Robert F Kennedy Jr

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      RFK Jr says he faces federal investigation for beheading whale

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr has said that he is being investigated by federal authorities for collecting the head from a decapitated whale carcass.During a campaign event on Saturday for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, in Glendale, Arizona, the former independent presidential candidate said, “I received a letter from the National Marine Fisheries Institute saying that they were investigating me for collecting a whale specimen 20 years ago.”He added: “This is all about the weaponization of our government against political opponents.”Kennedy, who endorsed the former president after dropping out of November’s election, fell under scrutiny in recent weeks after the resurfacing of a 2012 interview that his daughter Kick gave to Town & Country in which she addressed the whale in question.Recounting how the creature washed up on a beach near Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, she said, “[He] ran down to the beach with a chainsaw, cut off the whale’s head and then bungee-corded it to the roof of the family minivan for the five-hour haul back to Mount Kisco, New York.“Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet. We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day to day stuff for us.”Reports of the decapitation caught the attention of the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, which called on federal authorities to investigate Kennedy. In a letter to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the environmental group said Kennedy “violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and possibly the Endangered Species Act, by illegally cutting the head off of a dead whale in or around 1994 in Hyannis Point, Massachusetts, and bringing it to his New York house.”The letter went on to say, “We hope that the NOAA Office of Law Enforcement, at a minimum, is able to ensure that Mr Kennedy surrenders any and all illegally obtained wildlife that he continues to possess, including the whale skull he took from the Massachusetts beach in 1994. Given Mr Kennedy’s reckless disregard for the two most important marine conservation laws in the United States, we ask that NOAA consider all appropriate civil and criminal penalties as well.”Kennedy in August faced a separate backlash after an unrelated animal admission. In that case, he acknowledged on a video that he was behind the dumping of a dead bear cub in New York City’s Central Park over a decade ago.Recalling the episode, Kennedy said that he picked up the carcass and put it in his van with plans to skin it and eat it later. However, he ran out of time to take the bear home and instead decided to stage a scene to make it look like a cyclist had hit the animal.“We thought it would be amusing for whoever found it,” Kennedy said. More

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      North Carolina court rules RFK Jr’s name must be taken off state ballots

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      A North Carolina appeals court on Friday ruled that Robert F Kennedy Jr’s name must be taken off state ballots for president, upending plans in the battleground state just as officials were about to begin mailing out the nation’s first absentee ballots for the 5 November presidential election.The intermediate-level court of appeals issued an order granting Kennedy’s request to halt the mailing of ballots that included his name. The court also told a trial judge to order the state board of elections to distribute ballots without Kennedy’s name on them. No legal explanation was given.State law otherwise requires the first absentee ballots to be mailed or transmitted no later than 60 days before the general election, making Friday the deadline. The process of reprinting and assembling ballot packages would probably take more than two weeks, state attorneys have said. The ruling could be appealed.Kennedy, the nominee of the We the People party in North Carolina, had sued last week to get off the state’s ballots after he suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump. But the Democratic majority on the state board of elections rejected the request, saying it was too late in the process of printing ballots and coding tabulation machines. Kennedy then sued.Rebecca Holt, a Wake county superior court judge, on Thursday denied Kennedy’s effort to keep his name off ballots, prompting his appeal. In the meantime, Holt told election officials to hold back sending absentee ballots until noon Friday.A favorable outcome for Kennedy could assist Trump’s efforts to win North Carolina. The Republican nominee won the state’s electoral votes by just 1.3% over Joe Biden in 2020.More than 132,500 people – military and overseas workers and in-state civilian residents – have requested North Carolina absentee ballots so far, the elections board said.In an email, Paul Cox, state board attorney, told election directors in all 100 counties after Friday’s ruling to hold on to the current ballots but not send them. More than 2.9m absentee and in-person ballots have been printed so far.No decision has been made on appealing Friday’s decision, Cox wrote, and removing Kennedy and running mate Nicole Shanahan from the ballot would be “a major undertaking for everyone”, Cox wrote.Since Kennedy suspended his campaign, the environmentalist and author has tried to get his name removed from ballots in several states where the race between Trump and Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, is expected to be close.Kennedy on Wednesday sued in Wisconsin to get his name removed from the presidential ballot there after the state elections commission voted to keep him on it. Kennedy also filed a lawsuit in Michigan but a judge ruled on Tuesday that he must remain on the ballot there.Read more about the 2024 US election

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      The strangest insult in US politics: why do Republicans call it ‘the Democrat party’?

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      The Democratic party? Robert F Kennedy Jr’s never heard of it.On Tuesday, the former presidential candidate issued his latest condemnation of the “Democrat party”, endorsing a bizarre linguistic tradition among haters of the institution. As Donald Trump told a rally in 2018: “I call it the Democrat party. It sounds better rhetorically.” By “better”, of course, he meant “worse”, as he explained the next year: he prefers to say “the ‘Democrat party’ because it doesn’t sound good”.In removing two letters from “Democratic”, the former president is adopting a jibe that’s been around since at least the 1940s. Opponents of the party long ago decided, for some reason, that this brutal act of syllabic denial would shame their opponents. Democrats don’t seem particularly devastated by the attack, but Republicans and those who love them have stuck with it. We hear it regularly from party luminaries such as JD Vance, Mike Johnson and Nikki Haley; pragmatic independents like RFK Jr; and media voices across the vast spectrum from Fox News to Infowars. Last week, even Tulsi Gabbard, once a Democratic presidential candidate herself, wrote an op-ed proudly describing her departure from the Democrat party and support for Trump.But even if the misnaming doesn’t exactly leave liberal snowflakes in tears, it does serve a purpose, says Nicole Holliday, acting associate professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. It’s a marker of affiliation – an indicator of the media a person consumes and the politicians they listen to. She recently heard a friend remark on “Democrat party” policies and asked why they used the term; the friend wasn’t even aware they had done it. “Language is contagious, especially emotionally charged political language,” Holliday says. “Most of the time, we don’t have the cognitive bandwidth to think very hard about every single word that we’re using. We just use it because it’s what other people do.”That lack of awareness “shows how normalized it’s become”, says Larry Glickman, Stephen and Evalyn Milman professor in American studies at Cornell University, who likens the term to a “schoolyard taunt”. It suggests the party is “outside the mainstream of American politics so much so that we’re not even going to call them by the name they prefer. We refuse to give them that amount of respect.”It’s part of a familiar pattern, as Holliday has written: “Intentionally calling a set of people by something other than their official and preferred form of reference is a common tactic of opposition that is designed to confer disrespect.” If someone named Christopher prefers not to be called Chris, and you do it anyway, it’s pretty clear you’re being rude – regardless of your politics, she says. And she and Glickman both point out that we’re seeing a new version of the same unpleasant phenomenon when it comes to the pronunciation of Kamala Harris’s first name. Almost half the speakers at the Republican convention got it wrong, according to the Washington Post. At a July rally, Trump said he “couldn’t care less” if he mispronounced the word. Eventually, Harris’s grandnieces, ages six and eight, felt compelled to offer a lesson at the Democratic convention this month.Such bullying may be a Trump trademark, but its origins are a bit fuzzy. According to Glickman, the term first came to prominence in 1946 thanks to a congressman named Brazilla Carroll Reece, who headed the Republican National Committee. Unlike Trump, Reece saw himself as a liberal – at least according to that era’s definition of the term; still, he wasn’t a fan of the New Deal or other recent developments. He used the term to indicate that what was once the Democratic party no longer existed: it had been commandeered by “radicals”. In 1948, the Republican party platform left off the “ic” in “Democratic”, and in 1952, a newspaper columnist asked: “Who has taken the ‘ic’ out of the party of our fathers?” Senator Joseph McCarthy, meanwhile, helped popularize the term.Over the decades, the Democratic party became associated with liberal policies, and eventually, “the ‘Democrat party’ slur became a condemnation of liberalism itself”, Glickman wrote. The phrase was a huge hit in the 90s and 2000s; Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and George W Bush played it on repeat. By the following decade, Trump was mandating the word: “The Democrat party. Not Democratic. It’s Democrat. We have to do that.”Removing the “ic” does seem to suggest the party isn’t about democracy. But if that’s the goal, Glickman wonders: “Why not call it the undemocratic party? Like Trump used to say the Department of Injustice.” And anyway, as they’ve proved since 2020, democracy isn’t high on the list of Republican values. Instead, Glickman suggests, it’s more about a “babyish” tendency to misname people. Also, as Hendrik Hertzberg wrote in the New Yorker in 2006, “it fairly screams ‘rat’.”So what should Democrats do? Is it time to start calling Republicans Republics? Licans? Relics? President Harry Truman tried “Publicans”, and it clearly didn’t take off. Perhaps it’s best, especially considering that many people don’t even know it’s an insult, to just keep ignoring it. Getting mad would be taking the bait. “This would be constructed as Democrats are weak pedants who can’t take a joke and they’re policing our language and see how they’re so heavy-handed with regulation?” Holliday says.So Democrats can let the attempts at bullying continue. Trump and his gang clearly need to blow off some steam; might as well be through the world’s tiniest, oddest insult. More

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      Tucker Carlson lost his platform but crucially he still has Donald Trump’s ear

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      In spring of last year, Tucker Carlson was on the outs.The former prime-time host had been booted from the Fox News channel where he had made his name. Ensconced in his remote Maine home, Carlson launched a new show on what was then called Twitter, but as his viewer figures quickly plunged, consensus opinion was that Carlson’s position as a news and political tastemaker, someone capable of creating Republican stars and taking down careers, was over.It turns out that wasn’t quite right.The eponymous network that Carlson has since created, where he hosts interviews and delivers screeds to subscribing viewers, certainly lacks the reach of his Fox News show. But he has remained a key figure behind the scenes in Republican politics, someone with the ear of Trump and the ability to influence key positions. He had a headline slot at the Republican national convention, and next month is going on a tour that will feature JD Vance, Trump’s running mate.“He’s a confidant of Trump, and the GOP is the party of Trump now,” said Heather Hendershot, a professor at Northwestern University’s school of communication whose work focuses on television news and conservative and rightwing media.That relationship has allowed Carlson to become, if not a kingmaker, then certainly a prince-maker – playing a key role in Vance’s ascendancy to vice-presidential candidate. Vance was a frequent presence on Tucker Carlson Tonight during his run for Senate in Ohio, hopping on to pontificate on all manner of issues that Carlson’s far-right audience like. It was on Carlson’s show that Vance characterized Kamala Harris and others “childless cat ladies”, a comment that resurfaced in July.The pair stayed close, and Carlson had a key role in one of the most important decisions Trump had to make: choosing his running mate. The New York Times reported that Trump was “wavering” on choosing Vance in June, considering instead the more experienced Marco Rubio or the rich, inoffensive Doug Burgum. Carlson intervened in bombastic fashion, warning Trump that such a move could see him assassinated, according to the Times, and briefing that neither Rubio, the Florida senator, nor Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, could be trusted.“[Trump’s decision to pick Vance] is kind of backfiring for him now, because Vance keeps revealing his strange attitudes about women, childless women and childless women with cats. So it’s not really helping him that much, and Trump’s team isn’t really pleased about it, I’m sure,” Hendershot said.“It’s interesting that he had Trump’s ear for that, and his rationale was very sort of strange, or weird, is the word we’re using now, and kind of conspiratorial.”The conspiratorial aspect has long been key to Carlson’s appeal, and if his influence with Trump has increased – even in the face of texts emerging in 2023 that Carlson had said of Trump: “I hate him passionately” – it has done so as Carlson has become more fringe.In February, he aired an interview with Vladimir Putin in which he allowed the Russian autocrat to drone on for two hours about everything from a ninth-century Scandinavian prince to how he was allegedly prepared to end his invasion of Ukraine, and also gave a platform to Alex Jones, a conspiracy theorist who was ordered to pay $1.5bn to the families of the Sandy Hook victims after he claimed the 2012 elementary school shooting was faked.“If anything, he appears to have descended into even more public crackpottery since he left Fox News,” said Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a leftwing advocacy group.“Someone like that having a direct line to the former president of the United States, who could be the president again, is certainly a matter of great concern.”Carlson has retained that direct line even as his ability to reach the public appears to have declined. His Tucker Carlson Network has only 200,000 subscribers, the Wall Street Journal reported, while at its peak, his Fox News show attracted millions of viewers a night, although Carlson is popular on other platforms: his podcast is the second most popular on Spotify, behind only Joe Rogan, and his interview with Putin, while widely panned, was a success in terms of numbers: it received more than 200m views when Carlson posted it to X, although it is unclear how many people watched the entire thing.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“His media influence has diminished substantially since he left Fox, but his political influence is still quite potent,” Gertz said.“Tucker Carlson was really the most powerful single figure in the rightwing media. He was someone who was capable of swinging Republican primary elections, but also someone who was capable of swinging news cycles, of creating messages that would be broadly used by the right.”Gertz said that wasn’t the case any more, although Carlson remained “a potent political force”.“His relationship with Donald Trump seems to be the key factor here, he has been able, by publicly supporting him so loudly, to ensure that he still apparently has the ability to contact Donald Trump directly and advise him on key issues.”Along with the questionable guidance Carlson gave Trump over Vance, he was also key to bringing together Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr for a meeting at the GOP convention, and Vanity Fair reported that it was Carlson and Donald Trump Jr who helped organize Kennedy’s subsequent withdrawal from the presidential race and endorsement of Trump. The New York Times reported that Carlson connected Trump and Kennedy “on a three-way text message” hours after the attempted assassination on Trump, a message chain that led to the pair speaking on the phone that night.Where Carlson’s influence ultimately leads will probably depend on whether Trump can win in November. But in the meantime, despite the low views for Carlson’s shows and his lack of a wide public platform, his position as a key figure is demonstrated from “Tucker Carlson live”, a 16-date tour he will embark on in September.Trump Jr and Vance, two of the people closest to the former president, will appear with Carlson in Florida and Pennsylvania respectively, for a tour that Carlson claims is “going to be interesting and fun as hell”.While the latter will depend on an individual’s politics and taste, Carlson’s continuing influence at the top of Republican politics is certainly interesting – and could be worrying should Trump be re-elected president. More

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      RFK Jr sues North Carolina elections board to remove his name from ballot

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr is suing North Carolina’s state board of elections after it refused to remove his name from the electoral ballot following his decision to drop his independent presidential campaign and endorse Donald Trump.The legal action comes after a series of ballot woes that initially impeded Kennedy’s campaign but are now threatening to undermine the impact of his decision to end it.Kennedy announced the suspension of his presidential bid on 23 August, saying he planned to remove his name from the ballot in 10 states, including vital swing states where his was presence was likely to damage Trump in knife-edge contests with Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.“Our polling consistently showed that by staying on the ballot in the battleground states, I would likely hand the election over to the Democrats, with whom I disagree on the most existential issues,” Kennedy told journalists when he announced his withdrawal in Phoenix, Arizona, last month.He has since been enthusiastically embraced by Trump, who has appointed him to his transition team, despite concerns among conservative Republicans about Kennedy’s Democratic past and his support for abortion rights.However, Kennedy’s request to remove his name in North Carolina – a key battleground where recent opinion surveys have shown Harris taking a small lead – was rejected by the state election board after it said around 1.7m ballot papers had already been printed and that producing new ones would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.“It would not be practical to reprint ballots that have already been printed and meet the state law deadline to start absentee voting,” the board said in a 29 August statement.Sixty seven of the states 100 counties have already received their absentee mail-in ballots, meaning creating batches would create logistical problems, officials said. “When we talk about the printing a ballot we are not talking about … pressing ‘copy’ on a Xerox machine. This is a much more complex and layered process,” the election board’s executive director, Karen Brinson Bell, said.Board members split three to two along Democratic-Republican party lines in denying Kennedy’s request.A law suit filed on his behalf claims that the decision has damaged his rights of free speech.“By refusing to acknowledge Kennedy’s statutory rights and entitlements, defendants have irreparably harmed him,” the suit argued. “Even worse, by forcing Kennedy to remain on the ballot against his will, defendants are compelling speech in violation of [the US constitution].”The dispute with North Carolina is mirrored in two other states seen as vital to the outcome of the 5 November election.Kennedy has also been refused permission to remove his name from the ballot in Wisconsin and Michigan, where polls indicate his presence could help Harris at the expense of Trump.In Michigan, Harris gains 0.1% with Kennedy’s name on the ballot, according to RealClearPolitics, which already gives her a 2.2% lead over Trump from recent polling averages. The same analysis sees her gaining 0.5% through Kennedy’s presence in Wisconsin, where she already has a one point advantage in recent surveys.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWisconsin – where Kennedy was nominated by the Natural Law Party – rejected his request to remove his name on 27 August, citing election law that states that only death could result in a candidate’s removal once nominated.“Any person who files nomination papers and qualifies to appear on the ballot may not decline nomination,” the state’s election law says. “The name of that person shall appear upon the ballot except in case of death of the person.”Kennedy has successfully removed himself from the ballot in several other battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona.His struggle to get off the ballot in some states has been mirrored by his difficulties in getting on in others, where his presence is unlikely to affect the outcome.In New York, an appeals committee last week upheld a judge’s decision to exclude from the ballot on the grounds that he lived in California and that an address he filed as a state residence was that of a friend.“This is not a situation where Kennedy erroneously listed a former residence in the nominating petition, but rather, Kennedy listed an address at which the record evidence reflects he has never resided,” the panel of judges wrote.Ironically, Georgia – another battleground state where Kennedy’s presence could adversely affect Trump – recently ruled that he was “not qualified” to appear on the ballot because of doubts about his New York residence. The Georgia secretary of state’s office has said that Kennedy’s name “will not be appearing on the ballot in Georgia this election”. More

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      Who is running for president in 2024? Harris, Trump and the full list of candidates

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      The 2024 election season is well under way.The campaign was marked by a consequential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, followed by weeks of pressure on Biden following his debate performance, culminating in his announcement that he would drop out of the race.As Biden reconsidered his re-election, there was an attempted assassination against Trump, followed by the naming of the Ohio senator JD Vance as the Republican vice-presidential pick.After Biden’s surprise announcement, he backed his vice-president, Kamala Harris, as his choice to replace him on the party’s ticket. Harris quickly secured enough delegates to become the presumptive Democratic pick. She tapped the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate, and both were confirmed as their party’s nominees at the Democratic convention in August.Also in August, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the independent candidate with no shortage of wild stories, suspended his campaign and threw his support behind Trump.Here is the full list of candidates as of 27 August, including some long-shots who hope to challenge the major party candidates in November..gu-candidate-container.svelte-yah0vs.svelte-yah0vs{cursor:pointer;display:flex;flex-wrap:wrap;justify-content:center;width:80px}.gu-candidate-container.true.svelte-yah0vs.svelte-yah0vs{width:70px}.gu-candidate-container.true.svelte-yah0vs img.svelte-yah0vs{filter:grayscale(.8) opacity(.3) contrast(1.8);width:50px}.gu-candidate-container.true.svelte-yah0vs p.svelte-yah0vs{color:#707070}img.svelte-yah0vs.svelte-yah0vs{border-radius:100%;width:100%}p.svelte-yah0vs.svelte-yah0vs{color:#121212;font-family:Guardian Text Sans Web,Helvetica 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      The remaining candidatesView image in fullscreenDonald TrumpFormer president of the United States. Running mate: JD VanceDonald Trump accepted the Republican party’s nomination for president for the third consecutive time. At the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, the former president formally accepted the nomination on a night that was supposed to be filled with calls for unity but instead was marked by alarmist language and false claims.Trump announced Vance – once a vocal “never Trumper” – as his pick for the nomination for vice-president at the Republican convention.View image in fullscreenKamala HarrisVice-president of the United States. Running-mate: Tim WalzHarris officially accepted the Democratic party’s presidential nomination at the Democratic convention in August in Chicago, after a whirlwind tour of battleground states alongside her running mate, Walz.Harris’s campaign came after weeks of pressure following Biden’s disastrous June debate, and after Biden announced he would not accept his party’s nomination and endorsed her to replace him on the Democratic ticket.Immediately following Biden’s decision, Harris confirmed her intention to “earn and win this nomination” as a flood of Democrats endorsed her campaign, heading off a competitive race for the Democratic ticket.Harris made her first official campaign stop in Delaware on 22 July and has crisscrosed the country, stopping in swing state after swing state, since.View image in fullscreenJill SteinDoctor and activist. Running mate: Butch WareLeftwing environmentalist Jill Stein formally launched her third presidential bid in an online conversation in November 2023. Stein also stood as the Green party’s candidate in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections. Her candidacy follows the decision by Cornel West, the party’s original likely nominee, to leave the Green party and run as an independent.View image in fullscreenCornel WestProfessor and progressive activist. Running mate: Melina AbdullahThe progressive activist Cornel West announced in a video posted to Twitter that he was running for president as a member of the People’s party, a third party headed by a former campaign staffer for Bernie Sanders. West is currently a professor of philosophy at Union Theological Seminary and previously worked at Harvard but resigned, saying the school had an “intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of deep depths”.Dropped outView image in fullscreenJoe BidenPresident of the United States, dropped out 21 July 2024Joe Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election, winning all the party’s primary contests. However, following a disastrous debate performance in June against Trump, and weeks of pressure, Biden announced on 21 July that he would not accept the party’s nomination. Biden endorsed Kamala Harris to replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket. Biden served in politics for more than five decades, culminating in his 2020 victory over Donald Trump.Ryan BinkleyBusinessman and pastor, dropped out 27 February 2024Binkley, a Texas businessman, was a long-shot candidate who is also a pastor at Create church. The self-proclaimed far-right fiscal conservative criticized both Democrats and Republicans for not being able to balance the federal budget, and said he would focus on health costs, immigration reform and a national volunteer movement.View image in fullscreenDoug BurgumGovernor of North Dakota, dropped out 4 December 2023Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, announced his campaign in an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal on 6 June 2023. Viewed as a surprise, long-shot candidate, he touted his experience as a career businessman and leaned on his small-town roots in an announcement video titled Change. As governor, Burgum signed into law a near-total abortion ban, which makes the procedure illegal after six weeks, and only permissible in cases of rape, incest or medical emergency up to that point. He supported Donald Trump for president in 2016 and in 2020.View image in fullscreenChris ChristieFormer governor of New Jersey, dropped out 10 January 2024The former New Jersey governor has emerged as one of the harshest Republican critics of Donald Trump, whom he endorsed for president in 2016 after dropping out of that race. Christie says he broke ties with the former president after the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, claiming that he hadn’t spoken to Trump since then. Christie, a lawyer and a lobbyist who served as a US attorney appointed by George W Bush, announced he was running for president a second time on 6 June 2023 in New Hampshire during a town hall.View image in fullscreenRon DeSantisGovernor of Florida, dropped out 21 January 2024Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida was predicted to be the strongest contender for the GOP nomination against Donald Trump, consistently polling second among Republican primary voters. He made his formal announcement on Twitter, during a Spaces event attended by roughly 300,000 users that was riddled with technological glitches, on 24 May 2023. DeSantis, who has served as Florida’s governor since 2019 and handily defeated the Democratic challenger, Charlie Crist, in 2022, previously represented Florida’s sixth congressional district as a member of the US House from 2012 to 2018. As governor, DeSantis has signed a slate of laws banning minors from receiving gender-affirming care and restricting education on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools, and he has become an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist party.Larry ElderConservative radio host, dropped out 26 October 2023The rightwing political commentator and radio talkshow host announced his run for president on Fox News as a guest on the now-canceled Tucker Carlson Tonight on 20 April 2023. In 2021, Elder joined a list of Republicans seeking to replace Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, in a failed recall. The Los Angeles resident was an outspoken critic of the state’s mask mandates, calling them “a joke”.View image in fullscreenNikki HaleyFormer ambassador to the United Nations, dropped out 6 March 2024Haley, who got her start in politics as a member of South Carolina’s general assembly, was governor of the state from 2011 to 2017. She ended her second term early to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations under Donald Trump before announcing her resignation in 2018. She became the first Republican to announce a run against Donald Trump, even though she previously said she would not run against him. Haley vowed to “fix” the US immigration system by “stopping illegal immigration” and described herself as pro-life, but said a federal abortion ban was unrealistic. Haley, who is the daughter of Indian immigrants, would have been the first US president of Asian descent, as well as the first woman.Will HurdFormer congressman from Texas, dropped out 10 October 2023Former US Representative Will Hurd, of Texas, entered the crowded primary field as a moderate and critic of Donald Trump. Hurd announced his campaign in an interview on CBS. He followed that with a video posted online in which he called Trump a “lawless, selfish, failed politician” and laid out an agenda to curb “illegal immigration”, inflation, crime and homelessness. Hurd, who worked for nearly a decade in the CIA, served three terms in the House, from 2015 to 2021. He left office as the only Black Republican in the chamber.View image in fullscreenAsa HutchinsonFormer governor of Arkansas, dropped out 16 January 2024Hutchinson is the former governor of Arkansas, a post he held from 2015 to 2023. The relatively unknown politician announced his candidacy in an interview on ABC days after Trump was indicted in a Manhattan court, saying the ex-president should drop out of the race. Hutchinson is a businessman and lawyer who was appointed by Ronald Reagan to serve as a US attorney. He also served a stint in the US House of Representatives, winning a congressional seat in 1996 when he replaced his brother, Tim, who ran for Senate.View image in fullscreenPerry JohnsonBusinessman, dropped out 20 October 2023Johnson is a businessman who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Michigan in 2022 after providing fraudulent nominating signatures for that campaign. Originally from Illinois, Johnson founded dozens of companies, and lives in Michigan with his family. He has billed himself as Donald Trump “without the baggage” and has taken similar policy positions on curbing US debt and cracking down on the FBI.Robert F Kennedy JrLawyer and author, dropped out 23 August 2024Robert F Kennedy Jr, known for his work as an environmental lawyer and his anti-vaccine views, said he was running for president to end the “chronic disease epidemic”. Kennedy, who compared vaccine mandates during the Covid-19 pandemic to “Hitler’s Germany”, has promoted other baseless conspiracy theories such as telecom networks being used to control people. He is the nephew of John F Kennedy, the former Democratic president, who was assassinated in office, and is the son of 1968 Democratic presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy, who was assassinated on the campaign trail. He suspended his campaign on 23 August and endorsed Trump.View image in fullscreenMike PenceFormer vice-president of the United States, dropped out 28 October 2023Mike Pence officially launched his campaign for president on 7 June 2023, in a rare instance of a former vice-president challenging the president with whom he shared a ticket a few years ago. Pence joined a crowded Republican field in which he has consistently polled third, even before he officially announced his candidacy, though he trails far behind DeSantis and Trump. Pence was angling for a wide base among evangelical Christians and had vowed to ban abortion if he were elected. He denounced the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, and had used it as a talking point against Trump, who turned against him after he publicly refused supporters’ calls to overturn the results of the election.View image in fullscreenDean PhillipsRepresentative from Minnesota, dropped out 6 March 2024Dean Phillips, a three-term Democratic congressman from Minnesota, challenged Biden, saying the next generation should have the opportunity to lead the country. Phillips is the heir to a distilling company and once co-owned a gelato company. He entered public office spurred by fighting back against Trump.Vivek RamaswamyEntrepreneur and author, dropped out 16 January 2024The biotech entrepreneur and political newcomer announced his campaign in a video describing attacks on the “culture of free speech in America” and again on Fox News in an interview with now-fired Tucker Carlson. He is the author of Woke, Inc, a book that lobbies against “ESG” – a framework of corporate governance that encourages companies to consider the environment and social justice issues. Ramaswamy, who was the youngest candidate vying for the Republican nomination, had lobbied in favor of raising the national voting age to 25. Ramaswamy would have been the first president of Asian and Indian descent. He had also vowed to pardon federally indicted Donald Trump.Francis SuarezMayor of Miami, dropped out 29 August 2023Suarez, the mayor of Miami, was the first major Hispanic candidate seeking the Republican party nomination this election cycle. The son of Miami’s first Cuban-born mayor, Suarez had said he would broaden support for Republicans among Latino voters. He was the third candidate from Florida to join the crowded primary field, alongside frontrunners Trump and DeSantis. Suarez, who was first elected in 2017, filed paperwork to run the day after Trump appeared in a Miami court over federal charges and made his formal announcement on Good Morning America the day after that.View image in fullscreenTim ScottSenator from South Carolina, dropped out 13 November 2023In May, Scott became the second politician from South Carolina to run for the Republican nomination. He has served as a senator from South Carolina since 2013, when he was appointed by Republican challenger Nikki Haley to fill a vacancy. Scott, who is one of three Black members of the Senate and is the only Black Republican senator, said in his announcement speech that “America is not a racist country”. Scott joined fellow Republicans in opposing the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022. Scott served as a member of the House from 2011 to 2013 and before that spent stints in South Carolina’s general assembly and Charleston’s county council. During his 2010 campaign for the House of Representatives, Scott told Newsweek that homosexuality was a morally wrong choice.View image in fullscreenMarianne WilliamsonAuthorFailed 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, who also unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the US House of Representatives in 2014, became the first Democratic candidate to announce she is running for president as a challenge to Joe Biden. Williamson, an author of self-help books, launched her long-shot bid with campaign promises to address climate change and student loan debt. She previously worked as “spiritual leader” of a Michigan Unity church. She originally ended her campaign on 7 February 2024 but announced on 28 February she was “un-suspending”. More

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      RFK Jr is now political roadkill – what does it mean for Harris and Trump?

      by

      Hello, good day,First, an apology. We missed some big election news in July, when the town of Omena, in northern Michigan, elected a horse called Lucky to be mayor. Lucky becomes the first horse to hold the position – the largely ceremonial role was previously held by Rosie, who is a dog. We wish the 16-year-old stallion all the best for his time in office.One mammal who will not be becoming an elected leader, however, is Robert F Kennedy Jr. The bear-cub-vanquishing, non-dog-eating, brain-worm-surviving presidential candidate dropped out of the race, sort of, last week and endorsed Donald Trump. Kennedy was seen as a threat by both the Trump and Harris campaigns, and we’ll take a look at what his election exit could mean for both after some headlines.Here’s what you need to knowView image in fullscreen1.More legal trouble for TrumpThe justice department filed a new indictment on Tuesday against Donald Trump, over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump had already been charged in the case, but the new indictment aims to work around a supreme court decision in July which ruled that former presidents have complete immunity for official acts. Trump is charged with four federal crimes, including conspiracy to defraud the US, but the case is unlikely to go to trial before November.2. To mute or not to mute?The Trump and Harris campaigns are engaged in back and forth over the scheduled 10 September debate, with negotiations seeming to hinge on one issue: whether candidates’ microphones will be turned off when it is not their turn to speak. “Muted microphones” were used in the Trump-Biden debate in July, but the Harris team would like to keep the mics switched on the whole time – presumably with the hope that the notoriously undisciplined Trump will embarrass himself on live TV. Trump has said he wants open mics, too, but his team would rather they be turned off. “Our understanding is that Trump’s handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don’t think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own,” a Harris spokesman told NBC. The saga continues.3. More than 200 Republican staffers endorse HarrisA group of 238 people who worked for former president George HW Bush, former president George W Bush, former Arizona senator John McCain and Utah senator Mitt Romney have come out in support of Kamala Harris, warning that a Trump second term “will hurt real, everyday people”. In an open letter published this week the Republican staffers wrote: “Of course, we have plenty of honest, ideological disagreements with Vice-President Harris and Governor Walz … That’s to be expected. The alternative, however, is simply untenable.”The bear-conquerer is gone … what does it mean for Harris and Trump?View image in fullscreenWell, there goes that dream. We all knew Robert F Kennedy Jr would not be the next president of the United States, and it only took 18 months for him to figure it out too. The scion of the storied Kennedy Democratic family, who was running as an independent, brought an end to his campaign last week, and endorsed Donald Trump.While Kennedy’s campaign ultimately descended into a laughingstock – one highlight was when he was forced to reveal he had staged the death of a bear cub, another when he had to deny that he had eaten a dog – he was less of a joke to Democratic and Republican strategists.The election is likely to be decided by tens of thousands of votes in a handful of states, so if Kennedy had managed to persuade just a few people to vote for him over Harris or Trump, it could have tipped the scales of the election.In endorsing Trump, Kennedy claimed the former president had invited him to form a “unity government” – although Kennedy also admitted that Trump had given him no commitments about any actual government position. On Tuesday Trump appointed Kennedy to his transition team, giving him some influence in the policies a Trump administration would pursue, but does any of this mean that those Kennedy voters, whoever they are, will flock to Trump? And is Trump now a shoo-in for the White House?The answer seems to be: probably not.The polling boffins at 538 reckon the Kennedy exit and Trump endorsement will have “minimal impact on the race”. Ruth Igielnik, a poll expert at the New York Times, says it is “unlikely to change the nature of the race”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAccording to 538’s analysis of polling, if Kennedy hadn’t been in the race, his supporters would have been equally likely to vote for Trump or Harris, while polling shows that Kennedy’s supporters were less likely than Harris or Trump supporters to say they will definitely vote in November. So even if all Kennedy’s voters follow him to the Trump camp, they might not show up at the polls.That’s not to say it couldn’t have an impact.Biden won Wisconsin by just 20,682 votes in 2020. If Kennedy managed to win over 10,342 of those Democratic voters, and those people now vote for Trump, then assuming everyone else who voted in Wisconsin in 2020 a) votes in November, and b) votes the same way, then Trump would win the key swing state.But the truth is that Kennedy’s star had been on the wane for a while. Kennedy was polling at 10% nationally before Joe Biden dropped out: that has since dropped to 5%. Kennedy was also running out of money: at the end of July his campaign, which ended up being managed by his daughter-in-law, had $3.9m cash on hand, but was $3.5m in debt.In the end, Kennedy couldn’t even drop out properly. He’s withdrawing from the ballot in 10 states, including some of the states expected to be particularly close in November, but will remain on the ballot in 30 states. Oh, and some of the states he plans to drop out of have already started printing their voting papers, so Kennedy’s name could appear on the ballot anyway.While Kennedy says he endorsed Trump because they share some of the same priorities – ending the war in Ukraine, taking on big pharma, and sorting out the climate (lol!) – it’s telling that Kennedy also asked the Harris campaign for a job before deciding to back Trump.For now, Trump has received Kennedy warmly. On Tuesday it emerged that Trump had appointed Kennedy to his transition team, and while the addition of a man who looks like a melted GI Joe figurine and who says a worm ate part of his brain is unlikely to quell the accusations that Republicans are “weird”, it at least gives Kennedy something to do.Who had the worst weekView image in fullscreen
      Spare a thought for Steve Bannon, the rightwing media guru who helped mastermind Trump’s 2016 election win but is now, apparently, being “tortured” in prison.That’s what Rudy Giuliani – the occasional lawyer, regular Trump supporter and near-constant raiser of eyebrows – claimed in a recent interview.According to Giuliani, Bannon is being tortured by not being able to watch television while in prison, where he is serving a four-month sentence for defying multiple subpoenas. More

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      There’s a fair way to ensure third-party candidates don’t ‘spoil’ the US election | David Daley

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr has suspended his presidential campaign and endorsed Donald Trump, in part because he did not want to be a spoiler across competitive swing states. The third-party “spoiler problem”, unfortunately, will not vanish with him.Three committed independents and third-party nominees remain: progressive activist Cornel West, Libertarian Chase Oliver, and Jill Stein of the Green party. They could still tip the balance: the White House looks likely to be won by the tiniest margins across just seven swing states, just as it was in 2016 and 2020.The next president should not be decided by whether Stein earns 0.4% in Michigan or 0.2%, or if Oliver claims 1.1% or 0.8% in Libertarian-friendly Georgia and Arizona. But under our current system, that’s very much possible.We need a modern fix that recognizes that third parties are here to stay, but also that a nation with a guiding principle of majority rule deserves winners who earn more than 50% of their fellow Americans’ votes. The best solution to the urgent “spoiler” problem – which we’ve been exhaustingly debating since Ross Perot’s run in 1992 – is ranked-choice voting (RCV).Two states – Maine and Alaska – have already adopted this common-sense, nonpartisan fix for fairer results and will vote for president this fall with RCV. Others should follow their lead. RCV has lots of benefits. But most crucially, by giving voters the power to rank the field, it fixes the spoiler effect that emerges in any race with more than two candidates.A RCV election works much like an instant runoff. If someone wins a majority of voters’ first choices, they win – like any other election. If not, the last-place finishers are eliminated, one by one, and their supporters’ second choices come into play to identify a majority winner.In other words, a Democrat in Michigan who wants a different approach in Gaza could feel free to rank West or Stein first, and Kamala Harris second. A Sun belt conservative who thinks the national debt grew too quickly under Trump could put Oliver first and the former president second. They could make their voice heard – without worrying that their vote would elect someone they fear could be worse on the issue most important to them.Currently, despite our political nuances and the increasing number of registered independents, the spoiler problem continues to be the prism through which every third-party run is considered. Kennedy never seemed likely to win, but pundits agonized for months over whether he drew more from Democrats or the Republican party. It’s no surprise that serious independent candidates or anti-Trump conservatives such as Larry Hogan and Chris Christie rejected entreaties to run this year, when such a run would be reduced to the question of who they’d “siphon” votes from.It’s too early to judge the effect that Kennedy’s exit will have on the race. His support had softened in recent weeks. Yet almost no matter how his supporters break, the most competitive states remain extremely close.As of 21 August, Harris leads Arizona by 1.2%, Pennsylvania by 1.6%, and North Carolina by 0.2%. Trump holds a lead of 0.8% in Georgia. Any of the remaining third-party candidates could easily exceed the margin of victory in competitive states. It’s not just Florida in 2000, when George W Bush carried the electoral college tipping-point by 537 votes, a margin far surpassed by Ralph Nader voters. In Wisconsin in 2020, the Libertarian Jo Jorgensen and conservative-leaning independents took more than twice as many votes as the margin between Joe Biden and Trump.It’s easy to imagine something similar this year, perhaps even an election night 2024 where the electoral college is knotted up. Harris and Trump each have 251 electoral votes. Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin remain too close to call, each separated by a handful of votes. A tense nation awaits the verdict.Wouldn’t the result have more legitimacy if everyone knew that the electoral votes in those states went to a winner with more than 50% of the vote?Kennedy might have left the scene, but third-party candidates are not going away. Nor should they be forced out. We can adjust to that reality, or we can dig in our heels, repeat this tired debate, blame Ralph Nader and Jill Stein for everything, forever, and – at a time when the country feels ever more polarized – risk electing a president without a majority in the decisive states, leaving us even more divided than we are now.There’s no silver bullet to everything that ails our civic spirit. Yet the road out of this toxicity might begin with embracing values that most of us hold dear: more individual choice is good, all of us should be heard and majorities must rule. Ranked-choice voting makes that possible.

      David Daley is the author of Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count and Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy. He is a senior fellow at FairVote More