HARRIS ENDORSEMENTS GROW
US Vice President Kamala Harris has heaped praise on President Joe Biden in her first public appearance since the 81-year-old dramatically abandoned his reelection bid and endorsed her instead, Reuters reports.
Speaking at an event at the White House, Harris, 59, said: “Every day, our president, Joe Biden, fights for the American people and we are deeply, deeply grateful for his service to our nation.”
While she made no reference to the fact she is now the front-runner to be the Democratic candidate for president, on X her account she posted: “It’s the first full day of our campaign, so I’m heading up to Wilmington, DE later to say ‘hello’ to our staff in HQ. One day down. 105 to go. Together, we’re going to win this.”
Harris continues to pick up endorsements from senior Democrats, with the influential former speaker Nancy Pelosi declaring: “With immense pride and limitless optimism for our country’s future, I endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president of the United States. I have full confidence that she will lead us to victory in November.”
CNN reports Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries are also expected to endorse her soon. A source is quoted as claiming Harris spoke with former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton on Sunday after Biden dropped out of the race. The Clintons have endorsed Harris, while Obama has so far kept his statements to just praising Biden.
The BBC reports millions of dollars of donations have poured into Harris’ campaign in the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, on the Republican side of the fight, Senator JD Vance has held his first solo rally since being named Donald Trump’s vice-presidential nominee.
Speaking in his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, Vance said: “I don’t like Biden and I don’t like his policies”. Referencing Biden stepping down, he added: “What is going on in this country is disgraceful … everyone who saw Biden knew he wasn’t capable of doing the job.”
Elsewhere in this frantic and unpredictable US news cycle, The Washington Post reports independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. held talks earlier this month with Trump about endorsing the former president’s campaign and taking a job in his administration.
The reported discussions, which took place hours after the assassination attempt on Trump, apparently did not result in an agreement.
With regards to the shooting in Pennsylvania, the director of the US Secret Service Kimberly Cheatle told the House of Representatives Oversight and Accountability Committee the assassination attempt was the “most significant operational failure” in decades, adding she took “full responsibility for any security lapse”, Sky News reports.
Finally, the White House released a letter from Biden’s doctor saying the president’s COVID symptoms had “almost resolved completely”.
Dr Kevin O’Connor added: “His pulse, blood pressure, respiratory rate and temperature remain absolutely normal … The president continues to perform all of his presidential duties.”
DEEPFAKE LAWS
Proposed new laws could result in a six-year prison sentence for adults found to have shared sexually explicit “deepfake” images without consent, the AAP reports.
A Senate committee will later today consider the suggested changes to criminal laws in an attempt to crack down on non-consensual sharing of digitally altered sexual images.
The new laws could also see a seven-year prison sentence for adults found to have created and distributed images.
As the use of artificial intelligence tools continues to become more widespread, Google found internet searches in Australia for the technology hit a record in May, having jumped 20% compared to the first quarter of the year, the AAP also reports. However, searches for AI-detection tools have also risen, suggesting people are also becoming more wary of the technology.
In Queensland, the LNP used AI to create a fake video of Steven Miles dancing in an attempt to mock other videos of the premier making his lunch. The clip’s caption said: “POV: my rent is up $60 a week, my power bill is up 20%, but the premier made a sandwich on TikTok,” the ABC reports.
Responding to the TikTok video, Miles said: “It’s appalling and disgusting that (Opposition Leader) David Crisafulli has stooped to using AI and deep fake videos to attack me.
“In a time when misinformation is everywhere, we as politicians have a duty to communicate with our audiences and to voters clearly and honestly.”
An LNP spokesperson responded: “Young Queenslanders have been hit with higher rents and increased power prices under Labor, and this post — which is clearly labelled as being created with AI — is an example of one way we can share that message.”
The state election is still three months away…
Elsewhere, The Sydney Morning Herald reports Nine chief executive Mike Sneesby carried the Olympic torch on streets outside Paris yesterday just hours after staff in the company’s publishing wing voted in favour of strike action.
On Monday staff at the company’s print mastheads — The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, WA Today, Brisbane Times and Australian Financial Review — voted in favour of striking during the first five days of the Paris Olympics “after hitting an impasse with management”. Negotiations are said to have been over pay conditions, diversity quotas, and protection against the use of AI.
It was previously announced Nine would be cutting 90 jobs from its publishing division, The Australian reports.
Meanwhile, the AFR reports its editor in chief, Michael Stutchbury, is stepping down after 13 years in the role.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
A pioneering physicist who gave up her PhD 75 years ago to have a family has received an honorary doctorate from her former university.
The University of Bristol said Rosemary Fowler’s discoveries in 1948 “helped change our understanding of physics”.
The 98-year-old discovered the kaon particle during her doctoral research at the university. The Guardian reports the discovery helped lead to a revolution in the theory of particle physics.
Bristol University said in a statement on Monday the discovery “continues to be proven correct: predicting particles such as the Higgs boson, discovered at CERN in Geneva”.
Seventy-five years after leaving academia she was given the honorary doctorate by University of Bristol chancellor Sir Paul Nurse during a private graduation ceremony, attended by her family and friends.
The Independent reports Dr Fowler said she feels “very honoured” to have received the doctorate, adding: “But I haven’t done anything since to deserve special respect.”
Say What?
kamala IS brat
Charli XCX
Referencing the all-conquering Brat meme (born out of her summer album release), British singer Charli XCX responded to the news Biden had dropped out of the presidential race and was endorsing his vice president Kamala Harris with a three-word post on X. The Washington Post reports Harris’ team quickly jumped on the viral post by changing its official account’s header image to the distinctive bright green background and the words “Kamala hq”, fully leaning into the Brat summer meme.
CRIKEY RECAP
In 2020, CrowdStrike’s Australian president warned the government against relying too much on critical technology providers who couldn’t be trusted. Except he was raising the alarm about “foreign adversaries”, as opposed to companies such as his own, which accidentally triggered one of the world’s largest tech disasters.
On Friday, millions of Windows computers across the world were rendered useless thanks to a faulty update to CrowdStrike, an exceedingly popular enterprise cybersecurity software.
Unlike Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson’s hapless heir, Harris doesn’t have the burden of a deeply divisive war abroad. The war to save democracy, instead, is in the United States itself, against Donald Trump and his wholly owned subsidiary, the Republican Party — or, in 1968 parlance, it’s as if George Wallace had taken over the Republicans (and to complicate things, Robert F Kennedy Jr — the son of Bobby Kennedy, who would have been the Democrat candidate in ’68 — is running as an independent).
Biden was on the verge of splitting his party. Unlike LBJ, however, it wasn’t around any issue or policy, but rather his increasingly obvious frailty and inability to make much of a dent in Trump’s small but persistent polling lead, as well as the implications for the Senate and the House if Biden’s candidacy yielded a Republican landslide. The assassination attempt on Trump sealed the deal. Biden had to go, or the nightmare of a Republican White House, House and Senate looked likely. Any other Democrat with a pulse was viewed as a better candidate.
We have *so many* questions about the internal reality of this ad. Are Giles and Zempilas playing themselves, implying that they occasionally spend a day on a farm together? Or are they playing fictional characters who run a farm but are also business people and minor celebrities? The piece would have Andrei Tarkovsky saying it leaves too much to interpretation.
Anyway, it got us thinking about the various, often faintly unhinged ways that fossil fuel companies try to win the hearts and minds of the people whose futures they are helping to erase.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Taiwan’s military drills turn serious as China threat escalates (The Financial Times)
Microsoft says EU to blame for the world’s worst IT outage (euronews)
Gunman arrested after killing at least six people in nursing home in Croatia (The Guardian)
Israeli strike kills at least 37 after evacuation order issued for Gaza humanitarian zone (ITV News)
India alert after boy dies from Nipah virus in Kerala (BBC)
Police ‘ambassador’ for violence against women sacked for public wolf-whistling (The Times) ($)
THE COMMENTARIAT
The latest US presidential twist throws the race wide open — but what could it mean for Australia? — Arthur Sinodinos (Guardian Australia): What does this mean for Australia and the rest of the world? Do not expect much change in international economic policy from either side of politics.
Trump upended trade policy in 2016, forcing Hillary Clinton to disown her administration’s centrepiece trade strategy for the Indo-Pacific, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which dealt a major blow to the US pivot to the region. Since then, market access agreements have been off the table for both sides of politics with more interest in how to tilt the playing field in favour of US firms by imposing higher labour and environmental costs on foreign competitors.
COVID-19 and the technological cold war with China are also reshaping industrial supply chains with more reshoring and friend-shoring in the offing. The AUKUS capability pact and the Quad focus on critical and emerging tech are leading examples of this trend. Both Trump and a reelected Democrat administration will double down on this, with perhaps more onshoring in Trump’s case.
Suddenly, Trump, not Biden, is the buffoonish old guy in the race — Bill Wyman (The Sydney Morning Herald): But cock your head a little and this all looks like very bad news for those pursuing the ungodly mission of trying to get Donald Trump back into office.
Consider: The Republicans’ entire campaign has been focused on Biden in general and his age in particular. Suddenly, Trump, not Biden, is the buffoonish old guy in the race. This throws the Trump campaign game plan into question.
Besides the polls that, time after time, have been explicitly telling the Biden administration that voters thought he was too old, there were the other polls that suggested a huge majority of Americans were unhappy with the choices presented to them this year. Now, they’ve got a new one.
