First Thing: Biden says Trump 2.0 would threaten democracy

Faced with stagnant approval ratings, president ups ante in his re-election campaign. Plus, the plastic-eating bacteria that could change the world

Good morning.

Joe Biden dramatically raised the ante in the forthcoming US presidential election campaign yesterday with a stark and impassioned warning that American democracy was imperiled by a vengeful Donald Trump, his likely opponent next year.

Faced by stagnant approval ratings and worries about his advanced age, the president attempted to stir his dormant supporters and animate the undecided by spelling out the dangers he insisted a second Trump presidency would pose to the US’s status as the world’s leading beacon of democratic government.

Declaring US history to be at “an inflexion point”, Biden, 80, said the country’s character and future was threatened by the authoritarian values of Trump’s self-styled Make America Great Again (Maga) movement.

“There is something dangerous happening in America,” he told an audience in Phoenix, Arizona. “There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy: the Maga movement … History has brought us to a new time of testing.”

• What did he say about Trump? Referring to Trump by name just once in his half-hour speech, Biden nevertheless set out to contrast democratic norms and traditions with conduct that appeared to characterize his predecessor. He said democracy “means rule of the people, not rule of the monarchy, not rule of money, not rule of the mighty.”

US shutdown moves ever closer as McCarthy digs in over stopgap deal

A government shutdown appeared all but inevitable as the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, dug in yesterday, vowing he would not take up Senate legislation designed to keep the federal government fully running despite House Republicans’ struggle to unite around an alternative.

Congress is at an impasse just days before a disruptive federal shutdown that would halt paychecks for many of the federal government’s roughly 2 million employees and 2 million active-duty military troops and reservists, furlough many of those workers and curtail government services.

The House and Senate are pursuing different paths to avert those consequences before government funding expires after midnight on Saturday.

The Senate is working toward passage of a bipartisan measure that would fund the government until 17 November as longer-term negotiations continue, while also providing $6bn for Ukraine and $6bn for US disaster relief.

• What about the House? The House has teed up votes on four of the dozen annual spending bills that fund various agencies in hopes that would cajole enough Republicans to support a House-crafted continuing resolution that temporarily funds the government and boosts security at the US border with Mexico. It’s a long shot, but McCarthy predicted a deal.

Tesla trial begins over whether ‘experimental’ autopilot caused driver’s death

The lawyer representing victims of a fatal Tesla crash blamed the company’s autopilot driver assistant system, saying that “a car company should never sell consumers experimental vehicles”, in his opening statement in a California trial yesterday.

A civil lawsuit alleges that the autopilot system caused Micah Lee, the owner of a Tesla Model 3 car, to suddenly veer off a highway east of Los Angeles at 65mph (105kph), where his car struck a palm tree and burst into flames.

The 2019 crash killed Lee, 37, and seriously injured his two passengers, including an eight-year-old boy who was disemboweled, according to court documents. The lawsuit filed by the passengers and Lee’s estate accuses Tesla of knowing that autopilot and other safety systems were defective when it sold the car.

Jonathan Michaels, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in his opening statement at the trial in Riverside, California, that when Lee bought Tesla’s “full self-driving capability package” for $6,000 for his Model 3 in 2019, the system was in “beta”, meaning it was not yet ready for release.

• What has Tesla said? Tesla denied the claims, saying its autopilot system puts “guardrails” on the angle of the steering wheel at high speeds, making it capable of steering only a little bit left or right on highways. It defended the system’s safety and blamed the driver for being intoxicated.

In other news …

• Donald Trump is suing a former MI6 officer and the intelligence consultancy he founded, high court records in England show. The former US president is bringing a data protection claim against Orbis Business Intelligence and its founder, Christopher Steele, who previously ran the secret intelligence service’s Russia desk.

• More than a million children in the UK sleep on the floor or share a bed with parents or siblings because their family cannot afford the “luxury” of replacing broken frames and mouldy linen, according to the children’s charity Barnardo’s.

• Madeline-Michelle Carthen was declared dead in the summer of 2007. The only problem? She was still very much alive. Carthen, 52, learned she had died while studying at university. She was added to a death master file by the social security administration “in error” but to this day she cannot revive herself.

• Ever since the far-right movement in California’s Shasta county gained control of local government, it has sought to throw out voting machines in favor of hand counting and pledged to defend the second amendment using all “lawful means”. This week they focused their efforts on a new target: mosquitoes.

Stat of the day: Authorities rescue nearly 100 goldendoodles from Iowa puppy mill

Iowa authorities rescued nearly 100 dogs from a puppy mill over the weekend, many of whom were living in their own excrement. A deputy from the Boone county sheriff’s office was conducting a welfare check on a missing woman last Friday and came across what appeared to be a puppy mill, the sheriff’s office said in a press release.

Local outlets reported that the missing woman, Sara Stanfield, was connected to the Paris Puppies Paradise facility, which breeds goldendoodles, according to its website. The sheriff’s office has not disclosed the extent of Stanfield’s involvement in the puppy mill’s condition.

Don’t miss this: ‘We are just getting started’ – the plastic-eating bacteria that could change the world

In 2001, a group of Japanese scientists made a startling discovery at a rubbish dump. In trenches packed with dirt and waste, they found a slimy film of bacteria that had been happily chewing through plastic bottles, toys and other bric-a-brac. As it broke down the trash, the bacteria harvested the carbon in the plastic for energy, which it used to grow, move and divide into even more plastic-hungry bacteria. Even if not in quite the hand-to-mouth-to-stomach way we normally understand it, the bacteria was eating the plastic.

Now scientists are attempting to turbocharge those powers in an effort to solve our waste crisis. But will it work?

… or this: Unless Joe Biden stands aside, the world must prepare for President Trump 2.0

“Joe Biden has been a good president of the United States,” writes Timothy Garton Ash. “Although the retreat from Afghanistan was chaotic, he dealt with the Covid pandemic well and is handling the war in Ukraine fairly well. He is presiding over a remarkably vibrant economy, with New Deal-style public spending accelerating a green transition and creating jobs. But if he stumbles – physically, mentally or politically – during the gruelling marathon that is a US presidential campaign, and lets Trump back in, that’s the only thing Biden will be remembered for.

“At this point, some American readers might be huffing: ‘Who’s this Brit telling us what we ought to do?’ All I would say in reply is: sorry, but it’s not only your future that this contest will decide … A second Trump presidency would be a disaster for the US. It would also be a catastrophe for Ukraine, an emergency for Europe and a crisis of the west.”

Climate check: The hottest summer in human history – a visual timeline

As the world sweltered through the hottest three month spell in human history this summer, extreme weather disasters took more than 18,000 lives, drove at least 150,000 people from their homes, affected hundreds of millions of others and caused billions of dollars of damage. That is a conservative tally from the most widely covered disasters between early June and early September, which have been compiled in a timeline as a reminder of how tough this period has been and what might lie ahead.

It began in Haiti where unusually intense rains flooded towns and villages, killing 42 and destroying more than 10,000 homes. Then smoke from devastating wildfires in Quebec cast a pall over New York, prompting air quality warnings for tens of millions of people. Over the course of the summer, fires across Canada would go on to burn 17.9m hectares of land, double the previous record.

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