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      Kamala Harris says she is ‘honored’ after earning enough votes to become Democratic presidential nominee – live

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      Kamala Harris has won enough votes from Democratic delegates to win the party’s nomination for president.The announcement was made by Jamie Harrison, the chair of the Democratic national committee, during a call with supporters.The online voting process ends on Monday, but Harris has crossed the threshold to have the majority of delegates’ votes.The vice president, in a Harris for President campaign call, said:
      I am honored to be the presumptive Democratic nominee for President of the United States.
      Speculation about the Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro has been whipped into a frenzy after Cherelle Parker, the mayor of Philadelphia, tweeted a video in support of “@KamalaHarris for president and @JoshShapiroPA for VP!”Some have argued that the video was created to celebrate a yet-to-be-made announcement that Shapiro, an early frontrunner to be Harris’s running mate, has been formally invited to complete the Democratic ticket.But a member of Parker’s staff told the New York Times that the video was released as a show of support for Shapiro, who the mayor hopes will be chosen, not as a celebration.Elon Musk’s political action committee has been using user data to help Donald Trump win the presidential election in November, according to a CNBC investigation published on 2 August.According to reporter Brian Schwartz, ads from the America Pac, a group co-founded by Musk in spring, show a young man lying in bed, getting a text with a video of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. When the young man replies asking how he can help he’s met with a link to the America Pac.If the person who visits the Pac’s site is from a battleground state like Michigan, Arizona or Nevada, instead of being directed to a voter registration page for their state, they are directed to a page where they fill in personal information like their address and phone number.
      So that person who wanted help registering to vote? In the end, they got no help at all registering. But they did hand over priceless personal data to a political operation,” Schwartz writes. “The combination of owning a social media company that gives him an enormous platform to push his political views, and creating a PAC with effectively unlimited resources, has made Musk, for the first time, a major force in an American presidential election.
      Read the entirety of Schwartz’s article here.Here’s more from Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, who described Donald Trump’s attacks on Kamala Harris’s racial identity as “shameful”.Shapiro, speaking after an event in Cheney, said:
      I think it’s offensive. And it is more of the same from Donald Trump. He attacks other people based on what they look like, or who they pray to, who they love, the way they were raised. He tries to divide Americans, because quite frankly, he struggles with uplifting all Americans.
      The criminal case charging Donald Trump with plotting to overturn his 2020 election defeat resumed after a nearly eight-month pause on Friday, after a supreme court opinion last month narrowed the scope of the prosecution.The case has been formally sent back to the US district judge, Tanya Chutkan, who is expected to decide in the coming weeks which aspects of the indictment constitute official acts and which do not.Last month in a significant victory for Trump, the court ruled that former presidents are entitled to broad immunity for official actions taken as president.Judge Chutkan will have to decide how to apply the high court’s opinion to the remainder of the case.That includes whether key allegations in the case – including that Trump badgered his vice-president, Mike Pence, to reject the official counting of electoral votes showing that he had lost the election – can remain part of the prosecution or must be discarded, according to AP.The Secret Service takes “full responsibility” for the events that led up to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump last month, the acting director of the agency said on Friday.In a press conference in Washington, Ronald Rowe, who replaced Kimberly Cheatle after she stood down from her position as director of the service after Trump was shot, said: “This was a failure.”He said agents should have had better cover of the vantage points, from where a 20-year-old gunman ended up firing shots at the former president while he spoke at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last month.The gunman, Thomas Crooks, fired several shots from a rifle after positioning himself on a warehouse roof that Rowe admitted “was not far” from the stage where Trump was speaking. Crooks was killed by government counter-snipers. Rowe said agents should have had “eyes” on that position beforehand.“We should have had better coverage on that roof line,” he said.The agency is conducting an internal investigation and Rowe said disciplinary action would be taken if necessary, and procedures will be changed.The sentencing for Hunter Biden’s firearms case, in which he was found guilty of three felonies, has been set for 13 November – just eight days after the November election.Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden, is the first child of a sitting president to be convicted of a felony. He was found guilty by a jury in Wilmington, Delaware of lying on a gun application form when buying a Colt Cobra 38 Special revolver in 2018 by not disclosing his drug addiction, and then illegally owning the gun for 11 days, before his then girlfriend, the widow of his late brother Beau, threw it in a garbage bin.The charges carry a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and fines of $750,000, although such punishments are rare for first time offenders.Kamala Harris’s campaign has described the moment she secured enough votes from Democratic delegates to win the party’s nomination for president as “historic” in a “critical” election year with “sky-high stakes”.Harris has unified the party and generated “unprecedented enthusiasm from across the broad and diverse coalition that sent her and President Biden to the White House,” a statement from the campaign said, adding:
      Today’s milestone comes on the heels of a groundbreaking $310 million July fundraising haul – the best grassroots fundraising month in presidential history, with two-thirds coming from first-time donors.
      Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison has released the following statement after Kamala Harris secured enough votes to win the Democratic presidential nomination:
      In the span of just a few weeks, Vice-President Kamala Harris continues to break records – and today is no different. With historic momentum and a groundswell of support, Vice-President Harris has officially met the threshold, securing a majority of the delegates she needs to receive the Democratic nomination on Monday.
      With the support of more than 50% of all delegates just one day into voting, vice president Harris has the overwhelming backing of the Democratic party and will lead us united in our mission to defeat Donald Trump in November.
      But I want to be clear – there is still time for delegates to cast their ballots. I encourage every single delegate across the country to meet this moment and cast their ballot so that we head into our convention in Chicago with a show of force as a united Democratic party.”
      Upon being asked for his reaction to JD Vance comparing him to a “really bad impression of [Barack] Obama”, Pennsylvania’s governor Josh Shapiro, who is reported to be one of Kamala Harris’s top contenders for vice-president, said:
      Barack Obama was probably our most gifted orator of my time, so that’s kind of a weird insult …
      I’ll say this about JD Vance: it’s really hard being honest with the American people when you’re not being honest with yourself. He is the most inorganic candidate I think I have ever seen …
      This guy is not exactly off to a good start. It is clear that Trump really has buyer’s remorse. So, if he wants to sling insults in my direction, which I’m not even sure is an insult, let him do it. Bring it on. I’ll be ready for whatever JD Vance throws my direction.”
      After securing enough votes to win the Democratic presidential nomination, Kamala Harris took to X, saying: “This campaign is about people coming together.”
      I am honored to be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States. I will officially accept the nomination next week.
      This campaign is about people coming together, fueled by love of country, to fight for the best of who we are.
      Kamala Harris’s campaign has accused Donald Trump of being “too scared to debate” after the former president questioned why he should participate in a debate.Trump, in an interview with Fox Business, was asked if he regretted debating Joe Biden in June. Trump replied:
      If I didn’t do the debate, they’d say, ‘Oh, Trump’s you know, not doing the debate.’ It’s the same thing they’ll say now. I mean, right now I say, why should I do a debate? I’m leading in the polls, and everybody knows her. Everybody knows me.
      In response, the Harris campaign’s co-chair, Cedric Richmond, said:
      Donald Trump needs to man up. He’s got no problem spreading lies and hateful garbage at his rallies or in interviews with right-wing commentators. But he’s apparently too scared to do it standing across the stage from the Vice President of the United States.
      He added:
      Since he talks the talk, he should walk the walk and – as Vice President Harris said earlier this week – say it to her face on September 10. She’ll be there waiting to see if he’ll show up.
      Kamala Harris told supporters that “we are going to win this election” and that it will “take all of us”.“We believe in the promise of America, the promise of freedom, opportunity and justice, not just for some, but for all,” she said.
      We each face the question: what kind of country do we want to live in? Do we want to live in a country of freedom, compassion and rule of law, or a country of chaos, fear and hate? The beauty of our democracy is that we each, every one of us has the power to answer that question.
      Kamala Harris noted that it was the “tireless” work of the Democratic party’s delegates, state leaders and staff that was “pivotal in making this moment possible”.“Your dedication cannot be overstated,” she said.
      We love our country, we believe in the promise of America, and that’s what this campaign is about.
      Harris said she would officially accept the party’s nomination next week once the voting process ends, but that she was “happy” that she has enough delegates to secure it.
      Later this month, we will gather in Chicago, united as one party, where we’re going to have an opportunity to celebrate this historic moment together.
      Kamala Harris thanked the Democratic National Committee chair, Jaime Harrison, after he announced that she had secure enough votes from delegates to become the party’s nominee for president.Harris said she was “excited” for the future, but that the party has got “a lot of work to get there”. “It’s good work, we like hard work,” she told supporters in a call.This is a “people-powered campaign”, Harris said, as she acknowledged that she would not have reached this point without the party’s support and trust, for which she said she was “deeply grateful”.Kamala Harris has won enough votes from Democratic delegates to win the party’s nomination for president.The announcement was made by Jamie Harrison, the chair of the Democratic national committee, during a call with supporters.The online voting process ends on Monday, but Harris has crossed the threshold to have the majority of delegates’ votes.The vice president, in a Harris for President campaign call, said:
      I am honored to be the presumptive Democratic nominee for President of the United States.
      The mayor of a Louisiana city near the state’s border with Texas abruptly resigned from her post days before authorities jailed her on suspicion of raping a boy while she served in office.Misty Roberts became the first woman to be elected as mayor of DeRidder in 2018, and she was well into her second term in the position when she handed in her resignation – with immediate effect – to the local city council on Saturday.The letter did not provide a reason for Roberts’s decision. But the day before, Louisiana state police had begun investigating an allegation that Roberts engaged in “sexual relations” with a minor who was too young to be able to legally provide consent, according to a news release from the agency.Investigators said they interviewed the alleged victim as well as one other child. Both confirmed Roberts “had sexual intercourse with one juvenile victim while employed as mayor”, the state police statement said.Read the full story here: Louisiana mayor arrested on child rape accusations after abrupt resignationThe Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, in the Punchbowl News interview, was asked whether he was disappointed in the selection of the Ohio senator JD Vance as the Republican party’s vice-presidential nominee.“It’s not my job to tell the president who he ought to run,” McConnell replied, adding:
      With regard to Sen. Vance … yeah, we have a different point of view.
      Without directly criticizing Donald Trump or Vance, McConnell said the foreign policy doctrine Vance and others in his party believe in is “nonsense”, adding:
      I mean, even the slogans are what they were in the 30s – ‘America First’.
      Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, has compared Joe Biden’s proposed supreme court reforms to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.McConnell, in an interview with Punchbowl News published this morning, accused Biden of trying to undermine the high court.
      That’s what some people were trying to do January 6 – to break the system of handing an administration from one to the next. We can have our arguments, but we ought to not try to break the rules.
      Biden earlier this week unveiled a series of sweeping changes to the supreme court, including the introduction of term limits for justices and a constitutional amendment to remove immunity for crimes committed by a president while in office.In response, McConnell said the term limits proposed will end up “dead on arrival” in Congress.Kamala Harris’s campaign said that they will be hosting a call with “some special guests” at 12.34pm ET.The call will be livestreamed on the Democratic National Committee’s YouTube page.It remains to be seen if Harris herself will tune into the call, as well as who the special guests will be. More

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      ‘We have to be voting biblically’: the Courage Tour rallies Christians to get Trump in office

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      By 9am on Monday, hundreds of worshipers who had gathered under a tent in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, were already on their feet. Praiseful music bumped from enormous speakers. The temperature was pushing 90F (32C).The congregants had gathered in north-western Wisconsin for the Courage Tour, a travelling tent revival featuring a lineup of charismatic preachers and self-styled prophets promising healing, and delivering a political message: register to vote. Watch, or work, the polls. And help deliver the 2024 election to Donald Trump.Serving as a voter registration drive and hub for recruiting poll workers, it was no mistake that the Courage Tour came to Wisconsin just three months ahead of the presidential election in November. The tour had already visited three other swing states: Georgia, Michigan and Arizona.Heavy-hitting Maga organizations – including America First Policy Institute, TPUSA Faith and America First Works – had a presence outside the tent. Inside, headlining the event was Lance Wallnau, a prominent figure in the New Apostolic Reformation – a movement on the right that embraces modern-day apostles, aims to establish Christian dominion over society and politics and has grown in influence since Trump was elected president in 2016.“‘Pray for your rulers,’ that’s about as far as we got in the Bible,” said Wallnau, setting the tone for the day, which would feature a series of sermons focused on the ideal role of Christians in government and society. “I think what’s happened is over time, we began to realize you cannot trust that government like you thought you could trust, and you can’t trust the media to tell you what’s really happening,” he exclaimed.What followed in Wallnau’s morning sermon were a series of greatest hits of the Maga right: January 6 (not an insurrection), the 2020 election (marred by fraud) and Covid-19 (a Chinese bioweapon).Many of the attendees had learned of the event from Eau Claire’s Oasis church – a Pentecostal church whose congregants were already familiar with the movement’s goal to turn believers into activists with a religious mission.“This is wonderful,” said Cyndi Lund, an Oasis churchgoer who attended the four-day event. “I teach a class on biblical citizenship – the Lord put in my heart that we have to be voting biblically, and if nothing else, we have a duty in America to vote.”According to the preachers who sermonized on Monday, the correct biblical worldview is a deeply conservative one. The speakers repeatedly stated their opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights and inclusion, ideas that were elaborated on in pamphlets passed around the crowd and on three large screens facing the audience. (“Tolerance IS NOT A commandment,” read one poster, propped up in front of the pro-Trump Turning Point USA stall outside the tent.)After Wallnau spoke, Bill Federer, an evangelist who has written more than thirty books weighing in on US history from an anti-communist and rightwing perspective, offered a brief and often intensely inaccurate, intellectual history of the US and Europe. During his talk, Federer dropped references to the villains of his historiography – among them Karl Marx, Fidel Castro, the German philosopher Hegel and, “a little closer to home”, the political theorist of the New Left, Saul Alinsky. The crowd, apparently already versed in Federer’s intellectual universe, groaned and booed when Federer mentioned Alinsky.Federer also railed on “globalists”, tapping into the longstanding antisemitic idea of a shadowy cabal led by wealthy Jewish people who dictate world events.“Globalists,” Federer said, “are giving money to LGBTQ activists to get involved with politics.”It would be up to God-fearing Christians with a biblical worldview to push back against “wokeism”, by influencing what New Apostolic Reformers refer to as the “seven mountains” of society: religion, family, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, and, most important at the Courage Tour, government.The stakes, emphasized many of the speakers, couldn’t be overstated.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“What we’re up against aren’t people,” said Mercedes Sparks, speaking on the topic of the secularization of US life. “These are spirits.” Sparks made clear her explicit goal – shared by the other speakers on the tour – of bringing Christianity into politics and government. But despite invoking an intense form of Christian nationalism, the speakers at the Courage Tour repeatedly decried the label as a smear.“This whole idea of Christian nationalism, it’s kind of interesting, right?” said Sparks, who claimed the term amounts to a form of persecution against Christian Americans. “This term that’s being thrown around, that I really think is designed to shame Christians into not voting and not being engaged like any other group that makes up America.”By the end of the day, the speakers had warmed up the crowd for the afternoon’s natural conclusion: a call to get involved.Joshua Caleb, a speaker at the event who described himself as a former Republican opposition researcher, called on attendees to join his organization, The Lion of Judah – a group which, according to its website, aims to unleash “the ROAR of Christian Voters across America” and urges members to “fight the fraud” by becoming election workers. Event organizers handed out flyers provided by the Trump-aligned America First Works and the evangelical group Faith and Freedom, urging pastors to help their congregants get registered to vote before the November election.Not all attendees were prepared for the speakers’ political, and often dire, message.“It’s too intense for me,” said Kahmara Kelly, who is 20 years old and recently joined the Oasis church. “My body just doesn’t like the tension that could come with it, and the conflict, so I just try avoiding politics.” At times, Kelly left the tent for a breath of air.“Not gonna lie, I was ready to just walk away,” Kelly added. More

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      Harris says campaign ‘is about two different visions for our nation’; Trump faces criticism from Republicans for VP race comments – live

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      Here’s a wrap-up of the day’s key events so far:

      Kamala Harris’s campaign team has met with six potential vice-president contenders, NBC reports. On Thursday, the outlet reported that according to two sources familiar with the matter, the six contenders are Minnesota governor Tim Walz, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, Illinois governor JB Pritzker, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, Arizona senator Mark Kelly and rransportation secretary Pete Buttigieg.

      The Senate will vote on Joe Biden’s judicial nominations once senators return from recess in September, C-Span’s Craig Caplan reports. The nominations include those of Jeannette Vargas for the US district court judge position of southern New York, as well as Adam Abelson for the US district court judge seat for Maryland.

      Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor Josh Shapiro has cancelled his weekend fundraisers in the Hamptons, according to reports. In a post on X, NBC reporter Allan Smith cited spokesperson Manuel Boder saying, Shapiro’s “trip was planned several weeks ago and included several fundraisers for his own campaign committee”.

      In a new tweet on Thursday, Kamala Harris wrote: “This campaign is about two different visions for our nation.” She went on to add, “Ours if focused on the future. Donald Trump’s is focused on the past. We’re not going back.”

      Chuck Schumer introduced a bill in the Senate today to declare explicitly that presidents do not have immunity from criminal conduct, overriding last month’s supreme court ruling that Donald Trump has some immunity for his actions as president. The No Kings Act, which would apply to presidents and vice-presidents, has more than two dozen Democratic co-sponsors.

      A New York appeals court has denied Donald Trump’s challenge to a gag order in his hush-money criminal case. The state’s mid-level appellate court rejected Trump’s argument that his conviction “constitutes a change in circumstances” that warrants lifting the restrictions.

      New Hampshire’s Republican governor, Christopher Sununu, has called on fellow Republicans to “stop the trash talk” in a new New York Times op-ed. Sununu, who has won four elections in New Hampshire, wrote on Thursday: “The path to victory in November is not won through character attacks or personal insults.”
      We’re now pausing our live coverage of the US election campaign. You can read all our latest US elections coverage here:And if you want to stay up to date via your email inbox, you can sign up to our free election newsletter, The Stakes, here:Joe Biden has declared the prisoner swap between Russia and the US a “feat of diplomacy”. His statement followed the releases of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US marine Paul Whelan. Both are US citizens accused of espionage by Russian authorities. Gershkovich and Whelan were freed in exchange for people held across seven different countries.The president said:
      This is a powerful example of why it’s vital to have friends in this world whom you can trust and depend upon. Our alliances make Americans safer.
      As my colleague Anna Betts reported: “The swap is likely to be considered a political coup for Biden in the waning months of his presidency, and a blow to Donald Trump, who has claimed on the 2024 campaign trail that he would free Gershkovich if re-elected.”Read more of Anna’s story on Biden’s reaction to the release and what it took to get this deal done here.Away from the US election campaign, Kamala Harris’s office has released a readout of her call with Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Alexei Navalny, after Russia released 16 people in a prisoner exchange.Harris told Navalnaya she welcomed the release and would continue to stand with people fighting for freedom in Russia and elsewhere in the world. She also praised the courage of Navalnaya, who has vowed to continue her husband’s work after he died in a Russian penal colony in February.Russia recently issued an arrest warrant for Navalnaya, imposing a two-month detention order on grounds that she participated in an “extremist” group.Earlier today, Navalnaya welcomed the prisoner exchange and said “every released political prisoner is a huge victory and a reason to celebrate”.But, she stressed: “We still have to fight for: Daniel Kholodny, Vadim Kobzev, Alexei Liptser, Igor Sergunin. We will do everything we can to secure their release. Freedom for all political prisoners!”You can read about the latest developments on that story here:Here’s a wrap-up of the day’s key events so far:

      Kamala Harris’s campaign team has met with six potential vice-president contenders, NBC reports. On Thursday, the outlet reported that according to two sources familiar with the matter, the six contenders are Minnesota governor Tim Walz, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, Illinois governor JB Pritzker, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, Arizona senator Mark Kelly and rransportation secretary Pete Buttigieg.

      The Senate will vote on Joe Biden’s judicial nominations once senators return from recess in September, C-Span’s Craig Caplan reports. The nominations include those of Jeannette Vargas for the US district court judge position of southern New York, as well as Adam Abelson for the US district court judge seat for Maryland.

      Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor Josh Shapiro has cancelled his weekend fundraisers in the Hamptons, according to reports. In a post on X, NBC reporter Allan Smith cited spokesperson Manuel Boder saying, Shapiro’s “trip was planned several weeks ago and included several fundraisers for his own campaign committee”.

      In a new tweet on Thursday, Kamala Harris wrote: “This campaign is about two different visions for our nation.” She went on to add, “Ours if focused on the future. Donald Trump’s is focused on the past. We’re not going back.”

      Chuck Schumer introduced a bill in the Senate today to declare explicitly that presidents do not have immunity from criminal conduct, overriding last month’s supreme court ruling that Donald Trump has some immunity for his actions as president. The No Kings Act, which would apply to presidents and vice-presidents, has more than two dozen Democratic co-sponsors.

      A New York appeals court has denied Donald Trump’s challenge to a gag order in his hush-money criminal case. The state’s mid-level appellate court rejected Trump’s argument that his conviction “constitutes a change in circumstances” that warrants lifting the restrictions.

      New Hampshire’s Republican governor, Christopher Sununu, has called on fellow Republicans to “stop the trash talk” in a new New York Times op-ed. Sununu, who has won four elections in New Hampshire, wrote on Thursday: “The path to victory in November is not won through character attacks or personal insults.”
      Kentucky’s governor Andy Beshear has canceled a stop in western Kentucky, according to his office, KFVS reports.According to his office, Beshear was supposed to visit the Jackson Purchase Distillery on Friday. With the cancellation, lieutenant governor Jacqueline Coleman will visit the distillery instead.No official reason for the cancellation was given.Beshear is widely speculated to be among the finalists for Kamala Harris’s vice-president pick.Harris is set to announce her running mate by next Tuesday.Kamala Harris’s campaign team has met with six potential vice-president contenders, NBC reports.On Thursday, the outlet reported that according to two sources familiar with the matter, the six contenders are Minnesota governor Tim Walz, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, Illinois governor JB Pritzker, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, Arizona senator Mark Kelly and transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg.According to a source speaking to NBC, Shapiro met with Harris’s vetting team on Wednesday. Harris herself was not present, the source said.NBC further reports that two sources said Kelly met with Harris’s vetting team on Tuesday afternoon and that according to his aide, Kelly was “off campus” from the Senate floor.The Senate will vote on Joe Biden’s judicial nominations once senators return from recess in September, C-Span’s Craig Caplan reports.The nominations include those of Jeannette Vargas for the US district court judge position of southern New York, as well as Adam Abelson for the US district court judge seat for Maryland.The uncommitted movement is demanding the Democratic national convention allow a representative to speak on Israel’s deadly war on Gaza.The Guardian’s Melissa Hellman reports:The Uncommitted National Movement has announced a number of demands in the run-up to the Democratic national convention later this month, part of an effort to use its voting power to influence Kamala Harris and the Democratic party’s stance on Israel’s war in Gaza.In a press call on Thursday, movement leaders demanded that the DNC allow Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, an American physician who’s worked in Gaza, to speak at the convention about the humanitarian crisis that she witnessed firsthand. They have also requested that an uncommitted delegate be given five minutes to speak at the convention, and for Kamala Harris to meet with movement leaders about their concerns.Uncommitted leaders say that hearing from Haj-Hassan will help the Democratic party and Harris make informed policy decisions on Gaza, where more than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed since the 7 October attack on Israel by Hamas, according to health officials.For the full story, click here:Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor Josh Shapiro has cancelled his weekend fundraisers in the Hamptons, according to reports.In a post on X, NBC reporter Allan Smith cited spokesperson Manuel Boder saying, Shapiro’s “trip was planned several weeks ago and included several fundraisers for his own campaign committee”.“His schedule has changed and he is no longer travelling to the Hamptons this weekend,” Bonder added.Shapiro is widely speculated to be among the finalists of Kamala Harris’s vice-president picks. Harris is expected to announce her running mate by Tuesday and is set to hold a rally in Philadelphia next week.In a new tweet on Thursday, Kamala Harris wrote:
      “This campaign is about two different visions for our nation.
      Ours if focused on the future. Donald Trump’s is focused on the past.
      We’re not going back.”
      Harris’s tweet comes after the vice-president remained unfazed following Donald Trump’s comments at the NABJ conference on Wednesday in which he questioned her racial identity.Responding to Trump, Harris called his behavior the “same old show”, adding that “America deserves better.”The late singer and songwriter Johnny Cash will get a statue in the Capitol, congressional leaders announced.In an announcement posted by Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman, House speaker Mike Johnson, Senate majority leader Charles Schumer, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said:
      “Please join us at a ceremony commemorating the dedication of a National Statuary Hall Collection Statue in honor of Johnny Cash of Arkansas.”
      The ceremony will take place on Tuesday 24 September 2024 at 11am ET in Emancipation Hall on Capitol Hill.Thom Tillis, the Republican senator for North Carolina, would not say if JD Vance was the right pick to be Donald Trump’s running mate.Tillis told CNN:
      I’ve never been in a selection pool for VP, so I don’t necessarily – I’m not going to opine on that.
      Pressed on whether the Ohio senator would make a good candidate, Tillis replied:
      I know JD well. I’ve gotten to know him pretty well over the past couple of years. I think he’s a smart guy. I think that the Biden – or the Trump campaign picked him for a reason. I’m behind the ticket.
      JD Vance, the Ohio senator and Donald Trump’s running mate, visited the Mexico-Arizona border on Thursday, during which he criticized the immigration policies of the Biden administration, which he repeatedly referred to as the “Harris administration”.Vance said Harris had been a “border tsar” who had failed to curb the increased rates of migrants crossing the border. He said:
      It’s unbelievable what we’re letting happen at the southern border, and it’s because Kamala Harris refuses to do her job.
      Chuck Schumer introduced a bill in the Senate today to declare explicitly that presidents do not have immunity from criminal conduct, overriding last month’s supreme court ruling that Donald Trump has some immunity for his actions as president.The No Kings Act, which would apply to presidents and vice-presidents, has more than two dozen Democratic co-sponsors.“Given the dangerous and consequential implications of the court’s ruling, legislation would be the fastest and most efficient method to correcting the grave precedent the Trump ruling presented,” the Senate majority leader said in a statement.
      With this glaring and partisan overreach, Congress has an obligation – and a constitutional authority – to act as a check and balance to the judicial branch.
      The bill would stipulate that Congress, rather than the supreme court, has the authority to determine to whom federal criminal laws are applied.Maxwell Frost, the Democratic congressman from Florida, has criticized Donald Trump’s questioning of Kamala Harris’s racial identity.Frost, in a post on X, said “some folks said similar things about me” during his own primary race. He added:
      We need to fiercely call out this type of bigotry and ignorance.
      Joe Biden is currently speaking from the White House following the release of the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and the former US marine Paul Whelan from Russian custody as part of a major prisoner exchange.You can watch the news conference live below:A New York appeals court has denied Donald Trump’s challenge to a gag order in his hush-money criminal case.The state’s mid-level appellate court rejected Trump’s argument that his conviction “constitutes a change in circumstances” that warrants lifting the restrictions.Justice Juan Merchan, who presided over the former president’s trial, imposed the gag order in March, a few weeks before the trial started, after prosecutors raised concerns about Trump’s habit of attacking people involved in his cases.During the trial, he held Trump in contempt of court and fined him $10,000 for violations, and threatened to jail him if he did it again.The judge lifted some restrictions in June, freeing Trump to comment about witnesses and jurors but keeping trial prosecutors, court staffers and their families – including his own daughter – off limits until he is sentenced.In a ruling on Thursday, the state’s mid-level appellate court ruled that Merchan was correct in extending parts of the gag order until Trump is sentenced, writing that “the fair administration of justice necessarily includes sentencing”. More

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      JD Vance is the baby of Big Tech and Big Oil. He’s no ‘working-class populist’ | Jan-Werner Müller

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      Initially hailed as an inspired choice to inherit the Maga movement, James David Vance has fast proved a liability to the Trump campaign: Democrats are successfully branding him as a creepy manosphere specimen; his stances on abortion, IVF and women without children have rightly made him a focal point for criticizing the right’s obsession with controlling women’s bodies. Then there’s the issue of whether he’s really the man to mansplain Appalachia to the rest of us, given that he grew up in a city in Ohio.But one story about the junior senator continues to be accepted at face value: Vance as champion of a new “right-populism” that puts the working class first. There are no policy proposals that would vindicate that image; what’s more, Vance’s career has been financed by a nefarious combination of rightwing tech bros and the fossil fuel industry: those who have no problem polluting the public sphere with misinformation and disinformation and those profiting from polluting the atmosphere. Both are prime promoters of the libertarianism that “right-populists” supposedly disavow.Vance claims to want to break with corporate donors who care only about cheap labor resulting from a continuous influx of migrants. No doubt the Republican party’s promise to reduce immigration is real, as is the cruel plan for mass deportations – whether it will result in higher wages is anyone’s guess. One thing is sure, though: the other supposedly populist policy – raising tariffs on cheap imports – will make the already worst-off even worse off.Meanwhile, there’s no talk of raising taxes on the wealthy, in particular closing the loopholes that infamously allow hedge fund and private equity managers to have lower tax rates than their secretaries. Instead, Trump promises to reduce the corporate tax rate even further.Vance touts Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán as his model; the latter stands for an unembarrassed use of state power to enforce public morality (no same-sex marriages in Hungary!) and industrial policies in the national interest. But Orbán has also introduced a flat-rate personal income tax and the world’s highest value-added tax – which of course disproportionately falls on poorer Hungarians. If this is indeed the model, America’s billionaires will have no problem with Vance’s supposed “working-class conservatism”.Vance talks the talk of extracting the American right from libertarianism; yet, if one follows the money, a different picture is revealed. His career has been financed by reactionary venture capitalists such as Peter Thiel as well as the fossil fuel industry, who share a desire for deregulation wrapped in propaganda about “American freedom”. Vance himself has worked as a venture capitalist and is now part of a Republican ticket committed to abolishing regulations of social media, cryptocurrency, and AI. The party’s platform calls for a repeal of Biden’s executive order on responsible and, not least, worker-friendly development of AI.The irony is that the great champions of freedom and unleashing tech power are at the same time advocates of monopoly power: they really don’t like Biden’s robust anti-trust approach. They also often crucially depend on state contracts. No doubt Palantir, Thiel’s “big data analytics” firm whose central promise is effective surveillance, will want to be helpful with mass deportations.It might not just be a crude desire for taxpayer dollars which animates Silicon Valley’s new Trumpists, though; it can also be a philosophical vision. That doesn’t make things any better. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, newly converted to Trumpism, authored the Techno-Optimist Manifesto, which proclaims a belief in “accelerationism – the conscious and deliberate propulsion of technological development”. What many portentous pronouncements on human evolution boil down to is a simple demand: no restraints on developing AI, as well as an all-out commitment to nuclear power and a weird celebration of population growth as, according to Andreessen, “our planet is dramatically underpopulated”.Without naming its source, Andreessen quotes the manifesto of the Futurists – the artists who at the beginning of the 20th century worshiped technology as well as a kind of cleansing of the word through war – and who eventually became major promoters of Mussolini’s Fascism. Declaring himself a conqueror, not a victim, Andreesen rails against “a mass demoralization campaign … against technology and against life”, which supposedly has been going on for “six decades” “under varying names like … ‘sustainability’ … and … ‘social responsibility’”.The representatives of nothing less than life itself want to step on the pedal – and ask us to simply to trust a self-appointed elite of accelerationist visionaries.Vance might be the first champion of accelerationism in the White House – but he’s also an old-fashioned fossil fuel lobbyist who has weaponized climate in rightwing culture war. He’s associated renewables and electric vehicles with China – his (unsuccessful) Drive America Act suggested that buying gas and diesel cars is the only way of being a good patriot. Passively receiving wind and sunshine is also obviously not for real men; drilling makes for what scholars have called “petromasculinity”.Vance is all at once a nationalistic natalist (“breed, baby, breed!” for the nation), a promoter of fossil fuel industries (“drill, baby, drill!”), and a conduit of accelerationism (“break things, baby, break things!”). Given how unpopular he’s proven in polls, it does not seem like this is a vision for which Americans care. It’s also not the break with libertarianism that pundits praising the Republicans’ supposed turn to workers think it is. But there’s a hell of a lot of money backing it.

      Jan-Werner Müller is a professor of politics at Princeton University and a Guardian US columnist More

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      in US Politics

      Harris campaign calls Trump’s heated interview with Black journalists ‘a taste of chaos and division’ – live

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      Kamala Harris’s campaign team has released the following statement in response to Donald Trump’s combative NABJ interview:
      The hostility Donald Trump showed on stage today is the same hostility he has shown throughout his life, throughout his term in office, and throughout his campaign for president as he seeks to regain power and inflict his harmful Project 2025 agenda on the American people.
      Trump lobbed personal attacks and insults at Black journalists the same way he did throughout his presidency – while he failed Black families and left the entire country digging out of the ditch he left us in. Donald Trump has already proven he cannot unite America, so he attempts to divide us.
      Today’s tirade is simply a taste of the chaos and division that has been a hallmark of Trump’s Maga rallies this entire campaign. It’s also exactly what the American people will see from across the debate stage as vice-president Harris offers a vision of opportunity and freedom for all Americans. All Donald Trump needs to do is stop playing games and actually show up to the debate on September 10.
      The US was not aware of or involved in the apparent killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, the US representative to the UN says.He calls UN security council members with direct influence over Iran to increase pressure on it to “stop escalating its proxy conflict against Israel”.
      Every member of this council should call on Iran to stop arming, advising and financing terrorist groups and to rein in the actions of proxies and partners who threaten regional peace and security.
      He warns that it is a “dangerous” moment, and that it is “imperative” for members to work together to reduce tensions in the region.Follow more live updates on the situation here:JD Vance has responded to Donald Trump’s chaotic NABJ interview…The United Auto Workers union has endorsed Kamala Harris for president.In a statement released on Wednesday, UAW president Shawn Fain said:
      Our job in this election is to defeat Donald Trump and elect Kamala Harris to build on her proven track record of delivering for the working class …
      We stand at a crossroads in this country. We can put a billionaire back in office who stands against everything our union stands for, or we can elect Kamala Harris who will stand shoulder to shoulder with us in our war on corporate greed.
      This campaign is bringing together people from all walks of life, building a movement that can defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box. For our one million active and retired members, the choice is clear: We will elect Kamala Harris to be our next President this November.”
      Here is video of Donald Trump questioning Kamala Harris’s ethnicity during his interview at the NABJ conference in Chicago:Throughout the years, Trump has also questioned the birth origins of Barack Obama, Ted Cruz and Nikki Haley.Kamala Harris’s campaign team has released the following statement in response to Donald Trump’s combative NABJ interview:
      The hostility Donald Trump showed on stage today is the same hostility he has shown throughout his life, throughout his term in office, and throughout his campaign for president as he seeks to regain power and inflict his harmful Project 2025 agenda on the American people.
      Trump lobbed personal attacks and insults at Black journalists the same way he did throughout his presidency – while he failed Black families and left the entire country digging out of the ditch he left us in. Donald Trump has already proven he cannot unite America, so he attempts to divide us.
      Today’s tirade is simply a taste of the chaos and division that has been a hallmark of Trump’s Maga rallies this entire campaign. It’s also exactly what the American people will see from across the debate stage as vice-president Harris offers a vision of opportunity and freedom for all Americans. All Donald Trump needs to do is stop playing games and actually show up to the debate on September 10.
      When asked by Fox News journalist Harris Faulkner whether JD Vance would be ready for day one, Donald Trump said:
      I’ve always had great respect for him … but I will say this, and I think this is well-documented historically, the vice-president in terms of the election, does not have any impact. I mean, virtually no impact.
      You’re voting for the president, and you can have a vice-president who’s outstanding in every way. And I think JD is, I think that all of them would have been but, but you’re not voting that way. You’re voting for the president. You’re voting for me.
      Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, responded while at the podium in the daily media briefing to Donald Trump’s comments about Kamala Harris’s identity at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention.Jean-Pierre, speaking in real time in the west wing in Washington DC while Trump was being quizzed by three political journalists in Chicago, called his words “repulsive”.The former president said that he didn’t know Harris was Black until a few years ago when she “happened to turn Black”.Jean-Pierre said: “It’s insulting, and no one has any right to tell someone who they are, how they identify.” Jean-Pierre is the first Black and first openly LGBTQ+ American to serve as White House press secretary.She continued, of Harris: “Only she can speak to her experience.”Harris grew up in Berkeley, California, near San Francisco; her mother was an immigrant from India and her father immigrated to the US from Jamaica.“I think it’s insulting for anybody, it doesn’t matter if it’s a former leader, a former president, it is insulting,” Jean-Pierre said, adding: “She is the vice-president of the United States. Kamala Harris. We have to put some respect on her name. Period.”Donald Trump’s NABJ interview shocked the audience and ended up being cut short, apparently by his team. Here are some of the things the former president claimed in the heated Q&A:

      He claimed that he has been the “best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln”, adding that a “Black job” is “anybody that has a job”.

      He questioned Kamala Harris’s ethnicity, saying: “She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black.”

      He refused to condemn the white police officer who shot and killed 36-year-old Sonya Massey, a Black woman, in her home in Illinois, saying: “Sometimes very bad decisions are made. They’re not made from an evil standpoint.”

      He repeated the abortion lie that Democrats are allowing abortions in the ninth month, saying: “They’re allowing the death of the baby after the baby is born.”

      In response to what he would do on his first day in office, he said that he would “close the border” and “drill, baby, drill”.

      Throughout the interview, which appeared to have been ended by his team after 40 minutes, Trump’s responses drew multiple gasps and shouts from the crowd.
      The interview with Donald Trump at the NABJ conference is now over, with Trump giving a few fist pumps and shaking hands with the interviewers before walking off stage.The interview, which lasted around 40 minutes, got off to a rocky start, with Trump accusing interviewers of asking “rude” questions and calling their networks “fake news” before blaming the conference’s speakers for his lateness.In addition to multiple tangents on how he is allegedly persecuted by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and a supposedly “weaponized” justice system, Trump refused to condemn the January 6 insurrectionists, continued to espouse the lie that Democrats are “executing” babies after birth, and vowed to close the borders on his first day in office if he becomes president.Throughout the interview, Trump’s responses drew multiple gasps and shouts from the crowd.He also defended JD Vance’s comments about “childless cat ladies” said he “didn’t know [Harris] was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black,” and described a “Black job” as “anybody that has a job”.The interview was cut short after Trump’s team apparently asked interviewers to end the Q&A. ABC’s Rachel Scott told the audience: “I think we have to leave it there, by the Trump team. That is the last word.” Trump reacted with a bemused expression before getting off the stage.In response to a question on what he would do on his first day as president if he wins, Donald Trump responded:
      I close the border. And I do two things, because I can do a lot of things. I close the border. And we don’t want people coming. We want people to come in … but they have to be vetted. They have to be checked. They have to come in legally …
      And I drill. Drill, baby, drill. I bring energy way down. I bring interest rates down. I bring inflation way down. So people can buy bacon again, so people can buy a ham sandwich again, so that people can go to a restaurant and afford it because right now people can’t buy food.
      One of the next questions asked of Donald Trump is whether he believes the Republican party is getting “too judgy about people’s lives”.In response, Trump touted several false statements, saying that Democrats are “radical on abortion because they’re allowing abortion in the ninth month. They’re allowing the death of the baby after the baby is born.”Trump’s lie was swiftly fact-checked on the spot, with the interviewers saying: “That’s illegal in all 50 states.”He nevertheless continued with the false statement about abortions, saying: “Most Republicans believe in the exception, but they don’t want to see an abortion in the ninth month or the eighth month.”We are more than 15 minutes into the NABJ interview with Donald Trump, and the former president has already butted heads multiple times with the interviewers.In addition to frequently interrupting them, Trump has blamed the conferences’s speakers for his lateness, accused the interviewers’ questions of being “rude” and their networks, including ABC, of being “fake news”.At one point, when one of the interviewers told Trump she would like to move on to other questions following his tangent on his alleged political persecution, Trump replied: “You’re the one that held me up 35 minutes.”Donald Trump was asked about Sonya Massey, the 36-year-old Black woman who was shot and killed in her home by a white police officer in Illinois on 6 July.Specifically, the question was about Trump’s previous comments on police officers needing to have immunity and why someone like the officer, who has been charged with murder in the case of Sonya Massey’s killing, should get immunity.Trump responded:
      I don’t know the exact case, but I saw something, and it didn’t look, it didn’t look good to me. It didn’t look good to me …
      I’m saying if I felt, or if a group of people would feel, that somebody was being unfairly prosecuted because the person did a good job … or made a mistake, an innocent mistake, there’s a big difference between being a bad person and making an innocent mistake. But if somebody made an innocent mistake, I would want to help that person …
      Sometimes very bad decisions are made. They’re not made from an evil standpoint.
      Trump then went on a tangent of being “prosecuted because I’m a political opponent of two people that have weaponized our justice system”.In response to what Donald Trump’s message is today and why he chose to appear at the conference, Trump touted his typical anti-immigration rhetoric, saying:
      My message is to stop people from invading our country that are taking, frankly, a lot of problems with it. But one of the big problems, and a lot of the journalists in this room, I know, and I have great respect for a lot of the journalists in this room are Black … They’re coming in, and they’re coming in, they’re invading. It’s an invasion of millions of people … The first group of people, the Black population, is affected most by that and Kamala is allowing it to happen.
      Trump was also asked what a “Black job” is, to which he said:
      A Black job is anybody that has a job. That’s what it is.
      In response to a question on whether he believes Kamala Harris is only on the ticket because she is a Black woman, Donald Trump said:
      So I’ve known her a long time indirectly and she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know. Is she Indian or is she Black?
      In response to a question on why Black voters should trust Donald Trump following his track record of inappropriate comments towards Black communities, Trump said:
      First of all, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question so horrible manner. First question, you don’t even say hello. How are you? Are you with ABC? Because I think they’re a fake news network, a terrible network, and I think it’s disgraceful that I came here in history. I love the Black population of this country …
      I think it’s a very rude introduction. I don’t know exactly why you would do something like that.
      I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln.
      Donald Trump has just walked on stage.The interviewers also said that the interview will be live-fact-checked live.The NABJ interview with Donald Trump is about to begin.Interviewers Kadia Goba of Semafor, Rachel Scott of ABC News and Harris Faulkner of Fox News have just walked on stage.Donald Trump has fired off another post on Truth Social, blaming the conference’s speakers for his lateness:
      I’ve been waiting for a half hour. The speaker equipment at the NABJ is not working properly. Don’t blame me for being late. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump’s Truth Social network records second-worst audience decline

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      Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform experienced a third straight month of audience decline in June, a leading analyst of rightwing media said, detecting signs of “trouble at the ballot box” for the Republican presidential nominee.“The diminishing audience levels for Truth Social suggest a rejection of the harsh rhetoric expressed by the ex-president and his political allies that is one of the hallmarks of the two-year-old platform,” Howard Polskin said.“If this softness persists, it might portend trouble for Mr Trump at the ballot box in November.”Polskin is president of TheRighting, a site that seeks to “inform middle-of-the-road and liberal audiences about stories and viewpoints not on their radar that are shaping political opinion across a wide swath of America”.Trump launched Truth Social in February 2022, after being kicked off X, then known as Twitter, and other major platforms for inciting the deadly attack on Congress on 6 January 2021.He has since regained access to major platforms but continued to use Truth Social as his main political mouthpiece, through a campaign featuring repeated lies about electoral fraud, criminal conviction in New York, ongoing criminal cases elsewhere, multimillion-dollar fines in multiple civil cases, and an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally.All the while, the share price of Truth Social’s parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group, has fluctuated widely.Truth Social had 3.26 million unique users in its first month online, according to TheRighting. This June, per their analysis, the site had a little over 2.11 million unique users, a fall of 38% year on year.Comparing Truth Social with other rightwing platforms, TheRighting said Rumble had 6.37 million unique users in June 2024, down 43% year on year, while Gettr had 134,000, down 34%.The site also released figures for rightwing media sites, comparing unique visitor figures from June 2020 and June 2024. Fox News, the clear frontrunner, was down 26%, from 107.3 million to 79.6 million.Polskin said: “The ongoing audience erosion in June 2024 was expected because June 2020 was dominated by big news events like the civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd [by police in Minneapolis] and the global health crisis triggered by the spread of Covid-19.”According to TheRighting, rightwing sites mostly showed smaller audience falls between June 2023 and June 2024. Figures for mainstream and liberal sites followed similar patterns.For Truth Social and other sites, the picture may be about to change.This year, July brought a string of huge news events, including the failed attempt to kill Trump, a raucous Republican convention, Joe Biden’s decision to step aside as the Democratic presidential nominee and the rise of his replacement, Kamala Harris.Such events “should provide a much-needed boost to the traffic for news outlets on both sides of the aisle”, Polskin said. “However, if traffic continues to drop, it would signal intensifying challenges facing all news websites.” More

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      in Elections

      Republican Arizona official who said 2020 election was not stolen loses primary

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      The top election official in Arizona’s Maricopa county, who became nationally known for defending the 2020 election results from false claims by Donald Trump and others of fraud, has lost his seat in the Republican primary to a challenger who questioned those 2020 results.In his campaign, Stephen Richer reaffirmed in a primary debate with his Republican opponents that neither the 2020 nor 2022 elections were stolen. His opponents continued questioned the results, with one partly blaming Mark Zuckerberg, claiming the Facebook founder “dropped in illegal drop boxes” to sway the elections.State representative Justin Heap, another challenger, claimed election rules were not followed, though he avoided taking a direct stance on whether he thought the elections were stolen.On Wednesday it was announced that Heap had won the election with more than 40% of the vote, after 81% of ballots had been counted. Richer trailed by 6.5%.Heap is a first-term state representative who sought the votes of Maga supporters, despite deleting 2023 posts on social media claiming he is not one himself. He has, however, claimed he proudly voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and would do so again. His candidacy was supported by the far-right Freedom caucus.He has also aligned himself with the Senate candidate Kari Lake, a favorite of Trump who has also repeatedly claimed election fraud despite no evidence, and falsely accused Richer of having a role in it. Richer has sued Lake for defamation.Richer took office in 2021 after defeating a Democrat incumbent.“Nobody stole Maricopa county’s election. Elections in Maricopa county aren’t rigged,” Richer wrote in a 2021 open letter to Arizona Republicans. “The truth is that the case isn’t there. I spent November and December willing to wait for a meritorious lawsuit, a scientific claim or convincing data. But it never came because it didn’t exist.”He received death threats for denying the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and that the 2022 election was stolen from Lake. One county party official stated that he would “lynch” Richer, and a Missouri man faced federal charges for threatening to kill him in 2022.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs recorder of Maricopa county, the most populous county in Arizona, Richer ran voter registration and early voting efforts.Heap will now run against Democrat Tim Stringham, an attorney, in the 5 November general election. More