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The change agent v the tyrant: Harris’s big speech focuses on Trump
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
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
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Kamala Harris denounces Trump as ‘fascist’ who wants ‘unchecked power’
Kamala Harris has denounced Donald Trump as a “fascist” who wants “unchecked power” and a military personally loyal to himself after allegations emerged about the former president’s repeatedly-voiced admiration for Hitler.On Wednesday, the vice-president gave a surprise speech from her Washington DC residence, doing so in the aftermath of reports that John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, recalled how Trump lamented not having generals who swore loyalty to him in the same manner as military commanders served Hitler in Nazi Germany.“Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable, and in a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guardrails against his propensities and his actions. Those who once tried to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses would no longer be there and no longer be there to rein him in,” Harris said.Harris said that the remarks relayed by Kelly showed that Trump “does not want a military that is loyal to the United States constitution”.“He wants a military who will be loyal to him, personally, one that will obey his orders, even when he tells them to break the law or abandon their oath to the constitution of the United States,” she said.Posing the question as a stark choice for US voters going to the polls for the presidential election on 5 November, she added: “We know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power. The question in 13 days will be what do the American people want.”
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Harris’s address came after she had spent more than a week highlighting Trump’s earlier branding of his political opponents as “the enemy within” and demands for the military to be deployed those who cause election “chaos”.In on-the-record taped conversations with the New York Times, Kelly – who was White House chief of staff for 18 months during Trump’s presidency – said his former boss repeatedly praised Hitler, even when contradicted, and fitted the dictionary definition of a fascist.“He commented more than once that: ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,’” said Kelly, who also said that Trump would rule as a dictator if elected again.Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, made similar remarks in an interview with the Atlantic.Referencing the various reporting, Harris said: “It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans. This is a window into who Donald Trump really is, from the people who know him best.”She added: “It is clear from John Kelly’s words that Donald Trump is someone who, I quote, certainly falls into the general definition of fascists, who, in fact, vowed to be a dictator on day one and vowed to use the military as his personal militia to carry out his personal and political vendettas.”It was the second time in a week that Harris had, in effect, labelled the Republican nominee a fascist. Last week, she answered affirmatively when a Detroit radio interviewer who asked if Trump’s vision amounted to fascism – although she did not utter the word directly.Trump’s spokesperson has denied Kelly’s claims that Trump said this, calling it “absolutely false”.Harris’s remarks on Wednesday were the clearest sign yet that she had changed tactics from a previous approach initially adopted after becoming her party’s nominee, when she and her surrogates attempted to play down and belittle Trump. In one example, by mocking his obsession with crowd sizes at his rallies.Theories abound as to what Harris could do to turn voters away from Trump’s appeal, which has centered on vows to lower prices that rose during Joe Biden’s presidency and throw immigrants out of the country.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn an interview earlier today on CNN, the noted Republican pollster Frank Luntz said that the very sort of message Harris pushed this afternoon was not working.“What’s interesting is that [when] Harris focused on why she should be elected president, that’s when the numbers grew,” Luntz said.“And then the moment that she turned anti-Trump and focused onto him and said, don’t vote for me, vote against him, that’s when everything froze.”Kelly’s characterisation of Trump as a fascist echoes that of Gen Mark Milley, the retired former chair of the armed services joint chiefs of staff. Milley, who Trump has said should be executed, is quoted by the journalist Bob Woodward in a recently published book as calling Trump “a total fascist” and “fascist to the core”.Later on Wednesday, it was reported that Harris told NBC News that she was preparing for the possibility that Donald Trump will declare victory before the election is complete, saying: “We will deal with election night and the days after as they come, and we have the resources and the expertise and the focus on that.”Also, at the White House daily media briefing, the press secretary. Karine Jean-Pierre, acknowledged that Biden agreed with those who say Trump is a fascist.“I mean, yes,” Jean-Pierre replied, when a reporter put the question to her in the White House briefing room. She went on to argue that Trump himself has made no secret of how he would like to govern, saying: “The former president has said he is going to be a dictator on day one. We cannot ignore that … we cannot ignore or forget what happened on January 6 2021.”Cecilia Nowell contributed reporting More - in Elections
A Cryptic Letter With a Clear Warning
A domestic terrorist group sent a note to The New York Times admitting to detonating a bomb in Queens.Nearly 50 years ago, on Jan. 29, 1975, a bomb exploded inside the State Department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., damaging the building but causing no injuries. A bomb was discovered that same day at a federal office building in Oakland, Calif., and was safely detonated.The acts were part of a spree of violence by a far-left militant group, Weather Underground, a splinter group of the Students for a Democratic Society, which opposed the Vietnam War. (The group took its name from lyrics written by Bob Dylan — “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” — in the song “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”) In a manifesto, the Weather Underground called for “the destruction of U.S. imperialism and the achievement of a classless world: world communism.”In late 1970, about a year after the group’s formation, The New York Times received a cryptic letter dated Oct. 9. Painted across the note was a red, five-pointed star, a symbol for Communism. The letter was signed in large cursive letters: Weatherman.That letter is currently stored in the “morgue,” The Times’s vast clippings archive.The letter makes reference to “slave ships of the twentieth century” and says that “with rallies and riots, with marches and Molotovs, kids in New York City and around the country will continue the battle.”Most startling is that the group claimed credit for an attack in Queens: “Last night as part of an international conspiracy we blew up the Long Island City Criminal Courthouse,” the letter reads. The explosion, which occurred on the third floor, heavily damaged the interior of the gray stone building.The group would ultimately claim responsibility for more than 25 bombings, according to the F.B.I., including at the Capitol building in March 1971. The group eventually splintered as the Vietnam War came to an end, disbanding in the late ’70s.In a 2020 guest essay for Times Opinion, Mark Rudd, a community organizer who once belonged to the Weather Underground, described his time with the group. “We didn’t realize that the violence we claimed we hated had infected our souls,” he wrote. “At the time, I’m not sure we’d have cared.” More
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2 Men Sentenced for Attacking Officers at Jan. 6 Capitol Riot
One of the men, from New Jersey, referred to lawmakers as “traitors” and encouraged other rioters to drag them out of the building by their hair, prosecutors said.A man from New Jersey and another from New York were sentenced to prison on Friday after federal prosecutors said they had breached the U.S. Capitol building and attacked law enforcement officers during the riot on Jan. 6, 2021.The New Jersey man, Michael Oliveras, 51, was sentenced to five years in prison. He broke into the Capitol with rioters and urged them to drag members of Congress out of the building by their hair, according to a news release.Prosecutors said Mr. Oliveras, who lived in Lindenwold, N.J., traveled to Washington to try to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election. According to the release, he documented his attack online, not only posting on social media that he had booked a hotel room near the building to scope it out, but also detailing when he entered the Capitol.Mr. Oliveras, carrying an American flag, marched to the West Front of the Capitol and confronted police officers, the release said. About 10 minutes later, a video he recorded showed him barging into the building and looking for lawmakers, yelling, “Where are they?” He also called them “traitors,” prosecutors said.“Drag them out by their hair,” he yelled, using an expletive.Mr. Oliveras entered and was ejected from the Capitol twice. During an unsuccessful third attempt, he stood in a doorway telling others to “push” and then brawled with officers.He continued with the riot for hours into the evening, marching to the other side of the building and encouraging others as they destroyed media equipment, the release 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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Rudy Giuliani disbarred in Washington DC over role in Trump election plot
Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who built a career as an uncompromising crime-fighter, has been permanently disbarred from practising law in Washington DC in a ruling stemming from his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Donald Trump’s favour.The decision came in the form of a one-page order issued by the US capital’s court of appeal and followed a similar order issued in July in New York, Giuliani’s home state.Unlike that ruling, the decision in Washington was not directly related to his actions in Trump’s election-denying effort but was instead based on his failure to respond to a request that he explain why he should not be subject to the same penalty as meted out in New York.“ORDERED that Rudolph W Giuliani is hereby disbarred from the practice of law in the District of Columbia, nunc pro tunc [a Latin term used in legal parlance to mean retroactive] to August 9, 2021,” Thursday’s appeal court order said.In 2021, the appeals court had suspended Giuliani’s law licence in Washington after being notified of a similar decision in New York.The DC bar’s board of responsibility recommended in 2022 that Giuliani’s law licence be indefinitely revoked after its investigators found him guilty of unethical conduct over inaccurate and unsupported claims he made in testimony to a federal court in Pennsylvania while disputing the 2020 election results.The DC court of appeals order did not hinge on those findings. By contrast, the New York appeals court made similar judgments in issuing its ruling, asserting that Giuliani “repeatedly and intentionally made false statements, some of which were perjurious, to the federal court, state lawmakers, the public … and this Court concerning the 2020 Presidential election”.Ted Goodman, a spokesman for Giuliani called the order “an absolute travesty and a total miscarriage of justice”.“Members of the legal community who want to protect the integrity of our justice system should immediately speak out against this partisan, politically motivated decision,” he said.The order is the latest blow to the standing of a man who was dubbed “America’s mayor” for the leadership role he played in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in New York in 2001, which happened when he was the city’s mayor.Last year, two election workers in Georgia won $148m in damages after he defamed them by accusing them of fraud. A week later he filed for bankruptcy. More
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Trump pleads not guilty to revised 2020 election interference charges
Donald Trump pleaded not guilty on Thursday, via his legal team, to the revised charges in his federal criminal election interference investigation, in the first hearing in the Washington DC case since the US supreme court gave its immunity ruling.The former US president and current Republican nominee for the White House in this November’s election was not present in federal court in the capital.The US district judge, Tanya Chutkan, said she would not set a schedule in the case at this status conference for the prosecution and defense teams, but hopes to do so later on Thursday.The case relates to Trump’s conduct surrounding events after he lost his re-election bid in November 2020 to his Democratic rival Joe Biden, culminating in the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, by thousands of extreme Trump supporters intent on overturning the election result.Chutkan is hearing arguments about the potential next steps in the election subversion prosecution of Trump for the first time since the supreme court narrowed the case by ruling that former presidents are entitled to broad immunity from criminal charges.As the hearing opened, the judge noted that it has been almost a year since she had seen the lawyers in her courtroom. The case has been frozen since last December as Trump pursued his appeal.The defense lawyer John Lauro joked to the judge: “Life was almost meaningless without seeing you.”Chutkan replied: “Enjoy it while it lasts.”A not guilty plea was entered on Trump’s behalf for a revised indictment that the special counsel Jack Smith’s team filed last week to strip out certain allegations and comply with the supreme court’s ruling in July. Prosecutors have said they can be ready at any time to file a legal brief laying out its position on how to apply the justices’ immunity opinion to the case.Defense lawyers are challenging the legitimacy of the case and said they intend to file multiple motions to dismiss the case, including one that piggybacks off a Florida judge’s ruling that Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional.Neither side envisions a trial happening before the November election. The case is one of two federal prosecutions against Trump, in a host of legal cases. The other, charging him with illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, was dismissed in July by the US district judge Aileen Cannon, who said Smith’s appointment as special counsel was unlawful.Smith’s team has appealed that ruling. Trump’s lawyers say they intend to ask Chutkan to dismiss the election case on the same grounds.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting. More
