Australia's compulsory voting contrasts with increasingly restrictive voting rules in the US - just one of many differences between the two democraciesYou don't get the day off, but it is on a weekday in winter; there's no sausage sizzle; and, well, the loser might not accept the result. Elections in America are hard yakka.Here is how they compare with Australia's. Continue reading...
Spike Lee, 2 Chainz, Monica, Victoria Monet and Pastor Troy warmed up the crowd of enthusiastic Harris votersKamala Harris struck a contrast between her work as a prosecutor and a Donald Trump campaign obsessed with revenge and consumed with grievance" on Saturday in Atlanta, three days before election day.In less than 90 days it's either going to be him or me in the Oval Office," Harris said. Continue reading...
Kamala Harris said Friday Kennedy is exact last person' who should be setting policy for families and childrenRobert F Kennedy Jr could assume some control over US health and food safety in a second Trump administration, according to reports on Saturday, alarming Democrats who believe the former environmental lawyer and independent presidential candidate could be empowered to act on his vaccine-sceptical views.According to the Washington Post, Kennedy has met with Trump transition officials to help draw up an agenda for a new administration and could take a broad health tsar" position that would not require confirmation by the Senate. Continue reading...
Research shows that those with easier to pronounce names are more successful in the workplaceNames matter. I've written a whole book about our country being called Great Britain at a time when things haven't been going great. And being called Torsten causes all kinds of trauma - there was the distant relative who just gave up and called me Tristram.But I've not worried that having a weird name might have economic impacts. Until now. Reading a few studies last week has made me less chillaxed, because it turns out ease of pronouncing your name matters. A 2012 Australian study found that having a harder to pronounce name was associated with being judged less positively by others. And within law firms, it reduced your chance of having a top position. Continue reading...
In displaying all the signs that he is off his rocker, the Republican candidate has infected millions of othersIs Donald Trump going mad? It depends how you define the word. But since he's hoping to be elected US president on Tuesday, it would be handy to know. Democrats describe him as weird" and unhinged". His rival, Kamala Harris, raised the M" question again last week. This is someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance, and out for unchecked power," she warned.Harris, to her credit, was being relatively polite, though goodness knows why, given the way he disses and demeans her. So let's pose the question in more colloquial, idiomatic terms. Has stark raving Trump finally lost his marbles? Arethere bats in the belfry? If he's off his rocker, not playing with a fulldeck and away with the fairies, the world and the voters have a righttoknow. Continue reading...
by Alice Herman in Madison with photographs by Caleb on (#6RY7G)
But the Trump ground game - led by TPUSA and Elon Musk's America Pac - might be falling behind the Harris effortOn a warm October morning in Madison, Wisconsin, Ty Schanhofer found a unicorn: an undecided voter.Schanhofer, an organizer with the University of Wisconsin student Democratic party, had unfolded a plastic table on campus and was trying to encourage people to register in the key swing state. Continue reading...
First there was Moore's law, now the Nvidia boss has upped the ante. It's all fuelling a dangerous conviction that everything can be solved by technologyIn 2001 I interviewed the late Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel. He was in Cambridge to attend the opening of a new library that he and his wife, Betty, had endowed. We met in the university library - the central library of the university - and had an agreeable chat about the history of the tech industry and the role that he had played in it. As ever, he was wearing a tacky digital watch that served as a cue for a party trick he used to play on people. He would ask them what they thought it had cost, and most people would suggest a trivial sum - $10, say. Nope, he'd reply. The actual cost was $15m: because that was what it had cost Intel to get into - and out of - the market for digital watches. And one of the lessons he learned from that was that his company should stay away from selling consumer goods.Moore was world famous because of an observation he had made in the early days of the semiconductor industry that Intel once dominated. He had noticed that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit (or chip) had been doubling every year since 1965, and this was likely to continue for several decades. Inevitably, this became known as Moore's law", as if it were a law of physics rather than just an empirical observation and an extrapolation into the future. Continue reading...
From the intimate to the infamous, these pictures of US commanders-in-chief (and a few also-rans) capture moments of tragedy and hope at the heart of the White HouseIs it any surprise that photo op" is a phrase imported into British English from the United States? Of course it came from there, the land where the visual image sits right at the centre of the culture, with politics no exception. It was the Nixon White House that came up with it, specifically a press aide by the name of Bruce Whelihan. According to Washington legend, whenever the president was meeting a visiting dignitary, Richard Nixon's hardball press secretary, Ron Ziegler, would turn to his underling with an order to summon the snappers. Get 'em in for a picture," Ziegler would say. Too polite to put it that way himself, Whelihan would clear his throat and announce to the ladies and gentlemen of the Washington press corps: There will be a photo opportunity in the Oval Office." The photo op was born.But if the term was new, the thing itself had been a part of US politics almost from the start. Just as Roman emperors sought to cast themselves in stone and Tudor kings commissioned the finest artists to capture their likeness, so American presidents moved fast to harness the new technology of the age, in order that the nation might see the men who governed them. The selection of photographs assembled here is made up of a series of striking images, but a couple are extraordinary less for what they show than for the fact that they exist at all. Continue reading...
Amendment 4, which would enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution, must garner 60% of votes to passAs she stood in the parking lot of an auto supply store on Friday evening, Brittany Robinson was practically vibrating. With just a few days left before the 2024 presidential elections, the 32-year-old Floridian needed an outlet for her anxiety.So Robinson decided to go knock on strangers' doors in support of Amendment 4, a ballot measure that, if passed, would enshrine abortion rights into Florida's constitution and overturn the state's six-week abortion ban. Continue reading...
Bereaved mothers in a Michigan city pleaded with the council for action at its last meeting before local electionsTiffany Owens stood before the city council in Saginaw, Michigan, struggling to contain her anguish.I hate this city because this city took away something that was so precious and dear to me. I've been living here all my life and I had to bury two of my kids. They out in Forest Lawn cemetery," she said, her voice shaking with grief. Continue reading...
Trump insists on posing as the salient question of the election: are you crazier today than you were four years ago?Donald Trump's threat to execute Liz Cheney, with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her", is the apogee so far of his Hitlerian rhetoric. By his own words, Trump has proved her point that he is a danger" to the constitution and defied his apologists who insist he can be contained or that he doesn't really mean what he says. And let's see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face," he said. Shoot Liz Cheney" has replaced Hang Mike Pence."Hours after Trump declared his wish to kill Cheney, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, his reliable excuse maker for the executive collaborator class, published an editorial stating, We don't buy the fascism fears, and we doubt Democrats really do either."Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth Continue reading...
A 61-year-old man was surfing on Friday morning when a shark bit him, completely severing his legA shark bit a Maui surfer on Friday and severed his leg, authorities said.The man, 61, was surfing off Waiehu Beach Park on Friday morning when a shark bit him. Police officers who arrived to the scene first tried to control the bleeding with tourniquets. His right leg was completely severed just below the knee," Maui county said in a news release. Continue reading...
Richard Allen's alleged admission came after investigators struggled over case of Liberty German and Abigail WilliamsProsecutors in the trial of Richard Allen, who is accused of killing two teenage girls in Indiana, continued this week to build their case with testimony from a prison psychologist and law enforcement officials who lent credence to the allegation that Allen confessed to the murders while in prison in 2023.Allen's alleged admissions came after investigators struggled for years to find the person who killed Liberty Libby" German, 14, and Abigail Abby" Williams, 13, in 2017 on a hiking trail outside the small town of Delphi. Continue reading...
Vice-president's historic campaign has aligned stars and positioned itself as an antidote to Trump's threat but contest remains deadlockedOn the second to last Sunday in July, Kamala Harris had just finished making pancakes and bacon for her grandnieces at the vice-president's residence in Washington, and was sitting down with them to work on a jigsaw puzzle when Joe Biden called.I got up to take the call, and then life changed," Harris recounted later. Biden, isolating with Covid at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and facing calls from all corners of his party to step aside, had reached the history-altering decision to end his bid for re-election.Don't miss important US election coverage. Get our free app and sign up for election alerts Continue reading...
Rights we have taken for granted can, as we saw with the overturning of Roe v Wade, be suddenly yanked awayHello, I'd like a line of credit, please." Continue reading...
by Will Craft, Anna Leach and Andrew Witherspoon on (#6RY2Q)
Find out who's up and who's down in the latest US presidential election opinion pollsOn 5 November 2024, millions of Americans will head to the polls to choose between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump for president of the United States. The two candidates have offered starkly different visions for the future of the nation. As the election enters the final stretch, the Guardian US is averaging national and state polls to see how the two candidates are faring. Continue reading...
Ronald Gasser, 61, freed early from 10-year sentence after pleading guilty to manslaughter in road rage shootingThe man who shot the former NFL player Joe McKnight to death during a road rage confrontation outside New Orleans has completed his prison sentence less than eight years after the killing.Ronald Gasser's release from imprisonment quietly ended a winding legal saga that involved an overturned murder conviction and his subsequently pleading guilty to manslaughter - despite his initial claims of fatally shooting McKnight in justifiable defense of his life. Continue reading...
In her podcast, the Black trans media founder unpacks the harmful wave of rhetoric and laws against US trans peopleImara Jones was filming a documentary on a road trip in California when she took a break to scroll the news. A story about state lawmakers in Idaho banning transgender girls from playing on female sports teams at public schools caught her attention; it was the second anti-trans legislation that Jones had seen passed in 2020. She turned to her producer and told her that they needed to look into this anti-trans stuff". Dozens of similar bills were introduced in statehouses throughout the nation soon after.A year later, Jones launched her podcast The Anti-Trans Hate Machine: A Plot Against Equality to look into the religious extremists, conservative political groups and billionaires pushing an anti-trans agenda. Continue reading...
Experts fear those convicted over January 6 attack may act violently again - but biggest threat comes from lone actorsA year punctuated by two assassination attempts, high levels of threats and harassment, and a number of troubling, violent incidents in the lead-up to election day will culminate on Tuesday with an election deemed existential by all sides.It's the first presidential election since the January 6 insurrection, a reminder of the ways political violence can manifest that leaves Americans with a fear that such an attack could happen again. Those who study the attack and its participants say they aren't convinced criminal convictions against them will fully deter those involved on January 6 from future political violence, but that the biggest threat is a lone actor, not a large, coordinated event. Continue reading...
The election period has seen attacks on the voting process and threats of violence, but officials say voting is still safeIn the last week, the US saw numerous attacks on the voting process and threats of violence, and extremism experts are bracing for what comes after voting has ended.The goal of people committing these acts is often to create fear and distrust around voting or to sabotage the functioning of democracy. Still, election officials stress that voting is safe, and voters should not be deterred from voting because of any threats to the process, which are rare. Continue reading...
Trump, emboldened by the immunity ruling, wants to strengthen his grip on the courts. With a supreme court that has basically said Donald Trump can be a king, there will be no checks on him'If Donald Trump re-enters the White House on 20 January he will do so emboldened by a power that no previous incoming president has ever enjoyed: immunity from criminal prosecution for any act carried out in his official capacity.The protection, awarded in a July ruling from the far-right supermajority of the US supreme court, changes fundamentally the dynamics of the Oval Office. Continue reading...
Trump is right that resentment will be a winning message for some male voters. But women should not be underestimatedThere's one story of the 2024 presidential contest that says that this election is all about men, and their anger. Men, in this account, have gotten a raw deal: the decline of the industrial economy in the years since the postwar boom means that many of the jobs that gave dignity, structure, and steady paychecks to their fathers are now gone, and some men, especially those without college degrees, have fallen into a cycle of desperation and despair, unable to make the kind of living for which they could respect themselves.This economic argument about men is usually followed by a cultural one: that women aren't as nice to men as they should be, or maybe not as nice to men as they used to be. On one end of this conversation, there are paeans to male loneliness and discussions of the male suicide rate, quasi-poetic odes to their depths of despair and acute feeling: women just don't understand what it's like to be sad the way that men are sad.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...
At 38, the sevens star finally retired - wistful over three Olympic disappointments and uncertain about the futurePerry Baker is a three-time Olympian and two-time World Rugby Men's Sevens Player of the Year, second for all-time tries scored on the sevens circuit. He has a live claim to be not just the greatest American sevens player of all time but one of the greatest rugby players of all time - from any country, in any form of the game.Right now, though, he just needs a full-time job. Continue reading...
On Sunday more than 50,000 runners will run a 26.2-mile route from Staten Island to Central Park. The New York City Marathon is seen as the toughest world major for a reasonNew York is a city built on detours. Even the most straightforward journey can turn on a dime - be it an unexpected road closure, unreliable subway, or the unorthodox navigation of a cab driver - into a protracted, often painful, expedition.The city's marathon is no exception. Continue reading...
Americans still don't seem to understand that our fight is not just about us: it's about safety and peace across the globeAround a month before the US elections, in the Kharkiv region, I sat down with a group of Ukrainian infantry soldiers together with the American historian Timothy Snyder. I suggested they ask questions of him not only as an American historian, but also as an American citizen.The servicemen were curious about the upcoming election, but mainly the chances of receiving significant military aid any time soon. They expressed pity that many Americans still don't understand that the Ukrainian fight is not just about us. It's in the world's interests to support the fight against blatant breaches of the international order. Continue reading...
A vote for Donald Trump next week is also a vote for Elon Musk. The tech boss will have a springboard to greater power even than the US presidencyThis is what happens when successive US governments fail to tackle inequality. While millions of people live in poverty, a handful grow unimaginably rich. Wealth begets wealth, and they acquire political power to match. It was inevitable that one of them - now the richest man on Earth - would launch what looks like a bid for world domination.A vote for Donald Trump next week is a vote for Elon Musk. Just as Trump is using Musk, Musk could be using Trump as a springboard to perhaps even greater power than the US president can wield. Musk's secret conversations with Vladimir Putin, reported by the Wall Street Journal last week, and his contacts with other extremist world leaders, suggest a pattern of power-seeking that could be even more alarming than the prospect of a second Trump presidency. Continue reading...
As candidates compete for swing state on final stretch to 5 November election, Cardi B warms up Harris crowd in Milwaukee while Trump laments bad hair day and reheats gun rhetoric towards Liz Cheney
by Alice Herman in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on (#6RXYQ)
Robert F Kennedy Jr appears with Republican candidate, while congressman promotes state constitutional amendment to disqualify non-citizens from votingAt a Wisconsin rally on Friday, Donald Trump called Kamala Harris a low-IQ person" and vowed to save the economy from total obliteration" in a 1.5 hour-long meandering speech that touched on top campaign issues including the economy and foreign policy - but also featured threats to curb press freedoms and a lengthy discussion of his own rhetorical style.I will stop the criminal invasion of this country," said Trump during his opening remarks, promising to usher in a new golden age". Continue reading...
by Victoria Bekiempis in Warren, Michigan on (#6RXWJ)
In Michigan, the ex-president repeated his aggressive attacks that Liz Cheney should have rifles shooting at her'Donald Trump and Kamala Harris battled to woo voters in the key swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin on Friday, as the presidential campaign enters its final stretch.Harris made several appearances in Wisconsin on Friday, including one that featured the musician Cardi B, while Trump visited both Michigan and Wisconsin. Continue reading...
As voting day approaches, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump remain neck-and-neck in the polls. Keep up with our guide to Australian TV coverage, live results, news on the candidates and more
Brett Hankison is first Louisiana police officer at scene of raid that killed Taylor to be convictedA federal jury on Friday convicted a former Kentucky police detective of using excessive force on Breonna Taylor during a botched 2020 drug raid that left her dead.The 12-member jury returned the late-night verdict after clearing Brett Hankison earlier in the evening on a charge that he used excessive force on Taylor's neighbors. Continue reading...
Moore, 59, was killed on Friday evening as the state pursues a rapid spree of killingsSouth Carolina has executed a man on death row, despite widespread calls for his life to be spared, including from the judge who originally condemned him to death.Richard Moore, 59, was killed by lethal injection on Friday evening, minutes after the state's Republican governor, Henry McMaster, announced he would not be granting him clemency. Continue reading...
Israeli student filed lawsuit after suspension for spraying pro-Palestinian protesters with foul-smelling substanceColumbia University has reached a $395,000 settlement with a student who was suspended in January after spraying student protesters with a foul-smelling substance at one of several campus demonstrations in support of Palestine.The Israeli student who received the payout had been suspended until May. Continue reading...
The former president leaned heavily into his agenda of hate and menace in a week as unedifying as it was unhingedThere was racism and misogyny by the bucketload. There was a firing squad death threat to a former congresswoman. And there was the extraordinary sight of a Republican candidate for president of the United States playing dress-up as a sanitation worker in the cab of a garbage truck.Donald Trump's final full week on the campaign trail was as unedifying as it was bizarre. Continue reading...
Civil suit claims that tech billionaire and his Trump-supporting America Pac giveaway is illegal lotteryA federal judge on Friday denied an attempt by America Pac - the political action committee founded by Elon Musk to support Donald Trump's campaign for a second presidency - to move to federal court a civil suit brought by the Philadelphia district attorney over a daily $1m prize draw for registered voters.The lawyers for Musk and his America Pac had argued that the lawsuit, which is seeking to halt the sweepstakes in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, needed to be resolved in federal court as it referenced the 5 November presidential election.Don't miss important US election coverage. Get our free app and sign up for election alerts Continue reading...
Pennsylvania event organizer says it doesn't share values' presented by the float denounced as racist by NAACPA Pittsburgh-area Halloween parade's depiction of Kamala Harris in chains and being dragged by a vehicle displaying Donald Trump's name is being condemned as racist - and has prompted an apology from the event organizer.Photos of Wednesday night's parade in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, that circulated widely across social media show a person dressed as the Democratic vice-president shackled and walking behind a golf cart-like vehicle. The vehicle - a float in a Halloween parade organized by the Mount Pleasant volunteer fire department - is decorated with American flags and Trump campaign signs carrying people dressed in what appear to be Secret Service agent costumes, along with a mounted rifle. Continue reading...
The legendary Mexican pitcher died just before the Dodgers' World Series win against the New York YankeesFernando Valenzuela died and all I wanted to do was cry.I don't understand it. I didn't know him, not really, not personally. The man is a legend to anyone who knows baseball. As a 20-year-old immigrant from Mexico pitching for the Los Angeles Dodgers, he became the only Major League Baseball player to ever win the Rookie of the Year award and the Cy Young award in the same year. But that was in 1981; I wasn't even born yet. As I stared at a friend's Dia de los Muertos ofrenda, featuring a photo of Fernando among passed loved ones, I wondered: why am I so sad? Continue reading...
Recordings from 2017 reveal Epstein talking for some 100 hours' about the ex-president, journalist Michael Wolff saysA New York author and journalist has released audio tapes that appear to detail how Donald Trump had a close social relationship with the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein that he has long denied.The tapes, released as part of the Fire and Fury podcast series by Michael Wolff, author of three books about Trump's first term and 2020 bid for a second, and James Truman, former NME journalist and Conde Nast editorial director, include Epstein's thoughts about the inner workings of the former US president's inner circle. Continue reading...
by Joan E Greve in Philadelphia and Sam Levine in All on (#6RXJY)
Candidates fight for a diminishing number of undecided voters, who are feeling a mix of fatigue, excitement and fearKamala Harris stood before a cheering crowd of hundreds of her supporters in Philadelphia and promised that she would deliver in Pennsylvania, a battleground state considered a must-win in the electoral college.Nine days left in one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime, and we know this is going to be a tight race until the very end," the vice-president told supporters in Philadelphia last weekend. And make no mistake: we will win." Continue reading...
Brad Raffensperger warns of foreign interference in US election as rightwing accounts share disinformationA video circulating on social media purporting to show Haitians voting illegally for Kamala Harris is fake, according to the secretary of state in Georgia.Brad Raffensperger said in a statement that the video had probably been created and spread by Russian government actors trying to interfere in the US election.Don't miss important US election coverage. Get our free app and sign up for election alerts Continue reading...
Former Fox News host says he was physically mauled' by unknown entity in assault that left him with claw marks'Tucker Carlson, the former CNN and Fox News political chat host, has said he was physically mauled" by a demon a year and a half ago, in an assault that he says left him bleeding and with scars from claw marks".Carlson made the claim while speaking in an upcoming documentary, Christianities? In a preview clip on YouTube, Carlson is asked by John Heers of the non-profit First Things Foundation if he believed that the presence of evil is kickstarting people to wonder about the good". Continue reading...
Trump calls Liz Cheney a radical war hawk' and declares a gun should be pointed at her in latest dangerous commentRepublicans have made a series of offensive and misogynistic comments only five days before the vote, boosting Democratic hopes of turning out women on election day in a contest where the rights of women have been a central issue for the Kamala Harris campaign.With a large gender gap appearing to define the election race - women disproportionately breaking for Kamala Harris and men for Donald Trump - both campaigns have been seeking to shore up their bases in their final-pitch remarks.Don't miss important US election coverage. Get our free app and sign up for election alerts Continue reading...
Live, rolling coverage of business, economics and financial markets as non-farm payrolls numbers deliver economic surprise days before presidential electionOil prices have risen by 2% after reports that Iran is preparing an attack on Israel.Futures prices for Brent crude oil, the North Sea benchmark, have risen by 1.9% to $74.22, while the North American equivalent, West Texas Intermediate, is up 2.1% to $70.73.UK manufacturing started the final quarter of the year on an uncertain footing amid speculation on government policies ahead of the Budget, which was widely reported to have led to a wait-and-see approach on investment and spending.This domestic headwind, combined with an ongoing loss of export business, led to the first outright contraction in new work intakes since April. Output growth came close to stalling as a result. Continue reading...
Neveah Crain died in October 2023 after doctor reportedly called for two ultrasounds to confirm fetal demise'A pregnant Texas teenager died after three separate visits to an emergency room in attempts to get care in another incident that has highlighted the medical impact of the loss of abortion rights in the US.Nevaeh Crain, 18, had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours in October of 2023, each time returning home feeling worse than before. Crain was only diagnosed with strep throat upon her first visit. The hospital did not investigate her sharp abdominal cramps, according to reporting by ProPublica. Continue reading...
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