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      Kamala Harris makes history as whirlwind week upends US election

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      The telephone line was a little fuzzy, and the voice on the end gravelly from several days of Covid isolation. Yet the poignancy of the message, and the moment itself, could not have been clearer: “I’m watching you, kid. I love you,” the speaker said.Joe Biden’s warmhearted call to his vice-president, Kamala Harris, at the Democratic party’s campaign headquarters in Delaware on Monday marked a generational shift in US politics, a symbolic passing of the torch from parent to progeny.In terms of the 2024 presidential election race it was also a defining moment. Harris, a former prosecutor, state attorney general, California senator, and for three and a half years the 81-year-old Biden’s White House understudy, was appearing for the first time as her party’s preferred new candidate, less than 24 hours after her boss’s stunning announcement that he would not seek a second term of office sent a seismic shock across the country.There followed what by any metric could be called a whirlwind week on the campaign trail in an extraordinary month in American history already notable for the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump, the Republican party’s candidate for the 5 November election.By Wednesday, Harris was addressing an historically Black sorority in Indianapolis as the Democratic presumptive nominee, having secured the support of enough delegates at the party’s national convention in Chicago next month to clinch the nomination.It was the same day as Biden gave an emotional, nationally televised address from the White House explaining his decision to step aside “in defense of democracy”.“I revere this office, but I love my country more,” he said, urging the country to stand behind Harris.One by one, other heavyweight Democratic figures had stepped up to endorse her, culminating on Friday with the outsized backing of Barack Obama. The former speaker Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, all 23 of the party’s state governors, and elected officials from the most junior Congress members to Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, respectively the House minority leader and Senate majority leader, also gave their approval.“We are not playing around,” Harris told supporters at the sorority gathering in Indiana on Wednesday.View image in fullscreen“There is so much at stake in this moment. Our nation, as it always has, is counting on you to energize, to organize, and to mobilize; to register folks to vote, to get them to the polls; and to continue to fight for the future our nation and her people deserve.“We know when we organize, mountains move. When we mobilize, nations change. And when we vote, we make history.”It was a rousing speech from a politician who only three days previously was still in a supporting role, despite weeks of swirling speculation about Biden’s future following his disastrous debate performance against Trump in June.But things moved swiftly once the president’s decision to step aside was announced on Sunday afternoon. The Biden campaign apparatus, and election war chest of almost $100m (£77.6m), became the property of a new entity called Harris for President (Republicans have vowed to challenge the funds transfer in court).And staff hastily drew up a new travel schedule for the vice-president, which saw her crisscrossing the country, including the Wilmington, Delaware, appearance on Monday, at which she acknowledged the “rollercoaster” of the previous 24 hours.On Tuesday, she was rallying in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with the campaign message: “We’re not going back” to the “chaos” of the Trump years.View image in fullscreenOn Wednesday, to Black women in Indianapolis, Indiana, she said: “We face a choice between two different visions for our nation: one focused on the future, the other focused on the past.”On Thursday, she told teachers in Houston, Texas: “In our vision, we see a place where every person has the opportunity not just to get by, but to get ahead.”Also on Thursday came her first meeting with a foreign leader – Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu – in her own right as a presidential candidate, not in a joint summit as vice-president. In a White House statement issued in her name, not Biden’s, Harris condemned violence at Wednesday’s anti-Netanyahu protest in Washington DC and the burning of the US flag.In forceful public remarks following the meeting , she also went further than Biden ever had to criticize civilian suffering in Gaza. “I will not be silent,” she said.“Israel has a right to defend itself … [but] we cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering.”Activities behind the scenes, meanwhile, progressed every bit as quickly as Harris’s front-of-house appearances.Fundraising operations cranked up, pulling in an all-time record $81m for any 24-hour period in presidential campaign history, a windfall for the newly branded Harris Victory Fund that surpassed $130m, mostly from small or first-time donors, by Thursday night.Seizing on enthusiasm from younger voters that polling found was conspicuously absent for Biden, or the 78-year-old Trump, Harris’s team also released to social media its first campaign video. Beyoncé’s 2016 hit Freedom, the unofficial anthem of Harris for President, provided the soundtrack for a message countering what it says was Trump’s “chaos, fear and hate” vision for the country.View image in fullscreenHarris has enormous appeal with generation Z, noted by backing from numerous youth organizations, including March for Our Lives, the student activist group formed in the aftermath of the 2018 mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida.There could have been no better illustration than the declaration on X/Twitter by the British singer Charli xcx that “kamala IS brat”. Viewed by more than 53 million people, the simple message encapsulating a pop culture lifestyle delighted the younger generation and confounded their elders in equal measure. “You just got to go listen to that Charli xcx album and then you’ll understand it,” Florida’s Maxwell Frost, the first gen Z member of Congress, told CNN.“Whether it’s coconut trees or talking about brat or whatever, the message is getting across to tens of millions of young people across the entire country, and across the entire world, and that’s really inspiring.”Wrongfooted by Biden’s abrupt exit, and alarmed by polls showing Harris gaining ground or even surpassing Trump in popularity, the former president’s campaign scrambled to find attack lines for their new opponent.At a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Wednesday, Trump tested insults including calling Harris a “radical left lunatic” and “the most incompetent and far-left vice-president in American history”. Republican party acolytes have also been busy with racist attacks, accusing Harris, who has Black and Asian heritage, of being “a DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] hire” or “unqualified” for the presidency.View image in fullscreenExperts warn to expect an all-out attack of misogyny and racism on Harris as the election approaches.This week, however, while Harris’s fledgling campaign took its first steps, it was sharpening its own knives. Framing the upcoming campaign as “the prosecutor versus the felon”, it took swipes at Trump’s 34 felony convictions on fraud charges, and in a searing missive on Thursday mocked the former president’s rambling anti-Harris diatribe on a rightwing news channel by issuing a “statement on a 78-year-old criminal’s Fox News appearance”. The gloves are off.Now, with the first full, buoyant week of Harris’s presidential challenge about to be in the history books, the question is whether the initial enthusiasm and momentum can be maintained through the gruelling 101 days left until the election.Harris and her team are confident it can. Contradicting the statement by the liberal British politician Joseph Chamberlain more than a century ago that “in politics, there is no use looking beyond the next fortnight”, they have their sights set not only on November’s election, but the eight years beyond it. More

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      Biden to announce plans to reform US supreme court – report

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      Joe Biden will announce plans to reform the US supreme court on Monday, Politico reported, citing two people familiar with the matter, adding that the US president was likely to back term limits for justices and an enforceable code of ethics.Biden said earlier this week during an Oval Office address that he would call for reform of the court.He is also expected to seek a constitutional amendment to limit immunity for presidents and some other officeholders, Politico reported, in the aftermath of a July supreme court ruling that presidents have broad immunity from prosecution.Biden will make the announcement in Texas on Monday and the specific proposals could change, the report added.Justice Elena Kagan on Thursday became the first member of the supreme court to call publicly for beefing up its new ethics code by adding a way to enforce it.“The thing that can be criticized is, you know, rules usually have enforcement mechanisms attached to them, and this one – this set of rules – does not,” Kagan said at an annual judicial conference held by the ninth circuit. More than 150 judges, attorneys, court personnel and others attended.The court had been considering adopting an ethics code for several years, but the effort took on added urgency after it was reported last year that Justice Clarence Thomas did not disclose luxury trips he accepted from a major Republican donor.Public confidence in the court has slipped sharply in recent years. In June, a survey for the Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research found that four in 10 US adults have hardly any confidence in the justices and 70% believe they are more likely to be guided by their own ideology rather than serving as neutral arbiters.The Associated Press contributed to this report More

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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      Israelis want Netanyahu to resign. Why did Congress invite him to speak? | Tamar Glezerman

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      To put it bluntly – Benjamin Netanyahu is the enemy of the Israeli people, the Palestinian people, and of every person on this earth who values human life. He is also personally responsible for October 7. The fact that he spoke in Congress, with tens of thousands dead in Gaza and no hostage deal in sight, is an embarrassment to Congress and to every single representative who attended.When Netanyahu spoke to Congress, Congress should’ve walked out, not given him standing ovations. Even beyond the moral obvious, no dialogue should be had with this man for the same reason dialogue with Trump is a waste of time – all you’re ever going to get is another masterclass in gaslighting. And that is exactly what this speech was – from craven lying about the death toll in Gaza to craven lying about his attempts to free the hostages – A smorgasbord of craven lying, which congress, for some reason, could not stop applauding.But if dialogue with Netanyahu must occur – there is only one question to be asked – it’s not about the hostages – why give him another chance to pretend he cares for the people whose return he is actively preventing? It’s not about the Palestinians being killed in tens of thousands and displaced in millions – he just told you they are not. That what you see, you did not see.No, the question is biblical and it is – have you murdered and also inherited? Asked of Achav after he and Jezebel his wife murdered Navot to steal his vineyard. This question comes to say – How dare you? How dare you profiteer from a war you’re causing? How dare you shed crocodile tears for citizens you abandoned to get slaughtered, abused and kidnapped, and are now letting die, if not actively killing, in Gaza? How dare you use the blood on your hands to prolong your death grip on power?And there is so much blood on Netanyahu’s hands it is up to his neck. He is practically drowning in it. The blood of my aunt Hannah Kritzman, who was 88 years old when she was murdered in Be’eri by Hamas. The same Hamas Netanyahu funded and then ignored warnings about.The blood of tens of thousand Gazan civilians and who knows how many more under the rubble and the blood of the dead hostages who could’ve come home with a deal. Unfortunately, blood is Netanyahu’s sustenance – it keeps his career alive.I am an Israeli peace and anti occupation activist, living in New York. My family lives in Tel Aviv and I have some friends in Gaza. Since this war started, I’ve been organizing vigils and protests for ceasefire and hostage deal with a group called Israelis for Peace NYC. The first vigil was a little after I returned to NY from my aunt’s shiva – my entire belief system is based around a rejection of revenge politics, a striving for reconciliation and a dogged, relentless, choosing of hope over fear and anger. But there are exceptions – in some cases anger, like pain, serves as an indication that we are actively being hurt. Sometimes, anger is necessary, especially when dealing with a pathologically lying narcissist. Without it, we might confuse him pissing on our legs for rain.Because the sad truth is that the Israeli people have been mistreated by the Netanyahu family almost consecutively since 1996, when he was voted in less than a year after Rabin, whose murder he incited, was shot dead, and with him the two-state solution, (at least until now).At the time, I was just a kid, but I grew up in a leftist household, had already been in a bombing that killed 13 people, and learned that revenge only brings more revenge and that Palestinian self determination is not only a moral imperative, but also the only way to stop this blood cycle. So I knew what I was looking at as I watched Netanyahu replace Shimon Peres in the lead on election night in 1996 – I was looking at the starting pistol go off in the final race to the bottom. I was looking at the death rattle of hope. Since then we’ve hit rock bottom again and again, only to hear, as the Russian proverb says, knocks coming from below.Nine months after the rockiest bottom yet, Netanyahu has come to the US to pretend to speak for the Israeli people, the same people he is sacrificing in order to stay in power, and lie that continuing this horrifying war is in our interest.In reality, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been protesting Netanyahu even before the war. My 88 year old aunt was one of them. She would protest from her golf cart, the same golf cart she was later murdered on. And Israelis are still out on the streets every single night, getting arrested and beaten up for simply demanding a hostage deal and an end to this war.In reality, 72% of Israelis think Netanyahu should resign.So Netanyahu, quite literally, does not speak for us, and Congress should have never listened, let alone applauded. Shame. More

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

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