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      The Washington Post is a reminder of the dangers of billionaire ownership | Siva Vaidhyanathan

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      Last week the Washington Post refrained from endorsing a candidate in the presidential race for the first time in 36 years. The decision was reportedly ordered by Jeff Bezos, the Post’s owner and one of the richest men in the world. The Seattle billionaire, who owns Amazon, purchased the flailing newspaper in 2013 in a rare fit of civic duty.The blowback was immediate and substantial. Within 48 hours of the announcement as many as 200,000 paying readers cancelled their subscriptions to the already money-losing news organization, according to reporting by NPR.Such withholding of revenue is usually more a symbolic message than a real threat to the viability of a company. But for the Post, which has been teetering for decades, any loss in subscribers is threatening. Hundreds of good journalists who had no influence on Bezos’s decision remain unsure of the viability of their employer. Residents of the District of Columbia and much of Virginia and Maryland also rely on the Post for coverage of state and local issues, culture and sports. All of this is threatened by Bezos’s decision and the public uprising against it.Some angry citizens also cancelled their subscriptions to Amazon Prime, the service that provides free shipping for many Amazon products and access to video and music streaming.While a widespread Prime resignation would not damage the public sphere or the prospects for democracy and good government the way that hurting the Washington Post does, it’s still a futile gesture that probably will not alarm or injure Bezos in the slightest.That’s because Prime is a classic loss-leader feature: Amazon uses the service to crush competitors by offering cheaper goods and services while the company makes its money elsewhere. Prime has about 180 million members in the United States, so if a few thousand quit, Amazon would hardly notice and Bezos hardly care.Amazon and Bezos are far more powerful than most people realize. The company’s power is deep, broad and largely invisible. The books and dog toys we buy through Amazon remind us of its public face and original mission. But it’s not 2004 any more.Amazon is not a normal retail company or a normal company in any way; it’s a sprawling leviathan wrapped around the essential processes of major governments, commerce and culture of most of the world.Amazon’s major source of revenue and profit, Amazon Web Services (AWS), is the leading provider of computing and data services in the world, ahead of Microsoft and Alphabet. AWS hosts the sites and data of more than 7,500 governmental agencies and offices in the US alone, including those of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Reserve.Just about everything a 21st-century state or firm might want to do probably goes through Amazon and makes Bezos wealthier and more powerful in the process. All of this happened over the past 20 years as we enthusiastically chose convenience and mobility over all other human values. We clicked Bezos into power – and not by buying things through Amazon retail; we did it by choosing the internet again and again.In blocking the Washington Post endorsement, Bezos is not acting cowardly as much as slyly. Secure in his fortune and status regardless of the potential rise of fascism in the US, he has some more selfish concerns about the nature of the next administration.One potential Bezos-centric consequence of the election on 5 November is that Donald Trump will prevail over a bacchanal of greed and corruption, potentially opening federal contracts to all sorts of favored players and – more importantly – stifling investigations and prosecutions into firms and people Trump might favor.The other possible consequence is that a Kamala Harris administration would continue the aggressive and much-needed investigations into the ways internet companies like Amazon have restrained trade, concentrated wealth and solidified power by leveraging networks and scale.Bezos also founded and owns Blue Origin, a rocket and space technology firm that has many government contracts. Limiting the government’s regulatory oversight over space technology or contracting is in Bezos’s interest, which might explain why Blue Origin staff met with Trump around the same time as the Post announced its decision not to endorse. It’s also likely Bezos would like to muscle out Trump’s pal Elon Musk and his company, SpaceX, for what is to come.Given all this, it makes sense that Bezos, who is generally liberal and supports Democratic candidates, would try to limit how much Trump hates him (and Trump has long hated Bezos – a lot), if there is a small chance to curry favor with the once and future president. Perhaps Bezos figures his newspaper should not help Harris more than it already has by reporting the basic news.So there are many reasons to fear a Bezos-Trump rapprochement. Still, it does not make much sense to cancel a Post subscription or Prime membership. Neither would hurt Bezos at all.Most boycotts, especially when they are tiny, disorganized, ad-hoc, emotional and aimed at enormous, global companies, are mere expressions of self-righteousness. They have no significant influence on the world but they can make the boycotter feel a bit better for a few days. What’s worse, they often distract energy from real political action that might curb the excesses of the companies in question.Here is the problem: billionaires are mostly immune to consumer pressure. That’s how they became and remain billionaires.So how do we solve a problem like a billionaire? First, we must be blunt about the nature and scope of their power. It’s not a matter of describing their wealth, which flashes before us in numbers we can’t properly grasp or feel. We must describe their influence and how they control things in the world.Second, we must find ways to limit their wealth by taxing the various ways they accumulate and hide it.Third, we must be enthusiastic about breaking up big companies that do too many things in too many markets and thus crush or purchase potential competitors and insurgents. It’s not about prices. It’s about power.Most of all, we should do our best to elect leaders who are not beholden to billionaires, but actively seek to turn them back into millionaires.

      Siva Vaidhyanathan is a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and the author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy More

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      Giuliani’s book is silent on $150m award for defamation but noisy on election lies

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      In a new book, Rudy Giuliani claims his extensive legal problems and those of Donald Trump are the results of persecution by “a fascist regime” run by Kamala Harris and Joe Biden – all while avoiding mention of a $150m defamation award against him won by two Georgia elections workers and repeating the lies about electoral fraud which saw him lose law licenses in New York and Washington DC.Giuliani’s book also ignores the widely reported autocratic tendencies of Trump, which have triggered numerous warnings, including from former staffers, that he is a fascist in waiting, should he return to the White House.The New York mayor turned Trump lawyer even avoids mention of fascistic sympathies in his own family, specifically those harbored by his mother, whose own sister-in-law said she “liked Mussolini”, the dictator who ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943.Giuliani’s book, The Biden Crime Family: The Blueprint for their Prosecution, is released in the US on Tuesday. The book’s title betrays the reason for its delayed release – it is largely a propagandistic election-season attack on Biden, the president who stepped aside in July, amid concern that at 81 he was too old for a second term, ceding the Democratic nomination to Harris, his vice-president.Giuliani’s book is finally released a week from election day but even he may not have foreseen it landing amid explosive debate over whether Trump is a fascist himself.Mark Milley, formerly the chair of the joint chiefs of staff under Trump, and John Kelly, another retired general who was Trump’s second White House chief of staff, have said Trump deserves the label.Speaking to the reporter Bob Woodward, Milley said Trump was “fascist to the core”. Last week, Vice-President Harris said: “It is clear from John Kelly’s words that Donald Trump is someone who, I quote, ‘certainly falls into the general definition of fascists’, who, in fact, vowed to be a dictator on day one and vowed to use the military as his personal militia to carry out his personal and political vendettas.”On Sunday, outside a Madison Square Garden Trump event many observers compared to a Nazi rally at the same New York venue in 1939, Giuliani told reporters Trump was “the furthest from a fascist imaginable”.On the page, Giuliani’s case against Biden is undercut by omission of inconvenient details – as in the passage in which he complains of persecution by a “fascist regime”.“They … have sued me, sent me to bankruptcy court, and tried to force me to sell my homes,” Giuliani writes – not mentioning that such dire financial straits are the result of being ordered to pay around $150m for defaming Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman, the Georgia elections workers, while pushing Trump’s lie about voter fraud in the 2020 election. This week, Giuliani was ordered to give the women control of his New York apartment, his Mercedes-Benz, several luxury watches and other assets.Giuliani was disbarred in Washington DC and New York. Claiming such moves were politically motivated, he nonsensically claims: “I have never been disciplined by the bar association and my record is unblemished.” His legal troubles, he insists, are the result of being “but one” political opponent of Biden and Harris.“They’ve indicted and attempted to disbar legal friends and colleagues like John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark for their work on trying to correct the stolen election results,” Giuliani writes, of disgraced lawyers who also worked on Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.“Others, like [Trump advisers] Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, actually had to serve four months in federal prisons for misdemeanor of contempt of Congress – while their cases were on appeal!”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBannon, Trump’s former campaign chair and White House strategist, was released from prison in Connecticut on Tuesday. He provides a short introduction for Giuliani’s book.Giuliani also cites court cases involving “a Florida social media influencer … arrested by eight FBI and other law enforcement agents for the ‘crime’ of posting memes mocking Hillary Clinton supporters on Twitter” and a “75-year-old grandmother with a medical condition sentenced to jail for two years for protesting outside an abortion center”.“These are the actions of a fascist regime,” Giuliani writes, adding, “So is the lawfare leveled against President Donald J Trump”, in reference to 88 criminal charges, 34 having produced guilty verdicts regarding hush-money payments, the rest remaining outstanding as election day nears.Giuliani does admit in his book to having “some criminal issues in my family background” – namely his father’s 1930s conviction and prison time for robbery, an uncle’s work as a loan shark, and a cousin who “turned out to be head of an auto-theft ring and died in a shootout with the FBI”. Such ties are well known but tellingly, in light of his accusation of “fascist” behavior by Biden and Harris, Giuliani chooses not to mention another famous family detail: his mother’s liking for Mussolini.In 2000, the Village Voice published an examination of Giuliani’s family background by Wayne Barrett, the legendary New York investigative journalist. Entitled Thug Life, the extract from Barrett’s biography of the then New York mayor told the story of Giuliani’s criminal father, including his work as a mafia enforcer. But Barrett also described conversations around the dinner table during the second world war.“The fact that their homeland was an Axis country did not diminish Helen Giuliani’s sense of patriotism,” Barrett wrote of the future mayor’s mother. “‘Helen was a little sticking up for the Italians, a little on the Italian side,’ recalled Anna, Rudy Giuliani’s aunt.“‘She liked Mussolini and things like that.’” More

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      Hulk Hogan once endorsed Barack Obama. How did he become a big Maga mascot? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      It was less WWE, more WTF. On Sunday night, Terry Gene Bollea, better known as Hulk Hogan, strutted on stage at Madison Square Garden to speak at a Donald Trump rally. Wearing tiny yellow sunglasses that looked as if they’d been nicked off a toddler, Hogan attempted to rip his shirt off. It took a bit of struggling, but eventually the 71-year-old wrestling legend managed it.The high jinks continued: Hogan treated the crowd to a dance. Notably, Hogan’s dance moves are just like the ones Trump has shown off at numerous rallies. A lot of arm-pumping; kinda looks like they’re milking a cow. (That said, my own dancing looks like a penguin being caught in an earthquake, so I’m not judging.)“You know something, Trumpmaniacs?” Hogan said, after his jig was up. “I don’t see no stinking Nazis in here.” The wrestler was referencing the fact that the Trump event had drawn numerous comparisons, including from Tim Walz, to a Nazi rally held in 1939 at an earlier iteration of Madison Square Garden. Not an outrageous comparison, considering the 2024 rally was full of racism and nativist language, with former Trump aide Stephen Miller saying things such as: “America is for Americans and Americans only.” As for Hogan, while World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) once fired him for using the N-word, his rally speech wasn’t overtly racist. However, he did appear to make a disgusting oral sex joke about Kamala Harris.Hogan’s campy costumes and corny catchphrases may make him seem a bit of a joke, but he’s had a serious impact on the political landscape in recent years. Hogan may not have been able to see any “stinking Nazis” in Madison Square Garden, but powerful men with darkly authoritarian views sure seem to see a useful ally in him.Hogan was certainly instrumental in helping billionaire Peter Thiel kill the media organisation Gawker – a long and sordid saga that started in 2006, when Hogan had sex with the wife of his friend, a radio personality called Bubba the Love Sponge. Bubba filmed the encounter and, in 2012, the tapes got leaked (possibly by a rival DJ) to Gawker. They published the video with the headline: “Even for a minute, watching Hulk Hogan have sex in a canopy bed is not safe for work but watch it anyway”.Watching closely was Thiel, who had held a grudge against Gawker ever since it published a post with the headline: “Peter Thiel is totally gay, people” in 2007. A book about the lawsuit by Ryan Holiday claims that an acquaintance of Thiel, aware of this grudge, gave him the idea to take Gawker down in 2011. When the Hogan tape came out, Thiel had the perfect opportunity to exact revenge: he secretly bankrolled the wrestler’s lawsuit against the company. Because Thiel has unlimited funds, the lawsuit was dragged out to ensure Gawker hemorrhaged money. Which wasn’t necessarily great for Hogan, who had to make his private affairs very public. Things were even worse for Gawker, though, which was driven to bankruptcy.Gawker was a brilliant site, but it also did a bunch of indefensible things, outing someone and publishing a sex tape without their consent being prime examples. Nevertheless, an aggrieved billionaire suing a publication into oblivion set a chilling precedent. It ushered in a United States where, as Tom Scocca, a former Gawker writer, put it, “a billionaire can put a publication out of business”.Hogan, who once endorsed Barack Obama for president, clearly got a taste for hanging around vengeful billionaires after the lawsuit. He’s been a prominent fixture in the Trump campaign for the past few months and had a primetime speaking slot at the Republican national convention in July. Like every aggrieved rich guy in America, Hogan has also flirted with the idea of a political career: if Trump wins, there is a non-zero chance he might get some sort of official position.But while it may be notable that Hogan has got more Trumpy over the years, perhaps what’s most glaring here is how much Trump’s GOP has become like the WWE. It’s shed any pretence of respectability, morphing into a violent theatre of the absurd, full of caricatures and cheap gimmicks. Unlike wrestling however, the only people really getting hurt are the public. More

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      To defeat Trump, Harris must talk more about the economy | Robert Reich

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      I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling more anxious about the outcome of the upcoming election. I’m still nauseously optimistic, but the nausea is growing.I’m as skeptical of polls as any of you, but when all of them show the same thing – that Kamala Harris’s campaign stalled several weeks ago, yet Donald Trump’s continues to surge – it’s important to take the polls seriously.The US vice-president will give her closing message to the American people on Tuesday at a rally on the Ellipse on the Washington mall.Over the last several weeks she’s focused on a woman’s right over her body and the rights of all Americans to a democracy. Obviously, Trump threatens both.Tuesday night, though, she needs to respond forcefully to the one issue that continues to be highest on the minds of most Americans – the economy.She must tell Americans simply and clearly why they continue to have such a hard time despite all the economic indicators to the contrary. It’s because of the power of large corporations and a handful of wealthy individuals to siphon off most economic gains for themselves.Most Americans are outraged that they continue to struggle economically at the same time as billionaires are pulling in ever more wealth. Most know they’re paying too much for housing, gas, groceries and the medicines they need. They also know that a major cause is the market power of big corporations.They want someone who’ll stand up to big corporations and the politicians in Washington who serve them.They want a president who’ll be on their side. A president who will crack down on price-gouging, who will bust up the monopolies and restore competition, who will fight to cap prescription drug costs, who will get big money out of politics and stop the legalized bribery that rigs the market for the rich and who will make sure corporations pay their fair share and end tax breaks for billionaire crooks.A president who will put working families first – before big corporations and the wealthy.Harris needs to say she will be this president.Her policy proposals suggest this. She’s committed to strong antitrust enforcement – cracking down on mergers and acquisitions that give big food corporations the power to jack up food and grocery prices, prosecuting price-fixing and banning price gouging. She needs to remind voters of this.She also says she’ll raise taxes on the rich, provide $25,000 in down-payment assistance to help Americans buy their first home, restore the expanded child tax credit to $3,600 to help more than 100 million working Americans, and implement a new $6,000 tax cut to help families pay for the high costs of a child’s first year of life.All should be parts of her speech this Tuesday about why she will be the champion of working people.She wants to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, make stock buybacks more expensive and expand Medicare to cover home healthcare – paid for with savings from the expansion of Medicare price negotiations with drug manufacturers.She needs to frame all of this as a response to the power of big corporations and the wealthy – and say in no uncertain terms that she’s on the side of the people, not the powerful.If she fails to do this in her closing argument, Trump’s demagogic response will be the only one the public hears – that average working people are struggling because of undocumented workers and the “enemy within”, including Democrats, socialists, Marxists and the “deep state”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHarris should fit her message about democracy inside this economic message. If our democracy weren’t dominated by the rich and big corporations, fewer of the economy’s gains would be siphoned off to them. Average working people would have better pay, more secure jobs, and be able to afford homes, food, fuel, medicine, childcare and eldercare.A large portion of the public no longer thinks American democracy is working. According to a new New York Times/Siena College poll, only 45% believe our democracy does a good job representing ordinary people. An astounding 62% say the government is mostly working to benefit itself and elites rather than the common good.In her closing argument, Harris should commit herself to reversing this, so the government works for the common good.Harris started her campaign in July and early August by emphasizing these themes about the economy and democracy. But in more recent weeks, she’s focused on Trump’s threat to democracy. Her campaign seems to have decided that she can draw additional voters from moderate Republican suburban women upset by Trump’s role in fomenting the attack on the US Capitol.That’s why she’s been campaigning with Liz Cheney, and gathering Republican officials as supporters. And why she has chosen to give her closing message on the Ellipse – where Trump summoned his followers to march on the Capitol on 6 January 2021.But when she shifted gears to Trump’s attacks on democracy, Harris’s campaign stalled. I think that’s because Americans continue to focus on the economy and want an answer to why they continue to struggle economically.If Trump gives them an answer – although baseless and demagogic – but Harris does not, he may sail to victory on 5 November.Hence, in her closing message she must talk clearly and frankly about the misallocation of economic power in America – lodged with big corporations and the wealthy instead of average Americans – and her commitment to rectify this.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      ‘Biden has failed me’: at a Michigan soup kitchen, people are torn between Harris and Trump

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      People on the east side of Saginaw city are more used to seeing buildings come down than go up. Bulldozers have erased houses, schools, department stores and factories over recent years as jobs disappeared and the population plummeted.But builders will soon be at work in one corner of the Michigan city constructing a sprawling extension to Saginaw’s largest soup kitchen after demand soared through the Covid-19 pandemic and then as rampant inflation hit a community where many people live on the edge financially.The East Side Soup Kitchen now serves meals to more than 800 people a day, double the number provided during the pandemic, which itself was up on previous years. It also distributes food to children through local youth clubs and churches.Few of those who use of the kitchen think that whoever is elected as president next week will slow the demand in a city with a 35% poverty rate, but that does not mean they don’t think it will make a difference. And their votes, too, are up for grabs in a bellwether county that Joe Biden won by just 303 votes in 2020.On the day that Harris campaign canvassers visited the soup kitchen, Angelica Taybron was eating lunch with her three-month-old daughter, Tyonna, sleeping at her side. Taybron, who is unemployed, could not say enough good things about the kitchen.“They really help me out here with my baby. They helped with formula and Pampers when I need it. They help me provide for my daughter,” she said.Help, said Taybron, is what she’s looking for in a president and so she’s voting for Kamala Harris.View image in fullscreen“She’s gonna help the people that’s lower. Trump is for people that’s higher. Kamala is for the people that’s struggling,” she said.Taybron’s partner, Darshell Roberson, also relies on the food kitchen as she struggles to find work. She sees it differently.“I voted for Biden but I really feel like Biden has failed me. I trust Donald Trump. In the last election I didn’t vote for him. I was kind of scared of him a little bit, but once I really got to watch him and look at him I liked him,” she said.The soup kitchen’s director, Diane Keenan, said those who arrive for a hot meal each day, and cake for dessert, come from every walk of life. Sitting at the large round tables dotting the dining room are elderly people struggling to get by on small pensions and those driven into debt by medical bills alongside former prisoners rebuilding their lives, and the unhoused, some of them brought down by drug addiction.“Many are working but they’re working poor,” said Keenan. “They work but they just don’t make enough money to make ends meet with the cost of food, the cost of gas, rent, mortgage payment, insurance, that type of thing. We have a lot of senior citizens and elderly come through. They’re on a limited income and sometimes they have to choose, do I get my medicine or can I get some food?”The need is so great that earlier this month the state donated $1m to help fund an expansion to the soup kitchen with a larger dining hall and kitchen, freezers big enough for forklifts to drive into.In a city with one of the highest crime rates in the US, Keenan is trailed by two security guards as she walks around the outside of the building to describe the closure of a neighboring road to provide a covered area for people to pick up meals by car.The drive-through began when the dining hall closed during the pandemic. Keenan kept it going because she said there are people in need of food who are too embarrassed to come into the building or are not well enough to do so.Keenan described the kitchen is “felon-friendly”, helping to provide a fresh start for those who have been in prison.View image in fullscreenStanley Henderson served 30 years for a non-violent robbery. After his release in 2015, he worked at a steel mill known for employing former prisoners and then volunteered at the soup kitchen. A couple of years later, he was taken on as a worker and is now in charge of providing coffee and soft drinks.Henderson has watched demand for the soup kitchen rise as Saginaw’s factories closed and jobs were lost. He hasn’t seen a notable improvement in economic conditions under the US president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The minimum wage isn’t enough for people to sustain themselves through a whole month. We see people coming in when their money runs out for groceries,” he said.The vice-president is promising to make the economy work better for ordinary Americans if she’s elected. Henderson is sceptical.“I am hesitant to say that she will because I don’t know. I just don’t know whether there’s more jobs under a Republican or Democrats. I don’t know if the job environment is going to improve. It’s possible it will improve up under the Republicans. They may push employment harder than the Democrats,” he said.For all that, Henderson said there was “no question” that he will vote and that it was going to be “straight Democrat” because he believes the party does more to look after people living in poverty. He said his friends and neighbours were paying attention to the election in an area of the city with traditionally low turnout, and that he thinks most of them will vote.View image in fullscreenHenderson, who is Black, also thinks Harris’s race will bump up turnout in his part of the city, although not like for Barack Obama’s election.“She might encourage people to vote who don’t normally want to. I’d say about 5% more,” he said.But there are those who do not see the point in voting.Auralie Warren is retired and struggling financially after working at KFC for much of her life. Inflation has hit her limited income hard as she helps raise her grandchildren after her eldest daughter died of a brain tumor in February and her youngest daughter was diagnosed with stomach cancer.“It’s getting harder out there. Food prices are going up. [The soup kitchen] helps me because I’ve got a fixed income. So when I eat here it saves money on food that I can then spend looking after the grandkids,” she said.“I also come to mingle with people and then I get clothing for my grandkids. If you ask for something, like my daughter needed earmuffs because she has cancer and her ears get cold, they make sure to add them.”But Warren has never voted in her 76 years and has no plans to do so. Politics didn’t seem worth her time or effort.“Whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen. I figure, even if I go [and vote] it won’t make no difference. I mean, it’s shocking but I just never did. I got so busy, I just don’t bother myself, I guess,” she said. More

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      ‘I’ve lost friends’: in bitterly divided Georgia, can Democrats score another win?

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      Mary Holewinski lives in Carrollton, Georgia, home turf for the far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. But Holewinski is a Kamala Harris supporter and has a sign in her yard. It draws some nasty looks, she said. “I’ve lost neighbor friends.”It helps that Carrollton is a college town, and discussing politics is possible – to an extent. “I feel like the people I live around, you can sit down and have a conversation with them, and they are willing to listen … but not everybody. There are some people who don’t want to hear your side of it.”These tensions are ratcheting up, because for voters in Georgia, it can feel like the entire US election is on the line. The state went for Biden in 2020 by 11,779 votes, out of 5m ballots cast – the first time since 1992 that the state turned blue. Its 16 electoral college votes were a bulwark – psychological as well as practical – for Democrats, illustrating the nation’s rejection of Donald Trump, however slim.Georgia has personal significance for Trump, and his war on the 2020 election results. The former president still faces charges in an election interference case in Atlanta’s Fulton county, after he made what he described as a “perfect phone call” to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, asking him to “find” another 11,800 votes. A Georgia win would represent belated validation for the former president.Now the question is which Georgia will turn out in greater force this year: the Democratic-leaning Georgia represented by the burgeoning Atlanta suburbs, or the Georgia where conservatism holds sway in its smaller towns and rural regions. Polling suggests that Trump has a lead of one to two points, well within the margin of error.The election is already under way. About 7 million Georgians are registered to vote and about 3 million voters – more than 40% of the electorate – have already gone to the polls, setting early voting records each day.Both Harris and Trump may as well have leased apartments in Buckhead, an upscale part of Atlanta, for all the time they are spending in Georgia in the last-minute election push. Earlier this month, Trump rallied at a sports arena in the northern Atlanta suburb of Duluth, in the middle of one of the most diverse areas of the state. Harris appeared on Thursday with Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen.View image in fullscreenSuburban moderates in the Atlanta region turned on Trump in 2020, and he appears to have done little in the years since to win their favor. Much has been made of Republican hopes of targeting Black men – about 1 million of Georgia’s 7 million registered voters – as a potential swing bloc for votes. The difference between a Democrat winning 80% and 90% of their votes will probably be larger than the overall margin of victory.But Georgia is no longer a state defined by Black and white voters. Asian and Latino population growth has changed the political landscape in suburban Atlanta, which helped drive the Biden victory there in 2020. Turnout in that voting demographic has been a challenge for both parties.The politics of Georgia are a delicate dance of cooperation between Atlanta, which tends Democratic, and the rest of the state. More than half the state’s population lives in the metro area of Atlanta. Music by Atlanta’s hip-hop artists has long dominated the charts. Marvel films its movies on Atlanta’s streets. Dozens of Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in the Atlanta area, from Home Depot, UPS and Southern Company to mainstays Coca-Cola and Delta.

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      Outside Atlanta, Savannah and pockets of Black voters in south Georgia’s historic Black belt, Georgia is solidly conservative. The Republican governor, Brian Kemp, remains the most popular political figure in the state. Moderate liberals approve of how he handled Trump’s election interference claims. Even Maga Republicans grudgingly acknowledge that his resistance to pandemic closures and libertarian gun position matched their interests.Rural, conservative Georgia is more likely to be religiously fundamentalist, less diverse and occasionally reactionary. Georgia has a six-week abortion ban because even the business wing of the Republican party in Georgia, which is solidly in charge of the state’s government, crosses evangelicals on that issue at its peril.The party’s challenges are exemplified by Rabun county, in Georgia’s picturesque, tourist-friendly mountains on the border of North Carolina. Here, and elsewhere, it is attempting to heal the standing conflict between conventional conservative Republicans and the Maga insurgency on the right.Rabun county Republicans have hosted a range of events, from a traditional low-country boil to a firearm raffle and screenings of a Reagan biography at the last remaining drive-in, said Ed Henderson, secretary of the Rabun county Republican party. Local Republicans have established a detente between the Maga wing and traditional conservatives, he said.“We’re not imposing purity tests on candidates,” Henderson said. They also don’t view Democrats as an existential threat. “They’re not demons with horns on their head, or Satan worshippers. They’re the opposition.”People from traditionally Democratic areas began moving into Rabun county during the pandemic, attracted by its lower cost of living and extraordinary natural beauty. The area historically favors Republicans by about four to one.But in a close race, chipping away at that margin may make the difference, said Don Martin, chair of the Rabun county Democrats. “If we can get Republicans down to 70% here, we will win the state.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBoth parties now see early voting as key. Trump has reversed his skepticism of early voting and absentee ballots, a posture that may have made the difference between winning and losing in 2020. His repeated refrain on the road in Atlanta is for turnout to be “too big to rig”, falsely suggesting that Democrats stole the 2020 election and intend to steal this one.View image in fullscreenHistorically in Georgia, Democrats have been more likely to vote early than Republicans. But Trump has pointedly instructed his supporters to vote early in person in Georgia, and many appear to be doing just that. So far this year, there’s little difference in turnout between metro Atlanta counties with large Democratic voting majorities and Republican-heavy rural counties.Ralph Reed, director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and a venerable figure on the Christian political right, made a point of telling conservative voters to vote early at a recent faith town hall in Zebulon, about 90 minutes south of Atlanta.“We cannot and must not wait until election day to vote,” he said. “If you let them dominate the early vote for two or three weeks and run up a million- or a million-and-a-half-vote margin, then we are like a football team trying to score three touchdowns in the fourth quarter … If you want the texts and calls to stop, you need to vote, and you need to vote early.”And early concerns about Hurricane Helene disrupting the election appear to be unfounded so far. Turnout in areas affected by the devastating September storm is only slightly below that of the rest of the state.Gwendolyn Jordan lives in Grovestown, two and a half hours east of Atlanta and in the damage zone of Hurricane Helene. Two weeks ago, as early voting started, some residents were still without power, she said.Yet early turnout in her county is very slightly above the state average. Though Columbia county went almost two to one for Trump in 2020, Jordan is a Harris supporter. The role of the federal government and the competence of a presidential administration is no abstraction in the wake of a hurricane, she said.“I believe there’s going to be a big difference, because Kamala Harris is more for the people under the $400,000 income range, the people that really need the help,” Jordan said. “You know that’s who is struggling right now. We just had a hurricane that did a lot of damage to people.”In 2020, it took two weeks for Biden’s victory in Georgia to be confirmed. This year there was the prospect of other delays, after an effort by the Trump-aligned state board of elections to allow local elections officers the right to withhold certifications, to conduct open-ended investigations into poll irregularities and to mandate hand-counts of ballots on election night.But two superior court judges ruled the changes unconstitutional and the state’s superior court let the rulings stand pending appeal, which will not be heard until after the election.Georgia’s wounds from the fight over the election results in 2020 haven’t completely healed. And people are preparing themselves for a fresh round after voting concludes in November.“I could care less about whether you like [Trump] or not. It’s not a popularity contest,” said Justin Thompson, a retired air force engineer from Macon. “It’s what you got done. And he did get things done before the pandemic hit. And the only reason why he didn’t get re-elected was because the pandemic hit.” More

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      Kamala Harris to urge voters to ‘turn the page’ on era of Trump

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      With the presidential race deadlocked a week before election day, Kamala Harris will call on voters to “turn the page” on the Trump era, in remarks delivered from a park near the White House where the former president spoke before a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol in a last effort to overturn his 2020 loss.The Harris campaign has described the remarks as a major address that will underline the vice-president’s closing message, in a location she hopes will remind voters precisely why the electorate denied Trump a second term four years ago. She is expected to cast Trump as a divisive figure who will spend his term consumed by vengeance, leveraging the power of the presidency against his political enemies rather than in service of the American people.“Tomorrow, I will speak to Americans about the choice we face in this election—and all that is at stake for the future of this country that we love,” she wrote on X.Although the vice-president frames the stakes of the 2024 election as nothing less than the preservation of American democracy, her speech is anticipated to strike an optimistic and hopeful tone, standing in stark contrast to the dark, racist themes that animated Trump’s grievance-fueled rally at Madison Square Garden.In New York on Sunday, Trump repeated there that the gravest threat facing the US was the “enemy within”. In recent days, Harris has amplified warnings of her opponent’s lurch toward authoritarianism and open xenophobia. Her campaign is running ads highlighting John Kelly, a marine general and Trump’s former chief of staff, saying that the former president met the definition of a fascist. Harris has said she agrees.“Just imagine the Oval Office in three months,” Harris said, previewing her message at a rally in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on Saturday. “It is either Donald Trump in there stewing over his enemies’ list, or me, working for you, checking off my to-do list.”

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      In her remarks, Harris will attempt to balance the existential and the economic – focusing on the threat Trump poses to American institutions while weaving in the Democrat’s plans to bring down costs and build up the middle class. She is expected to cast Trump as a tool of the billionaire class who would eliminate what is left of abortion access and stand in the way of bipartisan compromise when it does not suit him politically.Polls consistently show the economy and the cost of living are the issues most important to voters this election. Protecting democracy tends to be a higher priority for Democrats and voters planning to support Harris.In the final stretch of the campaign, Harris has emphasized the breadth of her coalition, especially her endorsements from a slew of former Trump administration officials and conservative Republicans such as Liz Cheney and her father, the former vice-president, Dick Cheney.Trump has sought to rewrite the history of 6 January, the culmination of his attempt to cling to power that resulted in the first occupation of the US Capitol since British forces set it on fire during the war of 1812. Trump recently declared the attack a “day of love” and said he would pardon the 6 January rioters – whom he has called “patriots” and “hostages” – if he is elected president.Hundreds of supporters have been convicted and imprisoned for their conduct at the Capitol, while federal prosecutors have accused Trump of coordinating an effort to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. Trump maintains that he played no role in stoking the violence that unfolded, and still claims baselessly that the 2020 election was stolen from him.Harris’s campaign has sought to lay out the monumental stakes of the election while also harnessing the joy that powered the vice-president’s unexpected ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket.In an abbreviated 100-day campaign that Harris inherited from Biden after he stepped aside in July, the Democratic nominee has unified her party, raised more than a billion dollars, blanketed the airwaves and blitzed the battleground states. And yet the race remains a dead heat nationally and in the seven swing states that will determine who serves as the 47th president of the United States.After her speech, Harris will return to the campaign trail, where she will keep a frenetic pace until election day. More

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      Pennsylvania: anger among Puerto Ricans in key swing state after racist remarks

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      On Sunday evening, the Philadelphia council member Quetcy Lozada was attending a campaign event with Vice-President Kamala Harris at a local restaurant, as the Democratic presidential candidate unveiled a new economic proposal for Puerto Rico.Lozada is of Puerto Rican descent and represents the seventh city council district in Philadelphia, made up of over 50% Latino, predominantly Puerto Rican, residents.As Lozada left the campaign event, her phone began blowing up. Contacts began sending her texts with the video of racist remarks by a comedian, during a Trump rally in New York.“I got in the car, I looked at the video, and I had to play it multiple times in order to make sure that I was hearing what I was actually hearing,” Lozada said in an interview. “I was absolutely frustrated, I was angry – but I was not surprised.”As the Harris campaign was announcing her policy proposals for Puerto Rico, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe was opening for a Trump campaign rally in New York. Hinchcliffe, during his introduction, made racist and disparaging remarks about Puerto Ricans.“There’s a lot going on. I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” said Hinchcliffe, a comedian and host of the popular podcast and stand up comedy show Kill Tony.The racist comments spread like wildfire, leading to anger and indignation in Pennsylvania, one of the most important battleground states in the US election which many experts think is crucial to any attempt to win the White House. There are over 472,000 Puerto Ricans in the state of Pennsylvania, according to the US census bureau.A Puerto Rican voter, Yemele Ayala, who was also at the Harris campaign event in Philadelphia, found Hinchcliffe’s comments disturbing.“We should take this at face value – people’s behavior does tell the truth about themselves,” Ayala said. “And this is not the first time that our Puerto Rican community feels disrespected.”As Ayala, a Harris supporter, watched the video of the racist remarks, her first thoughts were: “We still have more work to do.”The backlash against the racist comments has led to Democratic party leaders to denounce the Trump campaign, seizing the opportunity to mobilize voters among Latino communities. On Monday morning, Lozada joined the Harris campaign in a press conference, denouncing the racist comments.The Guardian spoke with Puerto Rican community leaders and voters, who have expressed anger at the racism and who hope will motivate people to vote for Harris in the crucial state.Lozada said the racist comments were representative of the Trump campaign’s outlook on immigrant communities “Today, the Puerto Ricans are the topic of conversation. Not long ago, it was Venezuelans, it was Mexicans – it’s immigrants in general.”View image in fullscreenDuring the Trump rally, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Tim Walz, and New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez live-streamed their reaction to the racist comments.“Who is that jackwad?” Walz asked, then adding: “There are hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans across, in battleground states, that we need to send them a message: you’ve gotta vote.”In response, the comedian, Hinchcliffe, published a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, saying that the Democratic party has “no sense of humor”.“I love Puerto Rico and vacation there,” the comedian added. “I made fun of everyone … watch the whole set. I’m a comedian Tim … might be time to change your tampon.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Trump campaign, on their end, attempted to distance itself from Hinchcliffe’s comments. “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” a Trump campaign adviser said in a statement to Fox News. Other Republicans also attempted to distance themselves from racist remarks, including the Florida senator Rick Scott.Puerto Ricans on the island, despite being US citizens, are not eligible to vote. However, those based in US states are able to vote.After the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico became a US territory. In 1917, Puerto Ricans became US citizens. But because of the island’s status, Puerto Ricans on the island do not pay federal income tax and do not have political representation in Congress, aside from a non-voting representative.In 2006, a major recession hit the island. The Puerto Rican government borrowed so much money to combat the economic problems that it led to a tremendous debt crisis. In 2016, Congress passed the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, which established a financial oversight board known as “La Junta”, in order to manage the island’s budget to pay back Puerto Rico’s creditors. The financial oversight board has put in place austerity and privatization programs to incentivize investors to flock to Puerto Rico.On Sunday, the Harris campaign announced a new economic plan for Puerto Rico. If elected, Harris promised, will push forward an “Opportunity Economy” for the island.“Working with the private sector, the Puerto Rican government, municipalities, and other stakeholders, they will fight to strengthen the energy grid, make Puerto Rico a hub for industries of the future, and uplift the island’s role as a vibrant economic and cultural center,” the Harris campaign said in a fact sheet published on the campaign’s website.During the Trump administration, events in Puerto Rico placed the island in further turmoil. In 2017, a catastrophic hurricane struck the island, leading to deaths and tremendous devastation in Puerto Rico. After Hurricane Maria, Trump considered the idea of selling Puerto Rico. Later, a report found that the Trump administration delayed over $20bn in hurricane relief aid to the island following the hurricane. And during a visit to Puerto Rico, Trump faced backlash when he tossed paper towels at a crowd in need of supplies.“Giving this person an opportunity to lead our country could be disastrous,” Lozada said. “At the end of the day, they have just helped us – they have helped the Democratic party for where we will be on Nov 5, with this last incident.”Ayala, the Puerto Rican voter , agreed. The racist remarks from Sunday night, Ayala said, underestimated “the power we have, in numbers, in this country.“America and the current state of this country has been built on the sweat, blood and shoulders of our community,” Ayala added. “We’re not taking that lightly.” More