politics

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The stalled Harris campaign is alarming senior Democratic Party strategists who fear Donald Trump could gain the upper hand in the crucial Blue Wall states.

With a New York Times poll suggesting the Republicans will take control of the Senate in November, the vice president is facing her biggest test since taking over the Democratic presidential baton from Joe Biden.

Party leaders hoped Kamala Harris would ride her honeymoon boost all the way to the White House, but now they are openly admitting the campaign has got stuck… and there are signs it could even be sliding in some parts of the country.

As a hedge fund manager, Pennsylvania Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick's company held roughly $415 million in Russian sovereign bonds prior to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

According to a Thursday report in the Guardian, McCormick — who is running against three-term incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) — was found to have held the Russian debt through his firm, Bridgewater Associates, between 2017 and 2021. Sovereign debt is a major source of funding for countries to pay for operations and service debt, and has become increasingly subjected to sanctions since 2019.

McCormick has previously taken full ownership of Bridgewater's decisions during his tenure as CEO — a position he held until 2022, when he unsuccessfully ran in Pennsylvania's Republican Senate primary (he went on to lose to Mehmet Oz). In a 2023 speech to the American Enterprise Institute, McCormick told the audience: "Whatever we did I'm responsible for."

Wow...this is bonkers.

It has been said a gazillion times over the last few months, but is it getting through to those who need to hear it?

"Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's (R-Ga.) repeated social media claims that humans can control the weather — in the midst of a series of deadly hurricanes — is too much for some of her colleagues to handle."

NBC has delayed airing a new documentary about Trump's child-separation policy, described by MSNBC's Chris Hayes as "absolutely urgent," until December, despite its importance for public interest. The reason behind the delay appears to be concerns that airing it earlier could hurt Trump's feelings, thereby making him unlikely to do an MSNBC debate. This decision has been criticized as prioritizing Trump's sensitivities over informing the public on a significant and painful policy issue.

Trump and Vance see the natural disasters not as tragedies but as opportunities to advance their far-right conspiracy theories

Whipping up hurricanes to merge with great replacement theory took hardly a week, about the time it takes for hurricanes themselves to form. The overheated atmosphere warmed the waters that were drawn up into the winds to churn them into a menacing storm.

After Hurricane Helene hit, Donald Trump unleashed a whirlwind of humid lies: the federal government was deliberately preventing aid and even water from reaching areas that held Republican voters, "not getting anything"; Kamala Harris "spent all her Fema money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants"; and Fema was offering only $750 in disaster relief -- all false, all debunked by the Republican governors in the affected states. The Republican congressman Chuck Edwards of North Carolina felt compelled to issue a statement to his constituents not to listen to "untrustworthy sources trying to spark chaos by sharing hoaxes, conspiracy theories, and hearsay about hurricane response efforts" and the "outrageous rumors spread online".

Undoubtedly, he had in mind Elon Musk, who accelerated the circulation of the lies on his platform X: Fema "actively blocked" aid and "used up its budget ferrying illegals into the country instead of saving American lives. Treason." The Fema administrator, Deanne Criswell, called the calculated spread of disinformation "absolutely the worst I have ever seen", and announced that Fema for the first time had established a webpage for "Hurricane Rumor Response".

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Republican leaders instantly fell into line in a demonstration of Trump fealty. The congressman Steve Scalise, of Louisiana, the number two in the Republican leadership of the House, campaigning for Trump on 8 October, repeated his lie: "They use that money helping illegals here that they brought into America."

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Republicans denounce comparison of 27 October event to notorious 1939 rally made by Democrats and Jewish leaders

Donald Trump’s decision to hold a rally in the heart of Manhattan on 27 October, nine days before election day, has been slammed by New York Democrats, with one comparing the booking to an infamous Nazi rally held at the same venue in the lead-up to the second world war.

But it has also triggered a backlash to such sentiments, with Republicans saying such rhetoric heightens tensions even more in a presidential election campaign which has already seen two attempts on Trump’s life.

The Democratic state senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, whose district includes much of the west side of Manhattan where a date on Trump’s “arena tour” rally has been booked at Madison Square Garden, called on venue owners to cancel the event.

"Let's be clear," Hoylman-Sigal wrote on X. "Allowing Trump to hold an event at MSG is equivalent to the infamous Nazis rally at Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939."

Hoylman-Sigal was referring to a pro-Hitler rally, organized by the German American Bund, that was attended by more than 20,000 people and featured a portrait of George Washington flanked by swastikas. Many attendees came from Yaphank, Long Island, where the Bund was headquartered and had a summer camp teaching Nazi ideology.

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