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      ‘Edgelords’ and ‘butt-sniffers’: will Trump’s tour of hyper-masculine podcasts win over young men? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Donald Trump may be falling behind in the polls, but the former president is planning a comeback utilizing a secret weapon: edgelord influencers. In a bid to win over young male voters, the Trump campaign has been cozying up to controversial online streamers and podcasters who trade in stunts and testosterone.In June, for example, Trump sat down with Logan Paul for a podcast interview in which the pair talked about alien life forms. Last week, JD Vance made his TikTok debut alongside the Nelk Boys, a Canadian YouTube collective who have collaborated with the self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate. Then on Monday, apparently on the advice of his 18-year-old son Barron, who told his father Ross was “really big”, Trump livestreamed a 90-minute interview with Adin Ross. Trump told Ross that America was a “drug-addicted, crime-infested nation” and called Kamala Harris “strange”. The pair also talked about how the rapper Young Thug was being treated unfairly by the legal system and Ross suggested that Trump might want to call in some favors to make sure he gets treated OK. Then they did a little dance together.Who is Ross, other than someone Barron Trump thinks is cool? Well, it’s hard to explain his career trajectory in a way that doesn’t sound completely unhinged, but essentially the 23-year-old rose to fame by playing video games such as NBA 2K on Twitch (he’s since been banned from that platform after consistently allowing hateful unmoderated content in the chat, and now streams on Kick, a less moderated and more rightwing-friendly alternative).He then launched into a broader content creation strategy that involved him making a bunch of homophobic jokes and trolling celebrities. “A big part of Adin Ross’ whole persona is that he jokes about being gay in front of his celebrity guests and uploads videos of himself being ‘sus’ around them,” a 2021 Complex profile on Ross explains.Part of Ross’s “sus” schtick involves … wait for it … making a big show of sniffing people’s recently vacated chairs. There are a bunch of videos of him sniffing chairs, but he’s most famous for a video where he gets a good whiff of Andrew Tate’s chair during a livestream after the guy leaves the room. This has resulted in certain people terming Ross the “butt-sniffer”.Aligning yourself with someone who is famous for sniffing chairs in a sexually suggestive way is an interesting political strategy, especially when your nominee for vice-president is the butt of a number of jokes because of an online rumour about him once having sexual relations with a couch. Still, at least Trump and Vance, both of whom have a habit of putting their futon their mouth, are on the same page sofa.To be fair, Ross, who has 1.36 million followers on Kick, is known for more than his weird jokes. He’s famous for hosting white supremacists such as Nick Fuentes on his show, for example. And he made headlines for inadvertently getting Tate arrested this year by revealing, during a livestream on Kick in March, that Tate intended to leave Romania soon and never come back. This tipped off McCue Law, the firm representing four British women accusing Tate of rape and sexual assault, that the influencer was planning to flee and helped to get an arrest warrant issued.It’s possible Monday’s livestream might result in another spot of legal bother. During the interview, Ross gave Trump a Rolex and custom Cybertruck, which could possibly be a campaign finance violation. (He did not, however, sniff Trump’s seat.)While it’s easy to laugh at Trump’s interview with Ross, I don’t want to appear dismissive of the livestream, which, at its peak, was watched by around 580,000 people; clips from it will be viewed by millions more on TikTok and YouTube. The interview was part of a broader strategy to stir up support among young men, who are a key component in Trump’s path to the White House. Trump seems to have settled on a strategy of focusing his energy on appealing to men in extremely online, heavily masculine spaces rather than broadening his appeal via mainstream media. Interviews with people like Ross and Logan Paul cover off the youngest, more UFC- and video-games-focused end of this spectrum, while his June interview with the All-In podcast (run by a bunch of tech bros), help him stir up support in Silicon Valley and amongst the crypto crowd. His next big interview will be on Monday with Elon Musk: the crown prince of angry young men.Of course, appealing to young men doesn’t mean anything if those men don’t get up off the couch and actually vote. Which is why, last week, a group of Trump allies launched a $20m initiative called Send the Vote aiming to increase voter registration and turnout among young men. Per the Wall Street Journal, “plans include voter-registration drives at major sporting events, and parties in which admission is proof of voter registration”.Trump’s strategy to woo men under 30 has been fairly successful so far. For decades, young men have leaned left, but their support for Trump has grown since 2020. It helped Trump, of course, that Joe Biden did a brilliant job at alienating a lot of younger voters. While Harris has re-energized young voters (100,000 new voters registered during the first week of Harris’s campaign), the vice-president’s still trailing Trump when it comes to men (54%-45%). That may change, though: a recent “White Dudes for Harris” Zoom had almost 200,000 participants and raised more than $4m. Trump may have the support of guys who like to make racist jokes on the internet, but Harris has extraordinary momentum and a broad coalition. I reckon Trump may want to take a close look at the Rolex he’s been given because his time in the political spotlight may just be running out. More

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      Why Donald Trump won’t make major inroads with Black voters | Musa al-Gharbi

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      Throughout the 2024 cycle, polling has suggested that Republicans are poised to do extraordinarily well with African Americans.Even with Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket, nearly one out of five black voters say they support Donald Trump. Younger Black voters seem especially open to casting ballots for the Republican party.On its face, this seems like a sea change in Americans’ electoral affinities. The last time Republicans put up numbers anywhere near that level with Black voters was in 1976. And given that Black voters currently make up nearly one-quarter of the Democratic base, a scenario where almost 20% of these constituents defected to the other side would be absolutely devastating for the vice-president’s electoral prospects.The good news for Democrats is that, even if the polls have been genuinely capturing overall Black sentiment in the US, they are unlikely to be accurately predicting the final vote distribution in November.To clarify why polls are unlikely to reflect the eventual vote margins for this particular subset of voters, it might be helpful to look at how things typically shake out for third-party candidates.Elections are decided by voters, not poll respondentsDuring the 2016 electoral cycle, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson consistently hovered around 9% of the vote in polling. As the race tightened in the weeks before the election, voters began defecting to one of the top ticket candidates. However, in the week before ballots were cast, he was still polling at more than 6%. Ultimately, he ended up with just over 3%.In the 2020 cycle, Green party candidate Howie Hawkins polled at 2% of the national vote six weeks before the election. He ultimately secured roughly one-quarter of 1% of ballots.In the current cycle, Robert F Kennedy Jr polled above 10% for most of the race and, at his high point, was more than double that. However, as the race has tightened (we’re less than 90 days out), and after Joe Biden dropped out, Kennedy is now polling around 4%. In the end, he’d probably be lucky to get half that many votes in November.In short: despite most Americans consistently expressing support for alternatives to the Democratic and Republican nominees, third-party candidates consistently underperform at the ballot box relative to their polling – even in cycles (like 2016) where unusually high numbers of voters dislike both major party candidates.One of the primary causes of this gap between polling and outcomes is that contests are ultimately decided by who shows up to vote on election day. And Americans who are disgusted with both major-party nominees often find other things to do on a Tuesday afternoon than standing in line at a polling place to cast a ballot for someone who has little prospect of actually winning. And when these voters do show up at the ballot box, it’s often to hold their nose and vote for whomever they perceive to be the lesser of the two major party evils, in order to deny victory to the candidate they least prefer. And so, in the end, few Americans who express support for third-party candidates in polls actually show up to vote for them. The polls may accurately capture Americans’ preferences for third-party candidates, but they don’t predict well voting behavior with respect to those candidates.A similar tale holds for Black support of Republicans.Although polls this cycle have consistently found that nearly one in five Black Americans are open to voting for Trump, they also show that most Black voters could be easily swayed to vote for someone other than who they’re leaning towards at the moment, most Black voters have much weaker commitments to their current candidate of choice than other Americans, and roughly a third say they will probably not vote at all. This pattern in responses is also reflected in historical voting behavior: Black voters are more likely than most other Americans to sit elections out.Across the board, the Americans who are most likely to show up on election day – highly-educated, relatively affluent, urban and suburban voters – now tend to favor Democrats, even as lower-propensity voters (younger, working class and low-income, and/or less educated Americans, especially those who live in small towns and rural areas) have been shifting to the right.Historically, the dynamic has gone the other way. Democrats benefitted from high turnout and sought to expand access and participation while Republicans aggressively sought to suppress turnout by increasing voting restrictions, purging voter rolls, gerrymandering districts and otherwise undermining the Voting Rights Act. However, as the Democratic party was reoriented around knowledge economy professionals, many other constituencies swung in the other direction. And because there are far more “normie” voters than there are symbolic capitalists, high turnout increasingly came to favor Republicans instead.This matters because Republicans’ polling gains among African Americans are concentrated most heavily among lower-propensity voting blocs (such as younger and less affluent or educated constituents) and, as a consequence, the lower overall electoral turnout is, the more we should expect to see Republicans underperform among black voters relative to the polls.In 2020, the GOP got a bigger share of the black vote than in previous cycles, but this was in part because of record turnout among non-white voters (whereas Democrats overperformed in subsequent special elections that had much lower overall turnout). Unfortunately for Trump, there are signs that African American turnout this cycle may be significantly lower among lower-propensity voters. Consequently, the vote share Republicans ultimately receive in 2024 among black voters may end up being significantly lower than the polling suggests.The bad news for Democrats is that Trump doesn’t necessarily need to get around 20% of the black vote to freeze Kamala out of the White House. If he’s to even marginally exceed his numbers from last cycle, Democrats would be left with a highly precarious path to victory unless they can make up the losses with other constituents in swing states.Both parties have been alienating core constituenciesSince 2010, Democrats had been consistently losing vote share among African Americans in every midterm and general election.And it wasn’t just African American voters who were leaving, but also Hispanic Americans, religious minorities, and less affluent or educated voters. The very populations that Democrats often fancy themselves as representatives of and advocates for. The very constituents that were supposed to ensure Democrats an indefinite electoral majority.These defections were highly consequential: they contributed to enormous congressional wipeouts from 2010 to 2014 and cost Democrats the White House in 2016 (as Black voter attrition helped flip states including Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio, even as Hispanic alienation helped tilt Arizona, Texas and Florida toward the Republicans).Many assumed that with Trump in the White House, minority voters would come flocking back to the Democratic party. Instead, the GOP held their margins with non-white voters in the 2018 midterms. Democratic gains in that election were near-exclusively due to shifts among highly-educated, relatively affluent, urban and suburban white people.In 2020, Black voters in states such as South Carolina helped save Biden’s floundering primary election campaign. In response, the president vowed to appoint a Black woman as his running mate should he win the Democratic nomination. Upon securing the vote, he ultimately settled on Harris.This choice was striking because Harris was not popular with Black voters during the primary. She typically trailed behind not just Biden, but also Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and sometimes other competitors as well – consistently polling about 5% with African Americans.That general sentiment seems to have continued through to the general election. Although Harris’s nomination was historic in virtue of her being potentially the first Black, female and/or Asian vice-president, her appearance on the ticket generated little enthusiasm among any of these voter blocs. Democrats ultimately got a smaller share of the black vote and the Asian vote in 2020 as compared with 2016 (across gender lines). Democrats were able to nonetheless carve out a narrow electoral college win primarily because white men (especially self-identified “moderates” and “independents”) shifted away from Donald Trump in 2020.These patterns continued through the 2022 midterm elections: non-white people, including non-white women, shifted much further towards the GOP than white people (especially white men). And it seems likely that Democrats will see further attrition in 2024, even if it’s less than current polling suggests.Contrary to optimistic narratives that circulated as Obama was ushered into office, it’s actually quite difficult to hold together a coalition that is centered around knowledge economy professionals but attractive to less advantaged Americans as well.With respect to the Democratic party’s current core constituency, although knowledge economy professionals have been straying from the Democrats since the election of Biden, they seem poised to turn out in force for Harris. The record-breaking “White Women: Answer the Call” and “White Dudes for Harris” online events seem like a strong indicator – as does the huge outpouring of support from Wall Street, Silicon Valley and big law. The symbolic professions seem to be 100% coconut-pilled.Black people, on the other hand, seem much less enthusiastic. And should Harris lean heavily into her race or gender in an attempt to rally support – although this might be appealing to (disproportionately white) knowledge economy professionals – it would likely alienate non-white “normie” voters even more (who tend to prefer messages that are less identitarian and more focused on bread and butter issues).The big question for 2024 is whether or not Trump will continue to alienate white people at an equal or greater clip as Democrats are driving away voters of color. The answer will likely determine control of the White House.

      Musa al-Gharbi is a sociologist in the School of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University. His book, We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, is forthcoming with Princeton University Press. He is a Guardian US columnist. More

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      Far-right online attacks against Tim Walz focus on conspiracy theory

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      Just as he was officially announced on the ticket, Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, often lauded as the safest pick for Kamala Harris to make as a running mate, was already facing racist and nativist attacks from the online depths of the far right.In media speculation leading up to Harris’s potential pick, Walz, a midwesterner who once coached a high school football team, was seen as evening out the Californian vice-president’s candidacy for the White House.The thinking among pundits was that Walz, who is white and 60, was appealing to battleground states, namely Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – one of the keys to victory in the electoral college spread this November.But the far-right users of Telegram, Gab, 4chan and other adjacent social media sites frequently used to spread extremist propaganda have taken a different tack.The nexus of many of the early attacks have focused on the conspiracy theory that he changed the state flag of Minnesota to mimic a Somali flag.“Replaced Minnesota flag with Somali flag, loves loves loves Somalis moving into America by planeload,” said one anonymous post on the chatboard 4Chan, with an image of Walz at a press conference.“Timmy Somali changed the state flag to look African, lmao,” said another post on the same site, which was published following the news of Walz as Harris’s pick. “Dude is a fucking cuck. This is a worse VP pick than even Vance was.”This rhetoric stems from Walz unveiling the new Minnesota flag in December last year. The 1957 version was criticized for overtly depicting a Native American man being driven away from the land by threat of a rifle. The new design partly features a blue backdrop with a white star – an allusion to the official state motto “Star of the North” – something the Somali flag also happens to include.“Tim Walz is the perfect pick to sell you out to the hordes,” wrote one pro-Proud Boys channel on Telegram with more than 15,000 followers, putting a video of Walz and the new flag in the post.As the brutal civil war persisted into the 90s, Minnesota became a destination for many Somali immigrants, who established a rich and successful group of new Americans. Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar, who was born in Mogadishu, was part of that same wave of immigration fleeing the violence.But, of course, the more than 85,000 Somali Americans in the state of close to 7 million has become the racist fodder of neo-Nazis, nativists and far-right commentators of all types in recent years.“This is Minneapolis, Minnesota,” read one post with more than a thousand views on a neo-Nazi-sympathizing channel on Telegram, with photos of a vibrant Somali street festival in Minneapolis, not unlike annual Italian street festivals in every major US city. “This isn’t Mogadishu.”Mainstream Republicans have started adopting this racist invocation of Somalia when it comes to Walz. Stephen Miller, former senior adviser to Donald Trump, went on Fox News on Tuesday night to say the Democrat ticket will “turn the entire midwest into Mogadishu”.On Gab, a fringe and rightwing X-wannabe, an image showing a cartoon Harris and Walz carrying a Somali flag was making the rounds, while others largely focused on the Minnesota governor’s stewardship of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in 2020, which first began in his state after the police killing of George Floyd.“Minneapolis before and after Governor Tim Walz allowed BLM to destroy it,” wrote one Gab user posting images claiming to show Minneapolis buildings that were once pristine before the protests.Walz’s midwestern, folksy appeal was undeniably a major reason Harris and her team took the decision to include him. He’s a counter to Donald Trump’s running mate: the Ohio senator JD Vance, who uses any public appearance to stress his working-class and Appalachian roots.Vance and the far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is an often antisemitic and racist mouthpiece for the extremist branches of the Republican party, immediately cited the BLM protests in their attacks on Walz.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionVance accused Walz of allowing “rioters to burn down Minneapolis” while Greene said he similarly did “nothing while Minneapolis burned”, telegraphing a surefire Republican attack line in the coming months.“The incoming rightwing assault on Walz will be pretty predictable,” said Amarnath Amarasingam, an extremism expert and professor at Queen’s University in Canada who has researched the rise of the far right since the Trump presidency.Amarasingam explained that there was the underlying racial component to Walz’s candidacy that was sure to inflame the far right and be an implicit attack against him in mainstream Republican circles.“American politics is so tribal now that the same reasons that make [Walz] attractive to the Harris campaign will be the same reasons he will be considered ‘un-American’ by the right.”Amarasingam also pointed out that beyond his track record on Covid, LGBTQ+ and trans rights will surely be topics of conversation.“The predictable culture war fault lines – immigration, equity, gender fluidity, race – will be trotted out as insults and accusations: he took too long to call in the national guard against BLM protests, his state was too restrictive during Covid and so on,” he said.“When there aren’t verifiable policy choices to attack, conspiracy theories will take their place – like the idea that he changed the state’s flag to resemble the Somali flag due to an immigrant takeover.”Another point of criticism on Walz that’s gaining momentum among Republicans is … tampons? Walz supported a law that went into effect in Minnesota this year, requiring tampons in both boys and girls public school bathrooms.The perhaps uninspired hashtag “TamponTim” trended on X among rightwing circles for most of Tuesday. On Gab, there’s a meme dubbing Walz “Tampon Tim” and shows a manipulated picture of him menstruating from his jeans.Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson, wasted no time appearing on Fox News only hours after Walz was announced to criticize the vice-presidential pick and his legislative track record.“As a woman, I think there’s no greater threat to our health than leaders who support gender transition surgeries for young minors,” she said in an animated appearance, “who support putting tampons in men’s bathrooms in public schools.” More

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      ‘We invest in artists as changemakers’: using art to help increase US voter participation

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      Everything is politics, so the saying goes, and never more so during an election year. With its newest collection, Art for Change is taking the “everything” one step further.Since 2018, Art for Change has curated programs of online sales and exhibitions to raise money for a number of charities. Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Art for Change has partnered with When We All Vote, a non-partisan non-profit founded by Michelle Obama that seeks to up voter participation.On their own, many of the pieces in this collection may not feel overtly political. An art novice would probably imagine a collaboration like this to include art similar to the red, white and blue of Shepard Fairey’s Hope and We The People posters – not Jordan Kasey’s surreal illustration of a baby and mother, Daniel Gordon’s still life of red apples and white poppies, or Aaron Johnson’s vivid auroral depiction of a couple with a bird flying from one’s heart.But interspersed with pieces like Caris Reid’s playful rendering of the word “VOTE” against a starry backdrop and Rico Gatson’s colorful celebration of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, each piece in this collection takes on new context. Especially under the mission statement of When We All Vote, which will receive a portion of all the sales of prints and original works, the artwork of this collection come together to show what’s at stake with each election – what exactly a person risks losing by choosing not to vote.“The When We All Vote collection as a whole creates a narrative that we hope evokes various nuances of America,” said Jeanne Masel, founder of Art for Change. “As a group, they convey a sense of Americana, from the image of an apple to a whimsical take on a ‘Vote’ poster, to abstractions that evoke raw emotions.”Masel added: “What I love about this collection is how varied and multivalent it is, which I think can also be read as reflecting our country’s diversity.”Johnson completed Oh My Heart in 2023 and had not originally intended for it to convey a political message. “My piece can be looked at as kind of a love story,” he said. “It’s a coming together of two figures, melded together into like a non-duality.”As part of this collection, the love story of Oh My Heart comes to represent the ties that hold us together. “In a lot of times in my work, I’m thinking about the interconnectedness of all beings, our interconnectivity with each other as humans or interconnectivity with nature,” Johnson said. “I think that all wraps back around to the idea of community and the idea of why of it’s important to vote, having empathy for others and having a sense of a shared community. I feel like that’s a message that runs kind of kind of parallel to what we’re looking for when we’re going to vote. How do we function together as good citizens? How do we take care of each other as citizens?”View image in fullscreenLike Johnson, Kenny Rivero’s body of work, which looks at architecture and outdoor street space as sentient observers of our daily lives, does not always translate into something political. But once he agreed to work with Art for Change for this collaboration, he thought of Witness Revelator, a painting he finished in 2020 of a Black individual emerging from a dark rectangular portal in a gray brick wall. The witness in Witness Revelator is “a witness to your vote”, Rivero said.“There’s a lot of things that we do alone, that we do intimately and in private and in secret, and I think voting is one of those things, especially now where everything is so polarized,” he said. “There’s this thing you’re doing that is private but you’re being tallied in something greater, something much more impactful. Witness Revelator, for me, is connected to that in the way of somebody witnessing the effort that you’re making to create progress or create change.”Since its start six years ago, Art for Change has raised more than $300,000 for nonprofit partners and has collaborated with more than 100 artists, all of whom are guaranteed 50% of the profits from sales. Masel describes Art for Change as “art for the socially conscious collector”, but also a way for artists to have a platform for social change. “We invest in artists as changemakers,” she said.View image in fullscreenThis collection is the second time Rivero has worked with Art for Change, in part because he said he believes that artists have a unique role in a democracy, no matter the subject matter or intended message of their work.“I think that artists are on the frontlines of creating new ideas on how to relate to each other,” Rivero said. “Because we’re constantly engaging with these ideas around family, community and relationships, so I think that we look to artists, not necessarily on how to rebuild society, but to tell us what’s wrong with it. Where does it hurt?”Art for Change collaborated with When We All Vote for the 2020 election, working with four artists to raise more than $30,000 for the non-profit. This year, 14 artists are participating, with Art for Change pledging to donate a guaranteed $10,000.“A visual medium has the power to drive social change and impact, and having these artists involved and spreading the word to get out and vote is so important,” Masel said. “This project really harnesses a great creativity and joy to inspire change.”

      The When We All Vote virtual exhibit is now available on the Art for Change website More

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      JD Vance attacks Tim Walz’s military record as election race heats up

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      JD Vance went on the offensive on Wednesday, attacking the military record of Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick.Speaking in Michigan, Donald Trump’s Republican running mate said: “You know what really bothers me about Tim Walz? When the United States Marine Corps … asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it. I did what they asked me to do and I did it honorably, and I’m very proud of that service.“When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the army and allowed his unit to go without him.”Now a US senator from Ohio, Vance, 40, deployed to Iraq in 2005, as a military journalist. Despite his title – combat correspondent – he did not experience combat.Walz, 60, was in the army national guard for 24 years, in infantry and artillery, deploying in response to natural disasters on US soil and to Europe in support of operations in Afghanistan. He retired in 2005, to run for Congress, shortly before his unit deployed to Iraq.He has faced attacks before. In 2018, he told Minnesota Public Radio: “I know that there are certainly folks that did far more than I did. I know that. I willingly say that I got far more out of the military than they got out of me, from the GI bill to leadership opportunities to everything else.”A soldier who served under Walz, Al Bonnifield, said: “Would the soldier look down on him because he didn’t go with us? Would the common soldier say, ‘Hey, he didn’t go with us, he’s trying to skip out on a deployment?’ And he wasn’t.“… He weighed that decision to run for Congress very heavy. He loved the military, he loved the guard, he loved the soldiers he worked with.”Calling Walz “very caring” and a “very good leader”, Bonnifield said Walz helped him and other soldiers when they returned from Iraq.Vance seized on footage publicized by the Harris campaign in which, discussing gun control reform, Walz says: “We can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are at.”Vance said: “He says, ‘We shouldn’t allow weapons that I used in war to be on the American streets.’skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Well, I wonder, Tim Walz, when were you ever in war? What was this weapon that you carried into war given that you abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq? He has not spent a day in a combat zone. What bothers me about Tim Walz is the stolen valor garbage. Do not pretend to be something that you’re not.”Observers suggested Vance was attempting to “swift boat” Walz – a reference to attacks on John Kerry, the decorated US navy Vietnam veteran and Massachusetts senator who ran for president against George W Bush in 2004.Bush avoided serving in Vietnam but Republicans attacked Kerry regardless. The Republican operative (and wounded Gulf war veteran) widely credited with coordinating the effort, Chris LaCivita, now runs the Trump-Vance campaign.In a statement, the Harris campaign said: “After 24 years of military service, Governor Walz retired in 2005 and ran for Congress, where he chaired veterans affairs and was a tireless advocate for our men and women in uniform … As vice-president … he will continue to be a relentless champion for our veterans and military families.”It added: “In his 24 years of service, the Governor carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times. Governor Walz would never insult or undermine any American’s service to this country – in fact, he thanks Senator Vance for putting his life on the line for our country. It’s the American way.” More

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      Biden ‘not confident at all’ in peaceful transfer of power if Trump loses race

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      Joe Biden has said he is not confident there will be a peaceful transfer of power after the November presidential election.“If Trump wins, no, I’m not confident at all. I mean, if Trump loses, I’m not confident at all,” the president said in an interview with CBS News that is due to air in full this Sunday.Biden added: “He means what he says, we don’t take him seriously. He means it, all this stuff about ‘if we lose it will be a bloodbath’ … [and] ‘stolen election’, you can’t love your country only when you win.”The TV network posted the excerpt from the interview on Twitter/X.Donald Trump, who is the Republican nominee for president, said in March: “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath. That’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion

      Reuters contributed reporting. More details soon … More

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      Kamala Harris and Tim Walz inspire enthusiasm at Wisconsin rally: ‘I’m elated’

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      Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, continued their swing-state tour with a rally in rural Wisconsin on Wednesday.The rally, which followed a raucous event in Philadelphia, served as an opportunity for Harris to continue to introduce Walz, a formerly low-profile midwest governor, to Democrats in the critical swing state. Held in Eau Claire, a north-western Wisconsin city less than two hours from Minneapolis and St Paul, Minnesota, the rally drew attendees from both states.Walz spoke first, focusing on his midwestern background and noting he had family in the crowd. “Being a midwesterner, I know something about commitment to the people,” he said.He also spoke at length about his experience coaching football, teaching social studies and serving in the Minnesota National Guard, underscoring his role as a kind of ambassador to rural and working-class Americans for the Democratic party.And he directly took on Trump. “Don’t believe him when he plays dumb. He knows exactly what he’s talking about. He knows exactly what Project 2025 will do in restricting and taking our freedoms. He knows that it rigs the economy for the super rich if he gets a chance to go back to the White House. It will be far worse than it was four years ago.”Walz also revisited his support for and personal experience with IVF, the fertility treatment, which has become a contentious issue for Republicans after an Alabama court ruled that frozen embryos have personhood.The rally highlighted Harris’s focus on Wisconsin, where she held her first rally after Joe Biden announced the end of his bid for re-election. In 2016, Donald Trump won Wisconsin by about 20,000 votes, and Biden won the state in 2020 by a similar margin.Harris’s speech was similar to those at other recent campaign stops, with a focus on the future and Trump’s threat to democratic norms.“Donald Trump has openly vowed, if re-elected, he will be a dictator on day one, that he would weaponize the Department of Justice against his political enemies, that he would round up peaceful protesters and throw them out of our country, and even, quote, ‘terminate the United States constitution’,” she said.“Let us be clear, someone who suggests we should terminate the constitution of the United States should never again have a chance to stand behind the seal of the president of the United States.”Rallygoers were enthusiastic at seeing the duo at the event.“I’m elated,” said Lori Schlecht, a teacher from Minnesota who said she is excited about Walz given his background in public education – Walz was a public school teacher before he was elected to the US House of Representatives in 2006. “Minnesota is blessed to have him, and I’m glad to see him at the national level. He is authentic and real – he’ll get shit done.”Many Minnesota residents in attendance pointed to Walz’s down-to-earth manner as an asset for the Democratic party ticket.“Walz is my homeboy,” said Colin Mgam, who is 65 and retired and drove from St Paul for the rally. “He brings straight talk, and he’s going to do well,” Mgam added.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe indie folk band Bon Iver, whose lead singer is from Eau Claire and previously supported Bernie Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, opened for Harris at the Wednesday event.Walz, who was not initially an obvious contender for Harris’s vice-presidential pick, garnered widespread attention within the party after giving a candid and upbeat interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe in which he boosted Harris and wrote off Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance as “weird”.The “weird” moment went viral, and Democratic party officials and politicians quickly seized on the term to dismiss the Republican presidential ticket as reactionary and out-of-touch with everyday Americans.Walz’s comments – and subsequent references to the “weirdness” of the Maga movement, including at the Wednesday rally – marked the beginning of a rhetorical shift for Democrats, with Harris reframing the election in more positive terms than the Biden campaign, which leaned heavily on grave warnings about Trump’s autocratic tendencies. Since ascending to the top of the ticket, Harris has instead emphasized a policy agenda with issues that are popular among Democratic voters, such as abortion rights, labor unions and the cost of childcare.Donald Trump has been quick to paint Walz, who has worked with progressive lawmakers in Minnesota to pass a raft of progressive laws – codifying the right to abortion, expanding protections for workers and establishing landmark voting rights legislation – as a member of the “radical left”, a line of attack that the former president will likely continue to push.But Walz pushed back against Trump on Wednesday. “This election is all about asking that question, which direction will this country go in? Donald Trump knows the direction he wants to take it. He wants to take us back.” More