World news

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Peta unveils Kristi Noem ‘ghoulish monster’ Halloween costume

      by

      Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor and Republican vice-presidential hopeful, is “scarier than any horror movie villain”, the animal rights pressure group Peta said as it unveiled a Halloween costume inspired by Noem’s stunning campaign-book admission that she once shot an “untrainable” 14-month-old dog called Cricket.“Anyone cruel enough to blow a rambunctious puppy’s brains out instead of attempting to train her or find her a more responsible guardian is scarier than any horror-movie villain,” said Ingrid Newkirk, president of Peta.“With Peta Kristi Noem costume, dog lovers everywhere can strike terror in their friends as the most ghoulish monster at their Halloween party.”Halloween is more than five months away but Peta said it was taking orders for the costume, which costs $79.99 and includes “a mask of Noem’s face with devil horns and a camo hat imprinted with ‘Noem: Puppy Killer’, a fake gun, and the pièce de résistance: a stuffed dog to ‘bite’ the neck of the wearer, adorned with a bandanna that reads, ‘Take a Bite out of Cruelty.’”Noem describes killing Cricket – and an unnamed goat she deemed too aggressive – in her book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward.The Guardian first reported the remarkable tale of gravel-pit slaughter, thereby lighting the match on a political explosion widely held to have wrecked any chance Noem had of being named running mate to Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president.Noem has repeatedly defended her decision to kill Cricket the dog and the unnamed goat, as representative of her willingness to do unpleasant things in farm life and thus in politics.She has also rebuffed questions about what appears, later in the book, to be a threat to kill Commander, Joe Biden’s dog which was sent away from the White House after more than 20 biting incidents.This week, Politico reported that editors and advisers stopped Noem including the story in a previous book, because they insisted it would damage her image.Peta said it “urges everyone to consider whether they have the time, patience, and other resources necessary to socialise and train a dog before adding one to the family.“Humane dog training uses only positive reinforcement – never fear, intimidation, or painful methods such as shock collars, which Noem admits to having used on Cricket prior to killing her.” More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Bernie Sanders to run for fourth term in US Senate

      by

      Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent senator and former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, announced on Monday that he will run for a fourth six-year term – at the age of 82.In a video statement, Sanders thanked the people of Vermont “for giving me the opportunity to serve in the United States Senate”, which he said had been “the honor of my life.“Today I am announcing my intention to seek another term. And let me take a few minutes to tell you why.”In his signature clipped New York accent, Sanders did so.Citing his roles as chair of the Senate health, labor and pensions committee, part of Senate Democratic leadership, and as a member of committees on veterans affairs, the budget and the environment, Sanders said: “I have been, and will be if re-elected, in a strong position to provide the kind of help that Vermonters need in these difficult times.”Should Sanders win re-election and serve a full term, he will be 89 years old at the end of those six years. In a decidedly gerontocratic Senate, that would still be younger than the current oldest senator, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who will turn 91 in September. The Republican is due for re-election in 2028 – and has filed to run.Sanders was a mayor and sat in the US House for 16 years before entering the Senate in 2007.In 2016 he surged to worldwide prominence by mounting an unexpectedly strong challenge to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, from the populist left. He ran strongly again in 2020 but lost out to Joe Biden.Announcing another election run, Sanders stressed the need to improve public healthcare, including by defending social security and Medicare and lowering prescription drug prices; to combat climate change that has seen Vermont hit by severe flooding; to properly care for veterans; and to protect abortion and reproductive rights.“We must codify Roe v Wade [which protected federal abortion rights until 2022] into national law and do everything possible to oppose the well-funded rightwing effort to roll back the gains that women have achieved after decades of struggle,” Sanders said. “No more second-class citizenship for the women of Vermont. Or America.”Addressing an issue which threatens to split Democrats in the year of a presidential election, Sanders said: “On October 7, 2023, Hamas, a terrorist organization, began the war in Gaza with a horrific attack on Israel that killed 1,200 innocent men, women and children and took more than 230 hostages, some of whom remain in captivity today. Israel had the absolute right to defend itself against this terrorist attack.”But Sanders, who is Jewish, also said Israel “did not and does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people, which was exactly what it is doing: 34,000 Palestinians have already been killed and 77,000 have been wounded, 70% of whom are women and children. According to humanitarian organizations, famine and starvation are now imminent.“In my view, US tax dollars should not be going to the extremist [Benjamin] Netanyahu government to continue its devastating war against the Palestinian people.”In conclusion, if without mentioning Donald Trump by name, Sanders called the 2024 election “the most consequential election in our lifetimes”.“Will the United States continue to even function as a democracy? Or will we move to an authoritarian form of government? Will we reverse the unprecedented level of income and wealth inequality that now exists? Or will we continue to see billionaires get richer while working families struggle to put food on the table? Can we create a government that works for all of us? Or will our political system continue to be dominated by wealthy campaign contributors?“These are just some of the questions that together we need to answer.” More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Noem book contains threat against Biden dog: ‘Commander, say hello to Cricket’

      by

      The White House condemned as “disturbing” and “absurd” comments in which Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota and a potential running mate for Donald Trump, threatened to harm or kill Joe Biden’s dog.“We find her comments from yesterday disturbing,” Karine Jean-Pierre, Biden’s press secretary, told a White House briefing. “We find them absurd. This is a country that loves dogs and you have a leader that talks about putting dogs down, killing them.”Noem’s bizarre threat is contained in No Going Back, a campaign book that generated unusual buzz after the Guardian revealed how Noem describes in detail the day she shot dead her dog, Cricket, which she deemed untrainable and dangerous, and an unnamed goat.The revelation sparked a political firestorm, widely held to have incinerated Noem’s chances of being named running mate to Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.But as the book neared publication on Tuesday, it became clear Noem was not done when she closed her chapter on killing Cricket, a 14-month-old female wirehaired pointer, and the unnamed male goat, which Noem says was smelly and aggressive and dangerous to her children.At the end of No Going Back, Noem asks: “What would I do if I was president on the first day in office in 2025?”Remarkably, she writes that “the first thing I’d do is make sure Joe Biden’s dog was nowhere on the grounds. (‘Commander, say hello to Cricket for me.’)”Noem adds that her own dog, Foster, “would sure be welcome” at the White House.“He comes with me to the [state] capitol all the time and loves everyone,” she writes.Regardless, a governor widely held to have designs on the presidency in 2028 has at least implied, in print, that she would have a predecessor’s dog killed – whether by herself with a shotgun, like Cricket and the goat, or not.Noem has defended her description of killing Cricket and the goat as evidence of her willingness to do unpleasant but necessary things in farm life as well as in politics.Commander, a German shepherd owned by Joe and Jill Biden, was removed from the White House after biting Secret Service agents.On Monday, Jean-Pierre said: “Commander’s living with family members.”The day before, Noem doubled down.Her host on CBS’s Face the Nation, Margaret Brennan, quoted Noem’s apparent threat to kill Commander and asked: “Are you doing this to try to look tough? Do you still think that you have a shot at being a VP?”Noem said: “Well, number one, Joe Biden’s dog has attacked 24 Secret Service people. So, how many people is enough people to be attacked and dangerously hurt before you make a decision on a dog and what to do with it?”Brennan said: “Well, he’s not living at the White House any more.”Noem said: “That’s a question that the president should be held accountable to.”Brennan said: “You’re saying he [Commander] should be shot?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNoem said: “That what’s the president should be accountable to.”Noem tried to move on, to talk about Covid in South Dakota. But she also said she was “so proud” of a book that contained “a lot of truthful stories”.Elsewhere, though, Noem’s publisher, Center Street, said that at Noem’s request it was removing from her book “a passage regarding Kim Jong-un … upon a reprint of the print edition and as soon as technically possible on the audio and ebook editions”.In her book, Noem writes: “I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. I’m sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants (I’d been a children’s pastor, after all).”As first reported by the Dakota Scout, no such meeting occurred.Noem told CBS: “What bothers me the most about politicians is when they’re fake.”Brennan said: “But if you have to retract … parts of [the book] …”Noem, whose publisher said it would retract part of her book, said: “I’m not retracting anything.”Brennan said: “OK.”On Saturday, Noem attended a Trump Florida fundraiser featuring a host of vice-presidential contenders.Noem was “somebody I love”, NBC reported Trump as saying, adding: “She’s been with me, and a supporter, and I’ve been a supporter of hers for a long time.”But unlike other hopefuls, among them the South Carolina senator Tim Scott and the New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Noem was not called to the stage.She reportedly left early. More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      House set to vote on Marjorie Taylor Greene effort to remove Mike Johnson

      by

      The House is expected to vote this week on a motion to remove Republican Mike Johnson as speaker, but the effort, spearheaded by hard-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, faces virtually no chance of success.Greene announced on Wednesday she would move forward with forcing a vote on Johnson’s removal this week, following through on a threat she first issued in late March. Greene has consistently attacked Johnson for advancing bills that have attracted widespread bipartisan support, such as the government spending proposal approved in March and the foreign aid package signed into law last month.As she called for Johnson’s removal, Greene accused the speaker of abandoning his Republican principles in favor of Democratic priorities, such as Ukraine funding.“Mike Johnson is giving [Democrats] everything they want,” Greene said Wednesday. “I think every member of Congress needs to take that vote and let the chips fall where they may. And so next week, I am going to be calling this motion to vacate.”But Greene’s proposal is widely expected to fail, as House Democratic leaders indicated last week that they would vote to table, or kill, the motion to vacate the chair. In a statement issued on Tuesday, the three leaders cited the passage of the foreign aid package, which included nearly $61bn in funding for Ukraine, to justify their stance.“At this moment, upon completion of our national security work, the time has come to turn the page on this chapter of pro-Putin Republican obstruction,” the leaders said. “We will vote to table Marjorie Taylor Greene’s motion to vacate the chair. If she invokes the motion, it will not succeed.”Among House Republicans, Greene’s campaign has attracted little interest, as only two of her colleagues – Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Paul Gosar of Arizona – have expressed their support of the motion.Although the effort will almost certainly fail, Greene can still force a vote on her motion to vacate. Current House rules stipulate that a single member of the chamber may “offer a privileged resolution declaring the Office of Speaker vacant”. Greene introduced such a resolution in March, but she stopped short of calling for a vote on the matter.Greene plans to move forward with requesting a vote on the motion, which will force the House to take up the matter within two legislative days.Before voting on removing the speaker, one of Johnson’s allies is expected to introduce a motion to table the proposal. When then speaker Kevin McCarthy was facing the threat of removal in October, his allies tried the same tactic, but the motion to table failed in a vote of 208 to 218.This time around, the House will almost certainly be able to pass a motion to table Greene’s resolution. With House Democratic leadership signaling that they will support the motion to table and only two Republican colleagues joining Greene’s cause, she remains hundreds of votes short of the majority that she will need to remove the speaker. (However, Democrats are not expected to unanimously back the motion to table, as some have signaled they will oppose it or vote “present”.)Johnson himself has appeared largely unbothered by Greene’s threats, criticizing her motion as “wrong for the Republican conference, wrong for the institution and wrong for the country”. At a press conference on Tuesday, Johnson insisted that he remained laser-focused on advancing House Republicans’ legislative priorities.“I have to do my job. We have to do what we believe to be the right thing,” Johnson said. “We need people who are serious about the job here to continue to do that job and get it done.”If Johnson were ousted, he would become only the second House speaker in US history to be formally removed from the position – and yet he would also be the second speaker removed in less than a year. In October, a small group of Republicans joined Democrats in ousting McCarthy, making him the first House speaker to ever endure that humiliation.McCarthy’s departure set off weeks of chaos in the House, as Republicans repeatedly failed in their efforts to choose a new speaker. The House remained at a complete standstill for three weeks, unable to conduct any official business, until Johnson (the conference’s fourth speaker nominee) won election.Johnson has often referenced that embarrassing episode in recent weeks, as he has attempted to dissuade Republicans from joining Greene’s campaign.“We saw what happened with the motion to vacate the last time,” Johnson said on Tuesday. “Congress was closed for three weeks. No one can afford for that to happen.” More

    • 188 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Kristi Noem defends killing dog: ‘I’m tired of politicians pretending to be what they’re not’

      by

      The South Dakota governor and Republican vice-presidential hopeful Kristi Noem asked the American public to consider having to “make a choice between your children or a dangerous animal”, as she again defended her killing of a 14-month-old dog.“I would ask everybody in the country to put themselves in that situation,” Noem told CBS’s Face the Nation about her decision to shoot the dog, named Cricket, after the animal ruined a pheasant hunt and killed a neighbor’s chickens.“Because that’s what I faced, and I talked about it because what I’m tired of in this country is politicians who pretend to be something that they’re not.”Asked why she did not surrender Cricket to an animal shelter before killing the dog, about 20 years ago, Noem repeated her prior claims that the creature was simply untrainable, had tried to bite her, and might have bitten others.“I had put months and months of training into this dog – the dog had gone to other trainers as well,” Noem said. “When you put someone in a position where … they want to protect their family and protect children and other people from getting attacked, … that’s the choice I made.“And … I didn’t ask anybody to take that responsibility for me.”Noem’s latest justification for fatally shooting Cricket at her farm – an act chronicled in her upcoming memoir No Going Back and first reported by the Guardian – comes as fellow Republicans have all but written off her chances of being chosen as Donald Trump’s running mate in November’s presidential election.A Guardian review of South Dakota state law found Noem may have committed misdemeanors by failing to control Cricket and by killing the animal on her own property. A spokesperson has not responded to inquiries on that point, which many advocates against animal cruelty have also raised.Remarkably, Cricket was only one of two animals Noem says she shot on the same day. On Sunday, the CBS host Margaret Brennan asked Noem to address her admission that, after Cricket, she also shot dead an un-castrated goat, which “smelled” and chased children around Noem’s farm. In No Going Back, the chapter that recounts the episode is entitled “Bad Day to be a Goat”.Brennan noted that Noem’s book also contains the phrase, “Commander, say hello to Cricket” – a reference to Joe Biden’s dog, who was removed from the White House after biting or otherwise assailing Secret Service agents.“How do you justify that?” Brennan said to Noem of her decision to kill the goat. “How was the goat a threat? And I’m asking you this because it seems like you’re celebrating the killing of the animals?”Noem replied that political opponents know the story of the goat’s killing well and have tried to leverage it against her, so she simply wanted “the truth to be out there”.“These animals were attacking,” Noem said. “We live on a farm and a ranch and … tough decisions are made many times, and it is – it is to protect people.”Noem obliquely acknowledged that – ahead of her book’s release Tuesday – she had to retract an anecdote about meeting the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un because the encounter never happened.In her book, Noem claims she was “underestimated” by Kim, but trumpets her experience of “staring down little tyrants”, from her work as a religious pastor ministering to children.The Dakota Scout newspaper reported how Noem’s account of meeting Kim was unlikely, and her spokesperson subsequently told journalists a correction was forthcoming. On Sunday, Noem said “this anecdote shouldn’t have been in the book, and as soon as it was brought to my attention, I made sure that that was adjusted”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“When the book is released, we’ll do all that we can to see that – that that is reflected,” Noem said.Pressed on the retraction, Noem suggested that she could no longer hear the host.“Hello? I’m sorry, I … ” the former congresswoman said, as Brennan asked why she had not caught the error as she recorded the audio book of the memoir.Yet Noem answered seamlessly when Brennan finished the question, saying: “As soon as it was brought to my attention, I took action to make sure that it was reflected.”Noem insisted: “I’ve met with many, many world leaders – I’ve traveled around the world.”But she also said she was no longer interested in delving into details about such audiences.“I’m not going to talk to you about those personal meetings,” Noem said. “OK? I’m just not going to have that conversation.”Sunday’s interview occurred after Trump called some of those on his VP shortlist to the stage at a private donor retreat in Florida over the weekend, NBC reported. Noem left early and was not included.Edward Helmore contributed reporting More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Will the US campus protests harm Biden – and benefit Trump?

      by

      At the height of the tensions on US campuses this week, with Republicans gleefully seizing on student unrest as an election issue that could propel Donald Trump back into the White House, Joe Biden tried to steer a middle path.Weighing the democratic right to peaceful protest and the political necessity to stem disruption, Biden declared that “order must prevail”.“Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear – none of this is a peaceful protest,” Biden said in a statement on Thursday. “Dissent is essential for democracy … There’s the right to protest. But not the right to cause chaos.”His comments were his most notable intervention yet in the face of campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. The protests are a potential minefield for Biden.As his lead over Trump among younger voters continues to slip significantly from its 2020 levels and as he tries to fend off Republican attacks, he risks alienating young voters by siding with police.On the other hand, as riot police have moved against pro-Palestinian encampments and arrested thousands of people, senior Republican figures and Trump himself have been pushing hard to depict the US president as losing control and allowing America’s universities to slide into upheaval.Fox News has lavished round-the-clock coverage to what it has portrayed as a perfect storm of “Democrat chaos”, with riot police moving into occupied buildings on Columbia campus and open brawling at UCLA after a pro-Israel group attacked an encampment with sticks and fireworks.The events have diverted attention from the Trump trial in New York, where he is facing charges over a hush-money payment to an adult film star. That has confounded hopes among Democrat strategists that details from the trial would deal a blow to the Republican campaign.The focus of Fox and other conservative media on the pro-Palestinian protests marks a shift from other areas of supposed disorder allegedly caused by Biden administration incompetence – particularly the US-Mexico border, where there has been a continuous inflow of asylum seekers.Trump – posing, somewhat incongruously given his current legal predicament, as the law-and-order candidate – led the chorus on his Truth Social media platform. He called for a “COMPLETE LOCKDOWN” of Columbia and other universities similar to what he claimed had been imposed on the area outside the Manhattan court where he is on trial, supposedly to stop his supporters gathering.His pronouncement came after he had minimised a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia – where a counter-protester was killed and after which he was condemned for saying there had been “fine people on both sides” – as a “peanut” compared with the current protests.View image in fullscreenTrump is attempting to capitalise on a febrile campus atmosphere in which Jewish and pro-Israel students have complained of antisemitism and being subjected to threats.So far, analysts say, there is scant evidence of the images of campus upheaval having a radical effect on voter attitudes – although some caution that this may change if protests continue into the autumn.Biden is conscious of parallels with previous instances of student protests sweeping through American campuses, and producing arguably decisive effects in presidential politics.In 1968, mass demonstrations against the Vietnam war spilled over into the Democratic national convention in Chicago – coincidentally, the city that will stage this year’s event, where Biden will be formally adopted as his party’s candidate – resulting in violent street clashes with police and punch-ups on the convention floor.The anarchic scenes were followed by the defeat of the Democratic candidate, Hubert Humphrey, then the vice-president, to the Republican Richard Nixon.With polls showing the president running neck-and-neck with Trump, but behind in most battleground states, the Biden campaign could be forgiven for fearing that the current tumult might be instrumental in engineering a repetition.Analysts, however, point out that the Gaza war does not resonate with the American public in the same way as the war in Vietnam, where more than half a million US troops were deployed by 1968.“The raw numbers [of protesters] would have been a lot bigger in 1968,” said Kyle Kondik of the Centre for Politics at the University of Virginia.“The current protests are certainly large, but it does seem like Vietnam was fundamentally a lot different [from Gaza]. You had young people being drafted to fight overseas, America was engaged heavily in fighting a land war overseas.“The US has indirect involvement in Gaza in terms of funding. But it’s different and less impactful overall. I don’t think the race has changed in any kind of a significant way.”Other observers say that even for voters under 34, a cohort among which polls have shown Biden’s lead over Trump to be slipping significantly, Gaza plays a much smaller role than the passions emanating from college campuses would indicate.Amy Walter, of the Cook Political Report, told the Wall Street Journal’s free expression podcast: “What we see from the data is that for voters under 34, the top issues are the same as the top issues for folks over the age of 34, which the economy and the cost of living – they are concerned about issue of gun violence.”In a possible indicator that Gaza’s electoral impact even younger voters may be limited, an NBC focus group of college students opposed to US support for Israel’s military offensive revealed that few planned to vote based on the issue – although some said they would opt for third-party candidates such as Jill Stein of the Green party or Robert F Kennedy Jr.Yet for Biden, even that could have disproportionately negative effects. Walter said: “If you take just a small percentage of younger people who feel very strongly about this issue and say, ‘I cannot vote for Trump, but Biden is no good, I’m staying home’ … for Biden that might be a lot.“He has a coalition that’s dependent on voters who dislike Trump coming back to him.”What electoral bearing the protests have could be decided by the effectiveness of the very crackdowns Republicans have been calling for – especially when combined with the imminent end of the academic year, which will see most students leaving campus.JD Vance, the Republican senator and outspoken Trump ally, may have inadvertently highlighted a Republican dilemma when he posted on X: “No civilization should tolerate these encampments. Get rid of them.”With more than 2,000 protesters having been arrested, that process may already have begun, apparently with Biden’s blessing.If the college clampdowns successfully quell the protests, it would deprive Republicans of the images of chaos they crave – unless the war in Gaza continues to rage, fuelling future protests.Writing in New York magazine, Jonathan Chait said it was in Trump’s interests for the protests to carry on – a development he connected to a continuation of the war in Gaza into the autumn, thus triggering a fresh round of unrest at the height of the election campaign.“In a recent social-media post, Trump demanded, ‘STOP THE PROTESTS NOW!!!’” Chait wrote. “If they are still going on during a prospective second Trump term, he will probably stop them with maximal violence. In the meantime, he fervently wishes them to continue through November.” More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Boxing, tacos and TV: Democratic Senate contender aims to win back Latino voters

      by

      When one of the most celebrated Mexican boxers in history, Canelo Álvarez, steps into the ring against the undefeated Mexican fighter Jaime Munguía on Saturday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, excitement will be through the roof at a campaign event just 280 miles away.That’s because the Democratic congressman Ruben Gallego, caught in one of the most critical US Senate races in the country against the former TV anchor Kari Lake, will be holding a watch party for the fight at JL Boxing Academy in Glendale, Arizona, complete with big screens inside, and a truck serving birria tacos and Mexican Cokes outside.The event on Cinco de Mayo weekend, expected to bring more than 100 largely Latino residents and families, is not just happening because Gallego is a boxing fan, but rather serves as evidence of how the campaign from the former US marine and Iraq combat veteran aims to reach Latino voters and Hispanic men who have eroded from the Democratic party in recent election cycles.“I remember leaving work sites with my cousins to gather with friends and family to watch epic boxing matches,” Gallego told the Guardian, citing famous boxing legends like Julio César Chávez, Mike Tyson and Oscar De La Hoya. “Far too often, politicians treat Latino voters as a box to check. Our campaign is different: we’re focused on community events – food tours, town halls in Spanish, and this weekend: boxing watch parties.”Latino voter support for Democrats nationally slipped 8 percentage points from 2016 to 2020, according to the firm Catalist. A 2022 survey of 3,600 exit-poll interviews with voters in battleground states, conducted by the progressive donor network Way to Win, found that 58% of Hispanic men supported Democratic candidates, compared with 66% of Latinas. Meanwhile, the Democratic political action committee Nuestro Pac found after the 2022 midterms that Hispanic men consistently lagged Latinas in Democratic support in battlegrounds by 8 to 12 points.Chuck Rocha, an adviser to Gallego’s campaign, said Gallego himself texted senior staffers in the fall with the idea for the event, recalling his message was that with the Canelo bout coming in 2024 it would be good to have a presence around the fight for boys and their fathers and families who love boxing.“We all know Latino men have been trending away from [Democrats], and Ruben Gallego is reflective of those men,” Rocha said, noting that Gallego had to sleep on a couch in his living room until he went away for college because his sisters shared a room together and he didn’t have a bedroom.“Ruben went off to war and served with men and women who are true blue-collar, working-class kids like him. We both know the reason Latino men are slipping from Democrats is because we’re not showing up in the places we need to, and not having conversations about things Latino men care about.”For its part, Lake’s campaign said Gallego’s events, and ads focused on Harvard and being a marine would not ultimately reach voters who are focused on inflation and border issues.“Broadly every group is facing problems with inflation and the border and our plan all along is as voters learn about Gallego’s record, they will like him less, no matter what events he does and no matter his biography,” said Alex Nichol, a Lake campaign spokesperson, noting Gallego’s votes with Joe Biden’s “deeply unpopular” policies on illegal immigration and the economy.A FiveThirtyEight analysis of Gallego’s votes in the 117th Congress found the Phoenix congressman was aligned with Biden 100% of the time.Reaching voters where they areStill, Gallego’s event is being lauded by veteran political organizers and operatives of both parties who stress that while most Latinos don’t celebrate Cinco de Mayo, with the holiday often viewed as an excuse to drink margaritas and eat Mexican food, Hispanics who enjoy sports often look forward to the holiday as part of a major boxing weekend, when star Mexican prizefighters have high-profile bouts.“This brings politics and engagement into a place candidates often don’t think about,” said Tomas Robles, founder of Roble Fuerte Strategies, and an organizer for 14 years in Arizona who has worked to mobilize Latino voters. “So it’s doing what most politicians hope to do, which is reaching new people and communities with their message, who they haven’t been able to reach in the past.”Gallego has also put on a round table last week with Latino leaders on lowering prescription drug prices, a Maryvale, Arizona townhall last year entirely in Spanish, and a south Phoenix food tour with local influencer Señor Foodie.“The Canelo fight watch party, I would say, is smart, because he’s continuing to mine parts of the Latino vote that Lake will never even touch, so if he can get them to turn out that’s a net gain for him,” said Jaime Molera, who served as an adviser to the former Republican governor Jane Dee Hull and co-founded the Molera Alvarez consulting firm.While the Democratic party for the first time this cycle acknowledged its problem with reaching Latino men amid fear that they are gravitating to former president Donald Trump driven by his bravado and policies, Robles argues it’s an inaccurate view, and Hispanic men have instead been moved by what they perceive as “authenticity”.“He’s no doubt been to a bunch of events like the one his campaign is organizing, like the ones we went to in our 20s. He can have a 15-minute convo by the taco truck and it won’t have to be anything about politics, it will be about boxing,” he said.. “That is the connection politicians are eager to make but a lot of them don’t put themselves in the shoes of the people they’re trying to connect with.”View image in fullscreenGallego led by two points over Lake in a March Hill/Emerson poll 51% to 49% but has enjoyed larger leads in more recent polls. An average of 19 polls from the Hill finds Gallego leading by an average of 4.7%.Chuck Coughlin, who served as a campaign manager for former Republican governor Jan Brewer and is the president of HighGround which runs polls in Arizona, told the Guardian he spoke to Gallego before he ran and he shared that this was exactly the type of event he was going to do.Coughlin described a demographic divide within the Hispanic community between “older, traditional, Catholic, gun-owning, conservative-leaning” members and the more activist, immigration-focused generation that was baptized under the state’s hardline SB1070 immigration law over a dozen years ago.“For him to establish a beachhead with those people he would not be known to, coming from one of the lowest-turnout districts in the state, is smart,” he said. “His DNA – the story he tells on TV of having a hard-working single mom, going to college, being a marine in Iraq – that’s a working man’s story that they can relate to. I don’t think that story has been shared widely among those older Hispanics and this kind of event is a perfect place to allow himself to share those stories in an apolitical format with your tío and your family there.”Junior Lopez, 42, is the owner and trainer at JL Boxing Academy, who has trained fighters for more than 15 years, including current top contender David Benavidez. He said the primary thing people need to know about Latino men is that their number one priority is taking care of their families.In Lopez and men like him, Gallego has the opportunity to start a conversation on Saturday.“I’m not going to lie, I don’t follow too much of the political stuff,” he told the Guardian. “This is a good thing for me and for my people in the community to hear what he’s about and to understand what he’s fighting for.”One interesting wrinkle at the watch party: Benavidez, who Lopez trains, is ranked No 2 in ESPN’s super-middleweight ranking, behind Álvarez. Fans entering the watch party will walk by a giant poster of Benavidez, who is nicknamed the “Mexican Monster”, and has accused Álvarez of ducking a matchup with him. In some ways that makes this under-the-radar watch party in Glendale part of the orbit at the center of the boxing universe.And come November, Arizona too could be the center of the political universe, given the razor-thin margin in 2020 between Biden and Trump, and if Gallego is able to maximize his support with Latinos on his way to becoming the first Latino US senator in Arizona history.Rocha, who wrote a book called Tio Bernie about serving as the architect for Bernie Sanders’ surprisingly robust 2020 Latino outreach effort, said he was impressed by Gallego’s focus on Hispanics at this juncture in the campaign.“I’ve never seen a candidate more focused on maximizing the Latino vote than this candidate,” he said. “He’s from the community and has felt the pain they feel, and he has really good ideas.” More