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      Assured Kamala Harris cuts a transformed figure in New Orleans – and carefully avoids any mention of Biden’s fitness for office

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      The ideal understudy is talented but inconspicuous, prepared at all times to step into the top role and yet content to never do so.In New Orleans, at the 30th annual Essence Festival of Culture, gone was the Kamala Harris of the drab brown, chair-matching suit and the halting, technical commentary about American policy needs. That was the Harris who spoke here in 2019, then a Democratic presidential primary contender trailed by fewer than 10 reporters.Instead, on Saturday, Harris – dressed in a bright teal suit and tailed by a press contingent which had expanded to more than four times its previous size – spoke to a standing-room-only crowd in a room equipped to seat more than 500 people.In what was billed as an on-stage conversation with Essence CEO Caroline Wanga, Harris confidently offered a blend of standard campaign-season talk – a recitation of the Biden-Harris administration’s major policy accomplishments with dire warnings about the dangers posed by a possible second Trump term and the critical importance of the choice that voters will face in just 122 days – blended with the language of women’s empowerment.To say that Harris assiduously avoided any mention of recent questions about Biden’s fitness for office would be an overstatement, and Wanga did not ask or seemingly make room for the issue gripping much of Washington. In the past week, the fallout of the president’s shaky debate performance on 27 June has manifested in calls for him to drop out of the race, with a handful of Democratic lawmakers joining the chorus. Many of those same critics are now hoping Harris might be the new nominee in November.For those inclined to read tea leaves, there may well have been more there in New Orleans. Harris encouraged the audience to embrace ambition and the difficulty of cutting new, and even history-making, paths.“I beseech you, don’t you ever hear something can’t be done,’ Harris said. “People in your life will tell you, though, it’s not your time. It’s not your turn. Nobody like you has done it before. Don’t you ever listen to that.“I like to say, ‘I eat no for breakfast,’” she said.View image in fullscreenHarris had been introduced as a woman “doing the heavy lifting”, “smart”, “tough”, and a “proven fighter for the backbone of this country”. Then she entered and exited to the sound of a Beyoncé-Kendrick Lamar collaboration, Freedom, at the point where Beyonce sings, “Singin’, freedom, freedom, Where are you? … Hey! I’ma keep running.”While Biden has insisted he will remain in the race amid what he has described as a subset of Washington insiders and op-ed writers insisting he should step aside, Harris’s poll numbers have improved and her public speeches and commentary – once a much maligned element of her time on the national political stage – have become more assertive and assured.Harris has spent recent months crisscrossing the country speaking about threats to reproductive rights, maternal mortality, economic opportunity and inclusion. And in New Orleans, Harris described the election as more important than “any in your lifetime”, adding that democracy may not survive a second Trump term. Trump, she said, was a convicted felon whom the supreme court had just granted immunity from prosecution.Harris also spoke about an array of the administration’s efforts to resolve the problems that vex the lives of Americans, including many in the room: a cap on the price of insulin paid by those enrolled in Medicare; expanded access to public health insurance for low- to moderate-income women after giving birth, the period in which many fatal complications arise; and billions in student loan debt forgiven. When Harris called for those who had seen some of their student debt forgiven, hundreds of hands went up in the room.“You got that because you voted in 2020,” Harris told the audience.View image in fullscreenAnd, she said, there was work that remained such as reducing the cost of childcare for all Americans to no more than 7% of household income, and work on the cusp of being done. This included the administration’s efforts to remove medical debt from the calculus that generated credit scores and made it hard for some Americans to rent an apartment or purchase a car.Leshelle Henderson, a nurse practitioner from Cleveland providing family medicine and psychiatric care, said she was trying to serve her community and a country in the midst of a mental health crisis. And she was working double time to pay off hundreds of thousands in student loans, none of which had been forgiven. She came to Essence Fest for fun but wanted to hear the vice-president speak about student loan forgiveness and what a second Biden-Harris administration would do for the economic fortunes of Black men and women.That was before the event.“I liked what I heard,” Henderson said. “I did, but want to hear more. Honestly, I think what we heard tonight is the next president of the United States. Isn’t that something?” More

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      Biden defends his campaign as swing-state Democrat calls for him to exit race – as it happened

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      Democrats are divided after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance and subsequent gaffes that have thrown into question the viability of the campaign. Biden remained defiant, even as Democrats in Congress and donors joined a growing chorus calling for the president to step aside.
      Congressional Democrats are to hold an emergency Sunday meeting to discuss Joe Biden’s tottering presidential candidacy after a primetime television interview failed to dispel doubts triggered by last week’s debate fiasco. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrats’ leader in the House of Representatives, scheduled the meeting for Sunday even as Biden struck a defiant posture in Friday’s interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
      Gavin Newsom, the California governor who has been widely discussed as a potential successor to Biden, is campaigning for the president today in Pennsylvania’s Bucks county, a key political battleground.The governor cast the election as one that is “about liberalism versus illiberalism”, highlighting the threats Trump poses to American democracy, and emphasizing Biden’s economic record.
      Representative Angie Craig, a Democrat of Minnesota, is among the latest to call on Biden to exit the presidential race. Craig represents a swing district in suburban Minneapolis-St Paul. Some Democrats are concerned that Biden’s flailing candidacy could drag down House and Senate candidates down-ballot.
      Donald Trump broke his silence on the doubts swirling around Joe Biden’s candidacy following last month’s debate debacle with a characteristically mocking social post urging Biden to stay in the race.
      Biden is now leading Trump in Michigan and Wisconsin, according to the latest Bloomberg/Morning Consult tracking poll of battleground states. In Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, the president is within the poll’s statistical margin of error.
      What happens if Biden does decide to step away? Time is short to make a change.The Democratic National Committee announced weeks ago that it would hold a virtual roll call for a formal nomination before the party’s national convention, which begins on 19 August. Kamala Harris is emerging as the favourite to replace Biden if he were to withdraw, although governors Gavin Newsom of California and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan remain viable alternatives.A messy, divisive convention – where protests over the war in Gaza are already expected – would only reinforce the suspicion that, with American democracy hanging by a thread, the Democratic party is failing to meet the moment.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “American democracy and the force of the conservative movement that we’re seeing in the supreme court lacks a coherent, energetic counterpoint. The Democratic party is simply not up for the fight. The conservatives are marching ahead and the Democrats are flailing.”Jacobs added: “It’s reasonable to ask, why did it come to this with regards to Biden? Why weren’t party leaders intervening a year and a half ago to usher off Biden to bring in genuine competition? Instead, they leave it for a debate, which realistic leaders could anticipate how it was going to turn out.“The fact that Trump was lying and bullying was known going in and Biden seemed so incapable of responding and so surprised by it. It was a very powerful signal of his infirmity but also of the infirmity [of the] party in moving past him. Joe Biden almost certainly can’t win and the party seems incapable of processing that and taking action.”Before her public appearance in New Orleans tonight, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, has been drawing comparisons between the Republicans and the Democrats on reproductive health.Harris will be speaking at the Essence festival in New Orleans on Saturday evening and will be interviewed by Caroline Wanga, its chief executive and president.The festival says of the talk: “Black Women running things is our all-time favorite genre. You are cordially invited to witness a spirited conversation with Vice-President Kamala Harris.”In recent days, Harris has appeared to be much more on Trump’s mind, according to a leaked video clip that emerged earlier this week in which he talked about Biden being “broken down” and “quitting the race”.“He just quit, you know – he’s quitting the race,” Trump said in the clip obtained by the Daily Beast. “I got him out of the – and that means we have Kamala.”He went on to say Harris would be stronger than Biden, but that Harris was “also bad”. According to a report in Axios on Saturday citing unnamed Trump advisers, the ex-president would bombard Harris with attack ads if she looked to be becoming the nominee.It shows there is concern among Trump’s team, however, that a Harris emergence could get more attention than what looks like a coronation for Trump at the GOP convention in Milwaukee in mid-July, while the Democrats’ convention in Chicago is a month later with a likely bigger potential audience.The Guardian’s Sam Levin recently wrote about the Kamala Harris insiders rallying behind the vice-president to replace Biden if he were to bow out.With Project 2025, Donald Trump has promised to give rightwing evangelical Christians what they want – and more, writes Guardian opinions columnist and former labor secretary Robert Reich:
      Project 2025 is nothing short of a 900-page blueprint for guiding Donald Trump’s second term of office if he’s re-elected.
      After the Heritage Foundation unveiled Project 2025 in April last year, when Trump was seeking the Republican nomination, he had no problem with it.
      But now that the nation is turning its attention to the general election, Trump doesn’t want Project 2025 to draw attention. Its extremism is likely to turn off independents and moderates.
      So Trump is now claiming he has “no idea who is behind” Project 2025.
      This is another in a long line of Trump lies.
      The Project 2025 playbook was written by more than 20 officials who Trump himself appointed during his first term. If he has “no idea” who they are, he’s showing an alarming cognitive decline.
      One of the leaders of Project 2025 is Russ Vought. Vought was Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, a key position in the White House. Vought is also drafting Trump’s 2024 GOP platform.
      Another Project 2025 leader is John McEntee, another of Trump’s top White House aides. (McEntee recently went viral in a video in which he claimed he gives counterfeit money to homeless people to get them arrested.)
      Even the national press secretary for Trump’s campaign appears in the Project 2025 recruitment video.
      Trump says he “knows nothing” about Project 2025. And he says he “disagrees” with it.
      As the former chair of the Republican party Michael Steele put it: “Ok, let’s all play with Stupid for minute … so exactly how do you ‘disagree’ with something you ‘know nothing about’ or ‘have no idea’ who is behind, saying or doing the thing you disagree with?”
      America’s allies are worried that Joe Biden won’t be able to beat Donald Trump – and fear the consequences, Politico reports.These allies worry that a Trump victory would damage Nato and undermine the war effort in Ukraine. The magazine reports:
      POLITICO spoke with 20 people connected to NATO or the alliance’s upcoming summit over the past month and heard that many allies already had quiet reservations about putting their trust in Biden well before the debate. Now, Biden must convince his counterparts that he’s not only up for the fight but will overcome a political crisis to stay in it.
      “It doesn’t take a genius to see that the president is old,” said one official from a European NATO country. “We’re not sure that, even if he wins, he can survive four years more.”
      Others went further. “It was painful to watch, let’s be honest,” an EU official said of the debate. “We all want Biden to have a second term to avoid dealing with Trump again, but this isn’t really reassuring.”
      Speaking to POLITICO before the UK’s change of government on Thursday, a UK minister put it most bluntly: “Can the Democrat donors please get their act together and get Biden retired, so we have some chance of a candidate credible for voters?”
      The Biden campaign has dismissed Trump’s attempts to distance himself from Project 2025, the extreme second-term agenda developed by Trump’s close allies.“We can always rely on Donald Trump for one thing: to lie to the American people in pursuit of power. We saw that on the debate stage when he set a record. He lied about the economy, about his role in the January 6 insurrection, and about disrespecting our heroic servicemembers,” Biden said in a statement.“Donald Trump is lying again now. He’s trying to hide his connections to his allies’ extreme Project 2025 agenda. The only problem? It was written for him, by those closest to him. Project 2025 should scare every single American. It would give Trump limitless power over our daily lives and let him use the presidency to enact ‘revenge’ on his enemies, ban abortion nationwide and punish women who have an abortion, and gut the checks and balances that make America the greatest democracy in the world. It’s extreme and dangerous.”This evening, Kamala Harris is scheduled to speak in a moderated discussion at the Essence festival of culture in New Orleans.The vice-president has drawn extra attention in recent days amid calls for Joe Biden to step aside. Harris could be a natural successor to Biden should he drop out of the race.As my colleague, Guardian tech editor Blake Montgomery wrote, Harris’s base of supporters have been sharing memes about her with renewed enthusiasm:
      Supercuts of her set to RuPaul’s Call Me Mother. Threads of her “funniest Veep moments”. Collages of jokes about her over a green album cover a la Charli xcx’s Brat. Numerous riffs on a comment she made about a coconut tree. Previous progressive snark about Harris has cast her either as an incompetent sidekick a la HBO’s Veep or as an anti-progressive cop, a reference to her years as California’s top law enforcement official. But as rumors circle about discussions of Biden dropping out of the presidential race, social media commentary on the nation’s second-in-command has grown more positive – even if ironically so.
      Biden’s campaign has defended its choice to provide a radio host with questions for the president prior to an interview.“It’s not at all an uncommon practice for interviewees to share topics they would prefer,” Biden campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt said in a statement. But campaign officials “do not condition interviews on acceptance of these questions”, she added.On Saturday morning, Andrea Lawful-Sanders, host of The Source on WURD in Philadelphia, told CNN she had received questions from the campaign for approval prior to her interview with the president. “I got several questions – eight of them,” she said. “And the four that were chosen were the ones that I approved.”Biden’s campaign has attracted heavy criticism in recent days for limiting and curating the president’s unscripted public appearances. Critics have said this has obscured Biden’s tendency to slip up.Joe Biden joined a biweekly meeting with the campaign’s co-chairs this morning, according to the White House, “to thank them and discuss their shared commitment to winning the 2024 race in the face of the dire threat Donald Trump poses”.Michigan governor Getchen Whitmer, whose name has been floated as a possible successor to Biden, as well as close Biden ally James Clyburn, a representative of South Carolina, and Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison were in attendance.Rebecca Solnit on Biden and Trump: The media is once again repeating the mistakes of 2016The Guardian opinions columnist writes:
      I am not usually one to offer diagnoses of people I’ve never met, but it does seem like the pundit class of the American media is suffering from severe memory loss. Because they’re doing exactly what they did in the 2016 presidential race – providing wildly asymmetrical and inflammatory coverage of the one candidate running against Donald J Trump.
      They have become a stampeding herd producing an avalanche of stories suggesting Biden is unfit, will lose, and should go away, at a point in the campaign in which replacing him would likely be somewhere between extremely difficult and utterly catastrophic. They do this while ignoring something every scholar and critic of journalism knows well and every journalist should. As Nikole Hannah-Jones put it: “As media we consistently proclaim that we are just reporting the news when in fact we are driving it. What we cover, how we cover it, determines often what Americans think is important and how they perceive these issues yet we keep pretending it’s not so.” They are not reporting that he is a loser; they are making him one.
      Joe Biden is now leading Trump in Michigan and Wisconsin, according to the latest Bloomberg/Morning Consult tracking poll of battleground states. In Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, the president is within the poll’s statistical margin of error.Overall, Biden is trailing Trump by just 2 percentage points in key swing states, despite voters’ misgivings about the president’s performance.The numbers paint a complicated picture and highlight Democrats’ difficult position after Biden’s poor performance at the presidential debate and swirling speculation about his stamina and fitness to serve another term. About a third of Democrats surveyed in the poll, which was conducted four days after the debate, said Biden should drop out of the race.But the poll also placed Biden in his strongest position yet, showing a narrowing gap between him and Trump and bolstering the case for his narrow path to victory.Donald Trump is trying to claim he has “nothing to do” with Project 2025, a political roadmap created by people close to him for his potential second term.The project, which is led by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank, seeks to crack down on various issues including immigration, reproductive rights, environmental protections and LGBTQ+ rights. It also aims to replace federal employees with Trump loyalists across the government.Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social network: “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”The former president’s post came a day after the Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, said the US was in the midst of a “second American revolution” that can be bloodless “if the left allows it to be”. He made the comments on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, adding that Republicans are “in the process of taking this country back”.In response to Trump’s post, several critics were quick to point out that it appears unlikely that he is unaware of Project 2025, given that many individuals involved in the project are his closest allies.“Many people involved in Project 2025 are close to Trump world & have served in his previous admin,” CNN’s Alayna Treene said.Economist and Guardian columnist Robert Reich wrote: “Don’t be fooled. The playbook is written by more than 20 officials Trump appointed in his first term. It is the clearest vision we have of a 2nd Trump presidency.”Joe Biden’s doctor met with a leading Washington DC neurologist at the White House this year, it was reported on Saturday.The report came after Biden on Friday ruled out taking an independent cognitive test and releasing its findings publicly, in an interview with ABC News arranged following his disastrous performance in last week’s presidential TV debate with Donald Trump.According to White House visitor logs reviewed by the New York Post, Dr Kevin Cannard, a Parkinson’s disease expert at Walter Reed medical center, met with Dr Kevin O’Connor, a doctor of osteopathic medicine who has treated the president for years.The visit took place at the White House residence clinic on 17 January. Cannard has visited the White House eight times since August 2023. On seven of those visits, most recently in late March, he met with Megan Nasworthy, a liaison between Walter Reed and the White House.Biden has consistently rejected taking any cognitive test, including in August 2020 when he dismissed a reporter’s question with: “Why the hell would I take a test?” He has continued to dismiss the need for one and, according to aides, has not received one during his three annual physical exams during his term in the White House.The Washington Post on Saturday reported a White House aide saying that O’Connor, who has been Biden’s doctor since 2009, has never recommended that Biden take a cognitive test.Donald Trump has broken his silence on the doubts swirling around Joe Biden’s candidacy following last month’s debate debacle with a characteristically mocking social post urging him to stay in the race.“Crooked Joe Biden should ignore his many critics and move forward, with alacrity and strength, with his powerful and far reaching campaign,” Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, wrote on his Truth Social site nine days days after the calamitous Atlanta debate that has left the president’s re-election campaign mired in crisis.Mercilessly trolling the fears of worried Democrats, the post continued: “He should be sharp, precise, and energetic, just like he was in The Debate, in selling his policies of Open Borders (where millions of people, including record numbers of Terrorists, are allowed to enter our Country, from prisons and mental institutions, totally unchecked and unvetted!), to Ending Social Security, Men playing in Women’s sports, High Taxes, High Interest Rates, encouraging a Woke Military, Uncontrollable Inflation, Record Setting Crime, Only Electric Vehicles, Subservience to China and other Countries, Endless Wars, putting America Last, losing our Dollar Based Standard, and so much more.“Yes, Sleepy Joe should continue his campaign of American Destruction and, MAKE CHINA GREAT AGAIN!”The gleeful post was Trump’s first explicitly open comment on the saga that has thrown the Democrats into turmoil, with the exception of a video that emerged this week in which the former president appeared to predict Biden was about to withdraw in favour of Vice-President Kamala Harris, whom he disparaged in profane terms.It was unclear whether Trump’s sarcasm-laden post expressing joy at a rival’s misfortune would have the blessing of his campaign strategists amid post-debate polling evidence suggesting that Harris would fare better than Biden in a match-up against the Republican candidate, which in turn fuelled a belief that the GOP would prefer a contest against the sitting president.Fretting Democrats may see Trump’s mockery as further evidence of Biden’s comparative weakness and push harder for him to step aside.In a Truth Social post this week, Trump referred to the vice-president as “laffin’ Kamala Harris” – in reference to her supposed personal trait of loud public laughter – while in a separate campaign statement he referred to her as Biden’s “cackling copilot”. 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      David Lammy faces a world in turmoil: five key concerns for foreign secretary

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      UkraineMore than two years after Russia invaded Ukraine, the conflict drags on. Ukrainian forces are depleted and they need foreign weapons. Support for Ukraine crosses most party lines in Europe, but if Donald Trump wins the US election and cuts or limits the flow of arms, Europe may struggle to fill the gap. Lammy will want to shore up public support, bolster European collaboration, and map out what resources the continent can collectively offer Ukraine if the US steps back.GazaLabour’s stance on Gaza cost it several seats, and Lammy will face scrutiny on issues including arms sales to Israel. Labour is committed to recognising Palestinian statehood “as a contribution to a renewed peace process which results in a two-state solution”, but has not given a timeline. Starmer is unlikely to want to risk alienating the Biden administration by making unilateral moves in the run-up to the election.US presidential electionView image in fullscreenOne of the UK’s main diplomatic roles has been as Washington’s ally in forums like the UN, and an interlocutor between the US and Europe. But US politics are in turmoil, with Joe Biden’s bid for a second term hanging in the balance. Lammy will have to prepare for the possibility of working with a Trump administration.EuropeStarmer say he wants to keep Brexit out of politics but his commitment to growth means forming an economic relationship with the UK’s biggest trading partner. Ties to Europe will be particularly important if Trump win. A meeting of the European Political Community, held at Blenheim Palace later this month, will be a key first step to building a shared vision for the continent.Climate changeDespite heavy criticism for watering down commitments to clean energy, Labour has laid out ambitious plans to lead global efforts on climate change, building on British diplomatic reach and technological expertise. The potential loss of progressive allies in France or the US could make a British role important globally. But as the impact of a warming world become increasingly evident, Labour may open itself up to charges of hypocrisy if domestic policies don’t measure up. More

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      Biden’s doctor reportedly met with top neurologist at White House

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      Joe Biden’s doctor met with a leading Washington neurologist at the White House this year, it was reported on Saturday.The report came after Biden on Friday ruled out taking an independent cognitive test and releasing its findings publicly, in an interview with ABC News arranged following his disastrous performance in last week’s presidential TV debate with Donald Trump.According White House visitor logs reviewed by the New York Post, Dr Kevin Cannard, a Parkinson’s disease expert at Walter Reed medical center, met with Dr Kevin O’Connor, a doctor of osteopathic medicine who has treated the president for years.The visit took place at the White House residence clinic on 17 January. Cannard has visited the White House house eight times since August 2023. On seven of those visits, most recently in late March, he met with Megan Nasworthy, a liaison between Walter Reed and the White House.Biden has consistently rejected taking any cognitive test, including in August 2020 when he dismissed a reporter’s question with: “Why the hell would I take a test?” He has continued to dismiss the need for one and, according to aides, has not received one during his three annual physical exams during his term in the White House.The Washington Post on Saturday reported a White House aide saying that O’Connor, who has been Biden’s doctor since 2009, has never recommended that Biden take a cognitive test.O’Connor has said that his most important job is to offer Biden an affirmative “Good morning, Mr President” – to get Biden off the on the right track each day.During Biden’s ABC News interview on Friday, the anchor George Stephanopoulos, who was communications director in the Clinton White House, asked Biden if had taken specific tests for cognitive capability. “No one said I had to … they said I’m good,” Biden replied.Later in the broadcast, Biden was asked if he would do an independent neurological and cognitive exam and release the results. “I get a cognitive test every day,” Biden said. “Everything I do – you know, not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world.”Pressed on the issue, he said: “I’ve already done it.”Questions about Biden’s mental state continued on Saturday when the two radio hosts who interviewed him briefly on Thursday said that the Biden campaign had given them a list of approved questions. Wisconsin radio host Earl Ingram said that Biden aides had sent him a list of four questions in advance, about which there was no negotiation.“They gave me the exact questions to ask,” Ingram told the Associated Press. “There was no back and forth.”Philadelphia civic radio host Andrea Lawful-Sanders told CNN she had received a list of eight questions, from which she approved four. Both interviews had been scheduled to restore Biden’s credibility following his meandering debate performance with Donald Trump a week earlier.Biden campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt said it is “not at all an uncommon practice for interviewees” and that acceptance of the questions was not a prerequisite for an interview to go ahead. However, both interviews had been structured for Biden to tout his achievements for Black voters.On Saturday, Trump sarcastically called on Biden to “ignore his many critics and move forward, with alacrity and strength, with his powerful and far reaching campaign”. Last week, Trump’s campaign pre-emptively launched attack ads against vice-president Kamala Harris, who is polling better in a Trump match-up than the president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEarlier this year, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, defended O’Connor’s decision not to administer a cognitive test when the issue came up following a report by the special counsel Robert Hur into classified documents found at Biden’s Delaware home that concluded Biden was a “well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory”.At that time, as now, the White House pushed back, accusing Hur of being part of a partisan smear campaign. “I’m well-meaning, and I’m elderly, and I know what I’m doing,” Biden said at a news conference. “My memory is fine.”But the eight visits Kevin Cannard has made to the White House over the past 11 months are certain to raise further questions about the 81-year-old president’s mental abilities in the wake of his debate with Donald Trump and subsequent verbal mistakes, including during a radio interview on Thursday when he said he was “proud” to be the “first Black woman to serve with a Black president”.Cannard has served as the “neurology specialist supporting the White House medical unit” since 2012 and published academic papers including one last year in the Parkinsonism & Related Disorders journal that focused on the “early stage” of the brain degenerative disorder.Ronny Jackson, a Republican congressman in Texas who was White House doctor for Barack Obama and Trump, has previously called for Biden to undergo a cognitive exam and accused O’Connor and Biden’s family of trying to “cover up” problems with Biden’s mental abilities.Jackson told the New York Post he believed that O’Connor and Biden “have led the cover up”.“Kevin O’Connor is like a son to Jill Biden – she loves him,” Jackson continued, adding that ‘they knew they could trust Kevin to say and do anything that needed to be said or done”.Last week, the White House initially denied but later confirmed that Biden had seen a doctor since the debate. It has said that the president’s performance was affected, variously, by a cold, over-preparation and jet-lag. Biden has said simply: “I screwed up.” More

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      Top Democrats plan crisis meeting despite Biden’s vow to fight on

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      Congressional Democrats are to hold an emergency weekend meeting to discuss Joe Biden’s tottering presidential candidacy, after a primetime television interview failed to dispel doubts triggered by last week’s debate fiasco.Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrats’ leader in the House of Representatives, scheduled the virtual meeting for Sunday with ranking committee members, according to multiple reports, even as Biden struck a defiant posture in Friday’s interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.In a 22-minute interview from a school library in Wisconsin, aired in full, the president brushed off his miserable debate display as “a bad night” and insisted he would only withdraw his candidacy if the “Lord almighty” ordered it.But his posture appeared only to reinforce the views of those Democrats who had already publicly urged him to quit the race, while others were said to be privately infuriated by his seemingly insouciant attitude to the prospect of defeat at the hands of Donald Trump in November’s election.On Saturday, Congresswoman Angie Craig of Minnesota became the fifth House member to publicly urge Biden to stand aside. Four others had done so before Friday’s interview.“Given what I saw and heard from the president during last week’s debate in Atlanta, coupled with the lack of a forceful response from [him] following [it], I do not believe [Biden] can effectively campaign and win against Donald Trump,” she said.Asked by Stephanopoulos how he would feel if he had to turn the presidency back to an opponent he and his party loathe, the president said: “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do – that’s what this is about.”The response seemed to minimise the consequences of handing over power to a rival who tried to overturn the results of the 2020, incited a mob to attack the US Capitol and vowed to seek “retribution” on his opponents if he won again, a threat that has unnerved many Democrats.The convening of Democratic House members by Jeffries would follow a similar move even before Friday’s interview by Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, who called on fellow senators from his party to meet to discuss Biden’s candidacy. Warner has been reported to be leading an effort by Senate Democrats urging the president to stand aside.Democrats who had already called publicly for an end to his candidacy reiterated the sentiment after Friday evening’s broadcast of the interview, in which Biden projected greater assuredness than in the 27 June debate with Trump, yet affected obliviousness to concerns over his mental acuity or loss of support in the polls.Lloyd Doggett, a veteran Texas Democrat who had been the first congressman to call for Biden to withdraw last Tuesday, said the interview only confirmed his view.“The need for him to step aside is more urgent tonight than when I first called for it on Tuesday,” he told CNN.View image in fullscreenHe added: “[Biden] does not want his legacy to be that he’s the one who turned over our country to a tyrant.”Mike Quigley, an Illinois congressman who was the fourth to urge the president to stand aside – after Doggett, Raúl Grijalva of Arizona and Seth Moulton of Massachusetts – called aspects of the interview “disturbing”, adding that it showed “the president of the United States doesn’t have the vigour necessary to overcome the deficit here”.Addressing Biden’s response to a putative Trump re-election, he told CNN: “He felt as long as he gave it his best effort, that’s all that really matters. With the greatest respect: no.”Julián Castro, a former Democratic presidential hopeful and a member of Barack Obama’s cabinet, acknowledged to MSNBC that Biden had been “steadier” than in his debate performance but was in “denial about the decline that people can clearly see”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAddressing Biden’s comments on a possible second Trump presidency, Castro said: “I think the most chilling was when Stephanopoulos asked him, ‘Well, what if you lose to [former President Trump,] then how are you gonna feel?’ and President Biden said, ‘Well, as long as I gave it my all,’ that, basically, that he would feel OK.”“That’s not good enough for the American people. That’s not good enough with the stakes of Donald Trump winning.”Other Democrats criticised Biden’s resistance to the idea of taking a cognitive test. He dismissed the suggestion out of hand by telling Stephanopoulos: “I take a cognitive test every day”, referring to the daily work of the presidency and running for re-election.“I found the answer about taking a cognitive test every day to be unsettling and not particularly convincing, so I will be watching closely every day to see how he is doing, especially in spontaneous situations,” Representative Judy Chu of California told Politico.Tim Ryan, a former representative from Ohio – who has also urged a Biden withdrawal – echoed that sentiment, telling the same network: “I think there was a level of him being out of touch with reality on the ground.”He also said: “I don’t think he moved the needle at all. I don’t think he energised anybody. I’m worried, like I think a lot of people are, that he is just not the person to be able to get this done for us.”Several Biden loyalists, including Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, a chairman of his campaign, and John Fetterman, a senator from Pennsylvania, voiced their continued support. But even among supporters there were doubts.Ro Khanna, a California congressman and Biden surrogate, issued a statement saying he expected the president to do more to show he has vigour to fight and win the election and “that requires more than one interview.”“I expect complete transparency from the White House about this issue and a willingness to answer many legitimate questions from the media and voters about his capabilities,” Khanna said.Gavin Newsom, the California governor who has been widely discussed as a potential successor to Biden, was campaigning on Saturday for the president in Pennsylvania’s Bucks county.Kamala Harris, the vice-president, was due to make a public appearance at the Essence culture festival in New Orleans the same day. More

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      ‘Stealing with both hands’: veteran reporter Joe Conason details the right wing’s graft

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      “Trump is the apotheosis of this moral degeneration of conservatism because he’s out there stealing with both hands and it’s right in your face.”So said Joe Conason, veteran reporter and author of a lacerating new book, The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.He spoke on Monday, the same day the US supreme court ruled that presidents are immune from prosecution for official acts – even as Donald Trump, the former president and presumptive Republican nominee, faces 44 federal and 10 state criminal charges to go with 34 guilty verdicts handed down in New York.“Nixon said, ‘I am not a crook.’ Could Trump really say ‘I’m not a crook’ and have anyone believe him? Nobody would believe that, including his own followers. They know that he’s out to scam money for himself, and they don’t seem to mind.“Take the grifting around ‘stop the steal’, post-election, 2020-21. Led by Trump’s son in law [Jared Kushner], they knew they were going to do it before the election was even over. ‘We’re going to keep our fundraising operation intact.’ And they booked a quarter of a billion dollars in a couple of months. It was amazing. One of the biggest rip-offs ever.”On the page, Conason charts 75 years of rightwing rip-off merchants attacking liberals and making money. Beginning with the supposedly anti-communist crusade of the lawyer Roy Cohn in the mid-1950s, proceeding through the rise of the Moral Majority, the attempt to bring down Bill Clinton and the brief age of the Tea Party, he ends with Cohn’s protege, Trump, poised to retake power.To Conason, the key to the story is not how much money such grifters raise but where that money comes from: those grifters’ own supporters.As Conason spoke, a prominent rightwing figure was reporting to a Connecticut prison.“The media will tell you over and over again, ‘Steve Bannon is going to jail,’ or he’s fighting to stay out of jail. And it has to do with the fact he defied a subpoena from Congress [over the January 6 Capitol attack].“But he’s also facing state charges. And the state charges are very similar to the charges for which he was pardoned by President Trump. And what the media don’t tell you, and they should be telling you, is that three other people have gone to prison for those same charges already.“Bannon’s three co-conspirators in the We Build the Wall scam” – keeping donations supposed to support Trump’s border policies – “two of them pleaded guilty and apologized to the court and begged the court for mercy, because they admitted they ripped off millions of dollars.“Not from liberals. They didn’t own the liberals. They owned the conservatives. They stole this money from their own constituency. And Bannon, having promised that he would not take any money, did the same thing. [He has pleaded not guilty.] The only reason he didn’t go to prison when the other three did was because Trump pardoned him.“It signifies the level of impunity that has developed. It’s not just that their movement is riddled with this kind of scam and cynicism. It’s that you can get away with it.”It’s fair to say Conason’s seventh book seems well timed. With a laugh, he said: “People who haven’t called me for years from MSNBC are clamoring to have me on their shows.”Now 70, he has been a leading liberal voice since his years at the Village Voice, long before MSNBC was born. Asked to name prominent conservatives unstained by grift and swindle, he points to the Never Trumpers, “a bunch who I was once very critical of and vice versa.“Bill Kristol is one. Stuart Stevens’ book, It Was All A Lie, is a brilliant distillation of what went wrong with the Republican party, in certain ways a good companion to my book.“And obviously there’s Liz Cheney, somebody who I did not agree with about pretty much anything, and there’s Adam Kinzinger, someone I admire very much.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBoth Republicans lost their seats in Congress.Conason said: “You know they’re good people because they’ve made really big sacrifices to take a stand against this dishonesty and this threat to constitutional order. They’ve lost friends, they’ve lost family. And they stand under threat …“There’s plenty of time to go back and have whatever recriminations or debates or disputes you want. But right now, we need everybody. And the other thing is, I find a lot of them quite likable. Like, Conway is a funny story.”George Conway, a lawyer turned Never Trump pundit, was until recently married to Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager in 2016 and White House aide.Conason “exposed Conway on the front page of the [New York] Observer when he was acting as a secret lawyer for [Clinton accuser] Paula Jones in 1998. And I believe I embarrassed him because he was a lawyer at a Democratic law firm in New York but they didn’t know he was secretly working to take down Bill Clinton.“And I put a story about that on the front page of the Observer, and it ended up becoming a story in the New York Times. And I pursued him, and finally got him to call me back, and he did so very forcefully, he was angry.“And then, flash forward 25 years and I’ve finished The Longest Con. And I’m thinking, ‘Well, I need a foreword and the best thing would be a Never Trump conservative,’ because the book rarely quotes liberals or Democrats. Mostly, I’m trying to get conservatives to talk about what’s wrong with conservatism.“And my wife said, ‘Well, why don’t you get George Conway? He’s so funny.’ And I said, ‘Don’t you remember? He hates me.’ So anyway, I finally got him to come and have a drink. And we got along famously, and … he’s been a great supporter of this project. It’s really been fun.”The Longest Con is published in the US by St Martin’s Press More

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      Democrats in disarray as Trump immunity ruling raises stakes

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      “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.” So wrote the supreme court justice Sonia Sotomayor in a minority opinion this week. She was far from alone in the view that, with Donald Trump threatening an “imperial presidency”, American democracy is at a moment of maximum peril.Millions are pinning their hopes on the Democratic party as the last wall of defence. Surely, they believed, Democrats would field their best and brightest led by a dynamic presidential candidate and demagogue slayer. Instead the party is offering 81-year-old Joe Biden and an internal civil war.Biden’s career-worst debate performance against Trump last month has triggered acrimony, angst and panic among Democrats just four months from election day. There are growing calls for oldest president in US history to step aside in favour of Vice-President Kamala Harris – or someone else. But Biden has so far dug in and vowed to fight on.It would be a hugely consequential decision for any party at any moment, but the one thing that Democrats agree on is the stakes are uniquely high. America’s highest court has shifted right, thanks to three Trump appointees, and could indulge his authoritarian impulses should he be elected. A Trump victory would also have dramatic implications for Ukraine and other US allies.“American democracy is facing a category 5 disaster here,” said Charlie Sykes, a conservative political commentator and Trump critic. “Not just the election but the court. Unfortunately the Democratic party feels like it’s paralysed and refusing to acknowledge reality.”Debate viewers were shocked because Democrats had created an alternate reality bubble, Sykes added. “It reminds me a little bit of what what the Republican bubble felt like a few years ago where people will say one thing in private but they won’t say it in public. In private people know that they have a real problem with Joe Biden, that it was a disaster, that it might not get better, but they’re unwilling to say that in public and right now that’s an untenable solution.”America celebrated its 248th birthday this week with its customary barbecues, fireworks and flag-waving, but its democracy has been ailing for some time. The Watergate scandal, which led to Richard Nixon’s resignation, and the Ronald Reagan era helped sow distrust in government, while the the 2008 financial crisis fuelled a sense that the system was failing to deliver.View image in fullscreenThe supreme court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 opened the floodgates for special interests to pour money into elections. Republicans have mounted voter suppression efforts. Gerrymandering, the process whereby a party redraws district boundaries for electoral advantage, has fuelled polarisation and often means the loudest and most extreme voices are rewarded in party primaries.Structural flaws have been brutally exposed. The Senate, where states have an equal voice irrespective of their population size, has become unrepresentative and calcified by procedural rules such as the filibuster. Republican presidential candidates have won the national popular vote only once in the past 36 years, yet both George W Bush and Trump gained the White House via the electoral college.That means five of the nine supreme court justices were appointed by a president who lost the popular vote. Trust in the court is now an all-time low. Along with corruption scandals, the justices have defied public opinion with decisions such as the overturning of Roe v Wade, a precedented that enshrined the constitutional right to abortion.In the past two weeks, the court’s rightwing majority delivered a big blow to the regulatory powers of federal agencies and ruled that officials can accept cash or gifts from people they have assisted: they only count as bribes if given before the favour. Then, most consequentially of all, came its decision to expand presidential power.In a 6-3 decision, the court said former presidents have absolute immunity from investigation or prosecution for official acts that fall within their core functions. They are also presumptively entitled to immunity for all official acts. They do not enjoy immunity for private actions.The ruling was a major victory for Trump, who stands accused of orchestrating the deadly January 2021 insurrection but will now almost certainly not face trial in Washington ahead of the election in November. Sentencing for Trump’s hush money convictions was also postponed until at least September as the judge agreed to weigh the possible impact of the decision.The dissenting opinion, written by Sotomayor, was scathing as she considered what a president can now do. “Orders the navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold on to power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune … In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law.”There was condemnation of the ruling across the political spectrum. Sykes, author of How the Right Lost Its Mind, warned: “The supreme court decision raises the stakes because just imagine unleashing an absolutely immune Donald Trump on the nation, knowing that he can break the law at least in some respects with impunity.“That to me is the breathtaking part of it. It’s not some abstract where you’re talking about Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton or George HW Bush. It’s Donald fucking Trump that you are basically saying should be above the law.”Paul Begala, a scholar at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics and former adviser to Bill Clinton, told the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America podcast: “We had a good run. We go back to June 15, 1215: your country creates the Magna Carta. So we had 809 years of believing that no king, no president was above the law and that’s come to an end.“I’m sorry to sound cynical about it but it’s that dire because we’re about to put that power, potentially, in the hands of someone who we know from past experience will blow through any guideline, regulation and now he’s been given carte blanche by the supreme court.”View image in fullscreenTrump, 78, who is running a vengance-driven campaign and has expressed admiration for strongmen, has already quipped that he would be dictator on “day one” as president. His agenda for a second term is more extreme than the first – and better organised. The cabinet, congress and courts are likely to be more loyal and compliant, with fewer guardrails in place and fewer dissenters mounting resistance.Informed by policy documents such as the conservative thinktank Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025”, Trump has made no secret of his plans to purge the federal government of thousands of civil servants deemed disloyal, weaponise the justice department against perceived political foes, slap 10% tariffs on thousands of imported goods and open detention camps to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn this context, Biden is carrying the weight of the world on his frail shoulders: the 2024 election is a must win. But his raspy-voiced debate performance in Atlanta – losing his train of thought, stumbling over words, failing to combat Trump’s lies – revived anxieties over his fitness of office. Having identified him as the right man at the right time for the pandemic election of 2020, Democrats are now tormented by the possibility that they chose the wrong candidate for 2024.Questions swirled over whether Biden’s inner circle had been concealing his weaknesses from public scrutiny for some time. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, 84, a former speaker of the House of Representatives, wondered on the MSNBC network: “Is this an episode, or is this a condition? It’s legitimate – of both candidates.”After huddling with advisers and family members, Biden acknowledged that he nearly “fell asleep on the stage” during his poor debate showing, blaming it on a cold and jetlag, even though he had returned from Europe 12 days earlier. He told an all-staff campaign call: “I am running. I’m the nominee of the Democratic party. No one’s pushing me out. I’m not leaving.”The Biden campaign dug in its heels and dismissed the critics as “bed-wetters”, a dismissive attitude that disgusted some senior Democrats and made the situation worse. There was also frustration that Biden waited several days to do direct damage control with senior members of his own party. Some said the response had been worse than the debate performance itself.Two Democratic members of Congress called for Biden to quit the race and discontent on Capitol Hill is said to run much deeper, with many Democrats fearing that Biden could also cost the party the House and Senate. A major Democratic donor, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, also called on the president to step aside.Norman Solomon, national director of RootsAction.org, sponsor of the Step Aside Joe! campaign, said: “The train wreck around the bend is clear if he’s still the nominee, if he’s still the candidate. There’s an emergency cord that can be pulled.”View image in fullscreenSolomon warned: “The last days have brought powerful signs that the threat to democracy has become greater than ever. It’s a one-two punch. The obvious, clear evidence that Biden isn’t up to the job either to defeat Trump or to be president if he were to be re-elected.“Then this supreme court decision and it all underscores that the rather solipsistic fixations of the top of the Biden clan jeopardise democracy in a way that is a dream for the extreme right wing in the United States. The Biden performance was a gift-wrapped present to the Maga Republicans. It was everything but unwrapping the bow and taking off the wrapping paper.”The latest polls are fuelling alarm. A New York Times / Siena College survey found Trump leading Biden 49% to 43% among likely voters nationally, a three-point swing toward the Republican from before the debate. A Wall Street Journal poll found that 80% of voters think Biden is too old to run for a second term. A survey by Our Revolution, a political organising group, found that two in three progressives want Biden to suspend his campaign.But time is short to make a change. The Democratic National Committee announced weeks ago that it would hold a virtual roll call for a formal nomination before the party’s national convention, which begins on 19 August. Harris is emerging as the favourite to replace Biden if he were to withdraw, although governors Gavin Newsom of California and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan remain viable alternatives.A messy, divisive convention – where protests over the war in Gaza are already expected – would only reinforce the suspicion that, with American democracy hanging by a thread, the Democratic party is failing to meet the moment.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “American democracy and the force of the conservative movement that we’re seeing in the supreme court lacks a coherent, energetic counterpoint. The Democratic party is simply not up for the fight. The conservatives are marching ahead and the Democrats are flailing.”Jacobs added: “It’s reasonable to ask, why did it come to this with regards to Biden? Why weren’t party leaders intervening a year and a half ago to to usher off Biden to bring in genuine competition? Instead they leave it for a debate which realistic leaders could anticipate how it was going to turn out.“The fact that Trump was lying and bullying was known going in and Biden seemed so incapable of responding and so surprised by it. It was a very powerful signal of his infirmity but also of the infirmity party in moving past him. Joe Biden almost certainly can’t win, and the party seems incapable of processing that and taking action.” More

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      We should all be terrified of Trump’s Project 2025 | Robert Reich

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      “Project 2025” is nothing short of a 900-page blueprint for guiding Donald Trump’s second term of office if he’s re-elected.After the Heritage Foundation unveiled Project 2025 in April last year, when Trump was seeking the Republican nomination, he had no problem with it.But now that the nation is turning its attention to the general election, Trump doesn’t want Project 2025 to draw attention. Its extremism is likely to turn off independents and moderates.So Trump is now claiming he has “no idea who is behind” Project 2025.This is another in a long line of Trump lies.The Project 2025 playbook was written by more than 20 officials whom Trump himself appointed during his first term. If he has “no idea” who they are, he’s showing an alarming cognitive decline.One of the leaders of Project 2025 is Russ Vought. Vought was Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, a key position in the White House. Vought is also drafting Trump’s 2024 GOP platform.Another Project 2025 leader is John McEntee, another of Trump’s top White House aides. (McEntee recently went viral in a video in which he claimed he gives counterfeit money to homeless people to get them arrested.)Even the national press secretary for Trump’s campaign appears in the Project 2025 recruitment video.Trump says he “knows nothing” about Project 2025. And he says he “disagrees” with it.As the former chairman of the Republican party Michael Steele put it: “OK, let’s all play with Stupid for minute … so exactly how do you ‘disagree’ with something you ‘know nothing about’ or ‘have no idea’ who is behind, saying or doing the thing you disagree with?”Trump may also be worried that the Heritage president, Kevin Roberts, could alarm independents and moderates. On Wednesday, Roberts raised the prospect of political violence. “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” Roberts told the War Room podcast, founded by the Trump adviser Steve Bannon.But let’s be clear. The Trump campaign platform is basically Project 2025. Trump’s Make America Great Again Pac is running ads calling it “Trump’s Project 2025”.The Make America Great Again Pac also created the website TrumpProject2025.com. In case there’s any doubt that Trump and the Heritage Foundation are working in close partnership, Trump can be seen in this video praising the Heritage Foundation and saying he “needs” them to “achieve” his goals.The close relationship between Trump and the Heritage Foundation goes back years. In 2018, the Heritage Foundation bragged that Trump had implemented two-thirds of their policy recommendations in his first year – more than any other president had done for them.The goals of Project 2025 are the same goals Trump tried to achieve in his first term or has been advocating in this campaign.One key goal of Project 2025 is to purge all government agencies of anyone more loyal to the constitution than to Trump – a process Trump himself started in October 2020 when he thought he would remain in office.Trump has promised to give rightwing evangelical Christians what they want. Accordingly, Project 2025 calls for withdrawing the abortion pill mifepristone from the market, expelling trans service members from the military, banning life-saving gender affirming care for young people, ending all diversity programs, and using “school choice” to gut public education.Project 2025 also calls for eliminating “woke propaganda” from all laws and federal regulations – including the terms “sexual orientation”, “diversity, equity, and inclusion”, “gender equality”, and “reproductive rights”.Other items in the Project 2025 blueprint are precisely what Trump has called for on the campaign trail, including mass arrests and deportations of undocumented people in the United States, ending many worker protections, dropping prosecutions of far-right militias like the Proud Boys, and giving additional tax cuts to big corporations and the rich.Trump has repeatedly claimed that climate change is a “hoax”. Project 2025 calls for expanding oil drilling in the United States, shrinking the geographic footprint of national monuments, terminating clean energy incentives, and ending fossil fuel regulations.Trump has said he’d seek vengeance against those who have prosecuted him for his illegal acts. Project 2025 calls for the prosecution of district attorneys Trump doesn’t like, and the takeover of law enforcement in blue cities and states.Project 2025 is, in short, the plan to implement what Donald Trump has said he wants to do if he’s re-elected.Trump may want to distance himself from Project 2025 in order to come off less bonkers to independents and moderates, but he can’t escape it. The document embodies everything he stands for.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More