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      Biden administration doubles down on asylum restrictions at southern border

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      The Biden administration said on Monday it was making asylum restrictions at the southern border even tougher, as it is increasingly eager to show voters uneasy over immigration that it is taking a hard stance on border security.The new rules, which toughen restrictions announced in June, bar people from being granted asylum when US officials deem that the southern border is overwhelmed.Under the previous rules, the US could restrict asylum access when the number of people trying to enter the country between the official border crossings hits 2,500 a day. The daily numbers had to average below 1,500 a day for a week in order for the restrictions to be lifted.The version rolled out on Monday says the daily numbers will have to be below 1,500 for nearly a month before the restrictions can be lifted. And the administration is now counting all children toward that number, whereas previously only migrant children from Mexico were counted.These changes, which go into effect on Tuesday, will make it much more difficult to lift the restrictions and allow people entering the country between the official border crossings eventually to apply for asylum in the US.But the restrictions implemented in June have never been lifted because the numbers of border encounters have never gotten low enough for long enough, raising the question of why the administration felt the need to make them even tougher now. The seven-day average has gotten down to about 1,800 migrant encounters a day, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said.A senior administration official said on Monday that the longer timeline was necessary to make sure that drops in immigration are sustained and not due to a one-time event. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to brief reporters about the tighter restrictions before they were made public.Immigration advocates already had harshly criticized the restrictions announced in June, saying the administration was slashing away at vital protections for people fleeing persecution. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU and other groups are challenging the restrictions in court, saying that they differs little from a similar move by the Trump administration that was blocked by the courts. They argue that by law people who cross the border with a credible fear of persecution or harm deserve due process.The ACLU posted on the social media platform X on Monday: “The asylum law Congress enacted recognizes that people fleeing danger should not be forced to wait and try to secure an appointment to seek asylum. This restrictive rule is not just immoral but illegal.”The administration has touted its asylum restrictions, saying they have led to serious drops in the number of people coming to the southern border. The DHS said on Monday that since the changes were announced in June, the daily number of people encountered by border patrol between the legal border crossings had fallen over 50%.In a statement announcing the new rules, the DHS called on Congress to do more to solve immigration problems.Border security and immigration are a key weakness for the Biden administration and Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.The Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, and others from his party have hammered away at the high numbers of people who have come to the southern border under the Biden administration, saying the White House and the vice-president have not done enough to restrict migration and secure the border.Harris visited a border region of Arizona on Friday, her first visit as the Democratic nominee. She walked alongside the tall metal fence separating the US from Mexico and called for a tightening of asylum rules while pushing for a better way to welcome immigrants legally.“I reject the false choice that suggests we must choose either between securing our border and creating a system that is orderly, safe and humane,” Harris said. “We can and we must do both.”The restrictions do allow some exceptions. Victims of a severe form of trafficking, for example, would still be allowed to apply for asylum.The administration also allows people using its CBP One appointment system to apply for asylum, but those people must schedule an appointment on the app to come to an official border crossing point.The administration has tried to encourage people to use that app instead of crossing the border illegally.But demand far exceeds the 1,450 appointments available daily, and the administration has not indicated that it will increase the number of appointments. More

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      Harris holds Las Vegas rally as Nevada becomes crucial swing state in election

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      Kamala Harris held a rally in Las Vegas on Sunday night as the state, with six electoral college votes, becomes increasingly important in a presidential race that polls show is barely moving to favour either candidate.Both the vice-president and Donald Trump have been making frequent trips to Nevada, but Harris’s rally takes place two days after she visited the US-Mexico border, a vulnerable issue for Democrats that Harris is looking to defuse.Before the raucous Las Vegas crowd estimated at 7,500, Harris renewed her jabs at Trump over refusing another debate, saying, “the American people have a right to hear us discuss the issues. And as you say here in Las Vegas, I’m all in. I’m all in.”Harris offered her condolences for those affected by Hurricane Helene, and her campaign said she would visit affected areas as soon as doing so would not disrupt the emergency response to the storm that has hit the country’s southeast.“We will stand with these communities for as long as it takes to make sure that they are able to recover and rebuild,” Harris said on Sunday.On Friday, Harris walked alongside a towering, rust-colored border wall fitted with barbed wire in Douglas, Arizona, and met with federal authorities to discuss illegal border crossing and fentanyl smuggling.At a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania on Sunday, the former president attempted to blame Harris for the opioid epidemic. “She even wants to legalize fentanyl,” he said.Six out of 10 Americans rate immigration as “very important”, according to the Pew Research Center, and other polling suggests voters trust Trump can handle the issue more effectively than Harris can.In contrast, fewer than half of voters (40%) said abortion, the key Republican vulnerability, was a very important issue to their vote.In a speech in San Francisco on Saturday, Harris said the “race is as close as it could possibly be” and described it “a margin-of-error race”. The Democrat candidate added that she felt she was running as the underdog.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocrats have also begun testing a new strategy to appeal to younger voters, including visitors to Las Vegas with its long-crafted reputation for inebriation, with posts about what it calls “Trump’s tequila tax” that its says could come as a result of proposed import tariffs.Harris’s campaign swing through Las Vegas comes as both candidates have said they plan to end taxes on tips. Trump presented his proposal in the city in June; Harris used her own rally in August to make the same pledge.The issue resonates in Las Vegas, where there are approximately 60,000 hospitality workers. Nevada’s Culinary Union has endorsed Harris.Ted Pappageorge, the culinary union’s secretary-treasurer, told the Associated Press that the union favored Harris’s proposal because she pledged to tackle what his union calls “sub-minimum wage”.“That shows us she’s serious,” Pappageorge said.Trump was at the same Las Vegas venue that Harris is speaking at earlier this month. In that address, he called his opponent the “would-be the president of invasion”. 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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      Harris accuses Trump of playing ‘political games’ during US border visit

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      Kamala Harris accused Donald Trump of “playing political games” on immigration – his signature issue – as the vice-president sought to turn one of her biggest vulnerabilities into a political strength during a visit to the US-Mexico border on Friday.Speaking in the Arizona border town of Douglas, Harris declared the US both a “sovereign nation” and a “country of immigrants” and said as president, she would strengthen controls at the southern border, while working “to fix our broken system of immigration”.“I reject the false choice that suggests we must choose either between securing our border and creating a system that is orderly, safe and humane,” Harris said. “We can and we must do both.”She hammered Trump for derailing a sweeping bipartisan package that would have overhauled the federal immigration system, while providing additional resources to help hire more border patrol agents.“It should be in effect today, producing results, in real time right now,” Harris said, speaking on a stage framed by American flags and large blue posters that read “border security and stability”. “He prefers to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”After that bill collapsed, the Biden administration announced new rules to temporarily halt asylum processing at the US southern border. Since then, arrests for border crossings between ports of entry have plummeted. In July, arrests dipped below levels not seen since Trump’s final months in office in 2020, though they ticked up slightly in August.As president, Harris said, she would take “further action to keep the border closed”, including stiffening the punishments for those who cross between ports of entry. She emphasized her support for “humane” and “orderly” policies, reminding Arizonans of the measures Trump took during his first term to curb illegal immigration.“He separated families, he ripped toddlers out of their mothers’ arms, put children in cages and tried to end protection of Dreamers,” she said in Douglas, a blue dot in the overwhelmingly red Cochise county.Before her remarks, Harris walked a stretch of barrier constructed during the Obama administration. In the sweltering triple-degree heat, she received a briefing from customs and border protection officials on efforts to stop the flow of fentanyl across the border.She also stopped by the Raul H Castro port of entry in Douglas, across from Agua Prieta, Mexico, which is slated to be expanded and modernized with grants from the bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law by Joe Biden.“They’ve got a tough job and they need, rightly, support to do their job,” Harris said afterward.Speaking to supporters at a manufacturing plant in Walker, Michigan, Trump boasted that Harris was “getting killed on the border” and blamed the Biden administration’s border policies for fueling high levels of migration during the first three years of his presidency.“It’s a crime what she did,” he said. “There’s no greater act of disloyalty than to extinguish the sovereignty of your own nation.”In her remarks, Harris said she understood the unique challenges and needs facing border communities like the one in Douglas, having served as the attorney general of neighboring California. She recalled touring trafficking tunnels used by smugglers and touted her work prosecuting international gangs and criminal organizations that smuggle guns, drugs and people across the border.Republicans would rather discuss her more recent assignment, as vice-president during a period of record migration when she was officially tasked with addressing the root causes of people coming north from Central America. On Friday, Republicans misleadingly accused her of being an absentee “border tsar” whose policies led to the situation at the border.Voters in Arizona consistently rank immigration – Trump’s signature issue – as a top concern this election cycle, often second only to the economy. A sizeable share of voters trust Trump more on immigration and border security, but Harris’s campaign believes it has made progress softening Democrats’ deficit on an issue seen as one of their biggest electoral vulnerabilities.The campaign has blanketed the airwaves with ads designed to blunt Trump’s attacks over her immigration record. On Friday, it launched a new ad in Arizona and other battleground states highlighting her pledge to hire thousands more border agents and stop fentanyl trafficking and human smuggling. “We need a leader with a real plan to fix the border,” a voiceover says.Less than six weeks before election day, polls show a tight race in Arizona, one of seven battleground states that will likely decide the election and the only one that touches the southern border.A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll of swing states found Harris with a small lead in Arizona, while a New York Times/Siena College poll released on Monday found Trump opening a five-percentage point lead over Harris, marking a significant improvement from August when he trailed the vice-president by the same margin.Biden won Arizona by just over 10,400 votes in 2020, becoming the first Democrat to win the south-west state since Bill Clinton in 1996.Kris Mayes, the attorney general, who accompanied Harris throughout her visit on Friday, urged Arizonans not to sit the election out.“Races in Arizona can be close, take it from me,” Mayes said. In 2022, the Democrat won her race by 280 votes. More

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      Ohio residents flock to Springfield’s Haitian restaurants: ‘They are family’

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      The line down the center of the Rose Goute Creole restaurant on Springfield, Ohio’s South Limestone Street is halfway out the door. It’s been like this ever since former president Donald Trump falsely accused immigrants in Springfield of eating cats and dogs during a televised debate on 10 September.At the back of the restaurant, kitchen staff scramble to take orders and load plates of herring patties, rice and beans, and barbecued chicken legs on to serving trays. Outside, cars with plates from Georgia, Wisconsin and Indiana – diners who’ve stopped off a nearby highway to show support for the Haitian community – fill the parking lot.It’s a partly chaotic scene, as Dady Fanfan, a 41-year-old from Plaisance in northern Haiti, stands inside the door, greeting diners as they enter, before slipping away to clear nearby tables.“One day I came to the restaurant to buy something, and I saw there was a lot of people,” says Fanfan, who despite not knowing the restaurant owners personally is this week spending his free time helping his countrymen and women. “I just stayed a little bit to help them, and then the next day I came because they are family.”As Trump and JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate and Ohio senator, continue to spread false information about Haitians in Springfield, regular people from the city and beyond are taking it upon themselves to seize back the narrative around immigrants in the Ohio city.And the outpouring of support aimed at countering Trump’s damaging comments hasn’t been limited to volunteering.Many community healthcare centers and support organizations that have been assisting Haitians in Springfield for several years are reporting increased donations and contributions coinciding with the furor of the past 10 days.“In the last three days, we’ve taken cash donations about seven times the normal rate, and it’s specifically because of this polarization,” says Casey Rollins, executive director of Springfield’s Society of St Vincent de Paul. She says the money is then transferred to gift cards to be used by those in need at a local international grocery store.Unlike his party colleagues, Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, has come out in strong support for the Haitian community, urged Trump and Vance to end their “very hurtful” comments and pledged $2.5m over two years to assist healthcare organizations in Springfield.“I’m just trying to make it easier for them to go through the firestorm that they’re in,” says Sammy, who drove her Yamaha motorbike 176 miles (283km) from Cleveland last Saturday and pulled into the parking lot of the Haitian Community Help and Support Center without knowing a single person in town. Seeing the threats and hate for Springfield’s Haitians online and having served in the army, she wanted to help protect people she saw as innocent victims.“I believe that America does best when it is one community standing up for, protecting and in solidarity with another,” she says.Sammy, who asked not to be fully identified as she is a trans woman in the process of changing names, says she’s seen supporters bring fresh garden vegetables, perform yard work around the center, and drop off furniture and office supplies.“It’s been one of the most American experiences of my life,” she says.“It’s humbling.”As Sammy speaks, JoAnn Welland, 79, from the neighboring town of Enon, walks by the front of the center, asking where she can donate.“The people who are coming here [from Haiti] have sacrificed so much to come, and Springfield, in my opinion, is a lovely town,” she says. Welland says she was motivated to get into her car and drive to the Haitian community center to donate after hearing the lies on television about Haitians eating pets.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Then, I heard that the town hall got a bomb threat, the elementary school got a bomb threat. The hatemongering, that’s wrong. That’s ugly and negative and hateful. This is my way of standing up for truth,” Welland says.But even as Welland speaks, across town three supermarkets are abruptly evacuated and closed due to bomb threats, dozens of which have set the town on edge since Trump singled out Springfield during last week’s debate. One Springfield elementary school saw around 200 children absent from classes on Tuesday due to security concerns and bomb threats, which largely have been found to be hoaxes.Earlier this week, CultureFest, a fall festival beloved by locals, was canceled to “prevent any potential risks” to attendees. A debate involving local politicians up for election has also been canceled.Springfield’s Republican mayor, Rob Rue, has pleaded for both presidential candidates not to come to the town, saying it would place an extreme strain on the city’s already stretched resources. Despite that, at a rally in New York on Wednesday, Trump said he’d travel to Springfield in the coming weeks.Back at the Rose Goute Creole restaurant, the stream of customers keeps coming. Orders stack up as hungry Haitian workers wearing T-shirts depicting their employers dart over to the counter to collect their orders before scampering back out the door.And Fanfan isn’t alone. Amanda Payen hands out free bottles of water and asks diners if they’re being served. Her husband, Jacob, who’s from Port-au-Prince but lived in Florida for decades before coming to Springfield, thanks diners for coming in as they leave.None are employees of the restaurants, but as Haitians, they want to help.“I’ll come back again tomorrow,” says Fanfan, “and if I see they need help, I’ll stay.” More

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      Activist with far right ties fronts Marco Rubio-linked anti-immigration effort

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      The rightwing activist Nate Hochman, who was fired last year by the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, for employing neo-Nazi imagery in a campaign video, is now the face of a Marco Rubio-linked thinktank’s efforts to spread anti-immigrant panic from Ohio to Pennsylvania.Videos featuring Hochman recorded in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, have been boosted on X by a range of rightwing figures including the platform’s owner, the tech billionaire Elon Musk.In recent days Hochman, 26, has recorded several videos on location in Charleroi for America 2100, a rightwing thinktank where he is an adviser, according to his biographies on X and at websites where he has published articles. Hochman is also a staff writer and podcaster at the rightwing website the American Spectator, where his recent output has mostly consisted of anti-immigrant messaging.Like Springfield in Ohio, Charleroi has attracted a community of Haitian migrants.The borough manager, Jim Manning, told CBS News on Wednesday that immigrants including Haitians “have been a benefit to the town”.He added: “They come here. They buy property. They open businesses. They work here. They pay taxes. So for us, at the end of the day, it has been a benefit.”At the time of reporting, Hochman had only published interviews with older white residents of the town, who have variously complained that the newcomers do not speak English and that migrants have taken “American jobs”.One interviewee appears to concede that the Haitians are in Charleroi legally but dismisses the importance of that fact.“The perception is that it’s not legal,” the interviewee says at one point. “Now, you get a lot of people saying they’re illegals and everyone wants to fight about that term, but it doesn’t really matter.”In an email sent after publication, Mike Needham, America 2100’s founder and president, pointed to an interview with a Black resident that had been published on the organization’s X account on Friday afternoon.Needham added in the same email: “Nate also recorded interviews with multiple Haitian workers in the course of his week-long investigation.” As of noon on Saturday, no interviews with Haitian immigrants had been published on the X account.Most have not been shared extensively, although one of the videos was reposted by far-right account End Wokeness, and reposted in turn by Musk to his nearly 200 million followers along with a nugget of political analysis. “Pennsylvania is a swing state,” Musk wrote. His repost was shared in turn by the America 2100 account.America 2100 is ostensibly a thinktank, launched by Needham, Rubio’s one-time chief of staff, in June 2023. Rubio is a Republican senator from Florida. Coverage of the launch presented it as a project with Rubio’s blessing, whose mission was to “begin the work of codifying and institutionalizing the ideas Rubio helped pioneer”.In July, however, Needham was also appointed as chairman of another thinktank, American Compass, which is led by a former Mitt Romney aide, Oren Cass.Cass and American Compass have drawn attention by promoting interventionist economic policies. Those policy ideas overlap with those of JD Vance: in reporting on the Needham hire, Politico called American Compass a “Vance-aligned think tank”, and Vance “an ally whose own staff has deep ties to the organization”.American Compass’s policy director, Chris Griswold, meanwhile, is another former Rubio staffer.After being dubbed “Little Marco” by Trump in a 2016 primary in which he, in turn, mocked the size of Trump’s hands, Rubio moved closer to Trump politically over the succeeding eight years, and in May even refused to commit to accepting the results of the upcoming election.At that time, Rubio was under consideration as Trump’s running mate but was eventually passed over for JD Vance.Although there was reporting on America 2100 at launch, there is little information on the site about its current personnel or the nature of the entity underlying its activities.America 2100 was registered as a non-stock corporation in Virginia in June 2023.Officers listed in filings include Needham and another former Rubio staffer, Albert Martinez, along with Lisa Lisker, a lawyer who was reportedly previously involved in an organization that spread misinformation about solar power in 12 states, and was also secretary for JD Vance’s campaign committee during his run for Senate in the 2022 election.The Guardian emailed America 2100 for comment via an email address designated for “press”, and emailed Needham and Lisker. The Guardian also contacted Rubio’s office.Only Needham responded, writing that: “I know this article will be bad-faith political hit job.”Needham added: “Nate did a great job reporting on the tragic story playing out in Charleroi.”In mid-2022, Hochman appeared poised for a high-profile career in conservative media, having been rewarded with blue ribbon fellowships and a staff job at the home of mainstream conservative opinion, National Review.His status as a representative of the emerging, harder-edged “national conservative” movement made him “the leftwing media’s go-to voice for insight into this crowd”, according to a story on rising rightwing influencers published at that time by the Dispatch, a “never Trump” conservative website.Hochman’s appearance in that story, however, was the start of his undoing.The Dispatch reported on a recording of Hochman in a Twitter spaces conversation with the white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes.In that conversation, Hochman reportedly disagreed with Fuentes on some topics, but also appeared to compliment the “America First” far-right activist, telling Fuentes: “You’ve gotten a lot of kids based, and we respect that for sure,” and “I think Nick’s probably a better influence than [the conservative commentator] Ben Shapiro on young men who might otherwise be conservatives.”Amid the furore that followed, Hochman was stripped of his fellowships. In March 2023 he left the National Review to work for DeSantis’s abortive presidential campaign. He was fired by the campaign that July, however, after he retweeted a meme-drenched pro-DeSantis video on his personal account that embraced the aesthetics of the online far right.As the Guardian reported at the time, the video portrayed “a ‘Wojak” meme, a sad-looking man popular on the right, against headlines about Trump policy failures before showing the meme cheering up to headlines about DeSantis and images of the governor at work”, all to the tune of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill.Then finally it superimposed DeSantis on to ranks of marching soldiers and a Sonnenrad – a Norse symbol frequently appropriated by neo-Nazis.As Hochman departed the campaign, Axios reported that Hochman had made the video, but endeavored to make it “appear as if it was produced externally”.Since then, Hochman has more fully embraced the more extreme actors of the so-called “new right”.A week ago, he published an essay at the far-right magazine IM–1776, which appeared to embed conspiratorial claims about the media in a jeremiad against democracy.Hochman claims at one point in the piece: “The US constitution was conceived to thwart tyranny; but it did so, in part, by limiting mass democracy. Once those limits were removed, power was no longer dispersed across a system of checks and balances, but centralized in the hands of whoever controlled the machinery of opinion formation.”Another recent essay published at IM–1776 characterized critics of Darryl Cooper – the “Holocaust revisionist” who recently appeared on Tucker Carlson’s webcast – as adherents of “Hitlerian Satanism”.IM–1776 also gave space for the alt-right influencer Douglass Mackey to characterize his prosecution under Klan-era election laws as the government “prosecuting people [for] posting election jokes”.The Guardian previously reported on IM–1776’s close links to the rightwing activist Christopher Rufo, who has spent much of the last week trying in vain to substantiate Donald Trump’s false claims that Haitian immigrants are eating “dogs” “cats” and “pets”.In his essay, Hochman praises Rufo, saying that he “has won an impressive string of culture war victories by actively crafting news cycles rather than responding to them”.In May, in the American Mind, Hochman began a glowing review of The Unprotected Class, a book by the Claremont Institute’s Jeremy Carl that claims America is racked by anti-white racism, with the line: “Ethnic discrimination is as old as human civilization itself,” and goes on to argue: “Racial revenge is the germ of the sustained campaign to defame, attack, and disenfranchise white Americans on behalf of their country’s most powerful institutions.” More

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      Ohio city’s mayor issues emergency order over false migrant rumors

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      The mayor of Springfield, Ohio, has issued an emergency proclamation following the continued rise in public safety threats over false rightwing rumors about the city’s migrant communities.On Thursday, Rob Rue released a statement, saying: “Ensuring the safety of Springfield’s residents is our top priority.” He added: “We are addressing these threats with the seriousness they warrant and are taking immediate steps to ensure the security of both our community and our employees. Our commitment to preventing harm is unwavering.”According to a city statement, the proclamation allows Rue and other city officials to “swiftly acquire resources needed to address potential threats” and will “enable departments to respond more efficiently to emerging risks, including civil unrest, cyber threats and potential acts of violence”.In recent days, following Donald Trump, JD Vance and other rightwing politicians publicly repeating falsehoods about the city’s Haitian immigrants eating other locals’ pets, the city has received more than 30 bomb threats against its schools, government buildings and city officials’ homes.On Wednesday, local outlets reported multiple clinics and grocery stores across the city being forced to evacuate because of bomb threats. Among the establishments forced to evacuate were two branches of Walmart, one Kroger supermarket, as well as the Pregnancy Resource Center of Clark county and Planned Parenthood in Springfield.In response to the spread of the false rumors on social media, then taken up full throat by Trump, the Republican nominee for president, and his running mate Vance, Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine, also a Republican, said such escalations by national figures were “very hurtful” to the Haitian migrant community, adding: “They need to stop.”On Tuesday, Vance defended his comments about Haitian migrants eating pets, saying at a Wisconsin rally that “the media has a responsibility to factcheck” stories, rather than the candidate or his campaign. Earlier this week, Vance admitted on CNN that he was willing to “create stories” to get media attention.Trump and Vance have been told repeatedly by various authorities in Springfield and Ohio that the rumors about pets and animals such as local ducks are not true. More

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      JD Vance is factually challenged – and morally deficient | Margaret Sullivan

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      There was a moment when JD Vance could have turned back from the story.After the vice-presidential candidate posted on social media about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets – based on the flimsiest of supposed evidence – a Vance staffer checked it out.“His staff member asked Springfield’s city manager if the claim was true,” according to new Wall Street Journal reporting. The city manager responded clearly: “I told him no … I told him these claims were baseless.”Then and there, Vance could have deleted the post, which had already done damage. He could have disavowed it and tried to limit the harm.Nothing doing. He left the post up and Donald Trump immediately took it from there. As nearly 70 million people watched, the former president blasted the lie out to the world at the presidential debate.We know what followed: not just viral memes and hip-hop songs that feature the words: “They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”It was far worse. Bomb threats plagued Springfield’s hospitals, and officials closed schools. Racist rhetoric circulated, harming the lives of Vance’s own constituents – he is, after all, an Ohio senator.Innocent people were portrayed as villains. Despite all the Trump campaign’s trashing of “illegals”, the Haitian immigrants in Springfield are largely there legally, through a temporary protected status, as the Guardian recently reported. Local business owners say they have been a welcome addition to the city’s workforce.But Vance is fine – more than fine – with having turned rumors into real damage.He told CNN that he is willing “to create stories” to focus the media’s attention on his and Trump’s relentless, though often false, message about the harm that immigrants are doing to American society – and of course to blame Trump’s Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, at every turn.Vance’s rejection of the chance to take down his original post speaks volumes about how he and Trump operate. And his doubling down by asserting that making up lies is acceptable should be a red-alarm warning – yet another – about a second Trump term. There are so many.The ugly episode reminds me of Trump aide Kellyanne Conway’s remark to NBC News’s Chuck Todd soon after the 2016 election. As Trump spread ego-driven nonsense about the unprecedented size of his inaugural crowd – and insisted that his press secretary Sean Spicer do the same – Conway offered a blithe defense.Spicer, she said, was merely providing “alternative facts”.“Look, alternative facts are not facts,” Todd pointed out. “They’re falsehoods.” Or, as the mainstream media has finally brought itself to say: they are lies.Nearly eight years later, the Trump team is even bolder about lying, expressing that practice not just as defensible but a necessity. It spreads hatred so efficiently.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis chapter is sad – even tragic – for many reasons. The continual rejection of truth by some of the most prominent people in public life does real damage, not only to innocent people’s lives and to a community’s safety, but more broadly to our society and democracy.One bit of heartening news emerged amid all this ugliness. As the Wall Street Journal reporters explored the original rumor about pets in Springfield, a Vance spokesperson came up with a police report in which a resident had claimed her pet might have been taken by her Haitian neighbors.But when a reporter checked it out by going to Anna Kilgore’s house, she told him that her cat, Miss Sassy, had returned a few days after having gone missing.Imagine that: not stolen, not eaten, Miss Sassy was found safe – in Kilgore’s own basement.Afterwards, with the help of a translation app, Kilgore did the right thing: she apologized to her Haitian neighbor. That apology was a touch of human decency amid the ugliness.Don’t look for any such thing from Vance or Trump. They have no regrets, and – on the contrary – take all of this as proof that their methods are working very well indeed.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More