US elections 2024

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Harris’s VP list: Gretchen Whitmer and Roy Cooper say they’re not in running

      by

      Two lawmakers seen as strong contenders in the race to become Kamala Harris’s running mate have announced that they are not in the running. On Monday, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and North Carolina governor Roy Cooper both said that while they support the vice-president, they will be staying in their posts in their respective states.“This just wasn’t the right time for North Carolina and for me to potentially be on a national ticket,” Cooper said in a statement posted to Twitter/X on Monday. “As I’ve said from the beginning, she has an outstanding list of people from which to choose, and we’ll all work to make sure she wins.”In an interview with CBS, Whitmer said that she has not been vetted by Harris’s office and expects Harris’s to announce her pick within the week, which would confirm the Democratic ticket at least two weeks before the Democratic national convention begins on 19 August in Chicago.“I have communicated with everyone, including the people of Michigan, that I’m going to stay as governor until the end of my term at the end of 2026,” Whitmer said.Others rumored to be potential running mates are all white men who govern in swing states that can decide the 2024 election. They include: Kentucky governor Andy Beshear; Minnesota governor Tim Walz; Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro; and Mark Kelly, a US Senator in Arizona.While all four have been asked about their willingness to serve as Harris’s running mate if tapped, all have signaled that they would step up if asked but none have hinted at their engagements with her campaign.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This is not about me. But I’ve always, always said when I’ve had the chance to serve, I think that’s very important to do,” Kelly told reporters on 25 July.“Being mentioned is certainly an honor … I trust Vice-President Harris’s judgement, she’ll make the best choice she’s going to,” Walz told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday. “But one way or another, she’s going to win in November and that’s gonna benefit everyone … Either way it’s gonna be a win.”During a campaign stop for Harris in Pittsburgh, Shapiro said: “It’s a decision she needs to make who she wants to govern with, who she wants to campaign with, and who can be there to serve alongside her.”And Beshear, who has also been stumping for Harris in red and purple jurisdictions, told the Des Moines Register newspaper: “I’m honored to be considered and, regardless of what happens, I’m going to work every day between now and Election Day to make sure that Kamala Harris is the next president of the United States.” More

    • 250 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      US elections live: Biden takes the stage to talk about supreme court reform in speech marking Civil Rights Act anniversary

      by

      Joe Biden is expected to announce three proposed reforms to the US supreme court.In an opinion piece published in the Washington Post on Monday, the president called for three primary changes to the high court.

      Eighteen-year term limits

      A binding code of ethics

      A new constitutional amendment that would virtually reverse a supreme court decision in July granting former presidents broad immunity from prosecution for actions taken while in office
      Biden’s speech comes on the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.Hello, I’m Abené Clayton running the blog from Los Angeles. We’ll bring you the latest news and reaction.Biden just completed his speech and reaffirmed his proposed changes to the supreme court.One of his proposed changes is to reverse the recent immunity decision poses, which he says gives the president room to “violate our oath, flout our laws, and face no consequences”.On the issue of term limits, Biden argued that an 18-year cap would make the timing of nominations less “arbitrary” and limit the ability of the president to influence the makeup of the body.He is also seeking a new code of conduct that will replace the current one that is optional for justices. This new edict would require justices to disclose gifts, recuse themselves from cases that they or their spouses have an interest in, and “refrain from public political activity”, Biden said.Joe Biden is calling out supreme court decisions that he says have eroded civil rights.They include the 2013 Shelby County decision that gutted civil rights, the 2022 decision that overturned Roe v Wade, and most recently a decision that gives presidents broad immunity. These actions, Biden said, fly in the face of the notion that “there are no kings in America … No one is above the law.”“Extremism is undermining the public confidence in the court’s decisions,” Biden added.At the top of his speech Joe Biden emphasized his admiration for Lyndon B Johnson and reiterated the promises made by his signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.The president told the audience:
      In a great society no one should be left behind … It’s time for us to come to see that every American gets a decent break and a fair chance to make good.
      Joe Biden is now on the stage, he was introduced by Andrew Young, a former congressman and ambassador to the United Nations. Biden walked out to the song Glory, performed by John Legend and Common for the 2015 film Selma.The live stream is here.We are still waiting for Joe Biden to take the stage. Less than an hour ago, he arrived in Austin and was greeted by several local and state lawmakers.Currently, Mark Updegrove, the president and CEO of the Lyndon B Johnson Foundation, the group hosting the Civil Rights Act commemoration event, is giving a speech about the organization’s history and legacy.Watch the live stream here.As we await the arrival of Joe Biden on the stage, here are some of the images being sent to us on the newswires of the president arriving in Austin earlier today.He was met by Democratic state representatives Sheryl Cole and Donna Howard before heading to the LBJ library.There was music from the concert choir of Huston-Tillotson University, followed by the actor Bryan Cranston reading an excerpt from the 1964 Civil Rights Act.The event marking the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act is being held at the Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) library in Austin, Texas.It began with a short film showing previous presidents’ remarks on civil rights, including Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.Joe Biden is expected to announce three proposed reforms to the US supreme court.In an opinion piece published in the Washington Post on Monday, the president called for three primary changes to the high court.

      Eighteen-year term limits

      A binding code of ethics

      A new constitutional amendment that would virtually reverse a supreme court decision in July granting former presidents broad immunity from prosecution for actions taken while in office
      Biden’s speech comes on the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.Hello, I’m Abené Clayton running the blog from Los Angeles. We’ll bring you the latest news and reaction.A trial looming in a lawsuit challenging North Dakota’s abortion ban was canceled Monday as the judge in the case, state district judge Bruce Romanick, weighs whether to throw out the lawsuit. It was not immediately clear why the trial was canceled.The notice comes nearly a week after the state and plaintiffs, who include the formerly sole abortion clinic in North Dakota, made their pitches to the judge as to why he should dismiss the two-year-old case, or continue to trial, the Associated Press reports. The trial was due to begin late August.North Dakota outlaws abortion as a felony crime for people who perform the procedure, but with exceptions to prevent the mother’s death or a “serious health risk” to her, as well as for cases of rape or incest within the first six weeks.The plaintiffs, which include the Red River Women’s Clinic and doctors trained in obstetrics, gynecology and maternal-fetal medicine, alleged the abortion ban violates the state constitution because it is unconstitutionally vague about its exceptions for doctors and that its health exception is too narrow. They wanted the trial to proceed.Kamala Harris highlighted endorsements from mayors of border towns in swing state Arizona today as she looks to blunt the impact of Republican criticism of her handling of illegal border crossings.Harris’s campaign for president said she was backed by the mayors of Bisbee, Nogales, Somerton, and San Luis, as well as by Yuma county supervisors Martin Porchas and Tony Reyes, the Associated Press reports.Republicans say Harris did not do enough as US vice-president to clamp down on illegal immigration.
      I trust her to meet the needs of border cities and towns without taking advantage of us for her own political gain, like her opponent,” the Somerton mayor, Gerardo Anaya, said in a statement. Somerton is a city of about 14,000 people in the state’s southwestern corner.
      As vice-president, Harris was tasked with overseeing diplomatic efforts to deal with issues spurring migration in the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, as well as pressing them to strengthen enforcement on their own borders. The Biden administration wanted to develop and put in place a long-term strategy that gets at the root causes of migration from those countries.Border arrests have fallen from record highs last December.Read my colleague Lauren Gambino’s piece on Harris’s record on immigration policy, here.The Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, whose state borders Iowa, has also extended a welcome to Iowa residents who are in need of reproductive healthcare, as Iowa’s strict six-week abortion ban took effect on Monday.Walz, in a post to X, wrote:
      In Minnesota, we take care of our neighbors. It’s just what we do. As our neighbors in Iowa are stripped of their fundamental rights, my message is clear: Your reproductive freedom will remain protected in Minnesota.
      The House speaker, Mike Johnson, and minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, have announced the seven Republicans and six Democrats who will sit on the taskforce to investigate the assassination attempt against Donald Trump.The Republican chair of the panel will be the congressman Mike Kelly, who represents the Pennsylvania town of Butler where the shooting took place.The Democratic ranking member will be the Colorado congressman Jason Crow, who sits on the House intelligence and foreign affairs committee.Johnson, in a statement posted to X, said he and Jeffries “have the utmost confidence in this group of steady, highly qualified, and capable Members of Congress”.The Iowa ban, which takes effect today, permits abortions past six weeks in cases of rape or incest, or in medical emergencies.Fourteen other states, including much of the midwest, enacted near-total bans on abortion since the US supreme court overturned Roe.Three other states – Georgia, South Carolina and Florida – have banned abortion past about six weeks of pregnancy.Roe’s demise led to surge in support for abortion rights, even in red states. Sixty-one per cent of Iowans, including 70% of women, say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, a Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll found last year.A six-week abortion ban went into effect in Iowa on Monday, cutting off access to the procedure before many women know they are pregnant.The Republican-dominated Iowa state legislature passed the ban last year, but a lengthy court battle initially stopped it from taking effect. Last month, the Iowa supreme court ruled that the ban could be enforced, leading a lower-court judge to order the ban to take effect at 8am local time.Leah Vanden Bosch, development and outreach director of the Iowa Abortion Access Fund, said in a statement:
      The upholding of this abortion ban in Iowa is an absolute devastation and violation of human rights, depriving Iowans of their bodily autonomy. We know a ban will not stop the need for abortions.
      Up until Sunday, abortion had been legal in Iowa up to roughly 22 weeks of pregnancy. Now, abortion clinics in the state have indicated that they will continue offering the procedure to the legal limit.The closest options for Iowans who want abortions after six weeks of pregnancy will probably be Minnesota and Illinois, Democratic-run states that border Iowa and that have become abortion havens since Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022.The Iowa ban permits abortions past six weeks in cases of rape or incest, or in medical emergencies.Two Democratic state governors who are being considered by Kamala Harris’s campaign as her potential running mate, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and JB Pritzker of Illinois, have criticized the strict six-week abortion ban that went into effect in Iowa today.Shapiro directly blamed Donald Trump for the Iowa law, and urged voters not to re-elect the Republican former president.Pritzker, whose state borders Iowa, welcomed Iowa residents to visit Illinois if the new law blocks their access to “whatever care they need”. He added:
      Please know – as you work to maneuver around this dangerous and unjust law – we are here for you.
      Questions continued to mount about the political transformation of Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, after the release of emails from a former friend in which Vance called Trump a “morally reprehensible human being” and said: “I hate the police.”The messages between Vance and Sofia Nelson, who sent them to the New York Times, were largely dated between 2014 and 2017. In one, Vance sent Nelson a section of Hillbilly Elegy, his bestseller about his Appalachian boyhood. Vance wrote:
      Here’s an excerpt from my book. I send this to you not just to brag, but because I’m sure if you read it you’ll notice reference to ‘an extremely progressive lesbian’. I recognise now that this may not accurately reflect how you think of yourself, and for that I am really sorry. I hope you’re not offended, but if you are, I’m sorry! Love you, JD.
      Read the full story here: JD Vance calls Trump ‘morally reprehensible’ in resurfaced emails More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Former chief of staff says Democrats’ efforts to push out Biden were ‘nasty’

      by

      Senior Democrats’ successful efforts to push Joe Biden out of the presidential race were “unfortunate, nasty and public” and did the president a “disservice”, Biden’s former White House chief of staff said – even as the new nominee, Kamala Harris, continued to fundraise strongly, campaign vigorously and show signs of catching Donald Trump in polling.“I was disappointed that people in the party called for [Biden] to leave the race, and I thought they got out of control,” Ron Klain said.“I thought it was unfortunate, nasty and public, and shouldn’t have been … I thought they were doing him a disservice, but I think he handled it incredibly graciously and came up with a plan that is going to work for us in 2024.”The podcast host Kara Swisher released her conversation with Klain on Monday, a little over a week after Biden made history by saying he would relinquish power.Now 81, Biden was long subject to doubts about his fitness for office, but calls to quit accelerated after the first presidential debate in late June, during which Biden appeared frail and confused and failed to check Trump’s lies.Klain left the White House last year but helped Biden prepare to debate.He said: “I thought the debate was an opportunity for the president to put some of these questions [about his age and fitness] to rest, but obviously [it] did not go well that night and that is what it is. And so we took a gamble and the gamble didn’t work.“I thought it was a reasonable chance to take. I thought the president, as he showed in the days after the debate, was fully capable of making his case forcefully on the stump, fully capable of answering unscripted questions, as he did at his press conference [during a Nato summit in Washington]. I thought we would see that on debate night and we just didn’t, of course.”Klain said Biden had been “very kind” and “took responsibility in our conversations and said he’d had a bad night, and told me not to feel bad about it. I think … he just was off.”Few Democrats agreed. Amid sympathy for Trump after an assassination attempt, and with polling showing Biden in trouble in key states, calls for the president to stand aside surged, supported by party grandees including the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, who Biden served as vice-president.Eventually, Klain said, Biden “made a decision that he couldn’t keep the party unified” but also decided “to point the direction forward, and he pointed very clearly towards Vice-President Harris.“And so I think that was a wise decision, and I think he’s executed it extremely well. You see the vice-president emerging in very short order as the consensus nominee of our party with strong backing … I think that’s great.“… So I don’t really love how we got here, but I think we’re in a good place. We’re going to move forward. We’re going to win this year.” More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Kamala Harris will announce VP pick in ‘next six, seven days’, Democrat says

      by

      Kamala Harris will announce her running mate for the US presidential election against Donald Trump and JD Vance “in the next six, seven days”, an influential Democratic campaign co-chair said.“I would imagine we’ll know who her running mate is, and we’ll get ready for the convention,” Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, told CBS on Monday, referring to Democrats’ national gathering in Chicago next month.Whitmer also said she was not under consideration herself.“I have communicated with everyone, including the people of Michigan, that I’m going to stay as governor until the end of my term at the end of 2026,” Whitmer said.Harris is widely reported to have narrowed her field of possible picks to three – all white men from states expected to play key roles in the November election. On Sunday, a new poll said the navy pilot and astronaut turned Arizona senator Mark Kelly was seen most favourably by voters.According to ABC News and Ipsos, 22% of respondents saw Kelly in a favourable light against 12% who did not, giving him a net favourability of +10.The two other men widely reported to be in the final reckoning are the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, and Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania. In the ABC/Ipsos poll, Walz scored -1 for favourability, Shapiro +4.Strikingly, Kelly’s favourability rating was a striking 25 points better than that of Vance, the Ohio senator whose first steps in support of Trump have been beset by controversy and Democratic attacks, leading to reports of doubts among senior Republicans.Under fire for misogynistic comments including disparaging leading Democrats as “childless cat ladies”, and widely shown to have said he despised Trump before changing his tune, Vance’s favourability rating in the ABC/Ipsos poll was -15, a poor score surpassed only by Trump himself, at -16.Lest Kelly supporters get too confident, the ABC/Ipsos poll also noted that he and most other potential Democratic picks “remain unknown to large sections of the American public”. Among all possible Democratic nominees for vice-president, the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg (+4 favourability), and the governor of California, Gavin Newsom (-12), were the best-known to voters.Harris was seen favourably by 43% of voters and unfavourably by 42%. Among possible picks who might help boost that rating, Kelly represents a border state, central to the fight over immigration, and is married to Gabby Giffords, a former congresswoman who survived a shooting and campaigns for gun control reform.Shapiro governs a rust belt state that proved pivotal in 2016, when Trump won it, and in 2020, when it went for Joe Biden.Walz’s state, Minnesota, has voted for the Democrat in every presidential election since 1976 but Trump has targeted it this year, trumpeting polling gains before Biden dropped out of the race.Biden, 81, withdrew from his re-election campaign amid polling that showed most Americans thought him too old to be president. That means that, at 78, Trump is now the oldest candidate ever to run for the White House.Whitmer told CBS she expected a “convention of happy warriors” in Chicago. Harris advisers are reportedly placing emphasis on potential running mates’ ability to take the fight to Vance, who they want to portray as too inexperienced to step up should Trump fail to serve a full term.Now 39, Vance was a US marine, a bestselling author and a venture capitalist before winning a US Senate seat in 2022.On Monday, Mitch Landrieu, a Harris campaign co-chair, called Vance “one of the most unprepared people … ever put up to hold the vice-presidency of the United States”.Landrieu told CNN: “He’s never run anything. And he’s about to be one heartbeat away from the largest entity in the world, and the one that’s the most important.“So it’s a fair question to ask: ‘How would we know whether you have the capability to run domestic and national security policy for the most powerful country in the world, which you may be called to do on a moment’s notice?’”Kelly, 60, was elected to the Senate in 2020. Walz, 60 and a former teacher and national guard sergeant, was a US congressman for six terms from 2006 before being elected governor of Minnesota in 2018. Shapiro, 51, sat in the Pennsylvania state house before becoming state attorney general in 2017, then governor in 2023.CNN quoted “a Harris adviser” as saying the running-mate selection process would be informed by Harris’s own experience.Now 59, Harris was a former California attorney general and US senator when she was picked by Biden in 2020. Her four years as vice-president have generated reports of struggles but also effective displays on key campaign issues, particularly threats to abortion rights.“She knows the challenges of this world in a way that you have to have somebody who has a deep amount of resilience,” the unnamed adviser told CNN.A campaign spokesperson, James Singer, told the same network Harris would “select a vice-president who is qualified and ready to serve the American people, protect their freedoms, and fight for their future”.All three men reportedly under closest consideration have chosen their words with care.“This is not about me,” Kelly told reporters. “But always, always when I’ve had the chance to serve, I think that’s very important to do.”Walz said: “Being mentioned is certainly an honour. I trust Vice-President Harris’s judgment … I would do what is in the best interests of the country.”Shapiro said Harris would “make that decision when she is ready, and I have all the confidence in the world that she will make that decision, along with many others, in the best interests of the Amercian people”. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Pennsylvania officer spotted Trump shooter 90 minutes before open fire – report

      by

      Donald Trump has agreed to participate in a victim interview with the FBI regarding his attempted assassination earlier this month, the bureau told reporters on Monday.This comes as authorities continue their investigations into the 13 July shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, where 20-year-old Thomas Matthews Crooks fired eight shots from an assault rifle which hit and injured the former president, killed a rally attendee and injured several others. Crooks was killed by government snipers moments after the shooting began.On Sunday, new details around the shooting emerged from text messages between local security units, obtained by the Republican senator Chuck Grassley and published and verified by the New York Times, including that local law enforcement had spotted the shooter 30 minutes earlier than what officials had previously said.The published text messages show that a local countersniper first noticed a man, who was later identified as Crooks, loitering in the area where the countersnipers were set up more than 90 minutes before the shooting occurred.The Times reported that at 4.26pm, the countersniper alerted his colleagues of Crooks, and that he had parked near their vehicles and was sitting on a picnic table near the warehouse, where several countersnipers were, outside the fenced area of the grounds where Trump would be appearing later.The countersniper told his colleagues that Crooks knew they were there and saw him leaving with his rifle.One of the countersnipers took pictures of Crooks and the photos were shared in a group chat and another text went out among the local officers at 5.38pm, saying they should inform the Secret Service, per the New York Times.“Kid learning around building we are in. AGR I believe it is. I did see him with a range finder looking towards stage. FYI. If you wanna notify SS snipers to look out. I lost sight of him,” read one of the texts, accompanied by photos of Crooks.One of the two remaining countersnipers reportedly ran out of the building attempting to keep eyes on Crooks until other law enforcement arrived, per Butler County officials, but Crooks ran off, taking a backpack with him.At 6pm, one officer in the group texts guessed that Crooks was moving toward the back of the warehouse complex and away from the event, the Times reported. But instead, Crooks climbed on to a building in the complex closest to the stage.At 6.11pm, Crooks began firing, grazing Trump’s ear, killing a rally-goer and injuring several others. Moments later, Crooks was shot and killed on the roof of a warehouse that was connected to the one the countersnipers were stationed in.The newly released messages also suggest that the shooter was often one step ahead of security forces and law enforcement.The New York Times reported Crooks had scoped out the rally site a day before the Secret Service did on 8 July. The report also states the Secret Service excluded the entire warehouse complex from its inner security perimeter. This meant that on the day of the rally, Crooks was able to get to the building without passing through a security screening.After the Secret Service walk through on 8 July, the Times reported that the agency had asked local agencies to provide more help, and that text messages showed that Beaver county struggled to find enough volunteers to cover the 12-hour shift.Questions continue to be asked about the apparent failures in communication between different law enforcement agencies and how someone was able to get to close to assassinating Trump.Local police officers on a special tactical team, who were assigned to help protect Trump on 13 July, have also said they had no contact with Secret Service agents before the gunman opened fire.“We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service members whenever they arrived and that never happened,” Jason Woods, lead sharpshooter on the Swat team in Beaver county, Pennsylvania, told ABC News over the weekend.The Secret Service has not commented directly on the remarks by Woods. But an agency spokesperson, Anthony Guglielmi, has said the Secret Service “is committed to better understanding what happened before, during and after the assassination attempt of former president Trump to ensure that never happens again”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSeparately, members of Trump’s Secret Service detail and his top advisers have questioned why they were not told that local police assigned to guard the outer perimeter of the fairgrounds had spotted a suspicious person who turned out to be the would-be assassin.Last week, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, testified to the House judiciary committee that the shooter appeared to have used a drone at the rally location about two hours before the attack, to scope out an area about 200 yards (182m) from the stage where Trump was scheduled to speak.The drone was found in the gunman’s car, along with two explosive devices. According to the New York Times report, the Secret Service did not seek permission to use a drone for the rally.Wray also testified that the AR-style rifle used in the attack may have had a collapsible stock, making it easier to conceal, and that in the days leading up to the shooting, Crooks had searched online for information about the 1963 assassination of John F Kennedy.Despite the new information about the shooter’s focus on the Kennedy assassination, Wray said that the FBI had yet to find any clear indication of Crooks’ motivations or ideology.“It does appear he was interested in public figures more broadly,” he said.According to the New York Times, Crooks had started searching online for information on well-known figures, including Wray, US attorney general Merrick B Garland, Joe Biden and Trump, and he had also looked up “major depressive disorder”.In the immediate days after the shooting, Trump initially called for unity, writing on Truth Social that “in this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand United, and show our True Character as Americans, remaining Strong and Determined, and not allowing Evil to Win.”Delegates at the Republican National Convention also made much of how Trump’s campaign would pivot to a more message less divisiveness. But although Trump’s keynote speech at the convention began with him saying all Americans are ‘bound together by a single fate’, he soon reverted to attacking Democrats over the numerous criminal convictions he is facing and falsely accused the party of cheating in the 2020 election.More recently, on Saturday, Trump told supporters in a speech in Minnesota that the shooting may have made him “worse”.“I want to be nice,” Trump said. “They all say, ‘I think he’s changed. I think he’s changed since two weeks ago. Something affected him.’”“No, I haven’t changed”, he continued. “Maybe I’ve gotten worse, actually. Because I get angry at the incompetence that I witness every single day”. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Why Kamala Harris should pick Tim Walz as running mate | Mehdi Hasan

      by

      Have you seen the touching images from March 2023, of the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, being hugged by a group of elementary school kids after signing into law a bill that provided them with free school meals?Or the fun clip from September 2023, of Walz with his daughter Hope laughing and screaming on a ride at the Minnesota State Fair?How about the viral video of Walz on MSNBC last week, mocking Donald Trump, JD Vance and the Maga Republicans as “weird people”?That video has had more than 4.6m views on Twitter/X alone and, per Politico, is credited with the Democrats’ new shift “toward a more gut-level vernacular that may better capture how many voters react to far-right rhetoric” of the Trump/Vance variety.Kamala Harris herself has now borrowed Walz’s lingo and is also calling her opponents “weird”, while Walz is all over our television screens, bolstering the vice-president’s candidacy and playing “attack dog” against the Trump/Vance Republican ticket.I’ll be honest: last month, I would have struggled to pick Walz out of a lineup.This month? I’m Walz-pilled. I have watched dozens of his interviews and clips. And I’m far from alone. He has an army of new fans across the liberal-left: from former Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign co-chair Nina Turner, to one-time Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke, to gun-control activist David Hogg. “In less than 6 days, I went from not knowing who Tim Walz is,” joked writer Travis Helwig on X, “to deep down believing that if he doesn’t get the VP nod I will storm the capitol.”According to Bloomberg, the Harris campaign has narrowed down its “top tier” of potential running mates to three “white guy” candidates: Walz (hurrah!), plus the Arizona senator Mark Kelly and Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro.Both Kelly and Shapiro have their strengths – and both represent must-win states for the Dems. Allow me, however, to make the clear case for Walz.First, there’s his personality. The 60-year-old governor would bring energy, humor and some much-needed bite to the Democratic presidential ticket. There’s a reason why his videos have been going viral in recent days. Tim Kaine he ain’t. Pick the charismatic and eloquent Walz and you have America’s Fun Uncle ready to go.Then, there’s his résumé. A popular midwest governor from a rural town. A 24-year veteran of the army national guard. A high school teacher who coached the football team to its first state championship. It’s almost too perfect!Finally, there’s his governing record. You will struggle to find a Democratic governor who has achieved more than Walz in the space of a single legislative session. Not Shapiro. Not JB Pritzker of Illinois. Not even Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.In May 2023, Barack Obama, of all people, shared a piece from the MinnPost on X, which laid out Walz’s very successful – and very social-democratic – legislative record in the North Star state:“Democrats codified abortion rights, paid family and medical leave, sick leave, transgender rights protections, drivers licenses for undocumented residents, restoration of voting rights for people when they are released from prison or jail, wider voting access, one-time rebates, a tax credit aimed at low-income parents with kids, and a $1bn investment in affordable housing including for rental assistance.”Got that? Walz basically did Biden’s “Build Back Better” on steroids, despite only a single-seat majority in the state senate.But wait, there’s more!“Also adopted were background checks for private gun transfers and a red-flag warning system to take guns from people deemed by a judge to be a threat to themselves or others. DFL lawmakers banned conversion therapy for LGBTQ people, legalized recreational marijuana, expanded education funding, required a carbon-free electric grid by 2040, adopted a new reading curricula based on phonics, passed a massive $2.58bn capital construction package and, at the insistence of Republicans, a $300m emergency infusion of money to nursing homes.”Democrats at the national level can only dream of such progressive legislative victories.Policy wins aside, Walz also comes with less political baggage than his two main rivals and is, therefore, much less likely to divide the party.Think about it. Democrats can have Tim Walz on the ticket, who called the anti-war, pro-Palestinian ‘uncommitted’ movement “civically engaged” and praised them for “asking for a change in course” and “for more pressure to be put on” the White House, or they can have Josh Shapiro, who called for a crackdown on anti-war, pro-Palestinian college protesters and even compared them to the KKK.They can have Walz on the ticket, who has reportedly “emerged among labor unions as a popular pick” after signing “into law a series of measures viewed as pro-worker” including banning non-compete agreements and expanding protections for Amazon warehouse workers, or they can have Mark Kelly, who opposed the pro-labor Pro Act in the Senate.They can have Walz, who guaranteed students in Minnesota not just free breakfasts but free lunches, or Shapiro, who has courted controversy in Pennsylvania with his support for school vouchers.They can have Walz, who calls his Republican opponents “weird” and extreme, or Kelly, who calls his Republican opponents “good people” who are “working really hard”.This isn’t rocket science. Walz is the obvious choice. Not only is he the ideal “white guy” running mate for Harris, against both Trump and Vance, but he is already doing the job on television and online, lambasting Vance in particular over IVF treatment and insisting he mind his “own damn business”.And you know who is paying attention to all this? “Weird” Donald Trump, who was especially infuriated after Walz attacked him for cosying up to Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán on … Fox.“Why did Fox News put up Tim Walz, Governor of Minnesota, where I am leading?” the former president wrote in a post on Truth Social. “They make me fight battles that I shouldn’t have to fight!”Has there ever been a better endorsement for a Democratic vice-presidential nominee?

      Mehdi Hasan is the founder and editor-in-chief of the new media company Zeteo More

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      The Republican party’s obsession with families has taken a fanatical turn | Moira Donegan

      by

      “It’s possible,” writes Jessica Winter in the New Yorker, “that if JD Vance had his way, citizenship in the United States would be conferred not solely by birthright but by marriage and children.” This is no exaggeration. In a now viral 2021 clip, JD Vance said: “Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of those children. When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power – you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic – than people who don’t have kids. Let’s face the consequences and the reality: If you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice.”This position now represents large swaths of the Republican party, which has taken on an angry and aggressively prescriptive approach to family life.If you’re a woman in America, Republicans want you to be a mother whether you care to or not. They want you to risk your health to give them more babies. Then, when those babies get bigger, they want to make sure that those children’s fathers – or, excuse me, “parents” – have a near-total control over both them and you.They don’t want you to be able to get a divorce if your marriage turns unhappy or even abusive. They don’t want your daughter to be able to get birth control if her father doesn’t approve of it; they don’t want your other daughter to be able to get the hormone treatment she needs to thrive as her truest self. They want to inspect your kids’ genitals before they let them play on the high school softball team. They want to ban books, and decide what your kids can and can’t read.They want to bar the medical treatments that allow you to plan your family and have children on your own terms – things like egg freezing and IVF. They want to make you have your children young, and they want to stigmatize those of us women who pursue our own careers, interests and ambitions instead of popping out as many children as they deem appropriate.If you say no – if you resist their prescription for marriage, motherhood and perpetual feminine self-sacrifice – they want to let you know, in sneeringly condescending terms, that you’re “childless cat ladies”, that you’re not as good as them, that step-parents are not real parents, blended families are not real families, that women who don’t have children are disgusting, worthless and deserving of contempt. If you say no, they want to denigrate you in public, punish you financially, dilute your vote and lessen your citizenship.As the 2024 presidential election heats up following Trump’s selection of JD Vance as his running mate and Kamala Harris’s emergence as the new Democratic standard-bearer, it is becoming clear that much of the stakes of the November contest will revolve around questions of gender – and specifically, questions of family. And the view of the family that is emerging from the Republicans is a dark one indeed.Because the version of “family” that the Republicans are putting forward is one that can only look a very particular way. In their eyes, family is a compulsory relation of domination, an institution in which marriage and parenthood function to grant men near-total private control over women and children. Women, meanwhile, face a grim fate in the Republicans’ preferred vision of family: they are forced into motherhood, trapped into marriage, and punished for resistance.It’s not just that Vance, the VP pick and heir presumptive to the post-Trump Republican party, has made repeated, creepy remarks disparaging childless women and suggesting that adults without children should pay higher taxes and receive fewer votes. It’s that Vance’s obsessive, invasive and prurient investment in other people’s sexual and reproductive lives is the logical conclusion of the Republican party’s gender politics.Vance’s belief that women must be either compelled into childbirth or denied full citizenship is obviously of a piece with his party’s ambition to impose a national abortion ban. But it also flows from their opposition to no-fault divorce rights; their insistence that teens must not be able to access sexual, reproductive or transition-related healthcare without the approval of their parents; their rejection of IVF, diversity initiatives, and anti-discrimination protections; and their opposition to myriad other public policy initiatives that have helped advance women’s health, protect their safety, and allow them full access to work, education and the public sphere.The Republican plan, in short, is to sabotage or revoke any cultural or policy change that allows women to live as men’s equals. They instead aim to reshape policy, culture and the law to keep women in the home, dependent, without control over their own bodies and at the mercy of men.They aim, that is, to advance so-called “family values” in which birth is mandatory, marriage is inescapable, children are property rather than persons with rights of their own, and men are in charge. There’s a word for this dark vision of a world in which the private sphere is wholly controlled by husbands and fathers. That word is “patriarchy”.But the creepy and unsubtle patriarchal vision of gender and the family that is being advanced by the Trump-Vance Republican party may also present an opportunity for Harris and the Democrats to reclaim the mantle of “family”, and to redefine it for a better future. Rather than a compulsory, inescapable and unequal institution based on sexist domination, a “family” might instead be an alliance of equality, mutuality and care – one in which sovereign individuals can choose one another, and come together in an effort to love one another, respect one another, and help one another to thrive.These are, after all, the kinds of families that many Americans find themselves inhabiting: ones in which romantic partners might be gay or straight, married or not, but view themselves as equal partners; ones in which ties of blood, marriage, love, history and affinity all blend together in layers of connection and mutuality, ones in which children are wholly voluntary, chosen and loved, and in which women are sovereigns over their own bodies and lives, whose ambitions in the public world are neither impeded nor resented in the private one.These non-hierarchical, non-domineering, voluntary families can be encouraged through policy: through free, safe and legal abortion access, through free childcare, through paid family leave, affordable healthcare, high-quality care for seniors, insurance coverage for assisted reproductive technology, access to the full range of healthcare services for children and teens, and a thriving public school system. Such investments would help the sorts of families that most people want to build: ones that honor the dignity and worth of everyone in them.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

    • 113 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Bitcoin price hits six-week high after Trump backs cryptocurrency

      by

      Bitcoin has hit its highest level in more than six weeks after Donald Trump said at the weekend he would end the “persecution” of the crypto industry if he wins the US presidential election.The cryptocurrency’s price rose by more than 3% on Monday to peak at about $69,745, the highest since 12 June when the currency changed hands at more than $69,800.The increase comes after supportive comments from Trump at the Bitcoin 2024 convention in Nashville, Tennessee, where he said on Saturday he would make the US the world’s cryptocurrency leader and embrace a more pro-bitcoin stance than his rival, Kamala Harris.The former president said: “I pledge to the bitcoin community that the day I take the oath of office, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s anti-crypto crusade will be over … If we don’t embrace crypto and bitcoin technology, China will, other countries will. They’ll dominate, and we cannot let China dominate. They are making too much progress as it is.”He also said he would sack the chair of the US financial watchdog the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), on the first day of his presidency if he won the election. “On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler,” Trump said, to cheers of approval from the audience.Gensler is a noted sceptic about cryptocurrencies, despite aiding them in January by approving exchange-traded funds (ETFs) – a basket of assets that can be bought and sold like shares on an exchange – that track the price of bitcoin.The SEC chair said in a statement approving the ETFs that bitcoin was a “speculative, volatile” asset used for illegal activities including ransomware and terrorist financing. Since 2023 the SEC has launched more than 40 crypto-related enforcement actions.Speaking at the bitcoin convention, Trump said he would establish a crypto presidential advisory council and create a national “stockpile” of bitcoin using cryptocurrency the US government held that was largely seized in law enforcement actions.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Never sell your bitcoin,” Trump said. “If I am elected, it will be the policy of my administration, the United States of America, to keep 100% of all the bitcoin the US government currently holds or acquires into the future.”The Financial Times also reported on Saturday that Harris’s advisers had approached top crypto companies to try to “reset” the relationship between the Democratic party and the sector. Approaches had been made to the Coinbase crypto exchange, the stablecoin company Circle and the blockchain payments group Ripple Labs, the FT said. More