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    Harris to face biggest test of her political life with Democratic convention speech

    Kamala Harris will tonight face the biggest test of her political life so far when she addresses the Democratic national convention in Chicago in a bid to persuade American voters to defeat Donald Trump in November’s presidential election and put her in the White House.The vice-president’s rocket-fueled campaign is still barely a month old following Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from seeking re-election in the face of a disastrous debate performance and questions over his age and mental acuity.Harris, and her vice-presidential pick Minnesota governor Tim Walz, have quickly overturned the election’s narrative, turning a solid Trump lead in the polls over Biden into a slight – but clear – advantage over the former Republican president.In addressing the Democratic convention on Thursday night – and by proxy the wider US electorate watching in their millions on television – Harris will be making a direct pitch to voters to back her vision for the United States.Harris’s campaign has sought to portray a more optimistic, future-focused view of the country than her rival, and perhaps also than that of the president, who based much of his pitch on dark warnings of Trump’s autocratic sympathies.Over the course of the week at the convention, the audience has heard from the Democratic party’s most powerful players, who threw their support unequivocally behind Harris. Biden, Barack and Michelle Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi all gave primetime speeches, as did some of the party’s rising stars, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.Now it is expected that Harris’s speech will seek to lay out her personal story as she bids to become a historic president: the first woman president and the first woman of color due to her south Asian and Black background. Her speech is likely to focus on her work as a prosecutor, defending victims of crime.But her speech will also lay out a sharp contrast between her positive view of the country’s future prospects and Trump’s almost wholly grim warnings about the state of the nation and his focus on immigration and crime.Across three days so far, speaker after speaker has already hailed Harris as a change-agent who would not only defeat Trump but lift the country higher, ushering in a new chapter of possibility and seek to return US politics to some semblance of normality since Trump came onto the political stage eight years ago.The Harris campaign – and especially the outspoken Walz – has also displayed sharp elbows and an ability to insult and poke fun at Trump.The switch in the polls and newfound edge has impressed many observers. “She has had a very good month not just because of a honeymoon, but because of the way she’s presented herself, the way her campaign has positioned her,” David Axelrod, a former top aide to Barack Obama, told the Guardian.Certainly it seems to have unsettled Trump and his campaign. Trump has adopted a policy of directly insulting Harris and inventing a series of nicknames for her while trying to paint her as a leftwing extremist and questioning her racial identity. But the jibes have had little effect and even drawn criticism from some senior Republicans.They have not blunted her lead. Harris consistently tops Trump by three or four points in recent head-to-head surveys and has also improved her standing in the handful of key states that are crucial to victory. While the electoral contest remains impossibly close, she has widened the battleground once more from the Rust belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to once again include Sun belt states like North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia.Throughout the convention so far, Democratic speakers have tried to make Trump seem small and diminished. They have sought to keep him on the backfoot and in a reactive mode, responding to attacks and being kept off-balance.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, compared Trump to an “old boyfriend” who has spent the last four years spinning the block, trying to get back into a relationship with the American people.“Bro, we broke up with you for a reason,” Jeffries said.“Kamala Harris has always understood the assignment,” said Laphonza Butler, a California senator and friend of Harris’s.“Kamala, your mom would be so proud of you,” said Doris Baptiste, a family friend who was close to Harris’s mother.On Wednesday night, Walz offered a full-throated attack on Trump, a defense of his record running Minnesota and a passionate advocacy for Harris. After criticizing the Trump campaign, he led the crowd of cheering delegates in a chant of: “We’re not going back! We’re not going back!”Turning to the theme of freedom – which was the focus of the night’s convention programming – Walz said: “That’s what this is all about, the responsibility we have to our kids, to each other and to the future that we’re building together, in which everyone is free to build the kind of life they want. But not everyone has that same sense of responsibility. Some folks just don’t understand what it takes to be a good neighbor. Take Donald Trump and JD Vance.”Walz said Trump and his running mate had an agenda to only benefit the “richest and most extreme” people in the US. Walz added: “It’s an agenda nobody asked for. It’s an agenda that does nothing for our neighbors in need. Is it weird? Absolutely, absolutely. But it’s also wrong. And it’s dangerous.” More

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    Walz, Bill Clinton and surprise Oprah: Democratic convention day three key takeaways

    The third night of the Democratic national convention featured a surprise speech from Oprah Winfrey, along with scheduled remarks from Bill Clinton, Pete Buttigieg, Tim Walz and other major party figures, many emphasizing the “joy” of Kamala Harris’s campaign.Here are some key takeaways:1. Tim Walz’s pitch to voters: ‘We’ll turn the page on Donald Trump’Kamala Harris’s running mate gave his keynote pitch to supporters at the end of the third night of the convention, talking about his military service, coaching and teaching days, and his family’s fertility journey. He leaned into his humble roots and deployed repeated football metaphors: “I haven’t given a lot of big speeches like this, but I have given a lot of pep talks … It’s the fourth quarter. We’re down a field goal, but we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field, and boy do we have the right team.”He called on his supporters to step up with urgency: “We got 76 days. That’s nothing. There’ll be time to sleep when you’re dead. We’re going to leave it on the field. That’s how we’ll keep moving forward. That’s how we’ll turn the page on Donald Trump. That’s how we’ll build a country where workers come first, healthcare and housing are human rights, and the government stays the hell out of your bedroom. That’s how we make America a place where no child is left hungry, where no community is left behind, where nobody gets told they don’t belong.”2. Oprah Winfrey, Stevie Wonder, Kenan Thompson and other celebrities invigorate the crowdThe convention continued with a packed celebrity lineup. Oprah Winfrey earned huge cheers when she made an unannounced appearance. She denounced “people who would have you believe that books are dangerous and assault rifles are safe” and took a swipe at JD Vance’s “childless cat lady” comment. She put Harris’s candidacy into the historical context of other trailblazing Black women, including Tessie Prevost Williams, one of the “New Orleans Four” who helped integrate public schools. And she roused the audience with her call to action, singing the word “joy”.Saturday Night Live’s Kenan Thompson had a lively appearance, entering with a large Project 2025 book and virtually interviewing Americans who would be harmed by the rightwing agenda: “You ever see a document that can kill a small animal and democracy at the same time?”Musician Stevie Wonder urged the crowd to choose “joy over anger”. Actor Mindy Kaling gave a personal account of cooking with Harris. And musicians John Legend and Sheila E performed at the end of the night.3. Bill Clinton: ‘We need Kamala Harris, the president of joy’Bill Clinton, the 42nd president, addressed his 12th Democratic convention, reading off written notes, not the teleprompter, suggesting the speech was edited last-minute. He warned Democrats against complacency: “We’ve seen more than one election slip away from us when we thought it couldn’t happen, when people got distracted by phoney issues. This is a brutal business.” He mocked Trump for his narcissism and obsession with crowd sizes, following Barack Obama’s widely cited joke on Tuesday: “[Trump] mostly talks about himself … his vendettas, vengeance, his complaints, his conspiracies.”Clinton preached a message of unity, echoing Obama’s comments, encouraging supporters not to demean or disrespect neighbors they disagree with. He praised Joe Biden for “voluntarily” giving up power and celebrated the hope Harris has injected into the race: “If you vote for this team … you will be proud of it for the rest of your life.”4. Parents of a Hamas hostage were featured while protesters and AOC pushed for a Palestinian speakerJon Polin and Rachel Goldberg gave emotional remarks about their son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who is held hostage by Hamas. Polin praised the White House and said they had met with Harris and Biden: “They’re both working tirelessly for a hostage and ceasefire deal that will bring our precious children, mothers, fathers, spouses, grandparents and grandchildren home, and will stop the despair in Gaza.”Members of the uncommitted movement, who have been advocating for a ceasefire and arms embargo on Israel, said they welcomed the speech, but continued to advocate that a Palestinian leader get an opportunity to address the crowd. Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a doctor who has treated patients in Gaza, spoke on a Democratic convention panel centered on Palestinian human rights, but there hasn’t been a Palestinian American on the main stage. Gaza solidarity protesters staged a sit-in outside the convention, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called on the convention to “center the humanity of the 40,000 Palestinians killed under Israeli bombardment”, posting: “To deny that story is to participate in the dehumanization of Palestinians. The @DNC must change course and affirm our shared humanity.”5. Pete Buttigieg went hard after JD Vance: ‘Doubling down on negativity’Pete Buttigieg, the US secretary of transportation, went hard after Donald Trump’s running mate: “JD Vance is one of those guys who thinks if you don’t live the life that he has in mind for you, then you don’t count, someone who said that if you don’t have kids, you have ‘no physical commitment to the future of this country’ … When I deployed to Afghanistan, I didn’t have kids … but our commitment to the future of this country was pretty damn physical. Choosing a guy like JD Vance to be America’s next vice president sends a message … They are doubling down on negativity and grievance, committing to a concept of campaigning best summed up in one word: darkness.”6. Prominent Republicans again rallied for Harris: ‘Our party acts more like a cult’Prominent Republicans and former Donald Trump supporters continued to earn loud applause at the convention, arguing that GOP voters should reject the former president, even if they don’t agree with all of Harris’s positions. “If Republicans are being intellectually honest with ourselves, our party is not civil or conservative, it’s chaotic and crazy, and the only thing left to do is dump Trump. These days, our party acts more like a cult, a cult worshiping a felonious thug,” said Geoff Duncan, former lieutenant governor of Georgia.Olivia Troye, a former homeland security adviser to then vice-president Mike Pence also spoke, saying: “Being inside Trump’s White House was terrifying. But what keeps me up at night is what will happen if he gets back there.”7. Speakers uplifted LGBTQ+ rights: ‘Trump wants to erase us’Speakers repeatedly promoted LGBTQ+ rights, offering a sharp contrast to the Republican national convention which continually featured extremist, anti-trans rhetoric. Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ+ organization, warned: “Trump wants to erase us … He would ban our healthcare, belittle our marriages, bury our stories. But we are not going anywhere. We are not going back.”Jared Polis, Colorado’s governor and the first gay man to serve as a US state governor, highlighted the anti-LGBTQ+ agenda of Project 2025: “Democrats welcome ‘weird’, but we’re not weirdos telling families who can and can’t have kids, who to marry or how to live our lives.” Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said LGBTQ+ Floridians were enduring “endless state-sponsored hate”. And Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, earned loud applause when she said: “I got a message for the Republicans and the justices of the United States supreme court: you can pry this wedding band from my cold, dead gay hand.”Democratic convention highlights:skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion

    Tim Walz rallies Democrats: ‘We’re gonna leave it on the field’

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    Obamas cast Kamala Harris as their heir and ‘flip script on Trump’, says ex-aide

    Barack and Michelle Obama have cast Kamala Harris as the heir to their political movement and flipped the script on Donald Trump, former Obama adviser David Axelrod told the Guardian on Wednesday.The Obamas delivered electrifying speeches at the Democratic national convention in Chicago on Tuesday night. The former US president compared Harris’s ascent to his own by observing: “I’m feeling hopeful because this convention has always been pretty good to kids with funny names who believe in a country where anything is possible.”Michelle, the former first lady, invoked her husband’s hope-and-change campaign by remarking: “Something wonderfully magical is in the air, isn’t it?… A familiar feeling that’s been buried too deep for too long. You know what I’m talking about? It’s the contagious power of hope.”Both addresses were lauded by Axelrod, chief strategist for the 2008 and 2012 Obama presidential campaigns, in an interview after an event organised by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and the Cook Political Report on the sidelines of the convention.He said: “When Barack Obama got the call in 2004 that he was going to give the keynote speech at the Democratic convention, he said immediately, I know what I want to say, I want to talk about my story as part of the larger American story, and he’s always done that. He and Michelle are great American stories and they take pride in that and the values associated with that.“You heard it last night and Kamala Harris is very much rolling down those same tracks. They flipped the script on Trump. Trump’s play is to try and make people alien and what they did was make Trump alien to the values that most Americans share, so I thought those speeches were incredibly effective.”Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Obama in the White House, said there was “no doubt” that the Obamas regard Harris as their natural heir.“I think they feel very much a kinship with Harris and they see her as carrying that torch forward of what America really is about: the time-honored values of community and selflessness and hard work and all the things that we like to associate with what it means to be an American. She is out there talking about that and it’s one of the reasons why she is right in the middle of this race.”The mood in Chicago has been buoyant, with fears of a repeat of the party’s chaotic 1968 convention in the same city evaporating: instead of division and acrimony there is unity and joy. The gloom around Joe Biden’s candidacy has lifted as opinion polls show Harris pulling narrowly ahead of the Republican nominee Trump in swing states. Can it last?Axelrod, who was a student in Chicago and has spent much of his career in the city, commented: “I don’t know how you measure when honeymoons end but here’s the reality of the situation. This turnover happened very late in the race. She has had a very good month not just because of a honeymoon, but because of the way she’s presented herself, the way her campaign has positioned her. She now has a convention, which is a four-day commercial.“You get to Labor Day because next week is sort of a dead week and then the following week you have the debate. If she does reasonably well in the debate that takes you into late September and people are already voting. I think she has the ability to extend this and it may just turn out that it’s not a honeymoon but the consolidation of the base and then it becomes a scrum for the remaining voters.”As the Obamas define Harris as a personification of American values, Trump has been struggling to land a counter-punch. He has sampled attacks on her racial identity and intelligence as well as peculiar nicknames such as “Laffin’ Kamala”, “Lyin’ Kamala” and “Kamabla”. Axelrod believes that the former president is flailing.“He’s a jazz man when it comes to all of this and he gets in front of a crowd and he tries to find the groove and he throws everything against the wall. It’s generally bile, it’s personal and it’s negative. But he’s just trying out themes. The campaign seems more rational than the candidate and that’s been true from the beginning. The question is whether they can get him under control and on the message.“The best chance is for them to try and make her sort of Biden-lite and make her wear the jacket for whatever it is that people are unhappy with about Biden’s policies. But it’s hard to get people to buy the idea that the vice-president was actually pulling all the strings. That’s the flip side of nobody really knowing much about her. I don’t think they believe that and so there aren’t that many good options for that.”But he warned: “That’s not to say this isn’t a really close race and I’m not sure, if the race were today, that Trump wouldn’t win. But the motion is certainly in her direction.”Asked by the Guardian for a final prediction, Axelrod shot back: “Are you nuts? My prediction is it’s going to be a very close race. And I would not have made that prediction a month ago.” More

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    Robert F Kennedy Jr to drop out of presidential race by end of week – report

    Robert F Kennedy Jr is set to drop his maverick campaign for president, it has been reported, amid speculation that the independent and environmental lawyer will throw his support behind Donald Trump.The ABC network, citing “sources familiar with the decision”, reported that Kennedy would formally leave the race on Friday. The report followed an announcement on his campaign website that he would make a statement that day “about the present historical moment and his path forward” in Phoenix that would be live-streamed on X and other social media.Speculation that Kennedy could abandon his presidential bid intensified after his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, revealed on a podcast on Tuesday he was considering that option – and considering endorsing Trump, the Republican nominee. Shanahan suggested Kennedy’s continued candidacy risked diverting support away from Trump, thereby helping to elect Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.Her comments were immediately welcomed by Trump, who told CNN that Kennedy – who he denounced as recently as April as a “Democrat plant” and a “radical left liberal” – was “a brilliant guy”.“I didn’t know he was thinking about getting out, but if he is thinking about getting out, certainly I’d be open to it,” said Trump, who, perhaps not coincidentally, is also due to speak in the Phoenix area on Friday, at a campaign rally.In truth, the pair seem to have been in contact for weeks amid an apparent rapprochement.A leaked recording of a telephone call between them emerged last month during the Republican national convention – just days after Trump survived an assassination attempt – when the former president solicited Kennedy’s support and the two discussed the possibility of Kennedy joining a future administration.Trump also appeared to endorse some of the anti-vaccine theories, for which Kennedy has become noted, during the call.In an interview with NBC News, JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, acknowledged there had been a stream of “communication” between the two campaigns.“I haven’t spoken to RFK personally, but I know there’s been a lot of communication back and forth between RFK … [and] this campaign,” he said. “Our argument to RFK, and I’ll make it right now, because, of course, he hasn’t dropped out yet, is, look: if you want a Democratic party that protected American workers and stood for strong borders, maybe disagreed with Republicans on things like tax policy, that party doesn’t exist any more.”Kennedy initially sought the Democratic nomination before abandoning that attempt to launch an independent campaign.His presidential bid has been hit by a spate of damaging stories that have undermined his efforts to present himself as a serious figure.An allegation surfaced in a Vanity Fair article that he had groped a family babysitter, to which Kennedy responded not with a denial, but by saying: “I am not a church boy.”He added: “I said in my announcement speech that I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world.”A further embarrassing disclosure was unearthed by the New Yorker, which described how Kennedy once left the carcass of a dead bear cub in Central Park and placed a bicycle next to it to make it look like an accident.Kennedy pre-empted the article by posting a video on X of him admitting the episode in a conversation with Roseanne Barr, as the pair sat in a spacious kitchen.The campaign has also run into money troubles in recent weeks, as Kennedy’s poll standing has dropped. It reportedly ended July $3.5m in debt, while Shanahan – who has contributed her own funds to it – was recently given a $1m refund. More

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    Joe cried, Kamala cried and so did I. Can this be the Democrats putting on a better show than Trump ever did? | Emma Brockes

    “He looks perkier,” said my nine-year-old, passing the screen as I watched footage of Joe Biden speaking on the first day of the Democratic national convention in Chicago. The president did, indeed, look perkier, borne aloft by the gratitude of 23,000 people in the hall and the millions beyond it for the fact he is no longer seeking re-election. By itself, this moment would have lifted the occasion above the norm. But the Democratic convention this year is so uniquely dramatic, so unprecedented in US history, that it rivals and possibly outstrips even President Obama’s nomination in 2008. And Biden’s heart-wrenching appearance was just the beginning.“When we fight, we win,” said Kamala Harris in her opening speech on Monday and there it was, that strange moment of realisation that what she was saying might actually be true. Strange because it’s the kind of thing Democrats always say and that, in recent years, has been accompanied by a terrible wah-wah downward arpeggio on the trombone. Limp, disorganised, outshone by Donald Trump; that had been the campaign to date. The speed of the turnaround and the sheer force of the narrative that now propels Harris forwards, has unleashed a psychic energy so strong that on stage in Chicago it practically gave off sparks. Democrats have the scent of blood in their nostrils and thank God, they’re finally chasing it.Watching footage from the first two days, I kept thinking of Joan Didion’s biting piece about the 1988 presidential race, in which she remarked on the emptiness of staged political events. Reporters, she observed, like to cover a presidential campaign because “it has balloons”. You know what she means, which only makes the genuine emotion witnessed in Chicago this week all the more thrilling. So rare is it for balloon-based political events to do anything other than bore or depress, that when one does, it lets loose not only a primary giddiness, but a second-tier hysteria triggered by incredulity at the presence of the first.And so it was here, in the form of wave after wave of what felt like history. President Biden, smiling, rueful, apparently much more cogent now that the need to perform has been removed, and deeply touching in his ability to do that rarest of things, act for the collective good at his own expense. The alleviation of anxiety in the audience even allowed for the return of some of that old Biden charisma. It was emotional! Friends on the east coast stayed up late watching, and cried. I cried! Harris, in the audience, had tears in her eyes, and Biden himself was emotional as he was led off stage by his daughter. The political obituaries in the US press the next day were elegiac, sentimental, all the things that would’ve been undone had he stayed in the race. Evan Osnos in the New Yorker called Biden “a man whose career describes a half century of American history”, and that was the feeling – a real “thank you for your service” moment.Biden left it to younger Democrats really to go after Trump, and boy, did they. On the first day, congresswoman Jasmine Crockett of Texas called Trump “a 78-year-old lifelong predator, fraudster and cheat” who “cosies up to his role model, Vladimir Putin”. On the second night, Michelle Obama, after the years-long failure of her mantra “when they go low, we go high”, came up with an absolute corker, referring to Trump as the beneficiary of “the affirmative action of generational wealth”.She gave high praise to working mothers – the kind of “unglamorous” labour that holds the country together – while her husband got a huge laugh off Trump’s “weird obsession with crowd sizes”. It was a throwback to the good old days of humour and levity in a party long mired in depression and panic. “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?” said Michelle and the crowd erupted.What struck you about all this was the way in which it seized for Democrats a dynamic that has lately been the reserve of Republicans. Trump’s success is a side-effect of his pure entertainment value and the fact he is “disruptive” in a way that, for large numbers of his followers, is simply a fun thing to be part of. Now that same sense of drama and disruption animates the other side. People at the convention chanted “USA!” while Hillary Clinton – for whom this moment must be bittersweet – graciously talked up Harris and generational unity came in via the rallying cries of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Bernie Bros.No successful production can do without at least a little hokiness, and here it was in the form of Doug Emhoff, in line to be the first “second gentleman”, should his wife win the White House, on stage doing his lovable dork act. Emhoff, with much aw shucks self-mockery, even described the first time he rang Harris to set up a blind date. It felt like a flex: look at this married couple who actually love one another compared with those estranged freaks on the other side.There were notes of caution and warnings against complacency. The stakes are so much higher now that we know who Trump is, and that, like a squirrel cornered in an attic, his desperation if elected is liable to lead to attack. But there was, this week, also a sense of let us enjoy the sense of glamour, and excitement, and youth, and – yes, hope – of this moment before we get to the terror of the next few months and the actual election.

    Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

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    Midwestern guys: Vance and Walz’s opposing views of being from the US heartland

    For 30 years, Michael Bailey worked at the former Armco steel plant in Middletown, Ohio, eventually becoming president of a union that represented thousands of workers. Among them was James Vance, grandfather and sometimes stand-in father of the Republican party’s current vice-presidential candidate, JD, who worked as a skilled tradesperson at the plant.So Bailey, today a 71-year-old pastor at the Faith United church in downtown Middletown, says he’s confused by claims from Donald Trump’s running mate that he “grew up as a poor kid” in Middletown.“As a rigger, [James Vance] made good money. Where he lived, on McKinley Street, he didn’t live in poverty,” he says. “JD came up in a middle-income family. He didn’t come up on the rough side of town.”Politicians assuming working-class identities to attract votes is nothing new. But this year’s election pits vice-presidential candidates against each other – ostensibly picked for their “real American” chops – who hold contrasting views of what it means to be a boots-on-the-ground midwesterner.Endless corn fields, small towns and wide-open highways are characteristics of life in the midwest that most can agree on. Beyond that, experts say the region is far more complex.Cities such as Chicago, Detroit and Cincinnati are home to millions of people that, for a time during the 20th century, were among the most innovative in the world.“Midwesterners have historically been on the frontlines of progressive politics and education. Midwesterners also have been innovators in both an economic and cultural sense,” says Diane Mutti Burke, the director of the Center for Midwestern Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.But many agree there are a few features that typically set midwesterners apart.“Midwesterners also are said to be ‘nice’,” says Mutti Burke. “The idea is that midwesterners are often friendly and gracious to a fault.”Perhaps that’s why Democratic party vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz’s characterization of Vance and Trump as “weird” last month has struck such a chord with voters in the midwest, propelling the Harris-Walz ticket to a four-point lead in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in a recent poll.As governor of Minnesota, Walz’s brand of “nice” saw him introduce universal free breakfast and lunch for K-12 students in the state last year. The move was informed by his previous firsthand experience as a high school teacher who saw that lower-income kids using different colored food tickets to others could end up being stigmatized.What’s more, Walz has asked to appear on Millennial Farmer, a popular YouTube channel run by a Minnesota crop farmer that depicts everyday, midwestern farm life, despite its host’s anti-Democrat leanings. That request has yet to be fulfilled.At his first rally with Kamala Harris in Philadelphia on 6 August, Walz went straight after Vance’s midwestern chops, saying sarcastically: “Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires.”Vance has defended his upward mobility as illustrative of having succeeded in achieving the American dream.For his part, Vance has said he’d like to increase the child tax credit, currently at $2,000 per child, to $5,000, and eliminate the upper income threshold, which currently stands at $200,000 for single tax filers and $400,000 for couples.However, this month Vance failed to vote on a bill to increase the child tax credit program, claiming it would have failed regardless of whether he had taken part or not. The day of the vote, Vance was at the border in Arizona falsely claiming that the vice-president was the current administration’s “border czar”. (Harris aides have said that she was never given the responsibility of policing the border.)While Vance visited with picketing auto workers in Ohio last October, those who have closely watched his 18 months in office as a US senator say that, compared to Walz, he hasn’t achieved anything substantial for midwesterners.“Walz has been a teacher, a coach, a governor [and] a congressman,” said Charles “Rocky” Saxbe, a former senior member of Ohio’s Republican party who opposes the Maga movement. “I think when you look at vice-presidential contests – to the extent that they matter – you want someone who can step into the role of presidency, if it’s necessary and you want someone who has leadership experience, which JD Vance has never had.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnsurprisingly, Vance’s camp disagree, citing his working with Democrats to introduce rail safety and banking regulation bills as evidence of his political achievements.Politics aside, there’s an obvious financial gap dividing the two candidates. While in 2022 Walz earned $127,629 as governor of Minnesota, Vance raked in more than $1m the same year through a salary and company profits at a venture capital firm, a property rental, book royalties and from a host of investments. The Wall Street Journal suggests Vance’s net worth could be more than $10m.For some midwesterners, however, it’s the rhetoric that most keenly separates the two.Last year, Vance lobbied against, and failed to defeat, an amendment to the Ohio constitution to enshrine access to abortion. His “childless cat ladies” comments resurfaced last month were almost universally panned.But Bailey says his first opinions of Vance were formed several years ago, when the senator was in town publicizing his 2016 book, Hillbilly Elegy.As a pastor and former president of a major workers’ union at Armco Steel, Bailey figured that someone of Vance’s emerging public persona meant that the senator might want to speak with him and other Middletown community leaders, so he gave Vance his business card.“I said: ‘I’d like to talk to you and if you’re thinking about running for office, we’d like to have your ear,’” says Bailey.“We’ve never had a response.”Despite Vance being elected nearly two years ago, his Middletown constituency office has no external signs or obvious indications highlighting the location for locals seeking to meet with him. A recent visit by the Guardian found the office door locked and the only communication made available by a staffer was through an intercom.Bailey says he thinks that rather than running for the benefit of Middletown and midwesterners at large, Vance is being used as a political stooge by the Silicon Valley billionaires who bankrolled his successful 2020 senate campaign.“I think they looked at someone with JD’s background,” he says, “and said: ‘We can use him to take away our democracy.’” More

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    Why did this conservative US judge endorse Kamala Harris? | Margaret Sullivan

    J Michael Luttig has never endorsed a Democrat before. That’s no surprise since the well-respected legal scholar – a retired federal appeals court judge – leans well right of center.Appointed by the first President Bush in 1991, Luttig is from the old school of the Republican party. He once worked in Ronald Reagan’s White House and served as a law clerk to Antonin Scalia.But now, whatever his policy views or personal politics, Luttig has set them aside. He will pull the lever in November for Kamala Harris.Luttig wrote a withering statement about Donald Trump as he explained his decision to endorse the Democratic rival of the former president and Republican presidential nominee: “In voting for Vice President Harris, I assume that her public policy views are vastly different from my own, but I am indifferent in this election on any issues other than America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, as I believe all Americans should be.”Although couched in restrained language, Luttig’s statement packs a punch.How remarkable to read his view that every American should be indifferent to policy differences between themselves and Harris. Right now, he argues, any such disagreements are not worth quibbling over.What really matters, in Luttig’s view, is getting past January of next year with US democracy intact. We can argue later about how to govern.With that in mind, he sees Trump as utterly unfit and existentially dangerous.Luttig’s statement ought to be a clarion call. It should be emulated by every conservative with a conscience and a sense of patriotism.Sadly, there are too many on the right who ascribe to the misguided view that Trump’s supposed policy positions (what – mass deportations? More tax cuts for the super-wealthy?) should come before the obvious truth that electing him could destroy the United States as we know it.These conservatives may criticize Trump, but they won’t endorse his rival.How many times have we heard from Republican politicians that while, yes, they disagree with Trump’s words and behavior, they still intend to vote for him? Or they stay silent on the alternative.Apparently, the notion of supporting a progressive Democrat such as Harris is beyond the pale.“Respect to Judge Luttig,” wrote James Fallows, the journalist, former presidential speechwriter and incisive commentator. He called Luttig’s endorsement “an instructive contrast” to a long list of prominent Republicans including John Bolton, Nikki Haley, HR McMaster and George W Bush.They and many others of their ilk have (so far) failed the integrity test. At this crucial time, they haven’t fully used their influence to make sure Trump can’t bring his wrecking ball to what remains of the US experiment.Luttig has a greater sense of history – and a truer moral compass. Nor is this the first time he’s proven it.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe famously helped to persuade Mike Pence to certify the 2020 presidential election, defying Trump’s vehement urging and not-so-veiled threats.In a series of tweets, Luttig set forth the rationale for the then vice-president to reject efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s legitimate victory. He publicly gave Pence a legal foundation for defying his boss.Pence, notably, has said he won’t endorse Trump, startling in itself for a former vice-president; but despite everything he’s been through and all he knows, he has not pledged publicly to vote for Harris. Maybe Luttig’s example will inspire him to go there.Two years later, Luttig endorsed Biden’s nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the supreme court. While Trump World was portraying Jackson as nothing but a high-level DEI hire, Luttig urged bipartisan support for the accomplished jurist, calling her eminently qualified. Jackson, of course, became the first Black woman appointed to the supreme court.In an interview with CNN, which first reported his endorsement, Luttig explained that arriving at his decision to back Harris wasn’t complicated.He described it as a simple matter of knowing right from wrong – not merely right from left.Simple? Maybe so, but also admirable. And at this singular moment for US democracy, all too rare.

    Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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    Trump calls his supporters ‘basement dwellers’, says former press secretary

    Stephanie Grisham, Donald Trump’s former press secretary, excoriated the Republican presidential nominee at the Democratic national convention on Tuesday, saying: “He has no empathy, no morals, and no fidelity to the truth.”Grisham, a Republican operative who also served as a spokesperson to Melania Trump, offered firsthand accounts of the former president’s behavior behind closed doors.“I wasn’t just a Trump supporter, I was a true believer, I was one of his closest advisers. The Trump family became my family,” she said, saying she spent her holidays at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. “I saw him when the cameras were off … Trump mocks his supporters. He calls them basement dwellers. On a hospital visit one time when people were dying in the ICU, he was mad that the cameras were not watching him.”She continued: “He used to tell me: ‘It doesn’t matter what you say, Stephanie, say it enough and people will believe you.’” She repeated a story she has told before: that during the January 6 insurrection, she asked Melania Trump whether she could tweet that there was “no place for lawlessness or violence”, and the first lady gave a one-word reply: “No.”Grisham earned applause when she said she was the first senior staffer to resign that day. She ended her short speech with an endorsement of Kamala Harris, saying: “I love my country more than my party. Kamala Harris tells the truth. She respects the American people and she has my vote.”The Harris campaign and the Democratic national convention have been highlighting Republican voters who oppose Trump and are supporting the Democratic ticket.Before Grisham, Kyle Sweetser, an Alabama voter, told the convention crowd that he voted for Trump three times and repeatedly donated to the Republican: “He told us he’d look out for blue-collar workers.” But Trump’s tariffs policy negatively affected him, he said: “Costs for construction workers like me were starting to soar. I realized Trump wasn’t for me. He was for lining his own pockets.”Sweetster added: “I’m not left wing, period. But I believe our leaders should bring out the best in us, not the worst. That’s why I’m voting for Kamala Harris. She’s tough. She’s going to tackle inflation. Trump will make it worse. I’m voting for Kamala Harris because she’ll make us proud to be American again.”Other Republicans due to speak at the convention include Olivia Troye, a national security staffer who worked for Mike Pence, the former vice-president; Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican representative who has been a vocal critic of Trump; John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona; and Geoff Duncan, the former lieutenant governor of Georgia.Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, also showed up at the convention on Tuesday night. He and Trump have fallen out, and Cohen served as a witness for the prosecution in Trump’s hush-money trial in New York. It was not exactly clear why he showed up, but when a reporter asked if he would speak at the convention, he responded, “Only if they let me” and, “Of course I would.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocratic convention highlights:

    Six key takeaways from day two of the Democratic convention

    Michelle Obama lauds Kamala Harris and takes swipe at Trump

    Bernie Sanders urges Democrats to improve lives of ‘struggling’ Americans

    Trump calls his supporters ‘basement dwellers’, says former press secretary

    Here are the rising stars and politicians to watch this week

    What to know about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz More