Three key challenges for Kamala Harris: Biden’s shadow, Trump’s ‘comrade’ attacks and her interview problem
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris face intense scrutiny in the remaining two months of the US election campaign.
Ever since Ms Harris became the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee with Joe Biden’s historic announcement he would not seek re-election, she has enjoyed a rapid ascent in polling.
But momentum can swing quickly in an election campaign, and issues persist for both candidates – which could be crucial at their first debate on Tuesday.
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Your ultimate guide to the US election
The challenges facing Trump
A recent survey from the New York Times and Siena College puts the former president one point ahead of the vice president, at 48% to 47% respectively.
With only weeks to go until America goes to the polls, here’s a look at three key challenges for the Democratic nominee…
Pic: Reuters
‘Comrade Kamala’
Republicans portray Kamala Harris as a California liberal of the hard left, a “radical left lunatic” as Donald Trump would have it.
They point to her ‘flip-flopping’ on key policy areas and insist it exposes an extreme left agenda, while raising questions of authenticity and trust.
In her effort to win the Democratic nomination in 2020, Harris took a left-leaning stance on several issues as she paid heed to her party’s progressive wing. That has changed with her political elevation.
Kamala Harris embraced policies championed by Bernie Sanders – such as abolishing private health insurance – back in 2019 and 2020. File pic: Reuters
As vice president, she duly aligned herself more centrally with the administration of the day and so modified her position on issues.
On fracking – she favoured a ban, now doesn’t; for healthcare, she backed a scheme to eliminate private insurance, now doesn’t; on illegal border crossings, she supported decriminalisation, and now doesn’t.
In a recent interview, Harris addressed her shift by saying her values hadn’t changed and her time as VP had given her a fresh perspective.
Her opponents will insist she has chosen convenience over conviction in a cynical bid to hoodwink independent, moderate voters.
Biden’s shadow
There’s a reason Joe Biden was struggling in the polls – his age didn’t help, of course, but neither did his record.
On a matter most important – the economy – he can cite improvement, having delivered on GDP, unemployment and inflation.
His difficulty is in the economic indicators more measurable and meaningful to the public – prices at the petrol pumps and in the shops – that have left Americans feeling the pinch and feeling less well off than they were four years ago.
Inflation may be falling, but prices are roughly 20% higher than they were during the COVID pandemic. As hard as the president has tried to sell “Bidenomics,” the voters aren’t buying.
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From 3 September: Biden and Harris’s first official rally
In her effort to escape the shadow of economic angst, Harris has unveiled proposals she says will cut costs and is punting a populist line that casts big business and greedy landlords as the villains making life difficult.
Departing from Biden’s big picture boasting about economic wins and legislative victories, she aims to talk money in terms the voter understands and to empathise with their concerns.
The strategy needs to work for her. A CNBC survey in August found 40% of voters said they’d be better off financially under a Trump presidency compared to 21% if Harris won.
Harris’s opponents say that, as a core member of the existing government, she bears responsibility for the public’s financial woes.
They insist she will also have to answer for the record of the Biden administration as a whole – expect her to face awkward questions, too, on subjects like Afghanistan and the Israel/Hamas conflict.
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Interview problems
Kamala Harris can work a crowd.
At the Democratic National Convention and at rallies across the country, she has demonstrated a stage presence and sure-footedness that energises the faithful. She’s comfortable among friends.
There remain questions about her vulnerability in more challenging surroundings and, in a country where politics is heavy on performance, that matters.
A 2021 interview that Harris conducted with NBC’s Lester Holt is given an occasional dusting off, which doesn’t do her any favours.
On being asked about her role in investigating the root causes of immigration, she was asked the seemingly straightforward question about visiting the US southern border and the exchange unfolded thus:
Harris: “We’ve been to the border.”
Holt: “You’ve not been to the border?”
Harris: “And I haven’t been to Europe.”
It’s a brief exchange that took place three years ago and Kamala Harris has performed ably in numerous interviews since.
However, that particular interview, and its awkwardness, springs to mind after a campaign – so far – of limited exposure.
Since Joe Biden stepped down, Harris has only conducted one sit-down TV interview. Even then, it was with running mate Tim Walz by her side.
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From August: Harris gives first major interview
That’s one set-piece – or joint – interview in six weeks.
It would be an astonishing lack of independent scrutiny for someone bidding to be a local parish councillor, let alone president of the United States.
There remain questions unasked of Kamala Harris and the apparent reluctance to address them creates a sense of vulnerability.
The enthusiasm for a change in the ticket has shored up the Democratic vote, no doubt, but Harris needs to extend her reach to the undecideds, independents and Republicans feeling reluctant about Trump.
They need to know who she is and what she stands for. Harris has come a distance in the polls but they are starting to look sticky.
She needs the extra votes. If the TV interview is a risk, it’s one she might have to take – more than once every six weeks.
It’s one thing rolling out the teleprompted hits to the adoring masses, it’s quite another sitting down for independent interrogation.
That, perhaps more than elsewhere, is where judgement lies.
Elon Musk has said he wants to send a spacecraft crewed by humanoid robots on a voyage to Mars by the end of next year.
The tech billionaire outlined his latest schedule for Starship in a video presented at the project’s Starbase home in Texas and posted online on Thursday.
The SpaceX founder had been set to give a presentation, called The Road to Making Life Multiplanetary, on Tuesday night, following a ninth test flight of the spacecraft earlier that evening.
But the speech was cancelled after the vehicle spun out of control about 30 minutes into the launch, having not achieved some of its most important test goals.
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Moment SpaceX’s Starship explodes
And on Wednesday, Musk confirmed his brief but tumultuous spell in the Trump administration as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was ending.
Musk warned there was no guarantee he would be able to meet the Starship timeframe he set out and much depended on overcoming a number of technical challenges, during flight-test development, especially a post-launch refuelling operation while orbiting Earth.
He previously said he aimed to send an unmanned vehicle to the red planet as early as 2018 and had targeted 2024 to launch a first crewed mission there.
Humans would land on Mars as part of the second or third flights, he said on Thursday, but the first trip would be in the hands of one or more humanoid Optimus design robots built by Tesla, the electric vehicle and battery maker he leads.
The current target to land a human on Mars using Starship is 2028, but it has yet to make an orbit of Earth.
Musk said he wants to make it so that “anyone who wants to move to Mars and help build a new civilisation can do so. Anyone out there. How cool would that be?”.
At the end of 2026, Mars and Earth align around the sun, reducing the distance between the two planets to its shortest, but still seven to nine months’ travelling time by spacecraft.
Musk said they had a 50-50 chance of meeting that deadline and if Starship isn’t ready by then, SpaceX would wait another two years before trying again.
NASA, which hopes to land astronauts on Mars sometime in the 2030s, is planning to use Starship to return humans to the surface of the moon as early as 2027 – more than 50 years after the last lunar landings of the Apollo era.
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Elon Musk at the White House earlier this month. Pic: AP
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Starship’s previous test flights in January and March also failed, with the spacecraft exploding moments after lift-off, raining debris over parts of the Caribbean and forcing scores of commercial jets to change course as a precaution.
Musk shrugged off the latest mishap on Tuesday with a brief post on X, saying it produced a lot of “good data to review” and promising a faster launch “cadence” for the next several test flights.
US
Federal judges rule Trump tariffs can stay in place for now – as president rages at trade court’s ‘country threatening decision’
A federal appeals court has ruled that Donald Trump’s sweeping international tariffs can remain in place for now, a day after three judges ruled the president exceeded his authority.
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) has allowed the president to temporarily continue collecting tariffs under emergency legislation while it considers the government’s appeal.
It comes after the Court of International Trade blocked the additional taxes on foreign-made goods after its three-judge panel ruled that the Constitution gives Congress the power to levy taxes and tariffs – not the president.
The judges also ruled Mr Trump exceeded his authority by invoking the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
The CAFC said the lower trade court and the Trump administration must respond by 5 June and 9 June, respectively.
Trump calls trade court ‘backroom hustlers’
Posting on Truth Social, Mr Trump said the trade court’s ruling was a “horrible, Country threatening decision,” and said he hopes the Supreme Court would reverse it “QUICKLY and DECISIVELY”.
After calling into question the appointment of the three judges, and suggesting the ruling was based on “purely a hatred of ‘TRUMP’,” he added: “Backroom ‘hustlers’ must not be allowed to destroy our Nation!
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Trump asked about ‘taco trade’
“The horrific decision stated that I would have to get the approval of Congress for these Tariffs. In other words, hundreds of politicians would sit around D.C. for weeks, and even months, trying to come to a conclusion as to what to charge other Countries that are treating us unfairly.
“If allowed to stand, this would completely destroy Presidential Power — The Presidency would never be the same!”
The US president unveiled the controversial measures on “Liberation Day” in April, which included a 10% tariff on UK imports and caused aggressive sell-offs in the stock market.
Mr Trump argued he invoked the decades-old law to collect international tariffs because it was a “national emergency”.
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From April: ‘This is Liberation Day’
Tariffs ‘direct threat’ to business – Schwab
The trade court ruling marked the latest legal challenge to the tariffs, and related to a case brought on behalf of five small businesses that import goods from other countries.
Jeffrey Schwab, senior counsel for the Liberty Justice Center – a nonprofit representing the five firms – said the appeal court would ultimately agree that the tariffs posed “a direct threat to the very survival of these businesses”.
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US treasury secretary Scott Bessent also told Fox News on Thursday that the initial ruling had not interfered with trade deal negotiations with partners.
He said that countries “are coming to us in good faith” and “we’ve seen no change in their attitude in the past 48 hours,” before saying he would meet with a Japanese delegation in Washington on Friday.
Harvard graduates have a lot to say. In a sign of the times, now isn’t the time to say it.
That much was clear when I sought student opinion at the gates of America’s oldest university. There is a reluctance to talk about Trump.
“He needs to come back to this country,” said a Harvard dad of his son, politely declining an interview on the youngster’s behalf.
The young man, British, falls into the category of international student – a vulnerable species, currently, in America’s elite university system.
For him, saying the ‘wrong’ thing carries the risk of an exclusion order to go with his graduation certificate. Dad knows best.
It is the modern reality at the gates of Harvard – this iconic seat of learning and crucible of free speech and ideas isn’t as free as it was. For now, at least.
Read more:
Trump administration halts international student visa applications
It’s fair to say Harvard had other things on its mind this week, with Thursday’s ‘commencement’ day and graduation parades winding their route through surrounding streets in a ‘town and gown’ spectacle.
There were bagpipes and brass bands to lead students in their crowning moment. It was an emotional thank you and goodbye to Harvard, with a celebration soundtrack of music and ‘mwah’.
And yet, there was a political undercurrent. There has to be, when a US institution is at war with its president.
Some students wore a white flower on their lapel as a symbol of solidarity with Harvard’s international students.
Harvard president Alan Garber said graduates came from ‘around the world, just as it should be’
In giving his speech at the podium, Harvard president Alan Garber was given a standing ovation when he noted that graduates hail from “around the world, just as it should be”.
As graduates and families gathered in Harvard Yard, the university’s defiance against Trump was playing out simultaneously in court, where the latest hearing took place on government efforts to stop the enrolment of foreign students.
Donald Trump is ‘trying to crush us,’ Leo Gerden tells Sky News
Leo Gerden, a 22 year-old student from Sweden, was graduating in economics and government. We chatted while he stiffened himself with a Starbucks for the celebrations ahead.
What were his thoughts, as someone fitting the profile picked on by the government of his host country?
“I feel like the entire Harvard is under attack, because without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard anymore,” he said.
“He’s trying to crush us, but we have shown over the last couple of weeks that he won’t do that easily. The uncertainty itself is going to cause a lot of harm.
“People are definitely reconsidering their plans right now, whether it was coming to America, going to any university, because they might be next on Trump’s target list.”
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The distraction is widely shared across campus, so is the sentiment – not that it’ll trouble the White House.
Places like Harvard don’t lean Trump, and he’ll lose few votes in this fight.
It is a conflict to shape the future of US education – it’s politics, but it’s much more.
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