This blog is closed. You can read the latest US election coverage here.
Climate activist, feminist and screen legend Jane Fonda has put out a video message endorsing Kamala Harris to win the White House in November.
“Today I’m proud to endorse Kamala Harris as the next president of the United States,” Fonda begins, talking to camera in close-up.
Continue reading...Ex-president, who previously denigrated electric vehicles, says they are suitable for a ‘small slice’ of the population
Donald Trump has for months denigrated electric vehicles, arguing their supporters should “rot in hell” and that assisting the nascent industry is “lunacy”. He now appears to have somewhat shifted his view thanks to the support of Elon Musk, the world’s richest person.
“I’m for electric cars, I have to be because Elon endorsed me very strongly,” Trump, the Republican nominee for US president, told supporters at a rally in Atlanta, Georgia, on Saturday.
Continue reading...Four new spots at his resort have opened at a 43% spike in a move seen as buying political influence
Donald Trump has set a million-dollar price tag for the ability to whisper in his ear should he win back the presidency in November, prompting ethics watchdogs to worry that the Republican nominee is selling access and political influence for personal gain.
Trump is making available four new and rarely available memberships at his exclusive Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where he mingled freely with unvetted patrons during his first term of office and accepted policy advice from guests scrawled on cocktail napkins.
Continue reading...Florida representative Byron Donalds spars with ABC host over Republicans’ questioning of vice-president’s heritage
Donald Trump ally Byron Donalds and ABC host George Stephanopoulos sparred on Sunday over Republicans’ attack line questioning Kamala Harris’s racial identity.
During an interview on ABC’s This Week, the Republican Florida representative called the issue a “phony controversy” and said “I don’t really care.” He then proceeded to double down on the issues – which the former president brought up earlier this week at the NABJ conference – by saying: “When Kamala Harris went into the United States Senate, it was AP that said she was the first Indian American United States senator … Now she’s running nationally, obviously the campaign has shifted. They’re talking much more about her father’s heritage and her Black identity.”
Continue reading...Far-right plan for a Republican presidency would undercut unions, strip child labor laws and boost corporate profits
Donald Trump proclaimed he was for “all the forgotten men and women”, in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention. His vice-presidential pick JD Vance consistently portrays himself as a pro-worker populist. But an analysis of the labor chapter of Project 2025 – an ambitious rightwing plan to guide the next Republican presidency – found it has little to offer them.
Project 2025’s labor section proposes hardly anything to improve workers’ wages and working conditions. It is, however, chock full of recommendations that would boost corporate profits, undercut labor unions and advance the rightwing culture war.
Continue reading...The ruling is the first substantive order after a landmark supreme court opinion last month that conferred broad immunity for former presidents
A federal judge presiding over the election subversion case against Donald Trump has rejected efforts from his legal team to dismiss the indictment on grounds that the former president was prosecuted for vindictive and political purposes.
The ruling from US district judge Tanya Chutkan is the first substantive order since the case was returned to her on Friday, following a landmark supreme court opinion last month that conferred broad immunity for former presidents and narrowed special counsel Jack Smith’s case against Trump.
Continue reading...Ex-president touched upon a range of topics from crime to immigration in his speech with mostly made-up statistics
Donald Trump addressed a fully-packed venue in downtown Atlanta on Saturday, with thousands of people waiting in the Georgia heat outside to enter, or to protest his appearance in a city he has condemned repeatedly.
His remarks were consistent with the tenor and comportment of restraint and probity Atlantans are used to hearing at this point.
Continue reading...Ex-president says he will only debate on Republican-friendly channel on 4 September, while Harris demands he stick to original network
Donald Trump says he would be willing to debate Kamala Harris on the friendly environs of Fox News in September – but the vice-president has not signed on to what would be a switch-up.
Trump had previously agreed to appear on ABC News and debate Joe Biden a second time this year before the president ended his re-election campaign.
Continue reading...A Washington Post report details that an Egypt-linked group withdrew funds days before Trump’s inauguration
A spokesperson for Donald Trump blamed “Deep State Trump-haters and bad faith actors” for a bombshell report on Friday about a secret criminal investigation into whether Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, the authoritarian ruler of Egypt, sought to give the former president $10m during his victorious 2016 White House run.
“The investigation referenced found no wrongdoing and was closed,” Steven Cheung told the Washington Post, which published the report on Friday.
Continue reading...This blog has now closed. Read more on the Harris delegate story here
Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, is widely speculated to be among Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential finalists.
Martin Pengelly explores Shapiro’s background for the Guardian:
July was the best grassroots fundraising month in presidential history.
Team Harris raised more across grassroots channels in the four days following President Biden’s endorsement of Vice-President Harris than Trump’s big donor-reliant operation raised in the entire month.
More than 3 million donors made over 4.2m contributions – with more than 2 million donors making their first donation this cycle.
This month, 94% of all our donations were under $200, and teachers and nurses continue to be among the most common donor occupations.
Compared with June, we saw more than 10 times the number of gen Z donors, and more than eight times the number of millennial donors.
Sixty per cent of all donors in July were women.
Coalition groups that organized calls since launch – like Black Women for Harris, Latinas for Harris, and White Dudes for Harris – raised more than $20m for Team Harris.
Continue reading...Acting director Ronald Rowe says ‘this was a failure’ and admits errors in communications and surveillance
The US Secret Service takes “full responsibility” for the events that led up to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump last month, the acting director of the agency said on Friday.
In a press conference in Washington, Ronald Rowe, who replaced Kimberly Cheatle after she stood down from her position as director of the service after Trump was shot, said: “This was a failure.”
Continue reading...Vice-president’s fundraising haul dwarfed Trump’s $138.7m with polls indicating a tight contest in battleground states
Kamala Harris’s campaign said on Friday it raised $310m in July, the latest dramatic illustration of a US presidential race polls show has transformed from an apparent romp to victory by Donald Trump into a neck-and-neck race in battleground states, though Trump retains a narrow lead.
Harris doubled Trump’s July fundraising haul of $138.7m, which in any normal year would be an impressive result, boosted by the assassination attempt he survived in Pennsylvania and by the Republican convention in Milwaukee.
Continue reading...This week, Paul Dans, the leader of the controversial Project 2025, resigned and signalled in a company email that work on it was ‘winding down’. The project had become a manifesto of rightwing policies that would serve as a guide for the next Republican president. However, there is a significant stumbling block: Donald Trump wants nothing to do with it.
Joan E Greve and Rachel Leingang discuss whether this marks the beginning of the end of Project 2025
Archive: CNN, PBS Newshour, CSPAN, Tik Tok: heathergtv
Continue reading...Trump running mate made remarks to Catholic group in 2021, the same year he criticized ‘childless cat ladies’
In remarks to a Catholic group, JD Vance attacked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for having “a sociopathic attitude” about families and children.
“One of the politicians that I criticised is AOC,” said Vance in 2021, while campaigning for the US Senate seat in Ohio he would win the following year.
Continue reading...Ex-president says he will travel back to Butler where assassination attempt took place; White House condemns Trump after he questions Harris’s racial identity at NABJ event
Journalists at the annual conference of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) began trickling in to the Hilton hotel in downtown Chicago this morning for a 12pm CT/1pm ET panel – featuring Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
He will be quizzed by the prominent political reporters Kadia Goba of Semafor, Rachel Scott of ABC News and Harris Faulkner of Fox News.
Continue reading...Trump says ‘you’re voting for the president … you’re voting for me’ when asked about vice-presidential pick
Donald Trump has said that vice presidential picks have “virtually no impact” on elections when asked about JD Vance’s fitness for office, in an apparent attempt to downplay his running mate’s role on the Republican ticket.
Trump made the comments during a combative interview at the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) in Chicago. Asked by the Fox News journalist Harris Faulkner whether Vance would be ready to take over “on day one, if he has to be”, Trump avoided answering directly and instead downplayed the significance of the Vance’s role.
Continue reading...The former president snapped and snarled through his interview – and looked for all the world like an old crank
After keeping an audience of interrogators waiting, Donald Trump finally arrived on stage for his Wednesday appearance at the convention for the National Association of Black Journalists over an hour late. He blamed the delay not on the furious behind-the-scenes between the NABJ and his campaign about whether he could be factchecked in real time, but on what he described as organizers’ inability to calibrate the audio equipment in time for his highly controversial panel discussion. “It’s a disgrace,” he snarled.
When ABC’s Rachel Scott opened the proceedings by asking the former president his impetus for addressing the Black journalists, women and Chicagoans in the crowd who have been regularly subject to his hostility, Trump dismissed the question as “horrible” and called Scott “nasty” before turning his bluster meter up to 11.
Continue reading...Many expressed frustration with National Association of Black Journalists for inviting ex-president ‘into our home’
On Wednesday afternoon, Donald Trump participated in a contentious panel hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ). The discussion, held in Chicago at the organization’s annual convention, began after an hour-long delay, with a room full of journalists tensely awaiting the program.
During the wait, Philip Lewis, the HuffPost deputy editor, shared on X that the hold-up was being caused by a disagreement between the NABJ and the former president. “I’m told that Trump is demanding that NABJ not do the live factchecking and that’s why the event hasn’t started yet,” he wrote. “We’re in a standoff.”
Continue reading...Foreign minister’s ‘alarming’ phrasing echoes sovereignty recognised only by Israel and the US under the Trump administration, Palestine advocates say
The Australian government has insisted it still regards the Golan Heights as occupied territory after Penny Wong described the site of a weekend attack as a “northern Israeli town”.
The foreign minister’s statement was met with a flood of comments online asking why she had effectively recognised Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights – which Israel seized from Syria in the six-day war in 1967 – and not described it as occupied.
Continue reading...VP touts prosecution record to cheering crowd after state leaders including Stacey Abrams take stage to show support
Three weeks ago, the political commentariat was writing off Georgia and talking of narrow pathways for Joe Biden to hold the White House. Georgia was a desert. Tuesday evening, an Atlanta crowd greeted Kamala Harris like she backed up a truck full of sweet tea to that desert.
It’s probably too early – nine days since the president’s withdrawal and the vice-president’s ascension – to know if sentiment in Georgia had shifted enough to justify jubilation. But the crowd in Atlanta treated the new presumptive presidential nominee as a reason to celebrate after months of her quieter campaigning in the city as the vice-presidential nominee.
Continue reading...