In the heart of Ballymoney, a small town in Northern Ireland’s County Antrim, bike leather-clad tourists seek out a well-manicured memorial garden.
Astride his motorbike, a life-sized statue of champion racer Joey Dunlop leans back, arms folded, a victorious grin engraved for eternity. The late King of the Roads, a local legend, still commands pilgrimage from around the world.
There are statues too of his brother Robert, and nephew William, all three men taken before their time, snatched away by one of the world’s most dangerous sports.
Down the street, drinkers sip pints in the sunshine outside Joey’s Bar, beneath his smiling image. This place knows how to celebrate its sons.
Image: Statue of Joey Dunlop, motorcycle racing legend from Ballymoney
Yet there is a strange reticence to embrace the ancestral ties that might see Ballymoney blood in the Oval Office. A reluctance to acknowledge the town’s most famous daughter. “You’ll not get them to talk on that,” one man told me. And I soon found out how right he was.
Five years ago, Donald J Harris, father of Kamala Harris, revealed his belief that he is descended from Hamilton Brown, born in Ballymoney around 1776. Brown emigrated to Jamaica and ran sugar plantations. He owned scores of slaves, some treated harshly.
In an essay by Harris, published by the Jamaica Global Online website, the Stanford University professor wrote: “My roots go back, within my lifetime, to my paternal grandmother Miss Chrishy (nee Christiana Brown, descendant of Hamilton Brown who is on record as plantation and slave owner and founder of Brown’s Town).” Donald J Harris emigrated to the US from Jamaica in 1961.
Image: Donald J Harris with his baby daughter Kamala. Pic Kamala Harris
That story has been given fresh impetus since Joe Biden paved the way for Kamala Harris to become the Democratic presidential candidate. In recent weeks, a County Antrim historian said he had found documentation shedding further light on Hamilton Brown.
Stephen McCracken told the local newspaper, the Ballymoney Chronicle, that he had discovered letters connecting Brown to his birthplace in Bracough, a townland just outside Ballymoney. He told the newspaper that Brown was “a seriously bad man, who travelled to London a few times to campaign against the abolition of slavery”.
The Irish Times picked up on the story, as did the Belfast Telegraph and the Daily Mail.
“I’ve been getting a wee bit of abuse over it,” McCracken told the Irish Times. “People have been asking me why I’ve publicised it.”
Image: The local Ballymoney newspaper ran an article on Harris’s links to the town
When I asked him for an interview, he declined, citing an abusive backlash via social media, including Kamala Harris supporters accusing him of trying to wreck her campaign.
Right-wing and pro-Trump memes have circulated since 2019, painting the Harris family as “descended from slave owners”, without any context. These tropes deliberately ignore the ugly explanation that slave owners commonly raped their female slaves, explaining why many black Jamaicans have European genes.
In the ultra-polarised world of American politics, Kamala supporters were allegedly hitting out at those publicising her heritage, seeing it as ammunition for further MAGA propaganda.
Meanwhile, the Ballymoney Chronicle carried a follow-up piece practically debunking the original claim of lineage. A qualified genealogist told the paper that the links were “unproven”, and said Hamilton Brown was not recorded as getting married or having children.
Image: Depiction of slavery in British West Indies, most likely Jamaica, 1800. Pic slaveryimages.org,
When I asked that genealogist for an interview – they agreed. The next day they abruptly cancelled, calling the story “a pile of nonsense”.
I asked McCracken for further details of his research. He stopped replying.
A third historian told me he didn’t think existing documentation would ever prove the link. “You’d need DNA testing,” he said.
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I felt like I was encountering a wall of silence from others in Ballymoney. Multiple phone calls, messages and emails to a high-profile local DUP councillor went unanswered. A Sinn Fein colleague seemed unaware of the story and not overly interested in an interview. Ballymoney business owners declined to arrange interviews, or were not returning calls.
Repeated attempts to visit Ballymoney were abandoned due to rioting in Belfast. Another journey was aborted after the Sky News satellite van suffered a blow-out on a particularly inhospitable stretch of road.
The story was starting to feel a bit cursed.
Image: This bronze sculpture welcomes visitors to the Barack Obama Plaza. Photo by Adrian Langtry/Shutterstock
When we did belatedly arrive, the contrast to other US presidential “hometowns” in Ireland was stark.Long before they received the imprimatur of an actual visit, Ballina in Co Mayo and Carlingford in Co Louth were abuzz with Bidenmania.
You can’t visit the “Barack Obama Plaza” motorway service station outside Moneygall, Co Offaly, without a sense of the faintly ridiculous Irish enthusiasm for presidential heritage. Petrol and a chicken fillet roll downstairs, Obama visitor centre upstairs.
Yet, half a decade on from Donald J Harris’s revelation, there isn’t a solitary sign of the transatlantic connection in Ballymoney. Not a mural, a sign, a US flag or an enterprising cafe with a Kamala-themed name.
On Main Street, pedestrians were bemused. Most simply hadn’t heard the tale. It’d take more than Kamala to brighten up “this dreary town”, one woman ventured, a bit unkindly.
Image: There is a seeming reticence to discuss Kamala Harris’s links to Ballymoney
But some locals were happy to talk.
In the W & J Walker hardware shop, paint brushes from both the “Hamilton” and “Harris” brands hung serendipitously side-by-side.
“People around here like family trees,” said worker Joanne Donnell. “They like to go back to the original people.”
“It’ll bring a bit of excitement to the town,” her sister Rhonda Lafferty said. “We get a lot of visitors here from America, this summer especially.”
Image: Rhonda Lafferty and Joanne Donnell, sisters who both work at the W & J Walker shop in Ballymoney
Neither woman seemed concerned that Hamilton Brown was a slave owner. “People take these things with a pinch of salt,” said Joanne. “It was a long time ago.”
Winifred Mellot owns the bustling The Winsome Lady clothes shop. A popular figure, she is also the long-serving president of the Ballymoney Chamber of Commerce. She doesn’t think Brown’s slave-owning past should sour any future celebrations.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I mean let’s face it, we all have ancestors we’re not happy with, and you can’t blame Kamala or her family for what Hamilton Brown did. No, we don’t approve of it but it’s history.”
Image: Winifred Mellot, owner of The Winsome Lady clothes shop and president of Ballymoney Chamber of Commerce
County Antrim’s White House credentials are also history. Incredibly, nine US presidents (with varying degrees of certainty) claim lineage from The Saffron County, from Andrew Jackson right up to Ronald Reagan (shared with Co Tipperary).
Can Kamala Harris make it 10? That depends firstly on the US electorate, and a willingness in Ballymoney to embrace the story.
Not far from the town you’ll find the Dark Hedges which portray the “King’s Road” in Game Of Thrones. A certain darkness too, may lurk within the branches of the Harris family tree. But while historians bicker, Kamala’s own father knows his truth. And that roots the family as surely in Antrim soil as those storm-battered beeches.
Mature, developed economies like the UK and US became ever more reliant on cheap imports from China and, in the process, saw their manufacturing sectors shrink.
Large swathes of the rust belt in the US – and much of the Midlands and North of England – were hollowed out.
And to some extent that’s where the story of Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” really began – with the notion that free trade and globalisation had a darker side, a side he wants to remedy via tariffs.
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Trump’s tariffs: Ed Conway analysis
He imposed a set of tariffs in his first term, some on China, some on specific materials like steel and aluminium. But the height and the breadth of those tariffs were as nothing compared with the ones we have just heard about.
Not since the 1930s has the US so radically increased the level of tariffs on all nations across the world. Back then, those tariffs exacerbated the Great Depression.
It’s anyone’s guess as to what the consequences of these ones will be. But there will be consequences.
Consequences for the nature of globalisation, consequences for the US economy (tariffs are exceptionally inflationary), consequences for geopolitics.
Image: Imports from the UK will face a 10% tariff, while EU goods will see 20% rates. Pic: Reuters
And to some extent, merely knowing that little bit more about the White House’s plans will deliver a bit of relief to financial markets, which have fretted for months about the imposition of tariffs. That uncertainty recently reached unprecedented levels.
But don’t for a moment assume that this saga is over. Nothing of the sort. In the coming days, we will learn more – more about the nuts and bolts of these policies, more about the retaliatory measures coming from other countries.
We will, possibly, get more of a sense about whether some countries – including the UK – will enjoy reprieves from the tariffs.
To paraphrase Churchill, this isn’t the end of the trade war, or even the beginning of the end – perhaps just the end of the beginning.
Actors, directors and celebrity friends have paid tribute to Val Kilmer, after he died aged 65.
The California-born star of Top Gun, Batman and Heat died of pneumonia on Tuesday night in Los Angeles, his daughter Mercedes told the Associated Press.
She said Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 but later recovered.
Tributes flooded in after reports broke of the actor’s death, with No Country For Old Men star Josh Brolin among the first to share their memories.
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2:49
Watch: Val Kilmer in his most iconic roles
He wrote on Instagram: “See ya, pal. I’m going to miss you. You were a smart, challenging, brave, uber-creative firecracker. There’s not a lot left of those.
“I hope to see you up there in the heavens when I eventually get there. Until then, amazing memories, lovely thoughts.”
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Kyle Maclachlan, who co-starred with Kilmer in the 1991 biopic The Doors, wrote on social media: “You’ll always be my Jim. See you on the other side my friend.”
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Michael Mann, who directed Kilmer in 1995’s Heat, also paid tribute in a statement, saying: “I always marvelled at the range, the brilliant variability within the powerful current of Val’s possessing and expressing character.
“After so many years of Val battling disease and maintaining his spirit, this is tremendously sad news.”
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Heat co-star Danny Trejo also called Kilmer “a great actor, a wonderful person, and a dear friend of mine” on Instagram.
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Cher, who once dated the actor, said on X that “U Were Funny, crazy, pain in the ass, GREAT FRIEND… BRILLIANT as Mark Twain, BRAVE here during ur sickness”.
Lifelong friend and director of Twixt, Francis Ford Coppola said: “Val Kilmer was the most talented actor when in his High School, and that talent only grew greater throughout his life.
“He was a wonderful person to work with and a joy to know – I will always remember him.”
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The Top Gun account on X also said it was remembering Kilmer, who starred as Iceman in both the 1986 original and 2022 sequel, and “whose indelible cinematic mark spanned genres and generations”.
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Elon Musk has called reports that he will leave his government role in the coming months “fake news”.
A senior White House official previously told NBC News, Sky’s US partner network, that Donald Trump had discussed the Tesla and X boss transitioning back to the private sector at a cabinet meeting last month.
Image: The Tesla boss has headed DOGE since 20 January. File pic: Reuters
After reports emerged of the meeting, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it was “garbage” and added: “Elon Musk and President Trump have both publicly stated that Elon will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at DOGE is complete.”
Mr Musk added in response on X: “Yeah, fake news.”
NBC News reported that the official said Mr Musk would leave at the end of his 130 days as a special government employee.
That would be 30 May, but it is unclear if the billionaire businessman will indeed leave on that date.
Previously, the White House said that as a temporary organisation, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) would be terminated on 4 July next year – the 250th anniversary of the US.
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It comes days after Mr Musk said some members of his DOGE team were getting death threats on a daily basis.
Mr Muskhad drawn criticism over his efforts to downsize the US federal government.
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‘Elon Musk has got to go’
In just weeks, entire agencies were dismantled, and tens of thousands of workers from the 2.3 million federal workforce have been fired or have agreed to leave their jobs.
A number of lawsuits were filed in state and federal courts over cuts recommended by DOGE.