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In his new book, Bob Woodward, the legendary Watergate reporter, says Donald Trump is far worse than former president Richard Nixon and “most reckless and impulsive president in American history.”

The Middle East and Ukraine are ablaze, the US mired in turmoil. An octogenarian president recedes from view. The threat of a second Trump term hangs like the sword of Damocles. Fifty years ago, with Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward captured Watergate and the downfall of Richard Nixon. Now, the US sits at an inflection point once again. Woodward’s fourth book at least in part about Donald Trump is a sober but alarming must-read.

War depicts an administration under Joe Biden that is often behind the curve, at times captive to its own wishful thinking. The withdrawal from Afghanistan haunts. Trump mesmerizes. Yet as Woodward tells it, Biden and his team did clearly see the menace Russia posed. Unlike George W Bush, Biden did not need to gaze into Vladimir Putin’s blighted soul. Unlike Trump, he did not feel compelled to fluff his ego like a besotted fanboy.

True to form, Woodward gets his sources to talk. “All interviews were conducted under the journalist ground rule of ‘deep background’,” he notes. Unless the source agreed to be named. “It’s still a mystery to me how he deals with Putin and what he says to Putin,” Dan Coats, director of national intelligence under Trump, says of his former boss. “Is it blackmail?” There’s something there, Coats is sure.

In the fall of 2021, the Biden administration concluded that Russia would soon invade Ukraine. They had the intelligence to prove it. They mounted a full-court press. On the front pages of the Washington Post, they laid out what was coming. They warned and later armed the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, despite his initial skepticism, and they rallied the west.

Read Lloyd Green’s full analysis here:

North Carolina grapples with holding election in hurricane disaster zone.

In a normal life Jon Council would be holding his last campaign fundraiser of the 2024 cycle, exhorting local small business owners in Watauga county to back his bid to become a county commissioner over a plate of spaghetti and garlic bread.

But in the wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene, which left western North Carolina reeling from massive floods that swept away buildings, downed power lines, and left thousands of people stranded in their homes, life is anything but normal in this part of the Appalachians. Instead of wooing donors, the candidate is seeking winter feed for sheep.

“We’re talking hay bales, so we really need a truck,” he pleads down the phone.

With just over two weeks to go to election day, Council is wrestling with a problem that is common to anyone running for office in this rugged mountainous stretch of western North Carolina, from local candidates like him all the way up to Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. How do you hold an election in a disaster zone?

Can you meaningfully talk to people about their electoral choices at a time when they are fighting for daily survival? How do you reach them, let alone engage them, when the internet is down, there is scant cellphone coverage, the roads are broken, power is still out, and mail boxes swept away?

“The voting landscape has totally changed,” Council said. “Polling places have been destroyed, people have been unable to leave their homes, absentee ballots and IDs are lost – given all that, talking to folk about why they should vote for me just feels wrong.”

Council, who is unaffiliated with any political party, was gearing up his campaign for the final stretch when Helene struck on 26 September. The flooding and landslides killed at least 115 people in North Carolina, with almost 100 still missing.

Here’s more on the hurricane’s effects on the elections:

Stevie Wonder to join Kamala Harris at campaign event in Georgia

Later today, Vice President Kamala Harris will attend another ‘Souls to the Polls’ event at Divine Faith Ministries in Jonesboro, Georgia, where she will be joined by Stevie Wonder.

Meanwhile, Governor Tim Walz is attending services in Saginaw, Michigan, and Minnesota. His wife Gwen Walz is attending services in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The visits comes as the Harris-Walz campaign centers on reaching Black voters through churches and religious communities.

During an interview with Meet the Press, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said he disagrees with General Mark Milley, who allegedly called former president Donald Trump a “fascist” in Bob Woodward’s new book.

“To General Milley, you have a right to your opinion, but I don’t fear Donald Trump,” Graham said. “I fear what’s going on in the world today. If you want the world to stay on fire, vote for her,” he said referring to Vice President Kamala Harris.

Former president Donald Trump doubled down on calling the January 6 attack on the Capitol a ‘day of love’ during an interview with Fox News.

“They protested an election,” Trump said on Sunday. “They had a right to.”

The former president previously said the thousands of people who traveled to Washington DC that day did so because “they thought the election was a rigged election”.

“And when I say we, these are people that walked down, this was a tiny percentage of the overall which nobody sees and nobody, nobody shows. But that was a day of love,” he said in a town hall held in Miami recently.

Despite a revitalization, Donald Trump wrongfully claimed Charleroi, Pennsylvania, is “virtually bankrupt” with “massive crime”.

There is one thing about her community that makes Kristin Hopkins-Calcek prouder than anything: her city is now one of the few boroughs in Pennsylvania with a growing population.

“We haven’t invested in our borough for a long time,” says the Charleroi council president, “and now we are finally able to do that – it’s because we have a need to.”

Surrounded by retired power plants, railway lines and steel mills, Charleroi in south-west Pennsylvania was once the epitome of Rust belt America. For decades, factories here and in the surrounding area closed and people moved away, its population falling by about 60%.

But in recent years, immigrants have descended on the town of 4,200 people, drawn by well-paying jobs and cheap housing. According to the 2020 census, for the first time in a century, more people chose to make this quiet community on the banks of the Monongahela River their home rather than flee it.

The first jobs Rodny Michel could find when he arrived in Charleroi four years ago were line work at a food-preparation company and, later, similarly grueling work at an Amazon factory in a nearby town. Today, as the native of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, sees his community grow in Charleroi, his work day involves turning an empty, dated store on Fallowfield Avenue into a Caribbean restaurant that will serve the town’s growing immigrant community.

“Sometimes I work for 12 hours a day,” he says from inside the Global Food Mart, a Caribbean grocery store where shoppers play arcade games and sift through boxes of tropical fruit.

“It will be the first for our community and I’m proud of that.”

But while locals such as Michel and Hopkins-Calcek see Charleroi as being in the midst of a revitalization, others have tried putting the town’s immigrant communities to political use. It is something that has thrust this tiny community into the national spotlight of America’s bitterly fought and divisive 2024 election.

Read more on Charleroi’s revitalization:

Elon Musk’s extensive influence over US government agencies is both financially beneficial and fraught with conflicts, as his companies rely on federal contracts while also facing numerous investigations, according to a review of documents by the New York Times.

If Donald Trump wins the presidency, his promise to give the Tesla CEO a powerful regulatory role could create significant conflicts of interest, allowing Musk to oversee agencies that regulate his own businesses.

In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Speaker Mike Johnson was pressed on Donald Trump’s comments over the size of Arnold Palmer’s genitalia.

Yesterday, during a rally in Pennsylvania’s Arnold Palmer Regional Airport, Trump recounted some the stories he shared with the now deceased legendary golfer. In one instance, he praised Palmer’s genitals. “Arnold Palmer was all man, and I say that in all due respect to women,” Trump said. “This is a guy that was all man.”

Tapper told Johnson that, if it were President Joe Biden who would’ve made these comments, he would be labeled as cognitively impaired.

“You can cherry-pick a few words or lines that have a two-hour event,” Johnson said. “We could do that with Kamala Harris after a 20 minute event because she does word salads and she couldn’t hold court like that without a teleprompter.”

“We all know that the facts the American people see it and, you know, the media can pick it apart, but people are going to vote,” Johnson added. “They’re going to vote what’s best for their family and they see that in Trump.”

Tom Perkins

Biden’s economic legacy could decide the presidential race in Scranton.

From the north, motorists pull into Scranton via the Joseph R Biden Jr Expressway. Cutting through the scenic Pocono Mountains, now at the start of autumn color season, they are greeted with a towering, electric billboard, blaring an encapsulating – if divisive – message to this working-class town: “Democrats for Trump,” it reads. “Economy,” it continues, with a green checked box next to the word.

The sign in Biden’s hometown is the perfect fall 2024 welcome mat in this crucial swing state filled with voters whose economic anxiety or satisfaction will decide next month’s election.

The US has staged a remarkable recovery since the pandemic and Biden has successfully pursued an economic agenda, Bidenomics, that should benefit Scranton and the state – $13bn has been earmarked from his infrastructure bill for repairing highways and bridges alone. But poll after poll shows deep-seated worries about the economy – worries that could sink Democrats’ chances of keeping the White House come November.

Like many mid-sized upper midwest cities that have faced post-industrial decline, Scranton, a longtime Democratic stronghold, has grown more conservative in recent elections. With the city’s native son leaving office, and pocketbook issues top of mind, some believe Trump could finally take Scranton - a more-than-symbolic win.

But with Kamala Harris, Biden’s successor, and Donald Trump tied in the polls, guessing who will take Scranton, Pennsylvania, and the White House is a fool’s errand. And this politically split town shows why the race is so close. On the street, one person’s economic reality may be entirely different to the next.

The complicated political mix of fears about the local economy, faith and mistrust in both Harris and Trump and shifting political allegiance was evident at the Marketplace at Steamtown, a downtown mall filled with local mom-and-pop shops.

Read more about what people in Scranton have to say:

Governor of Pennsylvania Josh Shapiro questioned the legality of Elon Musk promising $1m giveaways to voters who sign his super PAC’s petition.

During an interview in NBC’s “Meet the Press,” governor Josh Shapiro called into question Elon Musk’s promise to give $1m every day until election day to someone who signs his petition that effectively encourages Republicans in the key battleground states to register to vote. The money would come from his Trump-supporting political action committee, America Pac.

“I think there are real questions with how he is spending money in this race, how the dark money is flowing, not just into Pennsylvania, but apparently now into the pockets of Pennsylvanians,” Shapiro said. “That is deeply concerning.”

“Musk obviously has a right to be able to express his views,” Shapiro told moderator Kristen Welker. “But when you start flowing this kind of money into politics, I think it raises serious questions that folks may want to take a look at.”

Shapiro added: “I think it’s something that law enforcement could take a look at.”

Kamala Harris concluded her remarks at the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia.

She asked the crowd: “What kind of country do we want to live in, a country of chaos, fear and hate, or a country of freedom, compassion and justice?”

“The great thing about living in a democracy is that we, the people, have the power to answer that question,” Harris said. “So let us answer not just through our words, but through our action and with our votes.”

Kamala Harris, speaking at a service at an Atlanta church, continued talking about acts of kindness recently taking place in the US, especially in the wake of Hurricane Helene.

“Right here in the Atlanta area, I saw the story of a reporter who was outside covering the storm live on television when he heard some screams, he dropped everything and waded into chest deep water to rescue a woman trapped in her car, carrying her on his back to safety,” Harris said.

The service at the church Kamala Harris is attending is honoring breast cancer survivors during Breast Cancer Awareness month.

Harris spoke about her mother, who was a breast cancer researcher.

“She had two goals in her life, to raise her two daughters, my sister, Maya and me, and to end breast cancer,” Harris said.

The Vice President later narrated the parable of the Good Samaritan to connect the story to a message of approaching others with kindness.

“As the Good Samaritan reminds us, it is not enough to preach the values of compassion and respect. We must live them,” Harris said. “Faith is a verb.”

Kamala Harris kicks off her birthday at a church in Stonecrest, Georgia

Kamala Harris is delivering remarks at a service in New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in the Atlanta suburb of Stonecrest, Georgia. The crowd sang happy birthday when the Vice President, who turns 60 today, took the stage.

Harris began her speech by turning the attention towards the ferry dock collapse on Georgia’s Sapelo Island, where at least seven people were killed during a fall celebration by the island’s tiny Gullah-Geechee community of Black slave descendants.

“Our administration has been in touch with state and local officials to offer any needed support,” Harris said.

Good morning, and welcome to our continuing coverage of the run-up to the US election. We’re nearly two weeks away from election day.

Today, Vice-President Kamala Harris will kick off her 60th birthday with two church visits in Georgia. The Democratic presidential nominee is slated to to rally early voters in the state a day after a star-studded campaign Saturday in Detroit with rapper Lizzo and in Atlanta with pop icon Usher.

Former president Donald Trump is heading to a McDonald’s fast food place in Pennsylvania. The visit will probably be used to undermine Harris’s stint at McDonald’s, which Trump constantly puts into question during his rallies. He will later hold a rally in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, his second event in the battleground state this weekend.

Both candidates are laser focused on rallying support from voters in battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, will take part in a “Souls to the Polls” event aimed at using gospel performances, national and state faith leaders, elected officials and others to mobilize voters.

Here’s what else is happening today:

Elon Musk promised to award $1m every day to voters as he steps up campaigning for Trump. The commitment, which started on Saturday as Musk handed a lottery-style check to the first winner of his contest at a town hall event, could mean Musk is on the hook for $17m if he remains the sole donor to his own Pac.

A Pennsylvania town is thriving with Haitian immigrants – and is the latest target of Republican hate. Despite a revitalization, Donald Trump wrongfully claimed Charleroi is “virtually bankrupt” with “massive crime.”

Incarcerated Californians can’t vote. A prison held an election anyway. Voters in a mock election at San Quentin revealed strong feelings about prison labor, wages and the presidential race.