The ideal understudy is talented but inconspicuous, prepared at all times to step into the top role and yet content to never do so.

In New Orleans, at the 30th annual Essence Festival of Culture, gone was the Kamala Harris of the drab brown, chair-matching suit and the halting, technical commentary about American policy needs. That was the Harris who spoke here in 2019, then a Democratic presidential primary contender trailed by fewer than 10 reporters.

Instead, on Saturday, Harris – dressed in a bright teal suit and tailed by a press contingent which had expanded to more than four times its previous size – spoke to a standing-room-only crowd in a room equipped to seat more than 500 people.

In what was billed as an on-stage conversation with Essence CEO Caroline Wanga, Harris confidently offered a blend of standard campaign-season talk – a recitation of the Biden-Harris administration’s major policy accomplishments with dire warnings about the dangers posed by a possible second Trump term and the critical importance of the choice that voters will face in just 122 days – blended with the language of women’s empowerment.

To say that Harris assiduously avoided any mention of recent questions about Biden’s fitness for office would be an overstatement, and Wanga did not ask or seemingly make room for the issue gripping much of Washington. In the past week, the fallout of the president’s shaky debate performance on 27 June has manifested in calls for him to drop out of the race, with a handful of Democratic lawmakers joining the chorus. Many of those same critics are now hoping Harris might be the new nominee in November.

For those inclined to read tea leaves, there may well have been more there in New Orleans. Harris encouraged the audience to embrace ambition and the difficulty of cutting new, and even history-making, paths.

“I beseech you, don’t you ever hear something can’t be done,’ Harris said. “People in your life will tell you, though, it’s not your time. It’s not your turn. Nobody like you has done it before. Don’t you ever listen to that.

“I like to say, ‘I eat no for breakfast,’” she said.

Harris had been introduced as a woman “doing the heavy lifting”, “smart”, “tough”, and a “proven fighter for the backbone of this country”. Then she entered and exited to the sound of a Beyoncé-Kendrick Lamar collaboration, Freedom, at the point where Beyonce sings, “Singin’, freedom, freedom, Where are you? … Hey! I’ma keep running.”

While Biden has insisted he will remain in the race amid what he has described as a subset of Washington insiders and op-ed writers insisting he should step aside, Harris’s poll numbers have improved and her public speeches and commentary – once a much maligned element of her time on the national political stage – have become more assertive and assured.

Harris has spent recent months crisscrossing the country speaking about threats to reproductive rights, maternal mortality, economic opportunity and inclusion. And in New Orleans, Harris described the election as more important than “any in your lifetime”, adding that democracy may not survive a second Trump term. Trump, she said, was a convicted felon whom the supreme court had just granted immunity from prosecution.

Harris also spoke about an array of the administration’s efforts to resolve the problems that vex the lives of Americans, including many in the room: a cap on the price of insulin paid by those enrolled in Medicare; expanded access to public health insurance for low- to moderate-income women after giving birth, the period in which many fatal complications arise; and billions in student loan debt forgiven. When Harris called for those who had seen some of their student debt forgiven, hundreds of hands went up in the room.

“You got that because you voted in 2020,” Harris told the audience.

And, she said, there was work that remained such as reducing the cost of childcare for all Americans to no more than 7% of household income, and work on the cusp of being done. This included the administration’s efforts to remove medical debt from the calculus that generated credit scores and made it hard for some Americans to rent an apartment or purchase a car.

Leshelle Henderson, a nurse practitioner from Cleveland providing family medicine and psychiatric care, said she was trying to serve her community and a country in the midst of a mental health crisis. And she was working double time to pay off hundreds of thousands in student loans, none of which had been forgiven. She came to Essence Fest for fun but wanted to hear the vice-president speak about student loan forgiveness and what a second Biden-Harris administration would do for the economic fortunes of Black men and women.

That was before the event.

“I liked what I heard,” Henderson said. “I did, but want to hear more. Honestly, I think what we heard tonight is the next president of the United States. Isn’t that something?”

A long-running heatwave that has already broken records, sparked dozens of wildfires and left about 130 million people under a high-temperature threat is about to intensify enough that the National Weather Service has deemed it “potentially historic”.

The NWS on Saturday reported some type of extreme heat or advisory for nearly 133 million people across the nation – mostly in western states where the triple-digit heat, with temperatures 15F to 30F higher than average, is expected to last into next week.

Oppressive heat and humidity could team up to spike temperatures above 100F (about 38C) in parts of the Pacific north-west, the mid-Atlantic and the north-east, said Jacob Asherman, a meteorologist with the NWS.

Records were broken in at least four Oregon cities on Friday, the NWS reported. Medford, which had a high temperature of 102F set in 1926, saw temperatures soar to 109F. The biggest leap, however, was in North Bend, whose record of 74F set in 1913 was busted by a spike of 11 degrees when it hit 85F on Friday.

“Certainly a pretty anomalous event that we’re expecting here, which looks like it will continue through at least midweek,” Asherman said.

At the Waterfront blues festival in Portland, Oregon, music fans dealt with heat on Friday by drinking cold water, seeking refuge in the shade or freshening up under water misters.

Angela Quiroz, 31, kept her scarf and hat wet and applied sunscreen to protect herself from the heat at the music festival.

“Definitely a difference between the shade and the sun,” Quiroz said. “But when you’re in the sun, it feels like you’re cooking.”

In sweltering Las Vegas, where the temperature had hit 100F (37.7C) by 10.30am, Marko Boscovich said the best way to beat the heat was in a seat at a slot machine with a cold beer inside an air-conditioned casino.

“But you know, after it hits triple digits, it’s about all the same to me,” said Boscovich, who was visiting from Sparks, Nevada, to see a Dead & Company concert later Saturday night at the Sphere. “Maybe they’ll play one of my favorites: Cold Rain and Snow.”

By midday Saturday, Las Vegas ended up tying its daily heat record of 115F, the NWS said, as it pleaded with people to be mindful of leaving children or pets inside vehicles in the extreme heat.

On Friday, a new heat record for the day was set in California’s Death Valley, one of the hottest places on Earth. The previous high was shattered by 5F, with the mercury climbing to 127F (53C). The old mark of 122F was last tied in 2013.

More extreme highs are in the near forecast, including 129F for Sunday at Furnace Creek in Death Valley national park, and then around 130F through Wednesday. The hottest temperature ever officially recorded on Earth was 134F (57C) in Death Valley in July 1913, though some experts dispute that measurement and say the real record was 130F recorded there in July 2021.

Rare heat advisories were extended even in upper elevations, including around Lake Tahoe, with the National Weather Service in Reno warning of “major heat risk impacts, even in the mountains”.

“How hot are we talking? Well, high temperatures across [western Nevada and north-eastern California] won’t get below 100 degrees [37.8C] until next weekend,” the service posted online. “And unfortunately, there won’t be much relief overnight either.”

There was also a record high for the date of 118F in Phoenix, where highs of 115F or hotter were forecast through Wednesday. In Needles, California, where the NWS has records dating to 1888, the high of 122F edged the old mark of 121F set in 2007. It was 124F in Palm Springs, California.

The intense heat – combined with winds and low humidity – means the potential for wildfires to spread is high.

Red-flag warnings are in effect across much of California until Saturday evening, said the California department of forestry and fire protection, or Cal Fire. Officials urged people to stay vigilant and take extra precautions such as avoiding activities that can spark fires and following evacuation orders.

California has more than two dozen wildfires burning across the state, with the two largest, in the central part of the state, burning more than 24,000 acres combined. The Thompson fire, in northern California’s Butte county, has devoured at least 3,700 acres since it was reported on 2 July.

By Saturday, the blaze had forced thousands to evacuate and injured two firefighters. It was 71% contained. Cal Fire reported that 26 structures had been destroyed by the blaze.

The French fire, which erupted on 4 July near Yosemite national park and quickly grew to more than 900 acres (364 hectares), has held steady after more than 1,000 personnel worked overnight to get it to 25% containment, according to Cal Fire.

The eastern US also was bracing for more hot temperatures. Baltimore and other parts of Maryland were under an excessive heat warning, as heat index values could climb to 110F, forecasters said.

“Drink plenty of fluids, stay in an air-conditioned room, stay out of the sun, and check up on relatives and neighbors,” said a National Weather Service advisory for the Baltimore area. “Young children and pets should never be left unattended in vehicles under any circumstances.”

In Arizona’s Maricopa county, which encompasses Phoenix, there have been at least 13 confirmed heat-related deaths this year, along with more than 160 suspected heat deaths still under investigation, according to the county’s most recent report.

That does not include the death of a 10-year-old boy earlier this week in Phoenix who suffered a “heat-related medical event” while hiking with family at South Mountain park and preserve, according to police.

Jon Landau, the Oscar-winning Titanic and Avatar producer who helped bring director James Cameron’s visions to life, has died at 63.

Alan Bergman, co-chair of Disney Entertainment, announced Landau’s death in a statement on Saturday. No cause of death was given.

“Jon was a visionary whose extraordinary talent and passion brought some of the most unforgettable stories to life on the big screen. His remarkable contributions to the film industry have left an indelible mark, and he will be profoundly missed. He was an iconic and successful producer yet an even better person and a true force of nature who inspired all around him,” Bergman said.

Jon Landau helped make history in 1997 with Titanic, which became the first film to gross $1bn at the global box office. He topped that record twice, with Avatar in 2009 and the sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, in 2022.

Landau began his career in the 1980s as a production manager, gradually rising through the ranks and eventually becoming producer for Cameron on his expensive, epic film about the infamous disaster that was the Titanic. Landau’s partnership with Cameron on that film led to 14 Oscar nominations and 11 wins, including for best picture.

“I can’t act and I can’t compose and I can’t do visual effects. I guess that’s why I’m producing,” Landau said while accepting the award with Cameron.

Their partnership continued, with Landau becoming a top executive at Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment. In 2009, the pair watched as Avatar, a sci-fi epic filmed and shown in theaters with groundbreaking 3D technology, surpassed the box-office success of Titanic. It remains the top-grossing film of all time.

Its sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, is third on the list.

Landau was a key player in the Avatar franchise, which saw frequent delays of the release of The Way of Water. Landau defended the sequel’s progress and Cameron’s ambitious plans to film multiple sequels at once to keep the franchise going.

“A lot has changed but a lot hasn’t,” Landau told the Associated Press in 2022, a few months before the sequel’s release. “One of the things that has not changed is: why do people turn to entertainment today? Just like they did when the first Avatar was released, they do it to escape, to escape the world in which we live.”

Landau was named an executive vice-president of feature movies at 20th Century Fox when he was 29, which led him to oversee major hits including Home Alone and its sequel, as well as Mrs Doubtfire and True Lies, on which he first started working closely with Cameron.

Born in New York on 23 July 1960, Landau was the son of the film producers Ely and Edie Landau.

Ely Landau died in 1993. Edie Landau, the Oscar-nominated producer of films such as Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Hopscotch and The Deadly Game, died in 2022.

Jon Landau is survived by his wife of nearly 40 years, Julie Landau, and their two sons, Jamie and Jodie Landau.

The Netherlands lie between England and a place in next Sunday’s final, although that does not tell half the story of a night that swirled in every conceivable direction. In the end they overcame a relentless Turkey and did so, in large part, by resorting to the kitchen sink.

Or, as he is better known, Wout Weghorst. He watched from the bench as everything his teammates tried in the first half ran aground. After beginning brightly enough they buckled under the sheer will, aggression, energy and noise pulsating from their opponents and deserved to be a goal down at half-time. Ronald Koeman knew his players had been running into a brick wall and reached for the 6ft 6in totem, whose introduction eventually turned the tide and sent an orange wave heading for Dortmund.

Weghorst gave the Netherlands a decisive focal point but, before assessing his attacking impact, it is worth zeroing straight in on a remarkable piece of defensive work that kept them in the game. Turkey were looking capable of scoring a second goal, tearing the Dutch defence up on the break and striking a post through an extraordinary Arda Guler free-kick, when Bart Verbruggen spilled Kenan Yildiz’s drive in the 65th minute. The way was clear for Kaan Ayhan to gobble up the loose ball before Weghorst, lying on the ground, showed astonishing reactions to poke out a leg and save the day.

The game would surely have been up if Ayhan had converted. In the next significant action Weghorst was peeling off at the far post in the other penalty area, sought by the latest of several crosses from the left side. His volley, half caught in truth, was tipped wide by Mert Gunok and it was time to load the box again. Memphis Depay took the corner short, received the return pass and crossed on to the head of the towering Stefan de Vrij. The centre-back did the rest from 12 yards and Turkey, comfortably the better side for the middle 40 minutes, were deflated.

Soon they were behind after Denzel Dumfries, who had come back from an offside position, was found unattended on the right and curved a glorious low centre across the face of goal. It was met by a mixture of Cody Gakpo and the right-back Mert Muldur, who both hurled themselves at the ball, and their combined force sent it flashing past a helpless Gunok.

Four days previously Gunok had been Turkey’s hero with a late save for the ages from Austria’s Christoph Baumgartner. Moments like that can leave the impression your name is on the trophy but football has a habit of turning the tables. With Turkey pushing ferociously for an equaliser in the first minute of added time, their substitute Semih Kilicsoy timed his run perfectly and jabbed towards goal from six yards. Verbruggen should have had no chance but somehow, diving to his right, scooped clear to give them a bitter taste of their own medicine.

How vigorously they had fought, their every run and challenge so intensely meant. Before Verbruggen’s stop they were also denied extra time by a monumental block from Micky van de Ven when Zeki Celik took aim at a seemingly open goal. What Vincenzo Montella’s team lacks in control, it atones for in gusts of pressure that threaten to blow opponents away.

One such first-half spell resulted in an opener that raised the roof. They had survived a couple of Netherlands half chances and gained impetus when Guler, magical to watch once again, delivered deliciously with his weaker right foot and watched the centre-back Samet Akaydin crash his header past Verbruggen from an angle.

Akaydin was playing because Merih Demiral, their surprise matchwinner against Austria, was suspended. Therein lay the match’s other subplot, confirmed by the presence of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the stands. Turkey’s president had not shown up simply for fun: Demiral’s two-match ban, handed down after he celebrated with a “wolf” gesture associated with an extremist nationalist group, had caused a diplomatic incident with Germany.

It was an obvious, choreographed show of defiance. Erdogan was there to stand by his men, who hardly needed any greater encouragement from the side. Before the game there had already been a flashpoint when a fans’ march to the stadium was stopped by police, a number of those supporters having decided this was a moment to perform the salute en masse. The debate about banning it in Germany will surely intensify.

The football argument was won by the Netherlands, though, and what a turnaround it has been since Austria outplayed them at this venue in the group stage. At that point the knives were out for Koeman and his skilful but sometimes ragged side. Now a blunter instrument has taken them within reach of Europe’s summit.

Keir Starmer touched upon a number of difficult topics in his first press conference as prime minister, answering questions on prisons, NHS understaffing and the economy.

The 20-minute session also gave way to a few lighthearted moments from a politician who has long been accused of lacking pizzazz.

He has not yet unpacked or found his way around No 10

“I’ve got a basic understanding of the rooms I’ve used so far here, and that’s good, but there are plenty of hidden places I’ve yet to discover,” Starmer said. “We are not unpacked quite yet, but we will be soon and we’ll be moving in soon. But there’s a bit of work to do before then.”

On his new title of ‘prime minister’

“I am getting used to it,” Starmer said, in response to a question from Channel 4. “I am very happy to be called Keir or prime minister.”

While he repeated at least twice that he was “happy to be called Keir”, he acknowledged the importance for those in civil service to address him by his new title.

“For them, it is important to refer to the office holder as ‘prime minister’ because they’re serving the office,” he said. “I recognised this when I was director of public prosecutions. It is actually important to them to use the title because it reinforces in them what they are doing by way of public service and I respect that and understand that.”

On the 10pm exit poll that all but sealed a Labour victory

“I was pleased to see that exit poll,” he said.

“I didn’t believe it until, like everybody else, I stayed up to watch every single result come in. It was only as the final results came through that I was confident we got to where we needed to be to do the work that we need to do.”

On his new cabinet

Starmer said he was proud that his cabinet will have the highest number of state-educated and female ministers in history.

“I’m really proud of the fact that my cabinet reflects the aspiration that I believe lies at the heart of our country,” he said. “That aspiration that so many people have, wherever they started from, to make a journey in life for themselves, for their families, their communities and ultimately for their country.”

Though Starmer had to catch himself referring to the “shadow cabinet”, he quickly corrected to say that at the cabinet meeting, he had told ministers: “I’m proud of the fact that we have people around the cabinet table who didn’t have the easiest of starts in life.

“To see them sitting in the cabinet this morning was a proud moment for me and this changed Labour party and a reinforcement of my belief in that aspiration, which is a value I use to help me make decisions,” he said.

Joe Biden’s doctor met with a leading Washington DC neurologist at the White House this year, it was reported on Saturday.

The report came after Biden on Friday ruled out taking an independent cognitive test and releasing its findings publicly, in an interview with ABC News arranged following his disastrous performance in last week’s presidential TV debate with Donald Trump.

According White House visitor logs reviewed by the New York Post, Dr Kevin Cannard, a Parkinson’s disease expert at Walter Reed medical center, met with Dr Kevin O’Connor, a doctor of osteopathic medicine who has treated the president for years.

The visit took place at the White House residence clinic on 17 January. Cannard has visited the White House house eight times since August 2023. On seven of those visits, most recently in late March, he met with Megan Nasworthy, a liaison between Walter Reed and the White House.

Biden has consistently rejected taking any cognitive test, including in August 2020 when he dismissed a reporter’s question with: “Why the hell would I take a test?” He has continued to dismiss the need for one and, according to aides, has not received one during his three annual physical exams during his term in the White House.

The Washington Post on Saturday reported a White House aide saying that O’Connor, who has been Biden’s doctor since 2009, has never recommended that Biden take a cognitive test.

O’Connor has said that his most important job is to offer Biden an affirmative “Good morning, Mr President” – to get Biden off the on the right track each day.

During Biden’s ABC News interview on Friday, the anchor George Stephanopoulos, who was communications director in the Clinton White House, asked Biden if had taken specific tests for cognitive capability. “No one said I had to … they said I’m good,” Biden replied.

Later in the broadcast, Biden was asked if he would do an independent neurological and cognitive exam and release the results. “I get a cognitive test every day,” Biden said. “Everything I do – you know, not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world.”

Pressed on the issue, he said: “I’ve already done it.”

Earlier this year, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, defended O’Connor’s decision not to administer a cognitive test when the issue came up following a report by the special counsel Robert Hur into classified documents found at Biden’s Delaware home that concluded Biden was a “well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory”.

At that time, as now, the White House pushed back, accusing Hur of being part of a partisan smear campaign. “I’m well-meaning, and I’m elderly, and I know what I’m doing,” Biden said at a news conference. “My memory is fine.”

But the eight visits Kevin Cannard has made to the White House over the past eleven months are certain to raise further questions about the 81-year-old president’s mental abilities in the wake of his debate with Donald Trump and subsequent verbal mistakes, including during a radio interview on Thursday when he said he was “proud” to be the “first Black woman to serve with a Black president”.

Cannard has served as the “neurology specialist supporting the White House medical unit” since 2012 and published academic papers including one last year in the Parkinsonism & Related Disorders journal that focused on the “early stage” of the brain degenerative disorder.

Ronny Jackson, a Republican congressman in Texas who was White House doctor for Barack Obama and Trump, has previously called for Biden to undergo a cognitive exam and accused O’Connor and Biden’s family of trying to “cover up” problems with Biden’s mental abilities.

Jackson told the New York Post he believed that O’Connor and Biden “have led the cover up”.

“Kevin O’Connor is like a son to Jill Biden – she loves him,” Jackson continued, adding that ‘they knew they could trust Kevin to say and do anything that needed to be said or done”.

Last week, the White House initially denied but later confirmed that Biden had seen a doctor since the debate. It has said that the president’s performance was affected, variously, by a cold, over-preparation and jet-lag. Biden has said simply: “I screwed up.”

I am not usually one to offer diagnoses of people I’ve never met, but it does seem like the pundit class of the American media is suffering from severe memory loss. Because they’re doing exactly what they did in the 2016 presidential race – providing wildly asymmetrical and inflammatory coverage of the one candidate running against Donald J Trump.

They have become a stampeding herd producing an avalanche of stories suggesting Biden is unfit, will lose, and should go away, at a point in the campaign in which replacing him would likely be somewhere between extremely difficult and utterly catastrophic. They do this while ignoring something every scholar and critic of journalism knows well and every journalist should. As Nikole Hannah-Jones put it: “As media we consistently proclaim that we are just reporting the news when in fact we are driving it. What we cover, how we cover it, determines often what Americans think is important and how they perceive these issues yet we keep pretending it’s not so.” They are not reporting that he is a loser; they are making him one.

According to one journalist’s tally, the New York Times has run 192 stories on the subject since the debate, including 50 editorials and 142 news stories. The Washington Post, which has also gone for saturation coverage, published a resignation speech they wrote for him. Not to be outdone, the New Yorker’s editor-in-chief declared that Biden not going away “would be an act not only of self-delusion but of national endangerment” and had a staff writer suggest that Democrats should use the never-before-deployed 25th amendment.

Since this would have to be led by Vice-President Kamala Harris, it would be a sort of insider coup. And so it goes with what appears to be a journalistic competition to outdo each other in the aggressiveness of the attacks and the unreality of the proposals. It’s a dogpile and a panic, and there is no one more unable to understand their own emotional life, biases, and motives than people who are utterly convinced of their own ironclad rationality and objectivity, AKA most of these pundits.

Speaking of coups, we’ve had a couple of late, which perhaps merit attention as we consider who is unfit to hold office. This time around, Trump is not just a celebrity with a lot of sexual assault allegations, bankruptcies, and loopily malicious statements, as he was in 2016. He’s a convicted criminal who orchestrated a coup attempt to steal an election both through backroom corruption and public lies and through a violent attack on Congress. The extremist US supreme court justices he selected during his last presidential term have themselves staged a coup this very Monday, overthrowing the US constitution itself and the principle that no one is above the law to make presidents into kings, just after legalizing bribery of officials, and dismantling the regulatory state by throwing out the Chevron deference.

His own former staffers are part of the Heritage Foundation’s team planning to implement Project 25 if Trump wins, which would finish off our system of government with yet another coup. “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” said the foundation’s president the other day. This alarms me. So does the behavior of the US mainstream media, which seems more concerned with sabotaging the only thing standing between us and this third coup.

“Why aren’t we talking about Trump’s fascism?” demands the headline of Jeet Heer’s piece in the Nation, to which the answer might be a piece by the Nation’s own editor-in-chief titled “Biden’s patriotic duty” that proposes his duty is to get lost. Sometimes I wonder if all this coverage is because the media know how to cover a normal problem like a sub-par candidate; they don’t know how to cover something as abnormal and unprecedented as the end of the Republic. So for the most part they don’t.

Biden is old. He was one kind of appalling in the 27 June debate, listless and sometimes stumbling and muddling his words. But Trump was another kind of appalling, in that almost everything he said was an outrageous lie and some of it was a threat. I get that writing about the monstrosity that is Trump faces the problem that it’s not news; he’s been a monster spouting lurid nonsense all his life (but his political crimes are recent, and his free-associating public soliloquies on sharks, batteries, toilets, water flow, and Hannibal Lector, among other topics, are genuinely demented). He’s a racist, a fascist, and a rapist (according to a civil-court verdict).

We are deciding if this nation has a future as a more-or-less democratic Republic this November, and on that rides the fate of the earth when it comes to acting on climate change. If the US falters at this decisive moment in the climate crisis, it will drag down everyone else’s efforts. Under Trump, it will. But the shocking supreme court decisions this summer and the looming threat of authoritarianism have gotten little ink and air, compared to the hue and cry about Biden’s competence.

Few seem to remember that Biden’s age and his verbal gaffes were an issue in the 2020 campaign. Biden is a lifelong stutterer, and the effort to keep his words on track means that he operates under an extra burden with every unscripted answer he gives, particularly under pressure (though he had a long, easygoing conversation with Howard Stern a couple of months ago, in which he discusses his stuttering at about the 1:13 mark).

Some speech pathologists have suggested he may (not does, just may) have a disorder that sometimes accompanies stuttering, called cluttering, which is not an intellectual deficiency but a sometimes hectic and disorderly translation of thoughts into words. In recent months, actual gerontologists have said in print that Biden appears to have normal signs of aging, not signs of dementia. Nevertheless, the amateur armchair diagnosticians have been out in packs, and their confidence in their ability to diagnose from watching TV is itself an alarming delusion. I am not giving Biden a clean bill of health; I’m saying that I don’t have a basis to render a verdict (and neither do the august editors of large publications).

Although the Biden administration seems to have run extremely well for three and a half years, with a strong cabinet, few scandals and little turnover, a thriving economy and some major legislative accomplishments, the narrative the punditocracy has created suggested we should ignore this record and decide on the basis of the ninety-minute debate and reference to newly surfaced swarms of anonymous sources that Biden is incompetent. Quite a lot of them have been running magical-realism fantasy-football scenarios in which is fun and easy to swap in your favorite substitute candidate. The reality is that it is hard and quite likely to be a terrible mess. Nevertheless this pretense is supposed to mean that telling a presidential candidate in mid-campaign to get lost is fine.

The main argument against Biden is not that he can’t govern – that would be hard to make given that he seems to have done so for the past years – but that he can’t win the election. But candidates do not win elections by themselves. Elections are won, to state the obvious, by how the electorate turns out and votes. The electorate votes based on how they understand the situation and evaluate the candidates. That is, of course, in large part shaped by the media, as Hannah-Jones points out, and the media is right now campaigning hard for a Democratic party loss. The other term for that is a Republican victory. Few things have terrified and horrified me the way this does.

The manosphere has Taylor Swift Derangement Syndrome

Poor Taylor Swift. The pop star is a billionaire and one of the most successful people on the planet. She has an army of devoted fans who happily bankrupt themselves to follow her on record-breaking tours around the world. A German city just temporarily renamed itself Swiftkirchen in her honour. The Federal Reserve has credited her for boosting the economy. And yet, when it comes to the most important metrics of success, Taylor is a tragic failure: she is an ageing, unmarried wench who hath not brought forth a child into this world.

Such is the opinion of John Mac Ghlionn: a man nobody has ever heard of. In a recent op-ed for Newsweek, Ghlionn argued that Swift is a terrible role model for women because “at 34, Swift remains unmarried and childless … While Swift’s musical talent and business acumen are certainly admirable, even laudable, we must ask if her personal life choices are ones we want our sisters and daughters to emulate.”

The opinion of one random man in an obviously rage-bait article published by a dying magazine would not normally be worth wasting oxygen on. However, this extraordinarily misogynistic piece is noteworthy because it reflects the manosphere’s toxic obsession with Swift. Ghlionn’s article came hot on the heels of a tweet by the notorious Andrew Tate blasting Swift for being 34 and unmarried. Tate called Swift “ancient” and asked: “If you’re a girl, why even live past 30 unless you have kids?” There’s nothing insecure men love more than trying to bring successful women down a peg or two.

Swift’s success isn’t the only reason she has rightwing men frothing at the mouth. Her politics also play a role. For a while, you see, the right loved Swift. She is, after all, the very embodiment of heteronormative ideals: a blond-haired, blue-eyed, ultra-feminine white woman who is dating an all-American football player. Andrew Anglin, the writer of the white supremacist blog the Daily Stormer, called Swift a “pure Aryan goddess” at one point, and claimed she was “secretly a Nazi and is simply waiting for the time when Donald Trump makes it safe for her to come out and announce her Aryan agenda to the world”.

In 2020, Swift broke a lot of neo-Nazi hearts when she called white supremacy repulsive and endorsed Biden/Harris. The right swiftly turned on their former goddess and she became the object of numerous conspiracy theories. Earlier this year, for example, a poll found that a massive 18% of Americans believe Swift is part of a “covert government effort” to re-elect Joe Biden. The right hate her because she’s successful but also because she has refused to be part of their political agenda.

Ghlionn’s Newsweek op-ed is also worth acknowledging, because it’s part of a phenomenon you could call brand-washing. Once upon a time, Newsweek, which was founded in 1933, was a highly respected magazine. Over the last 15 years, however, it has been devoured by the digital economy and become a shell of itself. Still, that shell – and the fact that many people still think of Newsweek as a vaguely reputable brand – has proved very useful to the far right. In 2022, for example, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a respected civil rights advocacy organization, published an extensive analysis that found that after Newsweek positioned the political activist Josh Hammer to run its opinion pages (he’s now moved on to be a senior editor-at-large), the magazine took a “radical right turn by buoying extremists and promoting authoritarian leaders”. In his personal podcast, the SPLC observe, Hammer has frequently spoken about “[shifting] the Overton window” and pushing far-right views into the mainstream; that, arguably, was also his goal at Newsweek. As the New Republic noted back in 2020, it certainly looks a lot like Newsweek’s “former legitimacy is [being] used to launder extreme and conspiratorial ideas”.

In short: if you’re wondering why a brand like Newsweek would, in the year 2024, publish an op-ed that essentially argues women have no worth without a husband and kids? Well, you need to look at the broader context of what Newsweek’s become.

Chet Hanks condemns the appropriation of ‘white boy summer’ by the far right

In 2021, Tom Hanks’s son joked on Instagram about how it was going to be a “White Boy Summer”. He then tried to capitalize on this viral moment by putting out a terrible song and even worse music video titled White Boy Summer. Three years later, the meme is back because a new report by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism has found (surprise, surprise) that the term has been co-opted by racists and extremists. In a statement, Hanks called this “deplorable”.

Prescribing of testosterone for middle-aged women ‘out of control’

A rise of “testosterone evangelists” online means that an increasing number of menopausal women are reaching for the hormone in the hope that it will improve their libido, mood, concentration and general health. However, experts are worried that “testosterone prescribing is completely out of control in the UK”, and users may have long-term health implications.

“[T]he vagina has a higher potential for chemical absorption than skin elsewhere on the body,” a report from Berkeley Public Health explains. Tampons are also “used by a large percentage of the population on a monthly basis – 50-80% of those who menstruate use tampons – for several hours at a time”. Despite all this, very little research has been done into chemicals in tampons. “I really hope that manufacturers are required to test their products for metals, especially for toxic metals,” the lead author, a UC Berkeley researcher, said. “It would be exciting to see the public call for this, or to ask for better labeling on tampons and other menstrual products.” This does seem overdue. It feels unbelievable that there hasn’t been more research into tampons. In fact, until 2023, no study had ever been published that tested period products using human blood.

The Afghan women rebuilding shattered dreams in Iran

More than 40,000 Afghan students, mainly women, are now studying at university in Iran. The country has become a “last resort” for many Afghan women who are no longer able to study in their home country because of the Taliban.

New book reveals Kennedys’ shocking treatment of women

Maureen Callahan’s Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed argues that the famous family should face a reckoning over gender.

Australian senator resigns from ruling Labor party over Gaza

Senator Fatima Payman, whose family fled Afghanistan after the Taliban first took over in 1996, is Australia’s first and only hijab-wearing federal politician. After defying her party’s position and voting for a motion recognizing a Palestinian state, Payman quit Labour but will stay in the upper house as an independent. “Unlike my colleagues, I know how it feels to be on the receiving end of injustice,” Payman explained in a press conference. “My family did not flee a war-torn country to come here as refugees for me to remain silent when I see atrocities inflicted on innocent people.”

The week in pawtriarchy

What with Britain electing a new prime minister and the US counting down the days until November, you might have election coverage fatigue. Treat yourself to a palate cleanser with the Guardian’s hard-hitting coverage of polling place pooches. Paw-litics at its finest.

Some of Rishi Sunak’s closest allies are facing an angry backlash after being awarded honours by the former prime minister, despite their apparent role in the “insane” decision to call an early election.

In a sign of the growing anger within the party ranks over the decision to call the snap poll – as well as alarm over the way it was conducted – the former deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden and chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith were singled out by angry candidates and aides for their role in the “cataclysmic defeat” that several sources claimed had been made worse by the early election decision.

Booth-Smith was handed a peerage in the dissolution honours list, while Dowden was given a knighthood. Both are said to have backed an early election, with Dowden described as particularly influential.

“Somewhere between 1,300 to 1,500 people lost their jobs last night,” said one senior Tory source. “The person who helped decide that this was the right time to do the election, Liam Booth-Smith, was included in the dissolution honours on the same night.” Dowden was also criticised by one figure for backing an election before playing little part in the election campaign itself. Another senior Tory adviser said simply: “Fuck that guy.”

Others defended the pair, stating it was “standard practice” for senior advisers and MPs to be rewarded. However, the blame game has started in earnest after a campaign that was criticised for repeated errors, from Sunak’s rain-soaked election announcement to his decision to leave D-day commemorations early. Insiders painted a picture of a despairing campaign in which the Tory HQ regularly struggled to find ministers to take to the airwaves. “That’s why you saw the same names,” said one party source. “Poor Mel Stride.”

There was an immediate outpouring of anger at the decision to call the election early once the result became clear. It included claims of widespread unease at the decision from across the cabinet, including Esther McVey, David Cameron and Chris Heaton-Harris. One source said the cabinet had been unable to influence the decision “in any way, shape or form”, as it had already been set in train. “There was too narrow a group of people – who don’t know anything about politics – advising the prime minister,” said one senior Tory. “These people have the temerity to think they’re political geniuses.”

While frustration boiled over after the dire result emerged, concerns were raised even in the hours after Sunak called the snap election. Officials warned that hundreds of candidates still had to be picked, while many MPs and their teams had already booked holidays. Plenty of candidates lacked the funds they needed to fight, meaning they were left with no real element of surprise.

“People had just oriented themselves towards November – everybody,” said a senior Tory source. “MPs, special advisers, ministers, campaign teams. Ask a random sample of MPs whether they had £20,000 in their campaign bank account, the answer is no.” In fact, some major donors – even those among the “leader’s club” class who regularly donate tens of thousands a year – did not chip in for the election effort.

“It was madness from the beginning,” said a source familiar with the cabinet discussions on an early election. “The polls had never really narrowed. Then there was a series of unforced errors in the campaign – and we were putting up these gimmicks like national service, which is not really going to attract people whatsoever.”

Another said that the lack of preparation led to the “mass exodus” of senior MPs, leaving the party with the task of finding new candidates, while losing the electoral boost that comes with incumbency. They also pointed to party chairman Richard Holden’s “undignified” decision to install himself into a seat 200 miles away from his abolished constituency as the ultimate example of a party caught on the hop.

Figures close to Sunak, however, remain adamant that they had little choice but to call the early poll, because of the high numbers of households that were having to remortgage each month. They said former prime minister Liz Truss was blamed “pretty much without exception” by householders for their higher costs. Meanwhile, an autumn campaign was seen in Downing Street as likely to hand Nigel Farage an even greater chance to exploit Channel crossings over the summer.

“If we’d have waited, Farage would have stood in Clacton,” said one Sunak ally. “But instead of the focus on Farage happening for five weeks, it would have been for four, five or six months. That’s in a context where you potentially have further boat crossings coming across the Channel. We thought it was best to go early – and I still think it was the best option now.”

Among Sunak’s team, there is fury at pollsters they accuse of overstating Labour’s lead and stopping key Tory messages from landing. Big Labour leads meant that an early “kitchen-sink strategy” of throwing new policies and tax cuts at voters was largely ignored as irrelevant.

“I’m convinced we should ban polls during campaigns,” said one campaign figure. “The reason we had to start talking about a supermajority was because in all our research, people just didn’t believe we were going to win. Three weeks out after the manifesto launch, it became evident and clear that nothing was really working because no one believed it would happen. That was a direct result of there being an MRP [multilevel regression and post-stratification] poll every day. Labour only won by 10 points in the end.”

But several senior Tories – even those who blamed Sunak for the decision to call a snap election – suggested the timing had made little difference to the result. “An insane night … Sunak will be hung out to dry for this,” said one. “But in reality, it’s the entire clown show that’s caught up with us.” Another former minister said the result was “not unexpected”, adding: “In reality this was lost in 2022. The loss of trust and reputation for competence has become ingrained.”

As well as the opprobrium flying around inside the Tory party after its defeat, some of those leaving Downing Street also believe they can sow the seeds of an early recovery – by learning from Keir Starmer. Rather than a major shift to the left or right, one said that just demonstrating “basic competence” could be enough to reassure people about the Tories, given the lack of enthusiasm for Labour.

“Labour is about to hit the same problem we had in 2019 – almost immediately after Brexit was delivered, our electoral coalition was no more. The thing that has brought voters in – getting rid of the Tories – will have been fulfilled immediately. How they maintain that voter base, when MPs are worried about Reform or Gaza, is not clear. We have to just show we’re not divided.

“It probably sounds bizarre and mad because we’ve just suffered a big election loss, but we’re quite optimistic. There is immediate disappointment, but under the surface, there is some optimism for the future. That’s the nature of the volatility we’ve seen.”

As the inquest gathered pace this weekend, it was all already too much for one minister who lost their seat, who was opting to disappear for the time being and not think about politics at all. “There will be lots of takes,” he said. “Almost all wrong.”

Very early on Friday morning, Liz Truss, a politician whose weapons-grade inability to read any room almost bankrupted the nation, appeared unable even to choreograph her own demise. The last minutes of her time in office as an MP were as clumsily inept as much of the previous 14 years of vapid careerism. To begin with, after a brief recount in her South West Norfolk constituency, her fellow candidates were kept waiting on stage for an age while, it appeared, the former PM was outside in a Range Rover with her expensive security detail presumably debating if she might stay behind the tinted glass and avoid the fatal moment for ever.

When she did finally appear through an unexpected side door, following a slow handclap, she stood with characteristic awkwardness to hear the fact that she had somehow, in five catastrophic years – or 49 fatal days – translated a 26,000 Tory majority into a 640-vote defeat. Her victorious Labour opponent, Terry Jermy, gave a heartfelt speech about his win, and the stage seemed set for Truss to offer some kind of response, or explanation, or at least the traditional thank you to tellers and supporters. She looked panicky for half a moment, perhaps with this thought in mind, before scuttling away ungraciously.

Afterwards I asked the velvet-breeched high sheriff who had conducted the announcement if Truss had indicated that she wanted to speak. “No,” he said. “I think she just wasn’t sure which way to get off the stage.”

In an election night overstuffed with Portillo moments – Shapps! Coffey! Mordaunt! Rees-Mogg! – this one provided the final and most fitting sense of closure to some of the least distinguished years in British political history. I happened to be staying for the count in King’s Lynn at a once-grand hotel in which Robert Walpole, the first prime minister and the longest serving, celebrated many electoral triumphs. The tenure of his shortest-serving successor ended in contrastingly banal surroundings, a couple of miles up the road, on the badminton courts of the Lynnsport leisure centre, a venue that might have featured in one of Alan Partridge’s fever dreams.

After successfully locating the exit, Truss gave the BBC her airy take on why she thought the people of Downham Market and Thetford and Swaffham and Methwold had rejected her, ending 60 years of untroubled Conservative victories in the constituency. You might have imagined her argument would be at least prefaced by some reference to the fact her emergency budget had sent the pound crashing to its lowest-ever level and created a £30bn black hole in the economy overnight, casting her as the least popular prime minister in living memory. Instead, of course, she doubled down on the rhetoric that fuelled her risible “comeback” book, Ten Years to Save the West: “The issue we faced as Conservatives was we haven’t delivered sufficiently on the policies people want. That means keeping taxes low, but also … things like the Human Rights Act that made it very difficult for us to deport illegal immigrants.”

It’s interesting to note that not even the Reform candidate in this election, an adult education manager for Norfolk council, Toby McKenzie, cites small-boat immigration as the first issue in his stealing 9,958 votes from Truss here. Instead he suggests that the MP was out of touch on local issues that mattered. “The big thing for me on the doorstep,” he said, “has been the megafarm that is planned near some of the villages here … an absolutely massive site for chickens and pigs. Liz Truss has failed to [campaign to] block it. We are talking thousands upon thousands of animals just a mile away from two villages. Imagine the stench. Pigs are bad enough. But chickens too. She was very much for it,” he said. Before adding, conspiratorially: “And word spreads in Norfolk.”

Truss’s defeat looked like a microcosm of the existential crisis that her party faced in this election and which will define it in the weeks ahead. Her vote was squeezed not only by the populist message of Farage’s party but also by remnants of the remainer centre-right that Truss so shamelessly abandoned after the EU referendum. One nation Tories have been all but purged from the parliamentary party, but there was a well-organised cell of that tradition that took some calculated revenge here.

Local landowner James Bagge (who has the kind of old-school name you hear pronounced three ways), a former army officer and barrister who worked for the serious fraud squad, has led the “turnip Taliban” opposition to Truss ever since she was fast-tracked into her safe seat by David Cameron in 2009. This time around, urged to run by fellow Old Etonian Rory Stewart, Bagge stood as an independent, trimming another 6,282 votes from her total by giving true blue constituents “a trustworthy place to go that wasn’t Labour or Reform”.

He was supported in the most urbane of guerrilla campaigns by those benign ghosts of Conservative past, Dominic Grieve and David Gauke. Bagge is pointedly unrepentant that he effectively helped Labour defeat Truss. He had been, he said, fighting above all for “what has gone [from the frontline party]: honesty, accountability, being genuine. One of the things that has undermined trust so badly is ministers endlessly coming on television and defending indefensible lies. And offering very simplistic solutions to intractable problems”.

Bagge is too polite quite to say so, but he is affronted by the way that Truss refused to attend the only hustings in the constituency, in the town hall at Downham Market, tweeting instead images of herself watching an England match in a local pub. Others have tales of her being hustled by her security out of a local chip shop when things got testy, and last week shouted out of the Whalebone IInn, a Wetherspoons, at breakfast time.

Her apparent inability to recognise that she may be among people whose mortgage payments she had trebled, and whose pensions she has hollowed out, was a source of baffled fascination to all her opponents.

In her campaign literature, without irony, Truss insisted that she was “running on her record in government”. For once, she was taken at her word.