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

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      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’

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      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

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      Sofa so bad for JD Vance as Trump’s VP pick faces swirling speculation

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      It all started with a tweet about a couch. Within hours of Donald Trump announcing the Ohio senator JD Vance as his running mate in the presidential race, a rather lurid accusation cropped up on social media.The user of a since-deleted X account wrote last month, “can’t say for sure but he might be the first vp pick to have admitted in a ny times bestseller to fucking an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions (vance, hillbilly elegy, pp. 179-181).”The fake page citation from Vance’s bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy lent credibility to what turned out to be a baseless claim, as detailed in a now-removed fact check from the Associated Press. Soon, the internet was awash in memes mocking Vance’s relationship with various pieces of furniture. “I did not have sectional relations,” one X user joked, paraphrasing Bill Clinton’s infamous quote about his extramarital affair. Another user added: “Who hasn’t been excited by the thrill of the chaise?”Even Kamala Harris’s newly launched presidential campaign appeared to get in on the fun, tweeting: “JD Vance does not couch his hatred for women.”The couch debacle only underscored Vance’s overall dismal introduction to the country after his somewhat forgettable speech at the Republican national convention last month, prompting some to wonder if Trump should make the historic decision to ditch his running mate just three months before election day. Vance enters the final 100-day stretch of the election season as one of the most unpopular running mates in recent history. According to a CNN analysis, Vance is the least liked non-incumbent vice-presidential nominee since 1980.And the backlash goes deeper than couch memes. Critics have dug up his past comments supporting a nationwide abortion ban and attacking women without children. In a clip from 2021 that has circulated widely over the past two weeks, Vance told the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the US was managed by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too”.That comment struck many Americans as so out of touch that it sparked censure from some surprising figures, including the generally apolitical celebrity Jennifer Aniston. “Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day,” Aniston wrote in an Instagram post. “I hope she will not need to turn to [in vitro fertilization] as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too.”The Harris campaign cast an even brighter spotlight on the controversy with a statement titled, Happy World IVF Day To Everyone Except JD Vance.The turmoil has intensified questions over whether Trump might replace Vance as his running mate, a strategy that has not been pursued since 1972. One unnamed House Republican told the Hill last week: “I think if you were to ask many people around this building, 9 out of 10 on our side would say he’s the wrong pick … He’s the only person who can do serious damage.”View image in fullscreenBut many of Vance’s vulnerabilities were apparent well before he joined Trump’s ticket. Vance won his Senate seat in 2022 after emerging victorious from a heated and closely contested Republican primary in Ohio. Vance only won the primary by eight points, even after securing Trump’s crucial endorsement. The endorsement surprised many, as Vance had sharply criticized Trump in the past. Vance’s primary opponents repeatedly attacked him as a fake Trump supporter, reminding voters that he once described the former president as “America’s Hitler”.After advancing from that ugly primary fight, Vance went on to defeat the Democrat Tim Ryan by six points, even though Trump had carried Ohio by eight points just two years earlier. (In comparison, Mike DeWine won re-election as Ohio’s governor by 25 points that same year.) Ryan was able to keep the race competitive enough to force outside Republican groups to spend tens of millions of dollars in Vance’s defense. The Senate Leadership Pac, which has close ties to the top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell, spent more than $32m in the race, according to OpenSecrets.Since joining the Senate last year, Vance has become one of Trump’s most loyal supporters in Congress and embraced the former president’s agenda on everything from foreign policy to election denialism. In one illuminating interview with CNN in May, Vance suggested pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses should face criminal charges.“So you agree that people who break in and vandalize a building should be prosecuted?” asked the CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins.“Exactly,” Vance said.Collins replied, “I’m just checking because you did help raise money for people who did so on January 6.”All of this baggage has come to the forefront right as Vance is trying to introduce himself to a much larger audience of voters, and the search for a Democratic vice-presidential nominee has only exacerbated his troubles. The Democrats vying to become Harris’s running mate have taken to publicly lambasting Vance at every turn, offering a preview of a potential vice-presidential debate.The Kentucky governor, Andy Beshear, who is reportedly on Harris’s shortlist of options, has accused Vance of caricaturing Appalachian residents in Hillbilly Elegy. In the book, Vance leaned into his family roots in eastern Kentucky, even though he was raised in an Ohio city near Cincinnati.“I want the American people to know what a Kentuckian is and what they look like, because let me just tell you that JD Vance ain’t from here,” Beshear told MSNBC last week.The governor added at a fundraiser in Des Moines, Iowa, last weekend: “This is somebody who exploited us – who used to come for weddings or funerals or a couple weeks in the summer to see his kin, and I respect that. But to claim that you know our culture and then to insult our people is just wrong.”Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, who is also on Harris’s shortlist, has mocked Trump and Vance as “weird”, an attack line now echoed by other prominent Democrats.“The fascists depend on us going back, but we’re not afraid of weird people,” Walz said last weekend at a Harris campaign event. “We’re a little bit creeped out, but we’re not afraid.”View image in fullscreenAs of now, Trump has given no public indication that he intends to drop his running mate, and Vance is trying his hardest to shake off the damage of the past two weeks.“I knew that when I came out of the gate there was going to be a couple of days of positive media coverage and then immediately they would go and attack me over everything that I had ever said in my life,” Vance told NBC News on Tuesday. “The price of entry of being on the national ticket and giving me an opportunity to govern is you have to … take the shots, and so I sort of expected it.”But in a less than stellar review of Vance’s performance so far, Trump reminded voters that elections are not generally decided by the vice-presidential nominee.“This is well-documented, historically, the vice-president in terms of the election does not have any impact, virtually no impact,” Trump said on Wednesday during his contentious interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention. “You can have a vice-president that is outstanding in every way, and I think JD is, I think all of them would have been, but you’re not voting that way. You’re voting for the president. You’re voting for me.”Trump’s best hope for the moment is that voters will start forgetting about Vance. And after the month he’s had, Vance might not mind some obscurity either. More

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      Name-calling and hyperbole: Trump continues fear-mongering fest at Georgia rally

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      Donald Trump addressed a fully-packed venue in downtown Atlanta on Saturday, with thousands of people waiting in the Georgia heat outside to enter, or to protest his appearance in a city he has condemned repeatedly.His remarks were consistent with the tenor and comportment of restraint and probity Atlantans are used to hearing at this point.“She happens to be a really low IQ individual. We don’t need a low IQ individual,” Trump said of the vice-president Kamala Harris. “They love dealing with low IQ individuals … She’s Bernie Sanders but not as smart.”Trump highlighted a handful of recent murders in the city, saying “Atlanta is like a killing field, and your governor should get off his ass and do something about it.”Trump rattled off a set of crime statistics in Atlanta that bear no resemblance to the actual change in crime over the last two years. Crime spiked in Atlanta in the last year of Trump’s term and peaked in 2022. It has subsequently fallen back to 2019 levels.But crime – and particularly crime involving immigrants – has been central to his appeal to Republican voters. Trump invoked the murder of Laken Riley, a college student murdered on the campus of the University of Georgia. Police have charged an undocumented immigrant with her murder.“Laken’s blood is on Kamala Harris’s hands,” Trump said, “as though she was standing there watching it herself.” Trump is trying to tie this to Harris’s role as “border czar” early in the Biden administration. “Harris should not be asking for your votes. She should be begging Laken Riley’s family for forgiveness.”Trump made a point of highlighting the work of three Republican appointees to Georgia’s board of elections, who have been entertaining changes to election rules that critics say are setting the stage for a legal contest in case of a Trump loss in November.Of President Joe Biden and the debate that led to his withdrawal from the race, Trump said “He was choking like a dog! He was choking. And that was the end of him … they did a coup, but he doesn’t know it.”Trump said, without any evidence, that “40 or 50 million illegal aliens” will enter the United States if Harris wins, he said, claiming that suburbs will be overrun with “savage foreign gangs”. He also claimed, falsely, that Harris wants to replace all gas cars with electric cars, to ban meat, to increase taxes by 70 to 80% and more claims that can only be taken as hyperbole because they are so far divorced from fact. He also reiterated claims that the 2020 election was stolen.Trump repeatedly called Harris a “lunatic”.Trump’s appearance in Atlanta is at the same venue Harris filled on Tuesday in her first Georgia rally since Biden’s dramatic withdrawal from the race and her ascension as the presumptive Democratic nominee.The contrast between Trump and Harris in the space was stark. Harris’s multiracial crowd Tuesday was peppered with the pink and green of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority sisters. Red Maga hats and Trump mug shots – or the now-iconic shot of his fist in the air after the assassination attempt – dominated the mostly white sea of support for Trump.Trump opened up his appearance in Atlanta lying about the Harris event in the same place, falsely claiming that people left the event early and that there were empty seats. Both events packed the room.Notably, the upper stands began to empty out about an hour into Trump’s comments.The refrain, repeated by speaker after speaker at the rally, was that Trump took a bullet for Republican voters, and they should return the favor with powerful turnout in Georgia.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“He took a bullet for you, and in that moment, we found out who Donald Trump is,” said Marjorie Taylor Greene, a representative, in a speech before 10,000 Trump supporters at the Georgia State Convocation Center. “He stood up, put his fist in the air and said ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ And that’s what we will do.”JD Vance, Republican vice-presidential nominee, took note of the emerging Democratic labeling of Republicans as “weird” as he warmed up the crowd.Weird is how “Kamala Harris comes to Atlanta and speaks with a fake southern accent even though she grew up in Canada”, Vance said. “Go watch the clips; she sounds like a southern belle.”Vance also linked the people who tried to “bankrupt” and “impeach” Trump to the attempted assassination.“America is never going to elect a San Francisco liberal who is so far out of the mainstream,” Vance said.Despite this assertion, polls increasingly suggest that Harris may be ahead of Trump today, with the Democratic national convention coming in two weeks. Before Biden’s withdrawal, Trump had been consistently ahead of Biden, so much so that political discussion here had been about whether the Biden campaign would capitulate in Georgia in order to focus its resources on Rust Belt races.Too few polls measuring Harris and Trump in Georgia have been conducted to read the race here, but both campaigns have begun treating Georgia as a battleground state once again.“The road to the White House runs through Georgia,” Greene said, almost word for word what Rev Raphael Warnock, a Georgia senator, told Harris supporters five days earlier.In long, rambling comments, Trump lambasted Brian Kemp, the governor, and Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, for disloyalty: “In my opinion, they want us to lose. If we lose Georgia, we lose the whole thing and our country goes to hell.” More

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      Democratic politicians’ husbands rake in record haul during New York event

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      While Kamala Harris cleared her campaign diary this weekend to finalize her choice of running mate ahead of a swing-state presidential campaign blitz next week, political spouses were hard at work.The vice-president’s husband, Doug Emhoff, and Chasten Buttigieg, husband of the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg – a potential running mate for Harris at the top of November’s Democratic ticket whose candidacy has been strengthening in recent days – were on New York’s Fire Island on Friday for a sold-out event that raised $321,000.According to reports, the total was a record for the Pines, part of the narrow barrier island that runs south of Long Island, famous as an LGBTQ+ summering spot second only to Provincetown, Massachusetts.Former treasurer of the Democratic National Committee Andrew Tobias told Vanity Fair that the double-teaming husbands had beat the $200,000 haul for a 2016 political event hosted by the singer Cher.The outlet reported that US Secret Service agents “appeared to waylay hunks in bikini cut swimsuits to smuggle Emhoff on and off the island”. The fundraiser had initially been organized for Harris and Joe Biden before the president quit his re-election campaign – and it had sold out before the vice-president had become the candidate.“The right to love who you want to love, the right to marry who you want to marry, to do what you want in your home, with who you love, without the government over your shoulder … this affects all of you,” Emhoff told the crowd, echoing fears that a US supreme court with three Trump appointees could eliminate same-sex couples’ right to marriage. “We need to have an army for freedom, an army for justice, led by my wife, Kamala Harris.”The Emhoff-Buttigieg husband double act raised speculation that it could be a test run for the transportation secretary to be Harris’s vice-presidential pick. Harris has until Tuesday to decide whom to pick as her running mate.Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, whom many consider as the leading candidate to be Harris’s running mate, may help with his crucial swing state. But he could also bleed votes away from Harris elsewhere over his strong support of Israel’s war on Gaza, which became a constant source of criticism for the Biden White House.“Of course I want it to be Pete,” fundraiser Jack Kabin said. But Kabin said he was worried “America isn’t ready for a gay vice-president”.Rumors of Buttigieg’s strengthening contention in the veepstakes come amid a media blitz. He is estimated to have made at least 30 media appearances, trips to two swing states and held a Washington news conference in the past two weeks. In recent days, he acknowledged that he is “probably” being vetted.In Buttigieg’s favor is his ability as a calm, skilled communicator. He is a Rhodes scholar and a veteran, previously served as a mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and he has emerged as formidable critic of Trump and the Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance.Buttigieg frequently appears on Fox News. Recently, he went on the Republican-friendly network and criticized Trump supporters for fostering a “warped reality” in which the former president is “perfectly fine … even though he’s rambling about electrocuting sharks”.Asked why he was so frequently on the outlet, Buttigieg told Bill Maher in July that it was not his job to speak only to people that agreed with him.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAsked why wealthy men, including gay tech investor Peter Thiel, supported Trump, he said the issues had been made “way too complicated”.“It’s super simple,” he said. “These are very rich men who have decided to back the Republican party that tends to do good things for very rich men.”On CNN, he called Vance “a regrettable choice” because he is “somebody who was at his most convincing and effective when he talked about how unfit for office Donald Trump is, and he has not explained any reason, other than of course his obvious interest in power, why he would have changed his mind on that”.In Esquire magazine, columnist, actor and former White House engagement adviser Kal Penn wrote that Buttigieg is the Democratic party’s “best chance for expanding the electorate and evolving the platform”.“He’s multilingual,” Penn wrote. “He’s comfortable on the world stage. He is deeply connected to blue-collar voters. He polls exceptionally well.“Most important, as a young husband and father of two with a modest home in northern Michigan, he speaks openly about his own family’s struggles and triumphs, which mirror what many Americans deal with day to day.” More

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      Trump says he would debate on Fox News – but Harris insists on ABC

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      Donald Trump says he would be willing to debate Kamala Harris on the friendly environs of Fox News in September – but the vice-president has not signed on to what would be a switch-up.Trump had previously agreed to appear on ABC News and debate Joe Biden a second time this year before the president ended his re-election campaign.In a statement on his Truth Social platform, Trump said the debate would be held on 4 September in Pennsylvania. The former president said that there was a conflict of interest at play after filing a defamation lawsuit against ABC and network host George Stephanopoulos over the anchor’s assertion that Trump had been “found liable for rape” in the E Jean Carroll case.Trump earlier this year was ordered to pay $83m for defamatory statements he had made about the magazine columnist after an earlier case found him liable for defamation and sexual abuse.“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,” Trump wrote.The former Republican president added that the site of the debate on Fox News – which is generally welcoming to the GOP – had not been determined. But he said the moderators would be Fox News’ Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, and the rules would be similar to his 27 June debate with Biden – except that this time there would be a studio audience.But on Saturday, in a statement that invoked Trump’s previous challenge to debate Biden at any time or place, Harris’s campaign made clear she did not agree to the terms of the proposed Fox News debate. And she particularly rejected using that debate to replace the ABC one.“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,” Harris campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler said in a statement shared on X by NBC News political correspondent Yamiche Alcindor.“He needs to stop playing games and show up to the debate he already committed to on [10 September]. The vice-president will be there one way or the other to take the opportunity to speak to a prime-time national audience. We’re happy to discuss further debates after the one both campaigns have already agreed to.“Mr Anytime, anywhere, any place should have no problem with that unless he’s too scared to show up on the 10th.”In a post on X, Harris herself added: “It’s interesting how any time, any place’ becomes ‘one specific time, one specific safe space.’”The vice-president said in July that she was “ready” to debate Trump and accused him of stepping back from the previous agreement involving ABC.In a post on Saturday, Trump alleged that Harris was “afraid” to “do a REAL debate” against him. He added: “I’ll see [Harris] on September 4th or I won’t see her at all.”Democratic party alarm at Biden’s June debate performance on CNN set in motion his dramatic withdrawal from the race, with polls indicating he was likely headed for a blowout electoral defeat.Trump and Harris are now polling neck-and-neck.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe political dance over presidential debates is now set to escalate. Earlier this year, Biden and Trump agreed to sidestep the typical arrangement of three debates, typically held in the fall and organized by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates.Democrats said reducing the number to two and moving them up to June and September reflected changes in the “structure of our elections and the interests of voters”.Biden said he had won two debates with Trump in 2020 and challenged him to two this year. “I hear you’re free on Wednesdays,” Biden said, referring to a weekly off-day during the New York criminal trial that saw Trump convicted of falsifying business records in connections with hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels.But that decision ultimately backfired for Biden.The latest twist in the 2024 debate drama comes after Trump said he would not face Harris because she was not the party’s official candidate. On Friday, Harris secured enough Biden delegates to officially become her party’s nominee.At a rally in Atlanta on Tuesday, Harris said she welcomed a debate against Trump, who days earlier had called her a “bum”.“As the saying goes, you got something to say, say it to my face,” Harris said. More

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      ‘I’m trying to make it’: Jimmy Carter’s goal is to vote for Kamala Harris

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      Nearing his 100th birthday and in hospice care since February 2023, the former president Jimmy Carter reportedly has one goal: voting for Kamala Harris against Donald Trump.“I’m only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris,” Carter told his son Chip this week, as his grandson Jason Carter recounted to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.Harris, Carter’s fellow Democrat, will face the Republican Trump for the presidency on 5 November. Carter’s 100th birthday will fall on 1 October.A Democrat who was in the White House from 1977 to 1981, Carter is the oldest living president. In ill health for several years, his family announced that he entered hospice care on 18 February 2023. Many took that announcement to mean Carter was near the end of his life.And the next month, the current president, Joe Biden, said he had been asked to deliver Carter’s eulogy.Biden also said Carter’s doctors had “found a way to keep him going for a lot longer than they anticipated because they found a breakthrough”.In October 2023, as the White House celebrated Carter’s 99th birthday, the former Democratic National Committee chairperson Donna Brazile said the former Georgia governor was “a towering, old southern oak … as good as they come and tough as they come”.The following month, Carter’s wife, Rosalynn Carter, died aged 96. The couple, who campaigned for human rights and mental health reform, were married for 77 years, through Jimmy Carter’s time in the US navy, in Georgia state politics, in the White House and in a post-presidency widely regarded as one of the most productive.In 2002, Carter was awarded the Nobel peace prize, “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development”.In 2021, he told the Associated Press the secret to a long life was “to marry the right person”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Saturday, the Journal-Constitution said Jason Carter said his grandfather had in recent days been “more alert and interested in politics and the war in Gaza”, the latter a tricky issue for Harris to navigate, not least as she nears a decision on her vice-presidential pick.Jason Carter said his grandfather a few days ago voiced his wish to vote for Harris, who has served as Biden’s vice-president. Jimmy Carter expressed his support for Harris when Chip Carter asked if he was trying to make it to 100.As the Journal-Constitution noted, early voting in Georgia begins on 15 October – two weeks past the former president’s centenarian birthday. More

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      Kyle Rittenhouse reverses course on not endorsing Trump after online pile-on

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      Acquitted killer Kyle Rittenhouse announced he would not be supporting Donald Trump’s attempt to return to the White House – but ultimately ended up politically endorsing him anyway after being inundated with vitriolic messages from the former president’s followers.The flip-flop by Rittenhouse – who has fashioned himself as a gun rights activist after shooting two people to death in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during racial justice protests there in 2020 – followed an initial pledge to write in former congressman Ron Paul as his choice on November’s presidential election ballot.In a video posted on the social media platform X, Rittenhouse argued that Trump had a “bad” record with respect to gun rights and explained he would instead back Paul.The 21-year-old then spent the next several hours grappling with ire directed at him by proponents of Trump’s “Make America great again” (Maga) movement, who embraced Rittenhouse as a hero after the shootings in Kenosha and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for his successful criminal defense. Among other insults, they taunted him with prison rape jokes and accused him of betraying Trump less than three years after the Republican met with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort and declared Rittenhouse “really a nice young man”.One of the more typical comments responding to Rittenhouse’s temporary endorsement of Paul was from political commentator Joey Mannarino, who wrote on X: “If not for Maga, you would be rotting in a prison bending over for Bubba … Fuck you and the horse you rode in on!”Another X user added: “I wish they would’ve let you go to prison so you could be the bitch you actually are.”By Friday afternoon, Rittenhouse had gone back on X and wrote that he was “100% behind Donald Trump and [would] encourage every gun owner to join me in helping send him back to the White House”.“Over the past 12 hours, I’ve had a series of productive conversations with members of the Trump’s team, and I am confident he will be the strong ally gun owners need to defend our … rights,” Rittenhouse also said. “My comments made last night were ill-informed and unproductive.”Some commentators met the quick about-face with equally swift mockery.“You stand for absolutely nothing and have zero backbone,” read one reply. Another said: “This time try not to murder anyone while you’re backpedaling.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRittenhouse was 17 when he traveled 20 miles from his home in Antioch, Illinois, as protests erupted after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, who is Black.Roaming Kenosha with other armed men claiming to be self-appointed security guards, Rittenhouse used a rifle to fatally shoot 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, then 26. He also injured Gage Grosskreutz, then 27, and was charged with five felonies, including first-degree intentional homicide.Rittenhouse contended to the jury which heard his case that he carried out the shootings in self-defense and had acted justifiably. At the end of a tumultuous trial, jurors found him not guilty of all charges against him, a verdict hailed by far-right politicians and pundits but decried by civil rights activists. More