Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, will give the keynote speech in Washington on Saturday at a dinner hosted by the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization.
In a statement announcing Walz’s attendance, Kelley Robinson, president of the organization, said:
Whether it was as a veteran, teacher and football coach, member of Congress, or Governor, he has spent his career championing equality.
BIG NEWS: We are thrilled to have Vice Presidential Nominee Governor Tim Walz join us at our National Dinner! He has been a steadfast champion for the LGBTQ+ community and will continue fighting for our rights once he is elected to the White House. pic.twitter.com/nRsZfzuMYg
— HRC 🥥🌴 (@HRC) September 4, 2024
In August, I attended a Maga-aligned tent revival in western Wisconsin, which promised hope, worship and healing. Much of the event, though, was political: speaker after speaker addressed topics like Covid-19 lockdowns, January 6 (an event one of the headlining speakers at the Courage Tour, Lance Wallnau, attended) and the importance of conservative Christians getting involved in politics.
One of the groups, called the Lion of Judah, is working to enlist poll workers to “fight the fraud” in November – an effort that extremism researchers worry could pose problems for election offices.
I spent some time digging into the Lion of Judah, and found that their course encourages participants to sign up as poll workers as “the first step on the path to victory this Fall”.
“That signals a very insidious desire to monkey around with the results of the election,” said Matthew Taylor, a researcher at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies whose work has focused on anti-democratic currents on the religious right.
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Half of gen-Z voters said they will vote for Kamala Harris in November, according to a new NBC News poll published today.
The poll shows one-third of gen-Z voters said they plan to vote for Donald Trump, and 1 in 10 said they do not plan to vote in the presidential election.
Harris has the support of 60% of young voters who said they are “almost certain” they will vote in November.
The results of the poll show a significant gender gap: young women said they will vote for Harris by 30 points, while young men said they favor Harris by only four points over Trump.
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Starmer strategist to brief Harris campaign on Labour's election-winning strategy – report
A top strategist to the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, will brief Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign on Labour’s election-winning strategy, according to a report.
Deborah Mattinson, Starmer’s polling expert who was his director of strategy for three years while he was leader of the opposition, will travel to Washington DC next week, Politico reported.
Mattinson will meet strategists from the Harris-Walz campaign and share insight on Starmer’s decisive path to victory in July’s UK election, it said.
A former colleague who worked alongside Mattinson on Labour’s campaign told the outlet that she wanted to “put the ‘hope and change stuff’ to one side” and maintain a ruthless focus on Harris’s appeal in swing states.
It comes after several of Starmer’s closest aides including Morgan McSweeney, now the head of political strategy in Downing Street, and Downing Street communications director Matthew Doyle traveled to Chicago for the Democratic national convention last month and met with members of the Harris campaign, the outlet said.
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One million people have now registered to vote this cycle through Vote.org, according to Politico’s Playbook, including 17% who live in the seven top swing states.
More than one-third of the new registrations are from 18-year-olds – compared with 8% in 2020 – and 79% of are from voters under 35.
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January 6 fundraiser at Trump's New Jersey golf club postponed indefinitely
A fundraising event for some of the rioters who attacked the Capitol on 6 January 2021 scheduled to take place today at Donald Trump’s golf club in New Jersey has been postponed indefinitely.
The J6 Awards Gala, which was planned for Thursday at Trump’s Bedminster golf club, has been “postponed” and the location and time are to be announced, according to the event’s website.
Trump has been invited to speak at the event alongside confirmed speakers including his former lawyer and New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro and Anthony Raimondi, a conservative influencer.
The event had been touted as a way to “honor and celebrate” some of the January 6 defendants “who have shown incredible courage and sacrifice”, with tickets ranging from $1,500 per person for general admission to $50,000 for a “platinum table” for 12 at the VIP reception.
The event website did not provide a reason for the postponement, but the New York Times said it had obtained text messages in which event planners cited “multiple issues outside of our control, the main one being safety concerns of attendees and staff”.
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Harris to travel to Pittsburgh on Thursday to prepare for debate
Kamala Harris will travel to Pittsburgh on Thursday to prepare for next week’s presidential debate, according to multiple reports.
Harris will spend the final days leading up to the debate on 10 September in Pittsburgh, the reports say, where she will also hold informal meetings with voters in the battleground of Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state.
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But national polling is only part of the picture. Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election despite winning more votes than Donald Trump, because of the electoral system by which the president is elected.
The US presidential election is decided by races in individual states that have a set number of electoral college votes. This means the race is decided by a handful of swing states such as Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia.
Looking at data from RealClearPolitics, Kamala Harris has managed to at least close the gap on, if not overtake, Trump in the swing states. This is especially evident in Georgia and Arizona, where Harris has gained more than four points since Biden dropped out of the race.
Sitting ahead of Trump by a couple of points nationally is not enough to give Harris a secure lead in any of the swing states. Trump and Harris are still within two points of each other in seven swing states – well within the margin of error for polls.
Harris leading in polls but state-level data puts race on knife-edge
National polls for the US presidential race have been upended ever since Kamala Harris took over from Joe Biden to run against Donald Trump.
While Biden was trailing the Republican former president nationally and in many crucial swing states, Harris has gained about three points in national polls since becoming the nominee.
The Guardian’s poll tracker assesses polls over a rolling 10-day period. It now has Harris leading nationally by about two points.
But when comparing this performance with previous elections, data from RealClearPolitics reveals Harris’s lead over Donald Trump is weaker than those of his previous opponents. As of 30 August in their respective campaigns, Hillary Clinton led Trump by five points in 2016 and Joe Biden was ahead of him by 6.3 points in 2020.
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“Donald Trump has destroyed the Republican Party,” a spokesperson for Republican Voters Against Trump said in a statement announcing the ad blitz.
And every election cycle he drives more and more Republicans to vote for Democrats, because they believe Donald Trump and the GOP candidates who imitate him are unfit for office.
The group says it helps elevate the voices of disaffected Republicans and “build a permission structure for many other traditional GOP voters to reject Donald Trump and his Maga movement, even if it means voting for Democrats with whom they might have policy differences.”"
Here’s the ad by Republican Voters Against Trump launched on Tuesday, which the group said is aimed at “conservative-leaning independents and undecided Republicans by featuring former [Donald] Trump voters who now support [Kamala] Harris.”
In the video, multiple former Trump voters talk about the dangers of a second Trump administration and about why they now support Harris.
These former Trump voters are voting for Kamala Harris in 2024.
— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) September 3, 2024
This ad is running now in AZ, MI, NE, PA, and WI as part of our new $11.5 million swing state ad blitz. pic.twitter.com/1xrGhOu9qg
The campaign also features 79 billboards showing former Trump voters from each swing state, with the messages: “I’m a former Trump voter. I won’t vote for Trump” and “I’m a former Trump voter. I’m voting for Harris.”
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Republican anti-Trump group launches $11.5m ad buy
Good morning, US politics readers. With the general election just nine weeks away, a Republican anti-Donald Trump group is targeting disaffected Republicans and conservative-leaning independents in a new $11.5m ad campaign that will play in key battleground states.
The ad buy, by Republican Voters Against Trump, targets voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nebraska and features former Trump voters explaining why they plan to vote for Kamala Harris in November.
Over the last few weeks, the Harris campaign has zeroed in on courting Republican voters, and more than 200 former GOP staffers declared their endorsement of the Democratic presidential candidate in an open letter last week. The Harris campaign also launched Republican Voters for Harris, which included more than 25 endorsements, and several Republican speakers were featured at the Democratic national convention last month, including former congressman Adam Kinzinger, the former lieutenant governor of Georgia Geoff Duncan and former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham.
Here’s what else we’re watching:
Kamala Harris is expected to unveil a series of economic proposals at a campaign event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, this afternoon.
Donald Trump will be in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, tonight for a town hall moderated by Fox News host Sean Hannity.
Tim Walz will be in Pennsylvania today for campaign events in Lancaster and Pittsburgh.
JD Vance will deliver campaign remarks in Mesa, Arizona, at an event hosted by the conservative group Turning Point Action.
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