This blog is closed, thanks for following along. You can find the latest election coverage here.
Here is a summary of today’s key developments:
The Federal Reserve cut US interest rates for the first time in four years, news that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris greeted as an important positive sign, though Harris said in a statement that prices were still too high.
Several polls today showed Donald Trump performing better than Harris. Majorities of Americans view both candidates unfavorably, Gallup found. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Trump has a narrow edge with voters in Georgia, which Joe Biden won four years ago. Harris’s weakness in Georgia may be due to lackluster support among both Democratic faithful and Black voters, the Journal-Constitution found.
Harris announced she will travel to Georgia on Friday, with a focus on the effect of Trump’s abortion policies on women’s lives. She has cited a ProPublica investigation that named Georgia resident Anna Nicole Thurman, 28, as the first woman officially confirmed to have died a “preventable death” in the wake of the supreme court overturning the federal right to an abortion. Georgia lawmakers had made the simple procedure that would have saved Thurman’s life into a felony.
Meanwhile, the Teamsters declined to join other unions in endorsing Harris, releasing internal polling data they said showed a majority of their members supported Trump, but saying they would not endorse either presidential candidate.
Meanwhile, Harris has gained the endorsement of more than 100 Republican former national security officials and lawmakers, who say she is a better choice to manage foreign policy and America’s relationships with its allies and enemies than Donald Trump.
Harris spoke at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual leadership conference in Washington DC, where she condemned Trump’s plans for mass deportations, and said better border security and sorting out the problem of Dreamers are not mutually exclusive.
The Associated Press reported that, according to the FBI and other federal agencies, Iranian hackers sought to interest President Joe Biden’s campaign in information stolen from rival Donald Trump’s campaign, sending unsolicited emails to people connected to the Democratic president in an effort to interfere in the 2024 election. There is no evidence that any of the recipients responded, officials said, preventing the hacked information from surfacing in the final months of the closely contested election.
Trump responded to the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cuts, saying the size of the cut suggested the economy may be in trouble. “To cut it by that much, assuming they’re not just playing politics, the economy would be very bad,” Trump told reporters. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who was appointed by Trump to lead the Fed, said was meant to show policymakers’ commitment to sustaining a low unemployment rate now that inflation has eased. Powell said the economy remained strong, with many job market indicators like unemployment claims and even the current 4.2% unemployment rate not at worrying levels.
Trump held an election rally in New York state where he claimed that the planet – which last year saw the hottest year on record and is likely to do so again this year after the hottest summer on record, is cooling. He also announced that he would turn the 9/11 memorial and museum into a national monument.
Trump just said “we want a landslide that is very simply too big to rig”. He has repeatedly, falsely, claimed that his legitimate loss to Biden in 2020 was the result of a rigged process.
Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump 306-232 in the Electoral College in 2020 and had a 4-point margin in the popular vote.
Trump is played off to the Opera song Nessun dorma – yesterday it was gay anthem YMCA – with its famous words Vincerò. (Think: Vinceeeeeeeeeeròòòò), which means “I will win”.
He has used the very famous, and emotional, aria before.
Trump just claimed that “the planet’s actually getting cooler”. It is not.
The year is not yet done, but this year already saw the hottest summer on record, and it will more than likely lead to warmest year ever measured, according to experts. Last year was the hottest year on record:
Updated
Trump admitted during this rally that he has not read his wife Melania’s memoir.
Here is the Guardian’s Arwa Mahdawi on the subject:
In a new Fox news poll, Harris leads Trump by 50%:
A new national poll, from Fox News:
— Taniel (@Taniel) September 18, 2024
Harris leads 50% to 48% among both registered and likely voters.
Fox’s last poll was in August, & had Trump up 1%. https://t.co/N74uqY4b56
Trump has just announced that he will turn Ground Zero into a “national monument.”
The site of the 11 September attacks is currently a called the “National September 11 Memorial & Museum”. I’m not totally sure what the difference is between that and a national monument, but will find out.
In other words, it is unclear if there’s a distinction between what it currently is and what he said he’d turn it into.
“I will officially make the ground zero site at the world trade centre a national monument so that hallowed ground and the memory of those who perished there will be preserved forever,” Trump said, to loud cheers.
Updated
The crowd has given Trump lively cheers, though at first, when Trump talked disparagingly about immigration, they were more muted.
37% of people in New York city were born outside of the United States, and almost half speak a language other than English at home, according to NYC.gov.
Immigrants make up more than a fifth of New York state’s population and more than 27% of its work force.
Now, however, Trump is getting loud cheers when he makes false and offensive claims about immigrants and their impact on the US and New York. It is almost as though they have become more comfortable booing immigration.
Half of New York adults identify as Democrats or Democrat-leaning, 26% as Republicans or Republican-leaning while 18% lean neither way, according to Pew.
Updated
Trump is talking about immigration and the border again, again making a series of false and outlandish claims. He again claims that he won more votes in 2020.
Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump 306-232 in the Electoral College in 2020 and had a 4-point margin in the popular vote.
In 2016, Donald J. Trump won the Electoral College with 304 votes compared to 227 votes for Hillary Clinton, and Trump lost the popular vote.
There are more than 14,000 people seated in the stands at this event, the New York Times reports, with more on the floor.
Trump is complaining about the subway in New York.
He has appealed to the audience to vote for him saying “what do you have to lose” and repeating the idea that he is a “common sense” candidate.
Trump continues his racist rhetoric, saying if Harris wins, “New York State will be like a third world country, if it isn’t already. I think it is.”
Trump is talking about the Teamsters union now. He says he “loves them” and that they have refused to endorse the democrat candidate “for the first time in many, many decades”.
Wednesday was the first time the teamsters have not make any election endorsement for the first time since 1996. The union has endorsed every Democratic candidate for president since 2000. Earlier on Wednesday, the union said it would not back a candidate, but that internal polling showed a majority of its members supported Trump.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention in July, “becoming the first labor leader to do so and sending shock waves through Democratic circles”, according to the Washington Post.
Updated
Trump is speaking now in Uniondale, New York.
“So as you know three days ago there was yet another assassination attempt on my life,” he says, and repeats his false claim that both of the alleged gunmen were “radical left”.
Ryan Wesley Routh, the man suspected of carrying out a second assassination attempt on Donald Trump, has undergone shifting political convictions that elude partisan definition.
Although records show the 58-year-old former roofing contractor making small financial donations to Democratic candidates in recent years, Routh has acknowledged voting for Trump in his 2016 election before subsequently embarking on a ideological odyssey the aims of which appear incoherent and confused.
Thomas Matthew Crooks was killed after firing shots at Trump. His motivation remains unclear.
Trump’s rally in New York is now starting at 7.15 PM EDT – in ten minutes’ time – according to C-Span.
The Harris campaign has meanwhile sent out an email noting which of the Teamsters have endorsed the Democratic candidate, after the national union declined to back a candidate. The Harris campaign said:
Today, local Teamsters unions in the key battleground states of Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin announced their support for Vice President Kamala Harris. They join nearly a dozen Teamsters locals including Teamsters 237 which is the largest in the country, the National Black Caucus of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and several Teamster retirees. Collectively, these members represent hundreds of thousands of Teamsters in critical swing states.
The Trump campaign has responded to the FBI announcing that Iranian hackers sought to interest President Joe Biden’s campaign in information stolen from rival Donald Trump’s campaign, sending unsolicited emails to people connected to the Democratic president in an effort to interfere in the 2024 election.
“This is further proof the Iranians are actively interfering in the election to help Kamala Harris and Joe Biden because they know President Trump will restore his tough sanctions and stand against their reign of terror,” Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
There is no evidence that any of the recipients responded, officials said.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell called the move a “recalibration” to account for the sharp decline in inflation since last year, Reuters reports.
He noted that the economy remained strong but the central bank wanted to stay ahead of and stave off any weakening in the job market; analysts saw a nod to what has been an overarching aim of his to avoid unnecessarily trading higher unemployment to reach the central bank’s 2% inflation target.
“A soft landing is within reach, which would seal his legacy as Fed Chairman,” said Diane Swonk, the chief economist at KPMG.
Trump responds to interest rate cuts
Trump has responded to the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cuts, saying the size of the cut suggested the economy may be in trouble.
“To cut it by that much, assuming they’re not just playing politics, the economy would be very bad,” Trump told reporters.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who was appointed by Trump to lead the Fed, said was meant to show policymakers’ commitment to sustaining a low unemployment rate now that inflation has eased.
Powell said the economy remained strong, with many job market indicators like unemployment claims and even the current 4.2% unemployment rate not at worrying levels.
But he nodded to the same issues economists and analysts raise with inflation: That it takes time for changes in monetary policy to have an impact and that, between anecdotal information from companies and slowed hiring rates, officials felt they needed to preempt further labor market weakness just as others have argued for fast action to preempt inflation.
“There is thinking that the time to support the labor market is when it is strong, and not when you begin to see layoffs,” Powell said.
Iranian hackers sought to interest Biden campaign in stolen information, no evidence any recipients responded
The Associated Press reports that, according to the FBI and other federal agencies, Iranian hackers sought to interest President Joe Biden’s campaign in information stolen from rival Donald Trump’s campaign, sending unsolicited emails to people connected to the Democratic president in an effort to interfere in the 2024 election.
There is no evidence that any of the recipients responded, officials said, preventing the hacked information from surfacing in the final months of the closely contested election.
The hackers sent emails in late June and early July to people who were associated with Biden’s campaign before he dropped out. The emails “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” according to a US government statement.
The announcement is the latest effort to call out what officials say is Iran’s brazen, ongoing work to interfere in the 2024 election, including a hack-and-leak campaign that the FBI and other federal agencies linked last month to Tehran. The Justice Department has been preparing charges in that breach, The Associated Press has reported.
In August, Microsoft researchers said that Iran government-tied hackers tried breaking into the account of a “high-ranking official” on the US presidential campaign in June, weeks after breaching the account of a county-level US official:
Updated
Trump will be at a rally in New York in 45 minutes’ time. We will bring you any news from that as it happens.
Interim summary
Here’s an updated summary of the day in US politics so far:
The Federal Reserve cut US interest rates for the first time in four years, news that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris greeted as an important positive sign, though Harris said in a statement that prices were still too high.
Several polls today showed Donald Trump performing better than Harris. Majorities of Americans view both candidates unfavorably, Gallup found. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Trump has a narrow edge with voters in Georgia, which Joe Biden won four years ago. Harris’s weakness in Georgia may be due to lackluster support among both Democratic faithful and Black voters, the Journal-Constitution found.
Harris announced she will travel to Georgia on Friday, with a focus on the effect of Trump’s abortion policies on women’s lives. She has cited a ProPublica investigation that named Georgia resident Anna Nicole Thurman, 28, as the first woman officially confirmed to have died a “preventable death” in the wake of the supreme court overturning the federal right to an abortion. Georgia lawmakers had made the simple procedure that would have saved Thurman’s life into a felony.
Meanwhile, the Teamsters declined to join other unions in endorsing Harris, releasing internal polling data they said showed a majority of their members supported Trump, but saying they would not endorse either presidential candidate.
Meanwhile, Harris has gained the endorsement of more than 100 Republican former national security officials and lawmakers, who say she is a better choice to manage foreign policy and America’s relationships with its allies and enemies than Donald Trump.
Harris spoke at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual leadership conference in Washington DC, where she condemned Trump’s plans for mass deportations, and said better border security and sorting out the problem of Dreamers are not mutually exclusive.
Updated
Pod Save America host competes on new season of Survivor
It’s been another very long week (yes, it’s Wednesday) and for the crossover of political podcast lovers and Survivor fans, here’s a tiny bit of fun news: Pod Save America’s Jon Lovett will be appearing on the forthcoming season of Survivor.
The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly both have previews of Lovett’s participation in the beloved reality TV show. Survivor showrunner Jeff Probst had praise for Lovett, calling him “one of the greatest storytellers that we will ever have on Survivor”.
Lovett’s ability to narrate his own experience “is just this beautiful gift to us, because no matter what the situation or how you pose a question, he will give you a compelling answer”, Probst added.
'Survivor' host Jeff Probst says Jon Lovett is one of the show's greatest storytellers ever, and weighs in on what happens if the podcaster is recognized on the island. https://t.co/6f5Yehnm5d
— Entertainment Weekly (@EW) September 17, 2024
How long Lovett actually survives Survivor, of course, is a different question.
Updated
WSJ: Vance’s team knew on day one ‘cats and dogs’ story attacking Haitians was false
The Wall Street Journal published an in-depth investigation into Donald Trump and JD Vance’s baseless slurs about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.
A Springfield city manager told the WSJ that a Vance staffer had called his office to fact-check a claim about Haitian immigrants eating pets the same morning that Vance had tweeted about it. He said he told the staffer, very clearly, that the rumors were not true. But Vance just doubled and tripled down on the story and Trump repeated the lurid claim that night at a presidential debate, sparking ongoing harassment and racist rhetoric, fear among Haitians in Ohio for their personal safety, and eventually bomb threats targeting schools, hospitals and government buildings.
“.. He asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’” recalled Heck. “I told him no. .. I told them these claims were baseless.”
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) September 18, 2024
“By then, Vance had already posted about the rumors to his 1.9 million followers ..”@WSJ #Ohio https://t.co/vNdrubYnCu pic.twitter.com/Zx7p7FuH7a
The WSJ also dug into the sources of the grotesque rumor targeting immigrants and found that locals who had shared these kinds of claims had already apologized for doing so.
A Vance spokesperson provided the WSJ with a police report in which a resident claimed her pet might have been taken by her Haitian neighbors.
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) September 18, 2024
The cat was later found safe in the resident's own basement.https://t.co/f8YFLS83aF pic.twitter.com/lvIBW1QYqy
Vance himself has not apologized, either for spreading the baseless story in the first place or for the story’s frightening and destabilizing consequences for people in Springfield.
“If I have to create stories so the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, than that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance told CNN anchor Dana Bash earlier this week.
Axios summarized Vance’s response as embracing a “zero-shame strategy”.
Updated
Fact checking Trump and Vance’s claims about that $35 insulin co-payment cap
The New York Times reported that at a campaign rally today, JD Vance once again repeated the “misleading claim” that Donald Trump was responsible for capping insulin Medicare co-payments at $35. In fact, the Times reported, Vance is attempting to campaign on an achievement of the Biden administration, which capped Medicare insulin payments at $35 as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
Under the Trump administration, some Medicare plans voluntarily participated in a program that capped insulin co-payments at $35, but it was the Biden administration which instituted the cost cap more broadly.
Confused? KFF Health News, an independent non-profit that covers US health policy, has a very helpful explainer, including their estimate that only 800,000 Americans had access to the $35 cost cap under the Trump policy, but more than 3.3 million had access under the broader Biden policy.
As both the Trump and Biden campaigns claim credit for capping insulin copayments at $35, @KFFHealthNews has a very helpful explainer of who *actually* did what: https://t.co/A4w4BJQUvx pic.twitter.com/FWtEnk6VGQ
— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) September 18, 2024
The bigger context is also crucial: KFF Health News notes that senate Republicans have proposed a full repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act, which would roll back the $35 insulin co-pay cap for those millions of Americans.
Meanwhile, Biden and the Democratic party have proposed extending the $35 co-pay cap to all people who need insulin, including those with commercial insurance. This would result in cost savings for the vast majority of Americans who need insulin, according to KFF’s analysis. Democrats tried to include that broader co-pay cap in the Inflation Reduction Act, the news organization reported, “but that provision was stripped from the final legislation after the vast majority of Republicans voted to remove it”.
Updated
California Teamsters endorse Harris
While the Teamsters’ general executive board announced earlier today that the union, which represents over 1.3 million workers, would make no endorsement in the presidential race, they also released polling data that they said showed that a majority of their union members favored Donald Trump.
But other organizations of Teamsters have said they will endorse Kamala Harris, including the California Teamsters.
California Teamsters are proud to endorse @KamalaHarris @Tim_Walz pic.twitter.com/zZGC3kmSxu
— California Teamsters Public Affairs Council (@CalTeamstersPAC) September 18, 2024
More on the political divisions within the Teamsters from Guardian labor reporter Michael Sainato:
Updated
Biden will address Fed’s interest rate cut on Thursday
This is Lois Beckett, picking up our live US politics coverage from Los Angeles.
Joe Biden tweeted that he will address Americans on Thursday on the state of the economy, in the wake of the Federal Reserve’s announcement that it was cutting interest rates for the first time in four years.
We just reached an important moment: Inflation and interest rates are falling while the economy remains strong.
— President Biden (@POTUS) September 18, 2024
The critics said it couldn’t happen – but our policies are lowering costs and creating jobs.
I’ll speak tomorrow about what this means for Americans.
Kamala Harris also put out a statement in response to the announcement, calling it “welcome news” for Americans, but saying more work was needed to bring prices down, which she called an important focus of her presidential campaign:
While this announcement is welcome news for Americans who have borne the brunt of high prices, my focus is on the work ahead to keep bringing prices down. I know prices are still too high for many middle class and working families, and my top priority as president will be to lower the costs of everyday needs like health care, housing, and groceries. That is why I am proposing plans to cut taxes for more than 100 million working and middle-class Americans, pass the first-ever federal ban on corporate price gouging on food and groceries, and make housing more affordable by building 3 million new homes and giving more Americans down payment assistance.
Updated
Harris announces Georgia visit amid furor over abortion-related death
Kamala Harris will travel to Georgia on Friday to highlight the importance of keeping abortion accessible, her campaign announced, after a report emerged earlier this week of a pregnant woman who died after being denied timely medical care due to the state’s restrictive abortion ban.
The vice-president “will speak about reproductive freedom and how Donald Trump overturned Roe v Wade, which has led to Trump abortion bans across the country, including in Georgia,” according to her campaign.
It cited ProPublica’s reporting on Amber Nicole Thurman, a Georgia medical assistant who died in 2022 in what the outlet described as the first “preventable” abortion-related death since Roe v Wade as overturned that year.
“The vice-president will highlight the stark contrast between her commitment to fight for reproductive freedom and the devastating and deadly consequences of Trump Abortion Bans,” her campaign said.
Harris will also hold a previously scheduled campaign event in Madison, Wisconsin on Friday. Here’s more on Thurman’s story:
Updated
The Teamsters is one of the few major labor unions not to back Kamala Harris.
After taking over from Joe Biden as the Democrats’ presidential candidate in July, Harris quickly picked up endorsements from labor organizations, including the United Auto Workers and the Service Employees International Union. But despite endorsing Biden in 2020, the Teamsters held out, and their just-announced decision to stay out of the race robs the vice-president of support that could have helped her gain the edge in what polls currently show is a very close contest against Donald Trump.
Here’s more on the wave of enthusiasm from organized labor that greeted Harris in July, when she threw her hat into the ring:
Though the Teamsters made no endorsement in the presidential race, the Trump campaign is nonetheless claiming victory because the polls of the union’s rank and file show that the ex-president is their preferred candidate.
“While the executive board of the Teamsters is making no formal endorsement, the vast majority of rank-and-file working men and women in this important organization want President Donald Trump back in the White House,” his campaign said in a statement.
Left unsaid is the fact that Joe Biden, who struggled to overtake Trump in public polling throughout the entirety of his aborted bid for a second term, was the pick of Teamsters members when the survey was first conducted earlier this year.
Updated
Teamsters say they will not make endorsement in presidential election
The Teamsters leadership says they will not endorse a candidate in the presidential election, after backing Joe Biden in 2020 and being courted by both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris this year.
The union, America’s largest, said its general executive board determined neither candidate would address the issues its members care about.
“The Teamsters thank all candidates for meeting with members face-to-face during our unprecedented roundtables,” president Sean O’Brien said in a statement. “Unfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business. We sought commitments from both Trump and Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries - and to honor our members’ right to strike - but were unable to secure those pledges.”
The union noted that its own polling of members found “no majority support for vice-president Harris and no universal support among the membership for president Trump.”
Teamsters polling data shows rank and file support Trump ahead of endorsement announcement
The Teamsters released polling data of its members this afternoon that showed its members supported Donald Trump by a large margin over Kamala Harris, and said the union’s leaders will announce its endorsement for president later today:
TEAMSTERS RELEASE PRESIDENTIAL ENDORSEMENT POLLING DATA
— Teamsters (@Teamsters) September 18, 2024
“For the past year, the Teamsters Union has pledged to conduct the most inclusive, democratic, and transparent Presidential endorsement process in the history of our 121-year-old organization—and today we are delivering on… pic.twitter.com/CnFNN9uosx
Organized labor, including the Teamsters, have typically backed Democrats, but this year, the union, which is the country’s largest, has held off endorsing a presidential candidate. President Sean O’Brien spoke at the Republican national convention in July, infuriating some members of the rank-and-file, while the New York Times reported earlier this week that Harris had met with O’Brien in what was described as a meeting that grew tense over how Joe Biden had handled a potential railway strike and a dispute between the Teamsters and UPS.
While the Teamster’s straw poll shows Harris is unpopular with its members, Biden was preferred over Donald Trump when the survey was taken earlier this year. Here’s more on the tensions within the union over O’Brien’s overtures to Trump:
Updated
Kamala Harris is scheduled to join a virtual organizing call on Wednesday afternoon, intended to rally young voters.
The event will feature Harris, as well as Tennessee state representative Justin J Pearson and actor and producer Chloë Grace Moretz.
Updated
During a campaign event for former president Donald Trump on Tuesday, the Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders took a swipe at vice-president Kamala Harris for not having biological children.
“So my kids keep me humble,” Huckabee Sanders said, adding “Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.”
Sarah Huckabee Sanders starts the Trump town hall by taking a shot at Kamala Harris for not having biological children.
— American Bridge 21st Century (@American_Bridge) September 17, 2024
"So, my kids keep me humble. Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn't have anything keeping her humble." pic.twitter.com/URV9FZBqhv
Though Harris does not have biological children, she has two stepchildren through her marriage to her husband, Doug Emhoff.
In response to Huckabee Sanders’s remarks on Tuesday, Kerstin Emhoff, who is the ex-wife of the second gentlemen, reposted the video of Huckabee Sanders on X, and added the caption: “Cole and Ella keep us inspired to make the world a better place. I do it through storytelling. Kamala Harris has spent her entire career working for the people, ALL families. That keeps you pretty humble.”
Updated
A new poll conducted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and released on Wednesday shows a tight race in the state of Georgia.
The results show that Donald Trump received 47% of the support among registered voters in Georgia, compared with 44% for Kamala Harris.
AJC POLL: Presidential election
— Atlanta Journal-Constitution (@ajc) September 18, 2024
The race has tightened since the AJC’s June poll, when Trump held a 5-point lead over President Joe Biden, with 8% of voters undecided. More: https://t.co/TvFl6t2isu pic.twitter.com/3MdLotTstG
On Wednesday afternoon, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution also reported a Harris campaign official has said that the Democratic nominee will be traveling to Atlanta, Georgia on Friday in an appearance focusing on reproductive rights.
Federal Reserve cuts interest rates by half a point
The Federal Reserve has announced it is cutting rates by a half point, bringing them down to between 4.75% and 5%.
This marks the first time in four years that the Fed has cut interest rates.
The Fed chair Jay Powell is expected to hold a press conference about the rate cut at 2.30pm ET.
Updated
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont announced on Wednesday that he is preparing to file resolutions that would block the sale of offensive US weaponry to Israel. This comes as last month the Biden administration approved $20bn in arms sales to Israel.
Sanders said in a statement that after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, killing around 1,200 people and kidnapping 250 others, Israel “of course, had the right to defend itself against Hamas.”
“It did not, however, have the right to wage an all-out war against the Palestinian people, which is what prime minister Netanyahu’s extremist government has done” Sanders said.
Since October of last year, more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s ongoing attacks in Gaza, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Sanders continued:
Sadly, and illegally, much of the carnage in Gaza has been carried out with U.S.-provided military equipment. Providing more offensive weapons to continue this disastrous war would violate U.S. and international law.
The sales would reward Netanyahu’s extremist government, even as it continues to cause massive destruction in Gaza, undermine the prospects of a ceasefire deal that would secure the release of the hostages, and advance its effort to illegally annex the West Bank.
Congress must act to save lives, uphold U.S. and international law, and stand up for U.S. interests. We must end our complicity in Israel’s illegal and indiscriminate military campaign, which has caused mass civilian death and suffering.
New poll shows Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump in Pennsylvania and Michigan, close race in Wisconsin
A new poll released by Quinnipiac University shows Kamala Harris is leading Donald Trump in two key battleground states and just slightly ahead of Trump in Wisconsin, another battleground state.
In Pennsylvania, the poll states that 51% of likely voters said they supported Harris, compared with 45% for Trump, a six-point difference. In Michigan, Harris leads Trump by five points in this poll, and in Wisconsin Harris leads Trump by just one percentage point.
The new poll was published on Wednesday, just over a week after the 2024 presidential debate, and with less than 50 days to go until the election.
Updated
The day so far
Kamala Harris has gained the endorsement of more than 100 Republican former national security officials and lawmakers, who say she is a better choice to manage foreign policy and America’s relationships with its allies and enemies than Donald Trump. But several new polls show voters aren’t quite so sure about the two candidates. Majorities of Americans view both candidates unfavorably, Gallup found, while in Georgia, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Trump has a narrow edge with voters in the swing state Joe Biden won four years ago. Harris just finished speaking at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual leadership conference in Washington DC, where she condemned Trump’s plans for mass deportations, and said better border security and sorting out the problem of Dreamers are not mutually exclusive.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
Harris’s weakness in Georgia may be due to lackluster support among both Democratic faithful and Black voters, the Journal-Constitution found.
The House will vote today on a government funding bill that also cracks down on non-citizens casting ballots, but the legislation is not expected to pass.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Democratic leader, decried the GOP for blocking legislation to protect IVF access nationwide, and linked their opposition to Project 2025.
Harris just wrapped up her speech, but before she did, she made the case that restoring reproductive freedom was a concern of Hispanic voters.
“Today, 40% of Latinas in America live in a state with a Trump abortion ban,” the vice-president said.
She then described how difficult it could be for a pregnant woman to travel out-of-state to seek care:
So, imagine if she is a working woman – understand that the majority of women who seek abortion care are mothers, understand what that means for her. So, she’s got to now travel to another state. God help her that she has some extra money to pay for that plane ticket. She’s got to figure out what to do with her kids. God help her if she has affordable childcare. Imagine what that means. She has to leave her home to go to a airport, stand in a TSA line.
…
Go through the details. So, she’s got to stand in the TSA line to get on a plane, sitting next to a perfect stranger, going to a city where she’s never been to go and receive a medical procedure. She’s going to have to get right back to the airport, because she got to get back to those kids, and it’s not like her best friend can go with her, because the best friend is probably taking care of the kids, all because these people have decided they’re in a better position to tell her what’s in her best interest than she is to know.
Harris then argued that support for reproductive freedom does not necessarily clash with religious beliefs against abortion: “It’s just simply wrong, and I think we all know one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling her what to do if she chooses. If she chooses, she will talk with her priest, her pastor, her rabbi, her imam, but not the government telling her what to do.”
Harris condemns Trump over plans for mass deportations
Kamala Harris has shifted to immigration, hitting out at Donald Trump for his promise to carry out mass deportations if elected, while insisting that border security and sorting out the status of undocumented people brought to the country as children are not mutually exclusive.
“While we fight to move our nation forward to a brighter future, Donald Trump and his extremist allies will keep trying to pull us backward,” Harris said. “We all remember what they did to tear families apart, and now they have pledged to carry out the largest deportation, a mass deportation, in American history. Imagine what that would look like and what that would be. How’s that going to happen? Massive raids, massive detention camps. What are they talking about?”
Harris also mentioned Dreamers, as undocumented people who grew up in the United States are known, and improving border security, which an increasing number of Democrats are demanding:
We must also reform our broken immigration system and protect our Dreamers. And, understand, we can do both – create an earned pathway to citizenship and ensure our border is secure. We can do both, and we must do both.
Updated
Harris began her remarks with a staple of her stump speeches: her background as a prosecutor in the Bay Area of northern California, which she said was informed by her mother’s quest to cure breast cancer.
Shyamala Gopalan Harris, a biomedical scientist, “had two goals in her life, to raise her two daughters, my sister, Maya and me, and to end breast cancer,” the vice-president said.
“She was a breast cancer researcher, and growing up, our mother taught us certain fundamental values, the importance of hard work, the power of community, and the responsibility that we have to not complain about anything, much less injustice, right? Because, why are you complaining about it? She would say, do something about it,” the vice-president said.
Harris continued:
Part of the background on why I became a prosecutor was actually when I was in high school, I learned that my best friend was being abused, being molested by her stepfather, and when I learned about it, I told her she had to come live with us. And I called my mother, and my mother said, of course she does, and she did.
And so I decided I wanted to start a career and do the work of … making sure that we protect the most vulnerable. And so I started my career as a courtroom prosecutor and took on those who would be predators against the most vulnerable.
Kamala Harris is now giving remarks at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual leadership conference in Washington DC.
She’s about 30 minutes late to starting the event.
This evening, Donald Trump will rally in New York’s Long Island, a state home to several House districts that will determine whether the GOP retains control of Congress’s lower chamber.
Earlier this morning, a social media account reported that police securing the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, where Trump will speak, had found an explosive device. But the county police department said on X that report is not correct, though it had detained for questioning one person “who may have been training a bomb detection dog near the site”.
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Harris to speak at Latino leadership institute conference
We’re expecting Kamala Harris to soon deliver remarks at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual leadership conference in Washington DC.
She will undoubtedly mark Hispanic Heritage Month, which began on Sunday, and make the case for why Latino voters should support her in the November election.
We’ll let you know what the vice-president has to say.
Senate Democratic leader Schumer hits GOP for again blocking bill to protect IVF access
Yesterday, Senate Democrats tried for the second time to pass legislation protecting access to IVF care nationwide, in reaction to an Alabama supreme court ruling earlier this year that temporarily cut off access to the procedure in the state.
But Republicans stood in the bill’s way, voting almost unanimously to keep it from clearing the 60-vote threshold needed for passage.
In remarks on the Senate floor today, the chamber’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said the GOP’s votes were a harbinger of what would come if Project 2025, the rightwing blueprint to remake the US government authored by conservatives connected to Donald Trump, was implemented. Pro-abortion groups fear the plan’s proposals to curb access to the procedure could also be used against IVF:
Yesterday was a sad day in the Senate as Republicans – for the second time this year – blocked legislation to protect families’ access to IVF.
By voting against IVF, Republicans confirmed many Americans’ worst fear: Project 2025 is alive and well when it comes to reproductive rights.
Senate Republicans have spent months tying themselves into knots claiming that of course they are in favor of protecting IVF.
But when it mattered most – when it came time to actually vote – Republicans showed their true colors and voted no.
And what made yesterday’s vote even worse was that was the second time they’ve blocked IVF protections, even though it’s increasingly clear many Americans are worried about access.
Both times, without hesitation, Senate Republicans caved to the extremists on their right flank.
Here’s more on the effort by Democrats to protect IVF access:
Over in the Senate, Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer continued to press House Republicans to approve spending legislation, known as a continuing resolution (CR) that has the support of both parties.
“For the last two weeks, Speaker Johnson and House Republican leaders have wasted precious time on a proposal that everyone knows can’t become law. His own Republican Conference cannot unite around his proposal. Today, the House is expected to vote on the speaker’s CR, and it is expected to fail,” Schumer said, in remarks on the Senate floor.
“I hope that once the Speaker’s CR fails he moves on to a strategy that will actually work: bipartisan cooperation. It’s the only thing that has kept the government open every time we have faced a funding deadline. It’s going to be the only thing that works this time too. Bipartisan, bicameral cooperation. That’s what works. That’s what we’re willing and happy to do. And the clock is ticking. If Republicans keep squabbling and careen us into a shutdown, the consequences will reverberate across the country.”
Updated
House Democrats are expected to vote against the government funding bill that is paired with legislation intended to keep non-citizens from voting.
Even if the legislation does pass, the White House said it “strongly opposes” the Save act, which requires people to prove citizenship when registering to vote.
But a perhaps more significant question is whether Republican House speaker Mike Johnson’s push even has the requisite support of his own party. Punchbowl News suggests it does not:
The House is set to vote today on a short-term funding bill that won’t pass. GOP lawmakers are grumbling about messaging, strategy and yearning to get back home to run for reelection. And Speaker Mike Johnson is being publicly and privately cagey about his next move, frustrating the entire House Republican Conference, which is looking for guidance about the leadership’s plans.
In fact, the GOP leadership is even in the dark at most times as to what Johnson is thinking and planning.
Johnson is putting a bill on the floor that his entire leadership team — Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Tom Emmer of Minnesota — knows is going to fail. One House Republican lawmaker entered a meeting of GOP whips Tuesday and told us that he was “going to see how well they’re polishing this turd.”
In theory, the impending failure of the six-month stopgap funding bill coupled with the SAVE Act will lead House Republicans toward accepting a clean CR. Johnson can then tell hardline conservatives that he has no other option.
“It’ll fail, then we’ll go back and do something that’s to the end of the year clean,” said Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), a senior House appropriator. “That’s just reality. We’ve been through this drill enough times to know that nobody’s come up with a silver bullet to put somebody in a chokehold ‘till they scream, ‘Uncle.’”
Republican House speaker Johnson vows to press on with spending bill tied to non-citizen voting ban
Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, this morning elaborated on his plan to hold a vote on a government funding bill linked to legislation that would require people to prove their citizenship before registering to vote.
Congress is scrambling to authorize new spending to ward off a partial government shutdown that could begin 1 October, but Johnson has insisted on pairing a funding bill with the legislation intended to crack down on non-citizens casting ballots, even though that rarely happens.
Johnson has scheduled for today a vote in the House on the controversial package, told Fox News this about his intentions in an interview this morning:
Listen, Congress has an immediate obligation to do two very important things. We have to keep the government funded, and we need to make sure that our elections are secure. And we have a vehicle today to do both things, because we owe that to the American people and because they demand it. We’re moving legislation today to have a continuing resolution to keep the government going for six months and to make sure that illegals cannot vote, noncitizens cannot vote in the upcoming election. It’s a number one issue around the country.
It’s not just Georgia where Black voters have grown skeptical of Democrats.
Polls taken throughout this year showed Joe Biden struggling with the group, and Kamala Harris has made winning their support a priority. In a conversation organized by the National Association of Black Journalists yesterday, the vice-president was asked about her strategy, specifically as it pertained to men. She replied:
I think it’s very important to not operate from the assumption that Black men are in anybody’s pocket. Black men are like any other voting group – you gotta earn the vote. So I am working to earn the vote, and not assuming I’m going to have it because I am Black, but because the policies and perspectives I have understand what we must do to recognize the needs for all communities.
One reason why Kamala Harris may be trailing Donald Trump in Georgia? Weakness with Black voters.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll of the state finds that the vice-president’s support among the group – a key part of the Democratic constituency – is not where it should be, and that Harris also has not rallied enough of her party’s voters overall.
Harris has the support of 86% of Democrats, and 77% of Black voters, which the Journal-Constitution said is 10 percentage points below her campaign’s goals. If there’s a silver lining here for Harris, it’s that about 12% of Black voters say they have not made up their minds.
Trump leads Harris in swing state Georgia – poll
Donald Trump has a lead over Kamala Harris in swing state Georgia, a new poll finds, raising questions about the vice-president’s ability to repeat the victory Joe Biden pulled off there four years ago.
Biden’s triumph in 2020 was the first time since 1992 that Georgia had supported a Democratic presidential candidate, but prior to his departure from the presidential race in July, polls of the state had generally shown Trump with the advantage in this year’s election.
That trend continues under Harris, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found in its data released this morning, although the gap between Trump and Harris is not as big as it was with Biden on the ballot. Trump leads with 47% support, compared to Harris’ 44%. In June, Trump had a five-percentage-point lead against Biden.
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More than 100 Republican former national security officials, congressional lawmakers endorse Harris
In an open letter, a group of more than 100 Republican former national security officials and House and Senate lawmakers have endorsed Kamala Harris, saying Donald Trump cannot be trusted to manage threats and the United State’s relationships with allies and adversaries.
“We expect to disagree with Kamala Harris on many domestic and foreign policy issues, but we believe that she possesses the essential qualities to serve as president and Donald Trump does not. We therefore support her election to be president,” the group writes, adding that, “We firmly oppose the election of Donald Trump.”
They write that the former president “promoted daily chaos in government, praised our enemies and undermined our allies, politicized the military and disparaged our veterans, prioritized his personal interest above American interests, and betrayed our values, democracy, and this country’s founding documents.” They also say Trump has shown he is susceptible to manipulation by foreign rivals like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping.
The letter continues:
We appreciate that many Republicans prefer Donald Trump to Kamala Harris, for a variety of reasons. We recognize and do not disparage their potential concerns, including about some of the positions advocated by the left wing of the Democratic party. But any potential concerns pale in comparison to Donald Trump’s demonstrated chaotic and unethical behavior and disregard for our Republic’s time-tested principles of constitutional governance. His unpredictable nature is not the negotiating virtue he extols. To the contrary, in matters of national security, his demeanor invites equally erratic behavior from our adversaries, which irresponsibly threatens reckless and dangerous global consequences.
The signatories stretch from recent government veterans all the way back to officials who served under Ronald Reagan. The group includes former congressman and January 6 committee member Adam Kinzinger and Chuck Hagel, a former senator who served as defense secretary under Barack Obama.
John Negroponte, a director of national intelligence for George W Bush, signed, as did Eliot A Cohen, a co-founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, which was influential in laying the groundwork for Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Also on the letter is Chester Crocker, who served as assistant secretary of state for African affairs under Reagan, and was a key figure in Washington’s relationship with South Africa and its neighbors during the volatile years that preceded the end of Apartheid.
This post has been corrected to read that Chuck Hagel served under Barack Obama, not Donald Trump.
Updated
Another poll released today showed a majority of Americans would support mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, something Donald Trump has suggested doing in a second term.
Vows to crack down on undocumented migrants are a major plank of Trump’s campaign, and at the Republican national convention in Wisconsin two months ago, attendees at one point were given signs reading, “Mass deportation now!”
A Scripps News/Ipsos survey released today finds that 54% of those polled would support mass deportations, while 42% would be opposed to it.
However, the poll found that 68% of those surveyed would be ok with creating a pathway to citizenship for undocumented people brought to the United States as children. Enacting such a policy has eluded Congress for years:
Majorities of Americans hold unfavorable views of Trump and Harris – poll
With all this talk of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, one would think that they are popular with Americans. A new survey indicates otherwise.
Gallup released data this morning showing that more people view both the Democratic vice-president and Republican former president unfavorably than favorably.
Trump’s unfavorability rating is 53%, seven points higher than his favorability rating. Harris has seen a jump in her popularity with voters since becoming the Democratic nominee last month, but even with that, 54% of voters view her unfavorably, and 44% favorably – a gap of 10 percentage points.
If you’re looking for a clue as to how this data, gathered from 3 to 15 September, could affect the election, you’ll find it among the perceptions of independent voters, who might make a difference in deciding the winner of battleground states.
Trump has the edge with that group, with 44% viewing him favorably, as opposed to 35% feeling the same about Harris.
Updated
Both Donald Trump and JD Vance have campaign events today, though only one is in a battleground state.
Vance will rally in North Carolina’s capital city, Raleigh, at 3pm. Polls have recently shown Kamala Harris coming within striking distance of winning the Tar Heel state, which has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 2008. Vance wants to keep that streak going.
Trump will be hold a rally at 7pm in a coliseum in Uniondale, in New York City’s Long Island suburbs. The state is not considered winnable by Republicans this year, but is home to several heavily contested House districts that the GOP is vying for. The former president’s campaign said he will zero in on crimes involving undocumented people on Long Island – even though study after study has shown that group offends at comparatively lower rates.
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National Hispanic Heritage Month began on Sunday, and will be a focus of both Kamala Harris and Joe Biden today.
The vice-president will address the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute annual conference at 12.15pm ET, then hold a virtual campaign event at 3.45pm.
At the White House, Joe Biden will host a reception in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month at 5pm.
America Pac, one of the largest and the most ambitious of the groups supporting Donald Trump’s campaign, is replacing its voter turnout operations in the crucial battleground states of Arizona and Nevada, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The political action committee, backed by billionaire Elon Musk, has ended its contract with the September Group and will hire a new company to knock on doors with fewer than 50 days left until the election.
America Pac used non-performance as the stated reason to back out of the contract in the past few days, claiming the September Group was not hitting its door-knocking targets, one of people said.
The shake-up comes at a crunch moment for the Trump campaign, which has outsourced virtually its entire ground game operation to a number of political action committees in this presidential cycle. America Pac is seen as the most ambitious, with a presence in every swing state.
As a result of the shake-up, America Pac has not canvassed any neighbourhoods in Arizona and Nevada on behalf of the Trump campaign for the past few days as it resets its operations in the two states.
America Pac hopes the roughly 300 canvassers employed by the September Group will be rehired by its successor but whether that occurs remains uncertain.
You can read the full piece here:
US still unprepared for Russian election interference, Robert Mueller says
The US is still not prepared for inevitable Russian attacks on its elections, the former special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated Russian interference in 2016 and links between Donald Trump and Moscow, warns in a new book.
“It is … evident that Americans have not learned the lessons of Russia’s attack on our democracy in 2016,” Mueller writes in a preface to Interference: The Inside Story of Trump, Russia and the Mueller Investigation by Aaron Zebley, James Quarles and Andrew Goldstein, prosecutors who worked for Mueller from 2017 to 2019.
Mueller continues:
As we detailed in our report, the evidence was clear that the Russian government engaged in multiple, systematic attacks designed to undermine our democracy and favor one candidate over the other.”
That candidate was Trump, the Republican who beat the Democrat, Hillary Clinton, for the White House.
“We were not prepared then,” Mueller writes, “and, despite many efforts of dedicated people across the government, we are not prepared now. This threat deserves the attention of every American. Russia attacked us before and will do so again.”
Interference will be published in the US next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.
Zebley, Quarles and Goldstein tell the story of the Mueller investigation, from its beginnings in May 2017 after Trump fired the FBI director, James Comey, to its conclusion in March 2019 with moves by William Barr, Trump’s second attorney general, to obscure and dismiss Mueller’s findings.
Mueller did not establish collusion between Trump and Moscow but did initiate criminal proceedings against three Russian entities and 34 people, with those convicted including a Trump campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who was jailed. Mueller also laid out 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice by Trump. Though he did not indict Trump, citing justice department policy regarding sitting presidents, Mueller said he was not clearing him either.
You can read the full piece here:
Trump and Poland's Duda may meet in battleground state of Pennsylvania, sources say
Polish president Andrzej Duda might hold talks on Sunday with Donald Trump in the US election battleground state of Pennsylvania, a senior Polish official said on Wednesday, confirming an earlier Reuters report that the two men may meet.
Any such meeting would mark a rare instance of a foreign leader appearing alongside a US presidential candidate on the campaign trail. Pennsylvania, which is home to a sizeable Polish US population, is one of several key battleground states in a tight race for the 5 Novermber US presidential election.
Duda, a nationalist who forged close ties with Trump when he was US president in 2017-21, will attend the unveiling of a Solidarity monument, the senior Polish official said, adding that Trump had also been invited to the event. However, it was not yet known whether Trump would attend, reports Reuters.
“If President Trump comes, then of course there will definitely be an opportunity to exchange a few words and talk about the most important topics,” the Polish official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. These topics would include Polish-US relations, Poland’s security and the war in Ukraine.
Neither the Trump campaign nor the organisers of the event in Pennsylvania responded immediately to Reuter’s requests for comment.
Two sources, also speaking on condition of anonymity, had earlier told Reuters that Trump planned to appear with Duda in Pennsylvania on Sunday, though they stressed that the joint appearance had not yet been finalised.
One of those sources said Trump and Duda were expected to appear at a Polish-US Catholic shrine in the suburbs north of Philadelphia. News of the visit was first reported by LevittownNow.com, a local outlet in Pennsylvania.
The chief of Duda’s chancellery, Małgorzata Paprocka, later clarified that both Duda and Trump had been invited by organisers to the same event. “Whether President Trump will be there, I do not have one hundred percent confirmation at this moment. We, as the president’s office, are not organisers of this meeting,” she said.
Trump and Duda, whose term in office expires in 2025, have described themselves as friends. The two men last met in New York in April.
American politics often has wild deviations from the norms of other major democracies and one of the most striking differences is set to be on display in this year’s election – the performance of its domestic Green party.
There are elected Greens at the national level in the UK, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany and Australia, sometimes helping form governments, and yet the US Green party has only ever had a handful of state-level representatives (it currently has none) and has never had a federal election winner.
Of about 500,000 elected positions in the US, from school boards and township supervisors to the presidency, the Green party holds just 149. There’s little indication there will be an influx of left-leaning Greens in November’s elections, which will include local and state polls, as well as the headline presidential race in which Jill Stein is the party’s nominee for a third time.
“It’s been a story of complete failure,” said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia who argued the most consequential Green party impact has been as “spoilers” helping Republicans in close elections, such as Ralph Nader’s campaign in 2000 and Stein’s in 2016. There’s a small chance such a scenario could play out again in this year’s tight contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. One poll this month had Stein leading Harris among Muslim-American voters in three key swing states of Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin, Middle East Eye reported.
“Normally the Greens aren’t important but they were in 2016, they cost Hillary Clinton a couple of blue wall states, and they were in 2000,” Sabato said. “Why vote for them when Democrats are also concerned about climate change? All you’re doing is helping Republicans. Without them we might not have had the Iraq invasion, we might not have had Donald Trump.”
Others are more sympathetic, pointing to the winner-takes-all nature of US politics and the well-funded machinery of the two-party system that makes it hard for third parties, including the Green party and the Libertarian party, to break through. Notably, however, the UK’s Green party did win four seats in first-past-the-post Westminster elections in July.
You can read the full piece here:
The US House will vote Wednesday on a government funding bill that appears doomed to fail, with less than two weeks left to prevent a partial shutdown starting 1 October.
Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, announced Tuesday that the chamber would move forward with the vote, despite vocal opposition from members of his own conference. The announcement came one week after that opposition forced Johnson to delay a planned vote on his bill, and the speaker has only faced more resistance in the days since.
Johnson’s proposed bill combines a six-month stopgap funding measure, known as a continuing resolution, with the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (Save) Act, a controversial proposal that would require people to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote.
“Congress has an immediate obligation to do two things: responsibly fund the federal government, and ensure the security of our elections,” Johnson said Tuesday. “I urge all of my colleagues to do what the overwhelming majority of the people of this county rightfully demand and deserve – prevent non-American citizens from voting in American elections.”
Critics of the Save Act note that it is already illegal for non-citizens to vote, and they fear such a law would hinder legitimate voters’ efforts to cast their ballots. House Democrats remain overwhelmingly opposed to the proposal, and only a few of them are expected to support Johnson’s bill on Wednesday.
Given Republicans’ narrow House majority and Democrats’ widespread opposition to the bill, Johnson can only afford a handful of defections within his conference on Wednesday. But a number of hard-right Republicans have already indicated they will vote against the bill, as many of them have rejected any kind of continuing resolution amid demands for more budget cuts.
Hard-right Republicans worry that, once the vote fails on Wednesday, Johnson will turn his attention to passing a more straightforward continuing resolution without the Save Act attached, although the speaker has dismissed those concerns.
You can read the full piece here:
Teamsters to meet on Wednesday to consider potential US presidential endorsement
The Teamsters executive board is meeting on Wednesday in Washington as the 1.3 million-member union decides who to endorse in the 2024 US presidential election, reports Reuters.
The Teamsters’ endorsement could be a factor in a handful of battleground states that will decide the 5 November election, including Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, where union membership is strong.
Teamsters president Sean O’Brien said on Monday the union could make its pick as early as Wednesday after union representatives met with vice-president Kamala Harris. They met her Republican rival Donald Trump in January.
“We can’t kick this can down the road,” O’Brien said, according to Reuters.
The Teamsters, one of the country’s largest unions, represents truck drivers and a wide range of other workers including airline pilots and zookeepers.
The union endorsed Joe Biden in 2020, as well as Democrats Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. It picked Republicans in some earlier elections.
Most major unions have endorsed Harris, including the United Auto Workers union. The AFL-CIO, which represents 60 unions and 12.5 million workers, endorsed Harris in July.
O’Brien spoke to the Republican National Convention in July, but also criticised Trump for suggesting that workers who go on strike could be fired.
Reuters reports that the union will present the results of polling of its members to the executive board on Wednesday, which is one factor in its decision making.
Asked if the union could opt not to make an endorsement, O’Brien said:
We are going to look at any and all options … We need to make sure we make the right decision.”
A 22-year-old woman who became an abortion rights advocate after she was raped by her stepfather as a child tells her story in a new campaign ad for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, reports the Associated Press (AP).
Hadley Duvall says in voiceover that she has never slept a full night in her life – her stepfather first started abusing her when she was five years old, and impregnated her when she was 12. As she speaks, images of Duvall as a child flash on the screen. The soundtrack of the ad is a song by Billie Eilish, who endorsed the vice-president on Tuesday.
“I just remember thinking I have to get out of my skin. I can’t be me right now. Like, this can’t be it,” Duvall says. “I didn’t know what to do. I was a child. I didn’t know what it meant to be pregnant, at all. But I had options.”
The ad is part of a continued push by the Harris campaign to highlight the growing consequences of the fall of Roe, including that some states have abortion restrictions with no exceptions for rape or incest. The AP reports that women in some states are suffering increasingly perilous medical care and the first reported instance of a woman dying from delayed reproductive care surfaced this week. Harris lays the blame squarely on Republican nominee Donald Trump, who appointed three of the conservatives to the US supreme court who helped overturn the constitutional right to abortion.
The AP reports that Duvall blames Trump, too. “Because Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, girls and women all over the country have lost the right to choose, even for rape or incest,” she says in the ad. “Donald Trump did this. He took away our freedom.”
Her name is Hadley Duvall, and you need to hear her story. pic.twitter.com/ub5Kmhi5pD
— Dr. Jill Biden (@DrBiden) July 17, 2024
During the presidential debate on 10 September, Trump repeatedly took credit for appointing the three supreme court justices and leaned heavily on his catchall response to questions on abortion rights, saying the issue should be left up to the states. He said he would not sign a national abortion ban.
“I’m not signing a ban,” he said, adding that “there is no reason to sign the ban.”
But he also repeatedly declined to say whether he would veto such a ban if he were elected again – a question that has lingered as the Republican nominee has shifted his stances on the crucial election issue.
Duvall of Owensboro, Kentucky, first told her story publicly last autumn in a campaign ad for the governor’s race in her home state supporting Democratic governor Andy Beshear. Duvall’s stepfather was convicted of rape and is in prison; she miscarried.
Beshear won reelection, and Democrats have said Duvall’s ad was a strong motivator, particularly for rural, male voters who had previously voted for Trump, reports the AP.
Duvall is also touring the country to campaign for Harris along with other women who have been telling their personal stories since the fall of Roe, joining Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro last week.
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Harris calls Ohio bomb threats ‘crying shame’ in talk with Black journalists
On Tuesday, Kamala Harris was interviewed by a panel of three National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) members, during which the vice-president talked about the anti-immigrant sentiment toward Haitians in Springfield, Ohio; Israel’s war in Gaza; domestic economic issues; gun violence; and reproductive rights. The conversation was one of the few interviews Harris has done since becoming the Democratic nominee, and it served as an opportunity for her to reaffirm policies.
When asked about “where [she] sees the line in terms of aggression and defense” in regards to the war, she said that she supported the Biden administration’s one-time pause on the delivery of 2,000lb bombs to Israel as “leverage” that they “have had and used”, but that achieving a deal was the real means to ending the war.
“We have to agree that not only must we end this war, but we have to have a goal of a two-state solution because there must be stability and peace in that region,” she said, “inasmuch as our goal must be to ensure that Israelis have security and Palestinians in equal measure have security, self determination, dignity”.
When asked what mechanisms the US has to support Palestinian self-determination, and whether or not it was even possible, as Israel’s ally, to support such a goal, Harris responded saying that she believed that it was. She described meetings with Israeli and Arab leaders to “talk about how we can construct a day-after scenario”.
She said that her “goals” are that there be no reoccupation of Gaza, no changing of the territorial lines in Gaza and “an ability to have security in the region for all concerned in a way that we create stability”.
Harris was also asked about the false and racist tropes that Donald Trump and JD Vance have espoused about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, which has resulted in bomb threats and lockdowns in the city.
“It’s a crying shame. I mean, my heart breaks for this community,” Harris said. “There were children, elementary schoolchildren, [for whom] it was school photo day. Do you remember what that’s like, going to school on picture day? Dressed up in their best, got all ready, knew what they were going to wear the night before. And had to be evacuated. Children. Children.”
You can read the full piece here:
Updated
Trump rejects 'rambling' label and mocks climate change
Donald Trump touched on a range of topics during his town hall with Sarah Huckabee Sanders, that included – according to The Hill – the fate of the US auto industry, climate change (which he mocked) and a rejection of the ‘rambling’ label he’s been given by Kamala Harris.
The Hill reports that, after giving a long and winding answer on Tuesday during which Trump spoke about the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, appeared to confuse Bagram airbase with an oil reserve in Alaska and threatened to impose a 200% tariff on cars imported from Mexico, the Republican presidental nominee argued his words were more “productive” than what Harris says on the campaign trail.
“The fake news likes to say, ‘Oh he was rambling.’ No, no. That’s not rambling. That’s genius,” Trump said of his own comments. “When you can connect the dots. Now, Sarah, if you couldn’t connect the dots, you got a problem. But every dot was connected. And many stories were told in that little paragraph.”
Trump also mocked climate change. According to The Hill, Trump said that the biggest threat to the public was not climate change but nuclear warfare.
“Not that the ocean is going to rise in 400 years an eighth of an inch, and you’ll have more seafront property if that happens,” Trump said. “I said, ‘Is that good or bad?’ I said, isn’t that a good thing if I have a little property on the ocean? I have a little bit more property, I have a little bit more ocean.”
Donald Trump held his first campaign event on Tuesday since the thwarted assassination attempt over the weekend, telling a packed 6,000-seat arena in Flint, Michigan that the assassin “couldn’t even get a shot off” while describing the Secret Service’s “great” response to the threat.
During a town hall moderated by former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump took audience questions about manufacturing and the economy, among other issues. Like his first appearance after the attempt on his life in July – also a rally in Michigan – Trump appeared ready to return to business as usual on the campaign trail, and his supporters were eager to see him in action.
Susan Moore and Christopher Moore, who came to the rally from Mundy Township, Michigan, got in line at 9.30am for a chance to get inside their first Trump event, where doors didn’t open until 3pm. “The atmosphere is just electric,” Susan Moore said.
Clark Grognan, a career auto worker from Whiteford, Michigan, said Bill Clinton’s “horrible” presidency convinced him to vote Republican, and that it was “exciting” to meet so many like-minded people.
“God is not done with President Trump,” Huckabee Sanders said as she opened the event, calling Trump “what our country desperately needs”.
Auto workers were among the most common attendees. Several people wore “Unions for Trump” merchandise, and some had UAW T-shirts.
Flint, like much of Michigan’s east side, has been a bastion of the US auto industry. Trump began the night by lamenting the rise of Mexican car manufacturing. He championed new tariffs, saying about Mexico: “We’re not going to let them sell one car in the USA.”
You can read the full piece here:
'Only consequential presidents get shot,' says Trump, at first public event after assassination bid
Good morning and welcome to our coverage of the run-up to the US presidential election.
The fallout from Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt on Republican nominee Donald Trump is continuing. Last night the former president made his first public appearance since the incident, which occurred while he was playing golf in Florida.
“It’s been a great experience,” the Republican presidential nominee said in an evening town hall in Flint, Michigan, about holding events with thousands of supporters. But he also went on to call running for president “a dangerous business” akin to car racing or bull riding.
“Only consequential presidents get shot at,” he said.
The crowd chanted “God bless Trump!” and “fight, fight, fight” as US Secret Service agents surrounded the stage to protect him.
Sunday’s incident, for which a suspect has been charged with possession of a firearm as a felon, comes two months after Trump was lightly injured when a gunman opened fire on him at a Pennsylvania rally.
In other developments:
On Tuesday, Kamala Harris was interviewed by a panel of three National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) members, during which the vice-president talked about the anti-immigrant sentiment toward Haitians in Springfield, Ohio; Israel’s war in Gaza; domestic economic issues; gun violence; and reproductive rights. The conversation was one of the few interviews Harris has done since becoming the Democratic nominee.
JD Vance defended his comments about Haitian immigrants eating pets during a Tuesday rally, saying that “the media has a responsibility to factcheck” stories – not him. The rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, came two days after the Ohio senator told CNN host Dana Bash it was OK “to create stories” to draw attention to issues his constituents care about, regarding inflammatory and unfounded claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, had eaten residents’ pets.
The FBI and the US Postal Inspection Service on Tuesday were investigating the origin of suspicious packages that have been sent to or received by elections officials in more than 15 states, but there were no immediate reports of injuries or that any of the packages contained hazardous material. The latest packages were sent to elections officials in Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York and Rhode Island.
Donald Trump is planning to appear with Polish President Andrzej Duda in the battleground state of Pennsylvania on Sunday, according to two sources familiar with the plan, reports Reuters. The dual appearance is not yet finalised, said one of the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss plans that are still private. But if the dual appearance goes forward, it would mark a rare instance of a foreign leader appearing alongside a US presidential candidate on the campaign trail.
A false claim circulating on social media that Kamala Harris was involved in an alleged hit-and-run in San Francisco in 2011 is the work of a covert Russian disinformation operation, according to new research by Microsoft. The Russian group responsible, which Microsoft dubs Storm-1516, is described as a Kremlin-aligned troll farm.
America Pac, one of the largest and the most ambitious of the groups supporting Donald Trump’s campaign, is replacing its voter turnout operations in the crucial battleground states of Arizona and Nevada, according to two people familiar with the matter. The political action committee, backed by billionaire Elon Musk, has ended its contract with the September Group and will hire a new company to knock on doors with fewer than 50 days left until the election.
Updated
