an argument which played well with Cuban émigrés. .That the same issue – immigration – could polarise Latino voters in two key states cautions against making firm political assumptions. It is becoming ever clearer that America’s Hispanic population is not the left-leaning monolith that some Democratic strategists wish it to be.It is a demographic with rich and varied traditions, convictions and aspirations that are increasingly becoming reflected in diverse electoral choices. As Jones put it: “What’s happening in south Texas tells us that some Hispanic areas that the Democratic party has depended on, that were dark blue, may no longer be reliable.”The Rio Grande valley is a frontier community that feels cut off from the world around it. It belonged to Mexico until Texas gained independence in 1836, and only joined the US with annexation in 1848.Spanish remains the first language of many of the valley’s US citizens. A drive through the region passes the usual relentless repetition of corporate behemoths like Walmart and McDonald’s, but also local outlets like El Tigre Food Store and El Pueblo Express Mart.View image in fullscreenBy the side of the road, crumbling Spanish-style haciendas are painted blue and ochre, bleached under a brutal sun. Military Highway, which tracks the river, runs alongside miles of border wall, some of it constructed noisily by Trump (“Build the wall! Build the wall!”), other portions erected more quietly under Obama.In the sky above Zapata, a large white blob hangs over the blackbrush. It is a blimp – an aerial radar system on the lookout for drug and human trafficking.A joke told about the valley is that its people have only two political affiliations: Democratic and conservative Democratic. The region has strong religious and socially conservative traditions: residents tend to be pro-gun, anti-abortion, strongly on the side of law enforcement given the number of jobs locally in border security and policing, and pro-fossil fuel industries.In the Walmart in Rio Grande City, many of the customers don’t have a vote – some are Mexican citizens who have hopped over the river to shop, others undocumented immigrants. Of those who can vote, many expressed enthusiasm for Trump, others were full of disappointment about the Biden-Harris administration.View image in fullscreen“I’m for Trump, sure,” said Gilberto Maldonado, a 21-year-old electrician who described himself as a Democrat. “Economically, Trump’s better for the country, better for everybody.”Stella Solis, 65, whose family has lived for at least five generations in the valley, said she was with Trump too. “I don’t like what Biden has been doing, all these people coming over the border from Mexico. Trump would give more help to people, when Biden has done nothing for us.”Carmen Castillo, 44, a registered Democrat, is not going to vote. Speaking with the Guardian in Spanish, she explained she would never vote for Trump because of his lack of morals, but she had the same criticism as Solis about the past four years, saying that the current administration “hasn’t done anything for us”.Abel Prado, a Democratic operative in the valley, told the Guardian that since Biden stepped aside last month to make way for Kamala Harris there had been a leap in confidence. Within days of Biden’s announcement the inbox of the Hispanic civic engagement group he co-founded, Cambio Texas, had filled up with offers to volunteer in registering people to vote.View image in fullscreen“There’s renewed enthusiasm, a new general swagger of the people I work with in this space,” he said.Opinion polls conducted in key battleground states since the switch to Harris suggest that what Prado is detecting in the valley may be part of a wider shift. A survey of 800 Latino voters released this week by Somos Pac based on seven swing states has Harris leading Trump commandingly by 55% to 37%.Prado himself is one of the rarer breed of progressive Democrats in south Texas. He said his personal politics were “extremely radical” but he keeps many of his views private because it could harm his ambitions to build a broad coalition.“People think that because this place is a Democratic stronghold they can walk into any meeting with piercings all over their nose and rainbow hair and fit in just fine. The exact opposite is true.”He said that Trump’s projected image as a strongman resonates in the valley among the children of immigrants who have had to make their own way in life and for whom family is supremely important. But Prado also thinks the most regrettable aspect of Trump’s impact in the valley is that it has got people to think that “just because somebody else enjoys something, they took it from you”.View image in fullscreenIt’s also divided the community, setting residents against each other despite their common heritage. “You would think that having such strong Mexican roots would give people empathy towards those who come after them. But there’s one thing that people in the Rio Grande valley love doing, and that’s pulling up the ladder after they’ve reached the top.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPrado has heard such sentiments from his oldest brother, a hardcore Trump supporter. He recalls a conversation with him at a barbecue early on in Trump’s presidency in which his brother began ranting about “illegal immigrants” and the need to “send them all back”.Prado’s parents were born in Mexico and entered the US illegally. They gained citizenship under Ronald Reagan’s 1986 amnesty.Prado said to his brother: “Bro, who do you think you are? We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for people like that. Have you forgotten your parents, your aunts and uncles, all these countless people who came here illegally?”He hasn’t spoken to his brother since 2019.The change that Trump has brought to the valley is etched into the individuals who now follow him. Literally so, in the case of Marcus Canales, who about a year into Trump’s presidency tattooed his arms with patriotic designs. “We the people” now dominates one arm, “In God we trust” the other.Canales, 56, was a committed Democrat until his late 40s, just like his parents before him. His grandparents crossed the river into the US as undocumented immigrants and his parents, born in Texas, were passionate Democrats after Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal gave them hope during the Great Depression.Yet Canales is now solidly in Trump’s camp, to an extent, he said, that would make his late parents “turn in their graves”. The change came with Trump’s 2016 campaign when Canales was drawn to the real estate developer because “we saw him talking as a businessman, not a politician”.View image in fullscreenCanales started asking questions, he said, about how it was that Democrats have run the valley for generations and yet it remains among the poorest parts of the country. A 2017 report found that 68% of children in the valley live in high-poverty neighbourhoods, compared with 18% statewide.Like many valley residents the Guardian spoke to, Canales has bought the line peddled repeatedly by Trump that as president he presided over the “greatest economy the world has ever seen” (a claim rated “false” by factcheckers). “Look at what Trump did for our economy,” Canales said.“He concentrated on the energy sector, and they started drilling, and jobs started popping up all over the place. And all of a sudden a lot of people are getting very good-paying jobs.”Canales complained by contrast about the economy under Biden and the high cost of food and goods. The inflation rate has in fact declined dramatically since its 2022 peak of 9.1% and now stands at 3%, yet opinion polls conducted for the Guardian show most voters wrongly believe it is still rising.Canales said that the Biden-Harris administration was “printing money, devaluing our dollar, you have inflation in the valley and we’re earning less, we’re getting poorer”.Religion is another critical factor. Opinion polls suggest that Trump’s popularity in Texas is especially high among born-again Christians.According to the TxHPF poll, Trump held a clear lead within this religious community over Biden of 61% to 18%. Evangelical preachers have led the charge, urging their worshippers to back Trump.Jorge Tovar, pastor of Jordan River church in Laredo, is busy organising next month’s Trump Train. He was a Democrat until 2018, when he said he converted to Trump’s side after a policy clash at Laredo city council over LGBTQ+ rights.The council had proposed a new ordinance that would have banned discrimination at work and in housing based on sexual orientation and gender identity; Tovar and other religious leaders successfully blocked the measure.“Ever since then, the Lord woke me up to get involved,” Tovar told the Guardian. “He said I had been neglectful in my civic duty, voting without even researching the candidate. He showed me that they are pushing God out with their laws, but we can keep God in Texas if we go back to the America that we had when Trump was president.”View image in fullscreenThe rise of Trump across the Rio Grande valley presents Democratic leaders and activists with a conundrum. In recent years hopes have risen that Texas – in which no Democrat has won a statewide race since 1994 – might be turned purple, based on its changing demographics.But if Trump continues to grow in the Rio Grande valley all hope of that dies. The Democrats would lose a vital repository of votes upon which statewide success depends.Beto O’Rourke has articulated the dream of a purple Texas perhaps more forcefully than anybody, having come close to defeating the Republican US senator Ted Cruz in 2018. (He then ran for governor in 2022 and was handily beaten by the incumbent Greg Abbott.)“I think Democrats have historically taken the Rio Grande valley for granted,” O’Rourke told the Guardian. “Republicans saw an opportunity, they’re hungry, and they’ve gone after it, investing money and running strong candidates with resources behind them.”He added: “For the first time in my lifetime you are seeing real contested elections between Republicans and Democrats in the valley, and it’s painful for my party.”O’Rourke hopes that events here will act as a wake-up call for the national Democratic party to listen more carefully to the hopes and concerns of local people. “National Democrats have tended to talk to Hispanic communities about being pro-immigration, when here in the valley there’ll be families who have been on this side of the Rio Grande river for seven generations, and they’re like, ‘What the hell are you talking to me about immigration for, what I care about is the economy and world-class public schools’.”View image in fullscreenPrado of Cambio Texas agrees. He criticises Democratic party strategists from Austin or Washington DC of coming to the valley with their own sets of priorities without listening to the actual wants and needs of local people.“They parachute people in from outside, draw their salaries, lose the races, and then they go back to wherever they came from – leaving us here to pick up the pieces.”Such disconnect poses an existential threat for Jonathan Gracia, who is running as the Democratic party’s candidate in a high-priority contested race for a Texas House seat in district 37. The makeup of the constituency means Gracia should have the edge over his Republican rival, but that lead is threatened by Trump’s soaring popularity.Gracia reckons that he’s knocked on about 4,000 doors in the district in the past month in hardcore Democratic-Hispanic neighborhoods. By his estimation, about 7% of those households, all of them longtime Democrats, told him they were voting for Trump – a proportion that if it spilled over into his race would wipe out his advantage.His challenge is to bring those 7% back into the Democratic fold. “I need to win their hearts and minds,” he said.To do that, he begins by listening to people’s concerns. He hears complaints about rising prices and the economy, which he responds to by stressing that new jobs are being created in the valley with the building in Brownsville of launch facilities for Elon Musk’s SpaceX and a new liquid natural gas (LNG) export plant which Gracia promotes against the protests of environmentalists.In terms of his messaging, he avoids any discussion of social issues such as abortion or LGBTQ+ rights. “That’s a loser,” he said. Instead, he stresses that he is pro-business, pro the creation of good-paying jobs, pro-law enforcement.View image in fullscreenIt’s a formula that few in the Democratic party in New York or Chicago or San Francisco would recognise. But it’s worked in the valley for decades.The question is: how long can it hold?Back in Zapata, Anna Holcomb is not only dusting off her truck before next month’s Trump Train, she’s also preparing to campaign for a couple of Republican candidates standing for county seats. It’s the first time in her lifetime that Republicans have run for local office.It’s characteristic of the valley’s complex politics that Holcomb remains a registered Democrat. She said she doesn’t even like Trump: “I couldn’t stand him as a TV personality, every time he came on I would switch the channel. I still don’t like his personality, his arrogance, his mouth.”But she’ll be voting for him in November. “I vote for him because I believe he’s the guy that can get the job done.” More

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      Republicans are on the offensive, and ‘Tampon Tim’ Walz is to the rescue | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Watch out world, Republicans are on the offensive. Still smarting from being called “weird”, it looks like a bunch of GOP strategists got in a room this week to workshop devastating nicknames for Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz. After combining their dozen or so braincells, they came up with a winner: Tampon Tim. The name has been trending on social media as people on the right desperately try to make #TamponTim stick.Apart from the fact that it alliterates, what prompted this moniker? Well, in 2023 Walz signed a wide-ranging Minnesota education bill that, along with a number of other provisions, mandated public schools offer free menstruation products in their bathrooms.To anyone with an ounce of common sense, this sounds like a great thing to do. Tampons are expensive! And “period poverty” – the inability to afford menstruation supplies – is a serious problem in the US. According to a 2021 study commissioned by Thinx, a period product company, 38% of US teenage students who menstruate said that they “often or sometimes cannot do their best schoolwork due to lack of access to period products”. A 2019 edition of the same study also found that more 84% of students in the US have either missed class time or know someone who missed class time because they did not have access to period products.For a long time, period poverty was an overlooked problem; in recent years, however, there has been a wave of legislating to address it. According to the Alliance for Period Supplies, 28 states and Washington DC have passed legislation to help students have free access to period products while in school. So, while the bill Walz signed was commendable, it wasn’t radical in any way – it was part of a nationwide trend to combat a serious problem.I’ve got to hand it to the Republicans, it’s quite difficult to turn “implemented a mainstream policy making kids’ lives easier and helping them stay in school” into something negative, but it seems they are always happy to try. Predictably the right has been using the bill as a way to attack, not just Walz, but trans people.“As a woman there is no greater threat to a woman’s health than leaders … who support putting tampons in men’s bathrooms in public schools. Those are radical policies Tim Walz supports,” a Trump campaign spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt,told Fox News on Tuesday.The actual legislation, I should be clear, does not explicitly state that tampons should be put in men’s bathrooms. It says that free menstrual products “must be available to all menstruating students in restrooms regularly used by students in grades four to 12”. But the very idea that a policy might be inclusive and help trans students seems to drive Republicans up the wall.The “Tampon Tim” attacks aren’t just born out of a hatred of trans people, they also reflect the Republicans’ disdain for women. There are memes with Walz’s head on a tampon and showing him menstruating into his jeans – all of which are meant to convey the idea that Walz is feminine. Which, to many men on the right, seems to be the most insulting thing you can call a man. Last week, for example, the Fox News host Jesse Watters wondered why any self-respecting man would vote for a woman. “[T]o be a man and then vote for a woman just because she’s a woman is either childish – that person has mommy issues – or they are just trying to be accepted by other women,” Watters said. “I heard the scientists say the other day that when a man votes for a woman, he actually transitions into a woman.” Ah yes, that is exactly what the scientists say.While Republicans may be having fun with their silly nickname, I’m not sure it’s going to help them in the polls. If anything, it will help Walz. As Hillary Clinton posted on Twitter: “How nice of the Trump camp to help publicize Gov. Tim Walz’s compassionate and common-sense policy of providing free menstrual products to students in Minnesota public schools.”Republicans’ juvenile tampon jokes also reinforce how Walz represents a very different model of masculinity than the one Trump and JD Vance embody. In 1999, for example, when Walz was a high school teacher and football coach in rural Minnesota, he helped students create the school’s first Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA). Walz has said he thought it was important for him to be the adviser to the GSA because “it really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married.” He wanted to show, in other words, that masculinity didn’t have to be toxic, that a real man had empathy.All of this to say: thanks for the nickname, guys! Rather than being the insult they think it is, Tampon Tim is a compliment. One that reinforces the fact that the GOP is suffering from a severe case of Toxic Schmuck Syndrome.New York’s oldest person said her secret to longevity is staying single“That’s why I am living … because I didn’t get married,” Louise Jean Signore, 112, told reporters this week. “I’d rather be single. When you are married, you have a lot of trouble.” The fact that Signore doesn’t drink or smoke probably also has something to do with it.Outcry on social media prompts new IUD insertion guidelinesWho says that complaining online is a waste of time? After TikTok users recently shared their painful experiences with getting intrauterine devices inserted, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued updated guidance on how doctors should share options for pain management with their patients. This is one small step towards taking women’s pain more seriously.Bulgaria’s parliament bans LGBTQ+ ‘propaganda’This mirrors regressive legislation passed in Russia and Hungary in recent years.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe gender police consistently target female athletes of colour“More women from the Global South or developing countries are affected by sex testing in sports,” the executive director of a sports advocacy organization told the AP in the wake of the Imane Khelif “controversy”. The AP further notes: “International sporting federations don’t tend to promote an understanding of diversity in sex and gender identity and that gender tests have often targeted female athletes of color who don’t conform to typically Western, white ideals of femininity.”Israel minister says starvation of millions in Gaza might be ‘justified and moral’While extremist Israeli leaders are fantasizing about starving 2 million people to death and defending rape, Harris has said she doesn’t support an Israel arms embargo. It is becoming clear that, just like Joe Biden, Harris has no red line when it comes to Palestinian suffering.Women in China spread secret, female-only languageNushu, sometimes called “script of tears”, is a secret language that goes back centuries in China.A political candidate who told voters not to be ‘weak and gay’ lost her raceValentina Gomez, the Missouri Republican who released homophobic campaign videos, lost her bid to become secretary of state by an embarrassing margin.The week in pawtriarchyBehind their prickly demeanor, cats are big softies. New research suggests cats will grieve after the death of fellow pets. They’ll even grieve dogs. Cats, it would appear, have more empathy than the average Republican politician. More

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      Biden, Harris to attend first joint event since he quit campaign race – live

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      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to attend an event together in Maryland next Thursday, according to the White House.No further details were given. Ordinarily, this would not be significant news, but so much has changed in the last three weeks and this will be their first appearance together in person since the US president announced on Sunday, July 21 that he would no longer seek re-election.Minutes later, he endorsed his vice president, Harris, to take up the baton and rise to the top of the Democratic ticket for the election this November against the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.Biden dialed in to a boisterous public happening that week when Harris went to what had formerly been the Biden-Harris election campaign headquarters in Delaware and talked to staff, as it became transformed into the Harris for President campaign – and is now the Harris-Walz campaign, since she chose the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate. Biden was effusive about his anointed successor.Now the two will make their first public appearance together in person since that seismic shift in the election. We’ll update you when we know a time, place and nature of the event next Thursday.On Sunday, “CBS News Sunday Morning” will air an interview with President Biden, discussing the president’s decision not to seek reelection.“When I ran the first time, I thought of myself as being a transition president,” Biden told CBS News. “I can’t even say how old I am – it’s hard for me to get it out of my mouth.”“Although it’s a great honor to be a president, I think I have an obligation to the country to do what I– most important thing you can do. And that is — we must, we must, we must defeat Trump,” he said.Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential election on July 21, and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, immediately after.Read David Smith’s analysis on Biden’s decision to withdraw for more background ahead of the interview this weekend:With Kamala Harris’s rally in Phoenix this evening still more than two hours away, footage of the crowds gathered inside and out of the venue have begun circulating on social media.The Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, where Harris will speak at 5pm local time, can hold 20,000 people.The number of Harris-Walz campaign rally attendees has made headlines recently – in contrast to the quieter crowds attending rallies for Joe Biden just weeks ago. They’ve also attracted attention from former president Trump, who has complained about the media supposedly exaggerating crowd sizes for his Democratic opponent, at his expense.Ahead of today’s rally in Phoenix, the Harris-Walz campaign released a new ad playing up Harris’s strict views on immigration.“Kamala Harris has spent decades fighting violent crime,” the ad says. “As a border state prosecutor, she took on drug cartels and jailed gang members for smuggling weapons and drugs across the border. As vice-president, she backed the toughest border control bill in decades. And as president, she will hire thousands more border agents and crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking. Fixing the border is tough, so is Kamala Harris.”The ad foreshadows the tone Harris may take as she takes the stage in Phoenix this evening – especially as Republicans criticize her record on immigration as vice president. For more on Harris’s views on immigration, read Lauren Gambino’s analysis:The justice department on Friday announced criminal charges against three executives at the voting machine company Smartmatic in connection to an alleged 2016 bribery scheme in the Philippines.The indictment, filed in federal court in south Florida, comes as the company has faced false accusations it was involved in rigging the 2020 election. Smartmatic was only used in Los Angeles county in 2020. Elon Musk, who has become a large spreader of misinformation, immediately shared news of the indictment on X.Prosecutors alleged three executives, including the president of the company, Roger Alejandro Pinate Martinez, bribed the chairman of the Commission on Elections of the Republic of the Philippines “to obtain and retain business related to providing voting machines and election services for the 2016 Philippine elections and to secure payments on the contracts, including the release of value added tax payments.” The scheme allegedly involved “at least $1m in bribes,” the justice department said in a statement.“Regardless of the veracity of the allegations and while our accused employees remain innocent until proven guilty, we have placed both employees on leaves of absence, effective immediately,” the company said in a statement. “No voter fraud has been alleged and Smartmatic is not indicted. Voters worldwide must be assured that the elections they participate in are conducted with the utmost integrity and transparency. These are the values that Smartmatic lives by.”The indictment comes as the company has several defamation lawsuits pending against several conservative news outlets, including Fox and Newsmax. It settled a suit with One America News Network and also has sued Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Mike Lindell for defamation.Alpha Kappa Alpha, the historic Black sorority that Kamala Harris joined in college, has created a political action committee, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission dated Friday, the New York Times reports.Alpha Kappa Alpha was the first Black sorority formed in the United States. Harris became a member while enrolled at Howard University.The Pac is the first in the sorority’s history, spokeswoman Carisma Ramsey Fields told The Times.Read more about the power of Black sororities from Guardian reporter Helen Sullivan:Make America Great Again, Inc, a political action committee dedicated to re-electing former president Donald Trump, has shared reporting from Fox News today on Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s record on policing:After police murdered George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, Walz signed a number of bipartisan police reforms, including a ban on certain types of chokeholds and a ban on “warrior style” police training, which emphasizes the use of force.For more coverage of Walz’s views on policing, read Gloria Oladipo’s reporting in The Guardian:Here’s a look at where things stand:

      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to attend an event together in Maryland next Thursday, according to the White House. This will be their first appearance together in person since the US president announced on July 21 that he would no longer seek re-election.

      Newly released body cam and dashboard camera footage from local Pennsylvania police officers on 13 July shows the moments right before the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The footage, obtained by CNN through a public records request, shows the moment one police officer climbed up to the roof of the building overlooking rally, and saw the shooter just before the firing began.

      A man who stood in front of a gallows and attacked police with poles on January 6, 2021 on Capitol Hill has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, the second longest sentence delivered in the riot. According to prosecutors, who sought 262 months, or 21 years, for David Dempsey, he climbed over rioters like “human scaffolding,” as well as used “his hands, feet, flag poles, crutches, pepper spray, broken pieces of furniture, and anything else he could get his hands on” as weapons against police, NBC reports.

      The US district judge overseeing the 2020 federal election interference case against Donald Trump has agreed to delay the case by several weeks after special counsel Jack Smith’s team requested an extension earlier this week. Smith’s office asked the court for extra time on Thursday, as the prosecutors said that they had not finished assessing how the US supreme court’s immunity decision issued last month.

      Texas governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, has signed an executive order ordering public hospitals in Texas to collect and report information on the immigration status of patients they treat, in order to assess the expenses of providing medical care of undocumented immigrants. Texas congresswoman Sylvia Garcia called it “unacceptable”.

      Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s rally in Detroit, Michigan was the duo’s largest campaign rally to date, featuring over 15,000 voters, the campaign announced today. It added that the crowd broke the campaign’s own record of more than 14,000 voters in Philadelphia on Monday.

      FiveThirtyEight’s new poll shows Harris leading Donald Trump by 2.1 points in the national average. Before Harris entered the race late last month, Joe Biden, who was then running for re-election, before dropping out and handing the torch to Harris, “was behind [Trump] by a significant number, not just at the national popular vote, but in battleground states.
      On Friday, Joe Rogan, the popular podcaster who has been criticized for using racist and sexist language in the past, as well as espousing Covid-19 misinformation, appeared to take a dig at Trump.Rogan said Robert F Kennedy Jr – who has become widely known as a vaccine conspiracy theorist – is “the only one that makes sense to me.”After drawing the ire of Trump who wrote on Truth Social, “It will be interesting to see how loudly Joe Rogan gets BOOED the next time he enters the UFC Ring??? MAGA2024,” Rogan took to X and wrote:
      “For the record, this isn’t an endorsement. This is me saying that I like RFKjr as a person, and I really appreciate the way he discusses things with civility and intelligence. I think we could use more of that in this world. I also think Trump raising his fist and saying “fight!” after getting shot is one of the most American fucking things of all time.”
      Nick Fuentes, the 25-year old white supremacist and Holocaust denier who once dined with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, has revoked his support for the former president.Referring to the loose network of white nationalist activists, alt-right and internet trolls known as Groypers, Fuentes wrote on X:
      “Tonight I declared a new Groyper War against the Trump campaign. We support Trump, but his campaign has been hijacked by the same consultants, lobbyists, & donors that he defeated in 2016, and they’re blowing it. Without serious changes we are headed for a catastrophic loss.”
      He added that he plans to present a “detailed statement of the facts, a mission statement, and a plan of action” on Monday.In 2022, Democrats, civil rights organizations and some Republicans criticized Trump for dining with Fuentes, who has a history of spewing violently misogynistic rhetoric, in addition to homophobic and Islamophobic views.Newly released body cam and dashboard camera footage from local Pennsylvania police officers on 13 July shows the moments right before the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.The footage, obtained by CNN through a public records request, shows the moment one police officer climbed up to the roof of the building overlooking rally, and saw the shooter just before the firing began.The officer, who was hoisted up to the roof by his colleague, is seen quickly dropping down after he sees the shooter. The officer is then seen running to the other side of the building to get a look at the roof, as the first three shots can be heard on the officer’s dashboard camera, followed by five more.In total, eight shots were fired by the shooter on 13 July, which resulted in Trump’s ear being grazed, one spectator killed and two others were injured.In the videos, the officer can be seen running back to his car to grab his rifle, and shouting at his colleagues to not put their heads up. “He’s right there,” he tells them. At this point, government snipers had killed the shooter, according to CNN.Other footage obtained by CNN shows local police officers expressing frustration and confusion, and complaining that they had previously told the Secret Service to put officers near the building the gunman fired from.“I told them that fucking Tuesday” one officer says. “I told them to post fucking guys over here”. When another officer asked who he told that to, he responded: “The Secret Service.”A man who stood in front of a gallows and attacked police with poles on January 6, 2021 on Capitol Hill has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, the second longest sentence delivered in the riot. According to prosecutors, who sought 262 months, or 21 years, for David Dempsey, he climbed over rioters like “human scaffolding,” as well as used “his hands, feet, flag poles, crutches, pepper spray, broken pieces of furniture, and anything else he could get his hands on” as weapons against police, NBC reports. According to documents reviewed by the outlet, prosecutors also wrote:
      “Though Dempsey has pled guilty only for his assaults on Detective [Phuson] Nguyen and Sergeant [Jason] Mastony, his violent assault on other officers defending the Capitol was relentless: swinging pole-like weapons more than 20 times, spraying chemical agents at least three times, hurling objects at officers at least ten times, stomping on the heads of police officers as he perched above them five times, attempting to steal a riot shield and baton, and incessantly hurling threats and insults at police while rallying other rioters to join his onslaught.”
      In a bizarre attempt to repeat the Republican attack line that Kamala Harris refuses to speak to the press, JD Vance wrote:
      “If we could convince Kamala Harris that illegal aliens are actually journalists trying to ask her questions she’d build that border wall in five seconds.”
      On Thursday, prior to departing from Detroit, Michigan on Air Force Two, a reporter asked Harris whether there is an update on when she will sit down for her first interview since being the Democratic presidential nominee.In response, Harris said:
      “I’ve talked to my team. I want us to get an interview scheduled before the end of the month.”
      The US district judge overseeing the 2020 federal election interference case against Donald Trump has agreed to delay the case by several weeks after special counsel Jack Smith’s team requested an extension earlier this week.Smith’s office asked the court for extra time on Thursday, as the prosecutors said that they had not finished assessing how the US supreme court’s immunity decision issued last month, which awarded former presidents some immunity from criminal prosecution, would narrow their case.“The Government continues to assess the new precedent set forth last month in the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v United States, including through consultation with other Department of Justice components,” prosecutors wrote in the filing requesting the extension.The joint status report that was previously due by 9 August is now due by 30 August, according to the court order, and the status conference hearing, previously scheduled for 16 August, has been postponed until 5 September.Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to attend an event together in Maryland next Thursday, according to the White House.No further details were given. Ordinarily, this would not be significant news, but so much has changed in the last three weeks and this will be their first appearance together in person since the US president announced on Sunday, July 21 that he would no longer seek re-election.Minutes later, he endorsed his vice president, Harris, to take up the baton and rise to the top of the Democratic ticket for the election this November against the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.Biden dialed in to a boisterous public happening that week when Harris went to what had formerly been the Biden-Harris election campaign headquarters in Delaware and talked to staff, as it became transformed into the Harris for President campaign – and is now the Harris-Walz campaign, since she chose the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate. Biden was effusive about his anointed successor.Now the two will make their first public appearance together in person since that seismic shift in the election. We’ll update you when we know a time, place and nature of the event next Thursday.Hello again US politics blog readers, it’s a fascinating news day even if a little less frenzied than most recent ones. The Democratic and Republican campaigns have rallies coming up later today and there is a lot of polling information around and other stories moving. We’ll keep you abreast as it happens.Here’s where things stand:

      Texas governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, has signed an executive order ordering public hospitals in Texas to collect and report information on the immigration status of patients they treat, in order to assess the expenses of providing medical care of undocumented immigrants. Texas congresswoman Sylvia Garcia called it “unacceptable”.

      Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s rally in Detroit, Michigan was the duo’s largest campaign rally to date, featuring over 15,000 voters, the campaign announced today. It added that the crowd broke the campaign’s own record of more than 14,000 voters in Philadelphia on Monday. The presumed Democratic nominees for president and vice president, respectively, addressed a gathering of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union.

      FiveThirtyEight’s new poll shows Harris leading Donald Trump by 2.1 points in the national average. Before Harris entered the race late last month, Joe Biden, who was then running for re-election, before dropping out and handing the torch to Harris, “was behind [Trump] by a significant number, not just at the national popular vote, but in battleground states.

      Meghan McCain, political commentator and daughter of the late US Senator for Arizona, John McCain, shared a video of Donald Trump comparing his crowd sizes to Martin Luther King Jr’s and then she simply posted the message: “Vice president Harris is going to win.”

      Harris and Walz plan to highlight reproductive rights – the Republicans’ war on choice and Democrats’ efforts to codify choice – and immigration policies, which have been a mess, when they hold campaign events in Arizona tonight and Nevada tomorrow. More