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      Seth Meyers on Trump’s garbage truck stunt: ‘I think you should stay there’

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      Late-night hosts talk Donald Trump dressing up as a garbageman as a late campaign stunt and Kamala Harris’s lead among suburban women.Seth Meyers“All politicians pander,” said Seth Meyers on Thursday’s Late Night, “but Donald Trump is the most shameless and prolific panderer in American history”. And “one of Trump’s favorite pandering tactics is playing dress-up”.On Wednesday, the former US president donned his “latest and perhaps most insane outfit yet” at a campaign stop in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Wearing a reflective orange vest, Trump climbed into a garbage truck emblazoned with his name and asked reporters: “What do you think of my garbage truck?”“You want to know what I really think of your garbage truck? I think it’s awesome and I think you should stay there,” Meyers replied. “I think you should drop out of the race and host a reality show where you try out different jobs while wearing exactly one piece of that job’s uniform.”Trump continued to wear the vest at a rally after the garbage truck stunt, designed to distract from the backlash to racist comments about Puerto Rico at his rally over the weekend. At his rally, he danced to his trademark campaign song, the Village People’s YMCA. “How is this real life?” Meyers wondered. “He doesn’t look like he’s running for president. He looks like he’s at a Halloween party at an assisted living facility.”In truth, “Trump could never make it as a sanitation worker,” Meyers added. “It’s a tough job with actual stakes and genuine responsibility, and no amount of cosplaying can make up for the fact that he’d be really bad at it. He wouldn’t last a day.”The stunt underscored the “central lie” of Trump’s political career: “that he’s a populist, an everyman, a champion of the working class. It’s a fraud.” Meyers reminded that Trump has cozied up to the world’s richest people, promised deregulation to please billionaires like Elon Musk, promised a tax cut for the wealthy and said he would not continue overtime pay. During his presidency, corporate profits soared while manufacturing jobs declined.“This is the one discernible throughline of Trump’s presidency in his three campaigns: billionaires will flourish, while regular people will suffer,” said Meyers.Stephen ColbertOn the Late Show, Stephen Colbert mocked Trump’s stumbling ascent into the garbage truck. “Looks like Trump is taking walking lessons from Rudy Giuliani,” he quipped.Trump tried to give a press conference from the truck, which devolved into rambling that ended with “I hope you enjoyed this garbage truck.”“That’s an inspiring closing message,” Colbert deadpanned, before imitating the former president. “I hope you enjoyed this garbage truck, by which I mean, this campaign. It has been a true honor and a bone-chilling dumpster fire.”At his rally, Trump mused about how he was advised not to say he wants to “protect women” by allowing Roe v Wade to be overturned. “I said, well, I’m gonna go do it whether the women like it or not. I’m going to protect them,” he said.“Now, I know that seems weird and creepy there, but I promise you, it sounded much sweeter in his wedding vows,” Colbert quipped.The host also noted that over 60 million people have already voted, with a 10-point gender gap in early turnout. The polls show that Harris has a 19-point lead among suburban women. “That’s right, Harris is almost as popular among suburban women as cocktail napkins that say ‘Wine do you mean we’re out of wine?!’” he joked.The gender gap has led to a rise in online queries such as: “Can my husband find out who I voted for?”“No, he can’t,” said Colbert. “But if that’s really a concern, the two of you should just sit down, and while he’s watching TV maybe look up your old college boyfriend on Facebook.”Jimmy KimmelAnd in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel also relished Trump’s brand-emblazoned garbage truck “because he is a ridiculous person”.Nevertheless, Trump’s cronies, such as Sean Hannity, tried to spin the photo op as a triumph. “The dumber Trump gets, the deeper Sean digs to spin stupid into smart,” said Kimmel.The Fox News host tried to claim the photo op was an “iconic, epic moment that we will remember for a long time”.“Washington crossed the Delaware, Trump hitched a ride on a garbage Trump,” Kimmel quipped. “The garbage drove the truck.”Kimmel also noted the absurdity of Trump’s subsequent rally with the reflective vest still on. “If there is a single image that we will look back on and think ‘this defines what America was going through in 2024’ I think it will be the Republican nominee for president dancing to the song YMCA in a garbageman costume,” he said.“That vest will come in handy when he’s on the side of the road picking up trash with the other inmates.” More

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      ‘Leaning into the whiteness’: journalist Paola Ramos on why some Latinos have turned to the far right

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      When the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made racist and disparaging comments about Latinos and referred to Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage”, at a Donald Trump rally in New York on Sunday, it was met with outrage from many Latino politicians, voters and celebrities. Still, those comments did not deter some Republican Latinos from affirming their support for Trump.“If you were already supporting Trump, I don’t think this is a comment that will make you reconsider that choice,” said the journalist Paola Ramos, the author of Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What it Means for America.However, Ramos said that she has talked to some Latino voters who are now realizing that Trump’s xenophobia could include them: “The question is for those that are independent, or those that were flirting with the idea of voting for Trump. The biggest difference is that the narrative, for the first time in a while, shifted from being targeted at immigrants to suddenly being targeted, not just directly at Latinos, but even US citizens. That has sort of awakened a lot of people for the first time to be like, ‘Oh, wait a second.’“We’ve been so used to pinpointing a narrative at the border, on immigrants, on migrants, on undocumented people, and then suddenly the conversation has shifted to people within us and inside us.”

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      In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, Trump has gained inroads from Latino voters, a base that was once reliably Democratic. While the majority of Latinos favor Kamala Harris, the shift is pronounced among Latino men, with 44% saying that they support Trump, up from 37% in 2020, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat political shift toward far-right sentiments in Latino communities can be attributed to tribalism, traditionalism and trauma, Ramos writes in Defectors. Tribalism refers to internalised racism, while traditionalism is based on conservative moral values and the ongoing effects of colonialism, and trauma comes from grappling with political upheaval in Latin America. Additionally, fantasy heritage, a concept coined by the civil rights activist and historian Carey McWilliams in the late 1940s in which Latinos whitewash their Indigenous or Black roots in favor of their Spanish ancestry, draws some Latinos to white supremacist values.“One of the entry points for far right Latinos into the world of white supremacy and white nationalism is by leaning into the Spanish heritage, leaning into the whiteness,” Ramos said. For instance, she interviewed Mexican American border vigilantes who held anti-immigration beliefs because they distanced themselves from their immigrant roots.Ramos also spoke with African Dominican Trump supporters in the Bronx who highlight their Spanish ancestry over their African roots, although they are racialized as Black in the US. “But in their minds, because of fantasy heritage, they see themselves more aligned racially with Trump’s America than they do with Blackness, and so I think that that’s where Trump is able to tap into some of that racial grievance.”View image in fullscreenThe path toward democracy in Latin American countries has often involved an authoritarian strongman, Ramos writes in her book. In the late 1970s, for instance, 17 out of 20 Latin American nations were ruled by dictators. Ramos interviewed Eulalia Jimenez, the leader of the conservative parents rights group Moms for Liberty, and Anthony Aguero, a border vigilante in Texas, whose political trauma manifested into far-right sentiments.Trauma is also what drew some supporters, such as the Cuban American Gabriel Garcia, a Proud Boys member, to join the January 6 insurrection after Trump lost the election. Garcia’s parents, who were unaccompanied minors airlifted out of Cuba during a covert US program in the 1960s, instilled in him a fear of communism and conservative sentiments that would inform his political beliefs. “At a time when democracy seems to feel a little messy for some folks,” Ramos said, “the elements of authoritarianism [aren’t] as scary for some Latinos.”In order to win back Latino votes, Ramos said, progressives must understand the complicated and rich nature of Latino identity and their quest for belonging in the US – which is all the more important now, as the country is projected to become a majority minority nation in 2045.Younger Latinos over the past decade have grown emboldened to challenge the Democratic party. “Part of that requires a level of curiosity to understand why internalized racism works so well, and why colorism is so present, and why anti-Blackness and these anti-immigrant sentiments can really manifest themselves,” Ramos said. “And I think part of that is just having conversations around identity that I think in the party they haven’t had.”Since her book launched in September, Ramos has talked to Latino voters while touring cities from New York to Los Angeles, an experience she described as “group therapy”. Some readers shared the pain that they felt of having undocumented immigrants as well as Trump supporters in their family, or young Latinos seeking acceptance from their religious families. “They’ve been really emotional, really personal, and I think painful too.” She urged progressives to understand “the pain that a lot of people are going through with not feeling a big solidarity right now”.While it is easy to see Trump supporters as radical, Ramos said that a deeper understanding of Latin American history is crucial to regaining the trust of Latino voters who are disillusioned by politics. Toward the end of Defectors, Ramos illustrated a future in which Latinos embrace their complex history and identity in a quest for collective liberation. “In that future, we finally wake up freer,” Ramos concluded in the book. “Welcome to the year 2045.” More

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      The women ‘cancelling out’ their Trump-loving partners’ votes: ‘No one will ever know’

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      Mackenzie Owens and her boyfriend strut toward the camera like models on a catwalk, posing as she takes a dramatic sip from her Stanley cup. “Just a bf and a gf going to cancel each other’s votes,” reads the caption of their TikTok – the couple, who live in Pennsylvania, support separate candidates this election season.Owens made the TikTok to join in on a trend of women disclosing that they’re voting against their partners’ preferred candidates. In one video, a woman mischievously tucks away a strand of hair as she mails in her ballot, “proudly” cancelling out her boyfriend’s ballot – “because someone paid attention in US History & has to care about keeping the Dept of Education!!!!” In another, a woman dances to Ciara’s Level Up before driving off to “cancel out” her “Trump loving Husband’s vote in a swing state”.View image in fullscreenThe dozens of women participating are, for the most part, Democrats supporting Kamala Harris’s bid, while their male partners are voting for Donald Trump. (Owens did not disclose who she or her boyfriend voted for.) Though their posts provide levity in the final days of an ugly presidential race, they also underscore the pivotal role gender is playing in the election.A late October national poll from USA Today/Suffolk University found that women resoundingly back Harris over Trump, 53% to 36%, a “mirror image” of men’s support for Trump over Harris, 53% to 37%. A September poll from Quinnipiac University similarly found a 26-point gender gap. An unknown – but certainly sizable – number of women are seeing this gender gap in their own relationships.Owens, who is 19, isn’t particularly bothered by her boyfriend’s politics. “Nowadays, people think that you have to have the same political opinions as your partner, because [hyper-partisan politics] is a big problem in society, but I personally think it’s cool to co-exist and learn about the other side, and get different opinions I didn’t think of before,” she said. “But in a way, that’s not socially acceptable.”Meanwhile, liberal TikTokers are weighing in to say they could never date or marry a Trump supporter, given the former president’s sexist remarks about women and his appointment of anti-abortion justices to the supreme court, which resulted in the 2022 reversal of Roe v Wade. “What do you mean you’re on your way to cancel out your husband’s vote?” reads one viral tweet. “You should be on your way to the courthouse. Divorce babe. Divorce.”Harris needs women to turn out on Tuesday, especially those who might take a page from the TikTokers’ playbook and vote differently from the men in their lives. But those posts come from mostly young, liberal women who feel safe publicly disagreeing on candidates. In recent days, Democratic groups have made overtures to Republican women, or women who project conservatism to their friends and family but quietly harbor doubts about Trump.Republican turnout among women – especially white women, who backed Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections – can be partially explained by their husbands, who are seen as wielding influence over the family vote, said strategists and advocates who spoke with the Guardian.“Women often give deference to the presumed expertise of their husbands on politics, and then the men reinforce that presumption and express their intensity and so-called greater expertise,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster. “We try to reinforce to women that you have your own way of doing things, your own point of view, you focus on what’s good for the whole family. Then we emphasize that the vote is private.”That’s a sentiment echoed in a new ad, narrated by Julia Roberts, from the progressive evangelical organization Vote Common Good. In the ad, a woman whose husband appears to be a Trump supporter enters the voting booth to cast her ballot for Harris. “In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want and no one will ever know,” Roberts says in the voiceover.Doug Pagitt, executive director of Vote Common Good, said the group first conceptualized the ad during the 2022 midterms. “We kept hearing from women that they were going to pay an emotional price with their families, friends and church if they didn’t continue to toe the line [and vote for Trump],” Pagitt said.On a campaign stop in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Michelle Obama told swing state voters: “If you are a woman who lives in a household of men that don’t listen to you or value your opinion, just remember that your vote is a private matter.” Liz Cheney, a never-Trump Republican who campaigned alongside Harris in Detroit last week, reminded Republican women that there is no official way to look up how someone voted: “You can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody, and there will be millions of Republicans who do that on November 5.”The Lincoln Project, a moderate political action committee, also released a bluntly titled ad, Secret, where two Trump-supporting men assume their wives also back their candidate. However, when the couples get to the polls, one of the women mouths “Kamala” to the other, and after an affirmative nod, both fill in their ballots for the Democrat.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis messaging is stoking anger among conservative personalities, who say it is sexist and retrograde to assume women only vote for Trump to appease their husbands. They also, paradoxically, say this messaging is undermining traditional family values. Charlie Kirk, who last year said the “radical left” was being “run by childless young ladies” on antidepressants, called the ads “the embodiment of the downfall of the American family” on Megyn Kelly’s podcast.The Fox News host Jesse Watters said that if he found out his wife had secretly voted for Harris, “that’s the same thing as having an affair … it violates the sanctity of our marriage”. This, despite the fact that Watters had an affair with his current wife while still married to his first wife.In the final stretch, these complex – and often secretive – relationship dynamics are affecting Democrats’ ground game, said Kelly Dittmar, director of research and scholar at Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics. “You see it in public women’s bathrooms or places where women can be directly appealed to without the barrier of the man in their life. There are stickers or signs that say, ‘Remember, your vote is private,’” she said.Nancy Hirschmann, a political scientist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, added that canvassers for Harris were trained to avoid outing wives who may be registered Democrats to their Republican husbands: “If a man answers the door who’s clearly in favor of Trump, you don’t ask for the woman by name, you ask if there are other voters in the house you can speak to.”View image in fullscreenIt is too early to tell if Republican-coded women may in fact turn out to be secret Harris voters. But back on TikTok, women vocally share their 2024 picks, even if they go against their partner’s choice – or an ex-partner’s choice.Jamisen Casey, a 21-year-old student who goes to school in California but is registered to vote in her home state of Tennessee, took part in the trend, with a twist. “My absentee ballot on its way home to cancel out my ex boyfriend’s vote,” Casey wrote in the caption of a video showing her dancing with the envelope while We Both Reached for the Gun from the musical Chicago plays.“It’s really hard to know that there are men out there who want to vote against reproductive rights, even though they shouldn’t have a say in it at all,” Casey, who voted for Harris, said. She doesn’t think she could date someone who doesn’t share her views again. “As a political science major, I made a decision that I don’t want to put myself in that position.” More

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      ‘I had to get out’: the US military officers filing for conscientious objector status over Gaza

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      For Joy Metzler, a second lieutenant in the US air force, joining the military had felt like answering a calling. An adoptee from China who was raised in a conservative Christian family, she believed she owed a debt to the United States.But the Hamas attacks in Israel last year, and Israel’s war that followed, rocked Metzler’s convictions. Within months, she filed for conscientious objector status, one of a small number of US military personnel seeking to end their service because of their moral opposition to US support for Israel.“I didn’t know Palestine was a place before October 7,” Metzler told the Guardian.“All of a sudden it felt like a light clicking on for me.”As the war in Gaza enters a second year, some disillusioned members of the US military have turned to the Vietnam war-era conscientious objector policy to terminate their military service because of religious or moral convictions.There are few avenues to express dissent in the army. Earlier this year, Harrison Mann, an army officer assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency resigned in protest of US support for Israel. In a far more extreme gesture, 25-year-old US airman Aaron Bushnell died after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington in February.The conscientious objector route is a seldom-invoked alternative that few service members are aware of – though some advocates say there has been an uptick in interest in the last year.The defense department referred questions about the number of conscientious objectors to each branch of the military. A spokesperson for the air force said that it has received 42 applications since 2021 and granted 36. Applications since 7 October “are on trend with pre-conflict averages”, the spokesperson added. (The army, navy, and Marine Corps did not respond to requests for comment.)But while the numbers remain relatively low, the war in Gaza is top of mind for those service members who have considered conscientious objector status this year, said Bill Galvin, a Vietnam-era objector and director of counseling at the Center on Conscience and War, one of a handful of groups that helps military members navigate the complex bureaucratic process.Galvin said his group helps roughly 50 to 70 applicants a year, across military branches, and that there’s been more interest than usual this year.The US has subsidized Israel’s war in Gaza to the tune of nearly $18bn over the last year, and is growing more deeply entangled as the conflict spills into the broader region. The Biden administration recently announced the deployment of 100 troops to Israel to man a missile defense system in anticipation of an escalation against Iran.“Almost everyone that I’ve talked to has at least cited what’s happening in Gaza as a factor in causing them to rethink what they’re doing,” Galvin said. “Some have actually said: ‘I know that the airplane that I’m doing maintenance on is delivering weaponry to Israel and so I feel complicit.’”Metzler said she was raised to believe that Israel is “the nation of God’s chosen people” and “terrorists were morally bankrupt people, who hate us because of who we are”.When the war in Gaza started, the images of Palestinian civilians’ suffering disturbed her, but it wasn’t until Bushnell’s self-immolation that she started reading about the history of the conflict and the role of the US government in it. “A lot of the things I had been told about the US’s role in the world were wrong”, she said.The war pushed Metzler to re-evaluate her time in the air force academy. She recalled laughing with her classmates as they watched footage of people running from a drone – she wasn’t sure in which country. She felt ashamed.“I had come out of the academy glorifying the act of warfare,” she said. “There’s a certain disregard for human life that you just have to have to be a member of the military.”Metzler learned about the conscientious objector option when she met a group of veterans at a pro-Palestine protest at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she’s completing a master’s in aerospatial engineering.The defense department first introduced the objector application process in 1962. Tens of thousands obtained the status over the following decade, as the Vietnam war, and a mandatory draft, sparked a mass antiwar movement. But since then, the number of applicants has fallen drastically, with many members of the military unaware that the option even exists.“It’s not common knowledge,” said Metzler. “You don’t want to advertise to the people that are working for you that there’s a legal way for you to break your contract if you start to feel weird feelings.”For the few who embark on it, the process is rigorous and lengthy – Metzler’s application filled 19 pages and she is still waiting for final word after filing it in July. Applicants must demonstrate that they are opposed to all wars and that their beliefs about military service changed after they enlisted. They have to interview with a chaplain and with a mental health professional before an investigating officer reviews their case and makes a recommendation to a committee that decides whether to grant the status. In the past, the military has approved about half the conscientious objector applications it received.Larry Hebert, another US senior airman, said the process was “excruciatingly long”.A six-year veteran, Hebert reached what he called “a moral break” as horrific images of Palestinian children resembling his own filled his TikTok.During a leave from his service in Spain in March, he traveled to Washington and staged a hunger strike in front of the White House to highlight the plight of starving children in Gaza. He later applied for conscientious objector status, but as the wait became unbearable, he filed for voluntary separation, another avenue to legally end one’s service. When that was rejected, he took off his uniform and refused to obey orders. He was disciplined and is currently waiting to be released on administrative grounds“I had to get out,” he said. “I didn’t want to be a part of any of it.”Juan Bettancourt, a US airman who also filed for conscientious objector status earlier this year, told the Guardian that many of the service members he has spoken with have fear of speaking out but are privately appalled by US support for Israel. “There’s a lot of deep-seated criticism and moral disgust at the complicity of our government in the genocide in Gaza,” he said.Because dissenting voices are so rare, the military just tries to “brush them under the rug”, Bettancourt added, noting that Bushnell’s self-immolation was portrayed by the air force exclusively as a matter of “mental health,” Bettancourt said.View image in fullscreenThe air force spokesperson wrote in a statement that the force is committed to ensuring its members “never feel compelled to resort to self-harm as a means of protest”. She added that policies like the conscientious objector process “provide a safe avenue for individuals to voice their concerns”.But service members say voicing dissent is not easy, with a number of them incorrectly believing it’s illegal for them to do so or fearing they may get into trouble for raising questions. (Metzler, Bettancourt and Hebert all stressed they are speaking for themselves, and not on behalf of the military.)To address that, a coalition of military personnel and veterans groups have launched an “appeal to redress” campaign, modeled after an earlier one during the Iraq war, as a way for service members to register their opposition with legislators to the US’s Israel policy.Metzler, Bettancourt and Hebert have also launched Servicemembers for Ceasefire, offering resources for fellow members who are opposed to the war, including an explanation of the conscientious objector process.Metzler stresses that they are not encouraging people to leave the military – they just want those with doubts to know that they have options.“I’m not saying you have to jump ship or refuse orders,” she said. “But at the very least, pick up a book, figure out what’s going on in the world, and understand the context of what you’re doing.” More

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      Some Maga men seem to think women don’t have rights – starting with their wives | Rebecca Solnit

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      This week, the fundamentalist Christian pastor Dale Partridge argued in a series of tweets that “in a Christian marriage, a wife should vote according to her husband’s direction”. In other words, he pits his version of the religion against the constitution, which, since the 19th amendment passed a century ago, guarantees adult citizens the right to vote regardless of sex. He argues that in marriage, the husband annexes and owns his wife’s voice and rights, so that he in effect gets two votes and she gets none. The far-right preacher is not alone in this argument that women should not have the right to participate in public life and act on their views and values.Jesse Watters, the Fox News personality, has argued that if he found out his wife “was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair”. It violates “the sanctity of our marriage; what else is she keeping from me?” Rightwing agitator Charlie Kirk also got upset about the idea that women might vote according to their agenda and not their husband’s.These men are offering warnings about what awaits women who marry men like them. Maybe it’s worth noting here that the rightwing opposition to marriage equality as same-sex marriage is in part because they’re opposed to marriage equality within heterosexual marriage. They want marriage to be an inherently unequal relationship with a subordinate wife and an entitled husband, a cozy little authoritarian regime at home.One of the things the 2024 US presidential election is about is whether or not women should be free and equal full citizens of this republic. Right now too many women are not – women in conservative states are denied reproductive rights, meaning jurisdiction over their own bodies and in some cases survival if an abortion or pregnancy becomes a medical emergency.But there’s another way that women are not free and equal which a few videos, a lot of tweets and reportedly some Post-It notes in women’s bathrooms have addressed – when women are afraid to vote for their chosen candidate, when their husbands or boyfriends are Trump supporters and they are Harris supporters. I just wrote a Guardian piece about the fact that so many women apparently are bullied over their political beliefs, despite assurances that there are ways to vote without being tyrannized, is troubling. It suggests that there’s a whole other kind of voting suppression and coercion that deserves investigation and raises questions about voting at home.The responses cited above confirm that a lot of women have good reason to fear their partners and hide their choices (and attention to the videos may be making Maga husbands even more angry and controlling). These Maga men don’t think that wives and girlfriends should be free to vote as they choose, nor that wives and girlfriends have the right to privacy in their political choices. They, in other words, do not believe she should have a choice. Which boils down to not believing she has rights, and if they don’t believe women have rights here, they don’t believe they have them in a lot of arenas.This aligns with the Republican party’s enthusiasm for ending reproductive rights and birth control and no-fault divorce and with Vance’s suggestion that women should stay in violent marriages. Vance’s campaign has said his remarks were taken out of context. It fits in with Trump’s ominous campaign speech on Tuesday in which he declared, “I want to protect the women of our country … I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not.”Those are alarming words from an adjudicated rapist who’s facing new sexual assault charges from both former model Stacey Williams and beauty pageant contestant Beatrice Keul. Or not facing, since neither of these stories have garnered much attention, Trump’s long history of adjudicated or alleged sexual abuse apparently being acceptable, denied, or both with his supporters.This election is about a lot of things, and whether women are endowed with certain inalienable rights is one of them.

      Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility

      This piece was amended on 1 November 2024 to clarify that the 19th amendment was passed 104 years ago, not 124 More

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      US election answers the question: how do you spend a billion dollars?

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      It was one of the most striking images of the final full week of the presidential election campaign: a giant projection of Kamala Harris’s face on the 516ft-wide, 366ft-tall Las Vegas Sphere.At a reported $450,000 per day for what is believed to be the first political ad to appear on the futuristic new attraction, it was also one of the most expensive. But even at those rates, it barely made a dent in the staggering election war chest of almost $1bn that Harris has built since replacing Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket this summer.What the Vegas investment did answer, in part at least, was the question of how a campaign spends a billion dollars – an amount larger than the gross domestic product of at least 14 countries, according to the World Bank – in a single election season.Cash-hungry stunts such as this one in battleground Nevada are often targeted at undecided voters in specific swing states and regions; and Republicans and Democrats alike have shown a penchant for splashing out on costly endeavors to try to reach those who are still persuadable, and therefore the most high-value. Bang for the buck, in other words.As another example, the campaigns of Harris and Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, booked pricey prime-time spots during games involving Pennsylvania’s two professional NFL teams – the Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers – on Sunday and Monday nights.Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral college votes could tip the election one way or the other, and with polling showing the state on a knife edge, Democrats in particular have made younger, male voters – a demographic they see as politically less engaged – a priority. Earlier this month, the New York Times reported, the Democratic National Committee paid “a six-figure sum” to fly pro-Harris banners over four NFL games involving teams from six of the seven key swing states, Pennsylvania among them.“It is an extraordinary amount of money that the candidates are raising, and there’s no shortage of places to spend it,” said Steve Caplan, a professor who teaches a course on political advertising at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.“Back in the stone age before the explosion of digital media, there were four TV networks in the US, and even after cable there was only so much what we would call inventory, or space, to get your message out.“Now, because of an explosion of channels and media outlets, there’s countless ways to spend that money, to slice and dice it by audience and by demographic, whether it’s on digital advertising, YouTube, Facebook and other social media. Interestingly, Snapchat has become a really big channel for Kamala Harris. It’s very cost-efficient and can reach younger voters.”Caplan said campaigns had invested in honing their digital content creation, from videos to podcasts, into a powerful and effective messaging tool.“There’s an entire infrastructure of producers, writers, editors and ad makers who just crank these things out for every conceivable audience, almost 24 hours a day for weeks and weeks,” he said.“We’ve also seen massive changes in the last few years where more consumers are cutting the cord: you get a smart TV and can stream through your provider. Those sort of platforms were really in their early stages just four years ago, and now they’ve become massive and very important. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars are now being spent on these platforms in swing states. It was virtually zero in 2020.”Other expenses that campaigns must cover include staff costs, printed materials and advertising, staging rallies and transportation. But broadcast advertising, especially television, remains king.Analytics company AdImpact says Democrats have spent $1.1bn on aired ads and future reservations alone since Harris became the candidate in July, $400m more than Republicans. Jointly, the two presidential campaigns have spent an eye-watering $2.1bn since March.For the entire election cycle, including Senate, House and partisan down-ballot races, plus ballot initiatives in many states, political advertising is expected to reach a record $10.7bn, a 19% increase from 2020, AdImpact says.Democrats have significantly out-raised and outspent Republicans in this cycle, disclosures to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show, in both campaign funding and money raised by and for political action committees (Pac), which are allied with the presidential candidates but, by law, are set up and run independently of them.Up to 16 October, the most recent date for which returns were available, Democrats hauled in $1.05bn and spent $883m, leaving almost $120m in hand. Republicans, by contrast, raised $565m and spent all but $52.6m of it.When Pac money is included, however, the figures swell exponentially. While individual contributors are limited to $3,300 donations directly to the presidential candidates, there are no such limits for Pacs, which raised $13.5bn between January 2023 and the end of last month, according to the FEC.The rules, framed by the 2010 Citizens United v FEC supreme court ruling, allow corporations, special interest groups and wealthy individuals – such as the billionaire Elon Musk through his controversial Trump-aligned America Pac – to make eye-popping and almost unrestricted contributions, and to buy oversized influence in elections and their aftermath.“Citizens United, and subsequent other cases, opened the door for corporate contributions to related entities to campaigns, and allowed for what are commonly referred to as dark-money groups to spend money on politics without disclosing who that money came from,” said attorney Noah Bookbinder, president and chief executive of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew).“Wealthy people have always been a political force, but a small group of billionaires have become just a huge part of the machine, fueling political campaigns now, both in terms of giving to dark-money organizations and giving to Super Pacs. In the case of Elon Musk, his Super Pac is essentially operating as an unchecked piece of the Trump campaign apparatus.“It’s troubling because we don’t want this country to slide into being the kind of oligarchy you see in a place like Russia where a small number of very wealthy individuals have outsize influence over the people in charge.”Musk’s self-funded Pac reported $130m in receipts, the latest FEC disclosure showed. Democratic-aligned Pacs ActBlue, the Harris Victory Fund and the DNC, filled three of the top four places with receipts of more than $5bn. The leading Republican Pac, WinRed, reported $1.4bn.A new report from Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), meanwhile, shows Musk in third place among individual donors, behind banking and oil magnate Tim Mellon ($172m) and the Las Vegas-based Adelson family of hoteliers ($137m). All three donated to Republicans.In all, the ATF said, 150 billionaire families have so far contributed $1.9bn among them to Pacs supporting presidential and congressional candidates in the 2024 cycle, a 60% rise from the 2020 total given by more than 600 individual billionaires.“Billionaire campaign spending on this scale drowns out the voices and concerns of ordinary Americans,” said David Kass, ATF’s executive director.Bradley Smith, professor at Capital University law school and FEC chair during the administration of George W Bush, said it was wrong to blame Citizens United for the cash swishing around in Harris’s, or Trump’s, coffers.“The vast majority of the money is coming from individuals subject to campaign finance limits. All the money Kamala Harris has raised directly in her campaign comes from individuals in amounts of $3,300 or less,” he said.“The law has played a part but more than that, it’s maybe a little bit of a cultural zeitgeist. People seem to really feel there’s a lot at stake in this election and one of the few ways people can participate in a campaign beyond voting is by giving money.“Most people don’t have time to go knock on doors, and a lot of it has been supercharged by the internet, which makes it really easy and low-cost to get small donors to contribute: ‘Click on this button, send us $20.’ Some of these people do that 30, 40, 50 times, and all of a sudden you’re talking real money.” More

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      US presidential election updates: false videos of voter fraud spread as election approaches

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      The Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has said a video that claimed to show a Haitian immigrant who voted multiple times is “false”, “targeted disinformation” and likely the work of a Russian troll farm.“As Americans we can’t let our enemies use lies to divide us,” said Raffensperger, who also asked that “Elon Musk and the leadership of other social media platforms … take this down.”Meanwhile, Musk has deputised his followers on X to spot and report any “potential instances of voter fraud and irregularities”. The election integrity community he spawned is rife with unfounded claims passed off as evidence of voter fraud.As Americans race towards the presidential election, claims of voter fraud – as well as real example of political violence – are growing, with burning vote boxes, attempts to steal ballots and online hoaxes all reported this week.Here is what else happened on Thursday:Kamala Harris election news and updates

      Kamala Harris said on Thursday that Donald Trump’s comment that he would protect women “whether the women like it or not” showed that the Republican presidential nominee does not understand women’s “agency, their authority, their right and their ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies”.

      Harris, who has been receiving a slew of celebrity endorsements, got an A-list boost from pop star and movie actor Jennifer Lopez in Las Vegas, after basketball great LeBron James endorsed her earlier in the day. “I like Hollywood endings. I like when the good guy, or in this case the good girl wins,” said Lopez.

      The cast of Marvel’s Avengers movies also came out in support of Harris. In a video posted first on Vanity Fair, actors Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, Chris Evans, Danai Gurira and Paul Bettany playfully riffed on their respective characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe while encouraging viewers to vote for Harris.
      Donald Trump election news and updates

      Trump acknowledged that Elon Musk and Robert F Kennedy Jr could be “influential figures” in a potential second administration as he sat for a lengthy interview with conservative broadcaster Tucker Carlson in battleground state Arizona. Trump also called Liz Cheney a “war hawk” who should be placed in the line of fire to “see how she feels about it”. The former congresswoman has become one of his most prominent Republican critics.

      Trump made stops in New Mexico, a traditionally Democratic state, and the swing state of Nevada. Trump predicted he would defy experts who said campaigning in New Mexico was futile. “They all said ‘Don’t come. You can’t win New Mexico.’ I said, ‘Look, your votes are rigged. We can win New Mexico,’” Trump said.

      Trump’s refusal to publicly acknowledge his defeat in 2020 and suggestion that if he loses this year, he will once again claim fraud, have changed the lives of many formerly low-key election offices and secretaries of state nationwide, who now regularly face threats and harassment, Chris Stein reported from Arizona.

      Elon Musk failed to show up to a required hearing in a Philadelphia case challenging his $1m-a-day sweepstakes. His absence would have risked contempt of court had the case continued in Pennsylvania court, but it was moved to federal court in response to a motion filed by Musk’s attorneys, who did attend the hearing. No hearings were immediately scheduled in the federal case.

      Musk’s get-out-the-vote effort for Donald Trump has come under renewed scrutiny after paid canvassers reported not knowing beforehand that they were being hired to support the former president. Workers recruited by Musk’s America Pac to canvass in the battleground state of Michigan only discovered they were working for the Space X and Tesla entrepreneur to drum up voter turnout for Trump after signing non-disclosure agreements, Wired reported.
      Elsewhere on the campaign trail

      Practising witches from around the world gathered in Salem by the hundreds on Thursday night to honour Stormy Daniels at their annual “magic circle” ceremony recognising loved ones who have died. Daniels – the adult film actor who allegedly had an affair with Trump and was at the centre of his May criminal trial that led to the former president’s conviction on 34 felonies – was chosen to be honoured in the Halloween ceremony as the organisers believe that she has been the victim of a modern-day witch-hunt.

      White House press officials altered the official transcript of a call in which President Joe Biden appeared to take a swipe at supporters of Donald Trump, drawing objections from the federal workers who document such remarks for posterity, according to two US government officials and an internal email obtained on Thursday by the Associated Press.
      Read more about the 2024 US election:

      Presidential poll tracker

      Harris and Trump policies

      What to know about early voting More