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      To win, Harris should talk more about working-class needs and less about Trump | Dustin Guastella

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      The 2024 campaign has entered the final stretch and, as polls tighten, it seems Kamala Harris plans to lean into attacking Donald Trump as a threat to democracy.Over the past week the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, the New York Times and even the conservative National Review have all reported or commented on the messaging pivot. In a newly unveiled official campaign ad, a disembodied voice warns gravely that a second Trump term “would be worse. There would be no one to stop his worst instincts. No guard rails.” At a recent rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, Harris reminded her supporters of Project 2025, the “detailed and dangerous plan” that she believes an “increasingly unstable and unhinged” Trump will follow to cement “unchecked power”. She sounded the alarm about the dire threat Trump poses to “your fundamental freedoms” and how in his second term he would be “essentially immune” from oversight.This is hair-raising stuff. And the campaign thinks that menacing warnings like these will motivate some urgency to march to the polls for Harris. The only problem is that voters, especially working-class voters, seem uniquely uninspired by the appeal.The Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP) recently tested a variety of political messages on voters in Pennsylvania, a key battleground for both campaigns, to determine what kind of rhetoric is working to nudge blue-collar voters toward Harris. In collaboration with the polling firm YouGov, we polled a representative sample of 1,000 eligible voters in Pennsylvania between 24 September and 2 October 2024. We asked respondents to evaluate different political messages that they might hear from Harris and Trump, and to score them on a scale of favorability.In line with our past research, we found that economically focused messages and messages that employed a populist narrative fared best relative to Trump-style messages about Biden’s competence, immigration, corrupt elites, critical race theory, inflation, election integrity and tariffs. No surprise there. Meanwhile, Harris’s messages on abortion and immigration fared worse than any of the economic or populist messages we tested.Yet no message was as unpopular as the one we call the “democratic threat” message.Much like Harris’s recent rhetoric, this message called on voters to “defend our freedom and our democracy” against a would-be dictator in the form of Trump. It named Trump as “a criminal” and “a convicted felon” and warned of his plans to punish his political enemies. Of the seven messages we tested, each relating to a major theme of the Harris campaign, the “democratic threat” message polled dead last.It was the least popular message relative to the average support for Trump’s messages. And it was the least popular message among the working-class constituencies Harris and the Democrats need most.Among blue-collar voters, a group that leans Republican, the democratic threat message was a whopping 14.4 points underwater relative to the average support for Trump’s messages. And among more liberal-leaning service and clerical workers, it was also the least popular message, finishing only 1.6 percentage points ahead of the Trump average. Even among professionals, the most liberal of the bunch and the group that liked the message the best, the message barely outperformed Trump’s messages.The exact opposite is true for the “strong populist” message we tested. This message, which combined progressive economic policy suggestions with a strong condemnation of “billionaires”, “big corporations” and the “politicians in Washington who serve them”, tested best with blue-collar workers, service and clerical workers and professionals.If we break down the results by party we find much the same story. Republicans – who didn’t prefer any of Harris’s messages over Trump’s messages – preferred the strong populist message the most. And they overwhelmingly rejected the democratic threat message, on average preferring Trump’s messages over this by over 75 points. Among independents – an imperfect proxy for nonpartisan voters – the strong populist message was best received, while the democratic threat message was least favored. Only Democrats strongly preferred the democratic threat message, and even then it was among their least favorite.All of this suggests that the messaging pivot is a big mistake.Why voters aren’t responding to messages like these is anyone’s guess, though the fable of the boy who cried wolf comes to mind. Trump was already president. And while Democrats warned about the danger he posed to democracy, we did actually have an election to get rid of him. Remember, the moral of the fable isn’t that, in the end, there wasn’t a wolf. It’s that no one believed the boy.Moreover, the distaste for the democratic threat message among working people, and the total obliviousness to that distaste among campaign officials, is evidence itself of the huge disconnect between Harris and the working-class voters she desperately needs to win. Worse, every ad or speech spent hectoring about the Trumpian threat is one less opportunity for Harris to focus on her popular economic policies; one less opportunity to lean into a populist “people v plutocrats” narrative that actually does resonate with the working class.If Harris loses, it’ll be because the campaign and the candidate represent a party that is now fundamentally alien to many working people – a party that has given up on mobilizing working people around shared class frustrations and aspirations. A party incapable of communicating a simple, direct, progressive economic policy agenda. A party so beholden to a contradictory mix of interests that, in the effort to appease everyone and offend no one, top strategists have rolled out a vague, unpopular and uninspiring pitch seemingly designed to help them replay the results of the 2016 election.Ironically, if Democrats are keen to defend democracy they would do well to stop talking about it. Instead, they should try to persuade voters on an economic vision that seeks to end offshoring and mass layoffs, revitalize manufacturing, cap prescription drug prices and put working families first.In other words, they should sound less like Democrats and more like populists.

      Dustin Guastella is a research associate at the Center for Working-Class Politics and the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623 More

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      Kamala Harris needs to win non-college educated white voters fast. Here’s how | Joan C Williams

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      Kamala Harris is doing a lot of things right that recent Democratic campaigns got wrong. She took a chance on Tim Waltz – coach, solider, snow-shoveling-helper – because she hoped to build bridges to the non-college grads who have abandoned Democrats in large numbers.Nearly 60% of Bill Clinton’s supporters were white people without degrees; only 27% of Joe Biden’s were. Non-college white people are the largest voting bloc in the country, so if Democrats lose them overwhelmingly, they need the immense support and turnout among people of color to win. Instead, Democrats have lost ground among non-white voters. Their advantage among Latinos has fallen from 39 points in 2016 to 19 points today; that same New York Times/Sienapoll found the vice-president down 12 points among African Americans compared with Biden in 2020.Much of the erosion is among non-college grads of color. Democrats’ support has fallen particularly sharply among Black voters without college degrees and is eight points lower among non-college-educated Latinos than among college grads. Some Black and Latino working-class voters, particularly men, increasingly are voting like the white working class.To win back (enough) of these voters, the Harris campaign is using anti-elitist rhetoric that has been shown to appeal to working-class voters. This is a big change. Republicans have owned anti-elitist rhetoric in recent decades, using it to redirect anti-elitist anger away from economic elites towards cultural elites – the “Brahmin Left”, as Thomas Piketty calls us (I’m one of them).In 2020, only 20% of congressional TV ads by Democratic candidates running in competitive districts used anti-elitist rhetoric, but Walz does so all the time: “Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, JD [Vance] studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a bestseller trashing that community.” Harris reminds voters that she won $20m for California homeowners ripped off by banks during the Great Recession.This isn’t just rhetoric. For 30 years, Democrats combined vague praise of the “middle class” with neoliberal policies that embraced free trade, with little attention to its consequences for blue-collar jobs in the US. Biden ended that: Democrats finally recognized that middle-status Americans don’t care about the increases in GDP if they don’t benefit from the resulting economic growth. Gone is the unquestioned faith in unfettered markets we saw from Clinton through Barack Obama; hence Harris’s proposal to lower grocery prices by prohibiting “price gouging” – policy (such as restraints on trade) free-marketers love to hate.The Harris campaign understands that class conflicts aren’t only about economics. Culture wars work for Republicans because class is expressed through cultural differences, and Democrats un-self-consciously send out signals that non-college grads hear as elitist. Patriotism is a good example. Being American is an important part of the identity of 79% of Americans with high school degrees or less, but only 43% of college-educated progressive activists. Non-elites are proud of being Americans for the same reason elites aren’t: everyone stresses the highest-status categories they belong to. That’s why elites stress class: as members of a globalized elite, they rise above nationhood. That’s also why non-elites cherish being American: it’s one of the few high-status categories they inhabit.So it’s an olive branch across class divides when Harris talks about “the awesome responsibility that comes with greatest privilege on earth; the privilege and pride of being American” to crowds chanting “USA, USA”. Like Harris’s Waltz pick, her aim is to forge a cultural connection with the white and Black non-college grads in Georgia and the midwest and the white and Latino non-college grads in purple Sunbelt states such as Arizona and Nevada. Only 46% of progressive activists would choose to live in the US if they could live anywhere in the world. But 79% of Latinos would. Latinos don’t inevitably endorse the cultural dispositions of the Brahmin Left, in part because 79% of Latinos aren’t college grads.The Harris campaign has been careful, too, about issues of style. Many commentators have complained that Harris is light on detailed policies, not recognizing that this, too, is a class outreach strategy. “Too often,” Stacey Abrams warned in 2021, “Democrats [turn] a legitimate message into an unclear or overstuffed manifesto.” Non-college grads hear messages such as Elizabeth Warren’s “I have a plan for that” as aimed at college grads, not at them.Harris is doing so many things right … and yet the election’s stubbornly tied. Does that mean it’s a fool’s errand for Democrats to attempt to build bridges to non-college voters? It is not a fool’s errand, but it is an uphill battle due to a cultural dynamic that threatens to swamp what a single campaign can do alone.Trump’s superpower is his ability to channel the hurt and fury of Americans (especially men) mourning the loss of the American dream: Americans are now 40 points less likely to earn more than their parents than they were a generation ago, with declines especially marked in the midwest. Trump doesn’t offer real solutions to their economic woes. What he offers instead is honor.He does this by drawing the Brahmin Left into openly insulting the intelligence and morals of his voters, whom Trump then defends, telling them: “I am your voice.” Bill Clinton warned against this at the Democratic national convention: “I urge you not to demean [Trump voters], but not to pretend you don’t disagree with them if you do. Treat them with respect – just the way you’d like them to treat you.”Clinton knows a thing or two about how Democrats can reach non-college grads and his approach is also backed by science. An experiment by Robb Willer found that political arguments framed to appeal to the moral values of those targeted for persuasion were more effective than those that weren’t – and that liberals were 2.4 times more likely than conservatives to fail to use such arguments. Too many are caught in an upper-middle-class bubble.Within this bubble, “disdain for the less educated is the last acceptable prejudice,” to quote philosopher Michael Sandel. A study out of Europe found that college grads showed more bias against the less educated than against any other group. Blue-state cultural elites supposedly attuned to social inequality openly traffic in stereotypes of less educated people as ignorant, irrational and worthy of contempt. “Trump’s cultists … are beneath contempt and deserve to be demeaned,” Richard Kavesh wrote of New York in the New York Times.“Yes, there are those supporters who have suffered addiction and hardship, but that this might logically lead them to support a criminal and potential dictator who gives no reason for a rational person to believe he would serve their interests is simply a bridge too far … [They are] just plain ignorant,” wrote Robert Millsap of California. “I assert that we must clearly call these people out for what they are; selfish, racist bigots like the man they support,” wrote David S Schwartz, also of New York. And it’s not just in the media; I hear these sentiments all the time in my social justice warrior circles in San Francisco. Trump’s team knows how to use this stuff against us, folks.Democrats’ fate depends on their ability to win (enough) non-college-educated voters in swing states. This isn’t how to do it. Trump bonds with non-college grads through rage; Democrats need to win them with respect – but to do that, they need to actually respect them.Harris can’t do this alone. Her supporters need to stop handing Trump a loaded gun.

      Joan C Williams is Sullivan Professor and the current director of the Equality Action Center at UC Law San Francisco and the author of the 2017 book White Working Class. Her next book, OUTCLASSED: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back, will be released in May 2025 More

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      US presidential election briefing: Harris courts Republicans with Liz Cheney as Trump says he was ‘saved’ by God

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      Kamala Harris continued to court conservative voters and disaffected Republicans as she was joined on the campaign trail by Liz Cheney. Cheney, a former Republican congressperson and abortion rights opponent, condemned Republican-imposed bans on the procedure as she appeared with the Democratic presidential nominee at three events in battleground states.“I’m pro-life and I have been very troubled, deeply troubled by what I have watched happen in so many states since Dobbs,” said the daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney.Donald Trump, meanwhile, visited hurricane-damaged North Carolina and spoke at a faith leaders meeting, where he told Christian voters to “stand up and save [their] country”.With only 15 days to go until election day, the candidates are hammering home their areas of comparative advantage. A new poll found Trump may have lost his edge among voters when it comes to handling the economy, while Harris is viewed more favourably overall.Here’s what else happened on Monday:Kamala Harris election updates

      Harris started the day cheering the White House announcement of a push to allow women with private health insurance to receive birth control without a prescription under the Affordable Care Act. “Today, our Administration is proposing the largest expansion of contraception coverage in more than a decade,” Harris said in a statement. Joe Biden signalled the move aimed to pressure congressional Republicans ahead of 5 November, saying in a statement: “Republican elected officials have made clear they want to ban or restrict birth control … vice-president Harris and I are resolute in our commitment to expanding access to quality, affordable contraception.”

      Harris then visited three battleground states alongside longtime opponent of abortion rights Liz Cheney, speaking in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Cheney, an outspoken Republican critic of Trump, condemned members of her party for enforcing abortion bans and urged conservatives to support Harris.

      Tim Walz defended the Democratic campaign’s collaboration with Republicans, saying many conservatives want to “move off the Maga stuff.” Appearing on The Daily Show, Walz said Harris’ endorsements from Liz Cheney and former vice-president Dick Cheney “give permission to those folks who want to find a reason to do the right thing”. Earlier, he spoke about meeting voters who are searching for reasons to not vote for Donald Trump, adding: “We need to give them that.”

      Walz also appeared on daytime talkshow The View, where he said Elon Musk’s daily $1m voter giveaway was a sign Trump’s ticket had “no plan” while Trump’s comments about deploying the national guard against political enemies showed he would bend the country’s “constitutional guardrails”.

      Biden shouted out Harris while honoring winners at an arts and humanities medal ceremony, telling the crowd female medallists were “proving a woman can do anything a man can do, and then some – that includes being president of the United States of America”.
      Donald Trump election updates

      Trump spent the day in North Carolina, first visiting the city of Asheville to survey the damage Hurricane Helene brought last month. He doubled down on debunked claims about the federal government’s hurricane recovery efforts and promoted baseless conspiracy theories about immigration. Trump has falsely accused the White House of deliberately diverting assistance away from Republican areas after the storm ravaged the region and killed about 100 people.

      Trump also held a rally in Greenville, before attending a faith leaders meeting in Concord, alongside his son Eric and Dr Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon and former US housing secretary. At the Concord event, the former president leaned into religious messaging. “God saved me for a purpose,” he said of his assassination attempt, later adding: “I’m here tonight to deliver a simple message to Christians across America. It’s time to stand up and save your country.”

      The Central Park Five sued Trump for defamation after he falsely said during the presidential debate that they had pleaded guilty to a brutal rape 35 years ago, despite the fact that they had their convictions overturned.

      Key rightwing legal groups tied to Trump and his allies have banked millions of dollars from conservative foundations and filed multiple lawsuits challenging voting rules in swing states.
      Elsewhere on the campaign trail

      Jill Biden acknowledged on Monday that her husband made “the right call” by stepping down from his run for re-election.

      A Republican county supervisor in Arizona who refused to certify the 2022 midterm election has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour.

      The politics writer Olivia Nuzzi and New York magazine have parted ways after she was placed on leave following the disclosure that she had engaged in a “personal” relationship with Robert F Kennedy Jr.

      A Pennsylvania man was charged with threatening to kill an employee of a state political party who had been recruiting people to monitor polls on 5 November, according to court documents made public on Monday.
      Read more about the 2024 US election:

      Presidential poll tracker

      Harris and Trump policies

      What to know about early voting More

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      Harris and Cheney talk economy, women’s health and Trump in Michigan campaign event – US elections live

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      Maria Shriver asks Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney if they ever imagined they would be campaigning together. Harris says she has long worked with Republicans, and given the threat Donald Trump poses, she is not surprised to be standing with the former Republican congresswoman:
      What is at stake in this election is so fundamental for us as Americans … Do we take seriously the importance of a president who obeys the oath to be loyal to the constitution of the United States? Do we prioritize a president … who cares about the rule of law?
      Cheney says: “Everyone who watched January 6th knows what Donald Trump is willing to do.” She adds:
      I could have just said I’m going to do everything I can to work against Donald Trump, and there are a lot of Republicans who have said that … I have decided, and I am very proud, and I’m honored to have made the decision to endorse Vice-President Harris … As a mother, I want my children to know that there is someone sitting in the Oval Office that they can look up to, someone who can be a role model.
      Shriver asks Cheney if she was afraid to endorse Harris, knowing the backlash she’d face. Cheney shares a message to Republicans who want to support the Democratic ticket, but are afraid: “You can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody … Vote him out.”Donald Trump repeated a litany of falsehoods and conspiracy theories about Hurricane Helene and the federal government’s response while campaigning in North Carolina today.The former president falsely suggested, once again, that federal money meant for hurricane relief was “spent … on illegal migrants”. There is no basis for the claim that disaster funding was reallocated to services related to immigration. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) is part of the Department of Homeland Security, which also oversees the major US immigration agencies. But money allocated for a program to help migrants is separate and unrelated to disaster response funds.Trump also falsely implied that the Democrats were spending money on undocumented people so that they could “vote in the election”, reiterating his frequently cited baseless claim about election fraud.He also claimed Fema’s money is “all gone”. But this is false, CNN noted, as the federal agency told the network last week that its disaster relief fund had roughly $8.5bn remaining.More here:As Kamala Harris’s Michigan rally with Liz Cheney comes to a close, moderator Maria Shriver asks the vice president how she copes with the stress of the race and what her message is to voters who are struggling with anxiety over the election.Harris says, “I wake up in the middle of the night usually these days … but I work out every morning. I think that’s really important [for] mind, body and spirit … I try to eat well. I love my family, and I make sure that I talk to the kids and my husband everyday … My family grounds me in every way.”The vice president adds:
      We cannot despair … Every individual has the power to make a decision about what this will be… so let’s not feel powerless. I get the overwhelming nature of this all makes us feel powerless … That’s not our character as American people. We are not one to be defeated. We rise to a moment.”
      Liz Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman now campaigning with Kamala Harris in Michigan, outlines Trump’s threats on foreign policy:
      He heaps praise on the world’s most evil people, while he attacks with venom his political opponents here at home … If you look at where the Republican party is today, there’s been a really dangerous embrace of isolationism, a dangerous embrace of tyrants …
      Don’t think that Congress can stop him … all he has to do is what he’s doing and say, I won’t fulfill our Nato treaty obligations, and Nato begins to unravel.
      Liz Cheney, campaigning with Kamala Harris in Michigan, criticizes commentators who assert that the vice-president isn’t ready to be president:
      She is supremely qualified to be president of the United States. There sometimes are some men who suggest that she’s not, but if you look at her qualifications, there’s no question that she’s somebody that I know I can count on, who will put the good of this country first.
      Cheney also emphasizes her conservative credentials while explaining her support for Harris: “The very first campaign I ever volunteered in was for President Gerald Ford … and ever since then, I have been voting for Republicans. I’ve never voted for a Democrat.”Maria Shriver asks Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney if they ever imagined they would be campaigning together. Harris says she has long worked with Republicans, and given the threat Donald Trump poses, she is not surprised to be standing with the former Republican congresswoman:
      What is at stake in this election is so fundamental for us as Americans … Do we take seriously the importance of a president who obeys the oath to be loyal to the constitution of the United States? Do we prioritize a president … who cares about the rule of law?
      Cheney says: “Everyone who watched January 6th knows what Donald Trump is willing to do.” She adds:
      I could have just said I’m going to do everything I can to work against Donald Trump, and there are a lot of Republicans who have said that … I have decided, and I am very proud, and I’m honored to have made the decision to endorse Vice-President Harris … As a mother, I want my children to know that there is someone sitting in the Oval Office that they can look up to, someone who can be a role model.
      Shriver asks Cheney if she was afraid to endorse Harris, knowing the backlash she’d face. Cheney shares a message to Republicans who want to support the Democratic ticket, but are afraid: “You can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody … Vote him out.”Maria Shriver, former first lady of California, has taken the stage at Kamala Harris’s campaign event in Royal Oak, Michigan, with Liz Cheney.Shriver starts off by making a pitch for bipartisanship, saying: “I served as a Democratic first lady in a Republican administration in California. So I get this bipartisan thing. I’ve seen it up close. And now I’m a proud independent … People of both parties used to get along really well.”Kamala Harris will soon make another appearance with Liz Cheney at a campaign event in Royal Oak, Michigan.Earlier in the day, the vice-president and former conservative congresswoman made their pitch in Pennsylvania, geared toward Republican voters. Cheney said:
      I’m a conservative, and I know that the most conservative of all conservative principles is being faithful to the constitution. And you have to choose in this race between someone who has been faithful to the constitution, who will be faithful, and Donald Trump, who is not just us predicting how he will act. We watched what he did after the last election.
      Trump then went on to insinuate that he had been told he was a better president than George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.He was harping on the border and the alleged ills of undocumented people, before going on to say that the border patrol had endorsed him. That’s not quite true – the government agency has not endorsed him, but its union, the Border Patrol Council has. Undeterred, Trump went on:
      They’re great. They endorsed your favorite president. They didn’t only endorse me, saying I’m the greatest president there’s ever been … What about George Washington? No, you’re better. What about Lincoln? What about Abraham Lincoln? No, you’re better, they said, I’m tougher on the border than Abraham Lincoln.
      The former president appeared to try to hit back at claims that, at the age of 78, he is “cognitively impaired”.But Trump raised more questions than he answered by jumbling his words.The moment came as he told the crowd in North Carolina, in a somewhat confusing anecdote, that he was talking to someone from the state on the phone, but was then distracted by watching one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets land.He told the person on the phone to wait while he watched the rocket, then forgot he was on the phone. “I forgot he was on the phone because, and now they, all these idiots back there, will say he’s cognitively impaired because he put he’s cognitively impaired,” Trump said, apparently referring to reporters in attendance.“You know, I do this stuff, five, six, seven times a day for 52 days without a break,” he said, by way of explanation for his misstatements. He appeared to then lose his train of thought:
      I’ll tell you what they are, really not all of them, not all of them. I’d say about 92% couple of good ones. That’s a lot of cameras going on. There are a couple of good ones back there. Now it is crazy in the crazy what they do, and the level of meanness.
      Trump is now onstage in Greenville, North Carolina, where he’s been whipping up the crowd with his usual attacks on Kamala Harris.Earlier in the day, he took note of Harris’s campaigning alongside Liz Cheney. On Truth Social, Trump implied that Arab voters – significant communities of which live in Michigan, a battleground state – are unlikely to look kindly on the vice-president associating with the daughter of Dick Cheney, who, as vice-president under George W Bush, was an architect of the US invasion of Iraq:Arab voters are indeed a source of concern for Democrats, though mostly over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Here’s more on that, from the Guardian’s Stephen Starr:Donald Trump is scheduled to soon take the stage in North Carolina, which hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 2008 but where polls have indicated Kamala Harris may have a fighting chance this year.Trump earlier in the day visited western parts of the state damaged by Hurricane Helene, and is now rallying in Greenville, on North Carolina’s eastern side. He was introduced by adviser Stephen Miller, who was the architect of the hardline immigration policies Trump allowed during his presidency.“For eight long years, Donald Trump has been fighting for us in the arena. What he has endured, what he has been through on this journey,” Miller said. “They came after him, they came after his family, they came after his children, they came after his businesses, they came after his freedom, and they came after his life, and he’s still standing strong. He is still standing tall. And with your help, North Carolina, Donald J Trump is going to save the United States of America.”The former president then invited Adam Smith, a former Green Beret who has helped relief efforts in the Asheville area since Hurricane Helene devastated the area just over three weeks ago, to speak.At the podium, Smith thanked Trump for coming to the area.“The biggest fear that western North Carolina is sitting on right now, at least in the communities we’ve talked to, is being forgotten,” Smith said.“To have you here and have an opportunity to have this conversation at a national level, will keep western North Carolina on the map, and not leave the communities holding the bag on the back end of this, so we’re very grateful that you’ve shown up,” Smith said to the former president.Trump continued his remarks by accusing the federal government of leaving North Carolinians “helpless and abandoned” after Hurricane Helene. “In the wake of this horrible storm, many Americans in this region felt helpless and abandoned and left behind by their government, and yet, in North Carolina’s hour of desperation, the American people answered the call much more so than your federal government, unfortunately,” Trump said.“Citizens poured into western North Carolina from all over the country, bringing food, water, fuel, medical aid, even helicopters.”“Nothing is more inspiring than to see the American spirit triumph over adversity with the most selfless acts of generosity and love” he added.Donald Trump held a press conference in western North Carolina, where he surveyed the damage wrought by Hurricane Helene and attacked the federal government’s recovery efforts.“Driving up here you see the kind of destruction, actually incredible” he said. “The power of nature, nothing you can do about it but you got to get a little bit better crew in to do a better job than has been done by the White House, because it’s not good, not good.”“I’m here today in western North Carolina to express a simple message to the incredible people of the state, I’m with you and the American people are with you all the way” Trump said. “We are going to continue to be with you, we will see what happens with the election and on January 20th I think you are going to have a new crew coming in to do it properly and help you in a proper manner.”Trump also addressed those who had lost family members and loved ones to the storm. “To everyone who has lost a loved one … we ask God to give you comfort and peace,” he said.“It’s been a terrible ordeal and this area was hit about as hard as anyone has ever seen….the communities were ravaged and destroyed, we are praying for you and we will not forget about you.”Trump’s repeated criticisms of the federal response to Hurricane Helene comes as the director of Fema condemned the former president and his supporters for spreading misinformation about the hurricane and the response by the federal disaster agency, which, the director said, has hampered the government’s ability to get people the help they need.Donald Trump has long drawn criticism before over his statements about the Central Park Five, a group of men who were exonerated after being wrongly convicted for a crime and who earlier today sued him.After the jogger’s assault, he spoke out about the case and took out a full-page ad in several New York newspapers calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty, Reuters reports.Trump in 2019 stood by his prior comments about the Central Park Five, and declined to apologize.The Guardian adds that at the debate with Kamala Harris last month, Trump said of the men: “They pled guilty…They killed a person, ultimately.”The five then-boys, who were tried as adults, actually pleaded not guilty. And the victim, Trisha Meili, although almost killed, was found unconscious in the park, survived and testified in court.Yusef Salaam watched the debate in Philadelphia, afterwards telling the Washington Post in an interview: “Here we are right now, full-circle moment, being able to be participants in this great democracy on the cusp of everything really powerfully supporting Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. I’m ready for it.”The five Black and Hispanic teenagers who were wrongfully convicted for the 1989 rape of a white jogger in New York’s Central Park have sued Donald Trump for defamation over statements he made at last month’s US presidential debate, Reuters reported.Known widely as the Central Park Five, the defendants spent between five and 13 years in prison before they were cleared in 2002 based on new DNA evidence and the confession of another person.Trump falsely said at the September 10 debate with presidential rival Kamala Harris that the Central Park Five had killed a person and pleaded guilty.The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Philadelphia by Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown and Korey Wise, called Trump’s statements “demonstrably false.”A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign called the case “just another frivolous, election interference lawsuit, filed by desperate left-wing activists.”A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Shanin Specter, said in a statement that Trump’s remarks “cast them in a harmful false light and intentionally inflicted emotional distress on them.” The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified monetary damages for reputational and emotional harms as well as punitive damages.Kamala Harris is on tour of the three Great Lakes swing states with Liz Cheney, a Republican former congresswoman who broke with her party over their support for Donald Trump. In their first event together in a Philadelphia suburb, Harris warned voters to take Trump seriously, while Cheney said she came around to backing the Democrats because she does not think the former president will stand up for American allies. They will appear together in metro Detroit and then Milwaukee before the day is through. Meanwhile, Tim Walz was on daytime talk staple “The View”, where he said that Trump’s comments about deploying the national guard against his political enemies was a sign that he planned to bend the country’s “constitutional guardrails”.Here’s what else has happened today so far:

      The White House proposed an expansion of contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) that will allow women to access birth control without a prescription.

      Harris has scheduled an interview with NBC News from her home at the Naval Observatory in Washington DC on Tuesday.

      A new poll found Trump may have lost his edge among voters when it comes to handling the economy, while Harris is viewed more favorably overall.
      Kamala Harris’s push for the support of Republican voters won her the support of the daughter of Gerald Ford, the late Republican former president who served from 1974 to 1977.Susan Ford Bales’s endorsement is perhaps most consequential in Michigan, the ex-president’s home and also a swing state coveted by both candidates. The Detroit News has Bales’s statement:As they wrapped up their joint event in Pennsylvania, Liz Cheney was asked to give something of a closing argument to her fellow Republicans for why they should support Kamala Harris.The former congresswoman said:
      I think that in this election, and especially here in Pennsylvania, we have the opportunity to tell the whole world who we are, and we have the chance to say, you know, we’re going to reject cruelty. We’re going to reject the kind of vile vitriol that we’ve seen from Donald Trump. We’re going to reject the misogyny from Donald Trump and JD Vance. And we have the chance in this race to elect somebody who, you know is going to defend the rule of law.
      You know, vice-president Harris is going to defend our constitution. We have the chance to remind people that we are a good country. We are a good and honorable people. We are a great nation and in this race, we have the opportunity to vote for and support somebody you can count on. We’re not always going to agree, but I know vice-president Harris will always do what she believes is right for this country. She has a sincere heart, and that’s why I’m honored to be here.
      Thus concluded the first of three joint events the pair will do today. They now fly to Michigan for an event in the Detroit suburbs, followed by another in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.All three states are part of the Democrats’ “Blue Wall” of swing states along the Great Lakes where voters traditionally back the party, but where polls show Harris is locked in a tight race against Donald Trump. More

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      Olivia Nuzzi leaves New York magazine after revelation of RFK Jr relationship

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      The politics writer Olivia Nuzzi and New York magazine have parted ways just over a month after she was placed on leave following the disclosure that she had engaged in a “personal” relationship with Robert F Kennedy Jr.The departure was announced in a statement from New York magazine on Monday afternoon.In the statement, the publication noted that the law firm they hired to review Nuzzi’s work during her reporting on the 2024 campaign, which included a lengthy profile of Kennedy, found “no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias” in her coverage.“Nevertheless”, the statement continued, “the magazine and Nuzzi agreed that the best course forward is to part ways. Nuzzi is a uniquely talented writer and we have been proud to publish her work over her nearly eight years as our Washington Correspondent.“We wish her the best,” it added.Shortly after the magazine released the statement, an attorney for Nuzzi also issued a statement saying that the reporter was “gratified though not surprised that two different investigations have determined that her reporting on the 2024 campaign was sound and that she did nothing wrong.“For nearly eight years, she consistently produced critically celebrated and hugely popular journalism in her capacity as the Washington Correspondent for New York Magazine,” the statement reads, adding that Nuzzi is “grateful for the editors, fact checkers, and artists with whom she worked and to the readers who have supported her with their time, subscriptions, and engagement. She looks forward to the next chapter of her career.”The news that Nuzzi and New York magazine are parting ways comes a little over a month after the magazine placed Nuzzi on leave and released their initial statement.In that statement the publication announced that Nuzzi had admitted to the magazine’s editors that she had engaged in a personal relationship with Kennedy while reporting on the campaign, which, the publication said, was a “violation of the magazine’s standards around conflicts of interest and disclosures.“Had the magazine been aware of this relationship, she would not have continued to cover the presidential campaign,” the magazine said on 19 September.At the time, the magazine said that an internal review of her published work had found no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias, and announced that Nuzzi was currently on leave. The magazine added that it was conducting a more thorough third-party review.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We regret this violation of our readers’ trust,” the statement read.In September, Nuzzi also acknowledged the relationship in a statement and said that earlier in 2024, the nature of some communication between herself and a former reporting subject “turned personal” adding that during that time, she did not directly report on the subject nor use them as a source.She continued: “The relationship was never physical but should have been disclosed to prevent the appearance of a conflict. I
      deeply regret not doing so immediately and apologize to those I’ve disappointed, especially my colleagues at New York.”It later came out that the source was RFK Jr, who Nuzzi had written a lengthy profile on while he was running his high-profile Independent campaign for president, before he suspended his run and endorsed Donald Trump in August.A spokesperson for RFK Jr told CNN last month that Kennedy “only met Olivia Nuzzi once in his life for an interview she requested, which yielded a hit piece”. More

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      Liz Cheney urges conservatives to back Kamala Harris over abortion

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      Liz Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman and longtime opponent of abortion rights, condemned Republican-imposed bans on the procedure and urged conservatives on Monday to support Kamala Harris for president.Cheney was speaking at the first of three joint events with Harris in the suburbs of three swing states aimed at prising moderate Republican voters away from party nominee Donald Trump. She has become the Democrat’s most prominent conservative surrogate and is rumoured to be under consideration for a seat in a potential Harris cabinet.At the first event in Malvern, a Philadelphia suburb, against a blue backdrop that said “a new way forward” and red one that said “country over party”, Cheney suggested that Republican-led states have overreached in restricting abortion since the supreme court’s 2022 Dobbs decision ended it as a constitutional right.“I think there are many of us around the country who have been pro-life, but who have watched what’s going on in our states since the Dobbs decision and have watched state legislatures put in place laws that are resulting in women not getting the care they need,” said Cheney, a former Wyoming congresswoman and daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney.“I think this is not an issue that we’re seeing break down across party lines, but I think we’re seeing people come together to say: what has happened to women, when women are facing situations where they can’t get the care they need, where in places like Texas, for example, the attorney general is talking about suing, is suing, to get access to women’s medical records … that’s not sustainable for us as a country and it has to change.”Harris nodded repeatedly and applauded in response. The audience also clapped warmly.It was a striking attempt to build a permission structure for conservatives to back Harris, who has made reproductive freedom a centrepiece of her campaign and vowed to restore the protections of Roe v Wade if authorised by Congress. Cheney, by contrast, has an A rating from Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, a group that grades members of Congress based on their anti-abortion credentials.Monday’s three events in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin were being held in counties won by Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary. Haley, a former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the United Nations, had sought to neutralise abortion as an election issue by supporting states’ autonomy and rejecting calls for a national ban.Cheney has vocally opposed Trump since the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, and was vice-chair of a congressional committee investigating the attack. Her recent endorsement of Harris fuelled speculation that she could play a part in a future Harris administration.

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      Earlier this month, appearing on the popular daytime talkshow The View, Harris said she would differ from Joe Biden by including a Republican in her cabinet. She was asked by radio host Howard Stern if that might be Cheney but avoided a direct answer. Appointing Cheney would carry considerable political risks given her hawkish foreign policy and her father’s role in instigating the Iraq war.Trump has frequently tried to paint Harris, who is from deep blue California, as a radical liberal but she struck a moderate tone during her appearance with Cheney, who lost her House seat after she co-chaired a congressional committee that investigated the January 6 attack.She promised to “invite good ideas from wherever they come” and “cut red tape,” and she said “there should be a healthy two party system” in the country. “We need to be able to have these good intense debates about issues that are grounded in fact,” she said.“Imagine!” Cheney responded.“Let’s start there!” Harris said as the audience clapped. “Can you believe that’s an applause line?”View image in fullscreenVoters in Chester county, which includes Malvern, narrowly voted for Republican Mitt Romney in 2012 but the county was won by Hillary Clinton by nine percentage points in 2016 and Biden by 17 points in 2020.The discussion was chaired by Sarah Longwell, who runs the group Republican Voters Against Trump, and lasted 40 minutes including two questions from the audience.Harris said Trump “has been using the power of the presidency to demean and to divide us” and “people are exhausted with that”. The vice-president added: “People around the world are watching. And sometimes I do fret a bit about whether we as Americans truly understand how important we are to the world.”Cheney praised Harris, saying: “I’m a conservative. I know that the most conservative of all conservative principles is being faithful to the constitution. You have to choose in this race between someone who has been faithful to the constitution, who will be faithful, and Donald Trump.”Cheney said she was concerned about allowing a “totally erratic, completely unstable” Trump to run foreign policy. “Our adversaries know that they can play Donald Trump,” she said. “And we cannot afford to take that risk.”But some observers questioned the wisdom of campaigning with Cheney in Michigan, which has the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the country, given her hawkish foreign policy and her father’s role in instigating the Iraq war. Many such voters are now wavering or abstaining because of the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the crisis in Gaza.Trump weighed in on Monday, writing on his Truth Social platform: “Arab Voters are very upset that Comrade Kamala Harris, the Worst Vice President in the History of the United States and a Low IQ individual, is campaigning with ‘dumb as a rock’ War Hawk, Liz Cheney, who, like her father, the man that pushed Bush to ridiculously go to War in the Middle East, also wants to go to War with every Muslim Country known to mankind.”More than a hundred former Republican officeholders and officials joined Harris last week in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, not far from where general George Washington led hundreds of troops across the Delaware River to a major victory in the revolutionary war. At a rally there, Cheney told Republican voters that the patriotic choice was to vote for Democrats. More

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      Walz says Musk’s $1m voter giveaway reflects that Trump has ‘no plan’

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      Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor and Democratic vice-presidential candidate, said Elon Musk’s plan to give away $1m a day in support of Donald Trump is a reflection of a ticket with “no plan”.Musk offered registered voters in swing states a chance to enter a $1m a day giveaway if they sign his Super Pac’s petitions, “in favor of free speech and the right to bear arms”. Experts have questioned whether the plan is legal or, in effect, buying votes.“Well, I think that’s what you do when you have no plan for the public,” said Walz, when asked about the giveaway on ABC’s The View, a daytime talkshow.“When you have no economic plan that’s going to benefit the middle class, when you have no plan to protect reproductive rights, when you have no plan to address climate change and produce American energy – you go to these types of tactics,” said Walz.As to whether Musk’s strategy was legal, Walz said: “I’ll let the lawyers decide.”This is the second time the Democratic presidential ticket has appeared on The View talkshow in recent weeks. Kamala Harris announced a new “Medicare at home” plan on the show, which she said would help seniors pay for home health aides without driving themselves into destitution.Walz, known to be chatty in such interviews, also quipped that “one nice thing” about Trump is that “he will not be president again.” He advised JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, to “just go in and order the chocolate doughnut”, referring to an awkward campaign stop.This is one of several recent TV outings for Walz, including an upcoming appearance on The Daily Show and recent appearances on Fox News Sunday. The governor appeared ebullient on The View – akin to the television appearances that helped land him the job as second on the Harris ticket.In the abbreviated time that Harris had to pick a running mate, and in which Walz has had to introduce himself to the country, he briefly took a more conservative approach to campaigning. Most notably, Walz was panned during the vice-presidential debate.Walz appeared more confident on Monday, telling voters watching The View: “Choose a future where you’re the center of it not Donald Trump.”

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