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    New Orleans woman sues after being accused of stalking the city’s mayor

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    A New Orleans woman once accused of stalking by the city’s mayor, LaToya Cantrell, turned the tables on Friday with a $1m-plus federal lawsuit accusing the elected official, her chief of staff, and eight members of the city’s police department of civil rights violations and defamation.Anne W Breaud’s lawsuit says Cantrell falsely accused her of following and harassing her. It also claims Cantrell’s chief of staff and members of the police department improperly accessed state and federal information on Breaud.Cantrell earlier this year filed a state court lawsuit accusing Breaud of stalking. But after a protective order against Breaud was initially issued, the lawsuit was thrown out, and Cantrell was ordered to pay Breaud’s legal costs.Defendants in the lawsuit filed on Friday include Cantrell, her chief of staff, the city and its police department, as well as three police officers identified by name and five officers who are not identified by name in the lawsuit. The police department declined to comment on pending litigation on Friday. The city also declined to comment in a release from Cantrell’s press secretary, saying its position would be made public in court filings answering the lawsuit.Sparking all the litigation were two photographs Breaud snapped from the balcony of her French Quarter apartment in April, showing Cantrell and a police bodyguard, since retired, dining and drinking on the balcony of a restaurant across a narrow street.Breaud said she sent the images to a police watchdog group, the Metropolitan Crime Commission. The pictures fueled controversy over Cantrell’s personal relationship with the bodyguard, Jeffrey Vappie.Vappie, who is not a defendant in the lawsuit, was criminally charged in federal court last week with wire fraud involving allegedly filing false payroll documents and lying to FBI agents about his relationship with the mayor. Vappie’s attorneys have declared him innocent. His first court appearance is set for 7 August.Cantrell, according to the lawsuit, accused Breaud of not only turning her pictures over to local media, but also of following Cantrell and taking and distributing another photo, all of which Breaud denies.“While Cantrell falsely painted herself as the victim of a pattern of stalking, harassment and intimidation by Breaud, it is Cantrell who has engaged in a pattern of harassment and character assassination against Breaud, a person wrongly accused by Cantrell of stalking solely because Breaud captured a photograph of Cantrell and Vappie in a compromising position,” the lawsuit states.The lawsuit accuses the police defendants of illegally obtaining information about her on state and national databases, and she contends that Cantrell and her chief of staff made it public.The lawsuit seeks a court finding that Cantrell and the other defendants violated Breaud’s civil rights and her constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure, violated federal privacy and computer fraud laws, and defamed her. It also seeks $500,000 in actual damages, including emotional stress, litigation costs and time lost defending against Cantrell’s allegations, plus $500,000 in punitive damages and other damages in unspecified amounts for alleged violations of state law. More

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      Trump says Harris comments about war in Gaza not ‘very nice’ to Israel as Netanyahu’s Mar-a-Lago visit draws protesters – live

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      Donald Trump described remarks by Kamala Harris after her meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday as “disrespectful to Israel”.Trump, speaking at his own meeting with the Israeli leader in Mar-a-Lago, said:
      They weren’t very nice pertaining to Israel. I actually don’t know how a person who is Jewish could vote for her, but that’s up to them.
      “We are here! We are here! We have arrived!” cheered the lawyer and activist Valarie Kaur, to more than 4,000 south Asian participants mobilizing for Kamala Harris on a Zoom call on Wednesday night.
      I want to name this a historic moment – and as a moment for all of us to come together.
      If elected, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee would become the first woman, first Black woman, and first south Asian to win the US presidency.Kaur was one of a series of speakers that included the actor Mindy Kaling, the congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, the Philadelphia councilwoman Nina Ahmad, the actor Poorna Jagannathan and other south Asian female leaders who called on south Asian women to rally for Harris.While views within the south Asian community are mixed – a few speakers, and many listeners on the call, voiced concerns over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza – the possibility of electing Harris in an election where the future of American democracy is at stake has renewed hope for Democrats.Read the full story by Prachi Gupta: ‘Could we have imagined this moment would come?’: Kamala Harris and the rise of Indian American politiciansKamala Harris and Donald Trump are essentially tied in a new Wall Street Journal poll published on Friday.Trump leads Harris 49% to 47% in a two-person matchup, within the margin of error, the poll of 1,000 registered voters shows. In comparison, Trump held a six-point lead earlier this month over Joe Biden before he withdrew from the race.In a race that includes Robert F Kennedy Jr and other independent and third-party candidates, Harris receives 45% and Trump gets 44%, the WSJ poll shows.The poll shows heightened support for Harris among Black, Latino and young voters, and dramatically increased enthusiasm about the campaign among Democrats. The WSJ writes:
      Greater backing among nonwhite voters could help her in the more racially and ethnically diverse battleground states—Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina—where Biden was struggling..
      Kamala Harris voiced support for the movement to “defund the police” in a June 2020 interview amid nationwide protests for police reform, according to a report.Harris, in an interview on a New York-based radio program reported by CNN, said:
      This whole movement is about rightly saying, we need to take a look at these budgets and figure out whether it reflects the right priorities.
      “It has to be about forcing change,” she added.
      This is why, you know, I was out there with folks and we’ll, any movement, any progress we have gained has been because people took to the streets.
      Her comments came just weeks after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer galvanized the “defund” movement among progressive activists. Harris’s remarks came months before she became Joe Biden’s vice-presidential running mate.Kamala Harris called the family of Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman who was shot in her home by an Illinois sheriff’s deputy earlier this month, NBC reported, citing Massey’s family members.Massey was killed on 6 July after she called the Sangamon county sheriff’s office because she was afraid there might be a prowler outside, according to an attorney of her family and Illinois state police.Harris “gave us her heartfelt condolences, and she let us know that she is with us, 100% that this senseless killing,” James Wilburn, Massey’s father, told the outlet.“It’s made me feel a lot better today,” he added.Harris called for policing reforms earlier this week following Massey’s killing, adding that her thoughts were with “communities across our nation whose calls for help are often met with suspicion, distrust and even violence”.On Monday, a 36-minute police body-camera video of the fatal shooting was publicly released.Donald Trump says he plans to return to Butler, Pennsylvania for a “big and beautiful rally” in the town where a gunman shot and injured him during a campaign rally nearly two weeks ago.Trump, in a post on his Truth Social platform, wrote:
      I WILL BE GOING BACK TO BUTLER, PENNSYLVANIA, FOR A BIG AND BEAUTIFUL RALLY, HONORING THE SOUL OF OUR BELOVED FIREFIGHTING HERO, COREY, AND THOSE BRAVE PATRIOTS INJURED TWO WEEKS AGO. WHAT A DAY IT WILL BE — FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT! STAY TUNED FOR DETAILS.
      He was referring to Corey Comperatore, the former fire chief fatally shot during the Trump rally.Comperatore, 50, spent the final moments of his life shielding his wife and daughter from gunfire, officials said.Tammy Duckworth, the Democratic senator for Illinois, has criticized Donald Trump for alleged remarks in which the former president said disabled Americans “should just die”.In a new book, obtained by the Guardian, Fred C Trump III said Trump, his uncle, told him that he should let his disabled son die. “Wait!” Fred C Trump III writes.
      What did he just say? That my son doesn’t recognize me? That I should just let him die? Did he really just say that?
      In a statement today, Senator Duckworth said anyone who suggests disabled Americans shouldn’t exist is “fundamentally unfit to serve”.Duckworth, who lost both legs serving in the Iraq War, said:
      It’s hard to describe the pain millions of Americans with disabilities are feeling in response to Donald Trump’s newly-reported comments against folks with disabilities. But we know this is nothing new for him — he mocked a reporter with a physical disability, dismissed traumatic brain injuries as ‘not very serious,’ attempted to slash support for disabled veterans and so much more.
      As we reported earlier, JD Vance tried to defend his comments where he described the country as being run by “childless cat ladies”, insisting in an interview on Friday that “I’ve got nothing against cats”.The Ohio senator and Donald Trump’s vice-presidential running mate claimed his comments were “not a criticism of people who don’t have children” but about criticizing the Democratic party “for becoming anti-family and anti-child”.Here’s the clip of Vance’s interview with Megyn Kelly:Following the success of a virtual call to mobilize Black women voters for Kamala Harris, a similar event with more than 160,000 attendees was held on Thursday aimed at white women, and appeared to break records.White women will be a key demographic for the Democrats to win over this election.“It’s our turn to show up. So that’s what we’re doing. Hold this date and time,” read the virtual flyer for an event calling for white women – the majority of whom tend to vote Republican – to mobilize for Harris shared widely on social media.“White Women: Answer the Call,” a Zoom call inspired by the one for Black women held earlier this week, saw 164,000 white women joining the call, reportedly setting a world record as the largest Zoom meeting in history. Nearly $2m was raised for Harris in less than two hours on Thursday night.Shannon Watts, a prominent gun control activist, organized Thursday’s event, which featured speakers, including actor Connie Britton, former US soccer star Megan Rapinoe, US house representative Lizzie Fletcher and musician Pink.The Zoom call that started it all was hosted on Sunday by Win With Black Women, a group of Black women leaders and organizers, within hours of Biden’s decision, and saw an astonishing 44,000 participants, raising more than $1.5m for Harris’s budding campaign.A Win With Black Men call also inspired by the one with Black women raised more than $1.3m to support Harris from over 17,000 donors on Monday.Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor and contender for the Democratic vice-presidential nomination, has defended Kamala Harris’s remarks on the Gaza war.Harris was “spot on” in her statement yesterday before a meeting with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Shapiro said at an event of building trade unions in Philadelphia on Friday, NBC reported.Harris “spoke about Israel’s right to defend itself, the need for the hostages to be returned home, that that is necessary in order to achieve peace in the Middle East,” he said, adding:
      She was right to shine a light on the suffering of innocents in Gaza and I thought she was right to lay it out the way she did. That has always been my view, stretching back long before Oct. 7, that we need a two-state solution, Palestinians and Israel living side by side in peace.
      He added:
      I think we also have to speak truth about the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu, I believe, has been a dangerous and destructive force, and someone who has blocked peace in the Middle East.
      The Trump campaign has released its readout of the meeting between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago.Netanyahu “thanked President Trump and his Administration for working to promote stability in the region through, among many historic achievements, the Abraham Accords, moving the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, eliminating Qasem Soleimani, ending the horrific Iran Nuclear Deal, as well as combatting anti-Semitism in America and abroad,” the statement read.The status of both Jerusalem and the Golan Heights are disputed under international law.According to the Trump campaign readout, the former US president “expressed his solidarity with Israel after the heinous October 7 attack, and pledged that when he returns to the White House, he will make every effort to bring Peace to the Middle East and combat anti-Semitism from spreading throughout college campuses across the United States.”Lindsey Graham, South Carolina senator and staunch Donald Trump ally, has written a letter to FBI director to recant his comments over whether Trump was hit but a bullet or shrapnel during his assassination attempt.In the letter reported by the Hill, Graham told Christopher Wray:
      “It is clear to everyone that president Trump survived an assassination attempt by millimeters, as the attempted assassin’s bullet ripped the upper part of his ear. This was made clear in briefings my office received and should not be a point of contention. Therefore, I urge you to immediately correct your statement and acknowledge that President Trump was hit by a bullet rather than glass or shrapnel…
      As head of the FBI, you should not be creating confusion about such matters, as it further undercuts the agency’s credibility with millions of Americans. Please correct this statement immediately.”
      On Thursday, during a hearing on Capitol Hill, Wray raised questions over the matter, saying, “I think with respect to former president Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear.”JD Vance defended his comment that the US was being run by “childless cat ladies.”In an interview with Megyn Kelly which the Hill reported, Vance addressed his comments made in 2021 when he said that the country was being run “bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”Speaking to Kelly, Vance said:
      “I know the media wants to attack me and wants me to back down on this, Megyn, but the simple point that I made is that having children, becoming a father, becoming a mother, I really do think it changes your perspective in a pretty profound way.”
      Vance went on to attack the Democratic party, accusing them of being “antifamily and antichildren.”
      “There’s a deeper point here, Megyn. It’s not a criticism of people who don’t have children. I explicitly said in my remarks — despite the fact the media has lied about this — that this is not about criticizing people who for various reasons didn’t have kids… This is about criticizing the Democratic party for becoming antifamily and antichildren,” he said.
      “No president has done what I’ve done for Israel,” Donald Trump said as he met with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara at Mar-a-Lago, Florida. Sitting across from Netanyahu and next Sara, Trump went on to say, “We’ve always had a very good relationship and if I didn’t, I have a secret weapon. You know what it is? Sara,” as he put his hands on Netanyahu’s wife’s shoulders.“I have Sara. As long as I have Sara, that’s all that matters,” Trump continued. More

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      Trump calls Harris remarks on Gaza war ‘disrespectful’ as he meets Netanyahu

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      Donald Trump has called Kamala Harris’s statement on the Gaza war “disrespectful” before a meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in Florida to discuss the conflict.Harris, the US vice-president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, had seemed to mark a change of tone on the Israel-Gaza war on Thursday after her own meeting with Netanyahu, when she declared she would “not be silent” about the suffering of Palestinians.Trump criticised Harris on Friday before his meeting at his Mar-a-Lago home, calling her remarks “disrespectful” as he targeted her over an issue that has split the Democratic party.“They weren’t very nice pertaining to Israel,” Trump said. “I actually don’t know how a person who is Jewish could vote for her, but that’s up to them.”Right-wing Israeli politicians attacked Harris and anonymous officials have suggested the remarks could make it more difficult to conclude a ceasefire deal.“I think to the extent that Hamas understands there’s no daylight between Israel and the United States, that expedites the deal,” said Netanyahu to reporters at his meeting with Trump. “And I would hope that those comments don’t change that.”A Harris aide rejected a report in the Times of Israel that a senior official had said that Harris’ criticism would hinder the conclusion of a deal.“I don’t know what they’re talking about,” a Harris aide told CNN.Photographs showed Trump warmly greeting Netanyahu, who is concluding a one-week visit to the US that has been marked by large protests against the war. People stood along the route used by Netanyahu’s motorcade to visit Trump, holding up signs that read: “Ceasefire now” and “Convicted fellon [sic] invites a war criminal”.View image in fullscreenBefore the meeting, Netanyahu said he believed military pressure on Hamas had created “movement” in ceasefire talks, and that he would send a team to an upcoming round of negotiations in Rome. “Time will tell if we’re closer to a ceasefire deal,” he said.The meeting is their first since Trump left the White House in 2020. The men have had a strained relationship in the past after Netanyahu congratulated Joe Biden on his victory in the 2020 election, a vote that Trump has claimed, without evidence, was manipulated. “Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake,” Trump said at the time. “Fuck him.”On Friday, the two appeared to have reconciled. “We’ve always had a good relationship,” Trump told reporters before the meeting.The two were political allies in the past. Trump largely gave Netanyahu carte blanche during his first term in office, ADD moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. . He told Fox News this week that Israel should finish the war and bring back the hostages “fast”. “They are getting decimated with this publicity, and you know Israel is not very good at public relations,” Trump told the broadcaster.Harris has tried to thread the needle of continuing the Biden administration’s policy of support for Israel while assuaging growing anger among Democrats about the humanitarian toll of the conflict that has killed 39,000 Palestinians. Nearly half the Democrats in Congress skipped Netanyahu’s speech in the House of Representatives, and dozens openly said they were boycotting it because of the war.Harris met Netanyahu on Thursday at the White House shortly after the prime minister had sat down with Joe Biden. The separate meetings highlighted how the presumptive Democratic nominee has become increasingly independent since launching her presidential campaign.At the same time, aides tried to play down the potential for change between Biden and Harris on Israel. “[Biden’s] and [Harris’s] message to PM Netanyahu was the same: it’s time to get the hostage and ceasefire deal done,” wrote Phil Gordon, Harris’s national security adviser.Harris called the meeting “frank and constructive”, and said “Israel has a right to defend itself, and how it does so matters”. She indicated that she would not halt military aid to Israel because she would “always ensure that Israel is able to defend itself”.But she went further than other administration officials in criticising how Israel has prosecuted the war in Gaza, bolstering hopes she may, at least rhetorically, give more voice to the humanitarian concerns of Palestinians.She said she had expressed her “serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the death of far too many innocent civilians, and I made clear my serious concern about the dire humanitarian situation there”.“What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating – the images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent.”Harris did not say how Netanyahu responded to the Biden administration’s offer of a three-part ceasefire that would begin with a withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from population centres and some hostages being released. She did not take questions from reporters following the remarks.“There has been hopeful movement in the talks to secure an agreement on this deal,” Harris said. “And as I just told prime minister Netanyahu, it is time to get this deal done. So, to everyone who has been calling for a ceasefire and to everyone who yearns for peace, I see you and I hear you.”The Democratic mayor of Dearborn, Abdullah Hammoud, said in an interview with Michigan public radio: “Many of us are waiting to see what policy platform Harris puts forward.” Hammoud has been outspoken on Gaza in a state where 13.2% voted “uncommitted” in this year’s Democratic primary in a protest against Biden’s policy towards Israel.“In the conversations that we have had I have found her to be sympathetic and empathetic,” he said. “I’ve found her to be someone that wants to listen … obviously there’s much that remains to be seen.”A senior administration official said before the meetings with Biden and Harris that the “framework of the deal is basically there” but that there are “some very serious implementation issues that still have to be resolved”.“There are some things we need from Hamas, and there are some things we need from the Israeli side, and I think you’ll see that play out here over the course of the coming week,” the official said. More

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      Record-breaking Zoom supporting Harris mobilizes white female voters

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      Following the success of a virtual call to mobilize Black women voters for Kamala Harris, a similar event with more than 160,000 attendees was held on Thursday aimed at white women, and appeared to break records.White women will be a key demographic for the Democrats to win over this election.The presidential campaign of Harris, who would become America’s first female president if she wins for the Democrats in November, and will become the first Black woman and south Asian woman to be a major party’s presidential candidate if she is confirmed at the Democratic national convention next month, has taken off quickly since Joe Biden announced last Sunday he would step aside from his re-election campaign.“It’s our turn to show up. So that’s what we’re doing. Hold this date and time,” read the virtual flyer for an event calling for white women – the majority of whom tend to vote Republican – to mobilize for Harris shared widely on social media.“White Women: Answer the Call,” a Zoom call inspired by the one for Black women held earlier this week, saw 164,000 white women joining the call, reportedly setting a world record as the largest Zoom meeting in history. Nearly $2m was raised for Harris in less than two hours on Thursday night.The Zoom call that started it all was hosted on Sunday by Win With Black Women, a group of Black women leaders and organizers, within hours of Biden’s decision, and saw an astonishing 44,000 participants, raising more than $1.5m for Harris’s budding campaign.The tens of thousands of those who couldn’t access that call because it was at capacity streamed it through other platforms such as Twitch, Clubhouse and YouTube.It was just one of several calls hosted by the group since 2020, when it was founded by strategist Jotaka Eaddy.A Win With Black Men call also inspired by the one with Black women raised more than $1.3m to support Harris from over 17,000 donors on Monday.Shannon Watts, a prominent gun control activist, organized Thursday’s event, which featured speakers, including actor Connie Britton, former US soccer star Megan Rapinoe, US house representative Lizzie Fletcher and musician Pink.Exit polls found 52% of white women eligible to vote in 2016 cast a ballot for Donald Trump, a figure which likely helped tilt the election in Trump’s favor. At the time, he was running against Hillary Clinton, who hoped to be the first female president. In 2020, the majority of white women voted for Trump again.“A majority of white women have voted for the Republican candidate since the 2000 presidential election when white women were almost equally split between Democrat Al Gore and Republican victor, George W Bush,” according to the center for American women and politics at Rutgers University. “In contrast, a large majority of Black, Latinx and Asian women have supported the Democratic candidate for the entirety of the time period in which data disaggregated by gender and race has been available.”Watts hopes history won’t repeat itself.“Fellow white women: we can and have to fix this, and that starts with mobilizing like Black women,” Watts wrote on Instagram ahead of the call. She linked to a Substack post she wrote, which read in part: “White women voting for Republicans, even when it appears to be against their best interests, is a complex phenomenon influenced by privilege, systemic racism and sexism, religious affiliations and, of course, the patriarchy.“But we’re not a monolithic group; our voting patterns are typically divided along lines of religion, education and marital status, and that division makes us not only a crucial voting bloc, but an unpredictable one – even small shifts in our voting behavior can have significant impacts on election outcomes.”Watts added: “In other words, if we start doing the work right now, we can create a shift in voting momentum that will help Black women elect Vice President Harris as President in just 100 days.” More

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      JD Vance called for ‘federal response’ to block women from traveling for abortions

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      JD Vance, the Ohio senator and Donald Trump’s running mate, promoted a baseless rightwing talking point in 2022 when he warned of George Soros-funded planes transporting Black women across state lines for abortions.“I’m sympathetic to the view that like, okay, look here, here’s a situation – let’s say Roe v Wade is overruled,” Vance said in a recently resurfaced podcast interview. “Ohio bans abortion in 2022, or let’s say 2024. And then, you know, every day George Soros sends a 747 to Columbus to load up disproportionately Black women to get them to go have abortions in California. And of course, the left will celebrate this as a victory for diversity – uh, that’s kind of creepy.”The US supreme court overturned Roe in 2022. Vance’s statements echo a common anti-abortion talking point accusing abortion providers and their supporters of targeting people of color.Black women did seek abortions at a higher rate before Roe fell, but public health experts say that this is far from proof of a racist conspiracy. They point to a number systemic factors – for example, Black women are more likely to live in areas where it’s harder to access contraception. They are also disproportionately harmed by abortion bans.Vance continued: “And, and it’s like, if that happens, do you need some federal response to prevent it from happening? Because it’s really creepy. And I’m pretty sympathetic to that actually. So, you know, how hopefully we get to a point where Ohio bans abortion in California and the Soroses of the world respect it.”While Open Society Foundations, which was founded by Soros, does support reproductive rights, the billionaire philanthropist is not directing planes to swoop up Black women for abortions. He has been the target of antisemitic conspiracy theories for years.Vance’s comments were reported by CNN. On Thursday evening, Kamala Harris’s campaign posted audio of the remarks on X.Vance’s record on abortion has come under national scrutiny since Trump picked the Hillbilly Elegy author as his vice-presidential running mate. In 2022, Vance suggested he would support a national 15-week abortion ban with exceptions. But, like other Republicans wary of the political fallout of Roe’s demise, Vance has more recently sought to soften his position and said in an interview that “we have to accept people do not want abortion bans”. He has also expressed support for the availability of mifepristone, a common abortion pill, and said he agrees with Trump’s position that states should decide their own abortion laws. (Trump has flip-flopped on this stance.)But in January 2023, Vance signed ont o a letter urging the Department of Justice to use the Comstock Act, a 19th-century anti-obscenity law, to ban the mailing of abortion pills nationwide. Since Roe’s fall, anti-abortion activists have begun claiming that the Comstock Act remains good law and can be used to enforce a federal abortion ban. Project 2025, a wish list for a conservative administration written by the influential thinktank Heritage Foundation, reiterates this argument.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Senator Vance has made his position clear: he agrees with President Trump that each state should have the chance to individually set their own abortion laws,” Taylor Van Kirk, a spokeswoman for Vance, said in a statement. “Desperate attacks from Democrats will not distract voters from the deadly effects of Kamala’s wide-open border, the untenable cost of living caused by her inflationary spending or any other aspect of her far-left, radical agenda.”Vance’s vice-presidential run is off to a rocky start, and he has spent the last week haunted by other resurfaced remarks. In a 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson, Vance said that the United States and the Democratic party wwere run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies, who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too”.He then named Harris, who has two step-children, as an example, along with Pete Buttigieg (who has since had children) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” he said. “And how does it make sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”Those comments have provoked an uproar, drawing condemnation even from relatively apolitical celebrities like Jennifer Aniston. Kerstin Emhoff, the ex-wife of Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff, called the attacks on the presumptive Democratic nominee “baseless” and praised her co-parenting. In an Instagram story, Harris’s step-daughter Ella Emhoff posted: “I love my three parents.” More

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      Kamala Harris still needs to define herself – but she is the ultimate anti-Trump candidate | Arwa Mahdawi

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      A week has always been a long time in politics, but this might have been the longest week in Kamala Harris’s life. While Joe Biden is still technically the US president, he already feels irrelevant. All eyes are on Harris now. The speed with which she has gone from being one of the most unpopular vice-presidents in modern history to sitting at the top of the Democratic ticket, with an army of enthusiastic fans behind her, is astounding. Biden’s trajectory has been widely compared to a Shakespearean tragedy; Harris’s sudden reversal of fortune, meanwhile, is like something out of a fairytale.A quick recap: Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris on Sunday. The Democratic establishment then threw its weight behind her on Monday. So did hundreds of thousands of donors; Harris’s campaign raked in a record-breaking $81m in just 24 hours. By Tuesday, she had earned enough support from delegates to win the Democratic nomination for president next month. On Wednesday, Democrats approved rules meaning that any Democrat who wants to compete against Harris for the nomination only has days to do so. Then, on Friday, Barack Obama endorsed the vice-president. Her coronation is almost complete.Importantly, Harris doesn’t just have the consolidated support of party elites. She’s also got large swathes of social media cheering her on. The woman has undeniably mementum. “kamala IS brat,” the British pop star Charli xcx posted on X on Sunday. It may not be on the level of an Obama endorsement but Charli’s approval thrust Harris into the middle of the pop-cultural zeitgeist. Charli xcx’s new album, Brat, has undoubtedly been the meme of the summer – the album’s lime-green aesthetic plastered everywhere.In fact, soon after Charli’s approving tweet, @kamalahq changed its backdrop to brat green. Cue a lot of campaign staff trying to explain to high-ranking Democrats like Nancy Pelosi what on earth is going on. (“Well ma’am, Ms xcx, has defined a ‘brat’ as ‘just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, who feels herself, but then also maybe has a breakdown, but kind of parties through it’. Yeah, I know that sounds confusing. But trust me when I say it’ll help us get out the youth vote.”)Harris’s campaign hasn’t just embraced the brats, it’s leaning hard into all the Kamala memes that have been flooding the internet over the past few weeks, including a lot of coconut-related content. That is not a racial slur, I should make clear to British readers, but rather a reference to a speech the vice-president gave in 2023.“My mother … would give us a hard time sometimes,” Harris said at a White House event about educational opportunity. “… and she would say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’” She then paused for profundity before continuing with the philosophical bit. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”The coconut quote – which circulated online long before last week – is quintessential Harris: a bewildering series of words that sound like someone typed “come up with a profound sentence” into an early version of ChatGPT. Lines like this have been a liability in the past, used by her detractors to suggest she’s unserious. The internet, however, is now turning Harris’s unique rhetorical style into an asset. The TikTok mashups and coconut memes have helped inject some much-needed joy and levity into what until now has been an extremely depressing election cycle.At the moment, Harris seems unstoppable. A new Axios/Generation Lab poll shows she’s got a big edge with young voters and another poll has found she’s narrowed Donald Trump’s lead significantly. Nevertheless, it can’t be emphasised enough that we are still very much in the Harris honeymoon phase. People were desperate not to have another Trump-Biden matchup and eager to embrace change of any kind. The question is: can the momentum around Harris be sustained?There is certainly precedent in US elections when it comes to a woman being rapidly built up, only to be swiftly knocked down. And Republicans are already doing their best to knock Harris down with racist and misogynistic attacks. They’ve also attacked her record as vice-president, calling her the “border tsar” and blaming her for the migration crisis.Then there’s the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The internet may have positioned Harris as a lovable goofball now but that image will be hard to sustain among young people if she becomes the face of Biden’s horrific Gaza policy – which has been deeply unpopular with young people and lost the Democrats a lot of support in the important swing state of Michigan, where there is a large Arab American population.So far, Harris has been walking a careful tightrope when it comes to Gaza; trying not to alienate progressives while also making sure she isn’t branded “anti-Israel”. On Wednesday, the vice-president skipped Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress and met him privately instead. On Thursday, she said it was time for a ceasefire deal to be done, but also pledged “unwavering” support for Israel. There’s only so long she can play both sides, however. She will either continue Biden’s policy of letting Israel kill as many Palestinians as it wants, with only meek protestations, or she won’t.Harris will also have to define herself as a candidate more broadly. This has never been one of her strengths and a lack of substance was the undoing of her 2019 attempt to be the Democratic nominee. “She has proved to be an uneven campaigner who changes her message and tactics to little effect and has a staff torn into factions,” the New York Times decreed in a November 2019 piece about how her campaign unravelled.That said, running against her fellow Democrats is very different from running against Trump. While Harris didn’t fully shine as the primary candidate or the vice-president, she has the potential to come into her own now. She is the ultimate anti-Trump. She’s the prosecutor, he’s the felon. He’s the old guy, she’s the relatively young woman. He represents the US’s past, she represents its future. Just a few weeks ago, I was resigned to a Trump win. Now I think the US has a fighting chance of seeing a Madam President.Then again, a week is a long time in politics. And there are still 14 to go before the election.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

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      The media is already failing in its duty to fairly cover Kamala Harris | Margaret Sullivan

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      It’s going to be ugly, that much is already clear.In the few days since Kamala Harris began her 2024 campaign for president, the media has shown us where some of their coverage is headed: no place good.Both the rightwing and traditional media are making some predictable blunders. Add in the swill that circulates endlessly on the social media platforms, and you’ve got a mess.Take, for example, the recent coverage of a Republican congressman’s smear of Harris.“One hundred percent she is a DEI hire,” Tim Burchett of Tennessee said on CNN, using the acronym for “diversity, equity and inclusion” to claim that she was ascending because of her race, not on merit. “Her record is abysmal at best.”An NBC headline was one of many to hand a giant megaphone to this racist trope: “GOP Rep Tim Burchett calls Kamala Harris a ‘DEI vice-president’.” Plenty of others did the same – parroting and thus amplifying the slur.Some news organizations added a fig leaf to their coverage, like the Tampa TV station whose headline read: “GOP representative called Harris a ‘DEI hire’: what does this mean?”There was a more responsible way to go. USA Today, for one, brought helpful context in a piece headlined: “DEI candidate: what’s behind the GOP attacks on Kamala Harris.” It did a good job of explaining that this phrase is all part of the right’s anti-“woke” culture wars. “DEI has become GOP shorthand to impugn the qualifications of people of color who ascend to positions of power and influence.” The reporter quoted the author Mita Mallick noting that the DEI label is an attempt to “discredit, demoralize and disrespect leaders of color by labeling them ‘diversity hires’ – or otherwise misappropriating the language of diversity, equity, and inclusion as thinly veiled racist insults.” You come away with greater understanding.Some insults are even more transparently racist, as when the perpetual liar and propagandist Kellyanne Conway went on Fox News in order to trash Harris: “She does not speak well. She does not work hard. She should not be the standard bearer for the party.”These stereotypes, painting a woman of color as unintelligent and lazy, echo well-established white-grievance themes, causing the author Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who studies authoritarian movements, to warn: “Propagandists know that you should build on existing prejudices when introducing a new hate object or theme.”Some commentary wasn’t racist but just pointless – as when Katy Tur asked, on MSNBC, if Harris was the kind of person voters would want to have a beer with. The “likeability” question certainly seems to come up for women candidates more than men.It’s a familiar election-cycle cliche, but the former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob didn’t find it harmless. He posted his disgust: “I want a president who won’t turn our country into a fascist hellscape. I’m not auditioning barstool partners.”Then there was the head-spinning opportunism of two columns in the Wall Street Journal by the same writer, Jason Riley, separated by only two weeks but managing to wildly contradict each other. The first headline, on 9 July: “Kamala Harris would be the best Democratic choice.” The second, on 23 July: “Kamala Harris isn’t the change Democrats need.”Parker Molloy, in her newsletter The Present Age, called it “a textbook example of the intellectual dishonesty that plagues much of our political commentary”.This hollow punditry is all about being provocative; consistency be damned.So far, Harris and her allies seem to be capable of flipping some stereotypes on their head. When JD Vance’s description of Harris and other urban career women – “childless cat ladies” who are “miserable at their lives” – resurfaced after he was named Donald Trump’s running mate, his sexist diss went viral.So did the backlash. Jennifer Aniston shot back at Vance, cat-lady apparel was sold at high volume, and Ella Emhoff posted on Instagram about her stepmother, also name-checking her brother: “How can you be ‘childless’ when you have cutie pie kids like Cole and I?”Still, sexist and racist tropes take their toll. To be sure, Harris deserves fair scrutiny from the press. But she doesn’t deserve to be the target of smears and stereotypes amplified by journalists and pundits addicted to conflict-driven clicks.As the election draws nearer, the media should consider the words of someone who has ridden in this rodeo.Writing in the New York Times this week, Hillary Clinton predicted that Harris’s record and character “will be distorted and disparaged by a flood of disinformation and the kind of ugly prejudice we’re already hearing from Maga mouthpieces”.Everybody has a role to play to prevent the spread. The campaign must find a way to cut through the noise, and voters must be careful about what they believe and share, as she urged.And I would add that the media must avoid spreading hateful stereotypes. November’s election is far too consequential for that.

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

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      Conservatives’ racist and sexist attacks on Kamala Harris show exactly who they are | Judith Levine

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      Like a warm compress drawing pus from a wound, the Democratic presidential candidacy of Kamala Harris immediately brought out the misogyny and racism of the Maga Republican party.Tim Burchett, the Tennessee Republican representative, called Harris, the child of a Black Jamaican father and an Indian mother, a DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) hire – picked, that is, because she is Black, not because she’s qualified. Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, insinuated that Harris is a welfare queen. “What the hell have you done other than collect a check?” he asked at a Michigan rally of Harris, a former state attorney general, US senator and now the vice-president. At the same time, social media posts showing Harris with her parents falsely claim she’s not really Black, because her father is light-skinned.Popping up again are rumors circulated in 2020 by Trump lawyer John Eastman that Harris is ineligible to run for office because she might not be a citizen. Like Barack Obama, about whom Trump stirred the same “birther” calumny, Harris was born in the US.Far-right blogger Matt Walsh and former Fox host Megyn Kelly suggested Harris slept her way to the top. Conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer went further, alleging that the veep was “once an escort” who started out by “giving blow jobs to successful, rich, Black men”. The founder of Pastors for Trump tweeted: “Both Joe + the Ho gotta go!”While allegedly copulating with all comers, Harris is slammed for failing in her womanly duty to reproduce. In a video that recently turned up, Vance, the father of three, told Tucker Carlson in 2021 that the US was being run by “childless cat ladies” – Harris among them – who don’t “have a direct stake” in the country’s future. Will Chamberlain, a lawyer who worked on Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign, proclaimed that “people without kids … are highly susceptible to corruption and perversion. They have no care for the future and live in the present.”Being a step-parent – as Harris is to her husband’s biological children – doesn’t count, Chamberlain added. This criticism has never been leveled against the childless George Washington – although, to be fair, he was the Father of Our Country.And if misogyny and racism are not sufficient, the right keeps searching for plain weirdness to use against the Democratic candidate. All they’ve come up with, though, is one of her more charming characteristics, her laugh, from which Trump derives his lamest-yet political nickname: “Laughing Kamala”.This stuff is vile to watch. But as with drained pus, it’s got to be exposed to the air. Because it’s not just talk. It reveals what a Trump presidency would mean. By exposing what’s festering barely under the skin of Trumpism, the Republican party is telling us to vote against him.While in office, Trump’s ignorance and incompetence prevented him from accomplishing – or, often, knowing – what he wanted to do. In his madder moments, some of his advisers pulled him back from the edge. But this time, he’s got a team of smart, loyal experts and a detailed plan, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, to get it done.In 2020, when Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd’s murder spread across the country, Trump gunned to gun down the protesters – literally. “Can’t you just shoot them?” he asked Mark Esper, according to the then defense secretary’s memoir. In another memoir, then Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender quotes the apoplectic president calling on police and the military to “crack [protesters’] skulls” and “beat the fuck” out of them. For the most part, this didn’t happen.Should Project 2025 become reality, however, the commander-in-chief would be freer to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, which authorizes him to direct the military to put down domestic unrest. The blueprint also advises the administration to revoke all consent decrees imposing federal oversight on police departments with records of brutality and murder of civilians, particularly civilians of color.The 2024 Republican national convention, featuring Hulk Hogan, Kid Rock and another straight white man on the ticket, was practically a parody of the white hypermasculinity animating the party. But the Republican party promises to force its gender ideology on the rest of us. “Cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, radical gender ideology, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children,” reads the platform. Project 2025 proposes that “the redefinition of sex to cover gender identity and sexual orientation … be reversed” and the phrase “sexual orientation and gender identity” be eliminated from anti-discrimination policies across federal agencies. In fact, its aim is to eliminate anti-discrimination policies altogether.And, of course, there’s abortion. In 2016, Trump opined that “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions. Then he walked the statement back. This April, he told a reporter that states should be allowed to punish doctors. “Everything we’re doing now is states and states’ rights,” he elaborated, using the historical code words for legislated racial segregation – now updated to gender oppression. And while he’s distanced himself from a federal abortion ban, Project 2025 is riddled with pledges to protect the safety, dignity and humanity of the unborn.Clueless as he was, Trump attained the right’s holy grail: a supreme court majority that will decimate the civil and human rights of people of color, pregnant people, the poor, immigrants and the marginalized long into the future. The Trump court is already punishing people who seek abortions. Even if Congress founders, this court will realize every racist and misogynist dream.It’s hard to say whether this bigotry will sway voters. A month before the 2016 election, after a campaign of one racist, xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic outburst after another, Trump’s “grab them by the pussy” tape was leaked and a dozen women accused the candidate of sexual misconduct. Hillary Clinton surged to a lead of as much as 11 points. Then, FBI director James Comey released a letter equivocating on the extent or importance of those official emails on her private server, and Trump won. It’s still unclear whether the Comey report turned the election. But the pussy-grabbing tape did not.Still, in 2016, Trump was a pig but an untested pig. A lot has happened since then. His presidency was bookended by the Women’s March and the Black Lives Matter protests. In 2017, Tarana Burke’s #MeToo hashtag went viral and rage over sexual harassment exploded. Five years later, Pew Research found that the majority of Americans, including Republicans, felt the #MeToo movement had a positive impact. BLM engaged protesters of every age and race, and antiracist movements continue to. Trump has been convicted of sexual abuse. Now, if anything, Maga is focusing the anger of women and people of color.Republican leaders sense these changes, and they’re worried – worried enough that Richard Hudson, chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, called a closed-door meeting to tell the caucus to cut the slime and focus on the issues.Maybe they will. But Trump and his nastier champions will not: hatred will continue to ooze from their mouths. Disgusting as it, pay attention. Because sexism and racism are not just talk. They’re policies – the calamitous policies a Trump presidency augurs.

      Judith Levine is a Brooklyn journalist and essayist, a contributing writer to the Intercept and the author of five books More