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      Keep talking, JD! Vance’s creepy views on ‘females’ are repelling women voters

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      JD Vance puts his futon in his mouth againConsider, if you will, the mysterious role of the postmenopausal female. Her ovaries have shrunk and she is no longer able to fulfil a woman’s biological destiny of bringing children into the world. What’s the point of her?One Mr Eric Weinstein, a mathematician and host of The Portal podcast, has helpfully provided some intellectual light on this most vexing of questions. Drumroll please, per Weinstein the “whole purpose of the postmenopausal female”, is to help take care of her grandchildren.A little more context: in 2020 Weinstein had Senator JD Vance on his podcast and the pair chatted about the importance of grandparents. Vance explained that his extremely accomplished mother-in-law, a biology professor, had taken a year-long sabbatical and lived with them for a year after the birth of the Vances’ first child. Weinstein heartily approved of this, noting that nurturing was, after all, the purpose of the “postmenopausal female”. Vance appeared to agree. He also seemed to agree when Weinstein proclaimed that having your grandparents help out with your kids is a “weird, unadvertised feature of marrying an Indian woman”. (Vance’s wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, is the daughter of Indian immigrants.)These recently resurfaced comments are attracting a lot of attention for obvious reasons. Ever since he was announced as Donald Trump’s running mate, Vance has been in the headlines for his history of weird comments about gender and marriage. During a 2021 event, for example, he seemed to suggest that it was far too easy for people to get divorced and it was best for people to stay married, for the sake of their kids, even if the marriages were violent. Vance has said these remarks were taken out of context. Around the same time he also memorably said that the US was being led by a “bunch of childless cat ladies”. Then, when recently pressed on the comment, he claimed it was sarcastic and added: “I’ve got nothing against cats.”Was Vance’s apparent agreement with Weinstein’s assessment of the role of “the postmenopausal female” sarcasm as well? No, this time the excuse is that it’s all fake news. A spokesperson for the aspiring vice-president has accused “the media” of “dishonestly putting words in JD’s mouth”. The spokesperson also claimed: “JD reacted to the first part of the host’s sentence, assuming he was going to say: ‘That’s the whole purpose of spending time with grandparents.’”You can listen to the excerpt yourself, if you can bear it, and come to your own conclusions. I think it’s fair to say, however, that Vance certainly doesn’t vocally disagree with Weinstein’s statement. He also doesn’t say anything along the lines of, “Eric, my friend, please don’t refer to women as females like that, it’s creepy and gives off major incel vibes.”Ultimately, it’s difficult to give Vance the benefit of the doubt when it comes to these comments considering his past statements on gender and the sort of people that he surrounds himself with. Donald Trump, the man’s running mate, has been legally branded a sexual predator and is one of the most famous misogynists in the world, for God’s sake!Then there’s Peter Thiel, who hired Vance at his investment firm in 2017 then groomed him for political stardom – donating $15m to Vance’s 2022 Ohio Senate campaign and helping to secure Trump’s endorsement. Vance has said that Thiel has been a major influence on him, which is worrying because the billionaire has a lot of incredibly archaic views. He’s called diversity initiatives “very evil and very silly” and has mused that women having the right to vote has been a setback for libertarianism. Weinstein, by the way, is also in the Thiel fold: at the time those “postmenopausal female” comments were recorded, the podcast host was the managing director of Thiel’s hedge fund. Males of a feather seem to flock together.Anyway, even if one were to be very generous and say this postmenopausal controversy has been overblown, Vance seems determined to keep insulting as many women as he can. On Wednesday, for example, he suggested to Fox News that it’s not “normal” to care about abortion. “What do you say to suburban women out there who are marinating in this propaganda [that abortion has been banned nationwide]?” the Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked. Vance replied: “I don’t buy that … I think most suburban women care about the normal things that most Americans care about.”Here’s the thing: suburban women do care about abortion. An April Wall Street Journal poll found that 39% of suburban women cite abortion as a “make-or-break issue for their vote” and Trump risks losing this important voting bloc because of it.All of which to say: please keep talking, JD, you’re doing a great job of alienating half of the electorate! Kamala Harris already has a massive lead with likely women voters in the polls and Vance seems to be doing his damnedest to make the gender gap grow.Katy Perry’s annus horribilis continues to get worseThis year was supposed to be Perry’s big comeback. Alas Woman’s World, the first single from her new album, was widely panned and there was a general sense that the singer is struggling to adjust her 2010s vibe to the present moment. Now the 39-year-old is being investigated by the government of Spain’s Balearic islands for filming on protected dunes without the necessary permissions. In the Guardian, Laura Snapes asks if Perry’s career can recover from these setbacks.British woman wins rare payout after ‘sexsomnia’ rape case droppedDays before the man charged with raping Jade Blue McCrossen-Nethercot was due to stand trial the case was dropped because two experts said it was possible she had a disorder which could cause her to engage in sexual acts while asleep. While sexsomnia is a real condition, it’s not exactly common. What is becoming more common, however, is it being used as part of a defence in criminal trials.Indian women march to ‘reclaim the night’ after doctor’s rape and murderThere have been several days of protests across the state of West Bengal after an unnamed 31-year-old doctor was attacked while taking a break from a shift at a government hospital. “If the government cannot ensure the safety of women at a government-run institution, what hope is there?” one protester asked.Hundreds of cases of femicide recorded in Afghanistan since Taliban takeoverIt has been three years since the Taliban seized power again in Afghanistan, creating “the world’s most serious women’s rights crisis”. Since then there have been 332 reported cases of Afghan women being killed by men, with Taliban officials implicated in more than half of reported incidents. Sadly these numbers are probably just the “the tip of the iceberg”.Draft Iraqi law would allow nine-year-olds to marryIn 1959, Iraq passed a progressive Personal Status Law that transferred jurisdiction over family affairs from religious courts to the state. It set the legal age of marriage at 18 and restricted polygamy. However, while technically illegal, there’s been an increase in child marriage in Iraq over the last 20 years; one survey by Unicef found 28% of girls in Iraq had married by 18. Instead of trying to reverse this, religious groups are trying to roll back the Personal Status Law and essentially legalize child rape. A bloc of female lawmakers have been trying to stop the draft law being passed but they have an uphill battle on their hands.The week in pawtriarchyThe universe works in mysterious ways. Sometimes, for example, it gives you a cat. The Guardian has an explainer about the cat distribution system (CDS) meme and what you should actually do if a stray cat suddenly appears in your life. Mews you can use. More

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      ‘The world is watching’: 1968 protests set stage for Democratic convention

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      Sean Wilentz was in the convention hall when someone handed out copies of a news wire report. “I remember the first line,” he says. “It said, ‘The lid blew off of this convention city tonight.’” The article went on to describe chaos and bloodshed in Chicago as police clashed with protesters against the Vietnam war.Just 17 at the time, Wilentz and a couple of friends raced to the scene in downtown Chicago. “It was horrible. The cops were angry and didn’t like the kids and the kids were angry and didn’t like the cops. I saw a motorcycle cop go on a sidewalk and pin a kid against the wall. I was very scared.”View image in fullscreenMore than half a century has passed since a police riot scarred the Democratic national convention of 1968. On Monday Democrats return to Chicago with a spring in their step as they prepare to anoint Kamala Harris their presidential candidate. Yet some comparisons with the events of 56 years ago are irresistible.Just as in 1968, a would-be assassin has sought to change the course of political history. Just as in 1968, an incumbent president has stepped aside and a vice-president will gain the Democratic nomination without winning a single primary vote. And just as in 1968, protesters will gather to demonstrate their anger over US involvement in an unpopular war.Democrats are praying that the similarities end there. When the teargas cleared in Chicago, Hubert Humphrey, a self-styled “happy warrior”, emerged as the standard-bearer of a bitterly divided party. He went on to lose the election to Richard Nixon who, like fellow Republican Donald Trump, pushed a “law and order” message to exploit white voters’ fears and prejudices.View image in fullscreenMuch has changed since Trump secured the Republican nomination at the party’s own convention in Milwaukee last month. With 81-year-old Joe Biden fading in opinion polls, the Democratic campaign had come to resemble a death march. But his decision to quit the race and throw his weight behind Harris triggered an explosion of relief, self-belief and surging enthusiasm.Next week’s Democratic convention will put the capstone on the dramatic turnaround. Harris and running mate Tim Walz, who have been drawing huge crowds at rallies and millions of dollars in donations, will be formally nominated and deliver the most important speeches of their careers – probably resulting in a further polling bump.But the carefully stage-managed event – also featuring Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and A-list celebrities – could yet go off script. Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters are expected to gather outside to demand that the US end military aid to Israel amid the ongoing war in Gaza, where the death toll has surpassed 40,000, according to the healthy ministry there.The March on the DNC, a coalition of more than 200 organisations from all over the US, plans to hold demonstrations on Monday and Thursday, the days when Biden and Harris are due to speak. Its website brands the president “Genocide Joe Biden” and warns: “Democratic party leadership switching out their presidential nominee does not wash the blood of over 50,000 Palestinians off their hands.”Although a sprawling security plan has been drawn up by federal, state and city governments, some activists have vowed a replay of 1968, when years of unrest over the American misadventure in Vietnam came to a head in Chicago. Then, as now, students took up the anti-war cause with campus protests, including at Columbia University in New York, where Hamilton Hall was occupied in both 1968 and 2024.View image in fullscreenThere was already political uncertainty after President Lyndon B Johnson closed a speech about the Vietnam war with the stunning announcement that he would not seek another term. Biden has similarly dropped out of the election race, albeit later in the cycle and for very different reasons.America was further shaken by the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy, who was running for the Democratic nomination, and by cities burning in protest at racial injustice. Last month Trump narrowly survived an attempt on his life at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania but one of his supporters was killed.Wilentz, now 73 and a history professor at Princeton University, recalled: “The thing about Chicago: this is the culmination of a crisis that had been building in American politics for five or six years and it was also feeding off the civil rights movement. There was a real feeling of desperation, that this disaster is going to continue. The politics were very fraught and furious and one was not necessarily thinking strategically.”In late August more than 10,000 protesters opposing the Vietnam war and assorted other causes held huge demonstrations near the convention site. Some threw red paint to simulate blood and occupied major roads to block traffic. The official response was brutal with widespread use of teargas, beatings and arrests by the police and national guard. The carnage was broadcast live on television and demonstrators chanted: “The whole world is watching.”View image in fullscreenEyewitness Taylor Pensoneau, 83, who was reporting for the St Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper, recalled: “The protesters were doing a lot to taunt the Chicago police. They were throwing bottles and stones at the police and they were calling them pigs and confronting them. It was a very incendiary situation.“It seemed inevitable that at some point the Chicago police were going to respond and eventually they did in a very forceful manner, swinging billy clubs and pushing protesters to the ground. A lot of people were getting hurt. It was a riot.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere was even mayhem inside the convention hall, including assaults on journalists. Supporters of anti-war candidates such as senator Eugene McCarthy clashed with supporters of Humphrey, who won the nomination with the backing of party elites and dared not defy Johnson over the war until much later.At first glance Humphrey appears to have little in common with Harris. But there is tonal echo. Humphrey had “The Happy Warrior” painted on his plane and, when first declaring his candidacy, remarked: “Here we are the way politics ought to be in America, the politics of happiness, politics of purpose, politics of joy.” Terms such as “happy warriors” and “politics of joy” have been widely applied to Harris and Walz.Such an upbeat approach could come over as tone deaf as children are dying in Gaza, according to Norman Solomon, national director of the progressive group RootsAction. He said: “I was 17 in 1968 and I remember it was like, what are you talking about, the politics of joy? Maybe you’re happy but the administration that you’re part of continues to massacre people on a large scale in Vietnam.“Harris is on an upswing with Walz and in terms of defeating Trump that’s good but the disconnect with people in Dearborn [home of the biggest Arab American community] or people who will be in the streets in Chicago next week is pretty severe. She’s talking politics of joy and Congress is voting the billions more for weapons. The US keeps helping to kill people in Gaza and she dispatches her national security adviser to say she’s absolutely against an arms embargo. It’s almost split screen.”Harris’s acceptance speech on Thursday night will be watched closely for clues that, unlike Humphrey at the convention, she is ready to put some clear daylight between herself and Biden, an ardent Zionist, on the Gaza issue. That could be crucial in persuading Arab American, Muslim and young voters to give her the benefit of the doubt.James Zogby, the founder and president of the Arab American Institute in Washington, said: “She was the first one to call for a ceasefire. She was the first one to call for Palestinian self-determination. She was the first one to use very powerful language about the devastation of Gaza and the suffering of the people there.“She’s been about as clear as you could be that there is a difference in her outlook on this. I’m not going to let you in on all of them but there are indications we’re getting that they do want to turn corners here. They’ve opened a door already in terms of language and policy will follow.”Zogby also doubts that there will be any repeat of the mayhem inside the 1968 convention hall. Of more than 4,000 delegates, only 30 are “uncommitted”, representing a grassroots voter coalition that has opposed Biden’s Gaza policy. This is “nowhere near what you would require to have any kind of floor demonstration”, he said.View image in fullscreen“If there’s a disruption, it would be a handful of people in sea of other delegates. It would not be 1968. Outside, on the other hand, is a different story because, even though many of the groups demonstrating intend to keep it civil and constructive, anytime you get something that large, it develops a dynamic all of its own.”The parallels with 1968 are undoubtedly striking. But the difference may prove more important. The Vietnam war and its draft affected far more Americans than the current conflict in Gaza. Few analysts believe that Gaza will have as much electoral significance, except perhaps in Michigan. Nixon would become embroiled in the Watergate scandal but did not threaten democracy as Trump does.Wilentz commented: “1968 was a very different time than anything I’ve ever seen in this country. There’s certain similarities between this year and that year in the sense that you have events happening very quickly and they seem traumatic. But nothing in comparison to what 68 felt like.” More

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      Iranian group used ChatGPT to try to influence US election, OpenAI says

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      OpenAI said on Friday it had taken down accounts of an Iranian group for using its ChatGPT chatbot to generate content meant for influencing the US presidential election and other issues.The operation, identified as Storm-2035, used ChatGPT to generate content focused on topics such as commentary on the candidates on both sides in the US elections, the conflict in Gaza and Israel’s presence at the Olympic Games and then shared it via social media accounts and websites, Open AI said.Investigation by the Microsoft-backed AI company showed ChatGPT was used for generating long-form articles and shorter social media comments.OpenAI said the operation did not appear to have achieved meaningful audience engagement.The majority of the identified social media posts received few or no likes, shares or comments and the company did not see indications of web articles being shared across social media.The accounts have been banned from using OpenAI’s services and the company continues to monitor activities for any further attempts to violate policies, it said.Earlier in August, a Microsoft threat-intelligence report said the Iranian network Storm-2035, comprising four websites masquerading as news outlets, was actively engaging US voter groups on opposing ends of the political spectrum.The engagement was being built with “polarizing messaging on issues such as the US presidential candidates, LGBTQ rights, and the Israel-Hamas conflict”, the report stated.The Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, and her Republican rival, Donald Trump, are locked in a tight race, ahead of the presidential election on 5 November.The AI firm said in May it had disrupted five covert influence operations that sought to use its models for “deceptive activity” across the internet. More

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      Trump reportedly considers endorsing expanded child tax credit after Harris unveils economic plan – live

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      Trump is considering endorsing an expanded $5,000 child tax credit for parents of all income levels, an official at his campaign told Semafor.“President Trump will consider a significant expansion of the child tax credit that applies to American families,” a Trump campaign official told Semafor. “President Trump respects and listens to his running mate Senator Vance.”The news comes just hours after Harris announced her own plan for a $6,000 child tax credit, and days after Vance proposed a $5,000 child tax credit during a CBS News interview.Cornel West will not appear on Michigan’s presidential ballot this fall, election officials told the Washington Post today. The independent presidential candidate’s ballot access was denied over notary issues, the state’s director of elections said in a letter.“The charges regarding procedural errors in our filings, such as notarization specifics, are trivial technicalities being weaponized to distract from substantive policy debates,” West’s adviser Edwin DeJesus said in a statement to the Post. “We are confident that these accusations will be seen for what they are – frivolous and unfounded attempts to stifle opposition and debate.”West’s campaign says it will appeal the decision, but must do so in five days as it did not previously respond to a notification from election officials in July.Engaging with young voters. Very mindful. Very demure. Very cutesy. Just hours after VP hopeful Tim Walz joined TikTok, the White House is joining in on attempts to connect with gen-Z voters by playing along with the latest meme sweeping social platforms.For more on the origins of the meme, read Alaina Demopoulos’s postmortem of brat summer:The White House has released a new statement from Joe Biden on the Middle East.In it, Biden states: “Earlier today, I received an update from my negotiating team on the ground in Doha and directed them to put forward the comprehensive bridging proposal presented today, which offers the basis for coming to a final agreement on a ceasefire and hostage release deal. I spoke separately with Amir Sheikh Tamim and President Sisi to review the significant progress made in Doha over the past two days of talks, and they expressed the strong support of Qatar and Egypt for the US proposal as co-mediators in this process. Our teams will remain on the ground to continue technical work over the coming days, and senior officials will convene again in Cairo before the end of the week. They will report to me regularly. I am sending Secretary Blinken to Israel to reaffirm my iron-clad support for Israel’s security, continue our intensive efforts to conclude this agreement and to underscore that with the comprehensive ceasefire and hostage release deal now in sight, no one in the region should take actions to undermine this process.”For more on the status of ceasefire negotiations, read Jason Burke’s and Bethan McKernan’s reporting:For those following along, JD Vance has landed in Cincinnati after an earlier midair emergency forced his plane to return to the Milwaukee airport.According to the New York Times, which had a reporter onboard the flight, the plane sat on the Milwaukee tarmac for about an hour before continuing on its way to Cincinnati.In an apparent response to Kamala Harris’s speech in North Carolina today, Trump has taken to Truth Social.The former president writes: “Kamala Harris wants to raise your taxes and make you pay for free healthcare and free housing in luxury hotels for her millions of illegal aliens. Meanwhile, our Veterans are sleeping on the streets and Kamala’s running mate, Weirdo Tim Walz, voted against my VA Mission Act that made healthcare more affordable and accessible for our Nation’s Heroes! Kamala and Walz will put Criminals, Terrorists, and Illegal Aliens FIRST. I will always put law-abiding, hardworking, patriotic AMERICANS First!”For more on the steps Harris proposed to fight child poverty, housing instability and inflation, check out George Chidi’s report:In lighter news, you may have seen the author Malcolm Harris’s tweet earlier this week that he accidentally acquired a Project 2025 swag bag.The Washington Post caught up with the Marxist journalist, who apparently was visited by police after posting on X:After seeing Harris’s tweets, a woman who describes herself on LinkedIn as a Project 2025 staffer called the police and filed a complaint for theft, according to a police report obtained by the Post.The cliff notes? Harris ultimately returned the duffle bag to the Heritage Foundation himself.Tim Walz has joined TikTok, or as he prefers to say, “TimTok”. The Minnesota governor’s first post features his dog Scout at a dog park along the banks of the Mississippi.In under a month, the Harris-Walz campagin has reignited gen-Z enthusiasm for the 2024 election, largely through memes and videos shared on TikTok, Instagram and other social platforms. Scout featured prominently in one post that began circulating in gen Z and millennial circles as Harris considered VP candidates earlier this month:Although Joe Biden signed a bill that would ban TikTok, or force its Chinese owners to sell it, Democrats have flocked to the app in recent months to drum up support from younger voters.Trump is considering endorsing an expanded $5,000 child tax credit for parents of all income levels, an official at his campaign told Semafor.“President Trump will consider a significant expansion of the child tax credit that applies to American families,” a Trump campaign official told Semafor. “President Trump respects and listens to his running mate Senator Vance.”The news comes just hours after Harris announced her own plan for a $6,000 child tax credit, and days after Vance proposed a $5,000 child tax credit during a CBS News interview.Another plank of Kamala Harris’s economic platform was a promise to lower housing costs by expanding the housing supply.Here’s the moment where she announced it, in her just-concluded speech in Raleigh, North Carolina:Joe Biden had sought to increase the supply of affordable housing with his ill-fated Build Back Better plan, but that did not make it through Congress.Last month, shortly before he dropped out of the presidential race, the president proposed capping annual rent increases for some landlords at 5%. But, as is the case with much of his agenda, Congress would need to pass a new law to make that happen, and the Republicans controlling the House have shown no interest in doing so.A charter plane carrying JD Vance, dubbed Trump Force Two, made an emergency landing in Milwaukee after a malfunction with its door, CNN reports. Then plane then took back off and continued its flight:Vance earlier in the day held a campaign event at a police union office in the city.The GOP is teeing up their counterattack to Kamala Harris’s economic proposals.Earlier this afternoon, Donald Trump’s campaign announced that JD Vance will deliver remarks on the economy on Monday in Philadelphia, where he’ll undoubtedly criticize the vice-president. And on X this afternoon, Republican congressman Mike Collins accused Harris of, essentially, trying to “buy votes”:As she wrapped up her speech, Kamala Harris debuted a proposal to bring back a tax credit that was credited with dramatically reducing child poverty in the single year it was in effect, and expanding it further.The expanded child tax credit cut poverty for children by about half in 2021, but expired the following year, when negotiations over renewing it broke down. Harris told voters that she would bring back the credit, and make it even more generous:
      As President, I’ll not only restore that tax cut, but expand it. We will provide $6,000 in tax relief to families during the first year of a child’s life. Now, think what that means. Think what that means. That is a vital, vital year of critical development of a child, and the cost can really add up, especially for young parents who need to buy diapers and clothes and a car seat and so much else.
      She argued that she could reduce the federal budget deficit while implementing this plan, though did not quite say how, instead hitting Donald Trump over his policies towards lowering taxes:
      And we will do this while reducing the deficit. Compare my plan with what Donald Trump intends to do, he plans to give billionaires massive tax cuts year after year, and he plans to cut corporate taxes by over a trillion dollars, even as they pull in record profits. And that’s on top of the $2tn tax cut he already signed into law when he was president, which, by the way, overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly went to the wealthiest Americans and corporations and exploded the national deficit.
      You know, I think that if you want to know who someone cares about, look who they fight for.
      And then Harris came at Donald Trump with a tried-and-true attack used by Democrats everywhere, by warning that he would repeal the Affordable Care Act.There’s lots to say about the law, which polling from health policy research firm KFF indicates is generally popular, but which most Republicans continue to oppose. But here’s one thing to keep in mind: it was first passed in 2010, which means there are lots of voters out there who never experienced what the American health insurance system was like before its changes took effect.Harris warned the crowd that repealing the law “would take us back to a time when insurance companies could deny people with pre-existing conditions”, she said, adding that 45 million Americans rely on the law for health coverage.At that point, the crowd began chanting, “We’re not going back!”Donald Trump has made levying new tariffs on foreign imports a key part of his platform, but Kamala Harris is warning the crowd in North Carolina that the idea amounts to “a national sales tax” on everyday goods.“He wants to impose what is, in effect, a national sales tax on everyday products and basic necessities that we import from other countries. That will devastate Americans. It will mean higher prices on just about every one of your daily needs. A Trump tax on gas, a Trump tax on food, a Trump tax on clothing, a Trump tax on over-the-counter medication. And, you know, economists have done the math. Donald Trump’s plan would cost a typical family $3,900 a year,” the vice-president said.“At this moment when everyday prices are too high, he will make them even higher.” More

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      Kamala Harris has made a dream start. But it’s too early to count out Donald Trump | Jonathan Freedland

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      Everything is going right for her and wrong for him. Kamala Harris has the encouraging poll numbers and, more precious still, the momentum. Donald Trump has the serial errors, the maudlin introspection and wobbling campaign team. In less than three weeks, the Democrats have pulled off one of the most extraordinary turnarounds in US political history, replacing a candidate who was shuffling towards near-certain defeat with one apparently soaring towards possible victory. And yet, even as Harris speaks of bringing the joy, contained within is a lurking danger – a peril that should be all too familiar.The sources of joy are not mysterious. Democrats are heading to Chicago for a convention that will feel like a party but was set to be a wake. Before 21 July, they were tied to Joe Biden, a man whose presidency has proved far more consequential than most predicted but who was on course to lose and lose badly in November. His passing of the baton to his number two has gone better than anyone had any right to expect.All but seamlessly, the campaign has switched over – equivalent to rebuilding a plane in mid-air, say seasoned election hands – and the candidate herself has taken to the task with unexpected ease. Twenty years younger and a whole lot more vigorous than her opponent, she has turned what had been Trump’s most potent weapon against Biden – age – against Trump himself. He is now the candidate of the past, she the face of the future. Never mind that Harris is a senior member of the present administration, she has shaken off the burden of incumbency – currently a negative in most democracies across the world – and cast herself as the turn-the-page option, aided by a powerful slogan: “We’re not going back.”The evidence that it’s working is in the headline poll numbers, which show her edging ahead in the very battleground states where Biden had been trailing. Almost overnight, she is winning back the voters who propelled Biden to victory in 2020 but were drifting away from him in 2024: young, Black and Hispanic Americans. Drawing big crowds, inspiring a thousand social-media memes, she is generating something Democrats have not seen since the first Barack Obama campaign of 2008: excitement.All this is having an equal and opposite effect on Trump. The better her numbers or crowds get, the more gloomy and rattled he becomes, consoling himself with the delusion that photos of Harris’s massive audiences are AI fakes. The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser depicts Trump as bereft, missing Biden as he pines for the return of the man he knew how to run against. That contest was simple: it was strong v weak, with Biden’s age doing the work.But now Trump faces Harris, and he can’t quite work out how to take her on. He can’t fix on a nickname, he can’t settle on a target. His team wants him to run on immigration and inflation – both Democratic vulnerabilities – but he keeps returning to the terrain he knows best: culture wars and race baiting. Just as he once falsely claimed that Obama was not born in the US, Trump initially offered his theory that only late in life did Harris happen “to turn Black”. He also regularly describes the vice-president as a “low IQ individual”, a phrase he has long applied to Black female politicians. His base may like this talk, but it repels everyone else.An illustration of the unsettling effect Harris is having on Trump came in the mutual back-scratch he conducted with X magnate Elon Musk this week. “She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live,” Trump said about a drawing of Harris on the cover of Time magazine. “She looked very much like our great first lady, Melania,” he added, referring to his wife. Along with any listener to that exchange, Trump doesn’t know where to put himself.Because he is knocked off balance, he keeps stumbling. The Musk encounter was a case in point. After the embarrassment of a tech breakdown that led to a start delayed by 40-plus minutes, Trump rambled for two hours, straying into baffling tangents and frankly weird claims. One example: “global warming” is no threat, because rising sea levels mean “more oceanfront property”. (The real danger, he said, is the warmth of nuclear weapons.) What’s more, Trump seemed to speak with a heavy lisp throughout. None of this might matter much in itself, but it shows that Trump is beginning to get some of the same scrutiny of his cognitive and physical capacities that drove Biden to step aside. Put simply, age is now his problem.So this race is going exactly the way Harris would want it to go. Trump is lashing out at allies and, always a sign of a troubled campaign, shaking up his team. He is saddled with a running mate whose back catalogue would make a Gilead commander blush, while he paints an ever-darkening picture of a US in decline, a nation riddled with crime and overrun by scary invaders. All the while, she is beaming about a brighter tomorrow. As the Republican sage Mike Murphy puts it, “He’s doing Voldemort and she’s doing Ted Lasso.”Where, then, is the danger? First, the polling is not quite as rosy as Democrats want it to be. Dig further into the numbers and you see that, despite everything, Donald Trump is more popular now than he was at this same, mid-August point in either 2020 or 2016. His approval rating currently stands at 44%. In August 2016, a paltry 33% of Americans had a positive view of him – but he went on to win.What’s more, in each of the three crucial battleground states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, Harris is ahead by only four points, according to the latest survey. That’s welcome progress, to be sure, but it’s not enough when you recall that Trump put on nine points between August and November in those states in 2016 and closed the gap to a photo-finish in 2020.Harris may be more charismatic than either of the Democratic standard-bearers in those earlier contests, but she has vulnerabilities of her own. She is clearly a figure of the “coastal elites”: a wealthy Californian, she has no equivalent of the Scranton Joe persona available to Biden. Both she and her running mate, the Minnesota governor Tim Walz, have a history of progressive positions that anyone with a memory knows Republicans can twist into a caricature of leftwing radicalism. True, Walz’s vibe is cuddly midwestern dad – and there’s good evidence that, these days, a politician’s vibe matters more than their record – but there’s still a job to do. It’s almost a universal truth of contemporary politics that any party not of the right has to go much further than it would like to reassure voters in the centre. (Just ask Keir Starmer.) By that measure, the Democratic nominee may still have some distance to travel.Above all, and paradoxically, it’s Harris’s astonishing early success that contains risk. It has encouraged Democrats to believe that, in ditching Biden, the hard work has already been done, that the menace of a second Trump presidency has been averted. But this remains a perilously close contest in a sharply divided nation. As we have seen twice in recent years, Republicans enjoy a structural advantage in the electoral college that means that a Democrat can win the popular vote by a resounding margin – and still lose.So, yes, Harris has made a dream start. Trump is flailing. But it is far, far too early to celebrate. In the autumn, Americans will take their traditional second look at the two candidates. There will be TV debates and the hard yards of getting voters not to share memes on TikTok but off the couch and to the polling booth. This race is far from over – and if the last, turbulent decade has taught us anything, it’s that it is always too soon to count out Donald Trump.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

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      in US Politics

      Trump reveals he made $300,000 selling Bibles and has big cryptocurrency stash

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      Donald Trump made hundred of thousands from his branded Bible and millions from his properties – but also owes millions for defamation and fraud cases, according to his latest financial disclosures that shed little light on the perennial question of whether the Republican presidential nominee is, in fact, solvent.Voluminous disclosure documents to the US Office of Government Ethics to comply with election campaign laws show that, in addition to Trump’s US real estate holdings, he has global financial interests, including registered trademarks in China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ukraine and Israel.He also owns millions in cryptocurrency and has a six-figure investment in gold bars.But the disclosures also hint at Trump’s substantial personal outgoings, including more than $500m owed to both the writer E Jean Carroll and the New York attorney general resulting from civil judgments involving defamation and accounting fraud.Both judgments – $83m to Carroll and $454m to New York state – are subject to bonds while Trump appeals the decisions, a process that could take years.Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and private club in Florida, which formed part of a case against the Trump Organization involving inflated asset valuations, produced about $57m in income from the club, down about $8m from a previous disclosure.The disclosures are not a profit-and-loss balance sheet – they only give broad ranges of income and assets – so alone they cannot determine whether Trump is in the red or the black. He has consistently resisted efforts to force the release of his tax returns, although two years ago a Democrat-controlled Congress released six years of Trump’s tax returns, dating to 2015, the year he announced his presidential bid.Earlier this year, Trump joined Bloomberg Billionaires Index of 500 richest people, with a fortune of $6.5bn – a $4bn increase, resulting from a Spac merger of his social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, which operates the Truth Social site where the former president posts most of his public messages. But the value of the media group has declined significantly in recent months by as much as $1.3bn.The disclosure comes as US voters are asked to weigh the relative fortunes of candidates and their running partners ahead of November’s presidential vote. The Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, is estimated to be worth $8m, while her running mate and Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, made headlines for being worth a modest $330,000.The net worth of Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, who worked as a venture capitalist and wrote a successful memoir, is placed at $4m, including $250,000 in bitcoin. Joe Biden and Jill Biden’s wealth is placed at $10m, including the $400,000 annual salary he earns as president.The particularities of Trump’s financial disclosures show that he earned $12m through licensing and royalty deals. Those include about $7m he earned from a NFT licensing deal that sells digital “trading cards”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe former president also reported earning about $5m in royalties for his recent books Letters to Trump and Our Journey Together. A Bible, published in association with the country singer Lee Greenwood, earned $300,000.There was no income reported from his gold high-top sneaker line.Trump, who recently signaled his support for cryptocurrencies at a global crypto convention in Nashville, Tennessee, declares between $1 and $5m in Ethereum. His son Eric Trump, who currently runs the Trump Organization, recently posted on X that he had “truly fallen in love with Crypto” and alerted to an unspecified “big announcement”.Alongside the former president’s disclosures, the former first lady Melania Trump said she had earned $237,500 from a booking to speak to Republicans in Florida, and about $330,000 from NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, which have recently included digital portraits of her celebrating Women’s History Month.The documents also hint at changes in direction at Trump’s real estate empire. Three Chinese companies that may be related to real estate deals were dissolved, though he still owns trademarks in the country. He also paid off a Deutsche Bank mortgage of between $25m to $50m on his Chicago Trump International hotel. More

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      in US Politics

      Harris has two paths to victory – Rust belt or Sun belt, polling analysts say

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      Kamala Harris’s surge in popularity since replacing Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee has opened up a surprise second path to victory in November, according to a fresh analysis of recent voter surveys.An aggregate of polls modelled by the Washington Post shows that the US vice-president has become newly competitive in four southern Sun belt states that were previously leaning heavily towards Donald Trump, the Republican nominee and former president.If the trend holds, it means Harris could eke out an electoral college victory either by winning those states – Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina – or, alternatively, by capturing three swing states in the midwestern Rust belt, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.Trump, by contrast, would need to capture both groups of states to earn the 270 electoral college votes necessary to secure victory, according to the model.The opening up of a potential second front in Harris’s pathway to victory may be the biggest boon yet from her elevation to the top of the Democratic ticket in place of Biden, whose only path to staying in office appeared to hinge on winning the three Rust belt states.Harris has gained an average of two percentage points nationally, and 2.1% in seven battleground states, since replacing Biden, who pulled out of the race on 21 July after weeks of intense pressure over a bad debate performance the previous month.The transformation in the party’s chances of retaining the White House amounts to a “reset” of the election race and might even make Harris a “slight favourite”, according to the analysis. It is largely due to renewed impetus in key swing states under the candidacy of Harris and Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor who she chose as her running mate.The outcome of US presidential elections is determined not by the popular vote, but by which candidate wins a majority of 538 electoral college votes, which are allotted state by state.Polls show many things, but in aggregate they appear to suggest that Harris now leads in the Rust belt states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and has closed the gap in another, Michigan, to within one point of Trump, the former president and Republican nominee. Biden won all three states, albeit by narrow margins, in 2020.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut she has also significantly improved on Biden’s post-debate standing – when the president’s poll position evaporated badly in all key states and even began to deteriorate in states previously considered safe – in three Sun belt states, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia, plus North Carolina, where she has pulled close enough to Trump to be within the polls’ margin of error.Biden won the first of those three states, again by narrow margins, in 2020 but lost North Carolina by less than two percentage points. Amid Harris’s recent surge, Democratic strategists have started to envision carrying the state, despite the party only having won it once in presidential elections since 1980.The uptick in support makes her competitive in more states than Trump that would enable her to reach the required 270 electoral college votes.However, Harris still trails Trump in the final tally, if the polls are accurate and the election were held now.Another boon to Harris is a Washington Post/Ipsos poll that shows her choice of Walz as running mate playing better with voters than Trump’s selection of JD Vance, who has seemed to hit trouble with female voters because of his hardline anti-abortion views and track record of misogynistic comments about childless women.The survey showed 39% of voters having a favourable view of Walz – who has been targeted by Republicans because of his left-leaning policies as Minnesota governor – and 30% unfavourable, giving him a positive rating of 9%. Vance, on the other hand, recorded a 32% favourable rating against 42% who saw him unfavourably, a negative rating that chimes with other polls, some of which have measured him as the most unpopular vice-presidential pick in history.Reflecting her campaign’s bullishness about its prospects in the state as it approaches next week’s Democratic national convention, Harris was due to make a keynote economic speech in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Friday where she was expected to set out policies on price gouging, rising food prices and high housing costs. All are areas that Republicans see as potential vulnerabilities for Harris.Vance, a senator for Ohio, was due to speak in the Wisconsin city of Milwaukee, following appearances in Pennsylvania and Michigan in recent days, mirroring the Trump campaign’s recognition of the need to win the states. More

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      in Elections

      Fake electors from 2020 giving thousands to Trump-Vance campaign

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      The people who served as fake electors in an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election have continued to donate to Donald Trump, JD Vance and other Republicans since then, campaign finance records show, underscoring the role they continue to play in US politics.Some fake electors face criminal charges for their actions. Some continue to hold key government roles.Meshawn Maddock, a former co-chair of the Michigan Republican party, has given more than $1,800 to Trump and allied fundraising groups this campaign cycle, according to federal campaign finance records. Maddock is one of the 16 fake electors in Michigan who were criminally charged by Dana Nessel, the Democratic Michigan attorney general, last summer and has pleaded not guilty. Tyler Bowyer, who has also pleaded not guilty for his role as a fake elector in Arizona, donated $645 this year to Trump.“It is incredibly rare for politicians to accept campaign contributions from people under indictment,” said Michael Beckel, the research director at Issue One, an election watchdog group. “It’s generally not good optics for politicians to accept money from people accused of serious wrongdoing. Political candidates generally don’t want to be tied to convicted or accused felons. Yet in certain circles, association with the people who served as fake electors for Donald Trump in 2020 may be a badge of honor.”“Former President Trump likely has fewer qualms about accepting campaign cash from people under indictment for serving as fake electors in 2020 than the typical politician,” he added. David Hanna, a fake elector from Georgia who was not criminally charged, has given at least $25,000 to Trump this year.In 2021 and 2023, Hanna also donated more than $6,000 combined to JD Vance’s senate campaign. Daryl Moody, another fake elector in Georgia who was not charged, donated $2,900 in 2022 to Vance. Vance, Trump’s running mate, has been supportive of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and has said that if he had been vice-president in 2020, he would have used his power overseeing the joint session of Congress to recognize fake slates of electors.“It doesn’t take a lot of work to figure out that Donald Trump and JD Vance are keeping extremist election-deniers in the fold as reliable henchmen and women to challenge the results of the fall election,” said Brandon Weathersby, a spokesperson for American Bridge 21st Century, a Super Pac that supports Democrats and initially flagged the donations to the Guardian.“They’ve taken thousands of dollars in donations from fake electors and welcomed them with open arms to the Republican national convention last month. Trump and Vance are actively selling out our democracy in exchange for the power to enact their Project 2025 agenda the day they step into the White House.”The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.Several Republicans running for the US House have also received donations from fake electors. Eli Crane, a Republican representative from Arizona, in 2023 received $2,900 from Jim Lamon, a fake elector who faces criminal charges there. Yvette Herrell, a New Mexico representative, has accepted more than $3,000 from Rosie Tripp, who served as a fake elector in the state. In 2022, Herrell also received $2,900 from Deborah Maestas, a former New Mexico Republican party chair who served as a fake elector in 2020.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe campaigns of Crane and Herrell did not respond to requests for comment.In addition to continuing to donate to candidates, fake electors continue to play key roles in the Republican party. Michael McDonald, a fake elector criminally charged in Nevada, is the chair of that state’s Republican party (a Nevada judge threw out the case against the Nevada electors last month, and the attorney general is appealing). At least 18 fake electors also served as party delegates at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee last month, according to CNN, NPR and a local news report.In Wisconsin, Robert Spindell, a fake elector, continues to serve as one of three Republicans on the bipartisan Wisconsin elections commission, the body that oversees voting in the state. In Georgia, Burt Jones and Shawn Still, both of whom were fake electors, respectively serve as lieutenant governor and a state senator.Full slates of fake electors in Nevada, Michigan and Arizona face criminal charges for their activities. A handful of fake electors were charged in Georgia, while those in Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Wisconsin have not faced charges. In Wisconsin, the fake electors reached a civil settlement agreeing that they would not serve as electors again in 2024. More