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      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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      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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      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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      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

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      Donald Trump is gaining on Kamala Harris in the polls. I have some theories why | Robert Reich

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      With less than 40 days until election day, how can it be that Trump has taken a small lead in Arizona and Georgia – two swing states he lost to Biden in 2020? How can he be narrowly leading Harris in the swing state of North Carolina? How can he now be essentially tied with her in the other key swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin?More generally, how can Trump have chiseled away Harris’s advantage from early August? How is it possible that more voters appear to view Trump favorably now than they did several months ago when he was in the race against Biden?How can Trump – the sleaziest person ever to run for president, who has already been convicted on 34 felony charges and impeached twice, whose failures of character and leadership were experienced directly by the American public during his four years at the helm – be running neck-and-neck with a young, talented, intelligent person with a commendable record of public service?Since his horrid performance debating Harris, he’s doubled down on false claims that Haitian migrants are eating pets in Ohio. He’s been accompanied almost everywhere by rightwing conspiracy nutcase Laura Loomer. He said he “hates” Taylor Swift after she endorsed Harris; that Jewish people will be responsible if he loses the election; that the second attempt on his life was incited by the “Communist left rhetoric” of Biden and Harris. And so on.He’s become so incoherent in public that Republican advisers are begging him to get back “on message”.So why is he neck-and-neck with Harris?Before we get to what I think is the reason, let’s dismiss other explanations being offered.One is that the polls are understating voters’ support for Harris and overstating their support for Trump. But if the polls are systematically biased, you’d think it would be the other way around, since some non-college voters are probably reluctant to admit to professional pollsters their preference for Trump.Another is that the media is intentionally creating a nail-bitingly close race in order to sell more ads. But this can’t be right because, if anything, more Americans appear to be tuning out politics altogether.A final theory holds that Harris has not yet put to rest voters’ fears about inflation and the economy. But given that the American economy has rebounded, inflation is way down, interest rates are falling, wages are up and the job engine continues, you’d think voters at the margin would be moving toward her rather than toward Trump.The easiest explanation has to do with asymmetric information.By now, almost everyone in America knows Trump and has made up their minds about him. Recent polls have found that nearly 90% of voters say they do not need to learn more about Trump to decide their vote.But they don’t yet know Harris, or remain undecided about her. More on this in a moment.Trump is exploiting this asymmetry so that when it comes to choosing between Trump and Harris, voters will choose the devil they know.This requires, first, that Trump suck all the media oxygen out of the air so Harris has fewer opportunities to define herself positively.Americans who have become overwhelmed by the chaos are tuning out politics altogether, especially in swing states where political advertising is nonstop. And as they tune out both Trump and Harris, Trump is the beneficiary, because, again, he’s the devil they know.In other words, Trump is running neck-and-neck with Harris not despite the mess he’s created over the last few weeks but because of it.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s strategy also requires that he and his allies simultaneously flood the airwaves and social media with negative ads about Harris, which are then amplified by the rightwing ecosystem of Fox News, Newsmax and Sinclair radio.Trump’s campaign has given up trying to promote him positively. The Wesleyan Media Project estimates that the Trump team is now spending almost zero on ads that show him in a positive light. There’s no point, because everyone has already made up their minds about him.Instead, the ads aired by Trump and his allies in swing states are overwhelmingly negative about Harris – emphasizing, for example, her past support for gender transition surgery for incarcerated people.Researchers on cognition have long known that negative messages have a bigger impact than positive ones, probably because in evolutionary terms, our brains are hard-wired to respond more to frightening than to positive stimuli (which might explain why social media and even mainstream media are filled with negative stories).Finally, Trump’s strategy necessitates that he refuse to debate her again, lest she get additional positive exposure (hence he has turned down CNN’s invitation for a 23 October debate, which she has accepted).Behind the information asymmetry lie racism and misogyny. I can’t help wondering how many Americans who continue saying they “don’t know” or are “undecided” about Harris are concealing something from pollsters and possibly from themselves: they feel uncomfortable voting for a Black woman.Having said all this, I’m cautiously optimistic about the outcome of the election. Why? Because Trump is deteriorating rapidly; lately he’s barely been able to string sentences together coherently.Harris, by contrast, is gaining strength and confidence by the day, and despite Trump’s attempts to shut her out, more Americans are learning about her. As she gets more exposure, Trump’s “devil-you-know” advantage disappears.Perhaps it’s more accurate to say I’m nauseously optimistic, because, to be candid, I go into the next five weeks feeling a bit sick to my stomach. Even if Harris wins, the fact that so many Americans seem prepared to vote for Trump makes me worry for the future of my country.

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