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      Village in India where Harris is ‘daughter of the land’ on edge as US election looms

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      Kamala Harris may never have visited Thulasendrapuram, a sleepy village in south India, but its residents claim to be some of her most devoted fans.It was here, in among the verdant rice paddies and groundnut farms of rural Tamil Nadu, that Harris’s grandfather PV Gopalan was born. Though more than a century has passed since then, residents have proudly claimed Harris as a “daughter of the land”.The outcome of the US election next week, where Harris is running as the Democrat party’s presidential nominee, has the community on edge. At the local tea shop, local gossip has been pushed to one side to make way for chatter over the challenges posed by Harris’s opponent Donald Trump and the trends from crucial swing states.Banners and billboards bearing Harris’s face and wishing her good luck in Tamil, the local language, have also been erected across the village and daily pujas [prayers] are held at the local temple to ensure her victory.“Whether she wins or not is irrelevant to us. The fact that she is contesting is historic and makes us proud,” said M Murukanandan, a local politician.Harris has often spoken about the formative influence of her mother Shyamala Gopalan Harris’s Indian roots. Gopalan Harris was born in the south Indian city of Chennai, and went to university in Delhi but moved to the US at 19, after getting accepted to the University of California, Berkeley for her masters. She would go on to become a celebrated breast cancer research scientist and her success – overcoming the racism she regularly faced as “a brilliant 5-foot-tall brown woman with an accent” – is often cited by Harris as a great source of inspiration.View image in fullscreenDefying expectations to return to India for an arranged marriage, in 1963 she married Donald Harris, an economics graduate from Jamaica, and remained living in the US till her death from cancer in 2009. However, as Harris wrote in her memoir, “we were raised with a strong awareness of and appreciation for Indian culture. All of my mother’s words of affection or frustration came out in her mother tongue.”It was Harris’s passing reference to a phrase she said was often used by her mother “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” that came to be one of the defining moments of her presidential campaign, setting the internet alight with memes.Harris has also spoken of the south Indian food she grew up eating at home, with a particular fondness for idli and dosa, and said as a child they would visit both the Black baptist church and the Hindu temple. She was also taken for several trips to her Indian family in Chennai. It was here that Harris recalled long walks with her grandfather Gopalan, along Chennai’s famous beach, where he would speak to his young granddaughter of the importance of fighting for civil rights and equality. Harris last returned to Chennai beach to scatter her mother’s ashes in 2009.There are no relatives of Harris’s family left living in Thulasendrapuram and all that’s remaining of the ancestral house where her grandfather was born is a vacant plot of land. However, he is still remembered fondly in the village as a well-read man with progressive values and a passion for activism that he passed down to his daughters, Shyamala and Sarala.Villagers were keen to emphasise how her family’s ancestral ties to the village remained present. “We all still feel a connection to Kamala,” said 80-year-old N Krishnamurthy, a retired bank officer.Harris’s aunt Sarala still lives and works in Chennai and has visited Thulasendrapuram several times, where villagers refer to her as chithi, an affectionate term meaning younger sister. The wall of the local Dharmasastha Temple are inscribed with Harris’s name after her aunt donated 5000 rupees (£45) towards its renovation a decade ago in her honour.Murukanandan, the local politician, said he and several others in the village had recently contacted Sarala to convey good luck messages from the residents of Thulasendrapuram and express their hopes that one day Harris would finally visit them. “She agreed to pass on our wishes,” he said. “We also asked her to encourage Harris to visit our village after winning the election. We hope everything will be possible.”View image in fullscreenHarris’s presidential campaign has also inspired a flurry of village development in her honour. A new water tank, to collect and harvest rainwater for the village, is under construction which will have a plaque bearing Harris’s name. A new village bus stop, named after Harris, is also being built.N Kamakodi, chairman of a local bank that is helping fund the renovation, said Harris’s rise to prominence thousands of miles away in the US was helping to uplift the local village. “We need to celebrate our daughter’s rise to power in any way we can,” he said. “If she wins the election, we will install more public utilities to honour her achievements and legacy. She is a source of pride and a lasting identity for us.”Yet in the US, the impact of Harris’s Indian heritage among the Indian American diaspora – now the second largest immigrant group in the states – remains more debatable, with her Black identity widely seen as much more significant. Historically Indian American voters have overwhelmingly been Democrat but a survey released this week by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace indicates that support for the Democrats is on the decline from 2020, even with Harris on the ticket.According to the survey, 61% of registered Indian American voters intend to vote for Harris, but since 2020 there has also been a slight increase in those who intend to vote for Trump. The gender difference was particularly notable: 67% of Indian American women intend to vote for Harris, compared with 53% of men.Yet as the villagers of Thulasendrapuram were keen to point out, around 250 families from the village had emigrated to the US for jobs in recent years, many for work in the software industry, and several were now registered to vote in the upcoming elections.“These families likely have at least 10 votes in favour of Harris,” said local farmer Jancy Rani. “So, the village is contributing modestly to her success.” More

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      Will young voters in swing states decide this election? – podcast

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      Archive: Full Send podcast
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      US elections live: about 58m people have already voted; Harris leads Trump in two crucial swing states, new poll shows

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      With six days until the 2024 election, more than 57.5 million Americans have already voted as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the Election Lab at the University of Florida.Of the 57 million, just over 30 million voted early in-person and about 27 million voted by early mail.In an op-ed for the Guardian, Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, addresses progressives concerns about voting for Kamala Harris given the administration’s support for Israel’s war.He writes:
      I understand that there are millions of Americans who disagree with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on the terrible war in Gaza. I am one of them.
      While Israel had a right to defend itself against the horrific Hamas terrorist attack of 7 October 2023, which killed 1,200 innocent people and took 250 hostages, it did not have the right to wage an all-out war against the entire Palestinian people.
      It did not have the right to kill 42,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of whom were children, women and the elderly, or injure over 100,000 people in Gaza. It did not have the right to destroy Gaza’s infrastructure and housing and healthcare systems. It did not have the right to bomb every one of Gaza’s 12 universities. It did not have the right to block humanitarian aid, causing massive malnutrition in children and, in fact, starvation.
      And that is why I am doing everything I can to block US military aid and offensive weapons sales to the rightwing extremist Netanyahu government in Israel. And I know that many of you share those feelings. And some of you are saying, “How can I vote for Kamala Harris if she is supporting this terrible war?” And that is a very fair question.
      And let me give you my best answer. And that is that even on this issue, Donald Trump and his rightwing friends are worse. In the Senate and in Congress Republicans have worked overtime to block humanitarian aid to the starving children in Gaza. The president and vice-president both support getting as much humanitarian aid into Gaza as soon as possible.
      Trump has said that Netanyahu is doing a good job and that Biden is holding him back. He has suggested that the Gaza Strip would make excellent beachfront property for development. It is no wonder Netanyahu prefers to have Donald Trump in office.
      But even more importantly, and this I promise you, after Harris wins we will, together, do everything we can to change US policy toward Netanyahu – including an immediate ceasefire, the return of all hostages, a surge of massive humanitarian aid, the stopping of settler attacks on the West Bank, and the rebuilding of Gaza for the Palestinian people.
      A Pennsylvania judge on Wednesday sided with Donald Trump’s campaign and agreed to extend an in-person voting option in suburban Philadelphia, where long lines on the final day led to complaints voters were being disenfranchised by an unprepared election office.A lawsuit demanding an extension of Tuesday’s 5pm deadline in Bucks county until today was filed this morning after long queues outside the county’s election offices on the last day for applications led to security guards cutting off the line and telling some of those waiting they would not be able to apply.Videos of the scenes were widely circulated on social media, fuelling rumours of voter suppression.The Trump campaign was joined by the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the GOP Senate candidate Dave McCormick in the lawsuit alleging that voters waiting outside election offices for mail ballots were turned away empty-handed and ordered to leave after the deadline expired at 5pm on Tuesday.“This is a direct violation of Pennsylvanians’ rights to cast their ballot – and all voters have a right to STAY in line,” the Trump campaign said.Judge Jeffrey Trauger said in a one-page order that Bucks county voters who want to apply for an early mail ballot now have until Friday.The queues for late mail ballots were a result of Pennsylvania not having an early on-site voting system at designated spots, as is the case in some other states. Instead, voters can apply for ballots on-demand at election offices before filling them out and submitting them on the spot, a procedure that takes about 10 minutes.The flood of late applicants overwhelmed electoral workers in Bucks county’s administration building in Doylestown, leading to a long queue which was cut off at around 2.45pm on Tuesday, according to CBS.Protesters interrupted Harris about 8 minutes into her remarks here.It was difficult to hear what they were saying, but I could hear the word “genocide”.The crowd began chanting “USA!” and Harris reminded the crowd that democracy was on the line in this election. “Ours is about a fight for democracy and your right to be heard. That is what is on the line in this election,” she said. “Look, everybody has a right to be heard, but right now I am speaking.”After another protester interrupted a few minutes later, she said: “At this particular moment it should be emphasized that unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy from within. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at the table.”Shawna Barnes, a 45-year old healthcare worker from Philadelphia, said she’s concerned that men aren’t supporting Harris in this election. When she’s knocked on doors, she’s noticed that the women are often all in, but the men are “iffy”.“Black and brown women are going to come out and support. White women of course are going to support. The men are just kind of like afraid,” she said as Mr Brightside by The Killers blasted on the sound system. “I don’t think it’s about gender, I just think it’s fear.”Kamala Harris is speaking at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex & Expo Center in Harrisburg, where she is promoting her economic proposals.”We stand for working people, we stand for middle class growth and strength,” Harris said.She derided Donald Trump’s tariff proposals, and warned that he would dismantle the popular Affordable Care Act. “We know what’s on the line. We know that Donald Trump will try, like he has so many times to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, which would throw, millions of Americans off of their health care and take us back to when insurance companies could deny people with pre-existing conditions,” she said.Donald Trump’s team is reportedly considering withholding federal grants from police departments that decline to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to ease deportations.NBC News reports that the former president’s team is working on plans to force sanctuary cities such as Chicago, and states such as California to work with the federal government to help Trump deliver on his promise of mass deportations.The Guardian has not independently verified NBC’s reporting.Withholding funding from police departments who decline to work with Ice will undoubtedly face legal challenges. During Trump’s presidency, several states sued the administration after it cut off grants to sanctuary cities, and appealed a court decision that sided with Trump – running out the clock on Trump’s term before the supreme court could issue a final decision on the matter.With six days until the 2024 election, more than 57.5 million Americans have already voted as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the Election Lab at the University of Florida.Of the 57 million, just over 30 million voted early in-person and about 27 million voted by early mail.I spotted Minerva Ortiz-Garcia, 68, walking around with a small Puerto Rican flag before the rally started so I stopped her to ask what she thought of the racist joke a speaker made before Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.“I feel horrible. I’m Puerto Rican, I actually started to cry,” she said. “How could someone say that about an island that is trying to survive [Hurricane] Maria?”Ortiz-Garcia, a flight attendant, lives in Easton, which is in eastern Pennsylvania, a part of the state that is extremely competitive and has a huge Latino population. She said she thought many Latino voters in her part of the state were waiting for Harris to reach out to them directly.“I think that people want her to say something directly,” she said.I’ve been chatting to a few voters at a Kamala Harris rally here at the Farm expo building in Harrisburg, where there’s a vague smell of horses as the crowd swag surfs and dances to Motown hits such as We Are Family and Aretha Franklin’s Respect.I just spoke with Corine Wherley, a 38-year-old librarian from Harrisburg who is attending her first political rally ever. She said she decided to come to the rally because she was so alarmed by what she heard during Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.“A lot of it was the rhetoric around ‘this secret’ and other things like that they’re planning on doing,” she said, referring to Trump’s comment that he has a “little secret” with House speaker Mike Johnson, that many took to be a plan to contest the election. “They’re like: ‘I can do whatever I want,’ and I think that’s what scares me.”Puerto Rican reggaeton singer Nicky Jam has withdrawn his support for Donald Trump after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday.On Wednesday, the singer posted a video on social media saying: “The reason I supported Donald Trump is because I believed it was what’s best for the economy in the United States, where a lot of Latinos live … a lot of immigrants that are suffering over the state of the economy … With [Trump] being a businessman, I felt it was the right move.”He went on to add: “Never in my life did I think that a month later a comedian would come to criticize my country, to speak poorly of my country, and therefore I renounce any support to Donald Trump and move aside from any political situation. Puerto Rico deserves respect.”In September, Nicky Jam made an appearance at one of Trump’s rally during which he was misgendered by the former president.“Do you know Nicky? She’s hot!” Trump said to the crowd, adding: “Where’s Nicky? Where’s Nicky? Thank you, Nicky. Great to be having you here.”The battleground states for the White House overlap significantly with the states where Democrats are fighting to keep or gain majorities in state legislative chambers, noted Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC).“While the overlap has opened some opportunities for unprecedented collaboration, this environment has also produced steep challenges for state legislative candidates to get their message out, especially through paid communication,” Williams told reporters on a press call today.Williams noted that the Harris campaign was now spending more on paid ads each week than the DLCC’s entire budget for this election cycle, which is $60m. The gap in resources could heighten the risk of “ballot rolloff”, the phenomenon of voters only filling out the top of their ballot without continuing down to lower-level races.“Our historical data indicates that, in presidential years, we face the challenge of ballot rolloff most acutely,” Williams said. “Communicating and educating voters on who their state legislative candidates are is incredibly important to mitigate underperforming the top of the ticket.”Although much of the country is focused on the presidential and congressional races, the results of this year’s state legislative elections will have vast consequences on Americans’ everyday lives.On a press call today, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) reported that state legislative control appears to be a true toss-up in several battleground states, reflecting the neck-and-neck nature of the presidential race.“Right now, just 12 legislative seats are deciding six legislative majorities in the biggest battleground states across the country, and all our polling shows that this election will be incredibly close,” said Heather Williams, president of the DLCC.Democrats are looking to maintain their narrow majorities in state legislative chambers in Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania while attempting to regain majorities in Arizona and New Hampshire. The new legislative maps in Wisconsin also represent a key opportunity for Democrats.“The stakes couldn’t be higher, as nearly half of Americans currently have their rights protected by Democratic majorities in state legislatures,” Williams said.“Decisions on fundamental freedoms are happening in the states, and many of the dangers of Project 2025 and Trump’s MAGA [’Make America Great Again’] agenda will continue to advance through our statehouses no matter the outcome at the top of the ticket.”A new CNN poll shows Kamala Harris leading over Trump by 6 points in Wisconsin and 5 points in Michigan, key battleground states.Harris leads Trump by 48% to 43% among likely voters in Michigan and 51% to 45% in Wisconsin.The candidates are tied at 48% in Pennsylvania.The vice president’s slim advantage is due in part to “relatively strong performance among White voters and White voters without college degrees, two groups which traditionally break Republican,” CNN said.Here’s a look at where things stand:

      Kamala Harris held a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, this afternoon. “Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy,” she said.

      Kamala Harris said that she strongly disagrees with criticisms of people based on who they voted for. Speaking on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday following Joe Biden’s “garbage” remarks, Harris said that Biden had “clarified his comments”, adding, “I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they voted for.”

      Arnold Schwarzenegger, the actor and former California governor, has announced he is endorsing Kamala Harris. He joins a running list of Republicans crossing party lines to vote against Donald Trump.

      The supreme court has paused the ruling by a lower court that would have restored voting rights to approximately 1,600 voters in Virginia. In its brief order, the supreme court wrote: “The application for stay presented to The Chief Justice and by him referred to the Court is granted.”

      Virginia’s Republican governor Glenn Youngkin has hailed the supreme court’s ruling, calling it a “victory for common sense and election fairness”. Youngkin had ordered state officials to identify and cancel the voter registration of alleged non-citizens unless they could prove their citizenship in two weeks.

      Tim Walz appeared on Good Morning America, saying, “We know it’s going to be close but we’re going to win this thing.” Speaking to host George Stephanopoulos, Walz said, “We’ve got the better ground game, we’ve got the excitement, we’ve got the momentum on our side.”
      “I see the promise of America in all the young leaders who are voting for the first time,” Kamala Harris said.“You’ve only known the climate crisis and are leading the charge to protect our planet and our future. You young leaders who grew up with active shooter drills, who are trying to keep our schools safe, you who have known fewer rights than your mothers and grandmothers and are standing up to fight for freedom to make your own decisions about your own bodies. None of this for you young leaders is theoretical. This is not theoretical for you. It is not political for you. For our young leaders, this is your lived experience, and I see you, and I see your power, and I am so proud of you,” she added.“Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy,” Kamala Harris said.“He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at the table,” she added.“We have an opportunity in this election to turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump, who has been trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other. We know that is who he is but, North Carolina, that is not who we are,” Kamala Harris said.“It is time for a new chapter where we stop with the pointing fingers at each other, and instead let us lock arms with one another, knowing we have so much more in common than what separates us,” she added.Kamala Harris is now on stage in Raleigh, North Carolina, for a campaign rally.Stay tuned as we bring you the latest updates.Donald Trump is claiming – without evidence – that Pennsylvania is cheating and has filed a lawsuit against Bucks county.In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote that the state is “cheating, and getting caught, at large-scale levels rarely seen before”.He did not specify what constituted the state’s cheating.In a separate statement, Trump’s campaign announced on Wednesday that it has filed a lawsuit against Buck county for “turning away voters.”Again, without evidence, the campaign claimed that voters were being turned away early, saying:
      “The Pennsylvania Department of State made clear if voters are in line at a county elections office by 5:00PM, the counties MUST give voters the opportunity to apply for their mail-in ballot. Pennsylvania voters were turned away as early as 2:30PM.” More

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      Supreme court rejects appeal to remove Robert F Kennedy Jr from swing state ballots – live

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      The highest court rejected an emergency appeal to remove Robert F Kennedy Jr, a third-party presidential candidate that has dropped out of the race and endorsed Donald Trump, from the ballots in Wisconsin and Michigan.Kennedy wanted to have himself remove from the ballots in these key swing states, arguing that keeping him on would violate his first amendment rights. But with early voting already under way, Wisconsin and Michigan said that removing him from the ballot now would be impossible.It is unclear how Kennedy’s presence on the ballot will affect the election, and whether it will rob votes from Trump.Politeness and convention dictate that European leaders try to sound noncommittal when asked whether a Donald Trump presidency would hurt Nato. But despite the rhetoric about “Trump-proofing”, Nato cohesion will be at risk from a hostile or isolationist Republican president, who has previously threatened to leave the alliance if European defence spending did not increase.“The truth is that the US is Nato and Nato is the US; the dependence on America is essentially as big as ever,” said Jamie Shea, a former Nato official who teaches at the University of Exeter. “Take the new Nato command centre to coordinate assistance for Ukraine in Wiesbaden, Germany. It is inside a US army barracks, relying on US logistics and software.”US defence spending will hit a record $968bn in 2024 (the proportion the US spends in Europe is not disclosed). The budgets of the 30 European allies plus Canada amount to $506bn, 34% of the overall total. It is true that 23 out of 32 members expect to spend more than 2% of GDP on defence this year, but in 2014, when the target was set, non-US defence spending in Nato was 24%. Lower than now but not dramatically so.There are more than 100,000 US personnel stationed in Europe, more than the British army, a figure increased by more than 20,000 by Joe Biden in June 2022 in response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine. US troops have long been based in Germany, but a 3,000-strong brigade was moved by Biden into Romania, a forward corps command post is based in Poland, and US troops contribute to defending the Baltic states, while fighter and bomber squadrons are based in the UK and five naval destroyers in Spain.Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defence minister, was recently asked whether Nato was ready for Trump. “Elections will have a result whatever,” he began, before acknowledging that much of Europe had been slow to increase defence budgets, missing the warning of Russia’s capture of Crimea in Ukraine in 2014 and only reacting substantively in 2022 after Russia’s full invasion. “What we did was push the snooze button and turn around,” Pistorius said.Read the full analysis here:In Wisconsin’s case, Kennedy had asked the supreme court to remove him from the ballot by covering his name with stickers, which officials said would be a herculean task.The state’s law prohibits the removal of a nominee’s name from the ballot, stating that “any person who files nomination papers and qualifies to appear on the ballot may not decline nomination”, with the only exception being in the case of that candidate’s death.Similarly, in Michigan, officials said that Kennedy’s request would be impossible to fulfill, requiring counties reprint and distribute new ballots, which would cause delays.Kennedy’s arguments to have his named removed from swing state ballots run contrary to his assertions in a New York case, where he fought to remain on the ballot after he was disqualified for listing a friend’s address as his residence.The highest court rejected an emergency appeal to remove Robert F Kennedy Jr, a third-party presidential candidate that has dropped out of the race and endorsed Donald Trump, from the ballots in Wisconsin and Michigan.Kennedy wanted to have himself remove from the ballots in these key swing states, arguing that keeping him on would violate his first amendment rights. But with early voting already under way, Wisconsin and Michigan said that removing him from the ballot now would be impossible.It is unclear how Kennedy’s presence on the ballot will affect the election, and whether it will rob votes from Trump.At the business roundtable in Pennsylvania, a woman from Puerto Rico who worked as a Medicare provider asked Trump about his plans for the health program.The campaign’s emphasis on the questioner’s Puerto Rican heritage was, no doubt, a way to manage the fallout from a comedian’s racist comments about the island during Trump’s rally this weekend. She told the former president that Puerto Ricans stand behind him.“I think no president said more for Puerto Rico than I have,” Trump responded, noting that the administration had approved aid for the island after Hurricane Maria. (It’s worth noting that his administration “unnecessarily” delayed $20bn in aid to Puerto Rico due to bureaucratic obstacles, according to an internal review)The roundtable is being hosted by Building America’s Future, an Elon Musk-funded Super Pac that has been putting out misleading campaign ads about Harris.At a business roundtable in Pennsylvania, where he was billed to discuss issues impacting senior citizens, Donald Trump is repeating a stump speech about migrants at the US border.He told the crowd of supporters that he doesn’t believe polls showing that the economy and inflation are the top issues for voters. “I think this is the biggest senior issue,” Trump said about migration. “They’re destroying our country, they’re ruining our country,” he said of migrants.As his campaign seeks to manage the fallout from this Madison Square rally, where a comedian’s racist joke about Puerto Rico has unleashed angry backlash, Trump has not scaled back any of the anger, vitriol or racist rhetoric that has been at the core of his message to voters.In his rambling comments, Trump also touched on transgender rights, lying that Democrats “want transgender operations for almost everybody in the world”.Deterioration of the Washington Post’s subscriber base continued on Tuesday, hours after its proprietor, Jeff Bezos, defended the decision to forgo formally endorsing a presidential candidate as part of an effort to restore trust in the media.The publication has now shed 250,000 subscribers, or 10% of the 2.5 million customers it had before the decision was made public on Friday, according to the NPR reporter David Folkenflik.A day earlier, 200,000 had left according to the same outlet.The numbers are based on the number of cancellation emails that have been sent out, according to a source at the paper, though the subscriber dashboard is no longer viewable to employees.The Washington Post has not commented on the reported numbers.The famed Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward said on Tuesday he disagreed with the paper’s decision, adding that the outlet was “an institution reporting about Donald Trump and what he’s done and supported by the editorial page”.Bezos framed the decision as an effort to support journalists and journalism, noting that in “surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress”.But in this election year, he noted, the press had fallen below Congress, according to a Gallup poll.“We have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working,” he wrote.In her remarks this evening, Kamala Harris is also expected to say that returning Trump to power will bring “more chaos” and “more division”.“I offer a different path,” she will say, in a speech dedicated to the still-undecided slice of US voters. “And I ask for your vote.”Harris will pledge to “seek common ground and commonsense solutions”.“Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at my table,” Harris is expected to say.The Democrat has built a broad coalition that includes conservative anti-Trump Republicans such as Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman and her father, the former vice-president Dick Cheney.“I pledge to be a President for all Americans,” Harris will say, “to always put country above party and above self.”Kamala Harris will warn that Donald Trump is “unstable”, “obsessed with revenge” “consumed with grievance” and “out for unchecked power” during her speech at the Ellipse on Tuesday night, according to excerpts of her remarks released by the campaign. “Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other. That’s who he is,” she will say. “But America, I am here tonight to say: that’s not who we are.”Harris is attempting to cast herself as a unifying figure who will work for “all Americans” as president, regardless of who they voted for in the November election, drawing a sharp contrast with Trump who has threatened a campaign of retribution against his political enemies. It’s a similar approach Biden took in the waning days of the 2020 election, but healing the tribalism and polarization proved elusive.Harris suggests that her election would “turn the page” on the Trump era entirely, though there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical that Trump would accept his defeat and retreat from the national stage.At his press conference, Steve Bannon also flirted with the idea that Democrats would try to steal the 2024 election from Trump.He also continued to deny the results of the 2020 election, though there is no credible evidence of misconduct that undermines the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.“Were going to have a reprise of 2020 where they’re going to do everything humanly possible to nullify” Trump’s victory and “delegitimize his second term”.“The working-class people in this country that support Donald John Trump are not going to let that happen.”“The 2020 election was stolen,” Bannon said later.During a question-and-answer session, some sort of apparent interloper – it was unclear whether this was a comedian or performance artist or someone else entirely – asked Bannon: “When’s the next insurrection, and can we storm the Burger King after this?”This person appears to have been escorted out of the press conference.At a press conference Tuesday afternoon, about 12 hours after his release from prison, Steve Bannon railed against Democrat Nancy Pelosi, attorney general Merrick Garland and Harris, again claiming that he was a “political prisoner”.“The system is broken,” he said, claiming the justice department was “weaponized” to punish Trump supporters and gut his popular podcast, in an effort to thwart Maga’s influence.Bannon also claimed that he met a lot of “working class minorities” behind bars, saying he listened to, and learned from, them. They disliked Harris, he claimed, referring to the former prosecutor as the “queen of mass incarcerations”.Doubling down on his War Room statements this morning, where Bannon insisted that prison had empowered him, he also said: “Nancy Pelosi, suck on that.”Bannon also thanked the prison for giving him the opportunity to teach civics to about 100 students, noting that he had Puerto Rican and Dominican students. Bannon discussed his encounters with people of color at several points today, in an apparent effort to deflect anti-Latino commentary from Trump supporters.Nearly 3.2 million voters have cast ballots in the 2024 general election in North Carolina as of Tuesday at noon.The North Carolina state board of elections made the announcement on Tuesday, adding that 3.2 million voters represents a turnout of 40.7% of registered voters in the state.Just over 3m of the votes were cast in-person, and about 170,000 were cast via mail in ballot.Through the end of the day on Monday, more than 2.9 million voters had cast ballots in person during the first 12 days of the early voting period, which the elections officials said was an increase of 11.9% compared with 2020.Interestingly, turnout in the 25 western North Carolina counties affected by Hurricane Helene continue to outpace statewide turnout, the election board added.Jennifer Lopez will join Kamala Harris at a rally in Las Vegas on Thursday, the Harris campaign has announced.Lopez will speak on the importance of voting, what’s at stake for the country with this election, and why she is endorsing Harris and Tim Walz, the Harris campaign said.Mexican pop band Maná, will also perform at that rally.Grammy-winning Puerto Rican artist, Bad Bunny, posted a video on his Instagram on Tuesday in celebration of Puerto Rican culture.The post comes in response to the insulting remarks made at Donald Trump’s rally on Sunday against the island, where a comedian called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”.Bad Bunny’s eight-minute long video, posted to his more than 45 million followers on Tuesday, is captioned “garbage” and highlights Puerto Rican culture, history and people over inspirational music.On Sunday, Bad Bunny, whose official name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, signalled his support for Kamala Harris, sharing a video of the vice-president on his Instagram just moments after the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made the remarks about Puerto Rico at the Trump rally.Vanessa Cárdenas, the executive director of the pro-immigration group America’s Voice, said the speakers at Trump’s rally on Sunday makes clear that his nativist movement will never see “Latinos or immigrants are real Americans.”Cárdenas pointed to comments made by Stephen Miller, an influential immigration adviser to Trump. Speaking at the same Sunday rally, Cardenas pointed to Miller’s declaration: “America is for Americans and Americans only.”“These words reveal their thinking. In their eyes we are not real Americans, and as far as Trump and his team are concerned, we will never be,” she said. “It foreshadows the sort of administration they would run.”Puerto Ricans are heavily concentrated in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Georgia but they have a presence in all 50 states Hispanic leaders and Activists said on a call on Tuesday responding to the racist remark about Puerto Rico made at Trump’s rally on Sunday. Alex Gomez, executive director of LUCHA based in Arizona, said there were approximately 64,000 Puerto Ricans living in the state, which was decided by 10,000 votes in 2020.“Trump is showing us who he is,” Gomez said. “This is our warning signal of the types of policies and what he and the people that follow him believe and so our communities are not going to stand for that.”She said her organization has a goal of knocking on 500,000 doors before election day, next Tuesday.“We will make sure that our communities know what he has said,” she said.A racist remark about Puerto Rico made at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday was the “October surprise for the Latino community”, said Gustavo Torres, head of CASA in Action, a Latino and immigrant organization.Torres said his organization would work to inform Latino voters every day for the next week until election day. Trump, he said, “humiliate[s] and … underestimate[s] the Puerto Rican Community and the Latino community.”Polls suggest Trump has made notable inroads with Latino voters, particularly men and young people, despite his persistent attacks on immigrant communities and his pledge of mass deportations. The Hispanic leaders and activists on Tuesday’s call predicted a backlash that could cost Trump not only his support among Latinos but possibly the election.“We are going to see what is going to happen on November 5,” Torres told reporters on Tuesday.“Until he apologises and directly disavows those comments, it will leave a stain of racism and bigotry on him and his campaign for the Latino community,” said Janet Murguia, President, UnidosUS Action Fund. “If he understands the importance of Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania and Georgia in particular, it would be in his interest to at least make that effort.”Puerto Rico’s Largest Newspaper, El Nuevo Día, has endorsed Kamala Harris for President as of Tuesday morning.“On Sunday, continuing a pattern of contempt and misinformation that Donald Trump has maintained for years against the eight million of us American citizens who are Puerto Ricans, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe insulted us during a Republican Party event by referring to Puerto Rico as ‘an island of garbage in the ocean’” the statement from the newspaper reads.It continues, “Is that what Trump and the Republican Party think about Puerto Ricans? Politics is not a joke and hiding behind a comedian is cowardly.”The newspaper said that Trump “has for years maintained a discourse of contempt and misinformation against the island” pointing out the time Trump, as president, threw paper towels into a crowd after Hurricane Maria, “while we suffered without electricity for months.”Later in the lengthy piece, the newspaper asks readers, “Is this the great America we want?”.“On Sunday, as insults rained down on Puerto Rico, the Democratic candidate offered a message of hope, promising to maintain the interagency group dedicated exclusively to strengthening and creating new opportunities” the piece states.In its conclusion, the newspaper writes: “today we urge all those who love our beautiful island, the land of the sea and the sun, not to lend their vote to Donald Trump. To all Puerto Ricans who can vote in this upcoming United States election and represent those of us who cannot: Vote for Kamala Harris.”Former Michigan GOP Chair Rusty Hills has spoken out against Trump in a new opinion piece in the Detroit Free Press published on Tuesday.In the article, titled ‘Trump’s no Gerald Ford. He’s not even George W Bush’ Hills outlines the ways in which Trump is different from former Republican candidates for president.Hills pointed to Trump’s character, rhetoric, offensive insults toward political opponents, praise of Russia, and language regarding immigrants, among other differences he sees between Trump and former GOP candidates.He then asks the readers:
      Why would any Republican in Michigan who voted for Gerald Ford – or Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush or George W Bush, Sens. John McCain or Mitt Romney – ever cast a ballot for someone like Donald Trump?
      Hills, who teaches at the Gerald R Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, then writes:
      The answer is clear – they shouldn’t.
      New polls show Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by one percentage point in Arizona, and Trump leading Harris in Nevada by the same margin.In the polls, published by CNN and conducted by SSRS polling between 21 October and 26 October, Harris received 48% support in Arizona among likely voters, while Trump received 47%.In Nevada, Trump received 48% support among likely voters, and Harris received 47%.It is important to point out that these numbers are within the margins of error for these polls. More

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      Steve Bannon released from prison a week before US election

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      Steve Bannon, the longtime Donald Trump acolyte, was released from prison on Tuesday, following a four-month sentence for defying a congressional subpoena in an investigation of the 6 January 2021 US Capitol attack.The far-right firebrand’s release from federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, comes just one week before election day. Bannon, 70, surrendered to prison on 1 July after the US supreme court rebuffed his effort to postpone this sentence pending appeal.“I’m not broken, I’m empowered,” Bannon said upon leaving the lockup at about 3.15am local time, according to the New York Times. Bannon wasted little time in resuming his position as a pro-Trump demagogue, implying that political unrest would unfold after the election.“If people think American politics has been divisive before, you haven’t seen anything,” Bannon said, according to reports.He also insisted that serving time behind bars was “1,000%” worth the price of refusing congressional testimony. “If you’re not prepared to go to prison to fight for your country,” Bannon said, “you’re not prepared to fight for your country.”Bannon was convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress in July 2022. Federal prosecutors argued that Bannon thought himself “above the law” in refusing to sit before the January 6 House select committee and rejecting demands for documents in his work to subvert 2020’s election results – which saw Joe Biden besting Trump.The prosecution said that Bannon “chose to show his contempt for Congress’s authority and its processes” in flouting these subpoenas. Bannon has insisted that the convictions against him were politically motivated, similar to Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that law enforcement actions against him stemmed from a nefarious Democratic conspiracy.David Schoen, Bannon’s lawyer, claimed that this case prompted “serious constitutional issues” that needed to be examined by the supreme court.“Quite frankly, Mr Bannon should make no apology. No American should make any apology for the manner in which Mr Bannon proceeded in this case,” Schoen said.Bannon’s legal team has also argued that there was a “strong public interest” in permitting him to remain out on bail in advance of the 2024 US presidential elections.Hours after his release, Bannon returned to his political proselytizing, with a live War Room podcast where he peddled election conspiracy theories.At a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, about 12 hours after his release from prison, Bannon railed against Nancy Pelosi, the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, and Harris, again claiming that he was a “political prisoner”.“The system is broken,” Bannon said, claiming the justice department was “weaponized” to punish Trump’s backers and gut his popular podcast.Bannon also insisted that he met a lot of “working-class minorities” behind bars, saying he listened to, and learned from, them. They disliked Harris, Bannon said, calling the former prosecutor as the “queen of mass incarcerations”.Doubling down on his War Room claims on Tuesday morning, in which Bannon insisted that prison had empowered him, he also quipped: “Nancy Pelosi, suck on that.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBannon also thanked the prison for providing an opportunity for him to teach civics to about 100 students, pointing out that he had Puerto Rican and Dominican pupils. Bannon discussed his work with persons of color at several points, in a seeming effort to downplay attention on anti-Latino commentary from Trump supporters.He also toyed with the idea that Democrats would try to steal the election from Trump; Biden won the 2020 election and there is no credible evidence of misconduct that undermines the legitimacy of his win.“We’re going to have a reprise of 2020 where they’re going to do everything humanly possible to nullify” Trump’s victory and “delegitimize his second term”, Bannon claimed.“The working-class people in this country that support Donald John Trump are not going to let that happen.“The 2020 election was stolen,” Bannon also said later.During a question-and-answer session with Bannon, an apparent interloper – it appears that he is a comedian – asked “when’s the next insurrection, and can we storm the Burger King after this?” This person seemed to have been escorted out of the press conference.Bannon still faces state-level charges in New York over his alleged tricking of donors who contributed to building a US-Mexico border wall. Bannon maintains his innocence; trial in this case is scheduled for December.With reporting from the Associated Press More

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      JD Vance hits out at critics over Trump ‘fascist’ claim

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      JD Vance hit back at those who say Donald Trump is a fascist, accusing Kamala Harris and her allies of disrespecting second world war veterans as he campaigned on Tuesday in one of the most hotly contested regions of battleground Michigan.A week before the election that will decide the next occupant of the White House and control of Congress and state legislatures nationwide, Democrats have increasingly argued that Trump – who has baselessly insisted that his 2020 election loss was fraudulent and recently proposed unleashing the military against his political opponents – is a follower of the far-right philosophy associated with Adolf Hitler.They have been aided in making their case by Trump’s former White House chief of staff John Kelly, who last week said his former boss fitted the definition of a fascist, and by Trump’s Sunday evening rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden, where Trump spent considerable time unleashing vitriol against immigrants and “the enemy from within”, as he describes his political opponents.Speaking at a recreational center in Saginaw, the seat of a central Michigan county of the same name that narrowly voted for Trump when he won the state in 2016, and then broke for Biden when he reclaimed it four years later, Vance sought to turn the tables on Democrats.“Look, politics is politics. I volunteered for this job – criticize me, attack me, insult me, it’s what I signed up for. But don’t you dare insult the brave Americans who are fighting for this movement. Don’t attack the voters of the United States of America. That’s what Kamala Harris is doing,” he said.

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      Vance turned to the Madison Square Garden rally, avoiding mention of warm-up act Tony Hinchcliffe describing Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage”, comments that have sparked fury among Latinos, a key voter group. Instead, he called the event “an incredible thing”, then decried how Democrats have compared it to a gathering of Nazis, such as the one held by American Hitler supporters in 1939.“I think it’s disgusting … and a person who would close out her campaign by running and attacking her fellow Americans has no business leading the greatest nation on Earth,” Vance said. Noting the presence of a war veteran who had led the pledge of allegiance at his event in Saginaw, Vance said: “It occurs to me that when they attack us as Nazis, it’s so disgraceful, because there are people in this room right now who have grandparents, who have parents, or who they themselves fought in world war two.”Last week, Harris said she agreed that Trump is a “fascist” and accused him of seeking “unchecked power”. The vice-president is searching for an edge in a race for president that, by all accounts, appears tied, with polls of Michigan and other swing states showing her neck-in-neck with the former president.Later on Tuesday, Harris is set to make what her campaign has billed as her closing argument to the American people from a park near the White House where Trump addressed his supporters before they attacked the US Capitol on January 6.Harris’s pitch to voters has centered on warnings that Trump is unfit for the presidency, and on promises to build an “opportunity economy” that would see the US government promote cutting-edge technologies and help Americans afford down-payments on their homes and care for their children and elders.Trump, by contrast, has described America as a country “destroyed” by foreign influence, from the undocumented migrants who have entered from Mexico to the manufacturers have have moved jobs overseas. Speaking in Saginaw, a medium-sized city that, like so many in Michigan and across the upper midwest, saw its manufacturing-centered economy collapse decades ago, Vance likened the struggles of American soldiers against Nazis to Trump’s own quest to win the presidency.“[Do] you think that the men who stormed the beaches at Normandy did it to give taxpayer-funded sex changes to illegal aliens? Do you think that the men who stormed the beaches at Normandy did it to ship all of our good manufacturing jobs off to China? Do you think the men who stormed the beaches at Normandy did it for a president who wants to open the American southern border?” Vance asked. “I don’t think so.” More

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      Giuliani’s book is silent on $150m award for defamation but noisy on election lies

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      In a new book, Rudy Giuliani claims his extensive legal problems and those of Donald Trump are the results of persecution by “a fascist regime” run by Kamala Harris and Joe Biden – all while avoiding mention of a $150m defamation award against him won by two Georgia elections workers and repeating the lies about electoral fraud which saw him lose law licenses in New York and Washington DC.Giuliani’s book also ignores the widely reported autocratic tendencies of Trump, which have triggered numerous warnings, including from former staffers, that he is a fascist in waiting, should he return to the White House.The New York mayor turned Trump lawyer even avoids mention of fascistic sympathies in his own family, specifically those harbored by his mother, whose own sister-in-law said she “liked Mussolini”, the dictator who ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943.Giuliani’s book, The Biden Crime Family: The Blueprint for their Prosecution, is released in the US on Tuesday. The book’s title betrays the reason for its delayed release – it is largely a propagandistic election-season attack on Biden, the president who stepped aside in July, amid concern that at 81 he was too old for a second term, ceding the Democratic nomination to Harris, his vice-president.Giuliani’s book is finally released a week from election day but even he may not have foreseen it landing amid explosive debate over whether Trump is a fascist himself.Mark Milley, formerly the chair of the joint chiefs of staff under Trump, and John Kelly, another retired general who was Trump’s second White House chief of staff, have said Trump deserves the label.Speaking to the reporter Bob Woodward, Milley said Trump was “fascist to the core”. Last week, Vice-President Harris said: “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.”On Sunday, outside a Madison Square Garden Trump event many observers compared to a Nazi rally at the same New York venue in 1939, Giuliani told reporters Trump was “the furthest from a fascist imaginable”.On the page, Giuliani’s case against Biden is undercut by omission of inconvenient details – as in the passage in which he complains of persecution by a “fascist regime”.“They … have sued me, sent me to bankruptcy court, and tried to force me to sell my homes,” Giuliani writes – not mentioning that such dire financial straits are the result of being ordered to pay around $150m for defaming Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman, the Georgia elections workers, while pushing Trump’s lie about voter fraud in the 2020 election. This week, Giuliani was ordered to give the women control of his New York apartment, his Mercedes-Benz, several luxury watches and other assets.Giuliani was disbarred in Washington DC and New York. Claiming such moves were politically motivated, he nonsensically claims: “I have never been disciplined by the bar association and my record is unblemished.” His legal troubles, he insists, are the result of being “but one” political opponent of Biden and Harris.“They’ve indicted and attempted to disbar legal friends and colleagues like John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark for their work on trying to correct the stolen election results,” Giuliani writes, of disgraced lawyers who also worked on Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.“Others, like [Trump advisers] Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, actually had to serve four months in federal prisons for misdemeanor of contempt of Congress – while their cases were on appeal!”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBannon, Trump’s former campaign chair and White House strategist, was released from prison in Connecticut on Tuesday. He provides a short introduction for Giuliani’s book.Giuliani also cites court cases involving “a Florida social media influencer … arrested by eight FBI and other law enforcement agents for the ‘crime’ of posting memes mocking Hillary Clinton supporters on Twitter” and a “75-year-old grandmother with a medical condition sentenced to jail for two years for protesting outside an abortion center”.“These are the actions of a fascist regime,” Giuliani writes, adding, “So is the lawfare leveled against President Donald J Trump”, in reference to 88 criminal charges, 34 having produced guilty verdicts regarding hush-money payments, the rest remaining outstanding as election day nears.Giuliani does admit in his book to having “some criminal issues in my family background” – namely his father’s 1930s conviction and prison time for robbery, an uncle’s work as a loan shark, and a cousin who “turned out to be head of an auto-theft ring and died in a shootout with the FBI”. Such ties are well known but tellingly, in light of his accusation of “fascist” behavior by Biden and Harris, Giuliani chooses not to mention another famous family detail: his mother’s liking for Mussolini.In 2000, the Village Voice published an examination of Giuliani’s family background by Wayne Barrett, the legendary New York investigative journalist. Entitled Thug Life, the extract from Barrett’s biography of the then New York mayor told the story of Giuliani’s criminal father, including his work as a mafia enforcer. But Barrett also described conversations around the dinner table during the second world war.“The fact that their homeland was an Axis country did not diminish Helen Giuliani’s sense of patriotism,” Barrett wrote of the future mayor’s mother. “‘Helen was a little sticking up for the Italians, a little on the Italian side,’ recalled Anna, Rudy Giuliani’s aunt.“‘She liked Mussolini and things like that.’” More