Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump pumps his fist as he is rushed offstage during a rally after an assisation attempt on July 13, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images via AFP

As he survived an assassination attempt by a whisker in Pennsylvania on Saturday evening, Republican Donald J. Trump’s image underwent an abrupt makeover. From defending charges of being an instigator and an authoritarian-in-waiting, he will now be seen as a target of political violence.

Mr. Trump’s defiant response in the face of death with his fist raised against the backdrop of an American flag could blunt his Democrat rival Joe Biden’s strategy of a counter polarisation, and reinforce his messianic claims. The bid on Mr. Trump’s life could derail the wobbly script that Mr. Biden struggled to put together after his meltdown in the presidential debate on June 27.

Also Read : Trump rally shooting LIVE

Mr. Trump is seen as a divisive figure of U.S. politics, but Mr. Biden’s re-election bid is also premised on polarisation. With the Democrat base itself conflicted over his politics, Mr. Biden has raised the decibel on rhetoric on domestic and international questions to unify his party. All that adds up to a very elementary claim that Mr. Trump would be worse.

On two polarising domestic questions that can unite the progressives, Mr. Biden has raised the stakes since the debate — gun control and abortion decontrol. The Biden campaign has sought to corner Mr. Trump on both questions. The battleground States that turned by narrow margins in 2016, and 2020, are being addressed on these two questions which would not only charge up the Democrat base but also potentially swing women voters from the Republican side too. Against the backdrop of his accelerating gaffe train, Mr. Biden amplified his messaging on these two questions, contrasting himself with Mr. Trump in stark terms.

‘Washington Playbook’

But this has not stopped the chatter about his fitness to run for another term. In fact, it is growing into a clamour, being repeated by Democrat seniors and American strategists across the political divide. Mr. Biden has sought to talk up the Russia-China axis in recent weeks — though he mistook Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for ‘President Putin’.

Mr. Trump’s first term had significantly disrupted what former President Barack Obama had described as ‘Washington Playbook,’ — the standard, usually militarised response to most global events. By confronting China and appearing friendly to Russia, Mr. Trump’s first term had disrupted this playbook.

Mr. Trump’s first term institutionalised rivalry with China in U.S. strategy, and Mr. Biden turned it into a new cold war by talking up the danger of an axis between Russia and China. This focus on Russia and China also helped Mr. Biden skirt two foreign policy setbacks under his watch — the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan without achieving the stated strategic goals and Israel’s war on Gaza that has scattered the Democrats.

On all these points, Mr. Biden’s claim of legitimacy has been that he is the most effective counter to Mr. Trump and his instincts. The stark scenarios that Mr. Biden portrays involve a double barrel polarisation — a U.S.-led world order threatened by an authoritarian Russia-China axis and the U.S. democracy threatened by fascism fuelled by MAGA [Make America Great Again] Republicans.

Mr. Trump is a common factor in Mr. Biden’s campaign narrative, which shows the former President as a stooge of Mr. Putin. The gunman in Pennsylvania has not merely dismantled this grand narrative of Mr. Biden’s claim of his own inevitability despite his infirmities but also reinforced the talking points of Mr. Trump.

Trump’s narrative

Mr. Trump has always claimed that he is a victim of a deep state conspiracy that undermined his first presidency, and thwarted his re-election in 2020. He has also, repeatedly, alluded to “a divine plan” in his politics — a theme that got an instant boost in social media chatter after his miraculous escape from the bullet on Saturday. Mr. Trump’s other talking points — American weakness, leftist conspiracies, and his claims of being a fighter and a true patriot, all fall in place for a perfect storm of a campaign for him on the eve of the Republican National Convention that begins on Monday in Milwaukee.

Mr. Trump presents himself as a strong leader and accuses Mr. Biden of being weak. By appearing unruffled and combative with blood dripping from his bullet injury, Trump can claim to have lived up to his boast. In the coming weeks, he is sure to use this to amplify his politics.

U.S. President Joe Biden claps next to U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is engaged in a delicate balancing act, playing cheerleader for President Joe Biden while standing by as a leading contender to replace him if he ends his reelection bid.

Biden’s dismal performance in last week’s debate with Donald Trump has triggered panic in much of the Democratic Party as people question whether Biden is physically and mentally able to beat Trump and serve another four years.

Former congressman Tim Ryan, while professing his admiration for Biden, wrote in a piece for Newsweek that “the Democratic nominee in 2024 should be Kamala Harris.”

Harris herself has not said anything in public, except to express loyalty to her boss.

“Look, Joe Biden is our nominee,” she said in an interview with CBS News. “We beat Trump once, and we’re going to beat him again, period.”

She said she was proud to be on the current ticket with the president.

Minutes after the debate, Harris had rushed onto TV to defend Biden, saying he had started off slowly in the clash with Trump but finished strong.

The official schedule for Biden on Wednesday says he had lunch with Harris, which is not a regular event, though it was a weekly fixture for Biden when he was vice president under Barack Obama.

– One heartbeat –

Harris, 59, is the first woman, the first Black person and the first person of Asian origin — her mother was from India — to hold the job that puts her a heartbeat from the presidency, as Americans like to say.

Harris would become president if Biden died in office or became incapacitated.

But she would not necessarily replace Biden if he were to end his candidacy, and Biden has insisted he has no plans to do so.

“For three and half years there has always been this drumbeat that someone other than the VP should be the Democratic candidate,” said Ange-Marie Hancock, professor of political science at The Ohio State University.

Hancock said it was possible an “undercurrent of racism and sexism” was at work against Harris.

For years Harris has been less popular among Americans than other Democrats seen as possible candidates, such as California Governor Gavin Newsom or his Michigan counterpart Gretchen Whitmer.

US media have reported extensively on mistakes she made early in this administration, mainly on the diplomatic front, and on tension among her staffers.

But Hancock said things could turn in Harris’s favor, because she has spent time out visiting battleground states, in particular to promote abortion rights as it came under repeated fire from conservatives judges and governors.

Harris is sometimes criticized as disappointing as an orator. But she got a warm welcome recently when she made a tour of universities that was focused on schools with high numbers of minority students.

Polling

A CNN poll released Tuesday had Harris doing better than Biden against Trump, although not beating him.

This poll gave Harris 45 percent of voter intentions against 47 percent for Trump, while Biden scored 43 percent to 49 percent for the Republican former president in a race between the two men.

In the event Biden were to drop out, Harris, thanks to her name recognition, her ties to powerful people in the government and the prospect for brisk fundraising, would go into the Democratic convention next month in a position of strength.

But the Republicans are ready and waiting.

“Kamala Harris is very much on the GOP’s radar,” Hancock said, referring to Trump’s party.

The Trump campaign on Wednesday broadcast a video montage of Biden suffering falls and other embarrassing moments, and questioned whether he can serve another term.

It concludes with the question, “And you know who is waiting behind him, right?” and footage of Harris laughing.

This combination of pictures show U.S. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Joe Biden and Donald Trump square off for a historic US presidential debate this week, with the stage set for what could be a pivotal moment in the 2024 race as millions of potential voters tune in.
| Photo Credit: AFP

The first general election debate of the 2024 election season is here, and it’s a historic moment no matter what happens on stage.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are taking part in June 27 night’s debate in Atlanta. Not only is it the first-ever matchup between a sitting president and a former one, but it’s also the first debate for either candidate in this year’s election. And it’s happening so early in the general election campaign cycle that neither man will have accepted their party’s formal nomination yet.

Here’s how to watch the debate:

What time is the debate? The debate will start at 9 p.m. ET Thursday. It’s being moderated by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash.

What channel is the debate on? CNN is carrying the debate live on its broadcast network, as well as on CNN International, CNN en Español and CNN Max. Viewers can also stream it without a log in on CNN’s website. Several networks have also agreed to carry the event live.

Where is the debate? The setting for the first general election debate is CNN’s studios in Atlanta. Unlike the Republican primary debates, no audience will be present.

Once a Republican stronghold, Georgia was a pivotal battleground in 2020. Both parties are preparing for another closely contested race in the state this year. Trump also faces an indictment in Georgia for his push to “find 11,780 votes” and overturn Biden’s victory based on false or unproven theories of voter fraud.

Which candidates will be on stage? Two candidates — Joe Biden and Donald Trump — will be on stage. For a time, it seemed like they wouldn’t be meeting up at all.

Biden’s campaign had proposed excluding third-party candidates, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., from the debates outright. Under the debate commission’s rules, Kennedy or other third-party candidates could qualify if they secured ballot access sufficient to claim 270 Electoral Votes and polled at 15% or higher in a selection of national surveys.

Both CNN and ABC announced the same qualification threshold, saying candidates will need to reach at least 15% in four separate national polls of registered or likely voters that meet their standards, between March 13 and a week ahead of Thursday’s match up. Last week, CNN announced that Kennedy hadn’t met those markers.

Trump didn’t take part in any of the GOP primary debates, so this is his first time on stage this cycle. Biden didn’t debate any of the Democrats challenging him, either.

Last month, Biden announced that he would not participate in fall presidential debates sponsored by the nonpartisan commission that has organized them for more than three decades. Instead, his campaign proposed that media outlets directly organize the debates between the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees.

Hours later, Biden said he had accepted an invitation from CNN, adding, “Over to you, Donald.” Trump, who had insisted he would debate Biden anytime and anyplace, said on Truth Social he’d be there, too, adding, “Let’s get ready to Rumble!!!” Soon after that, they agreed to a second debate.

What’s up next? ABC will host the second debate on Sept. 10. The network has not offered details on where its event would be held, only that it would be moderated by anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis.

And don’t forget about the running mates. Trump hasn’t named his yet, but Vice President Kamala Harris has accepted an invitation from CBS News to debate her eventual rival in studio on either July 23 or Aug. 13.(AP) AMS

Whether it’s a grinning Joe Biden as “Dark Brandon” or Donald Trump’s face superimposed onto a scene from HBO’s Game of Thrones, both presidential campaigns this year have embraced digital memes, the lingua franca of social media.

The campaigns of the Democratic president and Republican former president enthusiastically create and share content trying to shape the narratives around both men. Mr. Biden’s campaign even recently posted a job seeking a manager of meme pages.

Also Read | Trump campaign considering Nikki Haley as running mate: report

With tens of millions of people using social media as a primary information source, the battle of memes could affect who wins in November. Many Americans say they’re not excited about a Biden-Trump rematch and growing digital habits make it harder to reach people through traditional spaces for political advertising like print publications or television.

The history of memes

Memes can be an edgier, faster way to get a political point across than a block of text or a lengthy video. But online misfires have hurt candidates and created major controversies.

Here’s a look at how memes are shaping presidential politics.

First: What is a meme? Memes have been around longer than you think.

The term “meme” was coined in 1976 by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, who used it to refer to a piece of information that is imitated and shared, be it a slogan, a behaviour, an idea.

With the rise of internet culture, digital memes have skyrocketed in popularity. They often take the form of visual content like an image or a video with some kind of message that speaks to people who get it because of some knowledge they have or membership in a particular group. Memes don’t have to be funny or satirical, but that makes them more likely to be shared widely. And while politicians these days work to deliberately create and share memes, some of the most well-known ones were unintentionally sparked.

One of the earliest memes of the modern era was former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s enthusiastic scream the night of the Iowa caucuses, with videos and images of the Democrat’s guttural shriek being widely shared, drawing ridicule and damaging his already struggling presidential bid.

When President Barack Obama was moving into the White House in 2009, the photos of outgoing President George W. Bush with the text, “Miss me yet?” were broadly shared by Bush’s supporters.

A 2011 photo of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wearing sunglasses and staring at her phone became a popular meme the following year, “Texts from Hillary”, purporting to show her sending snarky texts to politicians and celebrities.

“If you do it well, you tap into something that the group agrees upon or is feeling suspicious about; you tap into something that connects with the audience,” said Rebecca Ortiz, an associate professor of advertising at Syracuse University who has researched the influence of memes around political identity.

Memes shaping U.S. presidential politics

How do the two candidates approach memes? Mr. Biden’s campaign has created its own stockpile of photos and videos for distribution on official Biden-related accounts. According to a Biden campaign official, advisers are also looking to partner with third-party creators in the coming months, with the hopes of reaching the followings of users who already seem aligned with a pro-Biden message.

By developing relationships with outside creators, campaign officials hope that some undecided or as-yet unpersuaded voters will glom onto Mr. Biden’s message if they receive it from another account they’re already following.

“We’re trying really hard to run a digital programme that is authentic to our candidate, who is probably not spending all his time on Twitter — actually, he definitely is not,” said Clarke Humphrey, senior adviser for digital persuasion for the Biden campaign. “So I think we just have been really creative about how to leverage all the corners of the internet so that he can be where he needs to be without him actually having to go to those places necessarily.”

Mr. Trump, a prolific user of social media even before he ran for president, has long embraced memes and shared them, as have his very-online political aides and some of his adult children. His oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., shares them frequently and refers to himself on Instagram as a “Meme Wars General”.

The campaign did not offer any details about its digital team or its use of memes. Spokesperson Steven Cheung issued a statement calling out Mr. Biden’s videotaped flubs of speeches and moments of apparent confusion.

“Joe Biden is a walking, talking meme every time he shuffles into public view,” Mr. Cheung said.

What are some examples of their content? Mr. Biden’s team has embraced “Dark Brandon”, reappropriating a right-wing conspiracy meme that depicted the president as a menacing force and used a nickname, “Brandon”, that become an in-joke among conservatives for insulting him.

While “Dark Brandon” originally depicted Mr. Biden as a shadowy threat, Democrats adopted it, using the image as a meme to mock conspiracy theories about Mr. Biden’s purported influence on events like the Super Bowl and portraying him as a powerful force to tout his accomplishments.

Now, the campaign sells signs, mugs, baby onesies and even coffee bags portraying Mr. Biden as “Dark Brandon” with red laser eyes.

Mr. Trump and his staff regularly share memes that glorify him in over-the-top ways, such as depicting him to be leading a band of dancing Bollywood soldiers.

Also Read | Biden, Trump issue dire warnings for the U.S. if other wins another term

In April, right before the total solar eclipse swept across North America, Mr. Trump shared a meme video on his Truth Social media account that featured clips of people staring up at the sky wearing eclipse glasses and cheering as the sky darkened, before cutting to an image of the sun with a large silhouette of Mr. Trump’s head blocking it out as people cheer.

And both the Biden and Trump campaigns quickly clip potentially embarrassing videos of their opponent and post them online within minutes, injecting those moments into the social media bloodstream and often driving traditional news coverage.

When have the memes gone wrong?

Mr. Trump and his campaign often share content created by outside meme-makers — often geared to his base supporters — and sometimes disavow content that stirs outrage later.

In 2016 when he shared a meme about Ms. Clinton that appeared to depict the Star of David atop a pile of cash, evoking an antisemitic trope. Mr. Trump deleted the image but called it “a basic star, often used by sheriffs”.

Last month, Mr. Trump drew backlash for sharing a video meme on Truth Social that included references to a “unified Reich” among hypothetical news headlines if he wins the election in November.

The “unified Reich” meme was created by an outside group of meme makers that The New York Times reported has collaborated with the Trump campaign. The Dilley Meme Team describes itself as “America’s greatest MAGA Members” and “Trump’s Online War Machine” with their creations sometimes shared by Mr. Trump himself.

The campaign said the video was shared by a staffer who saw it online and did not see the reference. Mr. Trump’s campaign denied it coordinates with the group but said it appreciates the effort of outside creators.

Brenden Dilley, who leads the Dilley Meme Team, did not respond to emailed questions about the group’s work but posted a reply on X saying he would grant an interview in January 2025, after the next presidential inauguration.

Whose memes are going furthest?

It’s hard to say. Both candidates have tens of millions of followers across social media networks, as do their campaign accounts, but it’s difficult to track the number of times any particular meme is shared, or remixed and shared again.

Mr. Trump has more social media followers than Mr. Biden on Instagram, TikTok, Truth Social (Mr. Trump’s social media network) and X, though the former president has only used X once since his account on the site, then known as Twitter, was locked after the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Mr. Trump’s lone post since then was to post his mug shot. It, too, has become a meme.

File photo of Donald Trump’s youngest son, Barron Trump.
| Photo Credit: AP

Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s youngest son, Barron Trump, will not be a delegate representing Florida at the Republican National Convention in July due to prior commitments, the office of his mother Melania said on May 10.

On May 9, a campaign official said Barron Trump, 18, had been selected by the state party as a delegate from Florida, a notable move given that he has kept largely out of the public eye during the campaign.

“While Barron is honoured to have been chosen as a delegate by the Florida Republican Party, he regretfully declines to participate due to prior commitments,” Melania Trump’s office said in a statement.

In Florida, presidential campaigns submit a list of proposed delegates to the state party, which in this case would have included Mr. Barron Trump.

Delegates are allocated following primary contests in each state. While the rules are complex, delegates are typically assigned to represent a candidate at the convention, where the nominee is officially selected.

Mr. Donald Trump is set to face President Joe Biden in November’s presidential election.

Washington:

Former president Donald Trump has sharpened his allegation that his Democratic successor has weaponized the US justice system against him, comparing Joe Biden’s tactics to those of Hitler’s Gestapo, American media reported Sunday.

The Republican 2024 presidential candidate made the remark during a private meeting Saturday with top party leaders and wealthy donors at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, according to a recording provided to US media by one donor.

In a 90-minute speech, Trump accused the Democrats of “running a Gestapo administration,” referring to the secret police force in Nazi Germany. “It’s the only way they’re going to win,” he said. 

The “Gestapo” comment came as the campaign has begun heating up, and it follows several other Trump remarks that critics have said are dangerously inflammatory, including calling political rivals “vermin” and comparing immigrants to “animals.”

His comments in Mar-a-Lago brought loud applause from the audience, which included a number of potential vice presidential picks, according to Politico.

He again lashed into the prosecutors who have brought four separate court cases against him, including the hush-money trial now taking place in New York. 

Trump denounced what he claimed was a “witch hunt” hatched by the Democratic administration to eliminate his key presidential rival.

The Biden campaign, which has denied any role in the legal cases, responded Sunday, saying the Republican’s angry remarks confirmed “what we already knew: Trump’s campaign is about him. His fury, his revenge, his lies, and his retribution.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

With just over six months left for the American general elections, some South Asian election activists are mobilizing to re-elect U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to the White House. The all-volunteer group, South Asians for Mr. Biden, kicked off its activities for the election season with a virtual event held on April 25 that featured messages from lawmakers and functionaries of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and focused on issues such as reproductive rights and gun control.

The group, like other groups working in this space, is motivated by the idea that South Asian populations in battleground States had exceeded the margins of victory for Democrats in previous election cycles (2020 and 2021 for example). This makes South Asians, like other Asian American and Pacific Islander groups (AAPI or  AANHNPI to include Native Hawaiians ), a potential deciding factor in who wins in battleground states.

 In a close election, such as the 2020 race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden,  winning swing states could be key to winning the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. However, Democrats and Republicans are focused not just on the Biden v Trump rematch this year but also other ‘down ballot’ races –  crucial Senate and House seats as well as contests for  state offices.  

South Asians for Biden had reached out to  a few hundred thousand South Asian and AAPI voters directly and via its digital and video campaigns in 2020 and 2021, according to Neha Dewan, National Co-Director of the group. Ms Dewan listed the group’s outreach in States such as Georgia and Wisconsin where Mr Biden won by wafer-thin margins ( around 12,000 votes in Georgia for example).

During the virtual event, titled, ‘Mobilizing the South Asian Community to be the Margin of Victory’, Ms Dewan highlighted the work of the Biden administration in areas she said were of importance to the community : reproductive rights (e.g., women’s access to contraception and abortion), curbing gun violence and hate crimes against Asian Americans.

“I know that the calls that were made into Georgia and into Wisconsin, were beyond the winning margin,” said Principal Deputy Campaign Manager for Biden-Harris 2024, Quentin Fulks, in a recorded video message.

The AAPI vote was 4% of the electorate in Georgia, and an important part of the margin (just under 3%) that got Senator Raphael Warnock re-elected the Senate (December 2022), Mr Fulks said. Democrats retained control (51-49) of the U.S. Senate with Mr Warnock – who initially came to the chamber after winning a partial term in 2020 – getting elected for full term in the 118th Congress that began in 2023.

“It’s going to take all of us again in 2024 to make sure that we hit 270 electoral votes,” Mr Fulks said.

The majority of U.S. born and foreign-born Indian Americans lean towards the Democratic Party (as per 2020 data), a statistic the group appears to capitalise on. One of the speakers at the virtual event, Washington (State)  Democrat, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal cited data to support the view that South Asian social and political priorities were aligned with those of the Biden-Harris platform.

Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Ro Khanna, an Indian American California Democrat emphasized that South Asian voters were critical  to electoral victories  in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and Arizona. Mr Biden won the electoral college votes in each of these States in 2020.

“We were key to President Biden and Vice President Harris’s 2020 historic win. We need to mobilize again,” he said.

Mr Khanna, whose constituency includes a part of Silicon Valley,  highlighted his involvement with the CHIPS and Science Act, one of the Biden administration’s big ticket policies aimed at increasing semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. (Mr Khanna was one of the lawmakers who introduced one of the  two pieces of legislation that later went on to become the Act).

“There are so many South Asians involved in creating good jobs and Arizona, in upstate New York, in Ohio, as a result of that act,” he said.

Chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) AAPI Caucus Bel Leong Hong described the 2024 elections in existential terms.

“We are fighting for a place for us to be in, we are fighting to be who we are,” she said.

Democrats rallying around abortion rights and gun control

Issues important to South Asian Americans – especially reproductive rights, voting rights and gun violence – featured repeatedly through the event. This mirrors the overall approach of Democrats – starting at the top with Mr Biden and Ms Harris – to rally voters, especially women, will who would otherwise have not voted or voted for Mr Trump, to vote for Mr Biden.

Anita Somani, a physician who is a representative in the Ohio State Assembly had a message about voting officials in who would  protect reproductive rights.

Abortion and — more broadly — reproductive rights, have been a key electoral issue, especially since June 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, a judgement that broadly protected a woman’s right to have an abortion. With reproductive rights becoming a state issue since the judgement was overturned, a number of States have enacted measures to protect these rights, with Ohio residents voting in November 2023 to do the same.  

“Imagine that kids are now the experts on how to dodge bullets while sitting at their desks are walking to the corner store,” said Shikha Hamilton,  the parent of bi-cultural Indian and Black daughter , who has worked for over two decades on gun violence prevention.

Anita Somani, a physician who is a representative in the Ohio State Assembly had a message about voting officials in who would  protect reproductive rights.

Editorial | Square one: On the 2024 U.S. Presidential election as a Biden-Trump rematch

Ballot access is an issue

Battle lines this year are also drawn around voting rights with a number of Republican governed states passing tightening access to the ballot. Last year (data as of October) at least 14 States had passed laws making it harder to vote while 23 had made it easier to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

At the South Asians for Biden re-launch, Gen Z candidate for Georgia State Senate, Aswhin Ramaswami, a former election security official, discussed the growing legislative challenges to voting in Georgia. The 24 year old is  running against State Senator Shawn Still, who was indicted, along with Mr Trump and others, for illegally trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Americans will elect the next President of the United Sates, as well as a number of U.S. Senators and Congressmen, State governors and local officials on November 5 this year.

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Nicole Shanahan react on stage as she becomes the vice presidential candidate of Kennedy, in Oakland, California.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Robert F.Kennedy Jr. has picked Nicole Shanahan, a California lawyer and philanthropist who’s never held elected office, to be his running mate in his independent bid for president, he announced on Tuesday.

An unconventional choice, Shanahan, who is 38, brings youth and considerable wealth to Kennedy’s long-shot campaign but is little known outside Silicon Valley.

Shanahan leads Bia-Echo Foundation, an organisation she founded to direct money toward issues, including women’s reproductive science, criminal justice reform and environmental causes. She also is a Stanford University fellow and was the founder and chief executive of ClearAccessIP, a patent management firm that was sold in 2020.

Shanahan was married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin from 2018 to 2023, and they have a young daughter. She was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Kennedy made his announcement.

Before the announcement, Kennedy’s campaign manager and daughter-in-law, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, praised Shanahan’s work on behalf of “honest governance, racial equity, regenerative agriculture and children’s and maternal health”. She said the work “reflects many of our country’s most urgent needs”.

Kennedy, who said in an interview Monday with “The State of California” on KCBS radio that his VP search placed a priority on “somebody who could represent young people”, said Tuesday that Shanahan — who he said, like him, has “left the Democratic Party” — also shares his concerns about government overreach and his distrust in major political parties’ abilities to make lasting change.

“She’ll tell you that she now understands at the defence agencies work for the military industrial complex, that health agencies work for big pharma and the USDA works for big ag and the processed food cartels,” Kennedy said at his Oakland rally. “The EPA is in cahoots with the polluters, that the scientists can be mercenaries, that government officials sometimes act as sensors, and that the Fed works for Wall Street and allows millionaire bankers to prey upon on Main Street and the American worker.” Kennedy had previously signalled interest in picking a celebrity or a household name such as NFL quarterback Aaron Rogers, “Dirty Jobs” star Mike Rowe or former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, who was a wrestler and actor.

According to campaign finance records, Shanahan has long donated to Democratic candidates, including giving the maximum amount allowed to Kennedy when he was still pursuing that party’s nomination before switching to an independent bid in October.

It was unclear if Shanahan would use her own money on the campaign, but she has already opened her wallet to back Kennedy.

She was a driving force and the primary donor behind a Super Bowl ad produced by a pro-Kennedy super PAC, American Values 2024, for which she contributed USD 4 million. In response to criticism following the ad’s release, the super PAC said its “idea, funding, and execution came primarily” from Shanahan.

The super PAC can accept unlimited funds but is legally barred from coordinating with Kennedy’s team.

But as a candidate for vice-president, Shanahan can give unlimited sums to the campaign directly. That’s potentially a huge boost for Kennedy’s expensive push to get on the ballot in all 50 states, an endeavour he has said will cost USD 15 million and require collecting more than a million signatures.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump warned of dire consequences for the country if the other wins another term in the White House as the pair held duelling rallies in Georgia on March 9 fresh off strong wins in Super Tuesday contests that positioned them for an all-but-certain rematch this November.

The state was a pivotal 2020 battleground — so close four years ago that Mr. Trump finds himself indicted here for his push to “find 11,780 votes” and overturn Mr. Biden’s victory — and both parties are preparing for another closely contested race in the state this year.

Mr. Biden opened his speech at a rally in Atlanta noting that Mr. Trump was across the state with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the firebrand lawmaker who has gone from the fringes of her party to the fore. “It can tell you a lot about a person who he keeps company with,” Mr. Biden said to applause. Mr. Biden noted that Mr. Trump had hosted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — who has rolled back democracy in his country — at his Florida club the day before.

“When he says he wants to be a dictator, I believe him,” Mr. Biden said of Mr. Trump. “Our freedoms are literally on the ballot this November.”

Mr. Biden hosted the rally at Pullman Yards, a 27-acre arts and entertainment venue in Atlanta that was formerly an industrial site to receive the endorsement of Collective PAC, Latino Victory Fund and AAPI Victory Fund, a trio of political groups representing, respectively, Black, Latino, and Asian Americans and Pacific Island voters. The groups were announcing a $30 million commitment to mobilise voters on Mr. Biden’s behalf.

Mr. Trump, meanwhile, hammered Mr. Biden on the border and blamed him for the death of 22-year-old Georgia nursing student Laken Riley last month. An immigrant from Venezuela who entered the U.S. illegally has been arrested and charged with her murder. He hosted Riley’s family at his rally in Rome, Greene’s hometown.

“What Joe Biden has done on our border is a crime against humanity and the people of this nation for which he will never be forgiven,” Mr. Trump said, promising the largest deportation in history. “What a tremendous shame,” he said.

Ahead of his rally, Mr. Biden expressed regret for using the term “illegal” to during his State of the Union address to describe Riley’s suspected killer, drawing more criticism from Mr. Trump’s team.

Mr. Trump, who took the stage at the same moment Mr. Biden was still speaking at another part of the state, skewered the president for the apology and said, “Are we going crazy?”

“I say he was an illegal alien. He was an illegal immigrant. He was an illegal migrant. And he shouldn’t have been in our country and he never would have been under the Trump policy,” he said to loud cheers.

Mr. Trump also highlighted the very things Mr. Biden knocked him for, saying that he “had dinner last night with a great gentleman from Hungary, Viktor Orbán” and praised Greene for yelling at Mr. Biden during his State of the Union about Riley, calling her “very brave.”

Also Read | Hungary’s PM Orban supports Trump after Florida meeting

Mr. Trump’s rally opened with a message asking attendees to rise to support the hundreds of people serving jail time for their roles in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, when thousands of pro-Trump supporters tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election by halting the counting of Electoral College votes.

The intensity of the rhetoric presaged a grueling eight months of campaigning ahead in the state.

“We’re a true battleground state now,” said U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, an Atlanta Democrat who doubles as state party chairwoman.

Mr. Trump, while repeating his lies about the 2020 election on Saturday, declared, “With your vote, we are going to win the state of Georgia in an epic landslide.”

Once a Republican stronghold, Georgia is now so competitive that neither party can agree on how to describe today’s divide. A “52-48 state,” said Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, whose party controls state government. “We’re not blue, we’re not red,” Ms. Williams countered, but “periwinkle,” a claim she supports with Mr. Biden’s 2020 win and the two Democratic senators, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, Georgia sent to Washington.

There is agreement, at least, that Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump each have a path to victory — and plenty of obstacles along the way.

“Mr. Biden’s numbers are in the tank for a lot of good reasons, and we can certainly talk about that. And so, it makes it where Mr. Trump absolutely can win the race,” Gov. Kemp said at a recent forum sponsored by Punchbowl News. “I also think he could lose the race. I think it’s going to be a lot tougher than people realize.”

Mr. Biden’s margin was about a quarter of a percentage point in 2020. Warnock won his 2022 Senate runoff by 3 points. Gov. Kemp was elected in 2018 by 1.5 percentage points but expanded his 2022 reelection margin to 7.5 points, a blowout in a battleground state.

In each of those elections, Democrats held wide advantages in the core of metro Atlanta, where Mr. Biden will be Saturday. Democrats also performed well in Columbus and Savannah and a handful of rural, majority-Black counties. But Republicans dominated in other rural areas, small towns and the smallest cities — like Rome.

At Trump’s rally, at a city in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, more than 3,000 people packed inside an event center Saturday to hear the former president speak. His campaign handed out signs featuring the image of Laken Riley.

Candace Duvall, from Hampton, Georgia, wearing a white “Trump 2024,” T-shirt, a gold purse that said “Trump” and a pair of earrings that said “Never surrender” on one earring and Mr. Trump’s mugshot on the other, declared that her candidate is “going to save this country.”

She faulted Mr. Biden for fumbling the pronunciation of Riley’s name during his State of the Union speech Thursday.

“That happened right here in Georgia. That hits home for us. We know why that happened. We know why,” she said, adding that there were too many migrants coming into the country.

Ms. Duvall said she thinks Mr. Trump is winning over voters who didn’t like him before “because they see the difference now” with Mr. Biden.

“If somebody gives you sirloin and then they take it away and give you a hamburger, you’re going to want sirloin again,” she said.

But the same State of the Union address being criticized by Republicans has also been a source of momentum for Mr. Biden, who openly challenged Mr. Trump’s commitment to democracy, U.S. allies, the middle class and the reproductive rights of women.

Supporters saw his spirited performance as cooling worries about the 81-year-old’s age. Mr. Biden laid into the 77-year-old Mr. Trump for having the “oldest of ideas” as the former president has promised that a return to the White House would bring retribution to his opponents.

This combo image shows President Joe Biden, and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump,. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Presidential candidates crisscrossed the country in the run up to Super Tuesday (March 5) this year, when 17 U.S. States and territories hold their primaries and caucuses to pick their contenders for November’s general election. The support of more than a third of each party’s delegates (i.e., representatives who vote in the parties’ conventions to select the candidate) is up for grabs on Tuesday.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to sweep the Republican contests on Tuesday, with Nikki Haley, the former American Ambassador to the U.N., having won just one race thus far (Washington DC). Although, at this stage, a Biden-Trump showdown is all but certain, further campaigning has been planned for the following weeks, with groups of states voting in March and April. Mr Trump, who has just under 100 cases against him, received a boost on Monday as the U.S. Supreme Court said it was wrong for the State of Colorado to have taken him off its ballot for his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

 The incumbent, U.S. President Joe Biden, is running uncontested for the Democratic (re)nomination in many of the states, while some states will have other contestants on them, such as self-help author Marianne Williamson and Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips.

Mr Biden is therefore expected to win the day on Tuesday but the process has revealed that the ultimate path to the White House – when the primaries are completed and Mr Biden presumably faces Mr Trump – will be far more challenging for Mr Biden, than is often the case for a sitting President seeking a second term. Questions about Mr Biden’s age, perceptions about the economy and inflation and Mr Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict have been working against him.

Mr Biden was faced with bleak polling results over the weekend. A New York Times/ Sienna College poll indicated that the President had the support of 43% of registered voters versus Mr Trump’s 48%. Some 10% of those who voted for Mr Biden in 2020 were planning to vote for Mr Trump in 2024. Democratic primary voters were more or less equally split on whether Mr Biden should be their party’s candidate, as per the poll, with the strongest opposition to the idea from those under 45 years of age. The data also indicated that Mr Biden’s edge over Mr Trump among non-white non-college graduates had also significantly narrowed since 2020.

After Democratic politicians urged primary voters in the crucial swing state of Michigan to show their frustration with Mr Biden’s policy towards Israel’s retaliatory attacks on Gaza, which have claimed more than 30,000 lives, more than 100,000 Michiganders cast an ‘ uncommitted’ ballot in last week’s Democratic primary.

This was more than the target of 10,000 uncommitted votes and was some five times the number of such votes in the last two presidential elections and is being seen as a warning to Mr Biden to change his accommodative stance towards Israel. A growing number of voters, not just Muslim Americans but also younger voters across the board , could sit at home on election day if the administration continues with the status quo. A few thousand voters could make a huge difference: Mr Trump beat former Democratic presidential candidate Hilary Clinton in Michigan by less than 11,000 votes in 2016 and Mr Biden won the state from Mr Trump in 2020 by a margin of 2.8% (just over 154,000 votes).

On Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris called for an immediate ceasefire in the region and a return of hostages taken by Hamas. On Monday, she was scheduled to meet with Israeli War Cabinet Member Benny Gantz.

Trump set to win big on Tuesday

Mr Trump has so far won 247 delegates – more than 10 times Ms Haley’s tally. So far his legal troubles have not prevented Mr Trump from moving forward and he has used them in his campaign rallies to portray himself as the victim of a political witch-hunt.

Ms Haley, who served on the Trump cabinet, has said she will remain in the race as long as she is “ competitive” but declined to define this term. She has shown some traction among college graduates and independent voters as well those who consider themselves’ moderate.

While she has claimed she is not anti-Trump, Ms Haley’s attacks on her former boss have become sharper in the run up to Super Tuesday. She has suggested that both lead candidates are too old for the job, has pointed to the fiscal deficit and spending – particularly during Mr Trump’s time in the White House and criticized his ‘ isolationist ‘ foreign policy and admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Significantly, Ms Haley did not commit to supporting Mr Trump if he is the chosen GOP candidate, when questioned about a pledge all GOP candidates had to take before an intra-party debate that they would support the eventual nominee. She cited changes in the party organisation, specifically Mr Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump’s bid for the position of Co-Chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC).

“The RNC is now not the same RNC , now it’s Trump’s daughter in law, “ she told NBC’s ‘ Meet the Press’ on Sunday. She also said she did not know if Mr Trump would abide by the country’s constitution if elected.

Other important contests to be held on Tuesday

There are also a number of ‘ down ballot ‘ primaries on Super Tuesday- such as a primary contest for the post of governor (North Carolina), several for the U.S. House of Representatives , where the Republicans have a four seat majority, and the U.S. Senate., including a primary contest in California for the late Senator Diane Feinstein’s Senate seat.