(Photo adapted from an official White House photo by Lawrence Jackson)

This last week the billionaire owners of both the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times prevented their newspaper editorial staffs from endorsing Kamala Harris for President of the United States. The rationale given for these interventions are thin gruel indeed, and belie the reasons that everyone already knows are behind the actions: These billionaire owners know an actual fascist has a reasonable chance of once more becoming president of the United States. This fascist does not care about the First Amendment to the US Constitution, or indeed any part of the US Constitution at all; he wants and intends to be a ruler with unlimited power — and the US Supreme Court, in a ruling this summer that will rank as one of the all-time misbegotten court decisions in the history of the country, has decided that US Presidents effectively have that unlimited power for “official acts.” They cannot rely on this fascist to restrain himself, or for the increasingly compliant courts of this nation to restrain him. Besides, at least one of these billionaires has government contracts.

So they are pulling their punches and hedging their bets. In this, they are cowards, but they are also calculating, and because of those calculations, are being pre-emptively compliant to the fascist. If Harris wins, they will have lost nothing; Harris, they know, is not a fascist, and even if she remembers their cowardice, calculation and compliance, she will do nothing about it. But if the fascist wins, well. They have ready evidence of their fealty. Billionaires are not overly bothered by incipient fascism, after all.

Indeed, it’s already well in evidence that at least a plurality of prominent billionaires would prefer fascism at this point; it’s easier to flatter and bribe than it is to comply with regulations. Their concerns are not the concerns of the millions of Americans whose rights and prospects will be threatened by a fascist in the White House. They never have been. They never will be. A fascist in the White House is all right with them.

Make no mistake: Donald Trump, in his words and actions of this election season and beyond, has shown himself a fascist. The will to power; the anger; the assertion that the “enemy within” (i.e., anyone who does not bow the knee) is a greater threat than the foreign despots he is so cravenly in the pockets of; the desire to use the military to attack and punish American citizens; the contempt for the rule of law; the intent to enforce loyalty to him as a condition of government employment; the almost certain attempt to implement the policies in the Project 2025 playbook; the bald declaration to be a dictator from day one.

Those who worked with him in his first administration openly call him fascist, and they would know better than anyone else; they saw him day to day, restrained only by (some of) his underlings’ dedication to the actual rule of law. Those underlings, the ones so fervently warning us against Trump now, will not be there to dissuade him in a second administration. The guardrails, as they say, are off. At this point, anyone who says that Trump isn’t, by action and intent, a fascist, is either ignorant or complicit, or some combination of the two.

In any other year where Kamala Harris was the Democratic candidate for the President of the United States, she would have my endorsement. She’s an incredibly smart and canny politician with a track record of supporting things that are important to me, a long and thoughtful sheaf of policies that she wants to implement if she gets into office, and someone who, has a prosecutor, attorney general, senator and vice president, has shown herself a good steward of the law of this land, and a dedicated servant of its people. She is, simply put, a no-brainer for the role. She’s not perfect and I don’t expect her to be, and I don’t imagine her tenure as President will be a cakewalk, especially in this current political climate. But at the end of the day it’s difficult to find anyone with a better track record to be president than she already has. In any year, she would likely be the best candidate. In any year, I would be happy to give her my vote.

This isn’t any year. The distinctions between the two candidates could not be any sharper, and the consequences for the future of the country couldn’t be greater. It’s tiring to live in an era which each presidential election is the most important election in the history of our democracy, but here we are, and it is what it is. On one hand you have a lifetime public servant who is dedicated to continuance of American democracy, imperfect as it may be, and to the idea that the US should be a place of opportunity for all of its people. On the other hand you have a convicted felon who wants to rule by fiat, backed by a cadre of authoritarians, starting with a bought-and-paid-for Vice Presidential candidate, who want to detonate a century of social and economic progress, and shove anyone who is not white, straight and male (and, critically, already rich, even if they are white, straight and male) as far down a hole as they can.

Note well that the above is focusing only on what’s best for the United States; for the rest of the world, politically, economically and ecologically, the consequences of this election will be as stark, if not more so. The choice is between stability and the strengthening of alliances, and, bluntly, a plunge into chaos. Whatever place and people you are concerned about, a Trump administration will make their problems much worse; any argument one might have otherwise is either unduly hopeful or tragically naive. The only international beneficiaries of a second Trump administration will be despots. They will be delighted to have him back. A little light flattery, and they can do whatever they want to whomever they like.

I am deeply tired of Donald Trump and everything about his shitty, selfish, criminal and hateful self, a man whose only lasting legacy to this point is encouraging the worst parts of the American public to free themselves of any social bond to their neighbors and to be be just as awful as their idol. Kamala Harris fucking laughs, and seems happy, and actually appears to like people, not just tolerate people she needs something from. It would be too much to say she embodies the better idea of what the US could be — that’s a lot to put on anyone — but I will say that at least when I look at her, I know that there’s a chance that the better idea of what the US could be is possible. I can’t look at Trump at this point and see anything but hate and anger, and the worst of what we are as a nation.

I deserve better than Donald Trump. We all do, even and including the people who will, to me unfathomably, give him their vote once again.

The billionaire owners of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times can hedge their bets about the possibility of a fascist in the White House, unrestrained by the rule of law and the idea that Americans are citizens, not subjects. The rest of us, including me, cannot. I want the United States that Donald Trump can’t, never could, and would never want to, give us all. That United States is one I believe Kamala Harris is working toward, and would continue to work toward as President.

In any year, Kamala Harris would be my choice for President of the United States. In this year, she is the only choice. She has my vote. She should have yours as well.

— JS

Enthusiasm can be a productive force for good, but our culture has rapidly become a fan-based landscape that the rest of us are merely living in

About a decade ago, I ventured my opinion that the adult multitudes queueing for superhero movies were potentially an indicator of emotional arrest, which could have worrying political and social implications. Since at that time Brexit, Donald Trump and fascist populism hadn’t happened yet, my evidently crazy diatribe was largely met with outrage from the fan community, some of whom angrily demanded I be extradited to the US and made to stand trial for my crimes against superhumanity – which I felt didn’t necessarily disprove my allegations.

Ten years on, let me make my position clear: I believe that fandom is a wonderful and vital organ of contemporary culture, without which that culture ultimately stagnates, atrophies and dies. At the same time, I’m sure that fandom is sometimes a grotesque blight that poisons the society surrounding it with its mean-spirited obsessions and ridiculous, unearned sense of entitlement. Perhaps this statement still requires some breaking down.

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Tech billionaire Elon Musk has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

According to the Journal’s intelligence sources, Musk and Putin continued to have talks into this year, even as Musk began to ramp up his criticism of U.S. military support for Ukraine and became actively involved in the election campaign of Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump.

Putin once asked the entrepreneur to avoid activating his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese President Xi Jinping, two people briefed on the request said.

The bombshell claims land at a critical time in the U.S. election campaign, but the businessman’s influence extends far beyond politics, via his social network platform X and his tech company SpaceX, through which he has megabucks government contracts and high-level security clearance to classified U.S. information.

His Starlink satellite internet service highlights a key aspect of Musk’s influence: The billionaire gave Ukraine free access to his system after Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

It was hailed as an important tool in Ukraine’s ability to fight back against Russian forces, but relations between Musk and Ukrainian authorities cooled over the course of the war, and Musk stopped funding the terminals for Ukraine and even restricted its military’s use of Starlink to control drones. 

In October 2022, Musk also began tweeting a series of Kremlin talking points about the war, which he presented as a plan for peace, but triggered major pushback from top officials in Kyiv, even from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself.

In early 2024, Ukrainian military intelligence reports said that Musk’s satellite service was being used by the Russian army on the Ukrainian front.

According to Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s only communication with Musk was a phone call in which he and Putin discussed “space, as well as current and future technologies.”

Knowledge of Musk’s Kremlin contacts appears to be a closely held secret in the U.S. administration, according to The Wall Street Journal, and several White House officials said they were unaware of them. 

Musk has not yet responded to the reports, and he did not respond to The Wall Street Journal’s requests for comment. 

Pedro Sánchez’s tone sharply contrasts with that of his European counterparts. He needs to prove it’s not just rhetoric

The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, recently read in parliament a newspaper article from Venezuela about a battered boat that had just arrived on the coast of the South American country with 106 migrants onboard. “The undocumented migrants arrested, among them 10 women and a four-year-old girl, were in terrible condition. The 19-metre boat’s hold emitted an insufferable odour,” he quoted the article as saying.

“This news story could have been published last week, and the migrants could have been Nigerian, Senegalese or Moroccan,” said Sánchez. “In reality, it appeared in a Venezuelan daily on 25 May 1949, and its protagonists were Spaniards, 106 of the 120,000 who crossed [the Atlantic] between 1945 and 1978 to escape misery and Franco’s dictatorship.”

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LONDON — Fifty years ago this month, the first McDonald’s opened in the U.K, becoming the 3,000th franchise of the fast food giant worldwide.

Staff at the restaurant in the working class suburb of Woolwich, south east London, were paid 65 pence an hour and got free food. A milkshake, burger and “French fries” (so much more exotic than British “chips”) cost diners 48p. Life would never be the same.

Attending the grand opening was the the gloriously named Mayor Len Squirrel, the first British politician to embrace the Big Mac, but by no means the last.

Here in the U.K., and across the more than 100 countries which host the Golden Arches, when it comes to McDonald’s, it seems politicians are lovin’ it.

On Sunday, U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump hit up a branch of Maccy Ds in the swing state of Pennsylvania to man a fries station.

A Mc-enthusiast, whose order of choice is said to be two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fish, and a chocolate milkshake, Trump famously once catered a White House celebration for college football players with McDonald’s. But the former president didn’t go to the Feasterville-Travose branch of the chain merely to hang with Ronald McDonald.

They’re lovin’ it

The visit paid a dual purpose: proving Trump’s affinity with voters by spending time in America’s favorite restaurant, and throwing shade over rival Kamala Harris’ own claim to the McVote.

In a version of “birtherism,” the lie peddled by Trump that Barack Obama was born overseas, the Republican is deploying what the New York Times dubbed “burgerism,” suggesting Harris is fibbing about her time toiling for a McDonald’s paycheck as a college student.  

Asked why Trump had wanted to shovel fries, his aide Jason Miller said: “So that one candidate in this race could have actually worked at McDonald’s.”

The Harris campaign hit back, insisting she was employed in an Alameda, California, branch of McDonald’s in 1983, working the cash register, French fry station and ice cream machine.

What might be viewed as a minor detail on a C.V. is clearly seen in political circles as something akin to electoral gold dust.

Since her nomination, allies have made play of Harris’ time doling out burgers. Former President Bill Clinton, who himself once campaigned in a McDonald’s, told the Democratic National Convention she would “break my record as the president who has spent the most time at McDonald’s.”

“Can you simply picture Donald Trump working at a McDonald’s?” asked Tim Walz, Harris’ pick to be vice president. “He couldn’t run that damn McFlurry machine if it cost him anything.”

Kamburlgar

But why do politicos seek to play up their McDonald’s connections? And why McDonald’s, why not Pizza Hut or Burger King — or just that café on the high street where they waited tables one summer?

Natalie Kirby was head of media at McDonald’s U.K. for six years until 2014, and before that worked for the Conservative Party as an aide to William Hague when he was leader of the party.

She said: “It’s seen as a shorthand for: I’m a man or woman of the people. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, quite the opposite: it’s saying I’m prepared to do hard graft. I earned my stripes. I’m like everyone else on the streets.”

Confirming Harris’ claim to have worked in McDonald’s, this week her high school friend Wanda Kagan told the New York Times she too had worked in the fast food joint: “That’s what us regular folks did.”

Because working in McDonald’s is indeed what regular American folk did — and do. One in eight U.S. citizens has at some point worked beneath the Golden Arches, flipping burgers, salting fries and assembling Happy Meal containers. One in 13 Americans will eat in a McDonald’s today.

One in ate

Does that mean they’ll feel warm towards a politician who has also worked in or eaten a McDonald’s? Both Harris and Trump seem to think so.

Back in Britain, Kemi Badenoch, favorite in the contest to become the next leader of the Conservative Party, has also been talking up her time as a Mc-employee, flipping burgers in a south London restaurant while at high school.

“I grew up in a middle class family, but I became working class when I was 16 working at McDonald’s,” she told GB News. “Just understanding how many people there were single parents, and they were working there to make ends meet.

“There’s a humility there … You had to wash toilets, you had to flip burgers, you had to handle money.”

One aide to Badenoch said that while U.S. politicians seek to prove their “quintessential Americanness” when they talk about McDonald’s, the would-be Tory leader was making a slightly different point.

Badenoch grew up in a prosperous family in Nigeria, which fell on hard times due to the changing political situation there, and came to the U.K. with just £100 in its pocket.

“What she particularly talks about is the fact that she had to clean the toilets,” the aide said. “It was a very formative moment for her. She wanted to make the best of herself, so she didn’t have to clean toilets again.

“Trump handing out burgers and fries is something a little different — he’s connecting with voters by highlighting a quintessential piece of Americana. When Kemi references it, she’s talking about having to clean the bathrooms. All she ate was burgers, because that’s how she had to feed herself.”

A stepping stone

Badenoch, the aide suggested, saw McDonald’s as a stepping stone to a better life — a route Kirby said was often the case for employees. “These aren’t dead end jobs. A surprising number of people on the McDonald’s board started in Saturday jobs when they were 16, 18. Others start there then go on to big careers elsewhere.”

If Badenoch wins, she’ll be facing Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer across the House of Commons. Bucking the political trend to embrace the burger, as a young lawyer in the 1990s, pescatarian Starmer worked pro bono to represent a group of environmentalists McDonald’s sued in the long-running courtroom drama which became known as the “McLibel” case.

Taunted during the election campaign for his somewhat robotic style and struggles to connect with voters, he might have been wise to have eschewed the law and flipped burgers instead.

In Europe too, McDonald’s seems to be having a moment in political circles. Belgium MEP Assita Kanko tweeted a photo of herself Monday clutching a McDonald’s bag, saying: “I am just hungry. Not campagning [sic] or something.”

The corporate McDonald’s line is that the burger joint is non-political. “We are not red or blue — we are golden,” was the official statement from McDonald’s Chicago HQ in response to Trump’s day behind the fryer.

Maybe so. But that doesn’t mean McDonald’s isn’t deeply political.

In 1996, the writer Thomas L. Friedman posited what became known as the “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict  Prevention,” summed up as: “No two countries that both had McDonald’s had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald’s.”

Friedman suggested that where globalization had driven economic development in a country to a place where it could sustain a McDonald’s, then the new middle class there would have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and avoiding conflict.

Sadly, the theory didn’t survive Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The Big Mac index

A decade before the Golden Arches theory, the Economist magazine came up with the Big Mac Index, by which the value of a currency is assessed relative to the cost of a Big Mac in a local McDonald’s; “Using patty-power parity to think about exchange rates,” as the strapline reads.

Kirby said that in some senses, McDonald’s is a symbol of capitalism itself, spreading the American dream on the global stage. “McDonald’s is so ubiquitous, it’s global — it makes sense for it to be a benchmark.

“Part of it is the franchisee model — it’s owner operated, and that makes it very attractive, because you can own your own business. Nothing can touch it in terms of global reach.”

And it’s not just on the macro level that the French fry is political — at the micro level too, McDonald’s bobs on the rocky seas of social movement.

In recent years, the company has been hit with its very own #MeToo movements. Last year Alistair Macrow, chief executive of McDonald’s U.K. and Ireland, told a parliamentary committee the firm had received 407 complaints “of all types,” of which 157 had been fully investigated with 17 categorized as sexual harassment. He said: “The cases are absolutely horrendous. What I’d like to be clear about is that we will tackle them and make sure that we do everything we can to eradicate them from the business. Nothing is more important.”

There have been protests against the chain’s environmental impact, concerns raised about obesity and ill health, and strikes over low wages.

But the chain has done much good as well, raising billions for charities and paying millions for employees to go through college.

For good or ill

One summer years ago, I worked in the Clapham High Street branch of McDonald’s, like Badenoch in south London, and like Harris to earn some cash during the long university vacation.

After a few weeks I realized a weird form of apartheid had emerged, with the young, white, female members of the crew pushed onto the cash registers, while older, male and minority members of staff languished behind the scenes.

There was compassion, though; elderly people knew they could come in and get a free hot drink, and stay as long as they liked. It’s a scheme many franchises around the world continue today, with little fanfare.

Many years later, I lived around the corner from a Ronald McDonald House in New York City, the gleaming glass and concrete structure a comfort to hundreds of families dealing with a little one’s cancer diagnosis. There are now Ronald McDonald Houses in 64 countries.

Yet the fast food chain’s origin story, as told in the 2016 movie “The Founder” starring Michael Keaton (and disputed by McDonald’s) is decidedly Trumpian.

While the first restaurant was opened by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald in San Bernardino, California, in 1940, their production line, self service system was turned into a mass franchise model by the Chicago entrepreneur Ray Kroc, who bought the brothers out in the 1961 and turned McDonald’s into the national and then international beast we now know and love — or loathe.

Today, there are 36,000 McDonald’s restaurants, with more than 2 million employees. Revenue comes in at about $26 billion a year. And despite a few wobbles along the way, the company is growing.

Kroc once said: “It is ridiculous to call this an industry. This is not. This is rat eat rat, dog eat dog. I’ll kill ’em, and I’m going to kill ’em before they kill me. You’re talking about the American way — of survival of the fittest.”

Sounds a lot like politics.

While the Conservative leadership candidates harp on about the ECHR or the ‘woke bureaucracy’, Rachel Reeves will get serious about public investment

What matters more to the British public: the health service or the European convention on human rights (ECHR)? It isn’t a trick question. The obvious answer is the correct one. That is why the party that recently won a big majority began this week by launching a consultation on NHS reform, while the party that would rather talk about the ECHR does so from opposition.

Robert Jenrick, the Conservative leadership candidate who agitates to quit the ECHR, thinks it is not a marginal matter. His argument is that European human rights law interferes with summary deportation of asylum claimants, which is an affront to sovereignty and something about which voters – especially those who have switched from the Tories to Reform UK – have strong feelings.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

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