Jeux Novito

Key events

Democratic voter registration has surged following Biden dropping out – and Harris stepping in, the New York Times reports.

This follows an almost year-long trend of more people registering as Republicans than Democrats in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and North Carolina, including a spike after the Trump assassination attempt.

But after Biden dropped out, weekly Democratic registrations outnumbered Republican nominations in North Carolina.

Pennsylvania saw the largest Democratic margin for new registrations since late last year.

The paper’s chief political analyst, Nate Cohn, points out that the Democrats nonetheless still need to catch up:

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AP has important apostrophe news:

Whatever possessed Vice President Kamala Harris to pick Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, it probably wasn’t a desire to inflame arguments about apostrophes. But it doesn’t take much to get grammar nerds fired up. They’re all over social media debating rules for possessive proper names ending in S. Some agree with The Associated Press, which says just add an apostrophe to Harris to make it possessive. Others agree with The New York Times and other outlets that add an apostrophe S. Timothy Pulju, a senior lecturer in linguistics at Dartmouth College, says the AP guidance reflects how English was spoken and written centuries ago but a shift is underway. For now, he says both are acceptable.

“The lower the stakes, the bigger the fight,” Ron Woloshun, a creative director and digital marketer in California told AP.

The resident punctuation guru on my desk, Warren Murray, has this rule: you use apostrophe and -s when that is the way you say it. Otherwise, it is an apostrophe. So it is Harris’s, and Walz’s. (At my Anglican high school the rule was that only Jesus got an apostrophe -s).

The Guardian’s style guide says: The possessive in words and names ending in S normally takes an apostrophe followed by a second S (Jones’s, James’s), but be guided by pronunciation.

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Updated at 00.34 CEST

Alice Herman

Tuesday’s Minnesota Democratic primary is the last in a series of heated primaries for the progressive “Squad” of House Democrats who have been vocal in their criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza. Fellow Squad members Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri were recently defeated by candidates supported by a deluge of pro-Israel spending. But Omar faces a lower-key race.

The two-term congresswoman became the first woman of color to represent Minnesota in the US House of Representatives in 2019. While in office, she has allied herself with the left wing of the Democratic party, serving as the deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and backing key progressive measures such as the Green New Deal and Medicare for All.

United States Representative Ilhan Omar. Photograph: Shutterstock

Even before the 7 October Hamas attacks and Israel’s ensuing offensive, Omar had established herself as a vocal critic of Israel. She memorably drew criticism in 2019 for quipping that US politicians’ support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins”, in reference to donations from the American Israel Political Affairs Committee (Aipac). The comment drew accusations of antisemitism and she later apologized for it.

In the wake of the 7 October attacks, and as Israel escalated its retaliatory war, Omar was among the first in Congress to call for a ceasefire. She has spoken out in support of the university encampments in solidarity with Gaza. Her daughter was suspended from Barnard College for taking part.

These together would seem to make Omar a natural target of pro-Israel groups, but Samuels, a former Minneapolis city councilman has not drawn support from Aipac or its affiliated Super Pac, United Democracy Project. In contrast, UDP dropped more than $20m to unseat Bowman and Bush.

The lobby groups have not said why they have not gotten involved in the Minnesota primary – but it is possible that Omar just did not provide them the fodder.

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Updated at 00.26 CEST

Hello, this is Helen Sullivan taking over our live US politics coverage. Coming up today, we’re expecting Tim Walz to speak at a Harris-Walz campaign reception in Newport Beach, California.

And Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota is defending her seat in the state Democratic primary, a rematch against Don Samuels that comes two years after she barely eked out a victory against him. Polls close at 8pm Minnesota time – in about three hours.

I’ll take you through the latest – stay tuned.

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Updated at 00.11 CEST

The evening so far

Elon Musk is basking in the afterglow of the interview he conducted on Twitter/X with Donald Trump last night. The Tesla CEO said their conversation had attracted 1bn views and comments, a number that was impossible to verify, while adding he would be willing to hold a similar event with Kamala Harris. But a remark the ex-president made during the interview about firing employees who strike has spurred the United Auto Workers to file a federal labor law complaint against both Trump and Musk, while Harris’s campaign dismissed last night’s event as a chat between “self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a live stream in the year 2024”. The campaign also went public with news that it had received warning from the FBI of foreign hackers trying to breach its systems, but does not think they have been successful.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor who is Harris’s running mate, made his first solo campaign appearance at a union convention, and defended his military service.

Harris has no public events scheduled today, but her campaign continues to face questions over why the vice-president hasn’t held a press conference or granted a sit-down interview since announcing her bid for the White House.

Musk has a long history of opposing unions, including at Tesla, where the UAW has been trying to encourage workers to organize.

Trump has been flying around to campaign events in a plane once owned by Jeffrey Epstein, according to a report.

Bernie Sanders, the progressive senator, warned that Trump was “laying the groundwork” to dispute the November election, if he loses.

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Updated at 00.01 CEST

In the further annals of Republicans who broke with Donald Trump returning to the fold, former North Carolina senator Richard Burr said he will vote for the ex-president in November.

Burr, who declined to seek re-election and left the Senate in 2022, was one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump after he was impeached by the House of Representatives in response to the January 6 insurrection.

The conviction ultimately failed to receive the necessary two-thirds majority in the Senate required to be approved, and North Carolina’s GOP censured Burr for his vote.

In an interview with Spectrum News, Burr said:

Maybe someone will have a hard time squaring with it. I don’t have a hard time squaring with it because I firmly understood why I voted for impeachment. And like I said, that’s not a disqualifier as to whether you can serve. It’s a bad choice I thought a president made one time.

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Updated at 23.57 CEST

Donald Trump’s campaign is facing accusations of racism over this post on Twitter/X earlier today:

It appears to be in line with the former president’s messaging around undocumented people, who he has baselessly blamed for causing crime, and sparked a wave of condemnation from users of X:

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Updated at 23.34 CEST

Tim Walz is set to become one of the most prominent Democrats in the country – at least for the next three months, as he campaigns alongside Kamala Harris. Here’s a look at his record in Minnesota, from the Guardian’s Rachel Leingang:

Tim Walz must be having the wildest month of his life.

After the Minnesota governor was announced as Kamala Harris’s pick for running mate, the progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and independent senator Joe Manchin both put out statements praising him, an indication of his appeal across Democratic constituencies.

“Dems in disconcerting levels of array,” Ocasio-Cortez joked on X.

In the week since his name catapulted from relative obscurity – Walz flew up the shortlist of second-in-command possibles in a matter of two weeks, buoyed by clips of his TV appearances and memes about his dadliness – camo caps with orange writing have flown off the campaign merch shelves, a nod to Walz’s dressed-down midwestern attire.

But beyond the appearances, his record in politics shows an evolution – a shift from a moderate Democrat winning over a Republican-leaning district to a governor who delivered a laundry list of progressive policy wins that has his critics fuming.

Is he a progressive darling? Is he a moderate in progressive clothing? A centrist? Is this a bait-and-switch?

Well, he’s Tim Walz.

When you talk to people who know Walz, they all call him real, genuine, authentic, an everyman. There’s no reason to believe he’s putting on an act.

ShareWalz defends military service in first solo campaign appearance

Speaking of the Harris campaign, the vice-president’s newly minted running mate, Tim Walz, today made his first solo campaign appearance at a convention of union members.

The Minnesota governor gave a wide-ranging speech in which he attacked Donald Trump and cheered the power of organized labor, while also taking time to respond to attacks from the former president and his supporters, who say Walz has exaggerated his military service.

Here’s what he said in response, at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees’s annual convention:

The attacks on Walz’s military service, from Trump allies including his running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance, have centered on the timing of his decision to retire after 24 years of army national guard service. Here’s more on that:

ShareHarris campaign says FBI warned of foreign hacking, but systems were not breached

Kamala Harris’s campaign said it has received a warning from the FBI that it had been targeted by foreign hackers, but they have not detected any breaches of their systems.

“In July, the campaign legal and security teams were notified by the FBI that we were targeted by a foreign actor influence operation. We have robust cybersecurity measures in place, and are not aware of any security breaches of our systems resulting from those efforts. We remain in communication with appropriate law enforcement authorities,” a campaign official said.

Earlier this week, the FBI said it was investigating a leak of documents from the Trump campaign that is being blamed on hackers tied to Iran. Here’s more on that:

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Democrats in Arizona received some good news yesterday, when the secretary of state approved a ballot measure that would protect abortion rights, the Guardian’s Carter Sherman reports. The party hopes the initiative will bring out voters who will also cast ballots for Kamala Harris in a state that could prove decisive to her hopes to winning the White House:

Arizona voters will decide this November whether to add abortion rights into their state constitution, a prospect that could turbocharge voter turnout in a critical battleground state in the 2024 election.

Late Monday, the Arizona secretary of state’s office announced that it had validated an estimated 577,971 signatures in support of a ballot measure, the Arizona For Abortion Access Act, to establish a constitutional right to abortion in the state.

On X, the office called the measure “the largest petition effort in Arizona history”. The measure will be listed on the ballot as Proposition 139.

Arizona is not the only state to face the prospect of an abortion-related ballot measure this November. So far, states including Colorado, Florida and Nevada – another key battleground state – are also set to hold similar ballot measures. Tuesday also marks the deadline for the state of Missouri to determine whether to add its own abortion-related measure to its ballots.

Since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, ballot measures that protect or preserve abortion rights have successfully passed even in red states such as Ohio, Kansas and Kentucky. However, they have never been tested during a presidential election. Democrats are hoping that enthusiasm for the measures will boost turnout among their base, especially since the vice-president, Kamala Harris, one of the Democrats’ most effective messengers on abortion rights, became the party’s nominee.

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Arizona’s Republican former governor Doug Ducey has endorsed Donald Trump’s re-election bid, after he was censured by the state GOP near the end of his term for not being sufficiently loyal to the former president.

Ducey cited his support for tougher immigration policies and a continuation of Trump-era tax cuts in his endorsement:

Three years ago, the state Republican party reprimanded Ducey after it was taken over by rightwing officials who retaliated against politicians from the state that had clashed with Trump:

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Donald Trump’s campaign is out with a new statement claiming that the former president’s interview with Elon Musk last night “breaks the internet”.

It says 25 million users on X have listened to the entire two-hour-plus interview as of noon today, and that the conversation generated 9.6m posts, among other statistics. It also hit out at Kamala Harris for not having done any interviews since launching her campaign.

“While weak, failed, and dangerously liberal Kamala Harris has avoided answering questions for 23 days, President Trump delivered his message directly to the people in a historic, two-hour interview that generated millions of posts and impressions related to President Trump and Elon Musk’s unfiltered conversation,” the statement reads.

Here’s more, from the Trump campaign communications director, Steven Cheung:

President Trump will do everything he can to bring his unscripted message directly to the people, something the fake news media refuses to do. While Kamala Harris enjoys the luxury of hiding from the press, President Trump accepted Elon’s invitation to have an unfiltered conversation about his America First policies with voters and people around the world. The media can lie, but the numbers don’t: Americans are eager to hear from President Trump and his momentum is only growing as we get closer to November 5.

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Updated at 21.18 CEST

Sanders warns Trump is ‘laying the groundwork’ to dispute election loss

The prominent progressive senator Bernie Sanders has warned that Donald Trump is preparing to once again dispute the results of the 2024 election, should he lose.

Trump has never publicly conceded his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, and engaged in a months-long effort to prevent the Democrat from taking office that culminated in the violent January 6 insurrection.

In a just-released statement, Sanders cites the former president’s recent language to argue that he is preparing to do the same this year:

Donald Trump may be crazy, but he’s not stupid. When he claims that “nobody” showed up at a 10,000-person Harris-Walz rally in Michigan that was live-streamed and widely covered by the media, that it was all AI, and that Democrats cheat all of the time, there is a method to his madness. Clearly, and dangerously, what Trump is doing is laying the groundwork for rejecting the election results if he loses. If you can convince your supporters that thousands of people who attended a televised rally do not exist, it will not be hard to convince them that the election returns in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and elsewhere are “fake” and “fraudulent”.

This is what destroying faith in institutions is about. This is what undermining democracy is about. This is what fascism is about.

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Updated at 20.54 CEST

Joanna Walters

The former Colorado clerk Tina Peters, the first local election official to be charged with a security breach after the 2020 election as unfounded conspiracy theories swirled, was found guilty by a jury on most charges last night.

Peters, a one-time hero to those denying that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, was accused of using someone else’s security badge to give an expert affiliated with the My Pillow chief executive, Mike Lindell, access to the Mesa county election system and deceiving other officials about that person’s identity, the Associated Press reports.

Lindell is a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to “steal” the election from Trump. His online broadcasting site has been showing a livestream of Peters’ trial.

Prosecutors said Peters was seeking fame and became “fixated” on voting problems after becoming involved with those who had questioned the accuracy of the 2020 presidential election results.

The breach Peters was charged of orchestrating heightened concerns over potential insider threats, in which rogue election workers sympathetic to partisan lies could use their access and knowledge to launch an attack from within.

Peters was convicted of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failing to comply with the secretary of state. She was found not guilty of identity theft, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation and one count of criminal impersonation.

She will be sentenced on 3 October.

Former Mesa County, Colorado, county clerk Tina Peters, arrives at the Mesa county justice center for her trial on Monday. Photograph: Larry Robinson/APShare

Updated at 20.43 CEST

Trump and Musk talk on climate labeled ‘dumb’ by top expert

Oliver Milman

Sea level rise will help create “more oceanfront property”, carbon pollution is only a problem once it starts causing “headaches and nausea” and we should be more worried about “nuclear warming” than global warming.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s conversation on X, which Musk owns, last night featured several incoherent and baseless statements on the climate crisis, prompting both confusion and derision among environmental advocates.

Bill McKibben, co-founder of the climate group 350.org, labeled it the “dumbest climate conversation of all time.”

Trump, the Republican presidential nominee in this election, said that rising seas will help create “more oceanfront property” and complained that “people talk about global warming or they talk about climate change, but they never talk about nuclear warming,” in reference to potential nuclear war.

During the often disjointed exchange, Trump also said it is a “disgrace” that Joe Biden’s administration hadn’t opened up the Arctic to oil drilling and baselessly claimed that “you have farmers that are not allowed to farm anymore and have to get rid of their cattle” because of climate edicts.

Musk, meanwhile, said that he is “helping the environment” by making electric cars via Tesla but said that he didn’t want people to “vilify” the oil and gas industry that is driving the climate crisis and that the real dangers were, he felt, an increase in CO2 that will cause “headaches and nausea” and the world potentially running out of oil.

“We don’t need to rush and we don’t need to like, you know, stop farmers from farming or, you know, prevent people from having steaks or basic stuff like that,” Musk said about the urgency of climate change. “Like leave the farmers alone.”

Scientists are clear that the world needs to rapidly move away from fossil fuels to avoid worsening and disastrous climate impacts such as heatwaves, flooding and droughts.

The exchange did little to assuage concerns that a second Trump term will only help accelerate dangerous global heating.

Illustration of the Statue of Liberty underwater because of sea level rise. Photograph: Denis—S/ShutterstockShare

Updated at 20.37 CEST