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      Kamala Harris should launch a national campaign to end the US diabetes epidemic | Neil Barsky

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      Before addressing the political opportunity in front of the vice-president, let us first confront the sacred cow in the room.Contrary to recent claims by Donald Trump, JD Vance and Ted Cruz, Kamala Harris loves a good cheeseburger; she positively does not want to take our red meat away. She has cited sugars and sodas as major culprits in our poor health. Moreover, the Biden-Harris administration has demonstrated that it is unafraid to challenge the stranglehold the pharmaceutical industry has over insulin prices, and the cost that industry charges Medicare patients for drugs.Next, let’s dispense with the false narrative that Trump and his acolyte Robert F Kennedy Jr, have the capacity to “make America healthy again.” As part of RFK Jr’s recent endorsement, Trump vowed to appoint “a panel of top experts, working with Bobby, to investigate what is causing the decades-long increase in chronic health problems …” Kennedy, whose anti-vaccine work is more likely to make America have measles again, has recently become the darling of many metabolic health advocates for his series of half-truths about America’s obesity epidemic.Let’s not be fooled. To paraphrase Harris, these are not serious people, and the consequences of putting America’s healthcare in their hands would be deadly.I happen to live with type 2 diabetes, and have spent the past year chronicling the ways one of the country’s most lethal, expensive and ubiquitous diseases is actually reversible through a diet low in carbohydrates – the macronutrient that diabetics like me cannot safely metabolize without the help of drug therapies. Nutrition in America has become quite politically polarizing, as shaky science often collides with ideology, leaving us at a loss to know why we get fat, why we get sick, and even whether red meat causes diabetes (it doesn’t). Our healthcare budget is $4tn a year, yet our life expectancy is only 48th in the world, and we seem to be getting heavier and sicker. Something is terribly wrong.In this abyss lies a golden opportunity for presidential candidate Harris to present a healthcare agenda that would save thousands of lives, billions of dollars, as well as her appeal to voters in conservative states. She can do what no president has ever had the courage to do before: launch a national campaign to reverse America’s diabetes epidemic and, in the process, improve our metabolic health. She might even declare the destructive disease a national emergency.This initiative would be both good policy and good politics, and it is not as quixotic as it might first sound. Type 2 diabetes is a condition where the hormone insulin does not naturally function properly, leading to high blood sugars, and leaving its victims at risk of cardiovascular, kidney, eye and other disease. Currently, 38 million American adults have diabetes, while another nearly 100 million more have pre-diabetes – or more than a third of adult Americans. At $420bn per year, it is one of America’s costliest diseases, accounting for over 10% of the country’s $4tn annual healthcare budget. It kills over 100,000 Americans annually, more than die of opiate overdoses.And while it is true that people of color are more likely to get diabetes than white people, it is also the case that, like the opiate crisis, diabetes is a color-blind disease that has disproportionately ravaged red state America. In fact, 14 of the 15 states with the highest diabetes mortality rates voted Republican in 2020. And 14 of the 15 states with the lowest mortality rates voted Democratic in 2020.What form should a Harris initiative take? Here are my personal recommendations, based on my own experience with the disease, and a year’s worth of interviewing well over 100 researchers, clinicians, advocates and patients. Frankly, it is baffling that this disease – which is killing us widely, breaking our budget and reversible through diet – is not yet a matter of national urgency.1. First, she should announce her intention to appoint a diabetes czar whose job, among other things, would be to solve this puzzle – over the past quarter-century, America’s pharmaceutical and medical technology industry have made extraordinary strides developing various forms of insulin and other drugs, continuous glucose monitors and test strips. So why have seven times more Americans been diagnosed with diabetes than in 1980? Eventually commonsense solutions would emerge, such as restricting cereal companies’ ability to market their sugary treats to children.Not only would the czar be empowered to confront things like the scandalous $1bn-plus in sugar subsidies provided by US taxpayers, she would explore common-sense treatments for treating diabetes that are diet and lifestyle-focused. (A good place to start would be the excellent 2024 book Turn Around Diabetes, written by endocrinologist Roshani Sanghani.)2. We must defund, disqualify and otherwise delegitimize the American Diabetes Association (ADA). As I have written, the ADA has become a virtual branch of big pharma and big food. Yet it sets standards of care for clinicians and de-emphasizes mountains of evidence that the low-carbohydrate diet is a powerful tool in reversing the disease. Frankly, it is mind-boggling that the world’s most powerful diabetes-fighting organization (2023 revenue: $145m) has so utterly failed to stem the disease, but still sets standards of care, controls research dollars and dictates the diabetes narrative in this country.Late last year, the ADA was sued by its former director of nutrition. She claimed she was fired for refusing to include the artificial sweetener Splenda, whose parent company donated $1m to the ADA, in the ADA’s list of approved recipes. It is one of American healthcare’s great tragedies that the ADA and the plaintiff, Elizabeth Hanna, settled before the facts of the inner workings of the ADA were brought to light in a trial. In any case, the complaint is a stinging indictment of the organization and should be read by every clinician interested in learning how corporate donations have corrupted the organization’s nutrition guidance.3. Perhaps most urgently, the federal government, including the National Institutes of Health, should expand its research budget to include researchers treating patients with low-carbohydrate and ketogenic diets. Over the past two decades, there has been an explosion of courageous clinicians who prescribe the low-carbohydrate diet to their patients, as well as at least two startups – Virta Health and OwnaHealth – with promising results treating diabetes and obesity with low-carbohydrate diets.But because their research does not include the search for the next blockbuster drug, researchers often cannot access ADA, NIH and big pharma research dollars. They don’t get prominent spots in pharma-funded conferences. This is an enormous impediment to the low-carbohydrate diet becoming part of the medical mainstream and in my opinion is responsible for the persistence of the diabetes plague.4. We should give platforms to people who actually have diabetes, especially those who have reversed their condition by taking control of their diet. Of all the misconceptions I uncovered in my reporting on diabetes, the most common was that the low-carb diet was too difficult for patients, particularly low-income patients, to maintain. Of course, resisting bread, sweets, rice and starches is not easy, but it is made far more difficult by the utter lack of a national consensus that these are the foods responsible for diabetes and obesity. Stopping smoking is hard too, but once it became a national imperative, usage plummeted. In my experience, when patients are told the truth (“Stop eating carbs or your disease will progress and you may die”), they can change their behavior. And they feel empowered.Take the case of Jemia Keshwani, a 40-year-old LaGrange, Georgia, woman who has had diabetes for 25 years, and who narrowly escaped amputation of her right foot after her doctor prescribed a low-carbohydrate diet. She has lost 120lb (54kg) and no longer shoots insulin into her belly four times a day. “I didn’t understand you could change things around if you eat the right foods,” she said. “You know how sometimes you feel helpless? Now I don’t feel that way.”Or the case of Ajala Efem, a 47-year old Bronx woman, who, according to a recent article in Medscape, lost nearly 30lbs and got off 15 medications after her Bronx-based healthcare provider, OwnaHealth, prescribed a low-carb diet.“I went from being sick to feeling so great,” she told her endocrinologist. “My feet aren’t hurting; I’m not in pain; I’m eating as much as I want, and I really enjoy my food so much.”This past March, Harris asked an audience in Las Vegas how many people had family members living with diabetes. “A sea of hands went up,” she wrote on her Facebook page.Harris clearly understands the diabetes scourge and needs only a gentle push to make it a priority. So here is one final word of affectionate advice. The next time she attends a state fair, she might consider having one of those cheeseburgers she loves. It’s delicious, nutritious and will make a great photo op.Just lose the ketchup and bun.

      Neil Barsky, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and investment manager, is the founder of the Marshall Project More

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      America’s New Female Right review – this lazy BBC documentary fails to tackle dangerously extreme views

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      I am going to go out on a limb and say that most Guardian readers who watch a BBC documentary called America’s New Female Right are unlikely to be in accord with the views espoused therein. We are not going to empathise with statements such as: “Women getting the right to vote has led to every form of degeneracy,” “Feminism was absolutely created to destabilise the family [and] western civilisation,” and: “Feminism is a thousand times more toxic than the ‘toxic masculinity’ we hear so much about.” We are unlikely to agree that “Satan’s agenda” is to destroy the nuclear family structure in order to control society.All these statements are uttered – with certainty and apparent sincerity – by women championing rightwing causes, often in a way that seems to run counter to what we would consider their best interests.The presenter, Layla Wright, has three main interviewees. There is the online influencer Morgonn McMichael, 24, who says she wants only to be a stay-at-home wife and mother. She believes that encouraging women to move into the corporate world is to encourage them to go against “our inherent nature”.There is middle-aged Christie Hutcherson, who leads Women Fighting for America – an online and slightly smaller real-life troop of volunteers who patrol parts of the US-Mexico border and livestream what they find. Wright accompanies her as she finds a rough camp created by people crossing. “What a great little setup they’ve got here,” she notes for her audience, gesturing towards propane tanks and mosquito repellent. She and her companions ignore the scattered children’s toys in favour of the “camo gear” they unearth (mainly sensible rucksacks) and talk of “high‑value targets being smuggled in”. “Do I think there are any innocent individuals in this camp? That would be a no.”Third is Hannah Faulkner, 17, who came to her particular brand of fame three years ago when she organised a Teens Against Genital Mutilation rally in her native Nashville, Tennessee, supporting a ban on medical intervention for young transgender people. She is one of several siblings homeschooled by devoutly Christian parents – her father is a former pastor – and is increasingly embraced as a darling of the right.There is so much to unpack with each of them (especially Faulkner). It’s a fascinating subject that deserves attention and rigorous interrogation of all the factors at play, especially with subjects as bright, articulate and confident as these (again, especially Faulkner). What we get instead is a cheap, shoddy programme apparently thrown together in 10 minutes, presumably on the grounds that everything and everyone is so obviously awful and evil and bad-bad-bad that it is enough just to film them, show Wright’s pained face occasionally and have her lob in a few wet questions to show that she is still listening and still on the side of right (which is, of course, left, not right).Sinister music is played in certain scenes, in case we are in danger of forgetting which side “we” are on – all of us, without doubt, without question, without occasionally wondering if the “other side” might have half a point buried in there that might be worth pulling out and examining in the light.It’s so lazy. “Point and weep” documentaries are only half a step removed from the “point and laugh” kind that commissioners have supposedly left behind as we move into a more sensitive, sophisticated era.If you are going to interview people such as McMichael, Hutcherson and Faulkner, you need a presenter who is capable and unafraid of going toe to toe with them. These are people with sincerely held beliefs. You need someone with the intellectual and temperamental firepower to challenge them – someone who is not afraid to, in British terms at least, be “rude” to their subjects and see if they can really defend assertions that are otherwise allowed to stand as truth. At one point, Wright tries to stand up to Hutcherson – who comes across as a bully, with “illegal immigrants” the perfect, self-serving target – but it’s the unfairest of fights.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionYes, some things said here are extraordinary – but only to the ears of those who are already on side. Without going further, the BBC is doing just what the influencers and ideologues it is condemning do – preaching to the choir and failing to move along the conversation. More

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      Biden to join Harris on campaign trail for first time since dropping out of race

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      Joe Biden will join Kamala Harris on the campaign trail for the first time on Monday since standing aside six weeks ago to let the vice-president claim the presidential nomination following a poor debate performance.The pair were due to appear together in Pittsburgh in the vital swing state of Pennsylvania at a Labour Day event aimed at cementing support from trade unions, a key Democrat constituency and a bedrock of Biden’s support as he has styled himself as “the most pro-union president in US history”.Harris is expected to assume that mantle with a pledge to oppose the sale of US Steel – which is headquartered in Pittsburgh – to the Japanese company, Nippon. Biden has already voiced his opposition to the proposed sale.Before her arrival in Pittsburgh, a Harris campaign official said she would “say that US Steel should remain domestically-owned and operated and stress her commitment to always have the backs of American steel workers.”Harris’s commitment represents one of the few specific policy promises she has made since her ascent to top of the Democratic ticket following Biden’s 21 July announcement that he was abandoning his re-election bid.Biden has since endorsed Harris and the pair appeared briefly together on stage at last month’s Democratic national convention in Chicago.While the president has spent the last two weeks holidaying in California and at his home in Delaware, he is expected to campaign for Harris – focusing in swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin with a high concentration of white working-class voters whose allegiance may be crucial in November.Harris has promised “a new way forward” while loyally adhering to the Biden’s policies, treading a thin line between distancing herself from his administration’s perceived economic failings – particularly on inflation – while tying herself to its success stories.The emphasis on Monday appeared likely to mainly express her continued adherence to Biden, who became the first president to appear on a picket line last September when he joined striking car workers in Michigan, another crucial battleground state, in a show of support for the United Auo Workers (UAW) union.Monday’s event is expected to be attended by local and national leaders of major unions including the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the United Steelworkers and the AFL-CIO, the main US trade union body. Also expected were Bob Casey, the Democratic senator for Pennsylvania who is running for re-election, and the state’s governor, Josh Shapiro, who Harris considered as her running mate before eventually choosing Tim Walz.Earlier, the vice-president visited Michigan – also a union stronghold – for an event in Detroit, where she was to be joined by the governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and two other union leaders, Shawn Fain of the UAW, and Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers.Polls show Harris and Donald Trump running neck-and-neck in both Pennsylvania and Michigan, despite holding a small but consistent lead over the Republican nominee in national surveys. Both states are considered part of the Democrats’ “blue wall”, along with Wisconsin. It is the outcome in these states, plus a small number of other battleground states in the south and south-west, rather than the national vote total that is likely to determine the winner in November’s election under the US state-by-state electoral college system.Trump has also pitched for union support and has sought the endorsement of the Teamsters union, whose head, Sean O’Brien, addressed July’s Republican national convention. However, JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, was booed last week when he spoke at a conference of the International Association of Firefighters and claimed to be part of “the most pro-worker Republican ticket in history”. More

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      Trump ridiculed after accusing Kamala Harris of mistreating Mike Pence

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      Donald Trump has drawn ridicule and accusations of hypocrisy after accusing Kamala Harris of mistreating Mike Pence, the former vice-president who his supporters said should be hanged during the January 6 insurrection that he incited.The Republican’s nominee’s comments came in an interview with Fox News, when he also singled out Harris’s 2018 cross-examination of Brett Kavanaugh during Senate confirmation hearings after Trump, then president, nominated him as a justice on the US supreme court.“They say she has many deficiencies, but she’s a nasty person,” Trump told the interviewer, Mark Levin. “The way she treated Mike Pence was horrible. The way she treats people is horrible. The way she treated Justice Kavanaugh in that hearing – in the history of Congress, nobody’s been treated that way.”Trump’s comments prompted a response from Harris’s campaign, which appeared to interpret it an example of age-related confusion and evidence that the former president, who is 78 and now the oldest presidential candidate in US history following Joe Biden’s withdrawal, is in mental decline.“In a stunning senile moment, Donald Trump just suggested it was Kamala Harris who treated Mike Pence poorly,” the campaign posted on X, linking to video footage of Trump’s comments.“Donald Trump clearly cannot remember anything. Retweet to make sure all Americans see this hypocritical and senile moment.”In fact, Trump may have been referring to a 2020 vice-presidential debate between Harris and Pence, when the now Democratic nominee twice told her opponent “I’m speaking” when he tried to interrupt her as she articulated an argument.However, the comments evoked social media references to Trump’s notorious treatment of Pence after his presidential election defeat to Biden, when he tried to pressure the vice-president into refusing to certify the results in Congress, as dictated by the US constitution, and then egged on a mob to attack the US Capitol while Pence was inside.Posting on social media, David Corn, a journalist with Mother Jones, wrote: “What? Did she call him the p-word and incite the violent mob that chanted ‘Hang Mike Pence’? Because if she did, she probably should drop out of the race.”On the morning of the 6 January 2021 Capitol attack, Trump reportedly told Pence: “You can either go down in history as a patriot, or you can go down in history as a pussy.”Later, with the crowd baying for the vice-president’s blood, Trump allegedly told aides that “Mike Pence deserves it”.Last year, Trump renewed his assault against Pence at a time when the former vice-president – who has refused to endorse his current presidential bid – was running for the Republican nomination, calling him “delusional” and “not a very good person”.Speaking to CNN last week along with her running mate, Tim Walz, Harris – who Trump has called “nasty” several times – confirmed to interviewers Dana Bash that she and and the former president have never met.His allusion to her treatment of Kavanaugh – one of three conservative justices Trump appointed to America’s highest court – referred to Harris’s question to him over abortion at the 2018 confirmation hearing, which took place when she was a senator.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Can you think of any laws that give government the power to make decisions about the male body?” Harris asked Kavanaugh, who parried by asking for “a more specific question”.When Harris persisted, Kavanaugh – one of six supreme court justices to vote in favour of a landmark ruling striking down a woman’s legal right to abortion in 2022 – haltingly acknowledged that he could not think of any “right now.”Harris has put restoring abortion rights at the centre of her presidential campaign.Trump also suggested in the Fox News interview that he “had every right” to interfere in trying to annul the 2020 election results.“Who ever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election, where you have every right to do it,” he said.Joyce Vance, a former federal prosecutor and US attorney during the Obama administration, posted on X: “There’s no right to ‘interfere’ with a presidential election. This is the banality of evil right here – Trump asserting he can override the will of the voters to claim victory in an election he lost.” More

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      Trump says maybe God saved him from assassination attempt to fix ‘broken country’

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      Donald Trump told a Fox News host that he thinks God believes he will “straighten out” the country after he survived an assassination attempt in July at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.“I think you think like, if you believe in God, you believe in God more. And somebody said like, why? And I’d like to think that God thinks that I’m going to straighten out our country,” Trump told Mark Levin on Life, Liberty & Levin after the host asked him if the shooting on 13 July had strengthened his belief in the almighty.In recent months the former US president and current Republican presidential candidate has increasingly sought to mobilise his religious base and some of its most extreme elements – such as Christian nationalists – as he seeks to get re-elected to the White House.Trump has previously suggested that it was divine intervention that the bullet from Matthew Crook’s gun merely clipped his ear. Soon after the shooting, he told reporters, “I’m not supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be dead.”“By luck or by God, many people are saying it’s by God I’m still here,” he said.During his Fox News interview, Trump pivoted to floating God’s political purpose for his survival. “Our country is so sick and it’s so broken. Our country is just broken. And maybe that was the reason, I don’t know. I don’t know, a lot of people have said that.”For evidence, he cited the view of his sons, both hunters, who had told him, he said, “there was no chance that he (Crooks) could have missed from that distance”. He added that he thought the shooter, who had been spotted by rallygoers, “was probably rushed”.Trump praised his Secret Service detail, which has come under intense criticism for failing to stop Crooks before he took up position on a rooftop less than 300ft away from the stage and fired off eight shots, killing one and seriously wounding two others.“Obviously, somebody should have been on top of that roof. And there was some problems. But I have to tell you – Secret Service. They were on top of me and they were bullets were flying over us–and there wasn’t one of them that said, ‘Oh gee, I’m not doing that,’” Trump said.The former US president’s invocation of a divine purpose comes as his former commerce secretary Wilbur Ross publicly warned him against being too “big and strong” in his upcoming debate against Vice-President Kamala Harris on 10 September.“The only danger is Trump being big and strong and a man,” Ross told radio host John Catsimatidis over the weekend. “He has to be careful not to be seen as piling on a woman. People don’t like to see a woman pushed too hard,” Ross said.During his term in the White House, Trump advisers frequently went on TV to express opinions that they wanted the president to consider. Ross said the debate should not be about theatrics but rather about “real topics” like inflation, foreign affairs, and the country’s southern border.“I think he needs to smoke her out as to what her positions are on those topics and subject them to real debate,” Ross said. “I think if he sticks to those issues, I think he’ll do just fine.” More

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      Why are so many Democratic politicians appearing on Fox News?

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      Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden’s transport secretary, introduced himself to Democrats at their convention earlier last month in unusual fashion. “I’m Pete Buttigieg and you might recognize me from Fox News,” he told the crowd in Chicago.The comment drew laughter, but beneath it was a certain truth: in the final two months of the 2024 election, politicians and campaign aides are less siloed in their ideologically aligned media bubbles in an effort to poach potentially persuadable voters.Buttigieg said he is proud to go on conservative outlets to speak on behalf of the Harris-Walz campaign because their arguments and facts might not otherwise be aired to that audience. So too have the Democratic governors Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore and Gretchen Whitmer, and senators Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, John Fetterman and Chris Coons also dropped in on the network.Meanwhile, Trump campaign adviser Corey Lewandowski has been on MSNBC’s The Beat with Ari Melber, and JD Vance on CNN. Presidential hopeful Kamala Harris told CNN she would find a place in her cabinet for a Republican if elected.In an election that is likely to turn on a small number of undecided voters in a handful of swing states, and considering that the Harris-Walz campaign has been on a bus tour of heavily Republican, mainly pro-Trump rural Georgia where there aren’t many votes to get, the cross-border forays into enemy TV territory makes sense.“We have so many hyper-close elections in swing states that even if you only get a point or two that you take away from Republicans and put in your column can be the 10,000 votes that give you that swing state,” said the University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato.The same is true for going on a cable news station holding perceived political biases. When Buttigieg goes on Fox News, Sabato says, he is “not just addressing Republicans, but also getting Democrats indebted to him for the unpleasant task he’s performing”.But the media too likes to play the game – albeit for different reasons. The issue of the media, and its perceived political biases, has become a central campaign issue in the US and there is a deep public hostility to journalists. For the more partisan television networks like Fox and MSNBC, there is an advantage to having people from the other side on – as it may somewhat defuse accusations of one-sidedness.It is also a long tradition. Fox News used to have a now-distant show called Hannity & Colmes that was presented by conservative Sean Hannity and liberal Alan Colmes. Typically, Colmes would come off worse – and indeed was often the subject of much mockery.“Both play a game here,” said Sabato. “Fox News chooses people who are quote-unquote Democrats who haven’t been in the game for sometime or who are out of sync with the party, and the same is true with Republicans on CNN. They feel an obligation – if not balanced, then at least a voice to the other side.”The passage of Democrats to Fox may also be entirely pragmatic given the power of the channel. Nielsen Media Research shows Fox News is the highest-rated network in all swing states. According to a recent YouGov poll –54% of Republicans, 22% of Democrats and 28% of independent voters had watched the cable station in the past month.An Axios/Harris 100 Poll also found that Fox News has gained ground this year with more independents and Democrats in terms of trust. Jessica Loker, vice-president of politics at the network, told Bloomberg that the network sees ratings go up when Democrats are on. The Fox News anchor Bret Baier told Axios: “If you build it, they will come.”A Fox News spokesperson confirmed that the outlet has seen, even before the Democratic convention in Chicago, a 41% increase in Democrat guests, excluding strategists, in the year to August.But that comes as politicians are fighting daily battles over media representation, most recently over whether microphones at the ABC-hosted Harris-Trump debate on 10 September would be muted when it is the other person’s turn to speak. Before that, the campaigns were locked in disputes over which network would host and when.“The inner workings of the political process are so much the subject matter, and that includes how the political process interacts with the media,” said Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture. “If they’re talking about microphones, or if it’s a fair place, then they’re not talking about the issues that they should be talking about in a debate, which they may or may not actually talk about that debate.”Moreover, Thompson points out, “the whole debate over doing a presidential debate on ABC or Fox demonstrates how much everyone assumes that each one of these operations are part of a set of established political ideologies.”“The things being debated are newly self-generated parts of how journalism has become so intimately part of the story as opposed to being the medium by which we communicate these two people,” said Thompson.And it is apt to go wrong. Last week, MSNBC’s Ari Melber threatened to sue Lewandowski for lying about him over comments he made over the attempted Trump assassination. Trump is suing ABC News and George Stephanopoulos over the anchor’s assertion that a jury concluded Trump had raped magazine writer E Jean Carroll. So, it seems, even if Democrats are venturing on to hostile territory more and more, the terrain still remains thoroughly part of a battlefield. More

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      Republicans are lining up to oppose Trump. Will it make a difference?

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      Donald Trump has a knack for rallying a remarkable range of political opinion around a common goal: preventing his return to the White House.That now includes prominent names from his own Republican party and top aides who worked under him as president. From former White House officials and national security staff to a once-worshipful press secretary, a host of one-time Trump fans are now lining up to join Democrats in declaring him unfit for another term in office.White House lawyers who served Republican presidents going back to Ronald Reagan and retired senior military officers have also denounced Trump as a danger to democracy.Adding to Trump’s humiliation, even members of his own cabinet – who once pledged their fealty with a subservience that would not displease Vladimir Putin – are declining to endorse him for re-election in November.It’s not entirely a one-way street. For his part, Trump has managed to win over Robert F Kennedy Jr, scion of the US’s most renowned Democratic family and erstwhile presidential candidate, and Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic member of Congress.Trump has added the pair to his transition team but the impact of their endorsement was tempered by Democrats swiftly reminding voters that Kennedy once described Trump as “a terrible president” and his policies as “absurd and terrifying”. Neither will more reasoned Republicans be reassured by Kennedy’s anti-vaxxer views, which have drawn the scorn of at least one major party donor.The anti-Trump messages are principally aimed at persuading Republicans who may formerly have voted for him that they should put country before party to keep a dangerous populist from a second term in the White House. Opinion polls say that 9% of likely voters who support Trump are prepared to at least consider switching to the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris.In early August, her campaign launched “Republicans for Harris” to target voters thought most likely to switch, particularly those who backed Trump’s rival in the primaries, Nikki Haley.On Monday, 200 Republicans who worked for President George W Bush and the former presidential candidates Senators Mitt Romney and John McCain, released an open letter in support of Harris and her running mate, the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz.The letter warned that there was more to fear from Trump than a repeat of his first term because he is now bound up with the authoritarian plan to impose rightwing control across the entire US government, including non-partisan federal agencies, known as Project 2025.“Of course, we have plenty of honest, ideological disagreements with Vice President Harris and Gov Walz. That’s to be expected. The alternative, however, is simply untenable,” the letter said.“At home, another four years of Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership, this time focused on advancing the dangerous goals of Project 2025, will hurt real, everyday people and weaken our sacred institutions. Abroad, democratic movements will be irreparably jeopardized as Trump and his acolyte JD Vance kowtow to dictators like Vladimir Putin while turning their backs on our allies. We can’t let that happen.”The signatories included Jean Becker, President George HW Bush’s chief of staff; David Nierenberg, the campaign finance chair for Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign; and two former chiefs of staff for McCain.View image in fullscreenThe Trump campaign communications director, Steven Cheung, scorned the letter as written by nonentities.“It’s hilarious because nobody knows who these people are. They would rather see the country burn down than to see President Trump successfully return to the White House to Make America Great Again,” he told Fox News.But many Trump supporters will have heard of Stephanie Grisham who served as White House press secretary and routinely appeared on conservative media outlets promoting the then president. Grisham spoke at the Democratic national convention in August where she described how she was once “a true believer” but by the end of Trump’s presidency had concluded that “he has no empathy, no morals, and no fidelity to the truth.“Trump mocks his supporters. He calls them basement dwellers,” she told the DNC and millions of Americans voters watching on television.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGrisham, who was the first senior White House official to resign after Trump stoked the January 6 insurrection, called on Americans to vote for Harris.“I love my country more than my party. Kamala Harris tells the truth. She respects the American people and she has my vote,” she said.A former member of Congress, Adam Kinzinger, who was one of just 10 Republicans to vote to impeach Trump after the attack on the Capitol, also denounced him from the Democratic convention podium for having “suffocated the soul of the Republican party”.Other Republicans have joined the criticisms of Trump by saying that it is not enough to stand by and not vote in November.A dozen former White House lawyers who served Republican presidents from Ronald Reagan to George W Bush backed Harris in a letter warning that returning Trump to office “would threaten American democracy and undermine the rule of law in our country”. The letter appeals to “all patriotic Republicans, former Republicans, conservative and center-right citizens, and independent voters to place love of country above party and ideology” and vote for Harris.“We cannot go along with other former Republican officials who have condemned Trump with these devastating judgments but are still not willing to vote for Harris. We believe this election presents a binary choice, and Trump is utterly disqualified,” it said.That appears aimed at former officials such as John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, and former defense secretary Mark Esper who have both denounced Trump as unfit for office but declined to endorse Harris.The letter signed by the 200 former officials said the last presidential election was decided by “moderate Republicans and conservative independents” in swing states who “put country far before party” to defeat Trump four years ago.“We’re heartfully calling on these friends, colleagues, neighbors, and family members to take a brave stand once more, to vote for leaders that will strive for consensus, not chaos; that will work to unite, not divide; that will make our country and our children proud. Those leaders are Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov Tim Walz,” it said.Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s center for politics, said the appeals by the anti-Trump Republicans are aimed at a narrow slice of the electorate given that he doubts many voters are truly undecided.“A lot of those undecided are just people who are not going to tell the pollster who they’re voting for. There just aren’t that many undecideds. It’s people’s way of avoiding an argument. Also, I don’t think it changes one Republican’s mind who wasn’t open to the idea of not voting for Trump and there aren’t that many of them,” he said.“But it can make a difference for people who pay attention and who are movable. It also makes a difference for Democratic-leaning independents. It justifies the decision to support Harris they’ve already made. For that reason it matters because these are people, many of them, who’ve worked closely with Trump in the White House and they’ve seen up close how incompetent he is and how unsuited he is for the presidency. It’s critical to get these people on the record.” More

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      The right’s obsession with childless women isn’t just about ideology: it’s essential to the capitalist machine | Nesrine Malik

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      A woman without biological children is running for high political office, and so naturally that quality will at some point be used against her. Kamala Harris has, in the short period since she emerged as the Democratic candidate for US president, been scrutinised over her lack of children. The conservative lawyer Will Chamberlain posted on X that Harris “shouldn’t be president” – apparently, she doesn’t have “skin in the game”. The Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, called Harris and other Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies miserable at their own lives”.It’s a particularly virulent tendency in the US, with a rightwing movement that is fixated on women’s reproduction. But who can forget (and if you have, I am happy to remind you of a low point that still sticks in my craw) Andrea Leadsom, during the 2016 Conservative party leadership election, saying that Theresa May might have nieces and nephews, but “I have children who are going to have children … who will be a part of what happens next”. “Genuinely,” she added, as if the message were not clear enough, “I feel that being a mum means you have a real stake in the future of our country, a tangible stake.”It’s an argument about political capability that dresses up a visceral revulsion at the idea that a woman who does not have a child should be vested with any sort of credibility or status. In other comments, Vance said that “so many of the leaders of the left, and I hate to be so personal about this, but they’re people without kids trying to brainwash the minds of our children, that really disorients me and disturbs me”. He appears so fixated on this that it is almost comical: a man whose obsession with childless women verges on a complex.But his “disorientation and disturbance” is a political tendency that persists and endures. It constantly asks the question of women who don’t have children, in subtle and explicit ways, especially the higher they rise in the professional sphere: “What’s up with that? What’s the deal?” The public sphere becomes a space for answering that question. Women perform a sort of group plea to be left the hell alone, in their painstaking examinations of how they arrived at the decision not to have kids, or why they in fact celebrate not having kids, or deliberations on ambivalence about having kids.Behind all this lies some classic old-school inability to conceive of women outside mothering. But one reason this traditionalism persists in ostensibly modern and progressive places is that women withdrawing from mothering in capitalist societies – with their poorly resourced public amenities and parental support – forces questions about our inequitable, unacknowledged economic arrangements. A woman who does not bear children is a woman who will never stay home and provide unremunerated care. She is less likely to be held in the domestic zone and extend her caregiving to elderly relatives or the children of others. She cannot be a resource that undergirds a male partner’s career, frailties, time limitations and social demands.A mother is an option, a floating worker, the joker in the pack. Not mothering creates a hole for that “free” service, which societies increasingly arranged around nuclear families and poorly subsidised rights depend on. The lack of parental leave, childcare and elderly care would become profoundly visible – “disorienting and disturbing” – if that service were removed.“Motherhood,” writes the author Helen Charman in her new book Mother State, “is a political state. Nurture, care, the creation of human life – all immediate associations with mothering – have more to do with power, status and the distribution of resources … than we like to admit. For raising children is the foundational work of society, and, from gestation onward, it is unequally shared.”Motherhood, in other words, becomes an economic input, a public good, something that is talked about as if the women themselves were not in the room. Data on declining birthrates draws comment from Elon Musk (“extremely concerning!!”) . Not having children is reduced to entirely personal motivations – selfishness, beguilement with the false promise of freedom, lack of values and foresight, irresponsibility – rather than external conditions: of the need for affordable childcare, support networks, flexible working arrangements and the risk of financial oblivion that motherhood frequently brings, therefore creating bondage to partners. To put it mildly, these are material considerations to be taken into account upon entering a state from which there is no return. Assuming motherhood happens without such context, Charman tells me, is a “useful fantasy”.It is a binary public discourse, obscuring the often thin veil between biological and social actualisation. Women who don’t have children do not exist in a state of blissful detachment from their bodies and their relationship with maternity: a number have had pregnancies, miscarriages, abortions and periods. A number have entered liminal stages of motherhood that don’t conform to the single definition from which they are excluded. A number extend mothering to various children in their lives. Some, like Harris herself, have stepchildren (who don’t count, just as May’s nieces and nephews didn’t). A number have become mothers, just not in a way that initiates them into a blissful club. They experience regret, depression and navigate unsettlement that does not conform to the image of uncomplicated validation of your purpose in life.But the privilege of those truths cannot be bestowed on creatures whose rejection of the maternal bond has become a rejection of a wider unspoken, colossally unfair contract. Women with children are handed social acceptance for their vital investment in “the future”, in exchange for unrewarded, unsupported labour that props up and stabilises the economic and social status quo. All while still suffering sneeriness about the value of their work in comparison with the serious graft of the men who win the bread.On top of that, women have to navigate all that motherhood – or not – entails, all the deeply personal, bewildering, isolating and unacknowledged realities of both, while being subject to relentless suffocating, infantilising and violating public theories and notions that trespass on their private spaces. With that comes a sense of self-doubt and shame in making the wrong decision, or not being as content with those decisions as they are expected to be. It is a constant, prodding vivisection. That, more than anything clinical observers feel, is the truly disorienting and disturbing experience.

      Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist More