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      Key Black Muslim group backs Kamala Harris for president over Gaza stance

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      Kamala Harris has won the backing for her presidential bid of a key US Muslim organization that had declined to endorse Joe Biden before he withdrew from his re-election campaign.The switch to Harris was a sign that those who voted “uncommitted” instead of actively voting for Biden in the primary, because of their objections to his response to Israel’s war on Gaza, may have found an ally in his vice-president.The group is the political action arm of the non-profit organization the Black Muslim Leadership Council, which was created in March to put pressure on the Biden administration to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.Salima Suswell, the founder and chief executive of the Black Muslim Leadership Council Fund, told NBC on Thursday: “[Harris] has shown more sympathy towards the people of Gaza then both President Biden and Former President Donald Trump.“During Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address to Congress, she decided not to attend. She has repeatedly called for a ceasefire, and I believe she has also expressed empathy towards civilian life and has been very caring as it relates to getting aid to the people of Gaza.”The move signals growing support for a Harris presidency from Democratic groups that were reluctant to support or were outright against another Biden term.The Harris campaign said it was “grateful to BMLC for their support”.“The vice-president is committed to combating Islamophobia wherever it exists and advancing opportunity for black Americans,” a Harris campaign spokesperson said in a statement. “We look forward to working with BMLC to win this November and defeat Donald Trump’s divisive, unpopular agenda.”Although Muslim Americans make up a small percentage of the electorate, they can prove to be crucial in battleground states in which they represent a large swath of the population.Muslims voted overwhelmingly for Biden in 2020, but many have since withdrawn their support due to the US’s strong support for Israel in its war in Gaza. Palestine, with a Muslim-majority population, and the rights of Palestinians, remain key issues for Muslim voters in the US.Harris has repeatedly called for a ceasefire in Gaza and a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine as the way forward to achieve sustainable Middle East peace.Harris has voiced support for Palestinians and said she “condemn[s] any individuals associating with the brutal terrorist organization Hamas”, but she has not explicitly broken with the Biden administration stance to condemn Israel for the killing and forced relocation of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Neither Biden nor the vice-president have called for an arms embargo on Israel – a point many Muslim, Arab American and progressive voters take issue with.In a meeting with Netanyahu in Washington last week Harris said she told him she “will always ensure that Israel is able to defend itself, including from Iran and Iran-backed militias, such as Hamas and Hezbollah”.But she added: “Israel has a right to defend itself, and how it does so matters.” She also said she would “not be silent” about civilian deaths and suffering in Gaza.A movement to vote uncommitted in the Democratic presidential primaries took off in swing-state Michigan and spread, garnering more than 700,000 ballots for the uncommitted cause.The Uncommitted National Movement is pushing for representation at the Democratic national convention later this month in Chicago.Abbas Alawieh, an uncommitted delegate from Michigan, told the Guardian that Harris had “expressed a level of concern about the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza that perhaps we weren’t seeing from the president”.Alawieh added: “We’re getting more engagement than we did under President Biden being at the top of the ticket, and so I’m hopeful that we can move in a direction that leads to her engaging directly.” More

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      Is this the end of Project 2025? – podcast

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      This week, Paul Dans, the leader of the controversial Project 2025, resigned and signalled in a company email that work on it was ‘winding down’. The project had become a manifesto of rightwing policies that would serve as a guide for the next Republican president. However, there is a significant stumbling block: Donald Trump wants nothing to do with it.
      Joan E Greve and Rachel Leingang discuss whether this marks the beginning of the end of Project 2025

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Who is Mark Kelly, the potential vice-presidential pick from Arizona?

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      Mark Kelly’s resume stands out in the sea of lawyers that dominate Washington.The Arizona senator was a US navy pilot who served multiple deployments. He was on Celebrity Jeopardy. He is a steadfast partner to his wife, former US representative Gabrielle Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt at a public event in Tucson in 2011 and has worked alongside Kelly to limit guns since.Oh, and he’s been to space multiple times because he was an astronaut, along with his twin brother, Scott. He even wrote a children’s book about it, called Mousetronaut.“An astronaut! Who doesn’t like astronauts, except for Flat Earthers, right? But they’re very small in quantity,” Arizona pollster Mike Noble said. “So, outside of Flat Earthers, I’m trying to think of what’s more American than astronauts. Astronaut takes everybody. I’ve been to space, what have you done?”Kelly is on Kamala Harris’s shortlist for vice-president, and his background certainly helps make his case.He first ran for office in 2020, winning a special election against Republican Martha McSally to take a Senate seat. He won again in 2024 in the regular Senate election against Blake Masters, a well-funded Peter Thiel acolyte.To win the Senate seat in a purple state, Kelly has struck a centrist tone and proven himself a prolific fundraiser. He hasn’t inspired the intra-party ire that Arizona’s other senator , now-independent Kyrsten Sinema, has. He polls at the top of Arizona politicians for favorability.His presence on the presidential ticket could help Harris’s prospects in Arizona, where Trump is polling ahead, though the benefit of a VP pick may be greater in other swing states where she’s closer to Trump in the polls. Kelly could also help her improve how she’s viewed on immigration issues.Harris is expected to choose a running mate in the coming days, then blitz through battleground states with them.Kelly has a couple vulnerabilities, but the biggest drawback is what Democrats stand to lose – his Senate seat, in a swing state, at a time when the balance of the Senate is in contention.Arizonans have endured a series of special elections, expensive and exhausting endeavors, for Senate seats since the late Senator John McCain’s death. Kelly’s vacancy would require another one, “giving the state a Senate election every even year from 2016 through 2030”, the Washington Examiner pointed out. The cycle has made Senate elections, with their longer six-year terms, more akin to congressional races, with their two-year terms. If Kelly becomes the vice-president, Arizona’s Democratic governor would appoint a Democratic successor, then a special election for the seat would be called in 2026.If the state’s Republican party decides to end its lean into hard-right Maga politics, Republicans could win it back. Democrats face a widening gap in voter registration compared to Republicans and independents. But the current Senate race, in which Ruben Gallego, a Democrat, faces Trump favorite Kari Lake, shows Gallego with the lead – a sign that the Republican candidates often remain out of step with the broader electorate there.Still, Democrats in Arizona are excited by the prospect of one of their own on a presidential ticket. The Arizona Democratic party’s executive board issued a letter formally endorsing Kelly as a VP, praising his work in the Senate and saying Kelly and Harris would “build a winning coalition” to beat Trump.“The road to the White House runs through Arizona in this election,” the board’s letter said. “We are united behind Vice-President Kamala Harris and Senator Kelly because our democracy is on the line.”Kelly hasn’t been as ubiquitous on TV or the campaign trail as the other Democratic contenders lately, and he’s not a bombastic debater ready to lob insults at the other side. He isn’t an attack dog like vice-presidents often can be. He isn’t as tested in the trenches – he hasn’t had to address much controversy or endure combative interviews, Noble said, but he has a great relationship with Harris.Kelly has praised Harris on social media in recent days. In one video posted this week, he shows footage driving a Jeep through the Arizona desert juxtaposed with rockets flying into space.“I’ve been on a lot of missions, but never once did I do it alone. I always had a really good team behind me, and that’s what @KamalaHarris, @RubenGallego, and Democrats are going to need to win in November,” he wrote.After Biden stepped aside, Kelly said he “couldn’t be more confident that Vice President @KamalaHarris is the right person to defeat Donald Trump and lead our country into the future”, giving her his full support.Kelly could use his proximity to the US-Mexico border to counter some of the right’s push to brand Harris as a “border czar”. In a TV appearance this week, he attacked Trump and Republicans over the demise of a bipartisan Senate border bill. That bill aligned more with Republicans than with Democrats, he said.“On their side of the field, we realized, we’ve got to get operational control over the border. I realized this, Kamala Harris realizes this, and this legislation was going to do that,” he said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “And our goal here was to get this legislation passed and then start working on comprehensive immigration reform. But this was stopped dead in its tracks by Donald Trump because he wanted to have this as an election issue. Like a lot of other Republicans, they don’t actually want to solve this problem.”If he’s chosen as running mate, some of his past liabilities could come back to haunt him. Perhaps the biggest line of attack he faced in his Senate races revolved around a space balloon company he co-founded and its ties to China. An odd turn slinging vitamins in China could come up, too.The right is also likely to hit him on his record advocating for gun control alongside his wife and her group, Giffords. After the shooting of elementary school kids in Uvalde, Texas, he said, “it’s fucking nuts not to do anything about this”.His personal story showcasing the toll of gun violence should eclipse this attack, Noble said. “That crosses party lines.”Another liability was foreclosed this week after he said he was in favor of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, a pro-union bill that he previously had not signed on to support.It’s a “huge honor” to have an Arizona Democrat on the list for the presidential ticket, said Stacy Pearson, a Democratic consultant in Arizona. “We’ve tried many, many times at this point, with Barry Goldwater and John McCain. Maybe it’ll take a Democrat to get there.”The last time an Arizona Democratic elected official ended up in a presidential administration – when Janet Napolitano left the governor’s office after she was tapped by Barack Obama to be Homeland security secretary – was more than 20 years ago.After Napolitano’s exit, Republicans held the governor’s office until Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, won it back in 2022 – a sign of the potential difficulty in maintaining power if Kelly heads to DC.“As much as they love to see Mark Kelly promoted to a position that important for our country, there is fear that the seat could be lost,” Pearson said. More

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      Doctors told Pelosi of concern for Trump’s mental health, ex-speaker says in book

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      In early 2019, at a memorial service for a prominent psychiatrist, a succession of “doctors and other mental health professionals” told Nancy Pelosi they were “deeply concerned that there was something seriously wrong” with Donald Trump, “and that his mental and psychological health was in decline”.“I’m not a doctor,” the former speaker writes in an eagerly awaited memoir, “but I did find his behaviors difficult to understand.”Pelosi’s book, The Art of Power: My Story as America’s First Woman Speaker of the House, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Pelosi was speaker between 2007 and 2011, and between 2019 and 2023, the latter spell coinciding with Trump’s chaotic presidency. Her memoir comes out amid a tumultuous 2024 presidential campaign, in which Trump is the Republican nominee for a third successive election.Questions about Trump’s fitness for office form a thread through the book. At 78, Trump is the oldest candidate ever, his campaign-trail utterances studied for frequent mistakes, his speeches are often rambling and marked by bizarre references.Trump’s volcanic behavior and disregard for societal norms also stoke such questions, not least because he left office having been impeached twice, the second time for inciting the deadly January 6 Capitol attack; has been convicted on 34 criminal charges and faces 54 more; has been ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in civil cases including one concerning a rape claim a judge called “substantially true”; and has promised if re-elected to govern as “a dictator” on “day one”.On the page, Pelosi says she did not solicit statements about Trump’s mental health from attendees at the memorial for Dr David Hamburg, “a distinguished psychiatrist who … served as the president of the Carnegie Corporation, where he had been a great voice for international peace”, and who died in April 2019.Elsewhere in The Art of Power, however, the former speaker is not shy of stating her views about Trump’s mental health, calling him “imbalanced” and “unhinged”.By 6 January 2021, Pelosi writes, “I knew Donald Trump’s mental imbalance. I had seen it up close. His denial and then delays when the Covid pandemic struck, his penchant for repeatedly stomping out of meetings, his foul mouth, his pounding on tables, his temper tantrums, his disrespect for our nation’s patriots, and his total separation from reality and actual events. His repeated, ridiculous insistence that he was the greatest of all time.”She describes how subordinates including Mark Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff, indulged improper behavior, allowing Trump to “surreptitiously listen” to private meetings with congressional leaders, eventually prompting Pelosi to ban all cellphones from her meeting rooms on Capitol Hill.Pelosi also describes getting calls from Trump, often late at night, including one in which she says Trump insisted missile strikes on Syria he had just ordered were Barack Obama’s fault, eventually prompting Pelosi to tell him: “It’s midnight. I think you should go to sleep.”Pelosi devotes attention to the events of 6 January 2021, when she and other congressional leaders were hurried from a mob who meant them harm, then spent hours trying to get Trump to call them off.Much of Pelosi’s account is familiar, thanks to the work of the House January 6 committee, which she created, and of her own daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, a documentarian who was filming her mother that day.“People still ask me how I remained so calm,” Pelosi writes, of the hours when Congress was under attack, she and other leaders were evacuated to Fort McNair, and Vice-President Mike Pence was in hiding as the mob chanted about hanging him.“My answer is that I was already deeply aware of how dangerous Donald Trump was.“He continues to be dangerous. If his family and staff truly understood his disregard for both the fundamentals of the law and for basic rules, and if they had reckoned with his personal instability over not winning the [2020] election, they should have staged an intervention. Whether because of willful blindness, money, prestige, or greed, they didn’t – and America has paid a steep price.”Saying she had quickly realised she had “more respect for the office of president of the United States than Trump”, Pelosi says “it was clear to me from the start that he was an imposter – and that on some level, he knew it”.Still she is not done. After describing how electoral college votes were eventually counted and Joe Biden’s victory confirmed, she says she “and many others wanted a consequence for the deranged, unhinged man who was still president of the United States”.That led to an impeachment and a second failed Senate trial, after the Republican leader there, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, made a historic miscalculation: that Trump did not require conviction and barring from office, as he was politically finished.Pelosi describes another failed effort to remove Trump from office, on grounds of being unfit.“Following January 6,” she writes, “the Democratic leadership discussed asking the vice-president to invoke the 25th amendment to the constitution, which allows for the vice-president and a majority of cabinet members to certify that a president is unable to discharge the duties of the office.”She and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, “placed a call to Vice-President Pence about this possibility”.Elsewhere, Pelosi writes that she admires Pence for his actions on January 6, when he refused to be spirited from the Capitol despite having to hide from a murderous mob sent by his own president, then ultimately presided over certification of election results.But when it came to the 25th amendment, Pence let Pelosi down.“The vice-president’s office kept us on hold for 20 minutes,” Pelosi writes, adding that “thankfully” she was at home at the time, “so I could also empty the dishwasher and put in a load of laundry.“Ultimately, Vice-President Pence never got on the phone with us or returned our call.” More

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      Trump favorite Kari Lake wins Arizona’s Republican Senate primary

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      Kari Lake, the far-right firebrand and favorite of Donald Trump, has won Arizona’s Republican Senate primary.The Associated Press projected the race at 8.44pm Arizona time on Tuesday night. Lake rose to prominence as a gubernatorial candidate in 2022, when she refused to concede the race to her Democratic challenger Katie Hobbs.Having secured a primary victory, she will face off against the Democratic US representative Ruben Gallego for an open Senate seat vacated by the centrist independent senator Kyrsten Sinema.Lake, endorsed by Trump, was widely favored to win the primary against Mark Lamb, the sheriff of Pinal county. Lamb, who has far less name recognition and campaign funding than Lake, pulled in about 40% of the vote as of Tuesday night – a potential sign of general election trouble for Lake, who has alienated the more moderate voters required to win statewide in Arizona.Her contest, along with several key down-ballot races, is considered a gauge for the relative strength of the Maga movement in a key swing state that has been racked with election chaos brought on by a far-right flank pushing false claims about election fraud.Lake, a former news anchor who rocked into the national stage by becoming one of the most ardent and telegenic faces of election denialism, once carried a sledgehammer on stage and told supporters she would use it on electronic voting machines.The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee quickly launched an ad against Lake, where she talks about how abortion pills should be illegal and brands her as a “power-hungry liar who only cares about herself”. Gallego tweeted: “It’s official – my opponent is Kari Lake. Arizona, the choice is clear: Kari wants to ban abortion. I will always protect abortion rights.”Election prognosticators Sabato’s Crystal Ball and the Cook Political Report rank the race as leaning Democratic, citing Lake’s election denialism and belief in abortion restrictions as factors moving the race toward Democrats. Polling on the matchup between Gallego and Lake has generally shown Gallego up a few points over Lake.The race is key nationally for the balance of power in the US Senate – Democrats need to keep it in their control to maintain their 51-49 majority in the chamber. It’s one of few close races around the country expected to see massive funding and attention as November nears.Far-right election deniers starred in several other key Republican primary races. Abe Hamadeh, who repeatedly tried to have his loss in the 2022 attorney general election overturned and has spread conspiracy theories about election security, is leading in a crowded Republican primary in the state’s deep-red eighth congressional district, where Trump made the rare move to endorse two candidates, including Hamadeh.His Republican rivals included venture capitalist Blake Masters, who Trump endorsed last-minute, as well as state senator and fake elector Anthony Kern, Ben Toma, the speaker of the Arizona house; Trent Franks, who resigned from Congress after staffers claimed he asked them to serve as surrogates for him; and political newcomer Pat Briody.View image in fullscreenMeanwhile, Mark Finchem, who has still not accepted that he lost his bid for secretary of state in 2022 has the lead in a race against relative moderate Republican Ken Bennett for a state senate seat.In Arizona’s Maricopa county – which includes Phoenix – election deniers vied for positions that could give them oversight in future elections. Early results show a mixed bag for election-defending county officials.Stephen Richer, the Maricopa county recorder who became a nationally known voice for defending elections and sued Lake for defamation over election falsehoods, was behind in his race for reelection as of Tuesday night. He is falling behind Justin Heap, a state representative who will not say whether he believes the 2020 or 2022 elections were stolen, but has called Maricopa county elections a “laughing stock” and supported bills that stemmed from election conspiracies. Another challenger, Don Hiatt, has said the 2020 election was stolen and wants to curtail voting access and is in third.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDebbie Lesko, an outgoing Republican congresswoman who is endorsed by Trump and voted to overturn election results on 6 January 2021, has a strong lead in the primary to join the county board of supervisors over another election denier, Bob Branch, a professor at the Christian college Grand Canyon University.The Maricopa county board of supervisors and recorder played a crucial role in 2020 standing up to pressure from Trump and his allies in their scheme to overturn the results of that year’s presidential election.The recorder and many board members have faced ongoing threats, some of which have been prosecuted and led to prison sentences. The pressure has remained intense in the lead-up to this year’s elections, with errors such as printing problems in the 2022 election adding fuel to rightwing conspiracies.Amid the threats and harassment, two supervisors, Bill Gates and Clint Hickman, decided not to run for re-election.For Gates’s seat, moderate former state lawmaker Kate Brophy McGee is far ahead in the primary against Tabatha LaVoie, who said on her campaign website that she wanted to restore voter confidence because: “Our County cannot continue to raise doubts about the integrity of our elections.”Jack Sellers, currently the board chair, is trailing far behind Mark Stewart, currently a council member in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler. Stewart won’t say whether he would have certified results in 2020 or 2022 and claims he will restore confidence in county elections.Thomas Galvin, who was not on the board in 2020 but has defended county elections since taking office after beating election-denying candidates in 2022, is fending off a challenge from Michelle Ugenti-Rita, a former state lawmaker and Lake-endorsed candidate who promised to “fight for election integrity” and “take back Maricopa County from the establishment”.On the Democratic side, former state senator Raquel Terán is trailing in her primary for Arizona’s third district, for the seat that will be vacated by Gallego. A longtime organiser against anti-immigrant laws in the state, Téran focused her campaign on protecting abortion rights. Her main rival former city council member in Phoenix, Yassamin Ansari, had raised more funds and secured several key labour endorsements, and has the lead as of Tuesday night.And in what is likely his last unsuccessful bid for office, the former Maricopa county sheriff Joe Arpaio, notorious for his harsh immigration regime, was trounced in a local mayoral race to lead the Phoenix suburb of Fountain Hills. Arpaio, 92, was recently kissed on the cheek by Trump at a rally in Arizona. In his run for mayor, one of his main ideas was to make the town’s eponymous fountain go higher. More