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How the Christian right is twisting the legacy of an anti-Nazi hero
by Evelyn Reynolds 3 November 2024, 12:00
This article is co-published with DocumentedLeading figures on the Christian right have seized on an unlikely hero in their campaign against secular government: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an antifascist theologian and pastor who resisted the Nazi regime before he was executed in 1945.Driving the trend is Eric Metaxas, a prolific author, speaker and celebrity on the Christian right, whose writings on Bonhoeffer and American politics provide the intellectual fodder for a movement that seeks to turn evangelicals against liberal policies on women’s rights, LGBTQ+ inclusion and racial justice.In the short term, this push has taken the form of a well-funded voter mobilization campaign ahead of the 5 November presidential election, with conservative organizations coordinating to screen Metaxas’s 2024 film – which lays out an argument equating liberal policies with Nazism, and urges believers to emulate Bonhoeffer – in churches across the country.In the long run, experts worry that the push to liken American liberal democracy to Nazi Germany could spur political violence, citing past examples of Christian extremists who invoked Bonhoeffer to justify bombing and shooting up abortion clinics.“We’re worried about post-election political violence, and this is a way of inspiring that,” said Victoria Barnett, a theologian and eminent scholar of Bonhoeffer and the Holocaust who has advocated for a nuanced understanding of Bonhoeffer and has cautioned against depicting Bonhoeffer as a kind of evangelical “Lone Ranger”.According to documents obtained by the Guardian and Documented, the production and distribution of the movie, called Letter to the American Church, was coordinated by the rightwing group Turning Point USA and American Letter Productions – the film division of Metaxas Media, an entertainment business founded by Eric Metaxas.Through the Letter to the American Church tour, an initiative launched in mid-2024, these groups and others have screened the film at churches, community organizations, and small groups for donations of any amount; churches willing to screen the film received an “extensive marketing kit” to promote it.Funding for this film and tour was pledged, in part, by the secretive Christian donor network Ziklag, a non-profit that embraces the aims of a growing movement of Christian nationalists who strive to rule over US government and society. As a piece of Ziklag’s larger, coordinated effort to get out the vote, the group committed to funding movie screenings in churches across the country “with a focus on oversaturation in the battleground states” to galvanize congregations and increase evangelical voter turnout.Since its launch, the film has been screened at least 170 times across the country, including more than 40 times in key swing states. Local GOP chapters and numerous outside organizations on the right have also held screenings, some in conjunction with poll worker sign-up initiatives and alongside Turning Point Action, a group the Trump campaign has relied on for its voter registration and turnout efforts.Internal videos produced by Ziklag, obtained by the Guardian and Documented, detail Ziklag’s 2024 election strategy, pledging $800,000 to “focus on rallying the church behind biblically based voting using Eric Metaxas’ new documentary, Letter to the American Church”. Organizations that partnered with Metaxas, including Turning Point Action and TPUSA Faith, were promised donations from Ziklag in this effort to engage evangelical voters.Ziklag and Turning Point USA did not return requests for comment.View image in fullscreenIn an email, Metaxas denied having “anything to do with the making of the LETTER film” – although he stars in the movie and founded one of the companies that produced it. Metaxas rejected the term “Christian nationalism”, saying it is used to “demonize people who believe that we Christians are obliged to live our faith in every sphere, including the political.”And he suggested that Bonhoeffer scholars and his critics were in fact the ones inciting political violence, not him.‘Co-opted by extremists’Born in 1906 and raised in a family of intellectuals and academics, Bonhoeffer dedicated himself as a young man to theology and ministry. At 21 years old, he wrote a dissertation exploring the idea of Christians’ ethical and moral obligations to one another and society.But Bonhoeffer’s prodigious academic career was cut short by the rise of Hitler’s Nazi party.An early dissident, Bonhoeffer wrote in 1933 that the Hitler government’s increasingly discriminatory and violent oppression of Jews was a “problem for the church”, which he viewed as responsible for opposing such policies, even if they were not directed at Christians.His work in the following decade, with other dissenting clergy and networks of resisters, would eventually lead the regime to accuse him of aiding in a plot to assassinate Hitler. He was arrested in 1943 and hanged in 1945 in the Flossenbürg concentration camp, leaving behind his letters from prison and numerous writings on ethics, morality and the role of Christians in a secular, modern society.Before he was executed, Bonhoeffer warned of the dangers of zealotry and groupthink – perils he believed societies face during times of political upheaval.“[The] upsurge of power is so terrific that it deprives men of an independent judgement,” wrote Bonhoeffer, “and they give up trying – more or less unconsciously – to assess the new state of affairs for themselves.”Scholars of Bonhoeffer, and Bonhoeffer’s living relatives, have argued that Bonhoeffer teaches Christians to reject nationalisms of all kinds.To their dismay, Christian nationalists have embraced Bonhoeffer, frequently invoking his participation in the 20 July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler as an example of moral courage. In this interpretation, Bonhoeffer is cast not as the contemplative theologian who agonized over his role in the antifascist resistance, but as a Christian warrior with the political leanings of a 21st-century American evangelical.Tobias Korenke, Bonhoeffer’s great-nephew, has expressed frustration about the use of Bonhoeffer by the religious right, saying in a recent interview with Germany’s Die Zeit newspaper that Bonhoeffer’s name had been “co-opted by extremists”.At its worst, this interpretation of Bonhoeffer has led to violence. Michael Bray, a pastor who was convicted for his role in bombing numerous abortion clinics in 1984 and 1985, cited Bonhoeffer as an inspiration. Paul Jennings Hill, an anti-abortion zealot who shot and killed a physician at an abortion clinic in 1994, too, invoked Bonhoeffer.Metaxas’s political evolutionOne evangelical celebrity who has consistently and effectively worked to popularize Bonhoeffer on the right is Eric Metaxas, a Yale-educated talkshow host whose popular biography of Bonhoeffer helped introduce the historical figure to a broader audience in the US.Metaxas’ 2009 book, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, was marketed to Christians but achieved popular acclaim – serving as a biography and an inspirational history for readers familiar and unfamiliar with Bonhoeffer.To explain Bonhoeffer’s participation in the resistance, Metaxas writes that God had called him to “get his hands dirty”.In turn the New York-based Metaxas, already an unusual east coast ambassador for conservative evangelicalism, achieved a new level of fame.“He was the rare figure in the evangelical world who was mixing it up with the culture shapers and the intellectuals in New York City,” said John Fea, a historian who has documented the rise of contemporary Christian nationalism. “And then the Bonhoeffer book came out, and that skyrocketed him.”At the 2012 National Prayer Breakfast, an annual gala in Washington convening lawmakers and Christian faith leaders, Metaxas spoke about the genesis of his Bonhoeffer biography in a speech delivered with the cadence and occasional vulnerability of a stand-up routine.View image in fullscreenFifteen minutes into the 30-minute talk, Metaxas reflected on the book’s widespread popularity, joking that “it was read even by president George W Bush, who is intellectually incurious, as we’ve all read. He read the book.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMetaxas paused, turning to Barack and Michelle Obama, who were seated to his right. “No pressure,” he added, and thrust a copy of the book into the hands of the president, who played along, smiling for a photo with the book.During the remainder of his speech, Metaxas became sharply political, railing in particular against abortion.“This is a Bonhoeffer moment,” Metaxas declared, implicitly comparing abortion to the Holocaust and calling on Christians to intervene in the manner that many Germans did not.In the decade that followed, Metaxas’s political evolution has turned even more dramatically to the right. In a 2016 column in the Wall Street Journal, he endorsed Donald Trump, acknowledging his reservations about the real estate mogul but writing that if Christians voted for Hillary Clinton, “God will not hold us guiltless,” citing abortion as a top issue.Metaxas eventually embraced Maga politics fully, vowing to support Trump as the former president falsely claimed the 2020 presidential election had been stolen and attempted to overturn the results.“This is the most horrible thing that has happened in the history of our nation,” Metaxas told Trump on 30 November, in a since deleted recording of a phone call between Metaxas and the former president that ran on Metaxas’s show. “I’d be happy to die in this fight,” he told Trump later in the call.Experts question the underpinnings of Metaxas’ work on Bonhoeffer. A recent petition circulated by eight Bonhoeffer scholars, and signed by dozens of clergy and scholars of religion, argues that Metaxas “has manipulated the Bonhoeffer story to support Christian Nationalism”.It warns that in his social media posts and public appearances, Metaxas “glorifies violence and draws inappropriate analogies between our political system and that of Nazi Germany”.Barnett argues that Metaxas’s book overstated Bonhoeffer’s role in the plot to assassinate Hitler and that Metaxas “tapped right into” a “mythology that Bonhoeffer was like the Lone Ranger, the Christian hero who fought the Nazis”.In fact, the full extent of Bonhoeffer’s role in the conspiracy has been disputed – and however closely involved he might have been in the plot, Bonhoeffer did not legitimize political violence in religious terms.“He did not justify his knowledge of the conspiracy on his being Christian – he just refused to do that, because he understood the dangers of that,” said Barnett.Blurred lines between religion and politicsIn Letter to the American Church, Metaxas, who narrates much of the documentary-style film, and a roster of rightwing pastors and activists take the Bonhoeffer narrative a step further, casting liberals and Democrats as being as destructive as Nazis and calling on evangelicals to take action and oppose evil.They insist liberal teachings are destroying the family and religion in an effort to strip away freedoms from the American people. The speakers warn that if evangelicals do not rise up against ideas that they portray as evil, such as LGBTQ+ rights and women’s rights, the country is headed for destruction.At the heart of their argument is Bonhoeffer.“Bonhoeffer effectively told the church that if we’re going to see any effective change for the better, they needed to start taking action and getting political,” Metaxas tells his audience in the film. “He said those who call themselves Christians have an obligation to God to get political if necessary, and to take a bold and likely dangerous stance against their own government.”Letter to the American Church has partnered with influential rightwing organizations, including the pro-Trump Moms for America, the anti-LGBTQ+ Her Voice Movement, and Patriot Academy – a Christian nationalist group that seeks to rewrite the constitution – to promote the film and spread its message. The organization also partnered with Million Voices, an evangelical get-out-the-vote initiative, to launch a “Pledge to Vote” campaign, aiming to see “250,000 pledge to vote” after seeing the movie.View image in fullscreenThe effort highlights how some tax-exempt religious organizations push the boundaries of legal restrictions on electioneering.Churches are banned from issuing endorsements or campaigning on behalf of a candidate, but they may be able to participate in the screenings without fear of incurring legal penalties, said Andrew Seidel, a constitutional attorney who specializes in first amendment and religious freedoms cases.“One of the ways that this Christian nationalist movement has started operating in the political space, is to create these kinds of movies and then push them out through churches,” he said.Despite the timing of the screenings – which end on election day – and the film’s ultra-political content, “the churches would all have, probably, some pretty credible deniability, if they said: ‘Hey, we were just [given] a chance to run a movie we thought our folks would be interested in.’”The Letter to the American Church tour officially ends on 5 November – but don’t expect Bonhoeffer to go away anytime soon.A splashy feature film, Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin, is to debut in theaters across the US on 22 November. Bonhoeffer, the movie, features a star-studded cast of German actors and promises to be a captivating second world war drama. (Americans might recognize August Diehl, who plays the resistance theologian Martin Niemöller, from his role in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, or the 2010 thriller Salt).Posters for the movie show Bonhoeffer carrying a gun. “With world-shattering stakes,” the Christian streaming company Angel Studios writes in its promotional materials for the film, Bonhoeffer “begs the question, how far will you go to stand up for what’s right?”Bonhoeffer scholars reject this gun-toting version of the theologian – and the film’s “how-far-would-you-go” framing. “[In] the current, highly-polarized climate in the United States, these are dangerous words,” wrote the leaders of the English and German-language International Bonhoeffer Society last month in Die Zeit.In their petition, the scholars warn more broadly of a possible uptick in violence after the election linked to the Christian far right.“Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s words and witness will be used to pit one side against the other, to fight ‘evil’, to put ‘America First’, and to justify violence,” they write. “The misalignment between these views and actions and Bonhoeffer’s own cannot be overstated. When you hear these grievous misuses, and you will, do not be fooled.” More
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Trump’s alternate-reality ‘mirror world’, where only he can save America
by Evelyn Reynolds 3 November 2024, 12:00
For many observers of the coming presidential election, especially those overseas, Donald Trump and his Maga-infused Republican party represent a foreboding stress test for American democracy.Historians have weighed in with analysis that Trump now heads a movement close to fascism, Trump himself has spoken of “enemies within”, he and his followers held a mass rally of racist rhetoric in a New York city venue known for an infamous Nazi gathering before the second world war and his language has been tinged with violent imagery.Yet, in Trump’s world, and those of his followers and campaign surrogates, it is the Democrats who are to blame for the degraded discourse in American politics, their rhetoric a sign that they demonize the other side. It is Kamala Harris who is far outside the American mainstream. It is Joe Biden who is a Marxist. It is the Democratic party who plots a complete remaking of the American way of life. They are even, they argue, trying to take away Americans’ hamburgers.When millions of American Republicans vote on Tuesday they will believe that it is they – by casting their vote for Trump – who are the ones saving American democracy.The alternate reality “mirror world” that Trump has built for himself and his followers features them as the victims of their political opponents, despite Trump’s rampant use of insults and heated comments. And he casts himself as the savior from this persecution, again framing his election in the final days as he only able to fix the country that Democrats have broken, a retread of his 2016 slogan of “I alone can fix it”.The mirror world effect is a feature of the 2024 campaign – a place where Trump’s liabilities are twisted to become his opponents’, a place where he can call people names but it’s an outrage when others do, a place where Trump is saving democracy despite his attempts to overthrow an election.Perhaps no incident more clearly shows the way the same word can be twisted differently in this flipside America than the way a “garbage” gaffe played out this week.At a rally in Arizona last Thursday, Trump called the US a “garbage can” because of migrants, noting how he’d never used the term before to describe the country but that it was accurate, though he had previously said the people around Harris were “scum” and “absolute garbage.” Days later, at a Madison Square Garden rally filled with opening acts that lobbed insults and diatribes at perceived enemies, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”.Trump sought to distance himself from the comedian by saying he didn’t know him and by claiming that Puerto Ricans love him. “Every time I go outside I see somebody from Puerto Rico. They give me a hug and a kiss,” he told Fox host Sean Hannity. He hasn’t walked back his own comments on the whole country being garbage.President Joe Biden then said Trump supporters were “garbage”, though then clarified he specifically meant Hinchliffe, the comedian, and that a critical apostrophe should be added: that Trump supporter is garbage, not the lot of them. Kamala Harris also said she disagrees with calling Trump supporters names, focusing instead on the former president himself in her comments.Sensing an opportunity for a campaign stunt akin to manning the fryer at McDonald’s, Trump donned an orange vest and jumped into a Trump-branded garbage truck for a brief ride, then wore the vest throughout a speech, joking that the outfit made him look thinner.View image in fullscreen“Joe Biden’s comments were the direct result of Kamala’s decision to portray everyone who isn’t voting for her as evil and sub-human,” Trump said. “And we know it’s what they believe because look how they’ve treated you, like garbage.”Since then, he has called Kamala Harris a “low-IQ individual” and a “sleaze bag” and claimed she is “dumb as a rock”. He called Biden a “stupid bastard”. At a later rally, with some supporters on stage behind him in bright construction vests, Trump again brought up the “garbage” comment and said his supporters were “far higher quality” than Harris’ or Biden’s.Yet, in Trump’s words, he is simultaneously “running a campaign of positive solutions” while Harris is “running a campaign of hate.”Trump, talking to rightwing media personality Tucker Carlson on Thursday, explicitly laid out how one of his political opponents, former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, was a radical war hawk and should face rifles herself to see the consequences of US involvement in conflict abroad.“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” he said.Cheney said the comments were indicative of how dictators destroy free countries. “They threaten those who speak against them with death,” Cheney said. “We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”It’s exactly the line of attack on Trump that Trump has twisted to say his opponents are using harsh language and calling him extreme names.“For the past nine years, Kamala and her party have called us racists, bigots, fascists, deplorable, irredeemables, and they call me Hitler … They’ve taken your money, they’ve thrown open our borders to criminals … They’ve sent our blood and treasure to fight in stupid foreign wars – This Tuesday is your chance to stand up and declare you are not going to take it anymore – VOTE!” he posted on Truth Social this week.Trump has also continued to claim the Democrats are a threat to democracy, a strategy he picked up this year as he faced a barrage of criminal charges related to his actions to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He has said these charges are the work of the Biden administration to hobble their political opponent during an election year, calling it “election interference”.This line of thinking is now a feature of his speeches, and his allies and supporters now often parrot it – that a vote for Trump is a vote to secure democracy. Despite these proclamations in his speeches, he is expected to declare victory whether he wins or not, and he and his allies are laying groundwork to challenge election results. He has called his political opponents the “enemy within” and threatened to prosecute them or use military force against them for nonspecific crimes, which has led even some of his former staffers to say he is a fascist. He and his allies have instead said comments about the existential threat Trump poses have led to assassination attempts against him. More
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Mass production of genetically selected humans: inside a Pennsylvania pronatalist candidate’s fantasy city-state
by Evelyn Reynolds 3 November 2024, 11:00
When Simone Collins, a Republican running for a seat in Pennsylvania’s state legislature, and her husband, Malcolm, were privately asked last year about their ideas for the model “pronatalist” city-state, they sensed an opportunity.With their own YouTube channel, online education platform and foundation, the couple are among the most high-profile and outspoken proponents of the pronatalist cause, which is centered on the belief that the developed world is facing a demographic collapse and that birthrates must rise to stave off disaster.The couple, who have four children, were approached last year by an individual posing as a wealthy donor willing to finance their work. In response to his request, they created a 15-page slide deck entitled The Next Empire: Leveraging a Changing World to Save Civilization. It contained ideas that seem plucked out of a dystopian science fiction movie. According to their presentation, the city-state they envisaged would become a magnet for “no-holds-barred” medical research, which in turn would open the door to the “mass production of genetically selected humans”.The voting rights of citizens of the city-state would be linked to their value to society, according to the Collinses’ presentation. The proposed city-state government would have “incentive systems that grant more voting power to creators of economically productive agents” and would be run by a single “executor” – which the proposal also called a “dictator” – with full control of the government’s laws and operational structure. The executor would be replaced every four years by three “wards”, according to the slide deck. Wards would be elected by previous executors.It may appear that the Collinses’ views are so far outside the mainstream that one could shrug off pronouncements as eccentric and alarmist. But the Collinses are part of a movement they call the “new right”, which rejects some aspects of traditional conservatism and bills itself as pragmatic, family-oriented and anti-bureaucratic. They staunchly support the Republican ticket, Donald Trump and JD Vance, and billionaire Elon Musk.Last year, Malcolm Collins said he thought the Isle of Man would be the best place to begin.“I actually think that’s the most viable place to do it. You’re near the center of Europe, you’re in a rapidly depopulating area, you can tell them look, this will obviously bring a lot of technology and investment to your country. But the great thing about a proposal like this is even if they turn it down, you can take it to other countries,” Malcolm told the man purporting to be an investor at the time.The funding never materialized and the proposal was never pitched to the Isle of Man, a British crown dependency located in the Irish Sea, because the man who claimed to be a wealthy investor was actually an undercover researcher with Hope Not Hate, a UK-based anti-racism group. It shared video recordings of the encounters with the Collinses – and a copy of their presentation – with the Guardian.Asked about the slide deck in an interview with the Guardian last week in their home in Audubon, Pennsylvania, Simone and Malcolm, who work together and appear rarely to be apart, acknowledged that their proposal “wasn’t supposed to be public”. But Simone Collins nevertheless said she stood by its core tenets “100%”, including the idea of mass-producing embryos, and of giving people who they deem to be less productive members of society less voting power.“If you are draining resources, you should have less influence,” she said.Asked about how it felt to be the subject of undercover research, Malcolm Collins said: “The experience was quite validating for both us and our movement.” He added: “Now I think it is pretty clear that despite us not socially isolating people with toxic views, the worst views we actually have are being slightly elitist and weird eccentrics (which isn’t exactly surprising to anyone).”The couple say their ideas were meant to be experimental and fit for a city-state, not a democracy such as the US. But the views are not dissimilar to ones expressed by one of Simone and Malcolm’s political heroes, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance. In a July 2021 speech, Vance said parents should be given “an advantage” and “more power” in the voting process than those who don’t have children.Simone Collins previously worked as managing director of Dialog, which she describes as an exclusive secret society, co-founded by Peter Thiel. Thiel, the PayPal founder, helped launch and fund Vance’s political career, and has supported the rightwing blogger Curtis Yarvin, who in 2012 said he believed the US should install a monarchy and “get over their dictator phobia”.‘We do target the elites’The Collinses often describe their pronatalist agenda in humanitarian terms – part of a wider bid to save the developed world from impending social and economic catastrophe. Their website outlines their desire to work with “any person or organization that shares our goal to preserve as much of civilization and as many cultures as possible”.But in the recordings made by Hope Not Hate, Malcolm describes their pronatalist agenda as being principally designed to transform the current socioeconomic elite into a future biological elite.“It’s easy to forget how small the population of people in the world who actually impacts anything or matters is,” he said. “When we do our campaigns we work really aggressively on how do we spread ideas within that narrow network, because also they are the people we want having kids and we want in the future.”View image in fullscreen“When we talk to reporters we’re very ‘Oh, this isn’t just for the elites’, but, in truth, we do target the elites – ha ha – unfortunately.”Malcolm said he and his wife are working to create a network of other pronatalist families, with whom their children can go to summer camp, grow up alongside “knowing this isn’t weird, what we’re doing” and, ultimately, marry. But this goes beyond the average desire to find family friends with shared values and be part of a community. “What I’m really trying to do is ensure that my kids have an isolated and differential breeding network,” he said.The so-called “elites” appear to be a central preoccupation for the Collinses and it is a theme they return to repeatedly and unprompted. “The very few families – and I think we might be talking about a hundred, 500 families in the world today – who are high fertility and really technologically engaged and economically engaged … own the future of our species,” Malcolm said.When the Guardian asked the Collinses about the remarks, Malcolm said they were “not incongruent with our other messaging”, and that they were better off “convincing Taylor Swift to have kids than John Doe on the street if we want to create ripple effects society-wide leading to more kids”.Race for the statehouseSimone Collins’s run to represent Pennsylvania’s 150th district in the state’s house of representatives was born, she said, out of frustration with traditional political campaigns. She acknowledges that her odds of success are low and that she has eschewed traditional local campaign tactics, like investing in ads or mailers.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut she is a big supporter of Donald Trump’s run for the presidency and has sought through her own candidacy, which has mostly been self-funded by what she calls the family’s “what the hell” savings account, to encourage so-called low propensity voters in her Pennsylvania district to boost the former president’s chances.“We are very interested in tipping the election [in Trump’s favor] and one of the most meaningful ways I can do so is as a Republican candidate running in a key, key swing spot,” she said. The Collinses have done this, she said, by printing out “hundreds and hundreds” of mail-in ballot applications, filling them out, and sending them to potential Republican voters to sign and send back so that they can be sent mail-in ballots. She said it is part of an effort to examine whether there are “low-cost and highly effective ways” to sway election results, even in Democratic-leaning districts like hers, where incumbent Democrat Joe Webster was first elected in 2018. Records show Webster has spent about $80,000 on his campaign, while Collins has spent just under $5,000.“I didn’t have enough money to send mail-in ballot applications to every low-propensity voter, but we’ll look after the election of what percent of those people voted,” she said.Asked whether there are aspects of Trump’s candidacy that trouble her – from his criminal convictions to being found liable for sexual assault – Collins said she is no more troubled by the Republican nominee’s record than that of Kamala Harris, the vice-president and Democratic nominee.“Nobody elects a president. You elect a team,” she said. “So many smart people I know are tapped into who his team is going to be.”She is most excited about billionaire Elon Musk’s high-profile involvement in the Trump campaign, and the Republican nominee’s promise that Musk would lead a cost cutting and “efficiency” drive in government spending. Musk has admitted it would lead to “temporary hardship” for Americans.Musk is reportedly a father of “at least” 11 children, according to a recent New York Times report that detailed the Tesla co-founder’s effort to fill a compound full of his own children and their mothers. Although he has been open about his pronatalist views, the New York Times reported that Musk likes to keep details about his own growing family a secret.It is the emergence of Silicon Valley as key partners in “the new right” that has the couple most excited about Republicans today. The Skype co-founder and Estonian billionaire Jaan Tallinn (a father of five) donated just under half a million dollars to the Collinses’ pronatalist foundation in 2022.The issues“I’m very pro-gun. If you walk around this house you’ll find guns all over the place,” Simone Collins said, pointing to an old musket that is mounted on the wall. She said the guns are locked up and not loaded, and that ammunition is kept in proximity. While others might not like the constant sound of gunfire from a nearby gun club and shooting range, Collins said she loved the sound.Child protective services (CPS), the state agency people can call if they fear a child is being abused or neglected, has visited the Collinses at home on two occasions. Asked what prompted the first visit, Malcolm told the Guardian in a written statement that it “was supposedly because our kids were wearing used clothing, played outside in our fenced-in yard (with us watching from inside), and got sick frequently (this was before we took them out of preschool and during a time when sickness in preschools post-pandemic was brutal as kids returned from isolation)”.The second visit by CPS, Simone Collins said, followed the publication of the last Guardian article about the couple, published in May, which included a description of how Malcolm had slapped their then two-year-old on the face for nearly knocking over a table in a restaurant. Slapping a child is legal in Pennsylvania if it doesn’t cause serious pain or injury.View image in fullscreen“After the Guardian piece came out, CPS was here again. They walked through every room of this house because the internet decided that we were abusive, terrible people. They came again. I feel bad wasting their time. They’re like, ‘Please don’t beat your infants, or whatever. But no, you’re obviously fine,’” she said.Some voters in her district have called her directly to ask about her stance on issues, including abortion. Abortion is legal in Pennsylvania up until 24 weeks, though there are some restrictions in place. Simone Collins said she would support what in effect would amount to an abortion ban in the state after 12 to 15 weeks, with exceptions if a woman’s life was in danger or the fetus had an anomaly. Any abortion performed after 15 weeks, she said, would have to include giving the fetus pain medication.Collins is, however, an unabashed advocate for IVF, which is opposed by many conservative and anti-abortion Republicans. Simone and Malcolm have used IVF themselves and plan to continue having more children. They also are “huge early supporters” of embryo selection based on a “polygenic score” related to intelligence. In other words, selecting embryos based on IQ.Collins is planning for her next embryo transfer in January. More
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The BBC’s Gary O’Donoghue: ‘I knew those were gunshots, and then realised Trump had stopped talking’
by Evelyn Reynolds 3 November 2024, 08:30
Born in Norfolk in 1968, and becoming blind by the age of eight, Gary O’Donoghue studied philosophy and modern languages at Oxford University. After graduating he joined the BBC as a junior reporter on the Today programme, later becoming Radio 4’s chief political correspondent. Now the BBC’s senior North America correspondent, O’Donoghue was in attendance at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania where Donald Trump was hit by a bullet; his interview with eyewitness Greg Smith subsequently revealed astonishing security lapses. With election day on Tuesday and Americans worried there could be more violence to come, O’Donoghue spoke to us from the corporation’s Washington DC bureau. He divides his time between Washington DC, London and Yorkshire with his partner and their daughter.Where will you be when America goes to the polls?I’ll be covering election day and night, and the fallout afterwards, from Mar-a-Lago, Trump HQ.You’re just back from swing state Michigan. Any sense of which way things will go?We always laugh when people ask us this. I have no idea. It’s a cliche but it really is decided in these swing states. In Michigan, the phrase “the lesser of two evils” was said dozens of times – and by the way, when people say that, they’re usually voting Trump.A recent poll found that a quarter of Americans fear civil war following the election. Does that seem a credible threat to you?The idea of America is under enormous strain. The divides are everywhere – between the coasts and the centre, the north and the south, the urban and the rural, the religious and the unreligious. They are so entrenched that there is very little crossover communication, very little empathy. I find that incredibly sad. Do I think there could be civil war? I don’t but you’d be a fool to rule out violence. I mean, we’ve already had violence, haven’t we?View image in fullscreenRight. What went through your mind as you dived for cover at Butler?I knew immediately that those were gunshots, and then suddenly realised Trump had stopped talking. That’s the “Oh shit!” moment. Your mind is working at a million miles an hour – you have no idea whether it’s over or not, and then you hear the screaming start and you think, we’re in a pretty exposed position.You ended up getting a vital interview – with a man wearing a Trump visor topped with fake hair and holding a beer can.I don’t know what prejudices I’d have brought to it if I could see. One of the advantages of being blind and in journalism is that you can focus on the words. I’m a listener. If we’d put someone on air live who was lying or got it wrong, it could have really inflamed the situation, but Greg Smith was consistent.Advances in technology must have made your professional life simultaneously easier and still more challenging.Keeping up with information and the world as it is now, I feel like I’m paddling furiously under the surface the whole time. You’re listening to things mainly on audio, so it’s all linear, you can’t skim in the way you can when you can see. I rely on the wonderful Iona [Hampson, O’Donoghue’s senior producer] to let me know what’s trending and what I’m missing, but I must spend 70% more time than my colleagues just trying to keep up.Does it ever get you down?Sometimes it takes its toll because you’re obviously dealing with the same kind of life stuff that everyone has. I was in Chicago to report on Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech at the DNC when my mother died. I had a bit of a wobble recently because I realised I hadn’t thought about her once in four or five days. The guilt was just awful.How has broadcast journalism changed over the course of your career?When I started out, there were no anti-discrimination laws. People could say: “You can’t be a reporter, you’re blind.” Now they can’t say that, which makes it harder to spot, but there are still dinosaurs around who believe it. Fortunately the key people at the BBC get it and they’re kind of chuffed – I mean, I am the first ever disabled foreign correspondent. We’re publicly funded, we need to walk, talk, look, sound, smell like the country who pays our salaries, right?View image in fullscreenWhere does your resilience come from?I lost my sight when I was eight and was sent away to boarding school, because that’s where blind children were educated in those days. It was actually the best thing that ever happened to me because I ended up with a Rolls-Royce education. But the other thing that happens is you’re forced to build some resilience because a thousand times a day there are micro-aggressions, as they call them nowadays.You’ve spoken about how your mother once confided that things were so hard in your childhood, she’d thought of killing you both. Presumably she betrayed none of that at the time?None at all. It was really tough and my parents weren’t educated people, but they were incredibly foresightful: they knew that getting me an education would give me some independence in life. It must have broken their hearts sending me away but they did the right thing.What’s the most distressing news story you’ve ever had to report on?The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. I’d done other mass shootings but there was so much horrible detail about what happened, every sinew in me was screaming. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to losing it on air.Is there a story you’re especially proud of?The Trump conviction. I basically did the whole 10 o’clock news with Clive Myrie. The drama was magnificent but the thing I was particularly pleased with is that the years of working hard to understand America meant I could sustain something as high profile as that, for all that time.What do you do to decompress?I’m continually rereading the multi-volume Oxford History of the United States, but fiction is the thing that calms me down. I love Colson Whitehead, Claire Keegan, Henry James.Is there anything you miss about the UK?London, mince pies and proper chocolate. American chocolate sucks, as they say. More
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Everything you need to know about the 2024 US presidential election
by Evelyn Reynolds 3 November 2024, 08:00
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The 60th US presidential election and will decide the 47th president – widely held to be the most powerful job in the world – and 50th vice-president. The candidates and their supporters are describing it as the most important election of their lifetimes with democracy and the American way of life are at stake. Record amounts of money have been raised and spent on campaign ads and ground games. Media coverage in print, on TV, online and on podcasts has never been more intense – or more polarised.All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs along with 34 of the 100 seats in the Senate, which together will decide the membership of the 119th Congress. Thirteen state and territorial governorships and numerous other state and local elections will take place.Voters in 41 states will consider a total of 159 ballot initiatives. Ten states including Arizona, Colorado and Florida have abortion-related measures on the ballot. Florida, North Dakota and South Dakota are considering whether to legalise marijuana.How are people voting?@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff) 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It no longer makes sense to talk solely about “election day”. Tens of millions of people have voted early by mail or in-person, thereby avoiding long queues, potential bad weather or other inconveniences. Georgia’s first day of early voting “shattered records”, according to state officials, while an “unheard of” 97,000-plus voted on day one in Wisconsin.Democrats encouraged people to vote by mail in 2020 to avoid exposure to Covid-19 during the pandemic and fought legal battles to expand absentee voting. Trump, by contrast, falsely claimed that the practice was rife with fraud (it is extremely rare), although Republicans have since changed their messaging and increasingly embraced it.With the exception of Alabama, Mississippi and New Hampshire, all states give voters the chance to cast a ballot in person at a polling place ahead of election day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.Most states begin counting those ballots on election day, and some require officials to wait until polls are closed to begin counting. Some states offer a version of early voting called “in-person absentee” voting, in which a voter can obtain and submit an absentee ballot in person at a polling place before election day.Most states offer some form of absentee voting, in which a voter requests a ballot in advance and returns it by mail. Some offer voters the option of returning absentee ballots to a secure dropbox. Eight states practice “all-mail” elections in which all registered voters receive a ballot in the mail, whether or not they plan to use it.Federal law requires states to send absentee ballots to military voters and voters overseas. Most states allow officials to immediately process absentee ballots but some require them to wait until election day to begin processing ballots – which can slow the release of election results.On election day, which is 5 November this year, everyone else goes to polling places to cast their vote. 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Kamala Harris, 60, the current vice-president, won the Democratic party’s nomination after Joe Biden ended his re-election bid. She is a former senator, California attorney general and San Francisco prosecutor and is bidding to make history as the first woman and first woman of colour to be elected president in America’s 248-year history.Donald Trump, 78, the Republican nominee, is making make his third consecutive run for the White House. The businessman and reality TV star continues to repeat his false claim that Democrats stole the 2020 election from him. He is the first president to be impeached twice and convicted of a crime. Trump is also the oldest major party nominee in history and this summer survived two assassination attempts.Chase Oliver, 39, is the little-known candidate for the Libertarian party. Oliver ran for a Georgia state senate seat in 2022 and garnered 2% of the vote. The party, which prioritises small government and individual freedoms, typically gains 3% or less of the national vote but its members could yet prove crucial in swing states.Jill Stein, 74, a physician who ran under the Green party in 2016, is running again in 2024. She launched her current campaign accusing Democrats of betraying their promises “for working people, youth and the climate again and again – while Republicans don’t even make such promises in the first place”.Cornel West, 71, is running as an independent candidate. The political activist, philosopher and academic is making an effort to attract more progressive, Democratic-leaning voters.What are the paths to victory?@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff) 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Democrats have won the national popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections. But the Republicans George W Bush and Donald Trump won the White House by gaining more than 270 votes in the all-important electoral college.Each state counts its votes separately. With two exceptions – Nebraska and Maine – the winner of a state gets all of its electoral votes. Each state has a number of electors based on the number of congressional districts it has, plus two additional votes representing the state’s Senate seats. Washington DC has three electoral votes, despite having no voting representation in Congress.This year the electoral college will probably come down to seven crucial battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The Harris and Trump campaigns are eyeing multiple combinations that could put them over the top.Pennsylvania, which carries 19 electoral college votes, is the ultimate prize and has been the focus of much campaigning. Along with Michigan and Wisconsin, it forms a “blue wall” won by Barack Obama, lost by Hillary Clinton and won by Joe Biden. Trump is targeting rural blue-collar voters; Harris is aiming to turn out Black voters in big cities.Losses in these states might be offset by victories in Arizona, where Trump has made gains among Latino voters; Nevada, the most diverse swing state; and Georgia, long a red state which Biden narrowly flipped in 2020. Republicans have won North Carolina in every election since 2012 but Democrats are running close this time.Democrats currently control the Senate but face a tough map this year. Democrats and senators who caucus with them currently occupy seven of the eight most competitive seats, including Montana and Ohio, which generally lean Republican.The House is likely to hinge on 42 of the most competitive elections. Republicans could retain control by winning just 12 of the 26 seats rated as toss-ups by the Cook Political Report if they also win seats deemed “likely” or “lean” Republican.What are the main issues that will decide the White House?@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) 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Abortion. This is the first presidential election since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that enshrined the constitutional right to abortion. Many Republican-led states have since imposed total or near-total bans on the procedure. Harris has made reproductive rights and personal freedoms a rallying cry and backs a national law codifying access to safe abortion. Trump has struggled to find his footing on the issue, insisting that it is a state matter and belatedly ruling out a national ban. Constitutional amendments that would protect or expand abortion rights will appear on the ballot in 10 states, which Democrats hope will drive higher turnout.Democracy. Democrats have warned that Trump poses an existential threat to democratic norms, citing the 6 January 2021 insurrection, when a mob of his supporters attempted to overturn his election defeat. Harris has described her opponent as a fascist who has said he would be a dictator on day one and who would yield to foreign autocrats such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un. Trump has sought to turn the tables by claiming – without evidence – that Harris is the true threat to democracy, citing alleged online censorship and the criminal cases against him. He has refused to commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election. A recent a Washington Post-Schar School survey of voters in seven swing states found that slightly more trust Trump to handle threats to democracy than Harris.Economy. The Economist magazine describes the US economy as the envy of the world, contending: “The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust.” But despite strong growth, low unemployment and stabilising inflation, Biden and Harris have consistently trailed Trump in opinion polls. Harris’s economic plans include tax cuts for most Americans, price-gouging bans, more affordable housing and a new child tax credit as well as efforts to boost domestic manufacturing. Trump has vowed to cut taxes, impose sweeping tariffs on imported goods and protect social security and Medicare.Immigration. This has been Trump’s signature issue since he trundled down an escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015 to launch his presidential bid. This time, even as border crossings drop to 2020 levels, he has pledged what he calls the biggest deportation operation in US history. He has also used dehumanising language reminiscent of the Nazis to claim that undocumented immigrants are “animals”, have “bad genes” and are “poisoning the blood of our country”. Harris has shifted to the centre on the issue, underlining her support for a bipartisan proposal in Congress that would have hired thousands of new border security agents and closed the border if crossings hit an average of more than 5,000 people a day over a week.What is the state of the race?@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) 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Excruciatingly close. Harris and Trump are tied at 48% each for the popular vote, according to the final New York Times/Siena College national poll published on 25 October.After Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in the 27 June debate, Trump held a four-percentage-point lead over Biden among registered voters, according to the Pew Research Center. Biden dropped out and endorsed Harris, who then surged to parity and a small lead over Trump amid a wave of energy and enthusiasm.In recent weeks the race has stabilised and an equilibrium has been restored.The national race is less important than swing states that will decide the electoral college. These too are tantalisingly close. As of 17 October, for example, the Guardian’s poll tracker showed Trump narrowly leading in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin, Harris ahead in Nevada and Pennsylvania and a dead heat in North Carolina – but all could still go one way or the other.The election will provide another test for a polling industry battered by the 2016 and 2020 elections when it seemed to underestimate Trump’s strength. Conversely, in the 2022 midterms, Democrats overperformed the polls and headed off the predicted “red wave”.Political analysts and commentators are understandably reluctant to stick out their necks and guess the outcome. Frank Luntz, a consultant and pollster, said: “You can’t call it. Anyone who calls it is an idiot.” But Allan Lichtman, a historian with a predictive method that has been right nine times out of 10, has declared he thinks Harris will win.Does the US have exit polls?@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) 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Exit polls are surveys conducted with voters immediately after they have cast their ballots. Major news networks such as CNN, ABC and Fox News use them to make early projections about who is likely to win, though these are subject to revisions as actual vote counts come in. Traditionally, media outlets agree not to release exit poll data before all polls have closed to avoid influencing people still voting.Exit pollsters position interviewers at selected polling stations, chosen to represent a cross-section of the voting population. Voters leaving polling stations are asked to voluntarily complete anonymous questionnaires covering the candidate they voted for, key issues and demographic information. Interviewers typically phone in the results three times during the day.Exit poll data is analysed quickly to generate insights about the voter base such as who is winning certain demographic groups. Dearborn, Michigan, for example, will be studied closely for any evidence that the war in Gaza affected turnout of Arab and Muslim Americans.Exit polls include absentee voters by conducting phone, text and email surveys. In states with a high level of early in-person voters, exit polls are carried out weeks before election day as these voters leave the polling place. The results are then combined with data from election day.There is a strict embargo on exit poll data until 5pm ET on election day. Within the next hour some initial demographic information about voters and their policy views begins to emerge. Networks are not allowed to project a winner while voting is still taking place. 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If the polls are wrong and one candidate has a clear lead over the other – think Ronald Reagan’s 49-state landslide victory in 1984 – the result will be obvious within hours. But given the closeness of the elections in 2016 and 2020, a nail-biter that runs through the night and possibly days beyond is more likely. Prolonged court cases are also possible: Republican donors and conservative billionaires have given $140m to 50 “election integrity” groups ready to do battle.News organisations such the Associated Press (AP) often project a winner on election night based on an analysis of votes already counted, the number of outstanding votes and the margin between the candidates. (The AP says its accuracy rate for the past several general elections is above 99.9%.) The losing candidate typically concedes in the early hours of the next morning, signalling that the contest is in effect over.Officially, however, there is still work to do. Local officials finish counting ballots in the days after the election and send their results to state officials. They approve the results and send them to federal officials. Every state must name individuals known as electors by 11 December; they must meet in their respective state capitols to cast their votes for president and vice-president on 17 December.On 6 January the House and Senate will count and tally the electoral certificates in a joint session. The vice-president serves as the president of the Senate and formally presides over the receiving and counting of electoral ballots cast and announces the result. In this case, Harris will proclaim her own victory or defeat on the fourth anniversary of the insurrection at the US Capitol.The election could be a big payday for lawyers. In 2000, when the Republican George W Bush and the Democrat Al Gore were the candidates, polling day fell on 7 November but the result was not called until 12 December. All eyes were on Florida, where votes were subject to an automatic recount because of Bush’s gossamer-thin margin of victory. The dispute went all the way to the supreme court, where justices voted to terminate the recount, prompting Gore to concede.In 2020 the AP declared Joe Biden the winner four days after election day – at 11.26am ET on Saturday 7 November. Trump had declared victory three days earlier, even as more than 1m ballots remained uncounted, and went on to lose more than 60 legal challenges. Few would bet against him mounting a similar effort this time.What happens after the race is decided?@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff) 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The president-elect forms a transition team to plan for the transfer of power. This works on setting up policy priorities, vetting candidates for key administration positions and coordinating with the outgoing administration. The president-elect and key members of their team begin receiving classified national security briefings to prepare for handling ongoing or emerging global threats.The 47th president will be inaugurated at 12 noon on 20 January at the US Capitol. Big crowds will be expected to return next year after Biden’s scaled-down pandemic version. The outgoing president typically attends the inauguration as a symbol of the peaceful transfer of power, although Trump boycotted in 2020. The new president begins work immediately, often signing a series of executive orders to reverse or continue certain policies and holding meetings with their team.Design, development and production: Rich Cousins, Pip Burkett and Bruno Haward. More
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Today’s populism is informed by bigotry, but its roots lie in the promise of equality | Kenan Malik
by Evelyn Reynolds 3 November 2024, 07:30
‘American politics has often been an arena for angry minds.” Not a comment on this year’s presidential campaign but an observation on another US presidential race, that of 1964. It is the opening line to one of the most influential political essays of the postwar era, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, first published 60 years ago this month.The very title of Richard Hofstadter’s essay is redolent of contemporary fears. As Donald Trump has, over the past decade, built a movement out of anger and disaffection, old copies of Hofstadter have been dusted off and op-eds written with titles such as “The paranoid style in American politics is back” and “Donald Trump’s style perfectly embodies the theories of renowned historian”.Not just Hofstadter’s analysis of the paranoid style but his evisceration of populism, too, has found a new generation of readers. Yet, as brilliant and influential as Hofstadter was, he was often wrong on both issues, and it is his wrongness that has shaped much subsequent debate.One of America’s most celebrated historians, Hofstadter moved from Marxist leanings in the 1930s into a cold war liberal who regarded social consensus rather than class conflict as the defining feature of American history. His 1964 essay, an abridged version of a lecture he had given in Oxford (the full version appearing later in book form), was an attempt to confront a new, belligerent form of rightwing reactionary politics that had emerged, displayed in Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist witch-hunt, in the creation of the ultraconservative John Birch Society, and in the success of Arizona senator Barry Goldwater in routing the Republican establishment to secure the party’s 1964 presidential nomination.The mainstream response to Goldwater in the 1960s prefigured in many ways the hostility to Trump half a century later. Some saw Goldwater’s rise as portending fascism. Fact magazine published a special edition on “The Mind of Barry Goldwater” in which more than 1,100 psychiatrists, none of whom had ever met the would-be president, diagnosed him as “psychologically unfit” for office. If he consolidated his Republican “party coup” by winning the election, Hofstadter warned, he would “put the democratic process in this country in jeopardy”. Goldwater lost to Lyndon Baines Johnson by a landslide.For Hofstadter, the new right was a potent expression of the “paranoid style”, a way of thinking that cast conspiracy not as a singular occurrence, but as “the motive force” in history. “The paranoid spokesman”, Hofstadter wrote, “always speaks in apocalyptic terms”, and is “always manning the barricades of civilization” in the existential struggle between good and evil.Hofstadter insisted he was not using “paranoia” in a clinical sense, but “borrowing a clinical term for other purposes”. Yet, he also believed “the recurrence of the paranoid style” across history “suggests that a mentality disposed to see the world in the paranoid’s way may always be present in some considerable minority of the population”. In other words, it is an ineradicable pathology lying latent within the population, and activated by the emergence of particular social movements or political organisations.It is an argument that many find appealing because it gives licence to dismiss alternative viewpoints as a form of mental illness. It is also a perspective that wrenches political responses out of a historical frame. Even “millennial sects of Europe from the eleventh to the sixteenth century”, Hofstadter wrote, exhibited a “psychological complex that closely resembles” that of the reactionary right in postwar America. “The paranoid style as described by Hofstadter,” the historian Andrew McKenzie-McHarg wryly observes, “is present throughout history yet does not itself appear to have any real history of which to speak.” It is a perspective, too, that allows liberals to be oblivious to the presence of such traits within their own ranks. Rightwing populists certainly trade heavily on conspiracy theories, whether about immigration or the elites. Liberal panics about the coming of “fascism” and the “end of democracy” often exhibit, though, an equally apocalyptic view and present the fight against populism in black and white terms.This takes us to the second key theme in Hofstadter’s work in the 1950s and 60s – his critique of populism. As Hofstadter moved from early radicalism to midlife centrism, he became increasingly wary of the masses and their impact on culture and intellectual life. His growing distrust of working-class movements led him to be sceptical of democracy itself. “Intellect,” he wrote in his 1963 book Anti-intellectualism in American Life, “is pitted against democracy, since intellect is felt to be a form of distinction that defies egalitarianism.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis political transformation shaped his reading of history. Until Hofstadter, most historians had viewed the rise of Populist movements in 1890s America in positive terms. These original populists were driven by a hatred of the inequalities and injustices of the so-called Gilded Age. They sought to forge cross-racial coalitions of farmers and workers to demand democratic reforms, progressive taxation and government ownership of utilities.Hofstadter, in his 1955 book The Age of Reform, questioned this narrative, portraying the movement as a racist insurgency with a conspiratorial view of the world that “seems very strongly to foreshadow” McCarthyism and postwar reactionary conservatism. Strands of bigotry were certainly on display, especially as the movement disintegrated in the face of a ferocious assault from the established order. But the Populists’ democratic and egalitarian promise cannot be gainsaid.A host of historians, including C Vann Woodward, Lawrence Goodwyn and Walter Nugent, challenged and largely rebutted Hofstadter’s revisionism. The political substance of his argument, however, became entrenched. After Hofstadter, Nugent wrote in a 2013 preface to his 1963 book The Tolerant Populists, “populism” began “to carry the connotation of demagogic, unreasoning, narrow-minded, conspiratorial, fearful attitudes toward society and politics”. It still does, shaping our view not just of the past but of the present, too.“Having come of age in a political culture that glorified ‘the people’ as the wellspring of democracy and decency in American life,” Eric Foner, perhaps the most distinguished living historian of the American tradition, observed of his mentor’s trajectory, “he came to portray politics as a realm of fears, symbols and nostalgia, and ordinary Americans as beset by bigotry, xenophobia and paranoid delusions”.The loss of hope, the sense of betrayal, disillusionment with fellow Americans – that might describe not just Hofstadter’s trajectory but America’s too. The tragedy is that whoever wins on Tuesday, that will not change. More
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Fur and loathing: do America’s ‘childless cat ladies’ hold the key to the US election?
by Evelyn Reynolds 3 November 2024, 06:00
When writer and artist Alice Maddicott’s beloved rescue cat died, she was understandably bereft. Dylan was a proper character, she says, the kind of gregarious cat that follows you to the pub or for a walk. But mourning him made Alice, who was then in her late 30s and single, feel faintly self-conscious. What if people thought she was a mad cat lady, weeping spinsterish tears for her pet?“If I’d had a dog, there would be no stereotype. But as a single woman approaching 40, it could be seen very differently,” says Maddicott. Curious about the origins of such a kneejerk prejudice, she started digging into its history. The research became a book, Cat Women, reclaiming an insult long used to belittle older women (especially non-compliant ones) or frighten younger women into settling down, lest they end up like the crazy cat lady from The Simpsons: once a high achiever, now a burnt-out drunk.But as Maddicott points out, it’s an objectively ridiculous insult. There’s no such thing as a “crazy cat man” and single hamster owners aren’t considered a threat to the patriarchal order. Only cat ladies touch a nerve, because only cat ladies immediately conjure up the idea of witches.In medieval times, the devil was believed to give cats as gifts to women inducted into witchcraft, Maddicott explains: so strong was the association that at the Bideford witch trials in 17th-century Devon, one woman was accused after a cat was seen slipping in through her window. “Probably an eccentric older woman feeding a stray, but that was used to condemn her.” Single women, unrestrained and also undefended by any man, made dangerously easy scapegoats if sickness came or the crops failed. Thankfully, people no longer believe in witches ruining lives out of spite. Or do they?Three years ago, the then aspiring Republican senator (and now vice-presidential candidate) JD Vance complained on Fox News that America was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He named then vice-president Kamala Harris, secretary of transportation Pete Buttigieg (who is gay) and the young New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as politicians who supposedly had no stake in the future they were legislating for.The idea that if you haven’t given birth, you don’t count, was hurtful to many doting stepmothers (as Harris is) or adoptive parents (like Buttigieg). But most incendiary of all was the idea that not having children renders a person a bitter, vengeful husk, desperate to drag everyone else down with them. Polling this summer, after those comments were dug up and recirculated, found two-thirds of Americans disagreed that not having biological children was a hindrance in a president; even among Republicans, only 15% agreed.View image in fullscreenThough Vance now insists he was merely being sarcastic, for many women on both sides of the Atlantic, those words summed up a strand of politics that seemingly values them mainly for their ability to procreate and views their right to choose with suspicion. Though powerful women have long been shamed for not being mothers – “deliberately barren”, the former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard’s opponents called her – in the current climate, attacks on childless cat ladies have a sharper edge.In both the US and Europe, rightwing parties are weaponising female fertility as a political issue, tapping into a potent mix of misogyny, economic anxiety and overtly racist angst about being “replaced” as the dominant culture if white women don’t start breeding more enthusiastically. Though falling birth rates across the developed world are an undeniable economic headache – shrinking populations mean fewer young workers to fund pensions for the old and, typically, lower growth – populists focus on the way a dwindling workforce leads to more imported labour. Hungary’s populist leader Viktor Orbán has claimed the west is “committing suicide” by not making babies; in Germany, the far right AfD called in its manifesto for “larger families instead of mass immigration”. Elon Musk, the X owner and Donald Trump donor, tweets in apocalyptic terms about impending “population collapse”.Yet still, the baby drought persists. Around one in five British women don’t have children by the end of their fertile years – the Office for National Statistics doesn’t keep equivalent statistics for men – and this year deaths overtook births for the first time (outside a pandemic) since the 1970s. Almost half of Americans under 50, meanwhile, are childless. Or should that be childfree? For this year of shaming women has also been a year of women refusing to be shamed: older women reclaiming witchy insults like “hag” and “crone”, while younger ones resist what they see as a Handmaid’s Tale future of curtailed rights over their own bodies.Like the cat-eared pink hats that anti-Trump marchers wore in 2017, referencing his boasts about grabbing women “by the pussy”, in 2024 a “Childless Cat Lady for Kamala” T-shirt or sticker is now a gleeful statement of defiance. When Taylor Swift identified as one in her Instagram post formally endorsing Harris, it felt like something of a Spartacus moment – arguably even more so when Elon Musk responded with a creepy tweet offering to get her pregnant.What’s different about Swift isn’t merely that she, too, is unmarried, childfree and a cat owner at 34; it’s that she makes it look like a blast. Rich, powerful and taking her pick of trophy boyfriends, she lives closer to what would once have been called a rakish bachelor’s life than a spinster’s – though these days spinsterdom is a story told very differently.In Kate Winslet’s recent feminist biopic Lee, about the pioneering Second World War photographer Lee Miller, there is a scene in which Winslet’s Miller and Vogue magazine editor Audrey Withers ask each other if they’re planning to have children. “God no,” says Withers, cheerfully. “Oh God no,” echoes Winslet’s Miller. It’s a bonding moment in the film which implies neither could have done what they did – in Miller’s case following the US army’s advance across Europe and documenting newly liberated concentration camps; and in Withers’s case battling the censors to publish her images – if they’d had families at home. Though Miller did eventually have a son after the war, the film doesn’t duck the fact their relationship was difficult and ultimately lets her work take centre stage. It’s how great men’s stories are often told, drawing a veil over domestic shortcomings, but more rarely women’s.View image in fullscreenOnce upon a time in Hollywood, childless women could be mad, murderous bunny boilers – in films like Single White Female and Fatal Attraction – or at a push Bridget Jones, terrified of dying “fat and alone”. Now they can be Carrie Bradshaw, reimagined in And Just Like That… as a sexy fiftysomething widow with a fluffy rescue cat, or even Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, the eternally childless doll who (according to her creator Ruth Handler) “always represented the fact that a woman has choices”. Though the film has a darker side, with the Kens’ angry revolt against the Barbie matriarchy echoing a backlash many young women say they’re experiencing in real life, the Barbieland both sides seek to control is a hedonistic land of parties and beach days where nobody is spending their Saturdays bleary-eyed at soft play. The toymaker Mattel has always resisted pleas to give Barbie and Ken children; instead they stayed forever aspirational Dinks, an 80s acronym for Dual Income No Kids now gleefully revived by millennials.“We’re DINKs. Of course we are already planning our European vacation next year,” says TikToker @johnefinance, in a chirpy post last December that racked up over 290,000 likes. “We’re DINKs; we spend our discretionary income on $8 lattes,” his partner giggles. Social media is still awash with #dinkcouple posts bragging about how much more money, sex and sleep they get compared to haggard new parents, recasting childless life as the opposite of sad and empty. Unusually, the trend brings young men’s perspectives into a debate normally (and exhaustingly) focused on women. But it also reflects polling released by the Pew Center thinktank earlier this year showing the most common reason childless Americans under 50 give for not being parents is that they just don’t want to.TikTok’s Dinks are young, and maybe not ruling parenthood out forever. But for now their lives arguably look a lot more fun than being a tradwife, those sourdough-baking, God-fearing, home-schooling mothers of multiple children whose retro social media content is – depending on your view – either a bit of guilty escapist fantasy for tired working women or a sinister attempt to drag women back into the kitchen. This summer a British newspaper interview with uber-tradwife Hannah Neeleman (aka @ballerinafarm), in which the writer wondered how exactly she’d ended up sacrificing a ballet career to have eight children and why her husband kept answering questions for her, triggered days of debate about whether she was being secretly oppressed or whether (as Neeleman’s fans argued) this was a hit piece by a writer who doesn’t have kids.Cut through all the noise, however, and there is one clear signal: neither the tradwife nor the Dink camp seem to think having it all is an option any more. You can’t have kids and a career in ballet; you can’t have a thrilling social life and children. You have to choose, with the implication that either way, something is lost. If there is a sadness to Neeleman talking about giving up on her professional ambitions, there is a faint whiff of financial distress around some of those Dink reels, too; a sense they’re blowing their cash on bucket-list travel destinations because the idea of buying a family home (while paying nursery bills that cost more than a mortgage) seems wildly out of reach.The second most common reason childless Britons aged 35-44 gave for not having children (after thinking they were too old) was a split between “I don’t want the impact on my lifestyle” and “the cost is too high”, according to YouGov. But for those on tight budgets, the two are related. It may be no accident that Britain’s last mini-baby boom was in the early Noughties – fuelled by cheaper childcare, longer maternity leave and rising prosperity – or that it fizzled out with the 2009 recession.On both sides of the Atlantic, women who do want kids some day are tired of being blamed for their childlessness by politicians who seemingly won’t meet them halfway: who instead of building cheap houses for first-time buyers or slashing their nursery bills, suggest (in Vance’s case) that grandparents could help out for free. But for some women, there’s an added worry that politicians cajoling or shaming women into having children may eventually turn to forcing them.For American women under 30, abortion is now the number one election issue, according to an October poll by the health policy researchers KFF. Two years ago, the overturning of Roe v Wade – the landmark ruling underpinning legal abortion in America – left the way open for an all-out assault on reproductive rights. At campaign rally after rally, Harris has hammered away at fears of what a Republican administration might do. She often quotes Project 2025, the infamous leaked wishlist for a second Trump term drawn up by a rightwing thinktank, which argues for giving foetuses legal rights and scrapping funding for contraceptive services.In Europe, too, rightwing governments in Hungary, Italy and Poland have tightened abortion law, though furious female voters helped propel a pro-liberalisation Polish government into power last year.For now, Britain seems to be on a much more progressive path. The prospect of curbs on abortion in this parliament looks at first glance remote, though the Labour MP Stella Creasy – who has been aggressively targeted in her constituency by anti-abortion activists – argues complacency is dangerous. “If the election hadn’t been called, it’s not clear that we wouldn’t have seen the first rollback on rights in 50 years,” she says, pointing to a backbench attempt to reduce the legal time limit from 24 to 22 weeks in the dying months of the last Conservative government.But the Tory MP Miriam Cates – who once argued that dwindling fertility rates are “the one overarching threat” to western society – lost her seat in July, while the Tory leadership favourite Kemi Badenoch says she isn’t convinced governments can make women have babies.America’s fate, however, still hangs by a thread, with a stark divide emerging particularly among the young: women for Harris, angry young men for Trump.Whether she wins or whether she loses in the coming election, it almost certainly won’t be because (along with every other occupant of the Oval Office in history) Kamala Harris hasn’t physically given birth. Most Americans say this election is still about the economy, stupid. But what is clear from months of arguing about childless cat ladies is that being one is just another American story now.When the pollsters Ipsos went looking this summer for female voters with no kids at home, but with a feline companion, the surprise was all the ways in which they were pretty much like everyone else: mostly suburban, disproportionately white, mostly with some college education, no richer or poorer than average – and in almost a third of cases, Republicans. They’re living behind the same white-picket fences as everyone else, shopping at Target, working nine to five, just getting on with life. And the clearer that becomes, the harder it is to pretend that every childless cat lady is a witch.View image in fullscreenFeline friendshipCat lover and author Britt Collins on her furry companionsI never imagined that childless cat ladies would become a political force and a whole new demographic. Over the years, I’ve heard all the snarks: mad, lonely, obsessive – the old witch-hunting slurs that have dogged outlier women forever. Am I miserable by the choices I made? Hell, no. Here’s the thing, cats rock and I don’t have to defend my choices. If I wanted kids, I’d have adopted one.The only time I felt lonely was in the last year of my marriage when I lost my sense of self. I’ve had boyfriends since I was 15, always cat men, and I still adore my two long-term exes with whom I spent my 20s and 30s. I’ve raised dozens of strays with them and had the best of times. However, these days, my ideal man is a gay vet. I’m happy with my mogs, enjoying the deep, uncomplicated love and pure joy of feline friendship.Still, I’ve had strangers tell me that giving up on relationships, as I moved into my 50s, is no way to live. Women and the cats they love have long been maligned, somehow seen as lesser-than or unfulfilled. Carving out my own little universe, I’ve filled it with cats and creativity. I’ve travelled to more than 35 countries, looked after big cats, baboons, bats and various wild orphans, written two books, ghostwritten and edited others, edited and created magazines, run a sell-out cat festival, directed pop videos and completed the screenplay adaption for my book, Strays, that has sparked interest from Hollywood producers. I do what I want, when I want – enjoying the privileges historically afforded to men.Journalist and activist Gloria Steinem, who’s had many felines over the decades, credits them as her teachers ‘when it comes to a strong will and self-authority’. When Steinem was asked how to raise the next generation of feminists, she said: ‘Like cats. They tell you what they’re going to do, and that’s that.’Cats, with their punky attitudes, have taught me defiance and everything else worth knowing. They are sensualists, things of beauty, who’ve inspired artists for centuries. Lennon, McCartney, Bowie, Dylan and many of the greatest rock stars were all crazy-cat ladies. Us cat people of all political stripes may not agree on everything, but we don’t let it get in the way of what matters most.Strays: A Lost Cat, A Homeless Man and Their Journey Across America by Britt Collins is published by Simon & Schuster More
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US presidential election updates: Kamala Harris on Saturday Night Live, Iowa polling puts Donald Trump behind
by Evelyn Reynolds 3 November 2024, 03:33
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump criss-crossed the United States on Saturday as both candidates tried to drum up support on the final weekend before the 5 November presidential election. Both candidates began the day in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, before Democratic nominee Harris departed for Atlanta and then Charlotte, North Carolina. Trump, the Republican nominee, also travelled to North Carolina, before heading to a rally in Virginia. Almost 70 million Americans have already voted in the historic US election that comes to a head on Tuesday, prompting furious arguments over what early voting trends might mean as Trump and Harris prepare for their final showdown.A Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll on Saturday unexpectedly showed Harris ahead of Trump 47% to 44% among likely voters. Broadly though, the polls have remained deadlocked. The Guardian’s Robert Tait writes that some experts think such a tight race is improbable. Josh Clinton, a politics professor at Vanderbilt University, and John Lapinski, NBC’s director of elections, write on the network’s website: “Some of the tools pollsters are using in 2024 to address the polling problems of 2020, such as weighting by partisanship, past vote or other factors, may be flattening out the differences and reducing the variation in reported poll results … [This] raises the possibility that the results of the election could be unexpectedly different than the razor-close narrative the cluster of state polls and the polling averages suggest.”Here’s what else happened on Saturday:Donald Trump election news and updates
A Georgia judge rejected a Republican lawsuit trying to block counties from opening election offices on Saturday and Sunday to let voters hand in their mail ballots in person. The lawsuit only targeted Fulton county, a Democratic stronghold. Trump falsely blamed Fulton county workers for his loss of the 2020 election in Georgia.
Ed Pilkington writes that if Trump re-enters the White House he will do so emboldened by a power that no previous incoming president has ever enjoyed: immunity from criminal prosecution for any act carried out in his official capacity. Whereas losing the election, writes David Smith, could mean he ends up in jail.
Kamala Harris election news and updates
Harris made a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live, playing herself as the mirror-image double of Maya Rudolph’s version of her. “It is nice to see you Kamala,” Harris told Rudolph, “and I’m just here to remind you, you got this.” In sync, the two said supporters needed to “Keep Kamala and carry-on-ala”, declared that they shared each other’s “belief in the promise of America”, and delivered the signature “Live from New York it’s Saturday night!”.
Harris struck a contrast between her work as a prosecutor and a Trump campaign “obsessed with revenge and consumed with grievance” on Saturday in Atlanta. “In less than 90 days it’s either going to be him or me in the Oval Office,” Harris said. The vice-president filled the fields at the Atlanta Civic Center, attracting thousands on little notice in the crucial swing state of Georgia, which Joe Biden won in 2020.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail
Americans took to the streets in cities across the country for a day ofwomen’s marches. Marches were planned in all 50 states for the eighth annual gathering, which began the day after Trump was inaugurated in 2017.
Vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr could assume some control over US health and food safety in a second Trump administration, according to reports on Saturday. Kennedy said in a social media post that he would remove fluoride from all public water.
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