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      Ron DeSantis accused of ‘intimidation campaign’ against abortion rights

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      Ron DeSantis is making a concerted effort to maintain draconian limits on abortion access in Florida that have led to accusations the rightwing Republican governor is conducting a “state-sponsored intimidation campaign” against abortion rights and trampling on civil liberties in the state.A near total ban on abortions after the first six weeks of pregnancy took effect in Florida in May after the state supreme court ruled that the right to an abortion was no longer covered by the privacy clause in the Florida constitution.Passage of legislation called Amendment 4 would change the state constitution to prohibit government interference with the right to an abortion before the viability of a fetus, which typically begins around the 24th week of a pregnancy.But registered voters in Florida have recently reported unannounced visits from law enforcement personnel that appear to be part of an all-out drive by DeSantis to use state government agencies and public funds to block passage of Amendment 4, which would enshrine in the state constitution a woman’s right to an abortion.The experience of Isaac Menasche is a cautionary tale. In early September, Menasche received an unexpected visitor at his home in the Florida Gulf coast city of Fort Myers – a plainclothes detective with a badge and a folder stuffed with documents containing Menasche’s personal information.They included copies of his driver’s license and a petition form he had signed months ago at a local farmer’s market on behalf of a campaign to qualify a pro-choice referendum for the statewide ballot in this year’s general election.The detective who turned up on Menasche’s doorstep wanted to know why his signature on the petition form did not match the one on his driver’s license. The retired 71-year-old attorney conceded the point but explained that his signature can sometimes vary. The officer left shortly thereafter.“The experience left me shaken,” wrote the New Jersey native on his Facebook page that same day. “It was obvious to me that a significant effort was exerted to determine if indeed I had signed the petition. Troubling that so much resources were devoted to this.”DeSantis initially asked the Florida supreme court to declare the ballot measure unconstitutional on the grounds that its language was vague and misleading. When that ploy failed last April, DeSantis shifted gears: in July a senior official in the state government department in charge of elections announced a review for possible fraud of tens of thousands of petition signatures collected in four counties in support of Amendment 4.In more recent weeks, the state-run Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) has launched a website opposing the initiative on the grounds that it “threatens women’s safety”. It has also spent millions of dollars on television ads urging Florida voters to reject the proposed amendment.“We’re seeing a state-sponsored intimidation campaign to make Floridians scared of voicing support for abortion access,” says Keisha Mulfort, a spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida which filed a lawsuit earlier this month seeking to halt the AHCA’s anti-Amendment 4 media campaign.“Florida’s leadership has made it clear they don’t trust women to make decisions about their own healthcare,” she added. “They’ll go to great lengths to demonstrate they don’t support the democratic process, including sending law enforcement personnel to the homes of private citizens.”DeSantis recently defended the state-funded anti-amendment website and television ads as “public service announcements” similar to those produced by the Florida department of transportation to encourage safe driving.“It’s being used by the AHCA agency to basically provide people with accurate information,” said the governor during a roundtable discussion held in a Miami suburb on 9 September. “Everything that is put out is factual. That’s been done for decades, it’s not electioneering, and it is not inappropriate at all.”The AHCA communications office failed to respond to a list of written questions submitted by the Guardian about the agency’s website and electronic media campaign. The governor’s communications director, Bryan Griffin, turned down The Guardian’s request for an interview with DeSantis, asserting that the newspaper was “completely consumed with left wing activism and does nothing to actually inform the public.”Under a law passed by the Republican-dominated Florida legislature, ballot measures must be approved by 60% of the electorate, and Amendment 4 proponents say they are confident of meeting that threshold in the general election scheduled for 5 November.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTo bolster his case against the pro-choice amendment proposal, DeSantis has even questioned the legitimacy of passing laws through popular referendums, even though that mechanism is authorized by the state constitution.“It takes power away from the people to be able to decide this through elections and who they elect to office and who legislates,” he told a press conference recently. “It effectively puts it in the courts, and there will be 25 years’ worth of lawsuits on what any of these terms mean.”In a letter dated 25 January of this year, the Florida department of state’s division of elections confirmed that the six organizations in support of the pro-choice referendum had collected enough valid signatures to qualify the proposed constitutional amendment for the November ballot.Six months later, however, a deputy secretary of that same state government department revealed in a letter that his office had received “alarming information” from the Palm Beach county supervisor of elections office about “fraudulent constitutional initiative petitions” that were submitted by 35 individuals who had been hired to collect signatures on behalf of Amendment 4.This apparent attempt to reopen the signature validity issue was replicated in three other counties in Florida, and as of two weeks ago an estimated 36,000 signatures are currently under review by an election fraud unit that was established by legislation that DeSantis signed into law two years ago.The Palm Beach county supervisor of elections, Wendy Sartory Link, received an email four weeks ago from that deputy secretary of state, Brad McVay, asking her office to review 17,637 petition forms that were certified as valid by her office last winter.The elections supervisor said the request from McVay was “not a common practice” that she had encountered in the five years since she was appointed to the position by DeSantis. Link is running for re-election this year as a Democrat, and she suggested that the entire exercise might be an academic one at this juncture.“It doesn’t really apply to us,” she said. “The initiative was certified, and it’s on our ballots.” More

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      ‘Running away from good news’: why is Harris distancing herself from Biden’s record?

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      As Joe Biden walked on the set of The View, one of America’s most popular daytime television programmes, he was greeted by Hail to the Chief and a studio audience erupting in wild applause and cheers. “They love you!” said the co-host Joy Behar. The US president replied wryly: “It’s always better when you’re leaving.”During the ABC show, filmed live in a New York studio where digital screens showed images from Biden’s career, he claimed to be “at peace” with his decision not to seek re-election in November. Yet he also insisted that he could have beaten “loser” Donald Trump. And the co-host Whoopi Goldberg criticised the way Democrats forced Biden’s hand: “I didn’t like the way it was done publicly.”The wistfulness might be owed in part to Biden supporters’ faith that, for all the concerns over his age and mental acuity, his record should be viewed more as an asset than a liability. Their argument has been bolstered of late by trends that could neutralise three scourges of his presidency.Inflation has been tamed. Illegal immigration has stabilised. Violent crime is down. In theory it is a perfect recipe for electoral success. Yet it is a gift that the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, seems reluctant to accept. Far from embracing her role in Biden’s White House, the 59-year-old is presenting herself as a change agent who will “turn the page” and offer “a new way forward”.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “A new way? She’s been part of a very successful administration and she was chosen by Joe Biden as VP and then essentially chosen to be his successor.“But she has to pretend that she’s going to be forging a new path because she can’t afford to be too closely associated with Biden. I know one person on the inner campaign staff who cringes every time Harris and Biden have to appear together because the visual reinforces the tie they don’t want people to make. It’s nonsensical.”View image in fullscreenTravelling by motorcade, helicopter and Air Force One, the Guardian accompanied Biden for two days this week, from his daytime TV slot to a Ukraine event with the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, from a glamorous reception at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to a gun safety event with Harris where the audience chanted: “Thank you, Joe!”There were reminders of the 81-year-old’s struggles, which culminated in a career-ending debate performance against Trump in June. “Welcome to Washington!” he told a room full of world leaders, diplomats and journalists at the InterContinental New York Barclay hotel in New York, New York.But this was also a man seeking to cement his legacy, calling for a 21-day temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, pledging $8bn in military aid for Ukraine and signing an executive order to combat emerging firearms threats and improve active shooter drills in schools. That legacy will also include economic growth, low unemployment and a string of legislative wins.Biden’s tenure has been overshadowed, however, by inflation – in 2022 the prices of gas, food and most other goods and services surged by 9%, a 40-year high – insecurity at the southern border and fears over crime. His approval rating has hovered below 40%. But with less than four months left in office, there are clear signs of the tide turning.Inflation has returned to close to where it was shortly before the Covid pandemic, defying predictions of recession and giving the Federal Reserve confidence to cut interest rates. Petrol prices, always a key indicator of discontent, have been coming down for months; in August the national average for a gallon was $3.38 – about 47 cents lower than the same time a year ago.Border security, long Trump’s signature issue, is also improving. After the former president compelled Republicans in Congress to block a border security bill, Biden stepped in to partially suspend asylum processing. In July the number of people illegally crossing the southern border dropped to 56,400, the lowest level in nearly four years, according to government figures.View image in fullscreenMoreover, Trump recently claimed that crime was “through the roof” under Biden’s administration. But this week the FBI released statistics that showed violent crime in the US declined an estimated 3% in 2023 from the year before, part of a continued trend since the Covid pandemic. Last year witnessed the biggest ever decline in the homicide rate, now 16% below its level in 2020. And for all Trump’s rhetoric, violent crime is now at a near 50-year low.Yet in a polarised political atmosphere, with rightwing media constantly attacking him, Biden is receiving little credit. Opinion polls showed him trailing Trump badly when voters were asked which candidate they trust to handle the economy, immigration and crime (Trump has a narrower lead over Harris on these issues).Sabato said: “Everything’s getting better except the American public thinks we’re in a recession and there are thieves outside their door every evening and those immigrants are trying to eat their pets. It’s insane. A classic case of the failure of civic education. I know that’s basic and people laugh about the term but it’s absolutely the root cause of all this.”In this climate, Harris appears to have concluded that, whatever the headline economic figures say, people are not feeling it. She has acknowledged many families are struggling with the cost of living, including the price of groceries and the dream of buying a home. She has promised to focus on basics such as being able to save for a child’s education, take a holiday and buy Christmas presents without financial stress.View image in fullscreenWendy Schiller, a political scientist at Brown University, noted that in the last quarter of 2023 and first quarter of 2024, every state in the country had growth in real disposable income. “The problem for the Democrats is that inflation eroded the power of that income up until, you could argue, the late spring of 2024. Do consumers now feel like their wages are buying them something and that things are less expensive?”She added: “You can tell them things are better but, unless they’re feeling it, it won’t help the Democrats in November. There’s a disconnect between voter impression of the economy and personal voter feelings about the economy. But certainly having a series of indicators and the news feed going from negative to positive can help sustain Kamala Harris’s campaign message that she, in fact, will produce a good economy.”Harris, as the incumbent vice-president, will be hoping to avoid a repeat of the Republican president George HW Bush’s fate in 1992. Economic indicators improved over the spring and summer but too late to save him from defeat by Bill Clinton, whose lead strategist, James Carville, memorably summed up: “It’s the economy, stupid.”Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington DC, said: “When it comes to the economy people believe their own eyes and they will make their judgments on that basis. This is a lesson I have learned in the six presidential campaigns I’ve wandered in and out of: if you have statistics on the one hand and personal experience on the other, it’s no contest.”Galston, a former policy adviser to Bill Clinton, acknowledged that inflation, immigration and crime are heading in the right direction. “The political damage is done and I wouldn’t say that these developments are too little but I would say they are too late,” he added.View image in fullscreen“That’s especially true for immigration because, as far as I can tell, there’s nothing that President Biden did eight months ago that he couldn’t have done four years ago. I’m ever mindful of the fact that immigration is the issue that Trump rode to the presidency the first time in 2016.”Harris has accused Trump of killing the bipartisan Senate compromise that would have included tougher asylum standards and hiring more border agents, immigration judges and asylum officers. She says she would bring back that bill and sign it into law. Trump promises to mount the biggest domestic deportation in US history, an operation that could involve detention camps and the national guard.As for Biden, a memo released by the White House this week said he intended to “aggressively execute” on the rest of his agenda and hit the road to highlight the Biden-Harris record. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he delivered an address on the sidelines of the UN general assembly while surrounded by sculptures from antiquity; a moment, perhaps, to consider his own place in history.“I’ve seen the impossible become reality,” he told guests, recalling how he saw the fall of the Berlin Wall, end of South African apartheid and war criminals and dictators face justice and accountability for human rights violations.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “There’s a very strong argument that we will hear from historians about Joe Biden getting a bad break. He was a better president than was appreciated in his time. If Kamala Harris loses, one of the major critiques is going to be that the Democrats were too quick to turn on Biden and that Harris ran a campaign running away from the good news.” More

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      Walz v Vance: two midwesterners miles apart in politics ready for debate

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      The football coach and the “Yale law guy” go head-to-head in New York City on Tuesday night, as two midwesterners with very different styles and vastly diverging messages slug it out over the future of the US.Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, faces the Republican senator from Ohio, JD Vance, in a vice-presidential debate that promises to be unusually significant in this white-hot election year. They will joust for 90 minutes under the moderation of CBS News as they seek to give their respective running mates – Kamala Harris and Donald Trump – a leg up to the White House.Walz has been prepping for the debate in Minneapolis with the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, masquerading as Vance. (Buttigieg may have been suffering deja vu – he posed as Mike Pence during Kamala Harris’s prep sessions ahead of the 2020 VP debate.)Vance has been holding mock debates with the Republican whip in the US House, Tom Emmer, standing in as Walz. Emmer is a fellow Minnesotan, so has the benefit of having studied Walz up close.The two running mates bring contrasting strengths to the gladiatorial ring. Vance is an experienced debater who will relish confrontation under the glare of the TV lights.“Look, he’s a Yale law guy,” Walz has said about his opponent. “He’ll come well prepared.”Walz by contrast will be able to lean on skills learned in the school classroom. Walz spent 17 years as a public school teacher, so he knows how to think on his feet – and deal with a disruptive kid.“I expect to see a very heated debate,” Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign manager, told CBS News.One of the big questions of the night is likely to be whether Vance can redeem himself after a troubled start to his candidacy. Will he be able to get past all the “weirdness”, as Walz has framed it, and bring consistency to the messaging of an often chaotic Trump campaign?From awkward encounters with doughnut shop workers, to the ongoing furor around his “childless cat ladies” remark, Vance has been the subject of online mockery that has at times appeared to engulf him. He also seems to be stuck on the same culture war issues that consume Trump.“Vance does not seem to have drawn additional voters to the Trump ticket, as the controversies he gets into are exactly the same as those the former president gets into,” said Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.Most egregiously, Vance has doubled down on the false and racist narrative that Haitian immigrants are eating family pets in Springfield, Ohio, despite categorical denials from local authorities. He recently confessed to CNN that he was willing to “create stories” if it meant that he attracted media attention.Such comments have sunk Vance underwater in the opinion of the voting public – his unfavorability rating is 11 points higher than his favorable, according to FiveThirtyEight.Walz by contrast is basking in the glow of a positive four-point gap between his favorability ratings, which poses him with a completely different set of challenges on debate night. He will need to parry Vance’s attempts to frame him as the misinformation candidate based on misrepresentations Walz made about his military record, defuse his rivals claims that he is dangerously liberal, and refuse to be knocked off track.“Walz just needs to get in and out of the debate without causing trouble for his ticket,” Burden said.John Conway, director of strategy for Republican Voters Against Trump, said that Walz was best advised to follow Harris’s playbook. He organised focus groups the day after Harris’s debate with Trump, involving voters from five battleground states who backed Trump in 2016 but switched to Biden in 2020.The focus group attendees were enthusiastic about Harris’s dual approach to the debate – attack Trump for his lies and felony convictions, but also lay out a positive plan for the future of the country. “That’s the blueprint Walz must follow,” Conway said, “attack when appropriate but also be substantive on the issues.”There have been several memorable made-for-TV moments from the VP debates since the first in 1976 between senators Bob Dole and Walter Mondale. Most celebrated is the 1988 incident when the Democrat Lloyd Bentsen chastised George H Bush’s running mate, Dan Quayle, for comparing himself to John F Kennedy.“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”“That was really uncalled for, senator,” Quayle wailed.More recently, John McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, ribbed Joe Biden, the Democratic VP candidate running with Barack Obama, in 2008, by telling him: “Aw, say it ain’t so, Joe.”Those were neat soundbites that entered the lexicons. But it is notable that neither Bentsen nor Palin were rewarded where it matters – at the ballot box.In fact, vice-presidential debates have tended to be underwhelming in terms of the lasting imprint they have left on US elections. Larry Sabato, professor of politics at the University of Virginia, pointed out that even after the dynamic presidential debate between Harris and Trump earlier this month, which was watched by 67 million TV viewers and which Harris was widely judged to have won, the race remains essentially neck-and-neck in the critical battleground states.Sabato said that given the lack of consequences from the debate at the top of the ticket, he expected Tuesday’s vice-presidential tussle to be equally inconclusive. “I don’t expect the vice-presidential debate to make any impact,” he said.Yet this is no ordinary election. Joe Biden’s departure and the sudden elevation of Harris, together with Trump refusing to participate in a second debate with her, has raised the stakes.Tuesday’s spectacle will probably be the final debate before election day on 5 November. “This is really the last main national moment in the campaign, so I do think it is important,” Mook said.Apart from the economy, immigration and foreign wars, which are certain to be addressed during the debate, a more amorphous struggle is likely to play out on stage: who will own the mantle of “authentic midwesterner”? Will it be Nebraska-born Walz, or the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy, Ohio’s Vance.The rivalry goes beyond mere aesthetics or regional loyalties. It resonates heavily in those states where the election could be decided – the three so-called “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.“I don’t know if the word ‘midwestern’ will be used in the debate, but feelings about the midwest will come through,” Burden said.The candidates offer a diametrically opposed vision of the heartlands. Walz’s midwest is folksy and homely, a world where neighbors look after each other, where football coaches double up as local heroes (Walz coached the sport at Mankato West high school from 1997), and where joy fills the air.Vance’s is a much darker picture of drug addiction, broken families and the threat of immigration. His is the midwest of Trump’s “American carnage” dystopia.Two utterly contrasting visions. Two tough and determined candidates. Gentlemen, shall we begin? More

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      Trump leans into anti-immigrant rants and Harris barbs at Wisconsin rally

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      Donald Trump spoke on Saturday in the battleground state of Wisconsin, escalating his anti-immigrant rhetoric and taking his personal insults against Kamala Harris up a notch.Trump’s speech in the small community of Prairie du Chien, where a Venezuelan in the US illegally was detained in September for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman and attacking her daughter, was unusually devoted almost entirely to undocumented immigrants. He wrongfully claimed that immigrants in the US are violent criminals, referring to them as “stone-cold killers”, “monsters” and “vile animals”.The Republican presidential candidate was flanked by posters of immigrants in the US illegally who have been arrested for murder and other violent crimes, and banners saying “End Migrant Crime” and “Deport Illegals Now”.Trump is locked in a close race with Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate and vice-president, before the 5 November election. Immigration at the southern border are one of the top issues for voters, according to opinion polls.Trump attacked Harris, who on Friday visited the US-Mexico border for the first time in her 2024 presidential campaign, calling her “mentally impaired” and “mentally disabled”.The former president blamed Harris and Joe Biden for allowing undocumented immigrants into the US, accusing some immigrants of wanting to “rape, pillage, thieve, plunder and kill the people of the United States of America”.At one point Trump admitted: “This is a dark speech.”“There’s no greater act of disloyalty than to extinguish the sovereignty of your own nation right through your border, no matter what lies she tells,” he said.“Kamala Harris can never be forgiven for her erasing our border, and she must never be allowed to become president of the United States and Wisconsin,” he added.A video intending to attack Kamala Harris was shown in the middle of Trump’s remarks.It was a compilation of Harris’s comments about immigration policy.“She is a disaster, and she’s not going to ever do anything for the border,” he said after the video. “She’s incompetent and a bad person.”“She’s a Marxist,” he added.JD Vance continued the attacks on Harris in a speech in Newton, Pennsylvania, taking the former president’s lead and making sure to continue the anti-immigrant claims.“The problem with Kamala Harris is that she’s got no substance,” Trump’s running mate 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.”Vance claimed without proof that Harris played a role in worsening the economy by exacerbating inflation, then went on to link the country’s economic woes to immigration, blaming Harris for what he describes as an “invasion” amid a lack of border control.Vance claimed that the presence of immigrants in the US is contributing to rising housing costs.Some 7 million immigrants have been arrested crossing the US-Mexico border illegally during Biden’s administration, according to government data, a record high number that has fueled criticism of Harris and Biden from Trump and fellow Republicans.In her visit to the border on Friday, Harris outlined her plans to fix “our broken immigration system” while accusing Trump of “fanning the flames of fear and division” over the impact of immigrants on American life.Harris also called for tighter asylum restrictions and vowed to make a “top priority” of stopping fentanyl from entering the US.Before wrapping up his speech, Trump called to the stage the mother of Rachel Morin, a 37-year-old Maryland mother of five who was killed last year. After Rachel’s death, a native of El Salvador was arrested. Trump has used this case to support his remarks against immigrants from Central America living in the US.Studies generally find there is no evidence immigrants commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans and critics say Trump’s rhetoric reinforces racist tropes.Trump’s opponents accuse him of cynically exploiting grieving families to fuel his narrative that foreign-born, often Hispanic, arrivals are part of an invading army.But some of the families of the victims have welcomed Trump’s focus on the issue of violent crime and the death toll of teenagers caused by the opioid drug fentanyl, much of which crosses into the US over the southern border. More

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      Trump takes stage at Wisconsin rally and continues anti-immigrant rhetoric – live

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      JD Vance accused Kamala Harris of flip-flopping on a series of major issues, such as fracking, Medicare for undocumented immigrants, private health insurance, and defunding the police.“Kamala, if you support fracking, if you support the police, if you support lower prices, and you want to close down the southern border, you’re welcome to endorse Donald J Trump,” Vance said. “All of us have done it, and you’re welcome to join the team.”JD Vance claims that Harris played a role in worsening the economy by exacerbating inflation.He linked the country’s economic woes to immigration, blaming Harris for what he describes as an “invasion” amid a lack of border control.Vance claimed that the presence of immigrants in the US is contributing to rising housing costs.He went on to make anti-immigrant remarks.JD Vance quickly touched a soft spot for the state of Pennsylvania: Natural gas.Vice President Kamala Harris says she doesn’t oppose fracking, despite prior assertions stating otherwise, but Republicans are still wielding her previous position to win over voters.“When Donald Trump is president, we are going to drill, baby, drill and bring back the great American energy economy,” Vance said during his speech. “She is the candidate of not buying oil and gas from Americans and Pennsylvanians. Kamala Harris wants us to buy energy from every tin pot dictator all over the world.”JD Vance attacked Kamala Harris, going back to her first solo interview on Wednesday, by saying she dodges questions on the economy by talking about her middle-class background and her former stint at McDonald’s.“The problem with Kamala Harris is that she’s got no substance,” he 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.’”Senator JD Vance took the stage in Pennsylvania.“We have got a hell of a crowd here in the state of Pennsylvania,” he said at the start of his speech. “We’re gonna turn Pennsylvania red, send Kamala Harris back in and send Donald Trump back to the White House.”Senator JD Vance is expected to deliver a speech in Newton, Pennsylvania, in a few minutes.The event at the Newtown Sports and Event Center comes as polls show a neck-and-neck race for president in battleground Pennsylvania.We’ll be covering the Republican vice-presidential pick’s remarks.Donald Trump wrapped up his speech in Wisconsin just before 5pm ET.His remarks mostly revolved around his proposed border policies and an anti-immigrant framing of the country.The mother of Rachel Morin, a 37-year-old Maryland mother of five who was killed last year, took the stage briefly in Prairie du Chien.After Rachel’s death, a native of El Salvador was arrested. Trump has used this case to support his remarks against immigrants from Central America living in the US.“I do want to say vote for Trump, though, because I really believe that he’s going to close our borders,” said Patty Morin, Rachel’s mother.In his speech, Donald Trump shifted briefly from immigration to the economy.“Your towns, your cities, your country, is being destroyed,” Trump said. “This is bigger than inflation, which is killing you all, caused by Biden and Harris with their stupid energy policy.”He shifted again to making anti-immigrant remarks.“The only things that don’t get obsolete are the wheel and the wall,” he said about the barrier he started to build on the border during his presidency, which increased migrant deaths and devastating injuries.Donald Trump referred to Kamala Harris’s immigrant-focused speech last night in Arizona as “BS”.Fox News broadcasted her remarks, and Trump said “they shouldn’t be allowed to put it on”.“Everything she said is a lie,” the former president said.A video intending to attack Kamala Harris was shown in the middle of Donald Trump’s remarks.The video was a compilation of Harris’s comments about immigration policy.“She is a disaster, and she’s not going to ever do anything for the border,” he said after the video. “She’s incompetent and a bad person.”“She’s a Marxist,” he added.Donald Trump struggled to pronounce “Prairie du Chien”, the name of the town where he’s delivering his remarks.“You could have given me a little easier name than that, but I think we got it right,” Trump said.He continued to make anti-immigrant and racist comments half an hour into his speech.Donald Trump wrongfully claimed that immigrants in the US are violent criminals, referring to them as “stone-cold killers”.“There’s no greater act of disloyalty than to extinguish the sovereignty of your own nation right through your border, no matter what lies she tells,” Trump said.“Kamala Harris can never be forgiven for her erasing our border, and she must never be allowed to become president of the United States and Wisconsin,” he added.Donald Trump said Kamala Harris’s border policies should disqualify her from ever becoming president and urged voters in Wisconsin not to support her.“Kamala is mentally impaired,” Trump said. “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way.”Donald Trump claims that more than 40,000 people were outside, unable to get into the building because the room was at capacity.He then turned to criticize Kamala Harris for her role in border policies, claiming that her actions have led to widespread chaos, suffering, and a lack of national security.“I watched this show that she put on, four years of the most incompetent border anywhere in the world, in history,” Trump said.Donald Trump has taken the stage, starting his speech more than an hour after his scheduled start time in Prairie Du Chien, Wisconsin. More

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      US Department of Justice sues Alabama for purging people from voter rolls

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      The US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit on Friday against Alabama and its top election official, accusing the state of illegally purging people from voter rolls too close to the November election.Federal officials said the purge violates the “quiet period provision” of the National Voter Registration Act that prohibits the systemic removal of names from voter rolls 90 days before a federal election.Alabama’s Republican secretary of state, Wes Allen, in August announced an initiative “to remove noncitizens registered to vote in Alabama”. More than 3,000 people who had been previously issued noncitizen identification numbers will have their voter registration status made inactive and flagged for possible removal from the voter rolls. The justice department said both native-born and naturalized US citizens, who are eligible to vote, received the letters saying their voting status was being made inactive.“The right to vote is one of the most sacred rights in our democracy,” assistant attorney general Kristen Clarke, who heads the justice department’s civil rights division, said in a statement. “As election day approaches, it is critical that Alabama redress voter confusion resulting from its list maintenance mailings sent in violation of federal law.”The lawsuit asks for injunctive relief that would restore the ability of affected eligible voters to vote on 5 November.“I was elected secretary of state by the people of Alabama, and it is my constitutional duty to ensure that only American citizens vote in our elections,” Allen said in a statement issued on Friday night. He said he could not comment on pending litigation.Allen in August acknowledged the possibility that some of the people identified had become naturalized citizens since receiving their noncitizen number. He said they would need to update their information on a state voter registration form and would be able to vote after it was verified.The Campaign Legal Center, the Fair Elections Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center earlier this month filed a lawsuit also challenging the voter roll purge. They said the state purge targets naturalized citizens who once had noncitizen identification numbers before gaining citizenship.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe plaintiffs in that lawsuit include two US citizens who received letters telling them they were being moved to inactive voter registration status because of the purge. One is a Dutch-born man who became a US citizen in 2022. The other is a US-born citizen. More

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      ‘I see the apathy’: Saginaw city’s Black voters could be vital – if they vote

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      The largest bloc of registered voters in the city of Saginaw has yet to make a choice between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and probably never will. A majority of Black residents of the biggest city in the most closely contested county of the battleground state of Michigan simply don’t vote.To the frustration of civil rights activists and Democratic politicians struggling to secure every ballot in a state that the Harris campaign sees as crucial to victory, more than half of Saginaw city’s population has long been unpersuaded that elections make much of a difference to their lives.Now, against the backdrop of the drama of the US’s knife-edge 2024 election, Black organizations and churches are once again making a determined push to turn out voters, helped by the first female Black candidate for president and changes to Michigan law making it easier to vote.But Terry Pruitt, president of the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) branch running voter education campaigns, said it was a struggle to generate enthusiasm in Saginaw.“I’ve been here all my life. I grew up on the east side of Saginaw and I see the apathy. This is not something that they put at the top of the priority list when they’ve got to figure out, can I get to work today?” he said.“My church is on the south side of Saginaw, probably the lowest socioeconomic district in Saginaw county other than a couple of rural areas, and when I walk through the neighborhood and talk to people about why they don’t vote, you’d be surprised how many of them say, ‘that’s not important to me.’ These folks are going to go ahead and do what they want to do. They don’t listen to me. They don’t want to hear what I have to say.”Black residents account for nearly half of Saginaw city’s 45,000 population with white people about one-third. Historically, a sharp racial divide was marked by the Saginaw river running through the heart of the city so that there were two downtowns on opposite banks.Neighborhoods on the east side are overwhelmingly Black. The west side was mostly white but the population has become more mixed in recent years as large numbers of white people moved to neighboring Saginaw Township.Voter turnout in the east of Saginaw city is consistently well below the other side of the river and anywhere else in the county. Many people are automatically registered to vote in Michigan when applying for a driving licence but do not do so.In the 2020 election, which saw the highest turnout of voters in Michigan history at 70.5% as sharp divisions over Trump drew more people to the polls, less than half of registered voters in Saginaw city cast a ballot. In most Black neighborhoods the figure was even lower, falling below 40% in some precincts.Even during Barack Obama’s first run for the White House in 2008, turnout in the east of Saginaw, where the man who would become the US’s first Black president picked up more than 95% of the vote in many precincts, was still much lower than elsewhere.But the number that some Harris supporters in Saginaw are focused on is Trump’s victory in Michigan in 2016 by fewer than 11,000 votes – only slightly more than the number of registered voters who did not cast a ballot in the city of Saginaw. Although Joe Biden narrowly won the state back four years later, Michigan is again on a knife edge. Michigan could help decide the whole US election, and Saginaw could help decide the whole of Michigan.Jeff Bulls, the president of the Community Alliance for the People in Saginaw, which is running a get-out-the-vote campaign, said the low turnout was not easily overcome.“The numbers are stupid. They’re really, really low. Some people, especially poorer people, they feel like their vote doesn’t count. Or people have become jaded with government. A lot of them feel like government doesn’t have any effect on their lives. That’s how people draw back from the process: ‘I’m going to go vote for what?’ A lot of people are disenchanted with the process. That’s not easy to change,” he said.Bulls said the sense of being overlooked by political leaders was especially evident in March, when Biden was still running for re-election. The president visited Saginaw city but failed to meet Black leaders or visit a Black church.“There was a lot of tension with people feeling like the president didn’t really care about the Black vote. His visit was specifically to come here and meet with Black leaders in the community and Black clergy to address that sentiment. When he got here, everything changed. He ended up meeting with white liberal Democrats and that pissed a lot of people off and set off a firestorm,” he said.Pruitt demanded an explanation from Biden’s campaign which, he said, apologized.“It left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths. It was clearly a mistake and, believe me, there were several of us who let him know that,” he said.Critics turned on the county’s Democratic party and its chair, Aileen Pettinger. She shakes her head in despair on being asked about the debacle.“Unfortunately, because I’m the party chair, I got the brunt of it. Honestly, we were only told the night before. In the past, they would ask our input. This time they did not listen to us at all,” she said.For some activists, the incident had echoes of Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 campaign when her staff arrived in midwestern towns waving data sets and riding roughshod over local advice, helping to cost her the election.Pettinger said the Harris campaign was a long way from that. Pruitt agreed.“I’m pretty sure that that would not happen with Harris,” he said.But Pruitt said the incident threw a spotlight on the alienation many in the city feel from established political parties.“There’s obviously the tendency for us who do vote to vote Democratic. But there’s a school of thought that the Democratic party takes that vote for granted and really doesn’t listen to what we really feel is important,” he said.Pettinger said she recognised the problem.“We have heard that on the doors but I’m seeing a huge shift out on the doors since Kamala has announced that she was running. It’s a huge difference. I haven’t seen hope like this since Obama, I haven’t seen this excitement,” she said.“I’m not losing hope. I feel very energised about it. We just have to make sure it carries over and make sure we get people to the ballot box.”Pruitt agreed that Harris had injected some enthusiasm into the election.“I don’t think it will drive it as much as Obama. I never had the slightest thought that I’d see an African American be elected president of the United States, so that phenomenon has already occurred,” he said.“But I see some people excited about the opportunity of a Black female being president and it will help drive our community to the polls. But in the end it’s the policies that matter to get people to vote. We have to help connect the dots for people. There has to be self-interest in voting which means you have to explain those two or three issues that you think are at the top of their list, and what we have to lose if we’re on the wrong side of voting on those things.”Pruitt said his get-out-the-vote campaign was focusing on the dangers Trump poses to “the social safety network”, including housing support, childcare assistance, and disability and social security payments.“As a national theme, abortion is out there and that’s what the parties are running with. That may be on the list for the average Black woman on the east side of Saginaw but it’s much further down the list. But if we start talking about losing the department of education and how that’s going to impact their children, that will hit home very quickly,” he said.Bulls said affordable housing was also a major issue in Saginaw even though the city’s population has dropped sharply over recent decades. Saginaw is dotted with grass-covered spaces where abandoned houses have been torn down, but rents for what remains are high and the quality often substandard.“In Saginaw city, almost 70% of our housing is over 60 years old. There’s a lot of blight, a lot of houses that have already been torn down or need to be torn down. There haven’t been any new builds in the city, en masse, probably this century. So we just have a huge need for new housing, whether it’s single family housing or apartments,” he said.Then there is policing in a city with one of the highest crime rates in the country. Bulls said some of the alienation comes from frustration at the political decision to bring the state police into Saginaw.“We’ve had a couple different community forums on it because people are really concerned. There’s a state programme called the secure cities partnership. It has largely brought a bunch of Michigan state police into the community. It’s been basically a stop-and-frisk program. They don’t answer 911 calls. They literally just patrol and pull people over. There’s a huge racial disparity on where they patrol and who they pull over. It’s been a very, very tense issue here, and it’ll continue to be until it’s dealt with,” he said.Still, campaigners see an opportunity in the introduction of nine days of early voting for this year’s presidential election which, they say, which will assist Black churches running “souls to the polls” initiatives to lead their congregations to vote after Sunday services.Pruitt has also looked to other places for advice, including to Stacey Abrams, the Georgia politician who created voting rights organisations that proved crucial in the Democrats winning two key seats in the US Senate four years ago.“We’ve had conversations with Stacey Abrams and people from Georgia because it was remarkable what she did. But when I started looking at how she did it, it takes an army of people and an awful lot of money to make it happen. That’s another side of this, the resources, because the frustration for people like me is marshalling the resources to get it done,“ he said.Bulls feels the same constraints, and laments what he sees as the tendency of white politicians to leave it to Black organisations to get out the vote in their community.“It shouldn’t be left to us but here we are. It’s important to us so we’ll do it anyway, but it shouldn’t be just us,” he said.Get in touchWe’d like to hear from Saginaw residents about the issues that matter to them this election. You can get in touch with us here. More

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      in US Politics

      Pennsylvania steel workers, wooed by Harris and Trump, remain skeptical: ‘I don’t trust either one of them’

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      The Monongahela River winds through the tight Mon Valley south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, creating a main artery in the nation’s industrial heart, where the steel and coal industries have driven the region’s economy and shaped political landscapes since the late 19th century.In the weeks preceding the election, the region is once again playing an outsize role in determining the nation’s political future. A controversial Biden-Harris administration plan to kill Pittsburgh-based US Steel’s proposed sale to Japan’s Nippon Steel is viewed in part as an election-year strategy to shore up critical union support in a must-win swing state.On the ground in and around the city, evidence suggests the move may just work – unions oppose the sale and the administration’s position is at the very least maintaining recent Democratic gains in the tug-of-war for swing voters in the nation’s steel capital.Anecdotal evidence and polling point to Harris gaining momentum here.“I’ve learned not to be comfortable with any election because we didn’t think Trump could win in 16 … but I think people are going to vote more common sense this year,” said Keli Vereb, a steelworker union rep and Lincoln borough council member.Unusually in these fractious times, both presidential candidates oppose the deal, backing United Steelworkers International union members across the political spectrum who are determined to thwart a deal they see as a job killer that puts their pensions at risk.Recent memories of supply chain issues have also hardened US resolve to protect vital industries such as steel.Still, politics are omnipresent, and the deal undoubtedly will play a role in determining the next president. It comes eight years after blue-collar workers here defected from the Democratic party en masse when then candidate Hillary Clinton said during a debate that she would put coalminers out of business.Some union leaders say the comment may have cost her Pennsylvania, which Donald Trump won by 0.7%. After four years of pro-labor policies from Joe Biden, the party has begun to win back some who left, and with Trump proposing to block the US Steel sale if he were elected, Democrats risk a 2016 repeat if it is allowed to proceed.“Trump would pounce on them if they let [the sale] go,” said Allen George, a lifelong Democrat who worked in unions adjacent to the steel industry.The companies are making a powerful argument that the deal is vital to US Steel’s survival. US Steel claims it will be forced to cut Pennsylvania jobs and move its headquarters out of Pittsburgh if Biden blocks Nippon’s $14.1bn bid, while it has promised to invest $2.4bn in its facilities if the sale goes through. The company’s “scorched earth” public relations campaign on the factory floors has at least some rank and file supporting the sale, said Bernie Hall, Pennsylvania director for USI.“Some are scared and think: ‘We should just take this and live to fight another day,’ and that’s natural,” Hall said.Many more, however, oppose the sale. The union’s contract is up in 23 months and they fear a Nippon-US Steel would cut jobs, or continue to send them to non-union states. They point to Nippon’s long history of “dumping” steel in the US, which has cratered prices and cost American jobs, and many fear the purchase is a ploy to continue the practice.US Steel’s record of closing factories and failing to keep promises has generated a deep mistrust and disdain for the company, workers told the Guardian on a recent Monday afternoon outside the Harvey Wilner’s pub in West Mifflin, just south of Pittsburgh. They rattled off a list of facilities that have closed over the decades.“Nippon can have at it,” said Barry Fez, who has worked in manufacturing in the region for decades, but, he says, in a few years he expects they will go back on their word.But that sentiment is colliding with Wall Street and Beltway support for the deal. The latter argue that the administration’s protectionist plan would run counter to international trade norms because Japan is an ally and close economic partner.The idea that trade decorum with Japan is more important than Pennsylvania union members’ security drew scoffs from some workers.“And then they’ll wonder why they lost an election,” said Mike Gallagher, a retired union member.‘They lie all the time’Banking legend JP Morgan created US Steel in a mega-merger in 1901. It grew to be the largest US producer, employing more than 340,000 people at its second world war peak. Today, it is a shadow of its former self, has closed many of its Mon Valley facilities, and now employs about 4,000 people, although the company says it indirectly supports 11,000 jobs and generates $3.6bn in economic activity annually.In the face of waning American steel power, the company has looked for a buyer, and many feel a US-Japan alliance makes sense in countering increasing Chinese domination of the industry.But the union is opposed, and in Pennsylvania, 25% of the electorate is unionized, making it a formidable bloc intensely courted by both political parties.Trump in January said he would stop the deal. Biden has said the same, including in a private meeting with steel workers in April, when the president insisted “US steel will stay US-owned”, according to Don Furko, president of Local 1557 in Clairton. “He said he ‘guarantees’ it.”The administration’s decision on whether the deal should be blocked largely lies with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, which is made up of Biden’s cabinet members and other appointees. It can veto mergers and acquisitions it finds present a national security risk.CFIUS was expected to issue an opinion on 21 September, but the administration punted until after the election. Union members say they aren’t worried.“President Biden and Vice-President Harris have been pretty clear and they will follow through,” Hall said.Harris has got the message: “US Steel should remain American-owned and American-operated,” she told a rally in Pittsburgh earlier this month.David Burritt, the CEO of US Steel, has warned of consequences if the deal is blocked. He says the company would “largely pivot away” from its blast furnace production in the region, and move its headquarters out of Pittsburgh.“We want elected leaders and other key decision makers to recognize the benefits of the deal as well as the unavoidable consequences if the deal fails,” Burritt said last month.That threat has further inflamed tensions. Furko said it reminds him of his young son flipping over the Monopoly board when he loses: “That’s really what’s going on here – if this deal doesn’t go through, then they’re going to flip over the Monopoly board.”Asked about US Steel’s claims that it will revitalize the region if the sale goes through, workers told the Guardian that there are no guarantees that the investment will be in Mon Valley. People would be “foolish” to believe that, Vereb said.That was echoed outside the Wilner’s pub. Fez recalled the pub’s heyday, when “you couldn’t get in there at 7am because it was so packed”, and the floor was littered with quarter wrappers from the slot machines.On a Monday afternoon around shift change time, a group of about a dozen retirees sat around the bar. They blamed US Steel for the region’s slowdown, and while they say they do not expect Biden or Trump to save the city, they have even less confidence that US Steel and a Japanese company will turn it around.“They lie all the time, and I don’t trust either one of them,” said Jack, a retiree who worked for US Steel for more than 30 years, who declined to use his last name.‘He gets credit for that’The political price that the Biden-Harris administration could pay for allowing the deal to go through can be seen in the 2016 election’s wake.Before 2016, the region was largely Democratic. But when Clinton made the comment about the clean energy industry putting coalminers and barons out of business, “Things turned on a dime,” Vereb said. Her borough of 900 was once about 80% Democrats. It’s now about 75% Republican, she estimates.About 75% of those working at US Steel’s Clairton Mill Works, several union leaders estimate, support Trump, and there is little Democrats can do to win back many of them.The situation is also complicated by US Steel’s intense campaign to convince workers that the sale will save their jobs. The company sends regular emails, holds meetings, takes out ads in newspapers and makes their case to reporters.“They say: ‘If you don’t support us, then we’re gonna shut this place down, and if that happens you can thank your union leadership,’” said Rob Hutchison, president of Local 1219. “When [rank and file] have that threat in their face eight to 12 hours per day, then it starts to become something they think about.”That also presents another political risk: if the Biden-Harris administration were to block the deal, and US Steel shuts down a plant, Democrats may again lose some voters.However, so far, the controversial move seems to be paying dividends.“I don’t know if the average Joe is thinking about CFIUS or is that in the weeds, but I think from a macro level, people see it, that it’s Biden supporting the union workers, and he gets credit for that,” Hall said. More