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      As Harris soars, Trump sulks

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      Hello there,Who knew that all Democrats needed to do was kick their ailing incumbent president off the ticket? Well, plenty of people. But few could have predicted just how successfully Kamala Harris and Uncle Tim have been relentlessly saturating the key swing states, speaking to huge crowds and rising in the polls.Trump, for his part, is floundering, trapped somewhere between rage and inertia. The former president held just one campaign event in the last seven days, and seems to spend most of his time complaining on his Truth Social website, with a breather to repeat his talking points to a wealthy idiot on X. More about Trump’s bad week after the headlines.Here’s what you need to knowView image in fullscreen1. Conventional thinkingThousands of Democrats will sweep into Chicago next week for the party’s national convention, where Harris will be officially anointed as their nominee for president. Despite Democrats’ checkered history of holding conventions in Chicago, the event will probably have a celebratory feel as Harris lays out her vision for the US to what will be a very friendly crowd. Barack Obama will be among the speakers, and the Guardian will be there with live updates.2. Abortion on the ballotA constitutional amendment protecting the right to abortion will be on the ballot in Arizona in November, something that could increase Democratic turnout in the swing state. “Democrats are hoping that enthusiasm for the measures will boost turnout among their base,” my colleague Carter Sherman writes. In total, voters in at least seven states (also including Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Nevada and South Dakota) will decide referendums on abortion rights this year.3. A Squad saveIlhan Omar, the Minnesota congresswoman and member of the progressive group “the Squad”, won her primary on Tuesday night, and will probably be re-elected to the House in November. Omar defeated Don Samuels, a former Minneapolis council member, and avoided the fate of fellow Squad members Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, both of whom lost their primaries this year. Pro-Israel lobbying groups spent millions to defeat Bush and Bowman after they criticized Israel’s war on Gaza, but despite Omar also being a critic of Israel’s actions, those groups stayed out of the Minnesota primary.The strategy of being angry on the internetView image in fullscreenHow about that Harralz momentum, huh? Kamala Harris and Tim Walz hit the ground running last week, and they’ve barely stopped since, holding events in five states, continuing to call people weird, and generally reinvigorating a previously weary Democratic base.There’s evidence that the Harris vibes tour is yielding results, because for the first time in absolutely ages, we’re seeing polling that shows Trump not winning the election. Before Biden dropped out, Trump was leading him by 3.1% nationally, and the Republican was ahead in every swing state. Harris now has a slight lead nationally, and has closed the gap on Trump in places like Michigan and Wisconsin. Each party typically experiences a popularity boost after their convention, so the momentum is likely to continue – for a little bit, anyway.
      Trump held just one campaign rally, in a state that will have no impact on the election
      Judging by how sulky Trump is being, it is clear he is worried. But it’s less clear what Trump is actually doing to combat the Harris surge. While Harris and Walz have been bounding across stages in front of thousands of people, Trump seems to have been mostly just sitting in the Florida private members’ club that he calls home.In the past week, the one-term former president has held a waffling conversation with Elon Musk on X, hosted a confusing press conference in Florida, ranted incessantly on Truth Social, and held just one campaign rally, in a state that will have no impact on the election. Oh, and it also emerged that Trump has been traveling around the country on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s former airplane, which if a Democratic candidate had done would be all the Republicans would talk about.Trump’s chat with Musk on Tuesday was supposed to give his campaign a shot in the arm – a cosy natter with a friendly ally. But once the conversation began – after a 40-minute delay due to technical difficulties – people’s main takeaways were a) this is very boring and b) why is Trump slurring his words? He did indeed seem to be struggling to pronounce the “s” in a number of words, with the term “groceries” proving particularly problematic. His campaign initially denied there was any problem – “must be your ears”, a spokesperson said – although Trump later blamed “modern day equipment, and cellphone technology”. Still, for a man who has a long history of mocking perceived physical weakness, the discussion will have been unwelcome.
      The strategy of being angry on the internet hasn’t typically proven to be a winner in elections
      Worse still, Trump’s admiring comments about Musk firing workers prompted the United Auto Workers labor union to file a federal labor charge. Trump didn’t address that in the more than 20 messages he posted to his own social media website on Tuesday, although he did describe Harris as “a joke”, complained about polling, and at one point declared: “I absolutely HATE the fake news media.” The strategy of being angry on the internet hasn’t typically proven to be a winner in elections, with the notable exception of 2016.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut Harris’s supporters will be aware that there is a long way to go until election day on 5 November (even if, in some states, people can begin voting in September). The momentum surely cannot last. She and Walz are fresh faces at the moment, but Republicans will spend hundreds of millions to attack them, and Trump will surely emerge from his bunker eventually.Harry Enten, a polling expert at CNN, pointed out on Tuesday that Trump was underestimated in surveys in 2016 and 2020, and said Trump’s favorability among Americans was higher than it was in those two elections. So nothing is decided yet – but Democrats at least have several reasons to be optimistic.Out and about: New OrleansView image in fullscreenThe Guardian joined Joe Biden on Air Force One on Tuesday en route to New Orleans, where the president doled out millions in new research grants for a policy program he created after the death of his eldest son, Beau, from brain cancer at age 46.“We know that all families touched by cancer are in a race against time,” Biden told a crowd at Tulane University.Now that Biden is no longer running for re-election, he seems to be devoting the final months of his presidency to his passion projects, including promoting his “moonshot” cancer-fighting initiative.Lie of the week: Sea level rise is fineView image in fullscreenThe sea will only “rise one-eighth of an inch in the next 400 years”, and in any case create “more oceanfront property”, Donald Trump claimed to Elon Musk on Tuesday.He was certainly wrong on the first count. According to Nasa the global average sea level has risen a total of about 4in in the past 30 years alone. And the rate of increase is accelerating.And while more oceanfront property may indeed by created, lots of current oceanfront property will not survive: rising sea levels hit low-lying coastal areas the hardest. More

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      Model candidate: the style lesson Kamala Harris can learn from Shirley Chisholm

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      The energy that Kamala Harris’s candidacy has injected into the Democratic party has taken over the election. With standing-room only rallies that have rock concert vibes, Harris has not only sharpened her rhetoric and message since her 2020 bid for the presidency, but she has also brought new spirit for the campaign.However, Harris’s style – which could be employed as a political tool to aid her candidacy and connection with voters – has shifted only slightly. Despite wearing a few outfits that have more color than her usual choice of navy and black, Harris has so far shied away from bold fashion statements that would convey the historic nature of her candidacy, or the excitement she stirs. While the campaign has certainly expanded the political imagination of what Harris can achieve, it still needs to hone in on what image defines her new status as a presidential nominee.Unlike Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who are known for fashion statements that effectively telegraph power and political shrewdness, Harris is not known for her sartorial savviness. In 2020, she branched out of her comfort zone by posing for Vogue in her Chuck Taylor All Stars or by wearing a white suit with a pussy-bow blouse during her victory speech as a tribute to the suffragists, but her fashion choices during her tenure as vice-president can be best described as safe. Harris is fond of corporate pantsuits in dark colors, a form of functional power dressing that has defined her career as an attorney general and a senator. Often paired with soft feminine blouses, high heels and delicate pearl jewelry, Harris maintains her femininity without letting it stand out.View image in fullscreenThere is some sense to this choice of style. The tailored suit is a symbol of power, professionalism and also masculinity. And as a Black woman on Capitol Hill, Harris has used the dark suit as a shield that allows her to blend in. It provides authority and legitimacy, two important qualities needed for a leader. This strategy was especially useful for Harris in her role as vice-president. Her outfits were so unremarkable they faded into the background.But as recent years have shown, a candidate’s style is an important element in crafting a political image and building a successful brand. It brings recognition and visibility while also helping to boost identification and campaign merchandise sales. Donald Trump turned his ill-fitted suits and Maga trucker hat into a trademark of his persona, conveying an image of “a regular, simple guy” that appeals to his base of white, rural, working-class voters. The sloppy tailoring hides the fact that his suits cost tens of thousands of dollars, and that his background is rooted not in the coal mines of Appalachia but in the boardrooms of Wall Street.View image in fullscreenFashionable accessories have also helped Joe Biden to project a vigorous image, presenting a cool and in-control look that signals vitality and leadership. His signature Ray-Ban 3025 aviators amplify his “dark Brandon” identity, and project the image of a confident president who pushes defiantly against his critics while getting the work done.But fashion functions differently for Biden and Trump. Unlike Harris, who needs to navigate an entire set of expectations and stereotypes about her presence in politics, they don’t need to worry about “looking presidential”. Being white men, that is almost a given. Fashion for them is just one tool in their political strategy box – one they can use but not be defined by.For Harris, however, fashion presents a different challenge. Female politicians, and specifically female politicians of color, have endured much more scrutiny (and misogyny) regarding their bodies and appearance. They have long needed to balance between the need to demonstrate their capability as leaders and conforming to gender norms of femininity. Much more than men, whose presence in politics is never questioned, women need to fashion themselves in a way that will prove their fitness for office and to claim their power.View image in fullscreenSo far, Harris has preferred to dodge the fashion issue, but as the campaign continues to gain steam, attention on her appearance mounts. Although there is no playbook for how a woman can “look presidential”, Harris can reach to the past – and to the only other Black female Democratic presidential candidate, Shirley Chisholm – for inspiration.The daughter of a dressmaker, Chisholm understood both the importance of presentation and of execution, viewing it as an important means of self-expression. Her clothes were often custom-made, and she was active in the design process. She cultivated a unique signature style through her bouffant hairdo, cat-eye glasses and brightly colored ladylike suits. Chisholm’s savvy dressing won her the title of the “best dresser in Congress” from the Washington press, and also helped her project a modern image of Black femininity. Refusing to be boxed into norms of respectability that expected Black women to be quiet and accommodating, Chisholm’s fashions nonetheless conveyed professionalism and propriety that commanded respect.As the first Black woman to be elected to Congress, Chisholm embraced the visibility of the position. She harnessed her style to create an unapologetic proud image of a person who refused to be silenced or muted, which worked well with her campaign message of “unbought and unbossed”. Known for saying, “if they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair,” Chisholm’s bold fashion statements enabled her to claim her right to power and influence.View image in fullscreenCombining knee-high boots and geometric prints together with church-lady style, Chisholm’s strategy was to maintain a feminine appearance that did not alienate voters or mark her as a “radical”. And while she was not known for wearing pants (it would take Carol Moseley-Braun, the first Black female senator, to lead this revolution), Chisholm showed that there could be a strong Black feminist woman in politics, even when sticking to feminine styles.Chisholm’s style provides a model for Harris of a female politician who was a strong, fearless advocate for women and people of color, while also being a smart dresser with a touch of creativity and fun. The Harris campaign already showed they were open to emulating Chisholm when it changed its logo typeface to resemble that of Chisholm’s presidential campaign. It is now time to embrace Chisholm’s fashion strategy, too.With the Democratic national convention starting on Monday, Harris has the opportunity to define what a female president could look like. Chisholm once advised that we should reject not only the stereotypes that others have of us, but also those we have of ourselves. Harris can listen to this advice as she tries to convince voters to imagine a world in which a Black and Asian woman can be a president. She could also use some styling tips while sending this message; Shirley would certainly approve. More

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      Donald Trump is desperate to land a punch on Kamala Harris. But he fails | Sidney Blumenthal

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      The madness of King George III was never diagnosed. He likely suffered from bipolarity. One of his uncontrollable bouts of madness was triggered by his reading of Shakespeare’s play of a mad king, King Lear. “This morning he is … more agitated and confused, perhaps from having been permitted to read King Lear,” wrote his doctor, in papers released only six years ago. The story upset King George, his equerry recounted: “His Majesty became so ungovernable that recourse was had to the strait waistcoat.”King George’s straitjacketing occurred in 1788, a year after the constitutional convention created the United States government to prevent the rise of any king – mad or not. The American revolution, waged against the absolute sovereignty of a monarch, had the madness of King George in mind as the office of president of the United States was being framed. The president, wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper No 69, would be subject to impeachment and removal, and “liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law. The person of the king of Great Britain is sacred and inviolable; there is no constitutional tribunal to which he is amenable; no punishment to which he can be subjected without involving the crisis of a national revolution.”About the difference between the American president and the English king, Hamilton stated: “What answer shall we give to those who would persuade us that things so unlike resemble each other? The same that ought to be given to those who tell us that a government, the whole power of which would be in the hands of the elective and periodical servants of the people, is an aristocracy, a monarchy, and a despotism.”When the US supreme court ruled on 1 July that Donald Trump as a former president had “absolute” immunity from prosecution for crimes committed as “official acts”, Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented that “the President is now a king above the law.” As Shakespeare wrote in King John: “Mad world, mad kings, mad composition!”King George swooned reading King Lear. Trump has become delirious at the sight of Kamala Harris. The king’s courtiers succeeded in restraining him, while Trump’s cannot control him. He rages, curses and shouts to the heavens of the unfairness of fate. His aides attempt to calm and steady him about Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race. “It’s unfair that I beat him and now I have to beat her, too,” he cries.Trump’s years-long industrial-level production of “Crooked Joe” and the “Biden Crime Family”, amplified as regular programming on Fox News, is now toxic waste. These crude projections were fabricated out of the materials of Trump’s own vices, flaws and offenses. If Biden could be tarred with false charges, his shadow would blot out Trump’s true crimes. Trump’s initial effort against Biden – to blackmail Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in an exchange of weapons for dirt on Biden – constituted the articles of Trump’s first impeachment.The House Republicans, led by the January 6 co-conspirator Jim Jordan, set up a “weaponization committee” that, along with the oversight committee, spent millions of dollars and consumed thousands of staff hours to discover, after parading one false witness after another, that Biden had done absolutely nothing wrong. Their impeachment farce of Biden collapsed from its own weightlessness. Despite their contrivances, they found Biden blameless. The entire Hunter Biden saga, which has breathlessly riveted the Wall Street Journal editorial board, meanwhile drifts into a trivial pursuit.Always just a series of distorted projections, the campaign against Biden is missing its object. The screen has suddenly gone blank. Trump is exposed standing naked on the stage. His negative campaign is self-indicting. Everything he accused Biden of being, he manifestly embodies. His malicious characterizations describe only himself. He is the crook, the cheat, the liar; he is the worst president in history. Biden is gone, but Trump can’t escape him. Biden haunts him as a ghost. Trump is left as the oldest man ever to run for the office, whose babbling incapacity is on display.Trump frantically attempts to find the key to a negative campaign against Harris. He stumblingly flickers his projection of Biden. She’s the crook, the cheat, the liar. She’s not really Black, or she is Black but only lately. He mispronounces her name in a variety of deliberately mangled ways to make her seem strange, but in doing so he appears stranger. She’s “dumb”, “incompetent” and a “bitch”. He states that Biden is plotting to stage a coup at the Democratic convention to overthrow her. His dream for restoration requires his animadversion of Biden’s ghost. He can’t stop talking about the man who isn’t there. He complains to Elon Musk, playing the role of his straight-man second banana, that Biden is “close to a vegetable”. But insults can’t make Biden come back to political life. Trump’s bitter nostalgia for Biden stokes his anger at Harris.Since Trump can’t change, Harris must be an illusion. He says the packed crowds at her rallies are “fake”, created by AI. “She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!” Of course, his 34 felonies for business fraud were for the purpose of election interference in 2016. His instinctive reflex for projection boomerangs. He constantly reveals his pattern of guilt through his accusations.Lost in the illogic of his conspiracy theories he wanders back and forth from higher realms of incoherence to lower depths of innuendo. His tale of his near-death experience in a diving helicopter with Willie Brown encapsulates more than his careening method of demeaning insinuation. It is his unconscious metaphor of his current plight crashing to earth.Willie Brown, the former speaker of the California assembly, once dated the young Harris. Trump explained: “But he told me terrible things about her. But this is what you’re telling me, anyway, I guess. But he had a big part in what happened with Kamala. But he – he, I don’t know, maybe he’s changed his tune. But he – he was not a fan of hers very much, at that point.”But Willie Brown is not a fictitious character. “I don’t think I’d want to ride on the same helicopter with him,” he said. Willie Brown never flew in a ’copter with Trump. Willie Brown admires Harris – “absolutely beautiful woman, smart as all hell, very successful” – and he supports her “religiously”. Willie Brown, clever, funny and canny as ever, says he can’t wait to watch Harris whip Trump in the debate. “I would think it would probably be unfair for her to debate inept Donald Trump with his appalling lack of knowledge. The absence of knowledge is appalling. I would put every nickel I have on the results of the debate and it will all be on Kamala Harris.”Trump appeared to confuse Willie Brown with the former California governor Jerry Brown, who did fly once in a ’copter with Trump – though it was never in difficulty. Then another Black politician – not Willie Brown – stepped forward to state that he was in a ’copter in trouble with Trump, Nate Holden, the former Los Angeles city council member and California state senator. “I guess we all look alike,” he told the Guardian.Trump’s near-death by helicopter is the latest flight of his freakish fantasies – this week’s favorite instead of electrocution from the battery of an electric boat or being eaten by sharks. Whatever convoluted smear Trump was attempting to spread about Harris, it wound up sliced in the propellers. It was Black Hawk Down for Trump’s slander.Though his lie was shredded, he feverishly tried to reassemble its pieces. He insisted to Maggie Haberman of the New York Times that he has the records to prove that it was really Willie Brown in the ’copter. “When asked to produce the flight records, Mr. Trump responded mockingly, repeating the request in a sing-song voice,” she reported.Trump responded with a slur: “Maggot Hagermann should apologize for her Fake & Fraudulent writing on the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX, along with many other of her poorly written and badly researched stories.”Trump had previously spoken of Haberman as his “psychiatrist”. His anger reveals his deep desire for approbation from the Times, a sign of his acceptance in Manhattan, which rejected him decades ago. His resentment erupts from his unfulfilled yearning. In lashing out at Haberman, she serves as an available surrogate woman for his frustration over Harris.Trump’s projection has become blowback. He can’t run a negative campaign to belittle Harris because his negative campaign engulfs and defines himself. He rages at being neutered and neutralized. His trials have also had their effect. Highlighting his abuses in courts of law as a sexual predator with E Jean Carroll and his history with Stormy Daniels has tainted his ability to sell his misogyny. His frustration, however, stokes more verbal abuse.Trump has descended to attacking Tim Walz, the avuncular Minnesota governor who is Harris’s running mate, for wanting “tampons to be put in boys’ bathrooms”. Apparently, Trump thinks tampon by association is an astute tactic. Scrounging around in the school toilets, he can only remind women of his lifetime of physical and verbal abuse, and that he claims credit for outlawing abortion rights. Trump is lost in the stalls. Grab ’em by the tampon.Trump targets Republican women who appear within his range of vision, too. He has gone to war against Marty Kemp, the wife of Brian Kemp, the Republican governor of Georgia, who had refused to support Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Trump laced into Marty Kemp: “Now she says she won’t Endorse me, and is going to ‘write in Brian Kemp’s name.’ Well, I don’t want her Endorsement, and I don’t want his.” He slammed Governor Kemp: “He’s a bad guy. He’s a disloyal guy and he’s a very average governor.” “Leave my family out of it,” replied Kemp. After Trump’s rain of insults, a poll showed Harris tied with Trump in Georgia.At a tentful of Republican billionaire donors in the Hamptons on 2 August, Trump resisted their gentle admonitions to tamp himself down. Many of them want a more muffled, dignified candidate talking about the federal deficit, curbing entitlements and the capital gains tax rate. These are the masters of the universe of carried interest. Their strategy would be for Trump not to be Trump. Let Trump be Paul Ryan. They want him to stick to the standard Republican playbook he discarded when he first starting remaking the party in his own image. The disoriented donors still can’t grasp that Trump’s depravity is the source of his appeal.“’Tis the times’ plague, when madmen lead the blind,” wrote Shakespeare in King Lear.

      Sidney Blumenthal is a Guardian US columnist More

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      ‘On fire with excitement’: Tim Walz’s former students react to nomination

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      Imagine your teacher in the White House.For Tim Walz’s former students, the hypothetical could become real. And they’re stoked.The Minnesota governor and Democratic vice-presidential candidate was a teacher in Nebraska and Minnesota before he ran for Congress in 2006. His time in the classroom features heavily on the campaign trail and in his governing. He has approved laws that provide universal school meals and add more money for education.He and his wife, Gwen, taught at Mankato West high school, in a town south-west of the Minneapolis area.There was high demand for his classes, said Jillian Hiscock, a former student at Mankato West. “It was hard to get into global geography. Who would have thought students would be fighting to get into global geography?“If you want to talk about strict, you got to talk about Mrs Walz,” she added. “I don’t think Tim had a strict bone in his body.”Mankato West alumni have convened in a Slack channel to share memories and excitement, finding community in the surreality of their former teacher potentially becoming vice-president. The alums usually bring up both Walzes as memorable and impactful educators who left impressions on them for different reasons.Beyond his teaching duties, he was part of the football coaching staff and an adviser to student groups, including the school’s first gay-straight alliance – in the late 1990s, in a small town in the midwest – after a student worked to set up the chapter.View image in fullscreen“It really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married,” Walz told the Star Tribune in 2018.For Kamala Harris, the titles of teacher and coach played heavily into Walz’s potential as a running mate. The vice-president repeatedly called him “coach” during their first rally together.Hiscock, 41, had Mrs Walz as a teacher and knew Mr Walz through his advising of a youth in government program and volunteering to plan prom. He was a fun-loving teacher who met students where they were, known to play a Jeopardy game in the classroom.Walz was known to care about students, even those who weren’t in his classes, and knew about their interests, wishing them luck at their softball game or asking if they were ready for the choir concert, she said. He was named “most inspiring” teacher in the school yearbook one year.Walz was passionate about teaching the underlying causes that can lead to atrocities like the Holocaust. One oft-cited story from 1993 shows how Walz taught students in Alliance, Nebraska, to study those factors and then identify which country could be at greatest risk of genocide. They landed on Rwanda, the New York Times reported in 2008, accurately predicting the country’s genocide before it happened.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLaura Muhm, 40, had Walz as a teacher in 11th grade in 2001. He encouraged free-flowing discussion and would toss the lesson plan if needed, she said. He worked to expose students to different cultures, inviting a student who was Muslim to share about their culture.View image in fullscreenShe was thrilled when Walz was chosen to be Harris’s running mate. “I felt like I drank five shots of espresso. That’s how energized I felt. Like, almost too energized,” Muhm said.Mankato, the Minnesota town that Walzes claimed as home, is “just on fire right now with excitement. Everybody’s like, I know that guy,” Muhm said.Hiscock owns a women’s sports bar in Minneapolis, A Bar of Their Own, and hosted a watch party to view Walz’s first rally as vice-president nominee. The bar was standing-room only as they served a tequila-based “blue wave” cocktail, and a non-alcoholic drink of Mountain Berry Blast Powerade. Walz himself does not drink after a 1995 drunk-driving arrest – he prefers Diet Mountain Dew.She said she was talking to a reporter this week who noted how rare it was that so many people had such good things to say about their high school teacher – not always a well-liked constituency among teenagers.“I’m not trying to be like Pollyanna with you. It just literally doesn’t surprise me that nobody has a bad story about him,” she said. More

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      Trump loses third bid for judge to step aside in hush-money case

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      A New York judge declined for a third time to step aside from the case in which Donald Trump was convicted of charges involving hush money paid to an adult film star, dismissing the former US president’s claim of conflict of interest related to political consultancy work by the judge’s daughter.As he did last April and in August 2023, Juan Merchan in a decision released on Wednesday denied a request by Trump’s lawyers that the acting justice of the New York supreme court recuse himself from the first case involving criminal charges against a former US president. Merchan is scheduled to sentence Trump on 18 September.“Defendant has provided nothing new for this Court to consider. Counsel has merely repeated arguments that have already been denied by this and higher courts” and were “rife with inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims”, Merchan wrote in the ruling dated 13 August.Trump was found guilty by a jury on 30 May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records for having covered up his former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels to avert a sex scandal before the 2016 US election.Two months later, his lawyers made their third request that Merchan step aside, arguing that his daughter’s work for a political consultancy that has counted Democratic campaigns among its clients – including the unsuccessful bid by Kamala Harris for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination – posed a conflict of interest.Harris, now vice-president, is the Democratic presidential candidate facing the Republican nominee Trump in the 5 November US election.Falsifying business records is a crime punishable by up to four years in prison, though sentences such as fines or probation have been more common for others convicted of that crime.Prosecutors with Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which brought the charges, had called Trump’s recusal request a “frivolous” attempt to relitigate an issue that was resolved twice before.“No amount of overheated, hyperbolic rhetoric can cure the fatal defects in defendant’s ongoing effort to impugn the fairness of these proceedings,” prosecutors wrote in an 1 August court filing.The payment to Daniels was made in exchange for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she has said she had with Trump a decade earlier, which the former president denied. Trump went on to win the presidency by defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMerchan rejected a recusal request in April before jury selection in the trial and last year after an ethics panel found that his daughter’s work did not pose reasonable questions about the judge’s impartiality.During the trial, Trump took to his social media platform to deride Merchan as a “highly conflicted” overseer of a “kangaroo court”. Ahead of the trial, Trump wrote on social media that Merchan’s daughter “makes money by working to ‘Get Trump,’” comments that in part contributed to Merchan’s decision to expand a gag order to bar the former president from commenting publicly about family members of court staff or prosecutors.Trump’s lawyers separately have asked the judge to throw out his conviction in light of the US supreme court’s July ruling giving former presidents broad immunity from prosecution for official acts taken in office. Merchan has said he will decide on Trump’s arguments by 16 September. More

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      Kamala’s tech ties: what is Harris’s relationship with Silicon Valley?

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      About 700 wealthy Democratic supporters packed into San Francisco’s Fairmont hotel on Sunday to see Kamala Harris in her first return to the city since launching her campaign for president. Among the crowd at the fundraiser, where the cheapest tickets cost $3,300 and went up to $500,000, was a mixture of tech billionaires, executives and Silicon Valley venture capitalists who have quickly embraced the vice-president in her bid for the White House.The event, which raised more than $12m, was the latest in the Harris campaign’s outreach to tech Democrats and an extension of a relationship with Silicon Valley elites that goes back more than a decade.Harris has extensive ties to some of the tech industry’s most influential players and prolific donors, in part due to her time as California’s attorney general and later, senator. While her campaign has yet to release detailed policy positions on issues such as tech regulation, Harris’s track record has led tech executives to speculate whether she could take a friendlier approach to the industry than Joe Biden has.Among the tech industry Democrats who have promoted or contributed to the Harris campaign are former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg; LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who attended the fundraiser in San Francisco, as well as philanthropist Melinda French Gates, IAC chair Barry Diller and Silicon Valley venture capitalist Ron Conway. Laurene Powell Jobs, billionaire philanthropist and former wife of Apple’s Steve Jobs, is a longtime friend and in 2013 held a fundraiser at her home for Harris. Netflix chairman Reed Hastings, who publicly called on the president to drop out after his disastrous debate performance, donated $7m to a pro-Harris Super PACac within days of her becoming the presumptive nominee.Some of these donors have arrived to Harris’s campaign with their own policies to promote, most notably Hoffman and Diller’s demands to fire Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Lina Khan. The FTC under Khan has taken an aggressive stance toward regulating big tech, pursuing cases against Microsoft and Amazon, which has rankled the industry. (Hoffman is a board member of Microsoft, which has been the target of FTC antitrust litigation.)Hoffman and Diller’s demands to remove Khan while donating heavily to Harris give the appearance of billionaire donors trying to sway policy for their personal benefit, despite denials from Hoffman that his contribution is in exchange for influence. Harris has yet to comment on Khan or the donations from her critics, meanwhile her campaign held an organizing event featuring Hoffman in early August following his attacks on the FTC chair.In addition to big-name donors, Harris has also received public pledges of support from hundreds of other venture capitalists and tech workers. A “VCs For Kamala” site featured more than 800 signatures from a variety of firms, while Bloomberg reported that a Tech4Kamala open letter received more than 1,200 signatures. The two groups are planning to host an event later this month.As he fights Harris, Trump forges new ties in Silicon ValleyAlthough Harris may have more vocal tech backers than Biden, the industry has also undergone a conservative shift and embrace of far-right beliefs that gives her a number of prominent opponents. A San Francisco fundraiser for Donald Trump held last month by venture capitalists David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya raised about $12m, while Silicon Valley power players Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz announced they plan to make substantial donations to the former president.JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, also ran his campaign for Ohio senator with the help of approximately $15m in contributions from tech billionaire Peter Thiel, whose venture firm briefly employed Vance in 2015. Prior to becoming a senator, Vance worked in Silicon Valley, where he plugged in to a broader network of wealthy conservatives in tech.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionElon Musk, the world’s richest man, has openly backed Trump while promoting attacks against Harris and Democrats on his social media platform X. Musk shared a deepfake parody video on the platform last month which featured manipulated footage of Harris, in which she was made to say “I am the ultimate diversity hire.” Musk’s Grok chatbot also spread false information suggesting that Harris was ineligible to appear on the ballot in some states, prompting condemnation from Democratic lawmakers.On Monday, Musk held a more than two-hour interview with Trump in which the Tesla CEO lauded Trump and gave no pushback as Trump rehashed a variety of falsehoods and baseless election conspiracies.“Trump’s entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself – self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024,” Joseph Costello, a Harris campaign spokesperson, said in a statement following the interview.California connections to big techAs state attorney general and then senator for California between 2010 and 2020, Harris was in office during a crucial period in the ascendance of Silicon Valley’s biggest social networks such as Facebook. Her record on legislation and litigation around tech has over the years alternatingly drawn applause from some regulation and privacy advocates and at times criticism from others that Harris didn’t attempt to rein in companies as they amassed monopolies.Harris enjoyed a fairly cozy relationship with the industry as attorney general, including developing a friendship with then Facebook COO Sandberg and participating in the PR campaign for Sandberg’s memoir Lean In. Sandberg gave the maximum legal individual contribution to her 2016 senate campaign and, according to emails acquired by HuffPost, sent Harris a message two days after that election that read “CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!!!!!!! We need you now more than ever.” Harris did not respond.During Harris’s time as attorney general, Facebook acquired both Instagram and WhatsApp in moves that helped it expand its dominance over social media. Antitrust advocates have since criticized federal regulators and state officials for failing to more intensely investigate or block those deals, with the FTC citing the acquisitions as evidence of anticompetitive practices in its antitrust lawsuit against Facebook. Harris has tended to stay away from taking a firm stance on antitrust actions, and in 2019 gave a vague answer to a direct question from the New York Times on whether big tech companies should be broken up.View image in fullscreenAreas where Harris took a more aggressive approach toward the tech industry were online privacy and sexual abuse, choosing what’s often called “revenge porn” as her marquee issue to fight. As a senator, Harris has introduced legislation and backed initiatives to criminalize sharing nonconsensual sexual images online, an issue that has become more pertinent in recent years with the rise of sexualized deepfakes of celebrities, politicians and average citizens. Her strategy with big tech companies on the issue, Politico reported in 2019, was to take a less publicly adversarial stance and instead forge relationships with executives who could change platform policies.When Harris chose to take legal action that involved tech companies, she instead tended to focus on smaller platforms or individual incidents of cybercrime. One of Harris’s most prominent prosecutions as attorney general was against the CEO and controlling shareholders of Backpage, an adult classifieds site that Harris accused of enabling illegal sex work, abuse and human trafficking. The prosecution, which Harris has touted in campaign ads, remains controversial and was heavily opposed by sex worker activists who viewed Backpage as a means to safely vet clients and avoid working on the streets. The founder of Backpage and two executives were convicted of prostitution and money laundering charges; a federal judge acquitted them on appeal.Harris’s record as a prosecutor shows other examples she could claim show that she’s tough on tech even as she maintains close relationships with the industry’s power brokers. She threatened to sue Uber as attorney general in 2016 after the company vowed to break state laws and put driverless cars on San Francisco streets without regulatory approval. Uber ultimately relented and ended its driverless tests days later. Meanwhile, Tony West, who became Uber’s chief legal officer a year after Harris threatened legal action, is now one of her campaign’s best-connected fundraisers. He’s also her brother-in-law. More

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      ‘We know who built this country’: Walz courts union workers in first solo event

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      Tim Walz held his first solo campaign event since being selected as Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential nominee on Tuesday, rallying union members in Los Angeles and denouncing Donald Trump’s record on labor rights.The Minnesota governor’s appearance, at an event hosted by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, was the first in a five-state fundraising campaign as Walz ramps up support for the still-young Democratic ticket.Speaking to thousands of union members in a darkened auditorium, Walz said he and Harris will support workers by bringing collective bargaining and other protections to “every state in the union”. The 1.4-million-member union has endorsed Harris.“We know exactly who built this country,” Walz said. “People in this room built the middle class.”He emphasized his and Harris’s history of supporting worker protections, including appearances that both candidates have made on picket lines and the ban Minnesota passed on captive audience meetings during his tenure as governor. Walz said that he was the “first union member on a presidential ticket since Ronald Regan”, but promised: “I won’t lose my way.” (Trump was a member of the Screen Actors Guild before resigning in 2021.)Walz then pivoted to warn them of what the future might look like for workers if the former president and his running mate, the Ohio senator JD Vance, are elected, saying: “They see the world very differently then we do.”“The only thing those two guys know about working people is how to work to take advantage of them,” Walz said. “Every single chance they’ve gotten they’ve waged war on workers.”He described a future where bargaining rights, overtime pay and other protections would be cut, referencing steps that the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 outlines for restricting worker rights under a second Trump presidency.The Trump campaign has also courted union support. When Trump accepted the Republican nomination last month, he said he would rescue the auto industry from “complete obliteration”.However, this morning the United Auto Workers union also filed federal unfair labor practice charges against Trump and Elon Musk over comments the two made during a live stream on X, which included threats to fire workers for going on strike.“You’re the greatest cutter,” Trump told Musk. “I mean, I look at what you do,” Trump said. “You walk in, you say, you want to quit? They go on strike, I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, that’s OK, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. So, every one of you is gone.”Walz concluded by referencing his own record of service, and attacks Republicans have made on his military service. “I’m proud to have served my country and I always will be,” he said.On Tuesday Walz also addressed a fundraiser in Newport Beach, and plans to speak in Denver and Boston tomorrow, before heading to Newport, Rhode Island, and Southampton, New York, on Thursday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt a fundraiser at the Balboa Bay Resort in Newport Beach on Tuesday, the Orange County Register reported, Walz peppered his 30-minute appearance “with Midwest jokes and self-deprecating quips”.“I couldn’t be more surprised if I woke up with my head stapled to the carpet,” he told an attendee who asked whether he was surprised to be selected as the vice-presidential nominee, before refocusing on his running mate.“You know better than anybody in this state what we’ve got in the vice-president. She’s found her voice,” Walz saidWalz also noted that his daughter, Hope, was in attendance at the Orange county event, before sharing his family’s story of conceiving Hope through IVF treatments.Also in attendance were multiple California Democratic house members, including representatives Nanette Barragán of South Gate, Mike Levin of San Juan Capistrano and Katie Porter of Irvine. Levin, who had been one of the first to call on President Joe Biden to abandon his re-election campaign, told the Register: “I want to win the election in November and defeat Donald Trump. Vice-President Harris and Governor Walz give us a great chance to do just that.”Donors in Newport Beach, one of California’s wealthier and more conservative regions, have contributed $770,000 to Trump’s campaign this election cycle; compared with $145,000 for the Democratic campaigns, the Register reports, citing Federal Election Commission reports.Walz’s fundraising tour will continue in Denver and Boston tomorrow, before heading to Newport, Rhode Island, and Southampton, New York, on Thursday. More

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      FBI told Harris campaign it was targeted by foreign hackers; Walz defends military service in first solo campaign event – live

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      Kamala Harris’s campaign said it has received a warning from the FBI that it had been targeted by foreign hackers, but they have not detected any breaches of their systems.“In July, the campaign legal and security teams were notified by the FBI that we were targeted by a foreign actor influence operation. We have robust cybersecurity measures in place, and are not aware of any security breaches of our systems resulting from those efforts. We remain in communication with appropriate law enforcement authorities,” a campaign official said.Earlier this week, the FBI said it was investigating a leak of documents from the Trump campaign that is being blamed on hackers tied to Iran. Here’s more on that:In the further annals of Republicans who broke with Donald Trump returning to the fold, former North Carolina senator Richard Burr said he will vote for the ex-president in November.Burr, who declined to seek re-election and left the Senate in 2022, was one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump after he was impeached by the House of Representatives in response to the January 6 insurrection.The conviction ultimately failed to receive the necessary two-thirds majority in the Senate required to be approved, and North Carolina’s GOP censured Burr for his vote.In an interview with Spectrum News, Burr said:
      Maybe someone will have a hard time squaring with it. I don’t have a hard time squaring with it because I firmly understood why I voted for impeachment. And l like I said, that’s not a disqualifier as to whether you can serve. It’s a bad choice I thought a president made one time.
      Donald Trump’s campaign is facing accusations of racism over this post on Twitter/X earlier today:It appears to be in line with the former president’s messaging around undocumented people, who he has baselessly blamed for causing crime, and sparked a wave of condemnation from users of X:Tim Walz is set to become one of the most prominent Democrats in the country – at least for the next three months, as he campaigns alongside Kamala Harris. Here’s a look at his record in Minnesota, from the Guardian’s Rachel Leingang:Tim Walz must be having the wildest month of his life.After the Minnesota governor was announced as Kamala Harris’s pick for running mate, the progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and independent senator Joe Manchin both put out statements praising him, an indication of his appeal across Democratic constituencies.“Dems in disconcerting levels of array,” Ocasio-Cortez joked on X.In the week since his name catapulted from relative obscurity – Walz flew up the shortlist of second-in-command possibles in a matter of two weeks, buoyed by clips of his TV appearances and memes about his dadliness – camo caps with orange writing have flown off the campaign merch shelves, a nod to Walz’s dressed-down midwestern attire.But beyond the appearances, his record in politics shows an evolution – a shift from a moderate Democrat winning over a Republican-leaning district to a governor who delivered a laundry list of progressive policy wins that has his critics fuming.Is he a progressive darling? Is he a moderate in progressive clothing? A centrist? Is this a bait-and-switch?Well, he’s Tim Walz.When you talk to people who know Walz, they all call him real, genuine, authentic, an everyman. There’s no reason to believe he’s putting on an act.Speaking of the Harris campaign, the vice-president’s newly minted running mate, Tim Walz, today made his first solo campaign appearance at a convention of union members.The Minnesota governor gave a wide-ranging speech in which he attacked Donald Trump and cheered the power of organized labor, while also taking time to respond to attacks from the former president and his supporters, who say Walz has exaggerated his military service.Here’s what he said in response, at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees’s annual convention:The attacks on Walz’s military service, from Trump allies including his running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance, have centered on the timing of his decision to retire after 24 years of army national guard service. Here’s more on that:Kamala Harris’s campaign said it has received a warning from the FBI that it had been targeted by foreign hackers, but they have not detected any breaches of their systems.“In July, the campaign legal and security teams were notified by the FBI that we were targeted by a foreign actor influence operation. We have robust cybersecurity measures in place, and are not aware of any security breaches of our systems resulting from those efforts. We remain in communication with appropriate law enforcement authorities,” a campaign official said.Earlier this week, the FBI said it was investigating a leak of documents from the Trump campaign that is being blamed on hackers tied to Iran. Here’s more on that:Democrats in Arizona received some good news yesterday, when the secretary of state approved a ballot measure that would protect abortion rights, the Guardian’s Carter Sherman reports. The party hopes the initiative will bring out voters who will also cast ballots for Kamala Harris in a state that could prove decisive to her hopes to winning the White House:Arizona voters will decide this November whether to add abortion rights into their state constitution, a prospect that could turbocharge voter turnout in a critical battleground state in the 2024 election.Late Monday, the Arizona secretary of state’s office announced that it had validated an estimated 577,971 signatures in support of a ballot measure, the Arizona For Abortion Access Act, to establish a constitutional right to abortion in the state.On X, the office called the measure “the largest petition effort in Arizona history”. The measure will be listed on the ballot as Proposition 139.Arizona is not the only state to face the prospect of an abortion-related ballot measure this November. So far, states including Colorado, Florida and Nevada – another key battleground state – are also set to hold similar ballot measures. Tuesday also marks the deadline for the state of Missouri to determine whether to add its own abortion-related measure to its ballots.Since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, ballot measures that protect or preserve abortion rights have successfully passed even in red states such as Ohio, Kansas and Kentucky. However, they have never been tested during a presidential election. Democrats are hoping that enthusiasm for the measures will boost turnout among their base, especially since the vice-president, Kamala Harris, one of the Democrats’ most effective messengers on abortion rights, became the party’s nominee.Arizona’s Republican former governor Doug Ducey has endorsed Donald Trump’s re-election bid, after he was censured by the state GOP near the end of his term for not being sufficiently loyal to the former president.Ducey cited his support for tougher immigration policies and a continuation of Trump-era tax cuts in his endorsement:Three years ago, the state Republican party reprimanded Ducey after it was taken over by rightwing officials who retaliated against politicians from the state that had clashed with Trump:Donald Trump’s campaign is out with a new statement claiming that the former president’s interview with Elon Musk last night “breaks the internet”.It says 25 million users on X have listened to the entire two-hour-plus interview as of noon today, and that the conversation generated 9.6m posts, among other statistics. It also hit out at Kamala Harris for not having done any interviews since launching her campaign.“While weak, failed, and dangerously liberal Kamala Harris has avoided answering questions for 23 days, President Trump delivered his message directly to the people in a historic, two-hour interview that generated millions of posts and impressions related to President Trump and Elon Musk’s unfiltered conversation,” the statement reads.Here’s more, from the Trump campaign communications director, Steven Cheung:
      President Trump will do everything he can to bring his unscripted message directly to the people, something the fake news media refuses to do. While Kamala Harris enjoys the luxury of hiding from the press, President Trump accepted Elon’s invitation to have an unfiltered conversation about his America First policies with voters and people around the world. The media can lie, but the numbers don’t: Americans are eager to hear from President Trump and his momentum is only growing as we get closer to November 5.
      The prominent progressive senator Bernie Sanders has warned that Donald Trump is preparing to once again dispute the results of the 2024 election, should he lose.Trump has never publicly conceded his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, and engaged in a months-long effort to prevent the Democrat from taking office that culminated in the violent January 6 insurrection.In a just-released statement, Sanders cites the former president’s recent language to argue that he is preparing to do the same this year:
      Donald Trump may be crazy, but he’s not stupid. When he claims that “nobody” showed up at a 10,000-person Harris-Walz rally in Michigan that was live-streamed and widely covered by the media, that it was all AI, and that Democrats cheat all of the time, there is a method to his madness. Clearly, and dangerously, what Trump is doing is laying the groundwork for rejecting the election results if he loses. If you can convince your supporters that thousands of people who attended a televised rally do not exist, it will not be hard to convince them that the election returns in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and elsewhere are “fake” and “fraudulent”.
      This is what destroying faith in institutions is about. This is what undermining democracy is about. This is what fascism is about.
      The former Colorado clerk Tina Peters, the first local election official to be charged with a security breach after the 2020 election as unfounded conspiracy theories swirled, was found guilty by a jury on most charges last night.Peters, a one-time hero to those denying that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, was accused of using someone else’s security badge to give an expert affiliated with the My Pillow chief executive, Mike Lindell, access to the Mesa county election system and deceiving other officials about that person’s identity, the Associated Press reports.Lindell is a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to “steal” the election from Trump. His online broadcasting site has been showing a livestream of Peters’ trial. Prosecutors said Peters was seeking fame and became “fixated” on voting problems after becoming involved with those who had questioned the accuracy of the 2020 presidential election results.The breach Peters was charged of orchestrating heightened concerns over potential insider threats, in which rogue election workers sympathetic to partisan lies could use their access and knowledge to launch an attack from within.Peters was convicted of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failing to comply with the secretary of state. She was found not guilty of identity theft, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation and one count of criminal impersonation.She will be sentenced on 3 October.Sea level rise will help create “more oceanfront property”, carbon pollution is only a problem once it starts causing “headaches and nausea” and we should be more worried about “nuclear warming” than global warming.Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s conversation on X, which Musk owns, last night featured several incoherent and baseless statements on the climate crisis, prompting both confusion and derision among environmental advocates.Bill McKibben, co-founder of the climate group 350.org, labeled it the “dumbest climate conversation of all time.”Trump, the Republican presidential nominee in this election, said that rising seas will help create “more oceanfront property” and complained that “people talk about global warming or they talk about climate change, but they never talk about nuclear warming,” in reference to potential nuclear war.During the often disjointed exchange, Trump also said it is a “disgrace” that Joe Biden’s administration hadn’t opened up the Arctic to oil drilling and baselessly claimed that “you have farmers that are not allowed to farm anymore and have to get rid of their cattle” because of climate edicts.Musk, meanwhile, said that he is “helping the environment” by making electric cars via Tesla but said that he didn’t want people to “vilify” the oil and gas industry that is driving the climate crisis and that the real dangers were, he felt, an increase in CO2 that will cause “headaches and nausea” and the world potentially running out of oil.“We don’t need to rush and we don’t need to like, you know, stop farmers from farming or, you know, prevent people from having steaks or basic stuff like that,” Musk said about the urgency of climate change. “Like leave the farmers alone.”Scientists are clear that the world needs to rapidly move away from fossil fuels to avoid worsening and disastrous climate impacts such as heatwaves, flooding and droughts.The exchange did little to assuage concerns that a second Trump term will only help accelerate dangerous global heating. More