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      Barack Obama to campaign for Harris across battleground states next week

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      Former president Barack Obama will crisscross the battleground states for Kamala Harris, with a kickoff in all-important Pennsylvania next week, according to a senior Harris campaign official.Obama will hold his first event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania next Thursday, the beginning of a blitz across the handful of rust belt and sun belt states that will probably decide the 2024 election.Obama will be appearing in the swing state after Republican nominee Donald Trump returns on Saturday to Butler, the Pennsylvania town where he survived an assassination attempt in July.Obama remains one of the Democrats most powerful surrogates, second perhaps only to his wife, Michelle Obama. His return to the campaign trail follows a rousing speech at the Democratic National Convention in August, in which he cast Harris as a forward-looking figure and a natural heir to his diverse, youth-powered political coalition.“We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos,” he told the convention in August. “We have seen that movie before and we all know that the sequel is usually worse. America is ready for a new chapter.”Harris was one of Obama’s earliest supporters when he launched a long-shot presidential bid against Hillary Clinton in 2007. She would go on to knock on doors for him ahead of the Iowa caucuses in 2008.Harris’s campaign already includes several former Obama campaign staff, including strategist David Plouffe, Stephanie Cutter – who was Obama’s deputy campaign manager in 2012 – and Mitch Stewart, Obama’s grassroots strategist for both campaigns. Stewart is Harris’s adviser for battleground states, among which Pennsylvania is a must-win for either side.Key to winning Pennsylvania could be winning the Latino vote. About 90,000 Latino voters might still be undecided, according to Penn State professor, A K Sandoval-Strausz, writing in the Conversation, who argues that an endorsement for Harris from Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny could have a greater impact on the election than Taylor Swift’s. In 2020, Biden won the state by 80,000 votes – or a single point. In 2016, Trump took the state with just 44,292 votes.According to the latest average of Pennsylvania polling from the Hill/Decision Desk HQ, Harris leads Trump by just 0.9 points in the state. More

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      Liz Cheney campaigns with Harris and urges voters to reject Trump’s ‘cruelty’

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      Liz Cheney, one of Donald Trump’s most prominent conservative critics, appealed to the millions of undecided Americans who could decide the outcome of the 2024 election, asking them to “reject the depraved cruelty” of the former president.A former representative from Wyoming, Cheney cast the stakes in November as nothing less than the future of American democracy as she appeared alongside Kamala Harris in Ripon, Wisconsin, on Thursday, the symbolic birthplace of the modern Republican party.The daughter of Dick Cheney, the Republican former vice-president, said she had never voted for a Democrat before, but would do so “proudly” to ensure Trump never holds a position of public trust again. Her father will join her in casting his ballot for Harris.“I know that the most conservative of conservative values is fidelity to our constitution,” Cheney said, speaking from a podium adorned with the vice presidential seal. The crowd broke into a chant: “Thank you, Liz!” A large sign looming over them declared: “Country over Party.”Harris praised Cheney’s “courage” for being willing to cross party lines to endorse – and campaign alongside – the Democratic nominee. During the event, a remarkable joint appearance that would have been unimaginable in the pre-Trump era, Cheney pitched Harris as a unifying leader who will safeguard American institutions.Cheney and Harris agree on little politically – only that Trump should not be allowed to serve a second term. But their union is part of an effort by the Harris campaign to win over Republican voters who, like Cheney, believe in “limited government” and “low taxes” but are repelled by Trump and his Maga movement.“No matter your political party, there is a place for you with us and in this campaign,” Harris said. “I take seriously my pledge to be a president for all Americans.”Harris touts a growing collection of endorsements from prominent Republican leaders and ex-Trump administration officials, including Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Trump White House who testified against him in the January 6 House hearings, as well as Anthony Scaramucci, former White House communications director, and Stephanie Grisham, a former press secretary.Adam Kinzinger, a former Illinois representative and the only other Republican to serve on the January 6 committee, also is backing Harris, and forcefully denounced Trump in a speech at the Democratic national convention in August.In a reprisal of her role as the vice-chair of the House select committee investigating the 2021 attack on the US Capitol, Cheney on Thursday methodically recounted for the crowd how Trump had refused for hours to intervene on January 6, instead watching the violence unfold on television.“After the Capitol had been invaded, he praised the rioters. He did not condemn them. That’s who Donald Trump is,” she said. Cheney rebuked Republicans who have sought to “minimize what happened” that day.“Do not let anyone lie about what happened and what they did,” she said, adding: “Violence does not and must never determine who rules us. Voters do.”Cheney was effectively exiled from her own party after she broke forcefully with the former president. But on Thursday, she said it was Trump, thrice chosen as the Republican nominee, who was failing to uphold the founding ideals of the “party of Lincoln”. With a dash of arch humor, she added: “I was a Republican even before Donald Trump started spray-tanning.”Harris’s appearance with Cheney came one day after a judge unsealed new evidence in a federal case against Trump for his attempt to cling to power in 2020. In the court filing, federal prosecutors allege that he amplified false claims of voter fraud and “resorted to crimes” in his failed bid to overturn the results of an election he lost.At a rally in Michigan earlier on Thursday, Trump repeated the false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election.“We won. We won,” Trump said in Saginaw, a swing county in the midwestern battleground. “We have to be too big to rig.”Harris will travel to Michigan on Thursday night, and campaign in Detroit on Friday, as the candidates battle for votes in the trio of “blue wall” swing states seen as the clearest path to the White House.Leaving the White House on Thursday, Joe Biden said he was hardly surprised by the razor-thin margins.“It always gets this close,” he told reporters. “She’s going to do fine.”He also praised her running mate, Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, for his performance against JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, during Tuesday night’s debate in New York. Near the end of the 90-minute exchange, Walz turned to the subject of the 2020 election: had Trump lost? he asked Vance.Vance replied that he was “focused on the future”.“That is a damning non-answer,” Walz replied, adding that Vance’s loyalty to Trump above all else was the reason he and not the former vice-president, Mike Pence, was there on stage that night. The response was clipped and immediately re-packaged by the Harris campaign into a television ad.On January 6, as protesters chanted: “Hang Mike Pence,” the then vice-president resisted pressure from Trump to reject the votes of the electoral college and returned to the Capitol after it was breached to certify Biden’s victory.On Thursday, Cheney claimed Vance, in Pence’s shoes, would have “thrown out the votes of the people of Wisconsin” because they had voted to elect Biden as president in 2020. “That is tyranny, and that is disqualifying,” she said.Cheney effectively ended her own political career by voting to impeach Trump over his role in stoking a mob of supporters that attacked the Capitol on 6 January 2021. She was one of just two Republicans willing to serve on the House select committee investigation into the attack that sought to hold Trump – and his Republican enablers – accountable for the sprawling effort to overturn his defeat.She lost a 2022 Republican primary, but has remained a vocal critic of the former president. Before Biden stepped aside, Cheney said she was mulling a third-party bid.But on Thursday, she made clear there was no other alternative to Trump. Cheney quoted from a letter that John Adams, the nation’s second president, wrote to his wife on the first night he spent in the White House: “May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”“Now I am confident,” she said, her smile widening, “that John Adams meant women, too.” More

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      Bruce Springsteen endorses Kamala Harris for president while criticising ‘dangerous’ Trump

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      Bruce Springsteen has officially thrown his support behind Kamala Harris, endorsing her for president and simultaneously opposing Donald Trump, calling him “the most dangerous candidate for president in my lifetime”.The Born to Run singer made the announcement in a video posted to his Instagram on Thursday evening (US time) in which he described the upcoming election as “one of the most consequential elections in our nation’s history”.“Perhaps not since the Civil War has this great country felt as politically, spiritually and emotionally divided as it does at this moment. It doesn’t have to be this way.”Springsteen, who was a vocal supporter of Barack Obama and Joe Biden in their respective presidential campaigns, is the latest high-profile endorsement for Harris, joining Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey and Barbra Streisand.In the video, he praised Harris and Walz’s commitment to “a vision of this country that respects and includes everyone, regardless of class, religion, race, your political point of view or sexual identity, and they want to grow our economy in a way that benefits all, not just a few like me on top”.“That’s the vision of America I’ve been consistently writing about for 55 years.”Trump, by contrast, “doesn’t understand the meaning of this country, its history or what it means to be deeply American”, the singer said.“His disdain for the sanctity of our constitution, the sanctity of democracy, the sanctity of the rule of law and the sanctity of the peaceful transfer of power should disqualify him from the office of president ever again.”Concluding, Springsteen said: “Now, everybody sees things different, and I respect your choice as a fellow citizen. But like you, I’ve only got one vote, and it’s one of the most precious possessions that I have. That’s why come November 5 I’ll be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Thanks for listening.” More

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      in US Politics

      Major US firefighter union declines to endorse Trump or Harris for president

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      The International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) has declined to endorse a candidate ahead of next month’s US presidential election, despite efforts by both the Kamala Harris and Donald Trump campaigns to court the union.“This decision, which we took very seriously, is the best way to preserve and strengthen our unity,” the IAFF said in a statement.The union, which has almost 350,000 members, was a key part of the coalition built by Joe Biden – and the first union to back the president’s run for election in 2020.It is the second leading trade union to refrain from endorsing either Harris or Trump as tens of millions of Americans prepare to cast their votes. The Teamsters International, a US transportation workers union that represents more than 1.3 million workers, also announced it would not back a candidate.Both campaigns had sought the IAFF’s support, with Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, and JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, addressing the union’s convention in August.Walz claimed in his speech that he had signed “the most comprehensive firefighter legislation in the nation” as governor of Minnesota. Vance, who grappled with boos from the audience, claimed that he and Trump represented a “new kind of Republican party” and would “never stop fighting” for first responders.On Thursday, the IAFF said its executive board had voted by a margin of 1.2% to not endorse a presidential candidate. “We encourage our members – and all eligible voters – to get out and make their voices heard in the upcoming election,” said Edward Kelly, the union’s president.It is not the first time the IAFF has refrained from backing a candidate. While it endorsed Barack Obama in 2008, it reportedly shelved plans to publicly support Hillary Clinton, the Democrat presidential candidate in 2016. More

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      US judge clears legal hurdle for Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan

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      A federal judge has dealt a setback to a legal challenge by seven Republican-led states to the latest student debt forgiveness plan from Joe Biden’s administration, removing Georgia from the case and moving it to Missouri.J Randal Hall, a US district judge based in Augusta, Georgia, took the action on Wednesday, one day before a temporary restraining order he issued on 5 September blocking the administration from proceeding with the plan – a USDepartment of Education regulation that is still not finalized – was set to expire.Hall ruled that Georgia, which along with Missouri had led the lawsuit, failed to show it would be harmed by the administration’s plan to forgive $73bn in student loan debt held by millions of Americans.The judge removed Georgia from the case for lack of legal standing despite the state’s claim of potential tax revenue losses, and transferred the litigation to federal court in Missouri.“There is no indication that the rule is being implemented to attack the states or their income taxes, so any loss of … tax revenue is incidental and insufficient to create standing for Georgia,” Hall wrote.The judge had previously ruled that Missouri did have standing to sue because that state operates a non-profit student loan servicer that stands to directly lose millions of dollars in funding under the debt forgiveness plan.The administration proposed the regulation in April after previous plans were blocked by the courts. Biden as a candidate in 2020 pledged to bring debt relief to millions of Americans who turned to federal student loans to fund their costly higher education. The draft regulation, according to court papers, would allow the government to provide full or partial debt relief to an estimated 27.6 million borrowers.The states challenging the policy on Thursday asked a federal judge in Missouri to rule by Friday on whether to continue blocking the proposal. The case was assigned to the US district judge Matthew Schelp, an appointee of Donald Trump.A Department of Education spokesperson in a statement expressed appreciation for the judge’s “acknowledgement that this case has no legal basis to be brought in Georgia”, and said the lawsuit reflected an effort by Republican state officials “to prevent millions of their own constituents from getting breathing room on their student loans.“We will continue our lawful efforts to deliver relief to more Americans, including by vigorously defending these proposals in court,” the spokesperson added.The offices of the attorneys general of Georgia and Missouri did not respond to requests for comment.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnder the draft regulation, debt relief would be granted to: people who owe more than they first borrowed due to the interest that has accrued; those who have been paying off loans for at least 20 or 25 years, depending on the circumstances; and borrowers who were eligible for forgiveness under prior programs but never applied.The fact that the rule has not yet been finalized was cited by the US justice department in arguing there was no final agency action for the judge to review in the first place. The states argued that the administration was laying the groundwork to immediately cancel loans once the rule became final before anyone could sue to stop it.The White House has called the current student loan system broken and has said debt relief is necessary to ensure that borrowers are not financially burdened by their decision to seek higher education.Republicans counter that the Democratic president’s student loan forgiveness approach amounts to an overreach of authority and an unfair benefit to college-educated borrowers while others receive no such relief. More

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      Musk’s millions in rightwing gifts began earlier than previously known – report

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      Elon Musk has given tens of millions of dollars to rightwing groups in recent years, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, revealing his backing for Republican groups began earlier than was previously known.Musk endorsed Trump earlier this year and has been a prolific booster of misinformation in support of the president’s re-election bid on X, the website he owns. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that Musk had said he planned to donate $45m each month to a Super Pac backing Trump (Musk has denied the report).But the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on Thursday revealed that Musk has already been spending tens of millions of dollars to back conservative causes. In 2022, he spent more than $50m to fund anti-immigrant and anti-transgender advertisements by a group called Citizens for Sanity. The group’s officers are employees of America First Legal, a non-profit led by Stephen Miller, a close former Trump aide.Musk also has donated millions to another rightwing group, Building America’s Future, Reuters reported on Thursday. The outlet reported the timeline and exact amount he has given were not clear.The group has focused on reducing Kamala Harris’s support among Black voters, according to NBC News. The group has also launched advertising criticizing Joe Biden and Harris for their support at the border.A Super Pac started by Musk, America Pac, has spent at least $71m on the presidential election, according to Bloomberg. The Trump campaign has largely outsourced its get-out-the-vote operation to the Pac.In 2023, Musk also gave $10m to support the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, in his bid for president, the Wall Street Journal reported. Musk publicly said in 2022 he would support DeSantis for president.“My preference for the 2024 presidency is someone sensible and centrist. I had hoped that would the case for the Biden administration, but have been disappointed so far,” he said at the time.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMusk’s donations to the groups were kept quiet, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal reported. He funneled money through social welfare groups that are not required to disclose their donors. People involved in his donations to Citizens for Sanity would use Signal, an encrypted messaging app, to discuss the transactions, the Wall Street Journal reported. More

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      What is Melania Trump’s game in suddenly defending abortion rights?

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      When news broke on Wednesday evening that Melania Trump supports abortion rights – and apparently has for her entire adult life – it was greeted with surprise and confusion.Melania’s husband, Donald Trump, is trying to rapidly recalibrate his approach to abortion as he races towards election day. Is his wife trying to help him? Hurt him? Or neither?In her forthcoming memoir, Melania Trump went into extensive detail about her support for the procedure.“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body?” she wrote. “A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.”Shortly after the Guardian broke the news, Trump uploaded a black-and-white video of herself to social media, set to stirring music.“Without a doubt, there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right that all women possess from birth,” she said. “Individual freedom. What does my body, my choice really mean?”The news of Melania Trump’s support for abortion rights comes at a time when her husband is striving to convince voters that he can be trusted to protect abortion rights.In the years since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, abortion has become Republicans’ achilles heel. It cost Republicans victories in the 2022 midterms, while abortion rights supporters have won a string of ballot measures even in states as red as Kentucky, Kansas and Ohio.Earlier on in his campaign, Trump attempted to be all-things-abortion to everybody, alternately bragging about his role in overturning Roe – by appointing three of the justices who voted for its demise – and grousing that hardline positions on abortion were costing the GOP elections. But since Kamala Harris, an extraordinarily effective messenger on abortion, became the Democratic nominee for president, he has abandoned that approach in favor of garbled support for abortion rights.“WOMEN WILL BE HAPPY, HEALTH, CONFIDENT AND FREE!” Trump recently posted on Truth Social. “YOU WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION, BECAUSE IT IS NOW WHERE IT ALWAYS HAD TO BE, WITH THE STATES.”Melania Trump’s revelation, then, could be intended to reassure undecided voters who are disinclined to vote for Harris but support abortion rights – as a majority of Americans do. But Tresa Undem, a pollster who has surveyed people on abortion for more than two decades, said the odds of such comments appealing to moderates or abortion-supporting conservatives were “fairly slim”.After all, regardless of her personal convictions, it seems unlikely that Melania Trump has any real sway over her tempestuous husband’s policies. Her pro-abortion rights beliefs did not stop Donald Trump from helping to demolish Roe. It also doesn’t help that Melania and Donald Trump’s relationship is, at least in public, far from cozy. (He recently indicated, despite having written the foreword, that he hasn’t read the book.)“Nothing Republicans say will distract the American people from the reality they see with their own eyes: story after story of victims of rape and incest being forced into pregnancy, doctors forced to turn away patients during miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies and women literally dying because of Trump’s abortion bans,” Emilia Rowland, Democratic national committee press secretary, said in a text.View image in fullscreenMelania Trump’s disagreement with her husband is also not as novel as it may seem. Betty Ford, the wife of the Republican president Gerald Ford, was an adamant supporter of abortion rights, said Mary Ziegler, a University of California Davis school of law professor who studies the legal history of reproduction. It didn’t end up making much of a difference in Gerald Ford’s campaign.“I think people understand that Melania and Donald Trump are very different people,” Ziegler said. “I could see independent and swing voters saying: ‘Wow. It’s bad that even Donald Trump’s wife doesn’t like Donald Trump’s position.’”What Melania Trump’s news seems to have done is anger the anti-abortion activists who have made up some of Trump’s most reliable supporters. These activists were already annoyed by Trump’s recent attempts to paint himself as an abortion rights champion.“Melania Trump’s support of abortion is anti-feminist and clearly outside the teaching of our Catholic faith. She is wrong,” Kristan Hawkins, president of the pro-life organization Students for Life of America, posted on X. “What a lost opportunity to inspire a generation of young women.”Melania Trump’s strategy, such as it is, may be much more straightforward than activists and politicos may think. She has never seemed particularly interested in being first lady, and she doesn’t appear to be invested in winning the job back, seeing as she has largely disappeared from the 2024 campaign trail.But Trump does seem interested in doing at least one thing: selling books. Suggesting that there is controversy within her memoir’s pages probably helps move copies.Or not. In her post, Hawkins added: “I won’t be buying Melania’s book.” More

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      in Elections

      Trump January 6 case: five key points in the latest filing against former president

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      In a court filing unsealed on Wednesday, federal prosecutors argue that Donald Trump is not immune from prosecution over the January 6 riots because he acted in a private capacity, and took advice from private advisers.The indictment seeks to make this case – that Trump acted in his private capacity, rather than his official one – because of a US supreme court ruling in July that former presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions taken as president.It also reveals further details about Trump’s alleged mood and actions (or lack of action) on the day, building on evidence that was provided in earlier briefs.In response to the new filing, the Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung called the brief “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional”. On Truth Social, Trump, writing in all-caps, called it “complete and total election interference.”Here are some key points made in the filing:‘Fundamentally a private’ schemeThe new court filing, in which Trump is referred to as “the defendant”, alleges that Trump’s plan that day was “fundamentally a private one”, and therefore not related to his duties as president but instead as a candidate for office.It reads: “The defendant asserts that he is immune from prosecution for his criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election because, he claims, it entailed official conduct. Not so. Although the defendant was the incumbent president during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one.“He extensively used private actors and his campaign infrastructure to attempt to overturn the election results and operated in a private capacity as a candidate for office.”The filing looks back to election day for Trump’s use of private advisers: “As election day turned to November 4, the contest was too close to project a winner, and in discussions about what the defendant should say publicly regarding the election, senior advisors suggested that the defendant should show restraint while counting continued. Two private advisors, however, advocated a different course: [name redacted] and [name redacted] suggested that the defendant just declare victory. And at about 2.20am, the defendant gave televised remarks to a crowd of his campaign supporters in which he falsely claimed, without evidence or specificity, that there had been fraud in the election and that he had won.”On 4 January, the filing says, a White House counsel was excluded from a meeting during which Trump sought to pressure Pence to help overturn the election result. Only a private attorney was present, the filing says: “It is hard to imagine stronger evidence” than this that Trump’s conduct was private.A presidential candidate alone in a dining room with Twitter and Fox NewsTrump’s day on 6 January started at 1am, with a tweet pressuring Pence to obstruct the certification of the results. Seven hours later, at 8.17am, Trump tweeted about it again. Shortly before his speech at the Ellipse, Trump called Pence and again pressured him to “induce him to act unlawfully in the upcoming session”, where Pence would be certifying the election results. Pence refused.At this point, according to the filing, Trump “decided to re-insert into his campaign speech at the Ellipse remarks targeting Pence for his refusal to misuse his role in the certification”.Trump gave his speech, and at 1pm, the certification process began at the Capitol.Trump, meanwhile, “settled in the dining room off of the Oval Office. He spent the afternoon there reviewing Twitter on his phone, while the dining room television played Fox News’ contemporaneous coverage of events at the Capitol.”It was from the dining room that Trump watched a crowd of his supporters march towards the Capitol. He had been there less than an hour when, at “approximately 2.24pm, Fox News reported that a police officer may have been injured and that ‘protestors … have made their way inside the Capitol.’“At 2.24pm, Trump tweeted, writing, ‘Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our constitution, giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!’”The filing reads: “The content of the 2.24pm tweet was not a message sent to address a matter of public concern and ease unrest; it was the message of an angry candidate upon the realization that he would lose power.”A minute later, the Secret Service evacuated Pence to a secure location.Trump, when told Pence had been evacuated, said: ‘So what?’The filing states that Trump said: “So what?” after being told that Pence had subsequently been taken to a secure location.The indictment notes that the government does not intend to use the exchange at trial. It argues, however, that the tweet itself was “unofficial”.The filing states that Pence “tried to encourage” Trump “as a friend” when news networks forecast a Biden win on 7 November. This again goes to the assertion that Trump acted in a private capacity.Pence allegedly told Trump: “You took a dying political party and gave it a new lease on life”.‘Fight like hell’ regardless The filing states Trump was overheard telling family members, amid his efforts to overturn the election results: “It doesn’t matter if you lose … you have to fight like hell.”“At one point long after the defendant had begun spreading false fraud claims, [name redacted] a White House staffer traveling with the defendant, overheard him tell family members: ‘It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.’”Trump knew his claims were falseThe filing states: “The evidence demonstrates that the defendant knew his fraud claims were false because he continued to make those claims even after his close advisors – acting not in an official capacity but in a private or campaign-related capacity – told them they were not true.”Among these advisers was a person referred to as P9, a White House staffer who had been one of several attorneys who represented Trump in his first impeachment trial in the Senate in 2019 and 2020, according to the filing.In one private conversation, “when P9 reiterated to the defendant that [name redacted] would be unable to prove his false fraud allegations in court, the defendant responded, ‘The details don’t matter.’”P9 at one point after the election told Trump “that the campaign was looking into his fraud claims, and had even hired external experts to do so, but could find no support for them.
      He told the defendant that if the Campaign took these claims to court, they would get slaughtered, because the claims are all ‘bullshit’.” More