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    Young men in the US used to lean left. Could they now hand Trump the presidency?

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    View image in fullscreenA chill wind swept through Europe this summer. On the continent, far-right parties rose triumphantly in the EU elections, hoisted not just by the grumbles of older xenophobes but on the shoulders of young men. When news crews went out on the streets to train their cameras on these extremists in France, Germany, Finland and the Netherlands, they found no blackshirts, just barbershop trims and Zara chinos worn by young men, enthralled by dreams of ethnonationalism and a return to the values of the 1980s or the 1940s or some other period long before their birth. Then, in Britain this weekend, gangs of mostly young far-right men marauded through northern towns, attacking mosques and accommodation for asylum seekers. The nationalist right is rising once more on the tides of gelled-backed hair and Nike swooshes.A similar transformation could befall America in November. Until now, twentysomething voters were a thorn in Donald Trump’s side, opposing him robustly in previous elections and making their resistance corporeal as leaders in the Women’s March, Black Lives Matter protests and climate movement. Yet recent election polls suggest that while young women remain committed to the cause, there has been a tremulous withdrawal from young men. In 2016, 51% of young men identified with or leaned toward the Democratic party. By last year, it was down to 39%. Young men now favor Republican control of Congress and their support for Trump has grown since 2020.The Democratic strategist James Carville (he who told Bill Clinton “it’s the economy, stupid”) has been warning Democrats that the party’s eroding numbers among young men and young people of color are “horrifying”: “We’re not shedding them; they’re leaving in droves.”Of course, many of these fears were emerging when Joe Biden, an octogenarian white man, was still the presumptive Democratic nominee. But while early polling suggests that overall, gen Z is excited by Kamala Harris’s likely nomination, she hasn’t made much impact on gen Z men. Research by the Young Men Research Initiative (YMRI), a group set up in recent months to observe this unexpected drift, shows that men aged 18-29 are split 32% for Harris and 33% for Donald Trump, with Robert F Kennedy Jr taking 15%. This is an almost identical split to when Biden was the frontrunner.Young men used to vote more like young people: left. Now they might start voting like men: right. What changed?View image in fullscreenSome pollsters believe we are witnessing a new politics of resentment – that young men feel #MeToo has gone too far, that feminism has left them behind, and that they can only see a home for themselves in a testosterone-fuelled Republican party.Others – including Richard Reeves, head of the recently founded and influential American Institute for Boys and Men – say this isn’t a cultural issue. While a small, loud minority of men might have become more extreme in their views on feminism, most are responding to other economic and social factors that have meant they have lagged behind women for some time. Young men statistically are more depressed, financially worse off and less educated than young women, and looking for electoral answers. “This is less about young men being pulled towards the right than it is about them being pushed away from the left,” Reeves says.Blue-collar workers, Hispanic voters in Florida, white married women: Democrats have blundered before in assuming they had certain demographics locked up only to find they had taken them for granted. Unless the party can work out why it’s losing young men and how to win them back, Democrats may wake up to a cold new dawn in November, as Europe did in June.‘A very scary time’: the politics of resentmentIn 2018, a gaggle of the White House press corps asked Trump for his opinion on the allegations that Brett Kavanaugh, his nominee for the supreme court, had sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford when she was 15 years old. Trump, almost drowned out by the whirring blades of Marine One, could only offer superlatives in response. “High quality”, “top student”, “a great judge”. The reporters sounded desperate: what does it say to boys that someone facing such a serious accusation is still being considered for the supreme court?“Well, I say it’s a very scary time for young men in America,” Trump replied. “You could be somebody that was perfect your entire life and somebody could accuse you of something … and you’re automatically guilty.”Trump had dismissed his own boasts of sexual assault as “locker room talk” during his 2016 campaign, but now he was making his pitch directly to the locker room. Having harnessed the racial resentment of white voters who felt society had become too diverse, could he do the same with young men who felt society had become too feminized?View image in fullscreenThe answer was a resounding no. One month later, in the midterms, the Democrats won 72% of young people’s votes overall, including at least 57% of young male voters. In 2020, Biden only won the popular vote narrowly but among young people (men and women aged 18-29), it was another landslide: a 24-point win. Time Magazine declared that young voters had reshaped “the contours of American politics” – if you were young, you were a Democrat.The feeling was that members of gen Z share a unique set of economic circumstances (a lifetime of renting, high student loans), will suffer most from environmental catastrophe, and are racially diverse and socially aware. A 2022 Gallup poll in the US found that more young people aged 18-29 had a favorable view of socialism than of capitalism. These sentiments have filtered into our cultural image of young people, too. Google images of gen Z and you’ll see groups of gender-ambiguous, ethnically diverse, septum-pierced activists clutching a smartphone in one hand and a protest sign in the other.Yet Trump’s dog whistles and Kavanaugh’s eventual appointment to the supreme court led to an embryonic neo-chauvinism. Kavanaugh, describing his confirmation hearing “as a national disgrace”, seemed to support Trump’s read that he was a victim of his gender and nod towards a politics of grievance.A few years later, Kavanaugh was instrumental in overturning Roe v Wade, destroying the hard-won freedoms of women and transforming the Democratic party – and its sometimes reluctant, whispered pro-choice position – into an explicitly pro-abortion-rights party. It also entrenched a situation in which young women passionately hated Trump; about 74% of young women had a negative view of him immediately after Kavanaugh’s confirmation, compared with 57% of young men.So if Democrats were clearly the party of young women, Republicans tried to take advantage of being the de facto party of young men.Tucker Carlson, the most powerful commentator on the right at the time, monologued nightly on Fox News about their plight.“[Young men] know that their lives will not be better than their parents, they’ll be worse,” he said. “Yet the authorities in their lives, mostly women, never stop lecturing them about their so-called privilege. ‘You’re male! You’re privileged.’ Imagine that. Try to imagine an unhealthier, unhappier life than that. So a lot of young men in America are going nuts. Are you surprised?”It was the night after the Highland Park Independence Day parade shooting, and Carlson was explaining why a 21-year-old man like Robert Crimo might want to murder seven people at random.View image in fullscreenThe Republican senator Josh Hawley, who raised his fist in salute to rioters at the US Capitol on January 6, picked up the baton in Congress and in his book Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs. “Why don’t you turn off the computer and log off the porn and go ask a real woman on a date – how about that?” the senator yelled at the rightwing Turning Point USA conference.The message was amplified by Trump-supporting figures outside the party too, chief among them Andrew Tate, the misogynist podcaster with a huge following among teenage boys.“Tate’s telling men that they are in a worse position than they should be because of feminism,” says Matt Shea, the journalist and documentary director who spent four years with Tate and hundreds of his young fans for two BBC documentaries and a new book, Clown World.He says Tate’s skill is in linking a feeling of incompetence in the dating world with a political impotence. Tate promotes the myth that the “sexual marketplace is dominated by a small number of alpha males, and that other men are sexually starved – and the reason for that is that women have more choice now”, says Shea.While there have always been sexually frustrated men, Shea believes that “now those men feel that they’re owed sex and have coagulated into a political movement that lays the blame on society for denying it to them”.Daniel Cox, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a free-market thinktank, agrees we need to look “upstream from politics” to relationships to see why men are becoming less progressive. “Women are less willing to overlook the same kinds of qualities that maybe their mothers and grandmothers were … in terms of what [men] need to contribute to a romantic partnership, the emotional labor that they need to do. Some young men have a kind of zero-sum mentality where if women are gaining, they’re losing.”In Germany, far-right candidates are already trying to capitalize on men’s supposed dating woes. The controversial AfD candidate Maximilian Krah posted on TikTok saying: “One in three young men in Germany has never had a girlfriend. Are you one of them? … Don’t watch porn, don’t vote green, go outside into the fresh air … Real men stand on the far right … That’s the way to find a girlfriend!”Within days of being re-elected to the European parliament this year, he was expelled from his party after making sympathetic comments about the SS.Unease about gender roles is reflected in polling. A July poll by YMRI found that 65% of young men aged 18-29 agreed that “guys can have their reputation destroyed just for speaking their minds these days” – an eerie refrain of Trump’s Kavanaugh statement – and 52% of men under 30 agreed that “things are generally better when men bring in money and women take care of the home and kids”.Armed with this sort of feedback, it seems Trump has been heavily courting the young, resentful male vote. He has attended Ultimate Fighting Championship bouts until the early hours, walking out to Kid Rock’s American Badass. He has lately worked hard to position himself as the crypto candidate and is heavily promoting himself on TikTok. When Kid Rock, Hulk Hogan and Dana White, CEO of UFC, introduced him at the Republican convention, Kid Rock screamed at everyone to put their fists in the air and shout “fight!” as Trump had done after the attempt on his life. Trump even attended a sneaker conference to launch his own golden hi-tops.There are millions of progressive young men who won’t be interested in his proposition. LGBTQ+ men, for example, remain solidly progressive, as do young Asian American voters. But for others, Cox says Trump’s effort could work. “Logan Paul just had Trump on his show. He’s got over 7 million followers. Some young men who are not very political might say, ‘Oh, hey, you know, Trump showing up, he’s talking, he’s engaging. I kind of like this.’”View image in fullscreen‘Shrugging shoulders, not raising fists’Fortunately for Harris, for all the many headlines about Trump’s successful overtures to young men, the polls are laden with caveats. Harris’s support jumps dramatically when pollsters measure only young men who are registered to vote (from 38% to 52% in a head-to-head matchup, according to the YMRI poll), suggesting that if Republicans want to capitalize on their popularity with this group, they will have to get them registered to vote (something they have made much harder over the past 20 years). She also takes a lead over Trump among all young male voters if RFK Jr isn’t offered as an option.The way in which age and gender overlap with race is also contested. Polling suggests a stark drop in support for Democrats in the past five years from both young Black men and young Hispanic men, with YMRI data showing both groups preferred Trump to Biden by a two-point and 19-point margin respectively. Harris changes things somewhat, but support for Trump remains high. “Young men, including men of color, are drifting away from the Democratic party,” says Shauna Daly, co-founder of YMRI, who conducted the research. “It’s just not reality if we don’t acknowledge that.”But Mondale Robinson, founder of Black Male Voter Project, which exclusively works with Black men who haven’t voted in previous elections, is dubious. He says that before every election, some polls say Black men are becoming less progressive, and yet in the elections it never comes to pass. He points to Black men in Ohio voting in 2023 on women’s right to abortion “more than anybody, 88%, even by eight points more than Black women”.What we do know is that women are becoming much more liberal. While the number of young men who identify as liberal has held pretty much steady around 25%, the number of young women who do soared in the space of a decade to almost 45%. A major Gallup poll unveiled by the Financial Times in January revealed that “women aged 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than their male contemporaries” in the US – a gap that opened up in just the last six years. (Polling found kindred patterns in the UK, Germany, South Korea and China.) Young women have become easily the most progressive generation in history – on abortion, healthcare, taxation and trans rights.But the shift in young men’s political attitudes can’t be explained simply by young women moving leftwards. Nor is it simply a story about young men resenting them for it.Richard Reeves – whose 2022 book, Of Boys and Men, has become a foundational text on what has gone wrong for young men in the country – is damning of framing that puts young men’s rightward turn in terms of UFC fights and incels, when he believes it’s about deep-seated inequalities of outcome in education, mental health and employment.“I want to talk about why only 60% of Black boys graduate high school on time in Michigan, or the fact that the share of male teachers has gone from 33% to 23%. Or that we’ve lost more than half the men who work in social work and psychology,” he says. “I’d want to talk about that rather than, for example, whether the Barbie movie was unfair on Ken.”View image in fullscreenHe says people are misinterpreting the polling. “It’s not enthusiasm for the reactionary right, it’s a sense of being taken for granted by the left. There are more young men shrugging their shoulders than raising their fists.”It’s true that there is now a growing gender gap in education; for every 100 bachelor’s degrees awarded to women, 74 are awarded to men. In many US cities, young women are earning more than young men and moving out of parents’ homes earlier than them.Reeves is careful to say that improving conditions for men and boys should not mean slowing down similar efforts for women and girls. But he says that government institutions do have a tendency to purposefully avoid naming the problems young men face. Suicide is one of the clearest areas in which there is a huge gender divide – there’s a fourfold gender gap in rates for young people – and yet, says Reeves, “the CDC website breaks down suicide rates by every demographic except gender. Why? Why don’t the Democrats have a taskforce on male suicide when there are 40,000 deaths a year?”He gives other compelling examples of how Democrats have failed to signpost their achievements to young men. Biden’s infrastructure bill – his key piece of legislative success – was a huge jobs creator for working-class men, “but the administration tied itself in knots not to say so”. Instead, it focused on the million women in construction initiative to ensure women got some of the funding. “That’s amazing. Now, er, where’s the million men into teaching initiative? … There are so many initiatives for women in Stem; why not one for men in teaching? Who is going to attack that?”On the Democrats’ own website is a page titled “who we serve” that lists 14 different groups. Men are not among them.Reeves believes there are some simple solutions – although he acknowledges they are “pallid” in terms of “the vividness” of Trump’s trips to UFC fights.“I’ve been thinking about writing the speech Biden should give,” he said before Harris became the likely Democratic nominee. “It would talk about vocational training, technical high schools, all things that are massively pro-men. And rather than apologizing for it, he could just say, ‘These would be particularly helpful for young men even though of course we want more women to do it too.’ Then I would want him to say, ‘I’ve asked the White House gender policy council to stop only focusing on women and girls’ issues, but also focus on some issues of boys and men, starting with issues of Black men, education, mental health.”Message testing by YMRI bears this out. Researchers asked two groups of men about the same hypothetical infrastructure bill, calling it “the Democratic Agenda for America” in one group and “the Democratic Agenda for Men” in the other. In another poll, they asked about a hypothetical female presidential candidate who promised one group to make history as the first female president, and the other group to focus on progressive policies like affordable housing and healthcare. There was “a 5-7 point swing in support, either an increase if you centered the policy agenda around men or a decrease if you focused on the historic nature of the candidate”, says Daly.View image in fullscreenPerhaps the “white dudes for Kamala” and “Black men for Kamala” fundraising calls are early steps towards Democrats acknowledging men as an important voting bloc in 2024 (even if those calls were mostly for rich donors). Biden’s attempt at masculine swagger, telling Trump to “man up” and debate Harris, could be seen as a sop towards that kind of messaging too.It’s not just about the message, though; it’s also about trusted messengers, says Robinson of Black Male Voter Project: “These young men don’t take marching orders from anyone.” He says turnout is a real issue, especially among non-college-educated Black men, among whom the distrust in both parties is so high that even having a Black candidate in Harris won’t make a difference. He says higher turnout can only come with grassroots organization – earning trust – that goes beyond election years.“[Our organization] doesn’t do that ‘Washington DC told us this is what works’ shit with Black men. Black men are suffering from not having their basic needs met … The Black men we engage with have no delusion that their vote is going to fix everything that’s plaguing them. But they do understand that when a vote becomes the tool to address the hunger, it starts yielding fruit.” Or, as he later put it, “if they’ve got a racist police chief, they can unelect the fucking mayor.”Reeves, however, says it almost doesn’t matter what the message is – the mere fact of someone from the Democratic party standing up and acknowledging men would be a huge shift. “Take someone like Jordan Peterson. His appeal does not lie in the brilliance of his policy proposals, or his advice. His appeal is simply in allowing a lot of young men to be heard. He says ‘I get it, you’re hurting’ and he fills stadiums with that message.”Can Democrats win men without losing women?Men, overall, are not the ones who are being legislated against. Over the past eight years, the Republican party, remade in Trump’s image, has cruelly gutted women’s right to abortion. It has decimated female representation at every level of government. It has given unwavering support to the police, even as police sexual assault against women reaches epidemic levels and police routinely murder Black women. They have emboldened the most misogynistic corners of the internet by putting forward a presidential nominee who has been found liable for sexual abuse, has bragged about sexual assault and rates women on a 1-10 scale (“in the same way that we do”, wrote the pick-up artist and alt-right blogger Roosh V after Trump won in 2016).View image in fullscreen“The messaging of the Republican convention was a message of male supremacy, of female submission. Women are afterthoughts in reproductive policy, health policy, the proposed marriage policy of no divorce,” says Bonnie Honig, professor of culture, media and political science at Brown University and author of Shell Shocked: Feminist Criticism After Trump.When women’s very safety is at stake, should the Democrats really be worrying about how to appeal to disaffected men?First, Honig says, it’s a mistake to think of abortion purely as a women’s issue: “The loss of women’s rights is a loss for men.” She suggests that Democrats should start using the line “women’s health is not a women’s issue”, adding that “women who don’t have choices, in my opinion anyway, are not fun to live with”.More broadly, she feels that the Democrats need to avoid falling into the young men v young women dichotomy laid out by the Republicans – and pollsters. “To over-extrapolate from these polls risks feminizing the Democratic party, which is what Republicans want to do, so that they can claim to embody a kind of masculinity that is fascist-forward.”Republicans have used this gendered messaging before. “They made Obama into a representative of a kind of feminized liberal man,” Honig says. “With Biden, there was an objective fact of his age, but that was turned into saying he had aged out of any masculinity he might once have had. They did something quite similar to John Kerry, who was a war hero, but by the time they were done with him, he was just a guy who was married to a wealthy woman.”Rather than trying to appeal to young men as an aggrieved demographic group, she suggests, Democrats should try to think beyond gender to the other economic, class and community groups young men are part of: unions, professions, students, parents. “I think by supporting the United Auto Workers, for example, [Democrats] are supporting men between the ages of 18 and 30.”Three months out from the election, the political reality remains that Republicans have nothing to offer men legislatively, but lots to offer in messaging. The Democrats have lots to offer in policy but are afraid to say the “m” word.But things can change quickly. After the far right performed so well in the European elections, Emmanuel Macron called snap French parliamentary elections – an incredibly risky strategy that paid off. Among voters 18-24, the far-right National Rally still did well, with 33% of first round votes. But the leftwing New Popular Front fared even better, winning 48%. It did so by promising to invest in public services, freeze prices, raise the minimum wage and embargo arms to Israel.America is not in the same political reality as France, but its election is not a done deal either. Young men’s votes are still up for grabs. “Democrats are missing a huge opportunity to say that they see and hear the issues of a certain kind of young man,” Reeves says, “and that they are at least open to acknowledging them.” More

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    Ashwin Ramaswami takes on a fake elector for a Georgia state senate seat

    The top of a ticket might normally be expected to have a profound impact on local races, especially with new vigor thanks to Kamala Harris replacing Joe Biden. The problem in Georgia is that there are almost no local races worth discussing because the state is gerrymandered to microscopic proportions.There is exactly one state senate race that’s predictably competitive for a Democratic pick-up in Georgia. And that one race is spicy.The Republican state senator Shawn Still will face trial in the Fulton county election interference case along with Donald Trump and 17 other co-defendants. He is accused of being one of the so-called fake electors in the scheme.Facing Still in November for the suburban Atlanta seat is Ashwin Ramaswami, a 25-year-old techie graduate of Forsyth county’s renowned public schools, impossibly earnest, unusually young, reflective of this district’s increasingly diverse demography, and utterly indefatigable. He is everywhere all at once and – perhaps unintentionally – wearing people down with high-end nerd glam and the zeal of a challenger.Ramaswami is a computer science graduate from Stanford University with a law degree from Georgetown, which he somehow managed to obtain while bouncing between startups and Google internships and fellowships with venture capital outfits and work for the federal government on election cybersecurity.He turned 25 at the end of July, four months ahead of the cutoff where he would have been too young to run for the Georgia senate.Most people on his trajectory end up in a 70-hour-a-week consulting job, earning a salary that reads like a phone number that they don’t have time to spend.“I just soon realized that just going off into tech and making money that way wasn’t really for me,” he told the Guardian. “It wasn’t that interesting, to be honest, because there are so many bigger issues going on, right?”If a devoutly Hindu candidate who is young enough to be on his parent’s health insurance does not sound like the profile of a Georgia politician, it is because politics is playing catchup with Atlanta’s rapid demographic changes and its increasingly international character.Georgia’s 48th state senate district crosses north Fulton, Forsyth and Gwinnett counties and is in the heart of the region’s affluent tech community. Nearly a third of its residents are foreign born. Ramaswami’s parents are from the same part of India as Kamala Harris’s mother, he said. (He is not related to Vivek Ramaswamy, former Republican presidential candidate and conservative firecracker.)Politically the district has been a purple mosaic of longtime Republican voters increasingly competing with newer, younger, Democratic transplants. The former Georgia GOP chairman David Shafer – one of the defendants in the Trump case here – held this seat when he was a state senator. It passed to Democrat Michelle Au, an Asian American physician, before the legislature carved it up in redistricting. Still won it by 11 points in 2022.The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee believes Still’s seat has a 7-point Republican lean now, discounting the effects of the indictment on the race. Two senate seats held by Democrats are within striking distance of a Republican. All of Georgia’s remaining senate districts require a wipeout wave election to be seriously competitive.Still, 52, owner of a swimming pool subcontracting company and a former finance chairman for the Georgia Republican party, did not return calls or emails asking for comment. But he has presented himself as a relatively moderate Republican and maintains his innocence in the case, describing his role as necessary to preserve legal challenges to the 2020 election in Georgia.View image in fullscreen“We went to the meeting. We listened to the attorneys. We signed our names exactly as we were prescribed,” he said on the Alan Sanders Show last month. “I never thought for a moment I had anything to hide.” Still characterizes the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, as “corrupt” for bringing charges, and said he would go to court immediately to clear his name if he could. An appellate court hearing to see if the case moves forward is scheduled for October.Twenty years ago, most people who lived in the district were white. Not so now, Still said.“We are in a minority to majority state,” Still told Sanders. “If people think that we can keep doing things the way that we’ve always done it, we are going to be in for a pretty rude awakening and wake up one day and never be able to win office again.”Still has campaigned aggressively to hold his seat, including and especially in the Indian community, which has a significant number of Republican supporters. “They’ve been very welcoming, because we share the same values, about family, about public safety, about education,” Still said. “If they see that you share their values, it’s OK if you don’t look like them, or worship like them, right.“In the past, I think a lot of Republicans have just kind of written off smaller groups like that. And we can’t afford to do that any more.”Education is a key component of Ramaswami’s pitch. The high school Ramaswami attended in the district – from which he graduated second in his class – is now majority students of color and 28% Asian.Ramaswami speaks often about the value of a product of these schools representing the community in the legislature. He can speak authentically and with authority about the somewhat absurd expectations parents in this part of Georgia place on their children’s achievements. Ramaswami is the kid that blows the grading curve.Up until recently, he also sounded like it.Constant campaigning has started to scrape the geek off of him, a bit. Conversations with voters and donors – and anyone he can corral – has that effect over time, he said.“You do it over and over again and then you get better, right?” he said. “Like, I wasn’t good at this when I was starting, but I figured I need to get better at it. I want to actually, you know, serve my community.”Ramaswami’s campaign has been relentless, even by the heightened standards of swing state politics. He has become a fixture in public in the north metro area, knocking on doors and showing up to churches and mosques and synagogues and temples and perhaps backyard pool parties and pickup basketball games. That retail politicking has been coupled with an intense social media and digital media campaign, fueled by more than $400,000 in fundraising – more than double that of his opponent.“I didn’t know him at the time, but the first thing I ever heard about him was from other people who do politics in north Fulton and Johns Creek talking about how often they’re getting texts and campaign emails from him,” said Alex Vanden Heuvel, a 27-year-old political consultant with FTR Political Strategies. “Anytime we bring it up, that’s the first thing out of anybody’s mouth is his digital game, like he’s always in your inbox, always in your texts.”Sara Henderson, a Georgia-based political consultant, knows Ramaswami and likened the persistence of his campaigning to being sold an extended warranty.“Every second of the day. It doesn’t turn it off,” she said. “Twenty-four seven. I think that it’s good in a way, to see that excitement and that, like, ‘I’m in it for the right reasons.’ But there’s also some learning that needs to happen about political nuance and knowing the right timing … Sometimes the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but it doesn’t always get the grease it needs.”But the goal is name recognition, Ramaswami said. His internal polling suggests he is now more recognizable than Still is.“It has actually been the case for a lot of my career, where I feel like I’m just doing normal things and then somehow that’s, like, 10 times more than what everyone else does,” Ramaswami said. “So, you know, I’m glad that it’s setting a new standard. I don’t feel overworked.” More

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    Trump ally calls GOP attack on Harris’s racial identity a ‘phony controversy’

    Donald Trump ally Byron Donalds and ABC host George Stephanopoulos sparred on Sunday over Republicans’ attack line questioning Kamala Harris’s racial identity.During an interview on ABC’s This Week, the Republican Florida representative called the issue a “phony controversy” and said “I don’t really care.” He then proceeded to double down on the issues – which the former president brought up earlier this week at the NABJ conference – by saying: “When Kamala Harris went into the United States Senate, it was AP that said she was the first Indian American United States senator … Now she’s running nationally, obviously the campaign has shifted. They’re talking much more about her father’s heritage and her Black identity.”Donalds then added: “It doesn’t really matter.”In response, Stephanopoulos said: “If it doesn’t matter, why do you all keep questioning her again? She’s always identified as a Black woman. She’s biracial. She has a Jamaican father and Indian mother she’s always identified as both. Why are you questioning that?”“Well George, first of all, this is something that’s actually a conversation all throughout social media right now. There are a lot of people trying to figure this out. But again, that’s a side issue, not the main issue,” Donalds replied.Stephanopoulos followed up, saying: “Sir, one second. You just did it again. Why do you insist on questioning her racial identity?” to which Donalds said: “You want me to talk?”“I want you to answer my question,” Stephanopoulos replied.Donalds’ comments come despite some Republican figures including South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham and House speaker Mike Johnson saying their party should avoid that kind of attack.In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Graham said: “Every day we’re talking about her heritage and not her … record … is a good day for her and a bad day for us.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeanwhile, Axios last month reported Johnson encouraging Republican members to take aim at Harris’s policies instead of her heritage. The outlet further reports that during a closed-door meeting, Donalds himself “encouraged members in the meeting to ‘hold off on editorializing’ on Kamala. Just stick to her disastrous record,” according to a Republican lawmaker who was present.The attacks against the vice-president’s racial identity also come as Trump says he would debate her on Fox News while Harris insists on ABC, the original network chosen for the second presidential debate.In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote: “The Debate was previously scheduled against … Biden on ABC, but has been terminated in that Biden will no longer be a participant, and I am in litigation against ABC Network and George Slopadopoulos, thereby creating a conflict of interest.”Harris’s team has not agreed to Trump’s request to carry out the debate on the Republican-friendly network, with campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler saying: “Donald Trump is running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to and running straight to Fox News to bail him out.” More

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    Trump calls union leader who endorsed Kamala Harris ‘a stupid person’

    The United Auto Workers’ decision to endorse Kamala Harris’s presidential run has apparently gotten under the skin of Donald Trump, who has responded by insulting the union’s leader as “a stupid person”.In a new interview with Fox News on Sunday, as reported by the Hill, the former president said of union chief Shawn Fain: “Look, the United Auto Workers I know very well – they vote for me. They have a stupid person leading them, but they vote for me. They’re going to love Donald Trump more than ever before.”Trump’s remarks allude to the harsh 100% tariff he has proposed on imported cars. Economists have warned that such a tariff would raise product costs for Americans, but Trump has insisted on it, saying it reflects how he would prioritize the auto industry if returned to White House in November’s election.“We’re going to take in a fortune but we’re going to tariff those jobs,” Trump said.“We’re bringing back the automobile industry and we’re going to do that with tariffs,” Trump said.Fain and the UAW – one of the US’s largest and most diverse labor unions – nonetheless gave their coveted endorsement to the vice-president, saying in a statement that Harris had a “proven track record of delivering for the working class”.Trump’s comments about Fain and the UAW come just days after Fain announced that the union – one of the country’s largest and most diverse – is endorsing Harris for president.“We can put a billionaire back in office who stands against everything our union stands for, or we can elect Kamala Harris who will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with us in our war on corporate greed,” said the statement announcing the UAW’s endorsement for November’s White House election.Trump and the UAW have frequently traded barbs, with Trump calling for Fain to be “fired immediately” during his speech at the Republican national convention in July.In response, the UAW called Trump a “scab” – a derogatory term for someone who abandons or refuses to join a labor union – as well as a corporate businessman whose main interest is protecting the wealthy.When the UAW endorsed Joe Biden before the president quit his re-election campaign in July, Trump took to his Truth Social platform to attack Fain, calling him a “dope” and urging autoworkers to defy the union’s endorsement by voting for him instead.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Sunday, Fain appeared on CBS News’s Face the Nation and elaborated on his union’s decision to endorse Harris.“When you put Kamala Harris and Donald Trump side-by-side, there’s a very telling difference in who stands with working-class people and who left working-class people behind,” Fain said.He continued: “Trump’s been all talk for working-class people.“One of the biggest issues facing this country is inflation. It’s not policy-driven. It’s driven by corporate greed and consumer price gouging and that’s what Donald Trump stands for. The rich get richer and the working class gets left behind.” More

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    Trump exploits the end of the American dream | Letters

    Stephen Reicher says Trump implies that the people need him as their saviour, to buck “the establishment” (Donald Trump is a misogynistic, billionaire felon. Here’s why Americans can’t stop voting for him, 26 July). It appears to me that he is exploiting the collapse of the American dream. Most “ordinary” people have realised that neither they nor their children will be better off in the future; that the dream is an illusion. And here comes the man promising to revitalise it, claiming that he is the incarnation of their dreams and that he, who has been successful as an establishment outsider, is the one person who can offer them hope again. This appears to be irresistible to all those who feel that the promise that hard work would guarantee a better life has not been upheld.Finally, they see others – in their view, less hard-working people – being supported and promoted, often by way of equality-enhancing measures or dismantling white male privilege, which they themselves have perceived as well-deserved entitlements. Their messiah confirms it, exploiting latent racism. It’s a message that they love to believe, regardless of whatever their leader does in reality. Emotions trump rationality, and Trump sets them free. Frightening, in particular for a German aware of how German democracy lost out to agitators a century ago.Dr Joachim H SpangenbergCologne, Germany While much of Stephen Reicher’s arguments regarding Donald Trump’s success is true, he fails to recognise the key issue – that US revolutionary fervour is politically agnostic. In much the same way that Barack Obama’s initial promise of “fundamental transformation” identified a problem with the system and its structures, Trump also primarily focuses on his supposed intent to bring genuine societal change.Unfortunately, what unites these two American icons is that neither had or has any intention of doing anything of the kind. The problem then, given the rules of the US electoral process, is that a substantial (or majority) demographic that craves meaningful change is only permitted to choose between candidates selected by the only two political parties possessing the financial backing of economic interests that do not want change.Dr Clive T DarwellManchester I appreciate Stephen Reicher’s analysis, especially the dynamic of how every violation of law by Trump demonstrates that he is a victim. Victimhood supersedes rule of law, because laws are a product of the establishment, government, etc, out to control people’s freedom. Yes, but let’s acknowledge that Trump has never won a popular majority, even in 2016. It’s only because of the electoral college that a few swing states control the outcomes.Also note the increased activities of Republicans to disenfranchise people of colour. Trump’s distorted, destructive views don’t work with the majority of American voters, which is why they’re hellbent on depriving people of the vote. Maga supporters will continue to be stoked by fear, but many more Americans are waking up to how to think rather than be consumed by fear. Gratefully, Kamala Harris can lead us into the future. And even then, the US will be plunged into violence of great proportion.Margaret WheatleyProvo Canyon, Utah Prof Reicher states his case cogently, but misses two points. First, within the hearts of many, there lies a deep desire for a simple answer to complex problems. Second, I and mine have done no wrong, it was the others who got us into this mess. Harness those who desperately want to believe these points to your populist cause and you are well on your way to elected office.David HastingsBalbeggie, Perth and Kinross More

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    ABC host reportedly received death threats after Trump interview

    ABC News’s senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott has reportedly faced threats to her life after her piercing interview of Donald Trump at the National Association of Black Journalists convention left the former president fuming.The NABJ’s executive director told members at a meeting on Saturday that “Scott had received death threats following her work asking incisive questions of … Trump at the group’s national convention” three days earlier, Eric Deggans of National Public Radio wrote in an X post published Saturday.Deggans didn’t elaborate, and the Guardian has asked the NABJ, ABC and Scott for comment.Scott asked Trump on Wednesday, “Why should Black voters trust you?” given his history of inflammatory comments about Black people. Among other questions, she also quizzed him about whether he believed Vice-President Kamala Harris had risen to the top of the Democratic ticket for November’s White House election solely “because she is a Black woman”.Trump replied to Scott by accusing her of being “rude” and having presented a “nasty question”. In reference to Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian descent, he said: “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black. And now she wants to be known as Black.“So, I don’t know. Is she Indian, or is she Black?”Trump’s comments about Harris drew widespread derision at a time when polls, including one Sunday from CBS News, show the pair essentially tied in key battleground states. Notably, on Sunday, US senator Lindsey Graham – one of Trump’s fellow prominent Republicans – urged him to focus on condemning her policies rather than her heritage.“Every day we’re talking about her heritage and not her … record … is a good day for her and a bad day for us,” Graham said on Fox News Sunday.Scott’s encounter with Trump added to the former president’s long record of hostility toward reporters. Frequently, he excoriates journalists as unpatriotic enemies of the people, uses his lectern as a platform from which to hurl insults at the press and singles out reporters by name as purveyors of “fake news” – often in the presence of an irate mob of supporters.Some in his circle even blamed the failed 13 July assassination attempt targeting Trump on news coverage that was critical of the former president, who just in May was convicted in criminal court of falsifying business records to hide hush money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels.United Nations experts have previously warned that such vitriol from Trump and his supporters – hundreds of whom attacked the US Capitol after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden – enhances the possibilities of violence against the press.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBlack journalists criticized organizers of the NABJ’s convention in Chicago for booking Trump’s appearance, citing his anti-Black, anti-journalist and anti-democracy stances.The NABJ’s president, Ken Lemon, defended the decision to invite Trump to speak as continuing a tradition of questioning national political figures. But the Washington Post’s Karen Attiah resigned from her position as co-chairperson of the convention’s organizing committee in protest of having Trump address the gathering.Scott moderated Trump’s session Wednesday at the NABJ convention with co-moderators Harris Faulkner of Fox News and Kadia Goba of Semafor. More

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    Kentucky’s governor clears schedule for Harris VP announcement, stoking speculation

    Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, canceled a planned appearance in the western part of his state on Friday with no official explanation, intensifying speculation over whether Kamala Harris might choose him as her running mate.Beshear’s schedule change is far from a guarantee that Harris will select him considering that Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, another name on the shortlist of potential running-mates, also canceled a fundraising trip planned for this weekend amid reports that Harris was interviewing a number of vice-presidential candidate contenders over the weekend.Shapiro is widely viewed as a frontrunner in the veepstakes, as Democrats hope he could help deliver the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, but Beshear’s supporters insist he is best positioned to sway independent voters in the presidential race. According to a recent Morning Consult survey, Beshear has the highest approval rating of any Democratic governor in the country, with 67% of Kentuckians holding a favorable impression of him.Beshear’s popularity is all the more astounding given the political leanings of his state. In 2020, Donald Trump defeated Joe Biden by 26 points in Kentucky, and no Democratic presidential candidate has carried the state since 1996.Despite those significant hurdles, Beshear won re-election to a second term last year by five points, besting the then Republican attorney general, Daniel Cameron. The victory came four years after Beshear defeated a deeply unpopular Republican incumbent, Matt Bevin, by just 0.4 points. The surprise victory was made possible in part because of Beshear’s high name recognition, as his father, Steve Beshear, served as Kentucky’s governor for two terms.Beshear’s strong performance last year was credited to his consistent leadership of the state through the coronavirus pandemic and multiple natural disasters. The governor pitched himself as a hard-working executive capable of rising above politics to do what is right for his state, an argument that he has reiterated at Harris campaign events in recent days.At a rally in Georgia last weekend, Beshear contrasted himself with Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance, who grew up in Ohio but touted his family connections to Kentucky in his memoir Hillbilly Elegy.“I mean, there’s a county that JD Vance says he’s from in Kentucky – and I won it by 22 points last November,” Beshear said.While Beshear emphasized his experience as he sought re-election last year, he also cast a spotlight on one of the social issues that may decide the presidential race: abortion access. A year after Kentucky voters rejected a ballot measure stipulating that the state constitution did not protect reproductive rights, Beshear capitalized on his opponent’s anti-abortion views in a searing campaign ad.The ad featured a woman named Hadley Duvall, who shared that she was raped by her stepfather when she was 12. Duvall condemned Cameron’s support for an abortion ban as a severe threat to Kentuckians.“Anyone who believes there should be no exceptions for rape and incest could never understand what it’s like to stand in my shoes,” Duvall said in the ad. “To tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her is unthinkable. I’m speaking out because women and girls need to have options. Daniel Cameron would give us none.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEven though Beshear leaned into the issue of abortion access during his campaign, reproductive rights groups have questioned his record. They note that Beshear often focuses on pregnancies involving rape or incest when he discusses abortion and that his lieutenant governor, Jacqueline Coleman, previously described herself as “a pro-life compassionate Democrat”. (Coleman has more recently endorsed Harris and condemned the overturning of Roe v Wade.)Speaking to reporters in Georgia last weekend, Beshear forcefully rejected any suggestion that he was weak on reproductive rights. He reminded them of his multiple vetoes of anti-abortion bills, even though some of those proposals were enacted anyway because of the Republican supermajority in the state legislature.“I’m the first Democrat in Kentucky that has ever run an abortion ad​​ during an election,” he told reporters. “I’ve stood up every single time, knowing that it would be one of the No 1 attacks on me.”Questions over Beshear’s stance on abortion could play an important role in Harris’s deliberations, as she has placed a heavy emphasis on the issue since formally launching her campaign last week. But if Beshear joins Harris’s ticket, he will probably follow the example of his predecessors by embracing the agenda of the presidential nominee.Harris’s announcement is expected no later than Tuesday, when she will appear at a rally in Pennsylvania with her new running mate. More

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    This Texas border city is tired of being a ‘pawn’ in Trump’s ‘political games’

    Just a few blocks from a riverbank park in Eagle Pass that’s been turned into a no-go militarized zone by Texas troops, local pastor Javier Leyva was attempting a normal Sunday.He was cultivating fellowship with congregants of his First United Methodist church and other residents downtown, on the US-Mexico border. But, as so often, events were to intrude. A fringe, rightwing group was headed to town.His small city is under unwanted global scrutiny because of people migrating here and the forces that want to stop them.People sporadically cross the Rio Grande from Mexico after being denied legal entry into the US because of tight government restrictions. Sometimes there are tragic consequences, sometimes migrants are detained by US federal agents, other times they run afoul of the $11bn Texas border security plan known as Operation Lone Star, designed to deter migration.Leyva is tired of the heavy-handed and expensive law enforcement presence, that has transformed the picturesque riverbank and not only skews perceptions of Eagle Pass but is costly, while he sees local services suffer.“It’s all a political show and they’re using Eagle Pass as a pawn for their political games,” Leyva said. “I’m for border security, but if they would use that money for the infrastructure here, we’d be in hog heaven,” he said.About 23% of Eagle Pass residents are estimated to live below the federal poverty line, more than double the national rate, according to the US Census Bureau.Colonias, a Spanish word to describe low-income neighborhoods, are found along the border and often have street drainage issues or lack running water and sewer connections.Leyva says more infrastructure investments in the colonias are one of the ways the community would greatly benefit from taxpayer funds being spent by the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, on Operation Lone Star, which has blighted Eagle Pass and caused a clash with the federal government.The border town with a population of 28,000 has experienced many ups and downs in the spotlight of immigration issues.View image in fullscreenMigrants seek asylum sometimes in large numbers, but recently in very low numbers. At times, dozens of journalists descend upon the remote town 140 miles south-west of San Antonio. Year round, hundreds of military and law enforcement officers are deployed to the city from in-state and around the US.And within the last year, far-right groups have homed in on Eagle Pass as a destination for aggressive demonstrations against immigration and in favor of Donald Trump.While Leyva was delivering his sermon at church last weekend, a so-called Take Our Border Back Convoy was en route from Dripping Springs, Texas, to Eagle Pass, roughly a 200-mile (322km) drive, aiming to protest on both sides of the border.In response, the local police, Texas department of public safety (DPS) troopers and national guard soldiers deployed by Texas were on high alert and prominent in the quiet streets of Eagle Pass.A previous convoy by the same group in February rolled dozens of trucks and hundreds of outsiders into town, many armed, and led to a border patrol facility being evacuated after extremist threats.Last weekend, police once again set up roadblocks leading to Shelby Park, the municipal park on the Rio Grande that has been taken over by Operation Lone Star and militarized. And the city braced as several police and trooper units were called in to stake out different parts of downtown or to patrol, in a city that is already policed out of proportion to the local population.But, in the event, fewer than 10 vehicles arrived, with US flags flying and Trump bumper stickers, and stopped in a pawn shop parking lot.One participant told the Guardian they had come “to pray on both sides of the border”. In fact, the small group of about 20 people walked across the international bridge on to the Mexican side and used a megaphone to shout in the general direction of Mexico: “We don’t want the illegals coming across our border destroying America,” and: “We declare these borders closed in the name of Jesus Christ.”View image in fullscreenThe group’s flyer features a picture of retired army officer Michael Flynn. But there was no sign of him in Eagle Pass last Sunday. He was then president Trump’s first national security adviser, who was disgraced and pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with a Russian official. Trump pardoned him and Flynn said Trump should deploy the military to “re-run the 2020 election” in the swing states Joe Biden won.Despite the small turnout this time the uninvited visitors heightened the sense for ordinary residents that their city has become a battleground and that Christian faith is being usurped.“The convoy has been deceived,” Leyva said. “God didn’t send you here, you sent yourself using God as justification.”He added: “They think they’re trying to do the right thing, the patriotic thing. But they’re taking the law into their own hands and that’s not how this country runs.”Locals typically spend weekends shopping with family, dining at restaurants, and attending church services. Residents from the Mexican sister city, Piedras Negras, regularly cross the international bridge to shop downtown. People talk of experiencing peace in border living – a reality that the wider world doesn’t see or hear much about.Several blocks away from the Methodist church is immigration attorney Cesar Lozano’s law office where he specializes in cases dealing with asylum and deportation. Lozano is an immigrant himself and came to the US with his family from Durango, Mexico, as a child. He recalled the natural anxiety and nervousness that immigrating to a new country brings and is something he relates to among clients.With Eagle Pass in the spotlight, he said: “One side says it’s attention for us and there’s a lot of people that have benefited from the economic activity” – brought by multiple law enforcement agencies basing themselves in the area.“On the other side, it’s sad to see that we are on the map for the wrong reasons. We are used as props, no one used to care about us until now, we continue to be a venue for marches and convoys,” he said.Safety is the ultimate concern for residents whenever anti-immigrant groups or hostile individuals target the region, Lozano said, rather than when migrants arrive.A Tennessee man affiliated with a militia was arrested earlier this year by the FBI for plotting to travel to Eagle Pass while aspiring to kill both migrants and federal agents.During the February convoy, a friend of Lozano’s who works for the Mexican consulate in Eagle Pass was told to go home early because the authorities didn’t know what to expect from all of the people descending upon the region.Trump and his supporters talk of “open borders” and migration as spreading crime. Meanwhile, gaining entry to the US is difficult on many levels, whether people are undocumented or not.View image in fullscreen“The borders are not open and this is just political rhetoric,” Lozano said. “That’s ridiculous and insulting because my clients are going through a system where they’re vetted, must have a sponsor, have to go through background checks, and all the info submitted on applications is verified.”He questioned Operation Lone Star’s legality, as immigration enforcement is the exclusive responsibility of the federal government, which is in a long legal battle with the state.Meanwhile, downtown, Yocelyn Riojas is leading a group exhibition in Eagle Pass of more than 40 artists who have created works on the theme of “The Border is Beautiful.”“It’s meant to connect us with different perspectives of what our lives are like at the border,” Riojas said. “A lot of the artwork is nostalgic of earlier days, before this militarization.”Riojas said locals dislike the city’s lack of willingness to openly discuss political issues concerning things like the controversial buoys placed by Texas in the river and the mayor in effect signing away Shelby Park to the state.And she added: “If you don’t live here, then you have no understanding of what’s going on. Before anybody speaks for the community, they need to come learn and educate themselves on what is actually happening and how locals actually feel about the issues.” More