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      Trump intensifies nativist message with sweeping proposal to deport immigrants

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      Donald Trump intensified his politics of nativism and xenophobia on Friday by announcing a sweeping plan to deport Venezuelans he claimed have “infected” a once-peaceful city in Colorado.The Republican presidential nominee held a campaign rally in Aurora on a stage adorned with posters displaying mugshots of people in prison-orange uniforms with descriptions including “illegal immigrant gang members from Venezuela”.Trump told the crowd: “I’m announcing today that, upon taking office, we will have an ‘Operation Aurora’ at the federal level to expedite the removals of these savage gangs.” He pledged to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law that allows the president to deport any non-citizen from a country that the US is at war with.“We will send elite squads of Ice [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], border patrol and federal law enforcement officers to hunt down, arrest and deport every last illegal alien gang member until there is not a single one left in this country,” he continued as the crowd roared approval.If they return to the US, Trump said, they will serve an automatic 10 years in prison without parole. “I’m hereby calling for the death penalty for any migrant that kills an American citizen or a law enforcement officer. With your vote, we will achieve complete and total victory over these sadistic monsters. It’s going to go very quickly,” he said.The rally represented a detour for Trump, since Colorado is not a battleground state and looks certain to vote for his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris. But recent events offered him an opportunity to exploit a swirl of local rumours to push his anti-immigrant message.Aurora, a city of about 340,000 people near Denver, hit headlines in August when a video circulated showing armed men walking through an apartment building housing Venezuelan immigrants. Trump amplified the story and falsely portrayed the city as overrun by members of the Venezeulan gang Tren de Aragua, or TDA.Authorities say the incident happened in a single block and the area is again safe, noting that the local crime rate is actually declining. Aurora’s Republican mayor, Mike Coffman, called Trump’s claims “grossly exaggerated” and insisted: “The narrative is not accurate by any stretch of the imagination.”TDA traces its origins back more than a decade to a notorious prison. In July, the Biden administration issued a sanction against the gang, placing it alongside MS-13 from El Salvador and the mafia-styled Camorra from Italy on a list of transnational criminal organisations, and offering $12m in rewards for the arrests of three leaders.At Friday’s rally, Trump played a series of news clips, accompanied by dramatic music, describing TDA’s crimes and the murder of US citizens by undocumented immigrants, as well as some seemingly evasive answers by Harris, the vice-president, whom Trump branded a “criminal” and the “worst border tsar” in the country’s history.“My message today is very simple,” he said. “No person who has inflicted the violence and terror that Kamala Harris has inflicted on this community can ever be allowed to become president of the United States.”The former president promised that 5 November, when the election is held, will be “liberation day”, prompting chants of “USA! USA!” from the crowd.“I will rescue Aurora and every town that has been invaded and conquered. These towns have been conquered and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail or kick them out of our country and we will be very, very effective in doing it. It’s going to happen very, very fast. Gonna get them the hell out of our country,” he said.Trump added later: “We’re talking a lot about Venezuela, because Aurora is really infected by Venezuela, but they’re coming from all countries.”The remark recalled past dehumanising language in which Trump claimed undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country” and, earlier this week, suggested that those suspected in homicide cases “have bad genes”.View image in fullscreenIn similar fashion on Friday, Stephen Miller, a former top aide who is expected to take a senior role in the White House if Trump wins, pointed to the posters on stage as he addressed the crowd before Trump’s appearance.“Look at all these photos around me,” Miller said. “Are these the kids you grew up with? Are these the neighbors you were raised with? Are these the neighbors that you want in your city?” The crowd roared “no” in reply.The ex-president has long made immigration his signature issue and promised to stage the biggest deportation operation in US history if he returns to the White House. In recent months, he has targeted specific smaller communities that have seen significant arrivals of immigrants, with tensions flaring locally over resources and some longtime residents expressing misgivings about sudden demographic changes.More than 40,000 immigrants have arrived in the Denver metro area over the past two years, including many Venezuelan families fleeing poverty and violence. But Colorado’s Democratic leaders accuse Trump and other Republicans of overstating problems in Aurora.Representative Jason Crow told the Associated Press: “What is occurring is minimal and isolated. And to be clear, it’s never acceptable, right? We never say any level is acceptable. But it’s not a surge. It’s not a change. There is no takeover of any part of this city, of any apartment complex. It has not happened. It is a lie.”Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, also have spread falsehoods about a community in Springfield, Ohio, where they said Haitian immigrants had been stealing and eating pets. The disinformation campaign led to bomb threats, school closures and forced evacuations.Trump has said he would revoke the temporary protected status that allows Haitians to stay in the US because of widespread poverty and violence in their home nation.Democrats have condemned Trump for tanking a border security bill negotiated in the Senate by both parties because it could have neutralised immigration as an issue. Harris told a Univision town hall in Nevada on Thursday: “He would prefer to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.” More

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      Friendship bracelets and eyeliner: the internet reacts to the Vance-Walz debate

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      Two of social media’s most talked-about characters faced off during the vice-presidential debate. On one side: the folksy, avuncular, pet-loving Minnesota governor, Tim Walz. On the other: the Ohio senator JD Vance, whose campaign trail gaffes – awkwardly ordering doughnuts, railing against “childless cat ladies” – are top-tier meme fodder. Whatever happened on the debate stage or in the spin rooms, the most widely viewed analysis lives on social media.Right from the start, viewers and commentators noticed the difference between Walz and Vance’s debating styles. During the first question about the unfolding crisis in the Middle East, Walz came off as nervous, fumbling over talking points. Vance tried to avoid the question. Because why talk about Iran when you can remind folks you wrote the New York Times bestseller Hillbilly Elegy?“Weird science”, a reference to the 1985 John Hughes teen sci-fi flick, became one of the night’s earliest catchphrases, after Vance evoked it in reference to the climate crisis. Perhaps not the best choice of words for someone whose opponent has described as “weird” many times on the campaign trail – much to the delight of younger voters.Vance’s appearance reignited one of the most persistent conspiracy theories of this election: does the Ohio senator wear eyeliner? His wife, Usha Vance, has shot down these rumors, telling the Puck fashion correspondent Lauren Sherman: “They’re all natural.” Even still, Twitter/X users delighted in comparing Vance’s debate night look to emo musicians or a teenage Miley Cyrus. Still, one person was impressed with Vance’s appearance: the former state representative and convicted felon George Santos, who tweeted: “Can anyone confirm Vance is on Ozempic? He’s looking thin and good!”And what about Walz? Eagle-eyed viewers spotted a friendship bracelet on the governor’s wrist. Some wondered if it was a nod to Taylor Swift, who has endorsed Kamala Harris and counts the accessory as part of her brand. The Harris campaign sells a similar style for $20. Maybe he’s ordered one.The debate moderators got time in the spotlight, too. When CBS News’s Margaret Brennan tried to move on from a question about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, Vance would not let her, instead trying to talk about a specific emergency visa. As he kept speaking over her, Brennan let out a strained: “Thank you senator for describing the legal process.” On X, many women noted Brennan’s tired delivery – relatable for those who have been spoken over or mansplained to at work.Vance also whined when moderators corrected a comment on immigration. “You said you wouldn’t fact-check me,” he groaned, as if he were angry at journalists for doing their job. Viewers at home noted the absurdity of his statement. But the conservative commentator Megyn Kelly incredulously tweeted: “F you CBS – how DARE YOU.” Meanwhile over on Truth Social, Donald Trump dismissively called the anchors “young ladies” who were “extremely biased” during his play-by-play of the debate.One of Walz biggest flubs of the night came during a question on gun control, when the governor said: “I’ve been friends with school shooters.” A slip of the tongue, but conservative social media accounts latched on to such a bonkers statement, and one of the strangest lines of the night.By the end of the night, Walz regained his friendly delivery for his planned closing statement, thanking Americans who had skipped out on watching Dancing with the Stars to view the debate, and bragging about Harris’s coalition of supporters, “from Bernie Sanders, to Dick Cheney, to Taylor Swift” – quite the lineup.As the night ended, many on social media wondered who the debate was for. Most of the people watching together online know exactly how they’ll be casting their ballots in November. One of the most compelling reasons to tune in to such a circus: to understand the next day’s memes. At least, as the moderators reminded before signing off, this was the final debate of the election season – the last time we have to go through this. More

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      Walz and Vance embrace an endangered US political species: agreement

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      There was a strange feeling as the vice-presidential debate got under way in the CBS News studios on Tuesday night that only intensified as 90 minutes of detailed policy discussion unfolded: was the United States in danger of regaining its sanity?After weeks and months of being assailed by Donald Trump’s dystopian evocation of a country on the verge of self-destruction, amplified by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s dire warnings of democracy in peril, here was something very different. The two vice-presidential nominees were embracing that most endangered of American political species: agreement.“Tim, I actually think I agree with you,” said JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, addressing his opposite number Tim Walz during the discussion on immigration.“Much of what the senator said right there, I’m in agreement with him,” said Walz, the Minnesota governor and Democratic nominee, as they turned to trade policy.It wasn’t true, of course. The two men were no closer to agreement than their bosses, who in their own presidential debate last month showed themselves to be worlds apart.But on Tuesday it was as if the CBS News studio in midtown Manhattan had been transported back to a prelapsarian – or at least, pre-Maga – times. To an era when politicians could be civil, and to get on you didn’t have to castigate your opponent as an enemy of the people.For Vance the metamorphosis was especially striking. He is, after all, running mate to the architect of “American carnage”.For his own part, the senator from Ohio has spread malicious untruths about legal-resident Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating people’s cats and dogs. Not to mention that he’s the “childless cat-ladies” guy.An unrecognisable Vance emerged on the New York stage. This one listened respectfully to his debating partner, spoke in whole and largely measured sentences, and went so far as to admit his own fallibility – three qualities that the former president rarely emulates.Vance had reason to present himself differently from Trump, perhaps. At 40, to Trump’s 78, he has the future to think about – his own future.But his affable demeanor was also artifice. When it came to the content of what he said, the Republican vice-presidential nominee was as economical with the truth as his overseer.He lied with abandon, in fact. He just did it with a silken tongue.He talked about the vice-president presiding over an “open border” with Mexico when numbers of border-crossers are actually at a four-year low. He claimed he had not supported a national abortion ban – oh yes he did, repeatedly during his 2022 senatorial race.On the Middle East crisis, he accused the “Kamala Harris administration” of handing Iran $100bn in the form of unfrozen assets – not true. It was $55bn, and it was negotiated under Barack Obama.Perhaps most egregiously, he said Trump had “salvaged” the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Obama’s wildly popular healthcare insurance scheme commonly known as Obamacare. “Salvaged” was an interesting choice of word to apply to Trump, who tried 60 times to destroy the ACA without offering any alternative.Yet it would have taken an attentive viewer to see behind Vance’s smooth comportment to the lies he was purveying. The former tech investor and bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy looked comfortable on stage and in his own skin, presenting himself as the reasonable Trump, a Maga lion in sheep’s clothing.Walz by contrast had moments in which he came across as tense and uneasy, the pre-debate nerves that had been reported by CNN appearing to have been genuine. While Vance beamed his piercingly-blue eyes direct to camera, the Minnesota governor frequently looked down at his notes.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe folksy, aw-shucks “Coach Walz” who has taken the US by storm since he was plucked out of Minnesota obscurity to be Harris’s running mate was largely absent.He stumbled on occasion, garbling his words to refer to having become “friends” with school shooters rather than their victims’ families. And he mishandled a question about why he had wrongly claimed to have visited China during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, woodenly trying to dodge the issue by calling himself a “knucklehead”.But when push came to shove, Walz came through. On the subjects that matter most to Harris in her bid to become the first female president, and the first woman of color in the Oval Office, he hit Vance hard – civilly, but hard.On abortion he followed his running mate’s lead and spoke movingly about the personal impact of Trump’s effective evisceration of Roe v Wade. He invoked the story of Amber Thurman, who died as she traveled in search of reproductive care from Georgia to North Carolina.That even extracted one of the most surprising “I agree” remarks of the evening from the staunchly anti-abortion Vance: “Governor, I agree with you, Amber Thurman should still be alive … and I certainly wish that she was.”There was only one point in the evening when the kid gloves came off, and the cod display of gentility was discarded by both parties. It came when Vance had the audacity to claim – silkenly, naturally – that Harris’s attempts to “censor” misinformation in public discourse posed a far greater threat to democracy than Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election on January 6.“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance deflected when Walz asked him directly whether Trump had lost that contest. “That is a damning non-answer,” the Democrat shot back, his face pained.In the last analysis, both men were only there playing the role of side-kick. They may have raised hopes that civility could make a comeback to US politics, but let Trump have the last word.“Walz was a Low IQ Disaster – Very much like Kamala,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social site shortly after the debate had ended. And just like that, it was business as usual. More

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      ‘This man is everything’: how devoted Trump supporters took over the Republican party in a Michigan city

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      Debra Ell opened her Trump Shoppe in a dingy Saginaw strip mall back when establishment Republicans and TV pundits were still scoffing at the man who was about to remake US politics.Ell latched on to Donald Trump as a winner not long after he declared his run for the presidency in 2015. But she understood that the key to his success in her corner of swing state Michigan was to keep a distance from the local Republican party, which Ell regarded with almost as much hostility as she did the Democrats.So the Trump Shoppe was born, soon drawing in people who had never voted Republican in their lives. Ell recalls the car factory workers struggling after General Motors closed the plants that propped up Saginaw county’s economy.“There’s no way union workers were going to go into Republican offices but they came in here because Trump’s name was on the sign and said: ‘There’s no way in hell I’m voting for Hillary Clinton.’ So we had that gift, and then they wanted to know more about Trump,” she said.“We’d educate them in what he was saying and they liked it because he’s a phenomenon. We’ll never ever see anybody like Donald Trump again, ever. It’s not going to be fun anymore when he’s not around. Even if you don’t support him, it’s fun, don’t you think?”View image in fullscreenNearly a decade later, the Trump Shoppe is still in business, squeezed between Lovely Nails and an insurance company. These days, it’s busy with people buying “vote Trump” signs sporting slogans tailored to military veterans, bikers, union members, Black people and Latinos. “Cats and Dogs for Trump” signs have done well since the former president accused Haitian immigrants of eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio.A blanket imprinted with a picture of Trump raising his fist in the moments after the July assassination attempt is for sale near the entrance. T-shirts carry the words Trump shouted as he walked away with blood running down his face: fight, fight, fight.But besides serving as a shrine to Trump, the office is now also the local Republican headquarters after Ell led a campaign to purge the Saginaw county party of those she derided as “Rinos” – Republicans in name only – for their lack of total fealty to Trump.She led a takeover last year by packing the local party with delegates aligned with the America First movement, a populist political philosophy embraced by Trump that promotes a nationalist agenda of unilateralism and protectionism but has frequently been accused of being underpinned by racism.Amid accusations of intimidation that on one occasion resulted in the police being called to an official party meeting, Ell’s husband, Gary, who voted for Barack Obama in 2008, was installed as chair of the county Republican party.View image in fullscreen“The Saginaw county Republican party were old guard, traditional establishment people. When Debra started a Trump office here, we grew a following of people that supported Trump strictly as Trump. We built up a continual base to the point where none of the previous executive committee or officers who were not loyal to Trump are now in any leadership capacity,” said Gary Ell.But for all her success in taking control of Saginaw’s Republican machinery, Debra Ell now faces a critical question: does any of this help get Trump elected in five weeks?Saginaw is a bellwether county. Trump narrowly won it in 2016, and took Michigan by less than 11,000 votes. He lost the county and the state four years later, helping to send him to defeat in the presidential election. Victory for Trump in Saginaw and Michigan in November would be a major blow to Kamala Harris’s campaign.But some Republicans have questioned the wisdom of what they see as the Saginaw party leadership’s obsessive focus on conspiracy theories claiming the 2020 election was stolen and denial of Trump’s role in the January 6 storming of the US Capitol.Thomas Roy was forced out as vice-chair of the county party by Ell and America First supporters in late 2022. “A lot of us don’t believe the election was stolen in 2020. They basically do, 100%,” he told WJRT television afterward.Roy then founded a Republican “club” to act as a rival to the local party by fundraising for more reasoned candidates – some of whom won their primaries against the America First challengers.Ell also led a campaign to unseat the director of the Michigan Republican party, Jason Roe, after just six months in office when it emerged that he had said not long after the 2020 election that Trump was responsible for his own defeat.“The election wasn’t stolen, he blew it. Up until the final two weeks, he seemingly did everything possible to lose. Given how close it was, there is no one to blame but Trump,” Roe told Politico at the time.Since his unseating, Roe has warned that America Firsters are damaging Trump’s chances for victory this year and has described some of its candidates in Michigan state races as “kooks”.Another former local Republican official, who remains a Trump supporter, said that repeatedly “harping on about election fraud and January 6 only reminds people of the most disruptive threat to democracy in modern American history – with Trump at the heart of it”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenHe added: “He lost then because of the chaos. Reminding voters of that chaos is not the way to win this election. We should stick to talking about his strength, the economy.”Ell is having none of it. She said America First politicians are only voicing Trump’s own views. But is that the way for him to win back Saginaw county after his defeat by just a few hundred votes in 2020?View image in fullscreen“I don’t think he lost it to begin with. I was here. I was on the ground. We walked out of our office in 2020 at about 10 o’clock at night and he was 75% ahead in Saginaw County, and we were just on a cloud. There’s no way that that could change. I think they cheated,” she said.In the Trump Shoppe, cardboard cutouts of former presidents Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower serve as a reminder of Republican royalty. But most of those who walk in the door are there for the man, not the party. Their views are better represented on a large television streaming Real America’s Voice, a rightwing channel peddling election conspiracy theories, which has displaced Fox News as the trusted source for America First supporters.Ell, too, is a Trump supporter first and a Republican second.View image in fullscreen“We are America First. That’s what Trump’s all about, is America First. And that’s not an arrogant, racist statement. America First is what our constitution is about,” she said.“They like to say that we’re so divided. I don’t think so. Trump’s brought up so many issues that have been buried for so long. He’s saying: ‘Why are these illegals coming in?’ He’s actually bringing us together by talking about these things. We were the silent majority that felt the hurt and the pain of what was happening to our country. We saw it and we knew it, but we didn’t have an advocate to do anything about it, so we didn’t talk about it until Trump came along.”Asked if she really believed that the US is more united because of Trump given the national political discourse and the divisions in her own party, Ell said whatever differences there may be are a result of the “left spreading disinformation”.Still, she agrees with her critics that the constant talk about alleged election fraud and the Capitol insurrection are not what most voters care about. Opinion polls consistently show that Trump is more trusted on the economy and inflation, a key issue for many voters after years of rising prices, although a recent poll for the Guardian showed that, in a blind test, Harris’s specific economic proposals – including some price controls and higher taxes for the wealthy – were more popular.Perhaps that should be the focus of the Saginaw Republicans campaign?“We talk about it plenty. Biden gave us the gift of this economy. And who, for the last three-and-a-half years, gave us that? Kamala Harris was his VP. This is her fault,” she said.For all that, recent polls consistently put Harris ahead in Michigan, albeit by the low single digits. Ell is dismissive.“In 2016, Trump was an unknown to the political world, and that’s why the Democrats and Hillary took him for granted: ‘Oh, he can’t win.’ All the polling was way off base. They thought the election was over. They did it then, they’re doing it now. The polling is similar. It’s wrong,” she said.“He’s going to win. Look at his rallies. Everyone there, including me, would take a bullet for that man because he’s going to save this country for my grandchildren. This man, at this time in history, is everything.” More

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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