Summary
Here’s a look at where things stand:
On Sunday, CBS News Sunday Morning will air an interview with Joe Biden, discussing the president’s decision not to seek reelection. “Although it’s a great honor to be a president, I think I have an obligation to the country to do what I – most important thing you can do. And that is – we must, we must, we must defeat Trump,” he said.
The justice department on Friday announced criminal charges against three executives at the voting machine company Smartmatic in connection to an alleged 2016 bribery scheme in the Philippines. The indictment, filed in federal court in south Florida, comes as the company has faced false accusations it was involved in rigging the 2020 election.
Alpha Kappa Alpha, the historic Black sorority that Kamala Harris joined in college, has created a political action committee. The news comes from a filing with the Federal Election Commission dated Friday, the New York Times reports.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to attend an event together in Maryland next Thursday, according to the White House. This will be their first appearance together in person since the US president announced on 21 July that he would no longer seek re-election.
Newly released body cam and dashboard camera footage from local Pennsylvania police officers on 13 July shows the moments right before the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The footage, obtained by CNN through a public records request, shows the moment one police officer climbed up to the roof of the building overlooking rally, and saw the shooter just before the firing began.
FiveThirtyEight’s new poll shows Harris leading Donald Trump by 2.1 points in the national average. Before Harris entered the race late last month, Joe Biden, who was then running for re-election, before dropping out and handing the torch to Harris, “was behind [Trump] by a significant number, not just at the national popular vote, but in battleground states”.
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On Sunday, CBS News Sunday Morning will air an interview with Joe Biden, discussing the president’s decision not to seek re-election.
“When I ran the first time, I thought of myself as being a transition president,” Biden told CBS News. “I can’t even say how old I am – it’s hard for me to get it out of my mouth.”
“Although it’s a great honor to be a president, I think I have an obligation to the country to do what I – most important thing you can do. And that is – we must, we must, we must defeat Trump,” he said.
Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential election on 21 July, and endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris, immediately after.
Read David Smith’s analysis on Biden’s decision to withdraw for more background ahead of the interview this weekend:
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With Kamala Harris’s rally in Phoenix this evening still more than two hours away, footage of the crowds gathered inside and out of the venue have begun circulating on social media.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will campaign in Glendale, Arizona later today, and the crowd is already filling up the Desert Diamond Arena. pic.twitter.com/Pfo8WsayUf
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) August 9, 2024
No, this is not a sporting event. It’s the line to see Kamala Harris & Tim Walz in Phoenix, Arizona with hours to go until start time. Amazing. pic.twitter.com/RZomItAZAL
— Victor Shi (@Victorshi2020) August 9, 2024
The Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, where Harris will speak at 5pm local time, can hold 20,000 people.
The number of Harris-Walz campaign rally attendees has made headlines recently – in contrast to the quieter crowds attending rallies for Joe Biden just weeks ago. They’ve also attracted attention from former president Trump, who has complained about the media supposedly exaggerating crowd sizes for his Democratic opponent, at his expense.
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Ahead of today’s rally in Phoenix, the Harris-Walz campaign released a new ad playing up Harris’s strict views on immigration.
“Kamala Harris has spent decades fighting violent crime,” the ad says. “As a border state prosecutor, she took on drug cartels and jailed gang members for smuggling weapons and drugs across the border. As vice-president, she backed the toughest border control bill in decades. And as president, she will hire thousands more border agents and crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking. Fixing the border is tough, so is Kamala Harris.”
The ad foreshadows the tone Harris may take as she takes the stage in Phoenix this evening – especially as Republicans criticize her record on immigration as vice president. For more on Harris’s views on immigration, read Lauren Gambino’s analysis:
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The justice department on Friday announced criminal charges against three executives at the voting machine company Smartmatic in connection to an alleged 2016 bribery scheme in the Philippines.
The indictment, filed in federal court in south Florida, comes as the company has faced false accusations it was involved in rigging the 2020 election. Smartmatic was only used in Los Angeles county in 2020. Elon Musk, who has become a large spreader of misinformation, immediately shared news of the indictment on X.
Prosecutors alleged three executives, including the president of the company, Roger Alejandro Pinate Martinez, bribed the chairman of the Commission on Elections of the Republic of the Philippines “to obtain and retain business related to providing voting machines and election services for the 2016 Philippine elections and to secure payments on the contracts, including the release of value added tax payments.” The scheme allegedly involved “at least $1m in bribes,” the justice department said in a statement.
“Regardless of the veracity of the allegations and while our accused employees remain innocent until proven guilty, we have placed both employees on leaves of absence, effective immediately,” the company said in a statement. “No voter fraud has been alleged and Smartmatic is not indicted. Voters worldwide must be assured that the elections they participate in are conducted with the utmost integrity and transparency. These are the values that Smartmatic lives by.”
The indictment comes as the company has several defamation lawsuits pending against several conservative news outlets, including Fox and Newsmax. It settled a suit with One America News Network and also has sued Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Mike Lindell for defamation.
Updated
Alpha Kappa Alpha, the historic Black sorority that Kamala Harris joined in college, has created a political action committee, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission dated Friday, the New York Times reports.
Alpha Kappa Alpha was the first Black sorority formed in the United States. Harris became a member while enrolled at Howard University.
The Pac is the first in the sorority’s history, spokeswoman Carisma Ramsey Fields told The Times.
Read more about the power of Black sororities from Guardian reporter Helen Sullivan:
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Make America Great Again, Inc, a political action committee dedicated to re-electing former president Donald Trump, has shared reporting from Fox News today on Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s record on policing:
Walz backed 'alternatives to policing' package at height of defund movementhttps://t.co/swilxABoFs
— MAGA War Room (@MAGAIncWarRoom) August 9, 2024
After police murdered George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, Walz signed a number of bipartisan police reforms, including a ban on certain types of chokeholds and a ban on “warrior style” police training, which emphasizes the use of force.
For more coverage of Walz’s views on policing, read Gloria Oladipo’s reporting in The Guardian:
The day so far
Here’s a look at where things stand:
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to attend an event together in Maryland next Thursday, according to the White House. This will be their first appearance together in person since the US president announced on July 21 that he would no longer seek re-election.
Newly released body cam and dashboard camera footage from local Pennsylvania police officers on 13 July shows the moments right before the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The footage, obtained by CNN through a public records request, shows the moment one police officer climbed up to the roof of the building overlooking rally, and saw the shooter just before the firing began.
A man who stood in front of a gallows and attacked police with poles on January 6, 2021 on Capitol Hill has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, the second longest sentence delivered in the riot. According to prosecutors, who sought 262 months, or 21 years, for David Dempsey, he climbed over rioters like “human scaffolding,” as well as used “his hands, feet, flag poles, crutches, pepper spray, broken pieces of furniture, and anything else he could get his hands on” as weapons against police, NBC reports.
The US district judge overseeing the 2020 federal election interference case against Donald Trump has agreed to delay the case by several weeks after special counsel Jack Smith’s team requested an extension earlier this week. Smith’s office asked the court for extra time on Thursday, as the prosecutors said that they had not finished assessing how the US supreme court’s immunity decision issued last month.
Texas governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, has signed an executive order ordering public hospitals in Texas to collect and report information on the immigration status of patients they treat, in order to assess the expenses of providing medical care of undocumented immigrants. Texas congresswoman Sylvia Garcia called it “unacceptable”.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s rally in Detroit, Michigan was the duo’s largest campaign rally to date, featuring over 15,000 voters, the campaign announced today. It added that the crowd broke the campaign’s own record of more than 14,000 voters in Philadelphia on Monday.
FiveThirtyEight’s new poll shows Harris leading Donald Trump by 2.1 points in the national average. Before Harris entered the race late last month, Joe Biden, who was then running for re-election, before dropping out and handing the torch to Harris, “was behind [Trump] by a significant number, not just at the national popular vote, but in battleground states.
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On Friday, Joe Rogan, the popular podcaster who has been criticized for using racist and sexist language in the past, as well as espousing Covid-19 misinformation, appeared to take a dig at Trump.
Rogan said Robert F Kennedy Jr – who has become widely known as a vaccine conspiracy theorist – is “the only one that makes sense to me.”
After drawing the ire of Trump who wrote on Truth Social, “It will be interesting to see how loudly Joe Rogan gets BOOED the next time he enters the UFC Ring??? MAGA2024,” Rogan took to X and wrote:
“For the record, this isn’t an endorsement. This is me saying that I like RFKjr as a person, and I really appreciate the way he discusses things with civility and intelligence. I think we could use more of that in this world. I also think Trump raising his fist and saying “fight!” after getting shot is one of the most American fucking things of all time.”
Nick Fuentes, the 25-year old white supremacist and Holocaust denier who once dined with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, has revoked his support for the former president.
Referring to the loose network of white nationalist activists, alt-right and internet trolls known as Groypers, Fuentes wrote on X:
“Tonight I declared a new Groyper War against the Trump campaign. We support Trump, but his campaign has been hijacked by the same consultants, lobbyists, & donors that he defeated in 2016, and they’re blowing it. Without serious changes we are headed for a catastrophic loss.”
He added that he plans to present a “detailed statement of the facts, a mission statement, and a plan of action” on Monday.
In 2022, Democrats, civil rights organizations and some Republicans criticized Trump for dining with Fuentes, who has a history of spewing violently misogynistic rhetoric, in addition to homophobic and Islamophobic views.
Newly released body cam and dashboard camera footage from local Pennsylvania police officers on 13 July shows the moments right before the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The footage, obtained by CNN through a public records request, shows the moment one police officer climbed up to the roof of the building overlooking rally, and saw the shooter just before the firing began.
The officer, who was hoisted up to the roof by his colleague, is seen quickly dropping down after he sees the shooter. The officer is then seen running to the other side of the building to get a look at the roof, as the first three shots can be heard on the officer’s dashboard camera, followed by five more.
In total, eight shots were fired by the shooter on 13 July, which resulted in Trump’s ear being grazed, one spectator killed and two others were injured.
In the videos, the officer can be seen running back to his car to grab his rifle, and shouting at his colleagues to not put their heads up. “He’s right there,” he tells them. At this point, government snipers had killed the shooter, according to CNN.
Other footage obtained by CNN shows local police officers expressing frustration and confusion, and complaining that they had previously told the Secret Service to put officers near the building the gunman fired from.
“I told them that fucking Tuesday” one officer says. “I told them to post fucking guys over here”. When another officer asked who he told that to, he responded: “The Secret Service.”
Updated
Jan 6 rioter who attacked police with poles gets 20-year sentence
A man who stood in front of a gallows and attacked police with poles on January 6, 2021 on Capitol Hill has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, the second longest sentence delivered in the riot.
According to prosecutors, who sought 262 months, or 21 years, for David Dempsey, he climbed over rioters like “human scaffolding,” as well as used “his hands, feet, flag poles, crutches, pepper spray, broken pieces of furniture, and anything else he could get his hands on” as weapons against police, NBC reports.
According to documents reviewed by the outlet, prosecutors also wrote:
“Though Dempsey has pled guilty only for his assaults on Detective [Phuson] Nguyen and Sergeant [Jason] Mastony, his violent assault on other officers defending the Capitol was relentless: swinging pole-like weapons more than 20 times, spraying chemical agents at least three times, hurling objects at officers at least ten times, stomping on the heads of police officers as he perched above them five times, attempting to steal a riot shield and baton, and incessantly hurling threats and insults at police while rallying other rioters to join his onslaught.”
In a bizarre attempt to repeat the Republican attack line that Kamala Harris refuses to speak to the press, JD Vance wrote:
“If we could convince Kamala Harris that illegal aliens are actually journalists trying to ask her questions she’d build that border wall in five seconds.”
If we could convince Kamala Harris that illegal aliens are actually journalists trying to ask her questions she'd build that border wall in five seconds.
— JD Vance (@JDVance) August 9, 2024
On Thursday, prior to departing from Detroit, Michigan on Air Force Two, a reporter asked Harris whether there is an update on when she will sit down for her first interview since being the Democratic presidential nominee.
In response, Harris said:
“I’ve talked to my team. I want us to get an interview scheduled before the end of the month.”
The US district judge overseeing the 2020 federal election interference case against Donald Trump has agreed to delay the case by several weeks after special counsel Jack Smith’s team requested an extension earlier this week.
Smith’s office asked the court for extra time on Thursday, as the prosecutors said that they had not finished assessing how the US supreme court’s immunity decision issued last month, which awarded former presidents some immunity from criminal prosecution, would narrow their case.
“The Government continues to assess the new precedent set forth last month in the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v United States, including through consultation with other Department of Justice components,” prosecutors wrote in the filing requesting the extension.
The joint status report that was previously due by 9 August is now due by 30 August, according to the court order, and the status conference hearing, previously scheduled for 16 August, has been postponed until 5 September.
Biden, Harris to attend first joint event since he quit campaign
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to attend an event together in Maryland next Thursday, according to the White House.
No further details were given. Ordinarily, this would not be significant news, but so much has changed in the last three weeks and this will be their first appearance together in person since the US president announced on Sunday, July 21 that he would no longer seek re-election.
Minutes later, he endorsed his vice president, Harris, to take up the baton and rise to the top of the Democratic ticket for the election this November against the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.
Biden dialed in to a boisterous public happening that week when Harris went to what had formerly been the Biden-Harris election campaign headquarters in Delaware and talked to staff, as it became transformed into the Harris for President campaign – and is now the Harris-Walz campaign, since she chose the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate. Biden was effusive about his anointed successor.
Now the two will make their first public appearance together in person since that seismic shift in the election. We’ll update you when we know a time, place and nature of the event next Thursday.
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Interim summary
Hello again US politics blog readers, it’s a fascinating news day even if a little less frenzied than most recent ones. The Democratic and Republican campaigns have rallies coming up later today and there is a lot of polling information around and other stories moving. We’ll keep you abreast as it happens.
Here’s where things stand:
Texas governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, has signed an executive order ordering public hospitals in Texas to collect and report information on the immigration status of patients they treat, in order to assess the expenses of providing medical care of undocumented immigrants. Texas congresswoman Sylvia Garcia called it “unacceptable”.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s rally in Detroit, Michigan was the duo’s largest campaign rally to date, featuring over 15,000 voters, the campaign announced today. It added that the crowd broke the campaign’s own record of more than 14,000 voters in Philadelphia on Monday. The presumed Democratic nominees for president and vice president, respectively, addressed a gathering of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union.
FiveThirtyEight’s new poll shows Harris leading Donald Trump by 2.1 points in the national average. Before Harris entered the race late last month, Joe Biden, who was then running for re-election, before dropping out and handing the torch to Harris, “was behind [Trump] by a significant number, not just at the national popular vote, but in battleground states.
Meghan McCain, political commentator and daughter of the late US Senator for Arizona, John McCain, shared a video of Donald Trump comparing his crowd sizes to Martin Luther King Jr’s and then she simply posted the message: “Vice president Harris is going to win.”
Harris and Walz plan to highlight reproductive rights – the Republicans’ war on choice and Democrats’ efforts to codify choice – and immigration policies, which have been a mess, when they hold campaign events in Arizona tonight and Nevada tomorrow.
Updated
Ahead of her and Tim Walz’s campaign in Arizona later today, Kamala Harris wrote on X:
“We are running a campaign on behalf of all Americans.
It is great to be in Arizona with governor Tim Walz.”
We are running a campaign on behalf of all Americans.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) August 9, 2024
It is great to be in Arizona with Governor @Tim_Walz.
Since getting on the campaign trail, Harris and Walz have framed themselves as “joyful warriors” compared to Donald Trump and JD Vance, whom Democrats including Walz himself have called “weird” and “creepy.”
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Texas governor orders public hospitals to collect and report patients' immigration status
Texas governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed an executive order on Thursday ordering public hospitals in Texas to collect and report information on the immigration status of patients they treat, in order to assess the expenses of providing medical care of undocumented immigrants.
Under the executive order, hospitals must start collecting the information on November 1, and start reporting the data to the state authorities shortly after, beginning in March 2025.
“Due to president Joe Biden and vice president Kamala Harris’ open border policies, Texas has had to foot the bill for medical costs for individuals illegally in the state,” Abbott said in a statement on Thursday, adding, “Texans should not have to shoulder the burden of financially supporting medical care for illegal immigrants.”
In a statement to the Texas Tribune, Carrie Williams, spokesperson for the Texas Hospital Association said that they are reviewing the new order, adding that “right now, hospitals don’t ask about patient immigration status as a condition of treatment” and that “hospitals are required by law to provide life-saving treatment to anyone, regardless of ability to pay or status.”
Sylvia Garcia, a Democrat who represents Texas’ 29th congressional district, called Abbott’s order “unacceptable” in a post on X on Thursday. Garcia accused the Governor of “social engineering” and trying to “make ICE officers out of doctors providing immigrants with medical care.”
Here we go again! @GovAbbott yet again social engineering and targeting immigrants. Just unacceptable.
— Rep. Sylvia Garcia (@RepSylviaGarcia) August 8, 2024
He should focus on issues that matter to Texas families like making sure our kids are safe from gun violence in school and fixing our damn grid. pic.twitter.com/IqrO5uNZhR
Updated
Former California politician Willie Brown has shot down Donald Trump’s helicopter story, which the ex-president claimed involved a near brush with death.
Martin Pengelly reports for the Guardian:
Claiming to “know Willie Brown very well”, Trump said: “In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him. We thought, maybe this is the end. We were in a helicopter going to a certain location together, and there was an emergency landing. This was not a pleasant landing, and Willie was … a little concerned. So I know him pretty well.”
Trump also said Brown told him “terrible things” about Harris and was “not a fan of hers very much at that point”.
Both parts of Trump’s story turned out to be untrue.
It quickly became clear after the news conference on Thursday that Trump was talking about a helicopter ride with Jerry Brown, then the California governor. Furthermore, Willie Brown had nothing bad to say about Harris.
For the full story, click here:
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s rally in Detroit, Michigan was the duo’s largest campaign rally to date, featuring over 15,000 voters, the campaign announced on Friday.
It added that the crowd broke the campaign’s own record of more than 14,000 voters in Philadelphia on Monday.
Noting Harris and Walz’s address to the United Auto Workers union on Thursday, the campaign said:
“The event comes on heels of the UAW’s endorsement and strong support for the Harris-Walz ticket because of their proven track record of delivering for the working class – a stark contrast with Donald Trump, JD Vance, and their anti-worker, anti-union agenda. In Michigan alone, UAW represents more than 130,000 members who will be mobilizing to elect Harris-Walz to fight for working people in the White House.”
With FiveThirtyEight’s new poll showing Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by 2.1 points in the national average, here is more from Martin Pengelly for the Guardian:
On Thursday night, Amy Walter, of the non-partisan Cook Political Report, told PBS that before Harris entered the race, Biden “was behind by a significant number, not just at the national popular vote, but in those … battleground states. You can see almost six points in a state like Georgia and Nevada.
“Now, just in the time that Harris has been in the race, you have seen those numbers move pretty significantly toward Harris, four- or five-point shifts in those battleground states, which is mirroring what we’re seeing in the national poll as well.
“It hasn’t turned those states, though, from ones that favored Trump to ones that now favor Harris. It just means now that the race is no longer as lopsided in Trump’s favor as it was, say, in late July … which is why we’re calling this race a toss-up.”
For the full story, click here:
Meghan McCain, political commentator and daughter of the late senator John McCain, shared a video of Donald Trump comparing his crowd sizes to Martin Luther King Jr’s, saying:
“Vice president Harris is going to win.”
In the video McCain shared, Trump, during his rambling press conference in Mar-a-Lago on Thursday, bragged about his crowd sizes, saying, “Nobody has spoken to crowds bigger than me. If you look at Martin Luther King when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours ... we had more.”
Vice President Harris is going to win. https://t.co/nvoj5YLksc
— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) August 8, 2024
Swing state voters are saying they are “cautiously optimistic” when they see Kamala Harris, according to a new Axios focus group report with Engagious/Sago.
One respondent, Dolly A, said:
“She thinks things out and I like that, when she talks, she does it with a sense of authority and that means a lot,” adding, “When I hear her talk, she talks eloquently and that makes a big difference to me.”
Another respondent, Jerry M, said:
“To me, I think they’re both really high energy speakers, very eloquent with their words and it kind of says to me, leadership.”
Meanwhile, respondent Sebastian P said:
“I think they bring a new ... intelligence and energy to an outgoing kind of stuffy administration.”
A lot of the swing state voters are comparing Harris to Barack Obama, with Engagious president Rich Thau, who moderated the focus groups, saying:
“Even though Harris serves alongside Biden, and is the same gender as Hillary Clinton, most respondents said that among the last three Democratic nominees, Harris is most similar to Obama.”
Harris and Walz to highlight reproductive rights and border policies in Nevada and Arizona
Ahead of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s visit to Nevada and Arizona today, the duo’s campaign announced that Harris and Walz will highlight reproductive rights and border policies during their visit.
In a statement released on Friday, the campaign team said:
“Vice president Kamala Harris and governor Tim Walz’s momentum across the battlegrounds is real and will be on full display in Arizona and Nevada, where we’ve built massive coordinated campaigns as Trump has almost no presence whatsoever.
Our campaign will continue our work to reach the diverse voters who power our victories in the southwest, highlighting the stakes of the race for reproductive rights and the vice president’s leadership to secure the border.
During this southwest swing, vice president Harris and governor Walz will highlight their positive vision for the future and Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda to drag voters in the past, and they will continue to show we are fighting to earn every vote and reach communities all across the southwest.
Donald Trump’s campaign is struggling to find coherent attack lines against Kamala Harris as the vice president’s campaign gains national ground.
The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports:
Donald Trump’s campaign recognizes that it could lose in November if the election is decided on “vibes” and “energy”, according to people close to the former president, as Kamala Harris continues to ride waves of momentum with her newly announced running mate Tim Walz.
The concern has also started to open fractures inside Trumpworld, with some Maga allies criticizing Trump’s political advisers for running a campaign that may be too structurally deficient to stand up a ground game in swing states.
The Trump campaign has sketched out a strategy to hit back and are expected to try and cast the Harris campaign the most progressive US ticket of all time, as they aim to get the political messaging back on their records in office and away from coverage about Harris’s extraordinary enthusiasm with voters.
For the full story, click here:
Harris up in national polls after debate date set
Good morning,
Kamala Harris is up by 2.1 points from Donald Trump in the national average, according to a new poll released by FiveThirtyEight.
Across averages in swing states, Harris led Trump by 2 points in Michigan, 1.8 point in Wisconsin and 1.1 point in Pennsylvania. In Arizona, Trump led Harris by less than half a point while in Georgia, the former president led by half a point.
With Harris and Trump neck to neck in the polls, the two have agreed to debate on ABC on 10 September. The confirmation from the network follows recent days of suggestions from Trump that he would back out and debate on Fox News instead.
As part of this week’s campaign blitz, Harris and her running mate Tim Walz are scheduled to travel to the sunbelt states of Arizona and Nevada on Friday. Meanwhile, Trump is set to hold a rally at Montana this evening at Montana State University.
Here are other developments in US politics:
Library and free speech groups are condemenning Utah’s ban of 13 books from public schools and classrooms under a new state law, calling it a “tragedy.”
Congressional Democrats are asking what the price is for migrant crossings that have plunged since Joe Biden’s asylum ban, with some saying asylum seekers are “forced to wait in danger.”
Updated
