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      Trump rally shooting being investigated as attempt on his life as spectator killed

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      Law enforcement agents were investigating what they suspected was an attempt to assassinate Donald Trump after a man with a rifle fired shots at him during a campaign rally on Saturday in Butler county, Pennsylvania.The Secret Service spokesperson, Anthony Gugliemi, said on X that the former Republican president was “safe” following several shots, which prompted agents protecting Trump to leap on him amid the ensuing panic. Gugliemi said Secret Service agents then fatally shot the suspected attacker – who had fired toward Trump “from an elevated position outside of the rally venue”, Gugliemi said.One spectator was killed and two others were critically wounded. The FBI later identified the shooter as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, the Associated Press reported.Officials have not publicly disclosed a possible motive. A public records database showed a Bethel Park man with the exact same name and age as Crooks registered to vote as a Republican in 2021. Yet federal campaign finance reports also show he gave $15 to a progressive political action committee on 20 January 2021, the first day Democratic president Joe Biden took office.In a pair of statements, Trump said he was “fine” after a bullet hit “the upper part of [his] right ear”.The former president also issued thanks to the Secret Service agents as well as other law enforcement officers for “their rapid response” in a Truth Social post in the shooting’s aftermath.“Mostly importantly, I want to extend my condolences to the family of the person at the rally who was killed and also to the family of [those] badly injured,” said Trump, who was taken to a hospital for evaluation and then reportedly released about 10.20pm local time.“It is incredible that such an act can take place in our country.”Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 video. Here is a link to the video instead.Video from NBC News captured more than a dozen shots, with later ones apparently coming from agents protecting the president, who had been speaking on stage at the time.A voice could be heard saying: “Get down, get down, get down!” Agents arrived to throw themselves on top of Trump as the gunfire continued and screams were heard from the crowd.Audio from the network captured agent’s voices saying: “Shooter’s down. Shooter’s down. Are we good to move? We’re clear, we’re clear.”As agents tried to move Trump off the stage at the rally, he said: “Let me get my shoes. Let me get my shoes.” Agents can be heard telling the former president: “I got you. Hold on. Your head is bloody. We’ve got to move.”Trump replied: “Wait, wait.” He then pumped his fist, mouthed the words: “Fight, fight, fight.”And the crowd at the rally responded with cries of: “USA! USA! USA!”Armed troops in uniform soon arrived as some spectators shouted abuse at the media.Agents then whisked Trump away from sight.Video showed blood on Trump’s ear. There were also snipers on a roof near the stage where Trump was standing, the Reuters news agency reported.NBC News, citing two senior law enforcement officials, reported there was growing concern among investigators that the shooting at the Trump rally “may have been a serious attempt on his life”.The local district attorney, Richard Goldinger, appeared on CNN and said he wasn’t sure how the suspected shooter “would’ve gotten to the location where he was”.“That’s something we’re going to have to figure out – how he got there.”View image in fullscreenThe BBC, meanwhile, interviewed a Trump supporter who said he was outside the rally site and had been trying to get close enough to hear the former president speak when he saw a man carrying a rifle climb on to the roof of a building.The man said he pointed out the building in question to police and remarked: “There’s a guy on the roof with a rifle.” But none of the police reacted, and about two minutes later, the man fired five or so shots toward Trump.At that point, the man told the BBC, Secret Service agents shot the attacker to death. “They blew his head off,” the man said.Investigators recovered an AR-style rifle at the scene, the AP reported, quoting a law enforcement source.The AP reportedly geolocated a video posted to social media which showed the body of a person lying motionless on the roof of a building at AGR International, a manufacturing plant just north of Saturday’s Trump rally.“The roof was less than 165 yards from where Trump was speaking, a distance from which a decent marksman could reasonably hit a human-sized target,” the AP’s Scott Bauer wrote on X.Biden said on X that he had been briefed on the reported shooting.“I’m grateful to hear that he’s safe and doing well,” the president said of Trump, with whom he reportedly spoke on Saturday night. “I’m praying for him and his family and for all those who were at the rally, as we await further information.”In a televised address, Biden urged widespread condemnation of political violence.“The bottom line is, the Trump rally … should have been able to be conducted peacefully without any problem,” Biden said. “But the idea … that there’s political violence … in America like this is just unheard of. It’s just not appropriate. Everybody must condemn it.”The scenes from the rally prompted a flood of reactions, including among Trump’s fellow Republicans.The US House speaker, Mike Johnson, wrote on X that his congressional chamber would “conduct a full investigation of the tragic events today”.“The American people deserve to know the truth,” Johnson said, pledging that the House would summon officials from the Secret Service, homeland security and FBI for hearings as soon as possible.Former Republican president George W Bush said he was “grateful” that Trump was “safe following the cowardly attack on his life”.The top Democrat in the US House, Hakeem Jeffries, offered prayers to Trump.“I am thankful for the decisive law enforcement response,” Jeffries wrote on X. “America is a democracy. Political violence of any kind is never acceptable.”The former Democratic president Barack Obama said in a separate statement: “There is absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy. Although we don’t yet know exactly what happened, we should all be relieved that former president Trump wasn’t seriously hurt, and use this moment to recommit ourselves to civility and respect in our politics.”In a Guardian interview in June, Steve Bannon – a Trump adviser and former White House chief strategist – spoke of his concerns that the Republican nominee would be assassinated before the election in November.“It’s my number one fear,” Bannon said, speaking before he began a four-month prison sentence for defying a congressional subpoena. “Assassination has to be at the top of the list and I believe that the woman that’s running the Secret Service part is not doing her job.”Referring to the Republican national convention, due to start Monday, he added: “I’m not comfortable with what’s happening in Milwaukee.” But he added: “His detachment is fantastic.”Bannon argued that Trump had been portrayed as a new Julius Caesar everywhere from a New York theatre production to an essay by leading scholar Robert Kagan, paving the way for a would-be assassin to feel justified in emulating Brutus. He said president Abraham Lincoln received similar treatment after the civil war before his assassination at the hands of John Wilkes Booth.“Remember John Wilkes Booth,” Bannon said. “In the southern press, and in particular the Richmond papers, Caesar-ism, Lincoln is Caesar, Lincoln is taking your liberties. You fought this war but, even in losing the war, he’s going to take all your liberties and enslave you.” More

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      Bernie Sanders backs Biden and urges Democrats to ‘stop the bickering’

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      Bernie Sanders has offered his backing to Joe Biden, dismissing calls for the man he described as the “most effective president in the modern history of our country” to stand down in the upcoming US presidential election.Sanders, the totemic progressive US senator, used an opinion piece in the New York Times to endorse Biden, who has come under increasing fire from fellow Democrats over his ability to beat Donald Trump following a disastrous televised debate between the two.“Despite my disagreements with him on particular issues, he has been the most effective president in the modern history of our country and is the strongest candidate to defeat Donald Trump – a demagogue and pathological liar,” Sanders wrote.“It’s time to learn a lesson from the progressive and centrist forces in France who, despite profound political differences, came together this week to soundly defeat rightwing extremism.”Sanders joins Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another key figure on the left of the Democratic party, in voicing support for Biden, even as upwards of 20 elected Democrats have called for him to step down, citing his apparent frailty during the debate and his tough re-election prospects against Trump.So far, the only Democratic senator to call for Biden to stand down is Peter Welch who, like Sanders, an independent who largely votes with the Democrats, represents Vermont.Democrats that have joined a “circular firing squad” need to “stop the bickering and nit-picking” over Biden’s performance, Sanders wrote, and start focusing on Trump’s far greater problems, such as the former president’s felony convictions, him being found liable in a sexual abuse case, his bankruptcies, and what Sanders called “thousands of documented lies and falsehoods”.“I know: Mr Biden is old, is prone to gaffes, walks stiffly and had a disastrous debate with Mr Trump,” Sanders wrote. “But this I also know: a presidential election is not an entertainment contest.“Enough! Mr Biden may not be the ideal candidate, but he will be the candidate and should be the candidate.”Biden has insisted he will not drop out of November’s presidential election, despite polls showing he is either trailing or level with Trump. Biden said he made a “stupid mistake” of being extremely busy prior to the debate, including tiring international trips.“Where’s Trump been?” the president said of his rival. “Riding around on his golf cart? Filling out his scorecard before he hits the ball?”The speculation over the future of the 81-year-old president’s future has prompted Trump, and his Republican allies, to turn their fire somewhat on Kamala Harris, the vice-president who is considered the most likely replacement for Biden. Trump unveiled a new, derisive nickname for the vice-president, “Laffin’ Kamala”, which he tested at a campaign rally in Florida this week. More

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      True Gretch review: Whitmer’s story – next stop the White House?

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      Joe Biden’s re-election bid remains on life support, the casualty of an indelible senior moment on the debate stage. Biden says he’s not quitting but polls show him falling behind. The moment has cast a spotlight on the alternatives, including a passel of Democratic governors seen as the party’s future.Among them is Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, who reportedly confided that Biden can’t win her state. But she has since announced that even if he were to drop his re-election bid, she would not run.And she denies that she wants Biden to quit.“Joe Biden is our nominee,” she posted on X. “He is in it to win it and I support him.”As it happens, Whitmer – the non-candidate – is out with a memoir: a traditional marker of ambitions for higher things.Like most campaign memoirs, True Gretch is about image improvement. As expected, Whitmer describes personal growth and political ascent. A light read, True Gretch’s underlying message is simple: “Don’t you forget about me.”Given Michigan is a swing state, that’s unlikely. Regardless of the outcome of the 2024 election, it will matter again in four years.First elected in 2018, Whitmer’s time in office will expire on 1 January 2027. She will need a new gig. Why not the White House?On the page, Lisa Dickey, author and ghostwriter, provides a valuable assist. Her client roster includes Jill Biden, George Stephanopoulos and Newsom. She “melded so well into Whitmer world” that she received “honorary ‘Half-Whit’ status”, according to the governor.Whitmer also reminds us of her familial familiarity with conflict and politics. She pays tribute to Dana “Dano” Whitmer, her grandfather. In the early 1970s, as school superintendent of Pontiac, a city north of Detroit, he implemented court-ordered desegregation. It was rough.The Ku Klux Klan threatened him and his family. Whitmer chronicles school bus bombings and the abuse suffered by her grandmother. “The phone would ring … someone on the other end would say, ‘Your husband’s dead.’ Dano was unflappable through all of it.”Whitmer’s parents were lawyers. Richard Whitmer, a Republican, served in the administration of William Milliken, a Michigan governor, then became chief executive of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. Sharon “Sherry” Reisig, the governor’s mother, worked for the state attorney general.Years later, in the depths of Covid, Whitmer faced death threats and a kidnap plot, the affair of the “Wolverine Watchmen”. Charges under state law yielded five convictions. Federal prosecutors charged six more men, four of whom were convicted. Two pleaded guilty and cooperated with prosecutors.Whitmer describes a protest in April 2020 outside her office: “Swastikas. Confederate flags. AR-15s.” Masked men in balaclavas abounded. This spring’s campus demonstrations come to mind. Anonymity cloaks the coward with strength.“One man had tied a noose around the neck of a brown-haired Barbie doll, dangling her from a pole.”Taking a page from his Charlottesville playbook, Donald Trump called the mob “good people” and urged Whitmer to “make a deal”. He tweeted that she should “give a little, and put out the fire”.Negotiate over the barrel of a gun. “That woman from Michigan,” he called her.In hindsight, all was prelude to January 6. Four years on, Trump still won’t rule out violence if he loses.True Gretch contains lighter notes, including an 18-song playlist. Not Ready to Make Nice by the Chicks is top. Other contributors include Aretha Franklin, Taylor Swift, Alanis Morissette, Guns N’ Roses, Eminem, Elton John and Prince.Think of it as jogging music. A good politician, Whitmer gives Motown and Michigan their due. Franklin and Eminem grew up in Detroit.Reminiscing about high school, Whitmer says she spent more time partying than studying. “I ran with a fast crowd,” she confesses. As a sophomore, she passed out drunk after a bout of exuberant tailgating.Whitmer also tells of hanging out, as governor, in a dive restaurant – and violating Covid social-distancing rules. Ostensibly regretting her sin, she mentions that Newsom of California, another ambitious Democratic governor, did the same thing, albeit at a pricier joint. Jab noted.Whitmer has been fortunate in her opponents. The US supreme court decision in Dobbs v Jackson, which removed the right to abortion, has proved a gift that keeps on giving.Tudor Dixon, Whitmer’s Republican challenger in 2022, spoke of the upside of a 14-year-old rape victim carrying the child to term.“The bond that those two people made and the fact that out of that tragedy there was healing through that baby, it’s something that we don’t think about,” Dixon told an interviewer.Whitmer won by double digits – and the Democrats flipped both houses of the state legislature. For the first time in 40 years, the party held a governing trifecta.The generational shift within Whitmer’s family crystalizes the cultural and political trajectory of the country as a whole. Teddy Roosevelt, once a Republican president, then a third-party challenger, is one of Whitmer’s heroes. She quotes from his “Man in the Arena” speech, at length.“Though these words were written more than a hundred years ago, they’re just as true today – except for two things,” she writes. “The ‘man’ may be a woman. And she may just be wearing fuchsia.”

      True Gretch: What I’ve Learned about Life, Leadership, and Everything in Between is published in the US by Simon & Schuster More

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      Films, fashion, law,d politics: George and Amal Clooney’s growing global reach

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      It took a famous TV doctor to diagnose the patient. After two weeks of turmoil in the US Democratic party over President Biden’s re-election bid, it was ER’s Doug Ross, AKA George Clooney, who wrote up a devastating evaluation of the incumbent president.The 63-year-old actor was not in theatrical mode when he wrote a more-in-sorrow letter published by the New York Times last week that called on Biden to withdraw from the presidential race that the White House reportedly begged him not to submit, coming three weeks after Clooney helped raise $30m for the Biden-Harris ticket at a lavish Hollywood fundraiser.But Clooney’s bedside manner was impeccable: “I love Joe Biden. As a senator. As a vice-president and as president. I consider him a friend, and I believe in him,” he wrote. “But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can.”Clooney was speaking for ­himself – and for a large swathe of liberal-leaning Hollywood donors angry at what they see as White House deception over the apparent decline of Biden’s health. Clooney said the man at the fundraiser “was the same man we all witnessed” in his debate performance two weeks later.In the current spirit of panic and recrimination, with a White House press corps turning every Biden appearance into a test of competence, Democrat money bundlers, including co-chair of Biden’s re-election campaign and movie producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, are under suspicion of helping to cover up Biden’s apparent health issues.Clooney’s letter has put the Ocean’s Eleven actor out of political harm’s way. The Democratic party may not be so lucky. Democrats, says James Carville, the Clinton strategist who last week called for a blitz primary to select a new candidate, “are hellbent on a mission to force the American people to do something they don’t want to do – to vote for Joe Biden”.“George has come out, [former house speaker] Nancy Pelosi has come out – I don’t know what else people can do,” Carville told the Observer. “Other than a few people in Congress, everybody thinks this is a terrible idea [for Biden to run]. But you’re up against a guy who doesn’t want to leave, and that’s just where we are.”View image in fullscreenGeorge Clooney is not the only Clooney making waves on a global stage. Last month his wife Amal Clooney was revealed to have played an important role in making the case for arrest warrants to be issued by the international criminal court (ICC) to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, defence minister Yoav Gallant and three top Hamas leaders.Biden called the ICC move “outrageous” and said that whatever the ICC prosecutor might imply, “there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas”. According to the Washington Post, George Clooney called Steve Ricchetti, counsellor to the US president, to protest about the administration’s willingness to impose sanctions in which his wife could get caught.This week, the Biden-Harris campaign attempted to blame Clooney’s letter on “pre-existing tensions” – hinting at the ICC dust-up. A Hollywood producer familiar with the couple told the Observer that the White House’s explanation for the letter was “bullshit” and the lawyer had been smeared because her work is on human rights irrespective of political division.“George has power in Hollywood. Amal doesn’t, except as George’s wife,” they added. “Her power is in the UK, at the Hague and on the pages of Vogue.”The lawyer has not commented on her husband’s political intervention, which may have come with Barack Obama’s tacit approval. But after 10 years together, George and Amal Clooney are seen as one of the most stable couples in Hollywood.View image in fullscreenThey’d met at the actor’s home in Lake Como, Italy, when a mutual friend brought her by. Clooney’s agent had also got wind of the ­introduction, the actor later revealed. “My agent said: ‘I met this woman who is coming to your house, who you’re going to marry.’ It really worked out that way.”“It felt like the most natural thing in the world,” Amal said. “I always hoped there could be love that was overwhelming and didn’t require any weighing or decision-making.”A safari in Kenya to see giraffes sealed the deal. In 2014 he proposed, they married in Venice and now have twins.The political instinct which had surfaced in Clooney films including Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) and The Ides of March (2011), soon took flight. By 2016 the couple were meeting with then-German chancellor Angela Merkel to talk refugee policy; that year they were at a UN refugee summit and soon after established the Clooney Foundation for Justice, which focuses on legal rights for those targeted by oppressive governments, tracking the money of human rights abusers and those profiting from war crimes.“We’re both inspired by the young people out there challenging injustice in their communities, a new generation that won’t accept the status quo,” the actor said in an awards acceptance speech two years ago.But Clooney’s intervention comes with potential costs. The Bidens, like the Clintons and Obamas, may see themselves as benefiting from rubbing shoulders with celebrities, but the intersection of entertainment and politics, and the money and ideologies that underpin it, is repulsive to many outside political-entertainment enclaves. In an echo of Trump, Biden now says the rising chorus against him is coming from members of “the elites”, despite the bad timing of first lady Dr Jill Biden appearing on the cover of the August US Vogue.The tradition of celebrity-political endorsements goes back to Frank Sinatra, who organised his friends, the Rat Pack, to campaign for John F Kennedy. Two decades later, disagreements over Ronald Reagan forced celebrities to choose where they belonged.“That’s where we are still,” explains veteran Democrat strategist Hank Sheinkopf. “Celebrities see themselves as an important part of the Democratic fundraising and thought-based operation, which a lot of Americans would not agree with.”View image in fullscreenSheinkopf says that the fight over Biden’s future is as much about the future of the Democratic party as it is about Biden’s health – and Clooney’s intervention will make Maga Republicans fight harder for candidate Trump.“Democrats are the party of the elites despite the fact that they see themselves as the party of the non-elites,” he says. Regardless of who is writing the cheques – Hollywood celebrities or a rightwing Texas industrialist – “what all elites want is a party that does what they want because they think it’s right”.“But that’s not who Joe Biden is. He represents the old pro-union, almost colour-blind left, but that’s not who the operators behind the scenes are,” he adds.Peter Bart, previous editor of the Hollywood trade bible Variety, wrote in a Deadline column that he had “great respect for Clooney’s decision” but it was also one that “will cost him”.He recalled other Hollywood stars who had mixed politics with entertainment, including Jane Fonda, Charlton Heston and John Wayne. “Apart from potential career damage, Clooney must confront donors who have spent millions at his ­urging to support a ticket he now renounces,” Bart, 91, warned.He recalled a conversation he’d had with Ronald Reagan about Nixon. “I want people to like me, even voters who vote against me,” Reagan told him. “Nixon doesn’t seem to care, but I’m still an actor.”Still, Clooney’s intervention has set him up for criticism. The progressive left and African-American voters, both voting blocs Biden is courting to firm up his support, slammed the actor for taking a position afforded him by being famous, white and male.Others have implied that perspectives are different from the window seat of a Gulfstream jet flying between homes in Los Angeles, England, France and Italy. (Besides being a successful actor, known for pranking friends, Clooney and partner Rande Gerber, husband of Cindy Crawford, split up to $1bn from the sale of their tequila brand Casamigos.)Clooney has been criticised, too, from the other side. Trump weighed in, saying Clooney “turned on Crooked Joe like the rats they both are”, and some have questioned why Clooney, and Hollywood more broadly, waited until after the debate to disclose what they had witnessed at the fundraiser.Still, the New York Times letter establishes the Kentucky-born actor as a modern-day Warren Beatty, the actor who made his political beliefs part of his public image. Beatty never ran for office and quipped it would be “more like running for crucifixion”, nor has Clooney, allowing both to ride over the humdrum day-to-day of retail politics.“George’s op-ed was provocative, well done, but voters don’t want this anyway: 73% of the voting public say they want something different,” says Carville. “They’re not asking for anything difficult – just a different nominee. We’re in a crisis.” More

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      Will the Republican convention be good for Milwaukee businesses?

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      For Ricky Ramirez, posting “stupid shit” on the Facebook page of his bar, the Mothership, is one way he draws in customers to taste the clever cocktails he crafts in Milwaukee’s trendy Bay View neighborhood.Yet a March post that Ramirez wrote in his typically profanity-laced, punctuation-free style declaring that the bar would close over the period of the Republican national convention, which begins in Wisconsin’s most populous city next week, brought him the sort of attention he never wanted.“Sup idiots we haven’t lost a lot of followers in a while so here we go … as everything gets amplified with like the RNC shitshow coming to town lmao I would like to formally state that we’re shutting bar down during the week of because fuck that noise,” Ramirez wrote.“I’m not trying to get involved with or actively take money or rent the space out to that tomfoolery.”The announcement of the temporary closure, which Ramirez wrote out of dissatisfaction with what both political parties have to offer ahead of the November election, attracted hundreds of likes and comments, and was written up by several major media outlets. But not long after, angry emails and messages began arriving, as well as outright threats, one of which was mailed from Florida, and which Ramirez said the police are investigating.“There’s a lot of things that happen that I don’t agree with and I don’t ever want to like, you know, ruin someone’s life over it,” Ramirez said in an interview. “But people are really into this.”Ramirez’s experience is the exception in a city where many businesses were hoping for a surge in bookings and reservations connected to the four-day convention, during which the GOP is expected to formally nominate Donald Trump as their presidential candidate.Yet he is not alone in finding the RNC to be a confounding experience, even before its Monday opening. While many restaurants, bars and venues have indeed seen a flood of business connected to the convention, others have seen a mere trickle, or nothing at all.“The whole big promise of what the RNC said it was going to be is not shaking out to be that way,” said Adam Siegel, the James Beard award-winning chef-owner of Lupi & Iris, a Mediterranean restaurant in downtown Milwaukee.He had expected that one of the many organizations or businesses that sets up shop on the sidelines of the convention would book out his whole restaurant, which lies outside the convention’s security perimeter, and is regarded as one of Milwaukee’s finest eateries.Instead, his only firm booking so far is a small dinner in one of his private rooms, and though he has received more inquiries lately, Siegel has put up signs reminding customers that they will remain accessible during the convention, in hopes of maintaining steady business.Victor Matheson, an economics professor at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, who has studied the impact of political conventions on cities and their businesses, said conventions, with their crowds, security and road detours, can undercut other industries.Bookings at Broadway theaters were down 20% compared with a typical summer week when Republicans held their convention in New York City in 2004, his research found. And unlike an event that brings similar demands on a city’s downtown, such as a city hosting the Super Bowl, political conventions don’t do much for civic pride, at least not in the current era of hyper-partisanship.“These conventions are disruptive without any kind of glow associated with them,” Matheson said.Milwaukee was initially supposed to host the Democratic national convention in 2020 until the party dramatically downsized that event and held much of it virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Now it will play host to Trump’s coronation, while the Democrats are expected to renominate Joe Biden later on in August, in Chicago.“If you go back to when the DNC was going to be here in 2020, I mean, we saw inquiries, bookings, conversations about catering, stuff like that,” said Dan Jacobs, co-owner of American-Chinese restaurant DanDan. “This definitely doesn’t have the same feel whatsoever.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe tourism bureau, Visit Milwaukee, estimates that 50,000 people will come to town for the convention, 16,000 hotel room nights will be booked and the total economic impact could rise to $200m. Venues as large as the American Family Field, where the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team plays, have reportedly been booked for parties connected to the convention.The RNC could also give heightened prominence to GOP candidates in a swing state that is crucial to Trump’s hopes of retaking the White House, and where the party hopes to oust the Democratic senator Tammy Baldwin, who is up for re-election in November.“It is a state that’s certainly in play politically. So if that drives people to come here to see our city, I just hope that the entire city views this as an opportunity to show off Milwaukee and Wisconsin in the best light possible,” said Paul Bartolotta, the chef and owner of the Bartolotta Restaurants, who said he had been “exceedingly pleased” with bookings for everything from buffet lunches to hors d’oeuvres receptions at his restaurants and catering venues.“It’s an incredibly charged political environment, and you just need to let that noise go away and focus on taking care of your employees and making sure that we’re taking care of our guests.”Gary Witt, president and CEO of the Pabst Theater Group, is bracing for a week in which he expects to lose about $100,000 since five of his six venues have no bookings connected to the convention, and many touring acts are avoiding the city. He wonders if things might have been different had Trump not staged a controversial takeover of the Republican National Committee earlier this year, or if the GOP had nominated a different candidate who would have attracted more donor support for the convention.“Once the candidate was announced, there were tremendous changes that were placed that impacted the RNC by the candidate, and that created a lot more confusion and disorganization within the RNC, and probably added to the delays of getting anything done,” Witt said.The former president did not help matters by reportedly calling Milwaukee a “horrible city” in a closed-door meeting with Republicans in Washington DC, though he tried to control the damage by declaring “I love Milwaukee” days later during a rally in nearby Racine. The predominantly Democratic city’s leaders are nonetheless rolling out the welcome mat, knowing that the convention could be a boon to its economy.“I welcome those types of comments from a guy who has extremely bad taste,” Milwaukee’s Democratic county executive, David Crowley, said in an interview on the sidelines of an event hosted by the Biden-Harris campaign in Milwaukee, two weeks before the convention was to start.“Our expectation is we’re going to have thousands of people descending on Milwaukee county, and it is our job to make sure that they have the greatest party that they have,” he said.“Even though I don’t agree with any of their policies or their nominee, for us, it’s about how do we make sure that we can showcase our community, so in the future, we can bring more conventions and conferences to Milwaukee.” More

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      The far right’s crusade against porn is a crusade against progress | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Project 2025’s porn problemThe lines between art and obscenity aren’t always clear; pornography can be hard to define. “I know it when I see it,” the late US supreme court judge Potter Stewart said in his famous non-definition of the term.The far-right knows it when they see it as well. And they see pornography everywhere. Experts have noted that worries about pornography among social conservatives seem to go up and down over time: right now we seem to be at a high-point of porn panic. The Republican Missouri senator Josh Hawley, for example, has repeatedly claimed that feminism has driven young men to “pornography and video games”. And the Republican party has called porn a “public health crisis that is destroying the lives of millions”.Porn also plays a big part in Project 2025: a Christian nationalist manifesto and list of desired policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation that has been described as “a wish list for a Trump presidency”. (Donald Trump has said he knows nothing about it.) The 900-page plan proposes policies like mass deportations, extreme abortion restrictions, and the dismantling of climate change protections. It also says that pornography should be outlawed.On the surface the conservative obsession with porn doesn’t seem overly problematic. There are, after all, plenty of serious issues with the porn industry. It’s often exploitative and it’s helped to normalize violent acts like strangling during sex. The problem, however, is the incredibly broad way in which Project 2025 Mandate talks about porn. No definition of porn is provided; rather, it’s talked about in the context of things like transgender rights and non-normative gender expression. Porn, we are told is “invading [children’s] school libraries”. The word has been weaponized as a useful way to attack LGBTQ+ rights. See, for example, this extract from the foreword of the Project 2025 Mandate:“Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology … is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”What does this mean? Well it seems to mean that the far-right want to define a book that features a same-sex couple as illegal pornography and throw the author of the book and any distributors of the book in prison. It seems to mean that a book talking about sexual violence could be classified as porn and banned. It seems to mean that talking about the existence of trans people would be “porn” and criminalized. In short: anything that goes against normative gender roles and hierarchies, or interrogates those hierarchies, could be considered obscene and criminalized.Project 2025, it can’t be stressed enough, isn’t some sort of hypothetical dystopian possibility. The scariest part of all this is that it’s very much under way. Republicans are already classifying anything they don’t like as obscene pornography and finding ways to ban it. There’s been a surge in book bans in American schools, for example. From July to December 2023, PEN America found that more than 4,300 books were removed from schools across 23 states. Many of the targeted titles feature LGBTQ+ characters. Work that address rape and sexual assault are also increasingly being targeted. So don’t be fooled by Project 2025’s preoccupation with porn. The far-right aren’t interested in the exploitation of women, they’re interested in controlling exactly what it means to be a woman. This isn’t a crusade against porn, it’s a crusade against progress.Katy Perry is getting backlash for Woman’s World, her new ‘feminist’ anthemWoman’s World is Perry’s first solo single in three years and, the singer explained, the first thing she’s done “since becoming a mother and since feeling really connected to my feminine divine”. Unfortunately, however, the single isn’t getting a divine reception. The Guardian’s Laura Snapes gave it a one-star review and described it as “Bic for Her of pop, the pink Yorkie for girls (get your lips around this!), a song that made me feel stupider every sorry time I listened to it”. Perry is also facing criticism for working with the controversial producer Dr Luke on the single. In 2014 pop star Kesha accused Dr Luke of sexual assault and he then sued her for defamation. In 2023 a legal settlement was reached in the defamation suit.Elon Musk denies volunteering his sperm to help start a colony on Mars“I have not … ‘volunteered my sperm’” wrote Musk in a post on X after the New York Times reported he had. Can you imagine a planet populated entirely by mini-Musks? It would be full of so much hot air it would be unbearable.The all-women patrol team protecting Sumatra’s rainforest“We have to remember that conservation is only necessary as a result of colonialism and the forced displacement of Indigenous people who have stewarded the land for thousands of years,” says an Indigenous female ranger in this beautiful Guardian photo essay.Canadian serial killer Jeremy Skibicki given life sentence for murders of Indigenous womenSkibicki appears to have been motivated by white supremacist beliefs and targeted vulnerable women in Winnipeg’s shelter system. The “jarring and numbing” murders helped draw attention to the broader crisisof missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAttempt to ease Poland’s strict abortion laws defeatedIn Poland anyone convicted of aiding a woman in getting an abortion faces up to three years in jail. On Friday a slim majority rejected legislation that would have decriminalized abortion assistance.Death at US women’s prison amid heatwave sparks cries for helpThere’s no air conditioning in the cells at the California’s largest women’s prison and there are worries there may be even more preventable heat deaths.Etsy sellers say imminent ban on sex toys is a betrayal“Bans like this one also further the idea that sexual health and pleasure is somehow taboo or something to be ashamed of,” one seller said. “It has broader impacts on society as a whole.”Israeli forces used US-made bombs to murder kids playing soccer in a Gaza playgroundJust another day in the graveyard that is Gaza! Meanwhile pundits in the Western media and politicians keep saying Joe Biden is a “good man”. Biden is facilitating one of the worst atrocities we’ve seen in modern times–if you think he is a “good man” then what you’re really saying is that you don’t think Palestinians are people.The week in pawtriarchyThe latest status symbol for the paranoid 1% isn’t a bunker with a safe room, it’s a Svallin. This is a “an undisclosed mix of Dutch shepherd, German shepherd, and Belgian Malinois”, bred to be “beasts that could rip out an attacker’s trachea yet also function as pets.” The top dogs cost $150,000 each and only 20 are sold a year after an in-depth vetting process. More

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      Republicans ramp up attacks on Kamala Harris amid swirl over Biden future

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      With the state of Joe Biden’s re-election campaign in turmoil, Donald Trump and his Republican allies are stepping up attacks on a familiar and, some say, possibly more threatening, political foe: his vice-president, Kamala Harris.In the weeks since Biden’s stumbling debate performance, Republicans have intensified what many call racist and misogynistic criticism. They have questioned Harris’s competency, mocked her demeanor, and accused her of concealing concerns about the president’s health. Trump unveiled a new, derisive nickname for the vice-president, “Laffin’ Kamala”, which he tested at a campaign rally in Florida this week.In the rambling, falsehood-filled speech, Trump dedicated several minutes to assailing Harris, whose shortcomings as vice-president, he said, were in effect an “insurance policy” for the embattled incumbent.“If Joe had picked someone even halfway competent, they would’ve bounced him from office years ago, but they can’t because she’s got to be their second choice,” he said.While the Trump team insists they are not intimidated by Harris, supporters say the pre-emptive strikes against the vice-president – the highest ranking woman in American politics and the first Black and Asian American vice-president – are a reflection of her strength at a moment when concerns about Biden’s fitness to serve have thrust her into the spotlight. In response, a group of Democratic strategists and donors are amplifying their defense of the vice-president, an effort they say is necessary to win in November.“We need to have a surround sound around Kamala that promotes the best of her strength – that she fights for our freedoms, that she works for a better life for all Americans, that she is ready to challenge Trump,” said Tory Gavito, the president and co-founder of Way to Win, a Democratic donor network.Though the group has not weighed in on whether Biden should remain the nominee, Gavito said Harris is a major asset to the party – whether as his running mate or his replacement. New battleground state polling released this week by her group found Harris running strong with the parts of the Democratic coalition Biden is struggling to energize: young people and Black and Latino voters.“She brings in factions of that coalition that, right now, are a little concerned,” Gavito said. “So it’s an important moment to lift up the full ticket.”For much of Biden’s presidency, Republicans have warned that a vote to re-elect the 81-year-old president was really a vote for Harris. Nikki Haley, in her unsuccessful run against Trump for the Republican nomination, once told voters that the possibility of a Harris presidency should “send a chill up every person’s spine”.In the presently unlikely scenario Harris becomes the Democratic nominee, Republicans say they have plenty of material ready to deploy against her from her years as a vice-president and her short-lived run for president against Biden in 2020. As the other half of the Biden-Harris administration, her record is tied to the president’s, Republicans argue, which means she is equally to blame for Americans’ frustration over the economy and the border.Republicans have sought to make Harris the face of the administration’s response to record migration at the US southern border, casting her as its absentee “border tsar”. But she was never charged with overseeing US border policy; rather, she was tasked, as was Biden during his vice-presidency, with a diplomatic mission to address the root causes of migration.In a preview of what Trump’s strategy against Harris might look like, his campaign released an online ad alleging a “Great Kamala Cover-Up”. The video overlays images of Biden looking lost and disorientated with comments from Harris defending his fitness for office. “Kamala lied to us for years about Biden,” it says. Trump’s campaign also referred to the vice-president as “Low IQ Kamala” this week.View image in fullscreen“No one has lied about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and supported his disastrous policies over the past four years more than Cackling Co-pilot Kamala Harris,” Caroline Sunshine, deputy director of communications for the Trump campaign, said in a statement to the Guardian. She also assailed the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the economy and immigration, among Biden’s most vulnerable issues with voters.Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist who was a spokesperson for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, said the attacks by Trump and his campaign were part of an old political “playbook” used to undermine women in positions of power.“It’s things like attacking her intelligence, attacking the tone of her voice, her laugh, the othering language,” Finney said. Those are pretty common tropes that we see used against women.”Several Democratically aligned women’s organizations, including UltraViolet and Emily’s List, have joined forces to combat what they described as the “racist and sexist disinformation campaigns” against the vice-president that are proliferating online and on the campaign trail, sometimes with the explicit endorsement of Republican officials.“There’s always legitimate reasons to critique any public figure, especially politicians,” said Jenna Sherman, campaign director at UltraViolet Action. But she said many of the rightwing attacks on Harris mix personal insults with myths and falsehoods about Democrats’ positions on issues such as abortion and immigration.“This is about misogyny,” she said. “This is about the society that we live in trying to normalize, essentially, the berating of women.”Since the presidential debate last month, some surveys have found Harris performing as well as or marginally than better than Biden in a hypothetical contest against Trump, which some suspect have prompted the new wave of attacks.“Vice-President Harris is proud to be President Biden’s running mate,” Brian Fallon, Harris’s campaign communications director said in a statement to the Guardian.“As a former district attorney and attorney general, she has stood up to fraudsters and felons like Donald Trump her entire career. Trump is lying about the vice-president because she has been prosecuting the case against him on the biggest issues in the race.”The former California attorney general, elected as a senator in 2017, had a rocky start to the vice-presidency, stumbling in media appearances and struggling to stand out as Republicans relentlessly attacked her performance. But since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, Harris has become the administration’s lead messenger on reproductive rights, by far Democrats’ strongest issue.On the anniversary of Roe’s fall last month, Harris declared Trump “guilty” in the “case of the stealing of reproductive freedom from the women of America”. She has also been at the forefront of democracy protection efforts, rushing to Tennessee last year to stand beside Black lawmakers expelled from the state legislature for protesting against gun violence.“She is qualified to be president,” Biden said at his Nato press conference on Thursday night. “That’s why I picked her.”He praised Harris as a “hell of a prosecutor” and a “first-rate person”, casting her as fighter for reproductive rights and an agile lieutenant who has effectively managed a wide portfolio. But even as Biden promoted Harris, he mistakenly referred to her as “Vice-President Trump”, the exact type of verbal gaffe that has unnerved Democrats in recent weeks. Trump immediately seized on the misstep.“By the way: yes, I know the difference,” the president’s campaign replied later on X. “One’s a prosecutor, and the other’s a felon.”Earlier on Thursday, Harris rallied supporters in North Carolina, delivering the kind of fiery denunciations of Trump that many Democrats long for in their nominee. Ticking through the Biden administration’s legislative and foreign policy achievements, Harris warned that a second Trump term would hurt the country’s standing in the world and make Americans less safe.“As Trump bows down to dictators, he makes America weak,” Harris said, a reference to the former president’s flattery of Vladimir Putin. “And that is disqualifying for someone who wants to be commander-in-chief.”Sharing a clip from her campaign stop in North Carolina, Representative Jared Huffman, a California Democrat, said on X: “VP Harris is on fire. She’s vetted, tested, and has been Democrats’ strongest messenger throughout this campaign. She’s next up if we need her, and we might.”Biden’s insistence that he is the candidate best positioned to defeat Trump has not quelled dissent within his party. A growing number of elected Democrats have called on the president to step aside, while speculation mounts over whether Harris could realistically replace him atop the ticket.Amid the uncertainty, the New York Times reported that the Biden campaign has commissioned a survey to measure how Harris would fare in a head-to-head matchup against Trump. It comes amid a series of media reports that advisers close to the president have lost confidence in his ability to beat Trump in November, which the White House and the president’s campaign have denied.In a memo outlining the “path ahead”, Biden’s re-election campaign chair, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, and his campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said there was no indication that any other candidate would fare better than Biden against Trump. It noted that an alternative Democratic nominee would face an onslaught of negative media, which is already “baked in” to his candidacy.Yet a separate memo circulating among Democrats makes a counter-argument. Titled “The case for Kamala”, the document, written anonymously by Democratic strategists, argues that making Harris the party’s nominee is the “one realistic path out of this mess”.It argues that her weaknesses are “real but addressable” and that she enjoys structural advantages over other potential alternatives: she has already been vetted on the national stage, has the highest name recognition and would have immediate access to the re-election campaign’s war chest.With just little over a month left before Democrats meet in Chicago for their convention, Harris remains the most obvious and, for now, the most popular choice to replace Biden in the apparently unlikely event he ends his run for a second term.But regardless of what happens with the ticket, attention will remain fixed on Harris as the next-in-line to a president who has raised public concern about his ability to serve another four years. That is why Democrats such as Gavito of Way to Win say it is important to defend her aggressively across all media platforms.“The anti-Maga coalition is bigger than Maga,” she said, referring to Trump’s “Make America great again” movement. “We have proven that for the last three cycles. They have lost consistently. We can prove it again. But that requires a full-throated response on every platform available that shuts down people who are afraid of strong women.” More