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      Black voters gather at DC hotspots to await results: ‘It’s a historic moment’

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      On Tuesday evening, Black voters milled about Washington DC as they awaited election results. Most voters had cast ballots for Kamala Harris and were excited that a Black woman might become president for the first time. It was a milestone that some didn’t believe that they would witness in their lifetimes.At a watch party at Busboys and Poets, a cultural hub and restaurant, the mood was similar to a New Year’s Eve celebration, with people listening to television pundits discuss the election and socializing with family and friends.View image in fullscreenFor Latoiya Bates, a 49-year-old Georgia resident, it was important to be among Black community on election night. Casting her ballot for Harris was an emotional moment for her. She voted with tears in her eyes and said she was excited due to Harris’s support of reproductive rights and democracy. “It’s a historic moment.”“There’s been so much change in the world,” Bates said, acknowledging the political power of Black women who she said had started a movement. “When she wins, part of her speech should be: ‘We did it. We made America great again.’”Others around the city said that they were concerned about the potential for political violence if Donald Trump loses the election, referencing the January 6 insurrection. “I don’t think that people are going quietly into the night and I also don’t think that it will be a smooth transition,” Dionna La’Fay said outside the White House at Lafayette Square. A 36-year-old Michigan resident who is moving to DC, La’Fay said that she went to the National Museum of African American History and Culture and tried to ground herself in the knowledge of Black resilience throughout the day. While she expects violence, she didn’t see it as any different than other tribulations that Black Americans have endured throughout history: “I am not afraid.”View image in fullscreenBlack voters, who account for 14% of the electorate, are expected to vote for Harris in droves. In a survey of Black Americans in all 50 states by the thinktank Black Futures Lab, 71% of respondents said that they trusted Harris and distrusted Trump, compared with 5% who said the opposite. According to a Black Voter Project survey of more than 1,000 Black Americans, Black support for Harris is at 84%, compared with 13% for Trump.The scene outside Lafayette Square in the early evening was cacophonous, with people blasting music and making speeches. One person strummed an acoustic guitar behind pro-Harris signs, while another person biked around blaring rock music as they hauled a small trailer with Trump signs behind them. Metal fencing surrounded the square in anticipation of post-election unrest.View image in fullscreenMamadou, a 31-year-old Washington DC resident from Guinea, walked around the square with friends. He said that he didn’t vote at all because “I don’t know much about that lady and I didn’t want to vote for someone I don’t know at all”. He also didn’t want to vote for Trump for fear of his draconian immigration policies. Otherwise, Mamadou said, he was supportive of Trump while he was in office, because he believes that Trump “loves the country”.Samson Meche, a 35-year-old biotech research associate, traveled to DC from San Diego to watch the election results. He had cast a mail-in ballot for Harris several weeks ago because he believes that she’s more empathetic than Trump, whom he called a “salesman”. Meche is hopeful that Harris will fight for Palestinian liberation in the future and will soon help end Israel’s war on Gaza, he said. “She’s looking out for me,” Meche said. “Since she is one of us, she’s more of the normal social status. She went from the middle class to a more educated person and she can relate to us better than someone who thinks of himself as an elite.”View image in fullscreenLater in the evening, at the Busboys and Poets watch party, Josh Johnson, a Howard alumnus, felt confident that Harris, a fellow alumna, would win. “It’s exciting to see how far she’s come,” Johnson said. He said that he cast a ballot for Harris because “I’m standing up for my rights as an American. It’s not just about me, it’s about the people I care about.”View image in fullscreenJohnson’s partner, Jackson Burnett, also voted for Harris because he supports her policies and is excited to see what she does for the country. “She’s very much for the people, and for the American population, no matter what race, gender,” Burnett said. He also wanted to be among community on election night to celebrate with everyone, Burnett added, “whether good or bad, just making sure that we come together … and figure out next steps”.“I really hope that after this election,” Johnson said, “that we can move forward to not have the same type of [hateful] rhetoric.”Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      Brian Bingham, a Veteran, Is Convicted of Assaulting Officer at Capitol Riot

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      Brian Glenn Bingham, of New Jersey, hit an officer in the face as the police tried to clear rioters from the building on Jan. 6, 2021, a jury found.On Monday, the eve of this year’s presidential election, a New Jersey man was convicted of assaulting a law enforcement officer as part of the mob of Donald J. Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.A jury in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., found the man, Brian Glenn Bingham, of Pennsville, N.J., guilty of the felony offenses of assaulting, resisting or impeding a police officer and civil disorder, and several misdemeanors, prosecutors said.As part of his defense, court records show, Mr. Bingham argued that his actions were colored by the fact that he had been nearby around the time that a Capitol Police lieutenant fatally shot a woman named Ashli Babbitt as she tried to vault through a window near the House Chamber at the Capitol.Mr. Bingham, a 36-year-old Army veteran, is scheduled to be sentenced in February. Kevin A. Tate, a federal public defender representing him, said Mr. Bingham was “disappointed by the verdict and intends to appeal.”Mr. Bingham is among more than 1,532 people who have been criminally charged in connection with the riot, and among more than 571 who have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement officers, according to the Justice Department. He and other supporters of Mr. Trump stormed the Capitol in a bid to prevent the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the winner of the 2020 presidential election. The investigation into the day’s events is continuing.Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee in this year’s presidential election, was charged with three conspiracy counts arising from the riot. He has pleaded not guilty, and a federal judge will ultimately determine which parts of the indictment should survive under a landmark Supreme Court ruling from July that gives presidents immunity from prosecution for certain official acts while in office.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At Women’s March in Washington, Hope That They Will Hold Off Trump

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      Nearly eight years after the first Women’s March in Washington demonstrated a furious backlash to the election of Donald J. Trump, thousands of women gathered again in the capital and across the country on Saturday, this time with the hope that Vice President Kamala Harris would triumph at the polls and prevent his return to the White House.The rally and march, taking place three days before the election, was much smaller than the original in 2017 that drew at least 470,000 people — three times the number of people who had attended Mr. Trump’s inauguration the day before. But the mood was far more optimistic, if also somewhat combative.The rally at Freedom Plaza was primarily focused on threats to women’s reproductive rights and other liberties.Cheriss May for The New York Times“We will not go back!” was the rallying cry on Saturday, echoing what has become a signature line for Ms. Harris on the campaign trail. While the march was primarily focused on threats to women’s reproductive rights and other liberties, speakers and signs expressed support for a wide array of Democratic and progressive policy positions. Those included gun control, transgender rights and support for Palestinians. The speakers also urged people to vote, and to take others to vote, although many people in the crowd said they had already cast a ballot for Ms. Harris.“I just hope that all these people — not just women, but men — convince a few people to vote and vote the way we want them. Vote for democracy and our rights, reproductive rights,” said Janice Wolbrink, 69.Ms. Wolbrink was joined by her two sisters, each carrying a bright pink sign that read, “Now you’ve pissed-off Grandma.” Together, the three of them had 24 grandchildren.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      North Korea, in the Spotlight Over Ukraine, Launches a Long-Range Missile

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      The launch, into waters west of Japan, came shortly after the United States and South Korea criticized the North for sending troops to join Russia’s war. North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile off its east coast on Thursday, South Korean defense officials said, shortly after the United States and South Korea condemned the country for deploying troops near Ukraine to join Russia’s war effort.The missile was fired from Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, at a deliberately steep angle so that it reached an unusually high altitude but did not fly over Japan, the South Korean military said in a brief statement. The missile landed in waters between North Korea and Japan.The military said it was analyzing data to learn more about the missile, but that it believed it was an ICBM. North Korea last tested a long-range missile​ in December, when it test-fired its solid-fueled Hwasong-18 ICBM.The launch on Thursday was the North’s first major weapons test since September, when it fired a new type of Hwasong-11 short-range ballistic missile, which it said could carry a “super-large” conventional warhead weighing 4.5 tons.On Wednesday, South Korean defense intelligence officials told lawmakers that North Korea might conduct long-range missile tests before the American presidential election next week. They also said that the North was preparing to conduct its seventh underground nuclear test, in a bid to raise tensions and gain diplomatic leverage with the next U.S. president. North Korea conducted its last nuclear test in 2017.In recent weeks, North Korea has posed a fresh security challenge to Washington and its allies by sending an estimated 11,000 troops to Russia to fight in its war against Ukraine. Thousands of them, outfitted with Russian uniforms and equipment, have moved closer to the front lines, preparing themselves for possible battle against Ukrainian troops, South Korean and American officials said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The change agent v the tyrant: Harris’s big speech focuses on Trump

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      Whither the politics of joy? Kamala Harris’s solid if unspectacular closing argument for why she should be elected US president was not about Kamala Harris. It was first and foremost about Donald Trump.The Democratic nominee’s big speech in Washington mentioned Trump by name 24 times and Joe Biden only once. It confirmed that, even when Trump is not commander-in-chief, he still commands the American psyche.A week before election day, Harris chose her venue carefully: the Ellipse, a park just south of the White House. Trump “stood at this very spot nearly four years ago”, she noted, adding that he sent an armed mob to the US Capitol to overturn his 2020 election defeat.A very different, more diverse, larger crowd – some estimated 75,000 – gathered here on Tuesday, basking in unseasonal afternoon heat, wrapping against an evening chill. They waved “USA” signs and the stars and stripes and wore wristbands glowing blue or red. They chanted “Kamala! Kamala!” and “We’re not going back!” They were surrounded by great symbols of the republic: the Washington monument, the Jefferson memorial, the White House itself.Speaking at a lectern behind protective glass, Harris went on to warn of Trump’s enemies list and intention to turn the military against those who disagree with him. “This is not a candidate for president who is thinking about how to make your life better,” she said. “This is someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance, and out for unchecked power.”The vice-president went on to sketch out some of her own biography as a prosecutor and law enforcement officer fighting for the people. Yet somehow the argument again came back to the Republican nominee. “On day one, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list,” she said. “When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list.”It was a far cry from the start of the Harris candidacy, which launched with joyous euphoria and her running mate Tim Walz branding Trump and his allies “weird”. That felt like a refreshing tonic after years of anxiety and misery in the Trump era. At the Democratic national convention in Philadelphia, speaker after speaker mocked Trump and made him seem small (Barack Obama even parodied his manhood).View image in fullscreenNotably, even then, Harris began to adopt a more serious tone about the threat he poses, and in recent weeks she embraced former Trump officials’ use of “fascist” to underline his authoritarian ambitions, though she did not deploy that word here. His rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, and its echoes of a pro-Nazi rally that took place there in 1939, provided more fodder.There is some political logic to this choice: make the election a referendum on Trump rather than Harris; make him seem like the incumbent and Harris the change agent. “It is time to turn the page on the drama and conflict, the fear and division,” she said. “It is time for a new generation of leadership in America.”That would explain why she has sought to distance herself from Biden and is reportedly brushing off his offers to campaign for her. Although her Tuesday rally in Washington was Bidenesque in its dire warnings about the Trump threat, it used the president’s favoured word, “democracy”, only once. Instead, the word “freedom” was spelled out on three giant blue banners, along with “USA”.Some Democrats are also eager for Harris to separate herself from Biden on the issue of the war in Gaza. A protester was led away shouting: “Stop arming Israel! Arms embargo now!” But Harris did not throw a bone to the peace movement during her remarks.Whereas Biden used to tout job growth and economic good news, Harris again offered some practical promises: tax cuts for working people and the middle class, the first-ever federal ban on price gouging on groceries, a cap on the price of insulin and help for first-time home buyers.These were important things that ought to win votes. But they were not accompanied by a grand vision. Mario Cuomo’s old adage was campaign in poetry, govern in prose, but there was not a great deal of soaring rhetoric in Harris’s address. A decade of Trump had been bad for the soul.The vice-president did deliver a memorable image towards the end, however, recalling how, nearly 250 years, America wrested itself free from a petty tyrant (British monarch George III) and how generations of Americans have preserved that freedom. “They did not struggle, sacrifice and lay down their lives, only to see us cede our fundamental freedoms, only to see us submit to the will of another petty tyrant,” she said. “The United States of America is not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators.”Then, from fear, a pivot to hope: “The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised. A nation big enough to encompass all our dreams. Strong enough to withstand any fracture or fissure between us. And fearless enough to imagine a future of possibilities.”Doug Emhoff joined Harris on stage with a hug and a kiss as the crowd cheered. Next Tuesday, they will be back in Washington for the most nail-biting presidential election since George W Bush v Al Gore in 2000. They will be hoping this Democratic vice-president fares better than Gore did. A wafer-thin margin of a few thousand votes in a swing state or two may determine whether Harris’s closing argument looks like strategic genius or a catastrophic miscalculation.She told the crowd: “Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other. That’s who he is. But America, I am here tonight to say: that’s not who we are.”The phrase “this is not who we are” has been used often in the Trump era. Sometimes the evidence says otherwise. Next week, the country will find out who we really are. More

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      Mystery artist leaves neo-Nazi tiki torch ‘tribute’ to Trump near White House

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      The unknown artist or artists who fashioned a swirled bronze piece of feces on a replica of the former US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk – and placed it on the National Mall recently – appear to have struck again.This time, the artistic-political commentary is focused not on the 6 January 2021 US Capitol attack carried out by Donald Trump supporters, when a participant did indeed defecate on Pelosi’s desk. Instead, the display satirically evokes the notorious white nationalist Unite the Right tiki torch parade through Charlottesville’s University of Virginia campus in August 2017, with some marchers chanting: “Jews will not replace us”.A tiki torch statue titled The Donald J Trump Enduring Flame was placed on display in Washington DC’s Freedom Plaza, a few blocks from the White House, on Monday. The plaque beneath the piece alludes to how the former president referred to “some very fine people on both sides” at the rally, which led to the murder of a counterprotestor demonstrating against white supremacy.“This monument pays tribute to President Donald Trump and the ‘very fine people’ he boldly stood to defend when they marched in Charlottesville, Virginia,” the plaque reads.Alluding to remarks from Trump at the time that the media had treated people at the rally “absolutely unfairly”, the plaque adds: “While many have called them white supremacists and neo-Nazis, President Trump’s voice rang out above the rest to remind all that they were ‘treated absolutely unfairly’. This monument stands as an everlasting reminder of that bold proclamation.”View image in fullscreenThe timing and placement of the scatological and torch works come as artists have sought ways to interpret the moment through satire. In September, a vast model of a naked Trump was placed on a highway outside Las Vegas, prompting complaints from local Republican officials supporting his second run for the presidency in the 5 November election against Kamala Harris.But the tiki torch is a more direct commentary on political undercurrents that have resurfaced in the closing days of the 2024 election, with the vice-president and her Democratic allies warning that a return to the White House for Trump risks a slide into authoritarianism.Torchlight parades were a feature of German national socialism in the 1930s. After a spell that returned the tiki to non-political purposes, including lighting summer barbecues and repelling mosquitoes, the Charlottesville rally reimbued them with sinister connotations.After the deadly Unite the Right rally, Tiki Brand Products of Wisconsin put out a statement that the brand “was not in any way associated with the events that took place in Charlottesville and … deeply saddened and disappointed.“We do not support their message or the use of our products in this way,” the company added.Civic Crafted LLC, the maker of the desk and tiki torch pieces, was granted a temporary license for display by the US park service. The agency said last week that when issuing permits it “does not consider the content of the message to be presented”.Vandals removed Pelosi’s name from the desk and poop piece soon after it was installed and drew crowds. An inscription on the piece said it was meant to honor “the brave men and women who broke into the United States Capitol on January 6 2021 to loot, urinate and defecate throughout those hallowed halls in order to overturn an election” that Trump lost to Joe Biden.For its part, the 9ft tiki torch went largely unnoticed after it was put up, according to the Washington Post.“I think it’s a perfect piece of satirical sculpture in its placement, in its timing, in its execution,” Eric Brewer, 56, told the Post. “It may be a warning sign of what could be to come.”The park service permit allows the tiki torch work to remain in place until Thursday. More