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      Walz asks America to ‘stand up’ for democracy – as it happened

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      Here are some of the key lines from the debate between the Democratic and Republican vice-presidential candidates, Tim Walz and JD Vance:On the Middle East:

      Both candidates were asked whether they would support a pre-emptive strike by Israel on Iran. Walz said: “Israel’s ability to defend itself is absolutely fundamental” after the Hamas attacks on 7 October. He said Trump’s own national security advisers have said it’s dangerous for Trump to be in charge. “When our allies see Donald Trump turn towards Vladimir Putin, turn towards North Korea, when we start to see that type of fickleness about holding the coalitions together – we will stay committed,” Walz said.

      Vance said it was up to Israel to decide what it needs to do. He said Trump “consistently made the world more secure”.
      On the climate crisis:

      Vance said he and Trump “support clean air, clean water” when asked what responsibility the Trump administration would have to reduce the impact of climate change. “If we actually care about getting cleaner air and cleaner water, the best thing to do is to double down and invest in American workers and the American people,” he said. He did not answer when asked whether he agreed with Trump that climate change is a hoax.

      Walz praised the Biden administration for the Inflation Reduction Act, and criticized Trump for calling climate change a “hoax”. “My farmers know climate change is real,” he said.
      On immigration:

      Walz criticized Trump for derailing a legislative package that he described as “the fairest and the toughest bill on immigration that this nation’s seen”.

      Walz accused Vance of having “vilified a large number of people who worked legally in the community of Springfield”, adding that those immigrants had been “dehumanized”. “This is what happens when you don’t want to solve it,” he said. “You demonize it.”

      Vance said the people he was most worried about in Springfield, Ohio, “are the American citizens who have had their lives destroyed by Kamala Harris’s open border”.

      At one point, CBS News muted the microphones for both candidates as the moderators tried to turn the debate to the economy.
      On the economy:

      Walz said presidents should seek advice from advisers around them. “If you’re going to be president, you don’t have all the answers. Donald Trump believes he does,” he said. “My pro-tip is this: if you need heart surgery, listen to the people at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, not Donald Trump.”
      On abortion:

      Vance said he “never supported a national ban”. He said that Ohio had passed an amendment protecting the right to an abortion, and that it taught him that his Republican party “have got to do a better job of winning back people’s trust”.

      Walz rejected Trump’s claim that he supports abortion in the ninth month of pregnancy, saying the accusation “wasn’t true”. He said that under Project 2025, there would a “registry of pregnancies” and that it would “get more difficult, if not impossible, to get contraception and limit access, if not eliminate access, to infertility treatments”.
      On mass shootings:

      Walz said his 17-year-old son had witnessed a shooting at a community center. He referred to his record in Minnesota, where there are enhanced background checks and red-flag laws in place. “We understand that the second amendment is there, but our first responsibility is to our kids to figure this out,” he said.

      Vance said that the country needs to buckle down on border security, and strengthen safety in schools. “We have to make the doors lock better, we have to make the doors stronger,” he said.
      On the candidates’ previous comments:

      Walz stumbled when asked about his misleading claims that he made about being in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen protests. “I’ve not been perfect, and I’m a knucklehead at times,” he initially said. When pushed for an answer, he conceded that he “misspoke”.

      Vance said he was “wrong about Donald Trump” when asked about his previous criticisms of his running mate. He accused the media of spreading false stories about Trump that he believed, and said he supports Trump because he “delivered for the American people”.
      On healthcare:

      Vance, when asked how a Trump administration would protect Americans with pre-existing conditions who were able to secure health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act, said there were laws and regulations on the books that should be kept in place. He said the functionality of the health insurance marketplace also needed to be improved.
      On paid family leave:

      Walz did not give a definitive answer when asked how long employers should be required to pay workers for parental leave. He said paid family leave is beneficial for families because it “gets the child off to a better start”.

      Vance said the nation should “have a family care model that makes choice possible”. He said the issue was important to him because he is married to a “beautiful woman” and “incredible mother” who is also a “very brilliant corporate litigator”.
      On the January 6 attack on the Capitol:

      Walz said democracy is “bigger than winning an election”, and that a “president’s words matter”. He said the January 6 attack “was a threat to our democracy in a way that we have not seen” and that it manifested itself because of Trump’s inability to accept that he had lost the 2020 election.

      Vance claimed that Trump wanted protesters to remain peaceful on January 6. He said he believes the biggest threat to democracy is “the threat of censorship”.

      Walz directly asked Vance whether Trump lost the 2020 election. Vance declined to answer, instead saying that he was “focused on the future”. “That is a damning non-answer,” Walz said.
      Closing remarks:

      Walz said he was as “surprised as anybody” at the broad coalition of support that Harris had built, including progressives like Bernie Sanders and Republicans like Dick Cheney. He said Vance had made it clear that he would stand with Trump’s agenda, adding that Harris is “bringing us a politics of joy”.

      Vance said that Harris’s polices were to blame for key needs like heat, housing and food being harder to afford. Harris has proposed a lot of things that she wants to accomplish on day one, Vance said, but he noted that Harris has been vice-president for three-and-a-half years and that “day one was 1,400 days ago”.
      With that, this blog is closing. Thank you for following along. Here is our full story on the vice-presidential debate:As the Middle East spiraled towards full-scale war, the US vice presidential debate focused largely on domestic issues, like school shootings and the cost of housing, healthcare, and childcare.The CBS News debate moderators largely declined to fact-check JD Vance or Tim Walz, asking them instead to respond to each other.Here are some key takeaways from the debate between the Republican senator from Ohio who wrote a bestselling memoir about poverty in Appalachia and the Democratic football-coach-turned-governor of Minnesota:The topics of abortion and the likelihood of Trump accepting this year’s result if he loses led to the most interesting moments during the debate.Walz demanded that Vance agree to abide by the results of the election and commit to a peaceful transfer of power. And he asked Vance whether Trump lost the 2020 election.“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance replied.“That is a damning non-answer,” Walz shot back.Walz noted that Vance was only on the stage because Trump cut ties with his former vice-president, Mike Pence, for certifying the results of the last election.Vance did not answer the question about whether Trump, who continues to falsely claim the 2020 election was marred by widespread fraud, lost four years ago. The exchange served as a reminder of one of Trump’s biggest vulnerabilities heading into the election, one that the Harris campaign will continue to highlight in the coming weeks.Reuters has this interesting bit of analysis of Vance’s performance tonight, writing that the Vance on stage was the one the Trump campaign had in mind when Trump selected him as his number two in July.” The idea then was that the 40-year-old first-term senator and best-selling author of “Hillbilly Elegy” could serve as an articulate and rational voice for Trump’s Make American Great Again movement as well as perhaps one day become a generational torchbearer.But instead Vance had a rocky rollout on the campaign trail, becoming the target of online scorn and mockery while most often serving as Trump’s attack dog. The headlines were mostly negative, and his approval ratings suffered.On Tuesday, Vance largely kept his message positive, while taking every opportunity to advocate for Trump.Vance seemed to be succeeding at a vice-presidential running mate’s primary task: Making the candidate at the top of the ticket more palatable to the viewers at home.It was clear as the evening progressed, that it was this, rather than trying to smear Walz, that was the goal of the Trump campaign in this debate.More from the CNN poll – and as expected – the debate did not shift the polled voters’ views much. Just 1% of them changed their minds:Here is what the Guardian’s panellists made of the debate:When Harris was considering Walz as her vice-presidential candidate, he reportedly told her that he was a bad debater, and at the outset Vance, wearing a sharp blue suit, a pink tie, plenty of make-up and hair gel, looked the more polished performer. Walz, a former high school teacher and football coach, cut a more bustling figure in a loose black suit.Vance, the Ohio senator who has been a regular on rightwing news channels for years, was polished from the off, comfortably dodging a question about whether he believes the climate crisis is a “hoax” to lament how much money has been spent on solar panels.Walz rose to the vice-presidential nomination, in part, through his confident appearances on cable news – it was from there that his famous “weird” characterization of Vance and Trump was born – but appeared initially nervous, and did not reprise his searing critique of his opponents.Both men also frequently referenced their upbringing in the midwest.Tim Walz and JD Vance took to the stage on Tuesday night for a vice-presidential debate that served up less drama than September’s presidential debate, but offered revealing differences on abortion, school shootings, and immigration.Three weeks ago Kamala Harris and Donald Trump had endured a contentious hour-and-a-half, with an emotional Trump being goaded into ranting about the number of people who attend his rallies and declaring the vice-president to be a “Marxist”, before reportedly threatening to sue one of the debate moderators. Harris enjoyed a brief polling uptick from that performance.But on Tuesday, Walz and Vance largely avoided attacks on each other, and instead concentrated their fire on each other’s running mates. It was a more policy-driven discussion than that of their running mates’, but one with a few gaffes that might overshadow some of the substance in coming days.In a key exchange over abortion, Walz, the governor of Minnesota, followed Harris’s lead in using personal stories.Trump “brags about how great it was that he put the judges in and overturned Roe v Wade”, Walz said. He noted the case of Amanda Zurawski, who was denied an abortion in Texas despite serious health complications during pregnancy – Zurawski is now part of a group of women suing the state of Texas – and a girl in Kentucky who as a child was raped by her stepfather and became pregnant.“If you don’t know [women like this], you soon will. Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies,” Walz said, which Vance refuted.Both candidates were seen more favourably after the debate than before it, according to CNN:
      Following the debate, 59% of debate watchers said they had a favorable view of Walz, with just 22% viewing him unfavorably – an improvement from his already positive numbers among the same voters pre-debate (46% favorable, 32% unfavorable).
      Debate watchers came away with roughly net neutral views of Vance following the debate: 41% rated him favorably and 44% unfavorably. That’s also an improvement from their image of Vance pre-debate, when his ratings among this group were deeply underwater (30% favorable, 52% unfavorable).
      That is the closest of the last five VP debates, according to CNN snap polls:CNN’s snap poll has viewers split over who won the debate – but Vance narrowly wins.The poll of 574 registered voters saw 51% say that Vance won the debate, with 49% choosing Walz.Polled before the debate, 54% of voters thought Walz was likelier to win.CNN adds this caveat: “The poll’s results reflect opinions of the debate only among those voters who tuned in and aren’t representative of the views of the full voting public. Debate watchers in the poll were 3 points likelier to be Democratic-aligned than Republican-aligned, making for an audience that’s about 5 percentage points more Democratic-leaning than all registered voters nationally.” More

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      in US Politics

      Vance or Walz: who won the VP debate? Our panel responds | Panelists

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      Moustafa Bayoumi: ‘A civil encounter with no overwhelming winner’The first question the vice-presidential candidates were asked in their debate was, frankly speaking, bonkers: “Would you support or oppose a pre-emptive strike by Israel on Iran?” The vast majority of the globe is waiting for the United States to exercise real global leadership and bring, at a bare minimum, temporary calm to the eastern Mediterranean region. But CBS apparently felt it wiser to ask the candidates whether they supported escalating the war now or escalating the war later.The candidates slung arrows of blame at each other before settling on essentially the same answer. And that was basically the leitmotif of this rather odd debate: we, two diametrically opposed candidates standing before you, actually agree on a lot, including how completely different we are.This debate will likely be recorded as a mostly civil encounter with no overwhelming winner. Over the course of the contest, Republican JD Vance was as slick as a CEO’s lawyer, emitting almost snake-oil salesman energy, while Democrat Tim Walz was predictably folksy, exuding an overly talkative teddy bear vibe. But on substance, both men tended to agree on a number of points ranging from the need to fortify our border crossings (at the expense of legitimate asylum seekers) to promoting affordable housing to protecting the Affordable Care Act.Significant differences nevertheless did emerge, the most important of which was about reproductive health. While Walz spoke powerfully about the need to protect the right to abortion, Vance found ways to quietly blame immigrants for gun violence, border insecurity and the housing shortage.But the debate will be forgotten by next week, if only because the world is currently a powder keg, and no one seems ready to challenge these two candidates about finding a real path to peace, justice and security for all.

      Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist
      Ben Davis: ‘Vance made extremist Trumpism sound moderate and reasonable’Vice-presidential debates rarely affect the election or move voters. Even by those standards, this one was a non-event. Vance and Walz seemed to be competing with each other regarding how friendly and agreeable they could be, and each avoided taking shots where they could have obviously landed. Vance was nimble, if smarmy, showing his background as a debater and a lawyer. Walz was nervous at the start but settled in once the questions got to areas he focuses on as governor, like housing and agriculture.One of the most notable aspects of the debate was the framing by the moderators, accepted dutifully by the candidates. It was taken as a given that Israel’s wars on Gaza and Lebanon and its expansionist ambitions are morally just. It was taken as a given that the United States should have a bellicose foreign policy in the Middle East. It was taken as a given that immigrants are hurting the economy and spreading crime. The moderators even framed a question around the notion that building new housing could harm the economy. That these ideas are considered unbiased and non-partisan is an extremely bleak sign for the country’s near future.The second notable thing is what Vance’s positioning and rhetoric says about the Republican party. Vance saw his primary task as shaping Trump’s often nonsensical and entirely personally motivated ideas into a coherent, explicable political program. But Vance went beyond explaining away Trump’s comments, into introducing Trumpism as an full-scale ideology, and not just one explicated by the Claremont Institute and the Heritage Foundation and aimed at the dark corners of the internet.This project – nationalism, protectionism, welfare chauvinism and a sort of communitarian-sounding social conservatism – floundered two years ago with candidates like Blake Masters or Vance himself. Vance was able to maneuver it to sound almost moderate and reasonable. There was no talk of birth rates or skull shapes. Even his outrageous defense of Trump’s attempted coup was couched in soft, compromise-oriented language. This is insidious, because in nearly every answer he gave, the core premise was still that white Americans are under attack by a nebulous other.

      Ben Davis works in political data in Washington DC
      Lloyd Green: ‘90 minutes that won’t move the needle’Walz and Vance clashed for 90 forgettable minutes. The debate likely won’t move the needle but may leave Kamala Harris and Donald Trump both feeling vindicated in their selection of running mates. Vance channeled a smarter and more disciplined version of his would-be boss. He whitewashed January 6 and the absence of Mike Pence from the stage. Once upon a time, the senator from Ohio compared his running mate to Hitler – not anymore.Walz was clearest and most impassioned when it came to abortion and healthcare. On that score, he wisely framed abortion as a matter of personal autonomy, one between a woman and her physician. Vance couldn’t run from the supreme court’s decision in Dobbs. On election day, the end of Roe v Wade may cost the Republican party a win.When it came to healthcare, Trump’s line on “concepts of a plan” won’t die. Walz also reminded Vance that he once dinged the 45th president as unsuitable for office. Regardless, Vance’s thumbnail biography likely appealed to blue-collar voters without four-year degrees. He also spun his mother’s history of substance addiction into a story of upward arc and personal redemption. Betting markets pegged Vance as the winner of the evening.In the end, Walz and Vance delivered little material for late-night talk shows or SNL to spoof. Their debate was more about policies than personas. The race is a dead heat with about 35 days to go.

      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
      Arwa Mahdawi: ‘Trump and Vance may have the last laugh’The night started off with a uranium-enriched bang, with the CBS moderators asking the candidates whether they would commit to a pre-emptive strike by Israel on Iran. As an opening question, it speaks volumes about how war-mongering even “reasonable” sections of American society are. Why not ask how the candidates would de-escalate the crisis? Why jump straight into baiting both candidates into endorsing a catastrophic nuclear war?Vance and Walz both did their best to avoid answering this question and rattled off their favorite talking points instead; Vance started waxing lyrical about his mother, who had a drug addiction. Trump, meanwhile, started going nuclear on Truth Social. “Both young ladies have been extremely biased Anchors!” Trump wrote on his social network two minutes into the debate.While Trump was being his usual unhinged and sexist self, Vance was being surprisingly normal. On superficial optics alone, he was the clear winner of the night. There has (quite rightly) been a lot of emphasis on Vance’s weird and incel-like viewpoints. Amid all that, one can forget how slick and polished he can be – and he certainly reminded us of that in this debate.Walz, on the other hand? Oh, dear. The media training the governor of Minnesota obviously had managed to train all the midwestern charm out of him. This wasn’t the lovable and empathetic high school coach we have come to know. Walz got better later into the night – particularly when he pushed Vance on whether Trump lost the 2020 election, a question that Vance dodged – but he was largely robotic and charmless, a man out of his depth.Look, VP debates don’t tend to have much impact on elections. But this was something of a wake-up call. The Trump-Vance campaign may seem like a joke but there is a very real chance they could have the last laugh in November.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
      Bhaskar Sunkara: ‘Vance gave a slightly stronger performance’We’ve come a long way from the libertarian 1990s, when both Bill Clinton’s new Democrats and Bob Dole’s Republican party were firm believers in free trade, couldn’t care less about manufacturing jobs, and found bipartisan agreement on shrinking the welfare state.Instead, we just had a vice-presidential debate where both candidates brought up social-democratic Finland as a positive example; Walz declared himself a “union man”; and Vance foregrounded the bread-and-butter concerns of millions of Americans. The candidates repeatedly went out of their way to identify areas of agreement on issues like housing and childcare.Of course, there was also a lot of bipartisanship not to like in the debate: war-mongering towards Iran, sycophantic support for Israel, the unwillingness of candidates to say that America is a nation of immigrants who create far more value for our nation than they take away.Still, both hopefuls were at their best talking about domestic issues. Vance spoke about the fraying American dream, economic anger and the loss of hope in many communities. But his solutions – industrial policy, manufacturing, domestic energy production – sounded close to the program Joe Biden embarked on in office. Vance praised the “blue-collar Democrats” who raised him – implying that Republicans are now the true party of the working class – but almost every Democrat stood with Biden’s union-backed agenda, and almost no Republicans.The biggest problem for Vance, who overall gave a slightly stronger performance, with fewer stumbles than Walz, is he has to tie his ideas to the contradictions of Trump’s economic program and his legacy of billionaire tax cuts. When Trump first ran for office, Vance hyperbolically called him “America’s Hitler”. When Trump left office, Vance was closer to the mark, privately calling him a “fake populist”.Tying himself to a potential administration bound to offer nothing but deregulation, mismanagement, and handouts for the rich makes Vance that kind of populist, too.

      Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of the Nation, founding editor of Jacobin and author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequalities
      LaTosha Brown: ‘Vance was a chameleon’The debate underscored a stark contrast between Waltz and Vance. Walz played the role of “the coach”, bringing receipts, sharing practical solutions and demonstrating real experience in addressing pressing issues. Walz showed that he knows how to govern – standing firmly with Kamala Harris’s vision and focusing on delivering tangible benefits to everyday Americans. His grounded explanations and proven record painted him as a steady, trustworthy leader ready to solve problems, not just win arguments.On the other hand, JD Vance lived up to his reputation as a bit of a chameleon. He shifted positions throughout the debate to make himself more palatable. At one point, he flat-out lied about never supporting an abortion ban, a claim contradicted by his past actions. He refused to give a clear answer about who won the 2020 election and downplayed the January 6 insurrection as merely a protest. As Walz put it, Vance’s response was a “damning non-answer”.Vance appeared cut from the same cloth as Donald Trump – willing to say anything to win, regardless of the truth. The debate made clear that voters face a choice: between Walz, whose authenticity and steady leadership reflect readiness to govern, and Vance, whose evasiveness shows a fixation on power over principle.

      LaTosha Brown is the co-founder of Black Voters Matter More

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      in Elections

      Vance refuses to say Trump lost the 2020 election in Walz debate

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      JD Vance refused to say whether Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and continued to sidestep questions over whether he would certify a Trump loss this fall during the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday.The exchange brought out some of the sharpest attacks from Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate and Minnesota governor, in what was otherwise a muted and civil back-and-forth with the Ohio senator.Walz asked Vance directly whether Trump lost the 2020 election. Vance responded: “Tim, I’m focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their minds in the wake of the 2020 Covid situation?” Walz then cut in with one of his most aggressive attack lines of the evening: “That is a damning non-answer.”Vance has previously said that he would have asked states to submit alternative slates of electors to Congress to continue to debate allegations of election irregularities in 2020. By the time Congress met during the last election to consider electoral votes, courts, state officials and the US supreme court had all turned away efforts to block legitimate slates of electors from being sent to Congress.Pressed by the CBS moderator Norah O’Donnell on whether he would again refuse to certify the vote this year, Vance declined to answer.“What President Trump has said is that there were problems in 2020, and my own belief is that we should fight about those issues, debate those issues peacefully in the public square,” Vance said. “And that’s all I’ve said and that’s all that Donald Trump has said.” He later said that if Walz won the election with Harris, Walz would have his support.Trump has warned of a “bloodbath” if he does not win the election. He has also said supporters will not have to vote anymore if he wins in November. Both the Trump campaign and Republican allies are seeding the ground to contest a possible election loss in November.Vance tried to pivot away from the issue by suggesting January 6 was not as much of a threat to democracy as limiting discussion of Covid on Facebook. He also equated January 6 with Democrats protesting the 2016 election because of Russian interference on Facebook.Walz did not let those comments go unnoticed. “January 6 was not Facebook ads,” he said in one of his bluntest responses in the debate. “This is one that we are miles apart on. This was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen. And it manifested itself because of Donald Trump’s inability to say, he is still saying, he didn’t lose the election.”A Harris campaign official said the moment stood out in a focus group of undecided voters in battleground states. Walz earned the group’s highest support of the evening while Vance saw some of his lowest ratings for defending Trump. More

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      Trump makes last effort to keep hidden January 6 case evidence before election

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      Donald Trump’s lawyers made a last-ditch effort on Tuesday to limit the amount of evidence that could become public that special counsel prosecutors collected during their criminal investigation into the former US president’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The prosecutors last week filed under seal a brief, which may be as long as 180 pages, to presiding US district judge Tanya Chutkan that defends the viability of the charges against Trump even after the US supreme court’s presidential immunity ruling.Simultaneously, the prosecutors asked the judge to allow them to file a public version of the secret brief with quotations and references to grand jury testimony from some of Trump’s closest aides, such as his former chief of staff, and his former vice-president, Mike Pence.To protect the integrity of proceedings and to protect lesser-known witnesses, the prosecutors said they intended in their public filing to redact specific names and use job titles to give context to the information being referenced.The kinds of identifiers being proposed by prosecutors include, according to their filing: “Campaign Manager”, “Arizona’s Governor”, “Senior Campaign Advisor”, “executive assistant”, “the Defendant’s Chief of Staff”, “Georgia Attorney General” and “Chairwoman of the Republican National Committee”.View image in fullscreenOn Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers bitterly complained that the redactions were so specific that it would make public identification of the witnesses easy, accusing prosecutors of trying to damage Trump’s presidential campaign with fewer than five weeks until election day.“In numerous instances, the redactions and pseudonyms proposed by the Special Counsel’s Office fail to meaningfully mitigate the privacy and safety issues the Office references in the Motion and has previously discussed at length,” the Trump lawyers wrote.Trump’s lawyers also claimed that prosecutors were adopting a double standard over redactions: in the case they brought against Trump in Florida over his retention of classified documents, which has since been dismissed, prosecutors pushed for no identifying information whatsoever.“Use of functionally impotent redactions is flatly inconsistent with the Office’s approach to other filings here and in the Southern District of Florida, where they sought to anonymize even ‘Ancillary Names’ based on privacy concerns,” the Trump lawyers wrote.The situation reflects a role reversal for Trump and the special counsel. When it was more expedient for Trump to have witnesses identified in the documents case, so they could complain about the case in public, Trump pushed for looser redactions.But now that it is against Trump’s interests to have the identities of former officials who testified against him become public, Trump has sought for more restrictive redactions that would make public scrutiny of his plot to overturn the 2020 election harder.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe special counsel’s filing and Trump’s objections come in the aftermath of the supreme court conferring broad immunity from criminal prosecutions to former presidents for actions that related to their official duties in office.As part of the decision, the court’s conservative supermajority ordered Chutkan to sort through the indictment and decide which of the allegations against Trump should be tossed because of the immunity rules and which could remain and proceed to trial.The special counsel’s opening brief was the first round of that process that could take months to resolve and involve hearings to decide what allegations should be kept. Much of the evidence Smith uses to make his case come from sensitive sources, such as grand jury testimony, which are secret.Chutkan has the power to decide how much of the indictment should be kept as well as how much of the special counsel’s evidence can be unsealed to make her determination, although much of the evidence became public knowledge during the House January 6 committee’s hearings two years ago. More

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      Trump tells rally Kamala Harris ‘wouldn’t have won The Apprentice’

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      Donald Trump reprised his role of a reality TV character during a rally in Waunakee, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, telling voters in the key swing state that his Democratic rival Kamala Harris wouldn’t have succeeded on his business competition show.“Kamala, you’re fired!” the ex-president said, invoking his contestant-eliminating tagline from The Apprentice after he urged voters to support him. “Get out of here!”“The Apprentice … she wouldn’t have won The Apprentice,” the GOP candidate said.His speech was intended to focus on the economy, which along with immigration has been a top concern among voters. Trump did discuss the economy, vowing to eliminate taxes on tips and overtime, and promised to help Americans with languishing purchase-power, saying: “Inflation, we can solve it.”Trump’s speech was also punctuated by self-praise, with boasts about his crowd size and closeness to Elon Musk. He also indulged in fearmongering about the Middle East conflict, noting Iran’s missile strike on Israel, and alarmism about migrants.“These people are grossly incompetent,” Trump said of Joe Biden and Harris’s handling of the US military. “And now we have them in charge of potentially world war three. World war three – it’s going to be like no other if it happens, because of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction that nobody’s ever seen before.”Trump also claimed that migrants were “taking over our small towns and cities they’re taking over our big cities too”, and seemed to voice support for New York City’s Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, who last week was charged with allegedly accepting bribes from the Turkish government.“If you fight it, you get indicted,” Trump said, echoing Adams’s claim that he was being politically targeted for clashing with the Biden administration over the migrant crisis. “The mayor of New York … he was appalled at what was happening and they indicted him, and I predicted it.”Trump’s comments comes as he continues to hammer Harris on her economic policies, and just hours before vice-presidential contenders JD Vance and Tim Walz were scheduled to debate. Voters have said that they want to hear both VP picks speak about immigration and the economy on Tuesday evening, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll.In a Harris poll conducted for the Guardian, a majority of those surveyed, 66%, said that the cost of living was among their biggest economic concerns. Democrats are confronted by continued pressure on American consumers who have seen their purchasing power plummet after inflation hit 9.1% in summer 2022 – a 40-year high – under Biden’s administration.Americans’ concerns over prices extend far beyond grocery-store shelves and gasoline pumps but the very places they call home. Democrats fear that housing costs could tilt key swing states such as Nevada; in Las Vegas, the median home price ballooned from $345,000 in August 2020 to $480,000 in August 2024.Inflation has decreased, and Harris has introduced numerous proposals to lower housing costs, and increase access to home ownership, in her economic platform agenda. But Trump and his surrogates have used economic challenges to double down on an integral campaign motif: Americans lives got worse under Democratic leadership.At a recent rally in Newton, Pennsylvania, Vance alleged – without evidence – that Harris had a hand in worsening the economy, and then tied financial concerns to immigrants by claiming their arrival contributed to increasing housing costs.“The problem with Kamala Harris is that she’s got no substance,” Vance said. “The problem with Kamala Harris is that she’s got no plan. And the problem with Kamala Harris is that she has been the vice-president for three and a half years and has failed this country.”While Trump’s camp is doing everything possible to sully Harris’s economic prowess, the poll for the Guardian indicates that Americans prefer her policies. The survey asked Americans about twelve economic policies – six from Trump, six from Harris – without being told which were from whom.The most popular idea, from Democrats, was a federal prohibition on the price-gouging of groceries and food. Some top economists have criticized this idea, but 44% of those survey agreed that it would boost the economy. More

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      Biden reaffirms US support for Israel amid Iran’s missile attack

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      Joe Biden has reaffirmed US support for Israel after Iran’s ballistic missile attacks, describing the barrage as “defeated and ineffective” and ordering the US military to aid Israel’s defense against any future assaults.“The attack appears to have been defeated and ineffective, and this is a testament to Israeli military capability and the US military,” the US president told reporters on Tuesday after Tehran launched an unprecedented salvo of 180 high-speed ballistic missiles.US destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean Sea destroyed several Iranian missiles, US defense officials said. Vessels currently in the region include the USS Arleigh Burke, USS Cole and USS Bulkeley. Additional destroyers are in the Red Sea.“Make no mistake, the United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel,” Biden said.Initial reports suggested that Israeli air defenses intercepted many of the incoming missiles, although some landed in central and southern Israel, and at least one man was killed in the West Bank by a missile that fell near the town of Jericho.Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that the missile attack was conducted in retaliation for Israel’s killings of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and Iranian Revolutionary Guard deputy commander Abbas Nilforoushan.The White House National Security Council said that Biden and Kamala Harris were monitoring the Iranian attack on Israel from the White House situation room and were receiving regular updates from their national security team.Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan hailed the response to the attack, which he described as “defeated and ineffective”.But before the missile barrage had even ended, Donald Trump, on his own social media platform, Truth Social, described the current conflict in the Middle East as “totally preventable” and claimed it would never have happened if he were president.In a lengthy statement, the former president and current Republican nominee attacked Biden and Harris, saying the world was “spiraling out of control” and asserting that the US had “no leadership” and “no one running the country”.“When I was President, Iran was in total check,” Trump added. “They were starved for cash, fully contained, and desperate to make a deal.”It remains unclear how the escalating tensions in the Middle East will play into the US election on 5 November.Iran’s attack on Israel comes just hours before the highly anticipated US vice-presidential debate on Tuesday night, 38 days from the US presidential election, and as the conflict in the Middle East appears to continue to escalate.A poll conducted by CNN shortly after the presidential debate between Harris and Trump in September found that more voters who watched the debate viewed Trump as a stronger candidate when it came to handling the role of commander in chief.Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, wrote in a statement that the missile attacks against Israel on Tuesday “should be the breaking point and I would urge the Biden Administration to coordinate an overwhelming response with Israel, starting with Iran’s ability to refine oil.“These oil refineries need to be hit and hit hard because that is the source of cash for the regime to perpetrate their terror,” he added.In another statement, Graham said that he had spoken with Trump, who he described as “determined and resolved to protect Israel from the threats of terrorism emanating from Iran.“While I appreciate the Biden administration’s statement, we cannot forget that when President Trump left office, Iran was weak economically, and he sent the regime the ultimate message with the elimination of Soleimani,” Graham said.Graham continued: “The only thing the Iranian regime understands is strength. Now is the time to show unified resolve against Iran, the largest state sponsor of terrorism.“We need decisive action, not just statements,” he added.On Twitter/X, Marco Rubio, also a Republican senator, described the attack as a “large scale (not symbolic) missile attack from Iranian regime against Israel” and added that “a large scale Israeli retaliatory response inside Iran is certain to follow”.Bob Casey, a Democrat senator for Pennsylvania, wrote in response to the attacks that he stands “with Israel and unequivocally condemn Iran’s missile strikes”.“The United States must continue doing everything it can to intercept Iran’s missiles and help our ally defend itself,” Casey added.Jerry Nadler, a Democratic representative, condemned the attack in a post on X, adding that his thoughts were “with the Israeli people at this time”. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump continues to deny climate crisis as he visits hurricane-ravaged Georgia

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      As research finds that the deadly Hurricane Helene was greatly exacerbated by global warming, Donald Trump is continuing to deny the climate crisis and court donations from the industry most responsible for planetary heating. Environmentalists worry that he will also gut flood protections and climate policy if he wins November’s presidential election.Hours before Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region Thursday night as a major category 4 hurricane, Trump said, baselessly, nuclear “warming”, not the climate crisis, is “the warming that you’re going to have to be very careful with”. The following day, he said the “little hurricane” was partially responsible for attendees leaving his rallies early.As the hurricane continued to ravage the region over the weekend, Trump dismissed global warming in a Saturday speech, and the following day referred to the climate crisis as “one of the great scams of all time”.Helene has now killed more than 150 people across the region.On Tuesday in Wisconsin, Trump incorrectly said that under the “green new scam”, Democrats “wanted to rip down all the buildings in Manhattan and they wanted to rebuild them without windows”. No environmental plans included removing windows from buildings, though Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act did include incentives for replacing windows with more energy-efficient models.A preliminary study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, published on Monday night, found that climate change caused 50% more rainfall during the hurricane in some parts of Georgia and the Carolinas.“It’s obscene that communities … are suffering and dying from the reality of the climate emergency while Donald Trump denies that it even exists,” said Brett Hartl, political director at the environmental non-profit Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund.When the former president visited hurricane-ravaged Georgia on Monday, he said: “We’re here today to stand with complete solidarity with the people of Georgia and all those suffering in the terrible aftermath of Hurricane Helene.” But he is now headed back to the campaign trail to court donations from the fossil fuel industry, which accounts for over 75% of all planet-heating pollution and nearly 90% of all carbon dioxide emissions.On Wednesday, Trump will attend two fundraisers in oil-rich Texas. First, he will hold an invite-only lunch in the Permian Basin, the world’s most productive oilfield. Later, he’ll reportedly hold a Houston cocktail party co-hosted by Jeff Hildebrand, who runs Hilcorp Oil and has been a major donor to the former president since 2017.Last week, Trump’s vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, also attended two fundraisers thrown by oil industry executives in Dallas and Fort Worth, before being forced to cancel two Georgia fundraisers due to the hurricane.The events come months after Trump reportedly offered a brazen “deal” to oil bosses, proposing that they give him $1bn for his White House re-election campaign and vowing that once back in office he would shred dozens of environmental regulations and prevent any new ones, sparking congressional investigations.Plans to gut emergency managementTrump has also come under fire for his ties to Project 2025, a wide-ranging policy blueprint from which the former president has tried to distance himself, but which was written by allies and previous advisers of the former president. The plan leave US communities with far fewer resources to rebuild after climate disasters.If enacted, the plan would end the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (Fema) federal flood insurance program – the primary source of federal flood insurance across the country – and replace it with private insurance plans “starting with the least risky areas currently identified by the program”.The playbook calls for an end to Fema’s disaster preparedness grants. And it calls to break up and privatize the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The agency should “fully commercialize its forecasting operations and focus on providing data to private companies”, the plan says, referring to forecasts done by the National Weather Service, the country’s main source of weather forecasting which sends out warnings about disasters like Helene.“While roads, bridges and entire towns are being washed away, Trump and Project 2025 plan to gut Fema and roadblock every agency from confronting the climate crisis,” said the Center for Biological Diversity’s Hartl.Project 2025 additionally calls for a “review” of the National Hurricane Center, a division of the National Weather Service which provides warnings, forecasts and analysis on dangerous storms.Data collected by the center should be “presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate”, the project says. But scientists have long warned that the climate crisis is strongly linked to increased hurricane intensity.In a statement, a spokesperson for the Heritage Foundation, the rightwing thinktank that led Project 2025, said the plan “does not call for the elimination of NOAA, the NWS, or the NHC”.“Rather than ‘cutting’ FEMA, Project 2025 is advocating for a realignment of the agency’s mission and focus – away from DEI and climate change initiatives and restoring it to that of helping people before, during, and after disasters,” the agency said.But the proposal would slash protections for flood-affected communities. And it would also more broadly catalyze a dismantling of climate policy, including efforts to curb planet-heating emissions.“Donald Trump just denied climate change for a week straight, is raising money from big oil billionaires tomorrow, and is planning to gut disaster aid with his Project 2025 agenda next year,” said Pete Jones, rapid response director for the climate-focused advocacy group Climate Power. “When American communities are devastated by extreme weather, Trump’s plan is to increase their suffering while handing out $110 billion in tax breaks to big oil.” More

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      in Elections

      Nevada Republicans dismiss 43ft nude Trump effigy as ‘deplorable’

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      A 43ft (13 meters) effigy of an entirely nude Donald Trump on the interstate from Las Vegas to Reno, Nevada, has been dismissed as “deplorable” and “pornographic” by Republicans in the state.In a statement, the Nevada Republican party said it “strongly condemns” the effigy of the former president, which hangs from a crane, weighs 6,000lbs, is made from foam and rebar, is titled Crooked and Obscene and is expected to be brought to other cities as part of a nationwide tour.“While families drive through Las Vegas, they are forced to view this offensive marionette, designed intentionally for shock value rather than meaningful dialogue,” said the party’s statement, invoking the name of a city that was essentially founded to capitalize on gambling and sex.The artists behind the graphic effigy – who want to remain anonymous – told the Wrap that Trump’s nudity was “intentional, serving as a bold statement on transparency, vulnerability and the public personas of political figures”.Political battles over statuary run hot and have become a feature of the Trump era after he won the presidency in 2016.For instance, hundreds of statues paying tribute to the white supremacist Confederacy that lost the US civil war have come down in southern states where the Confederacy was based after a spate of police killings victimizing Black Americans.The Trump effigy and the offense Republicans took over it drew attention days after he boasted at a political rally in Wisconsin of his “beautiful body”. It was taken down Monday with plans to move it to other swing states in November’s presidential election, during which Trump is seeking a return to the White House as the Republican nominee.The sculpture in Las Vegas came eight years after artist Joshua “Ginger” Monroe created statues of Trump that he told a Cleveland news outlet took four to five months of strenuous labor to create. He described it as a “hate-filled labor to create this monstrosity”.Monroe told Cleveland Magazine the following year: “The reason we show Trump’s veins [is] to show a visible representation of his thin skin.”At the same time, a 16ft effigy of Trump’s rival in November’s presidential race, Kamala Harris, has been put up at the United States Funhouse in West Hartford, Connecticut. The display is from Matt Warshauer, a professor and political historian at Central Connecticut State University – and it likens Harris to the Statue of Liberty.Warshauer says he sees Harris – whose statue is flanked by Halloween skeletons and ghouls – not as “a fundamental threat to the system”.“I see her as a stable force,” he said.A statement on the statue suggests it could be the last of Warshauer’s annual political displaying. It declares the piece as “the final year of Political Halloween”. More