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Harris Gains Ground in Polls as Trump Tries to Brand Her a Marxist 

Former US President and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump points to supporters in the crowd after speaking during a campaign rally at the Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina, on July 24, 2024. (AFP)
Former US President and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump points to supporters in the crowd after speaking during a campaign rally at the Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina, on July 24, 2024. (AFP)
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Harris Gains Ground in Polls as Trump Tries to Brand Her a Marxist 

Former US President and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump points to supporters in the crowd after speaking during a campaign rally at the Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina, on July 24, 2024. (AFP)
Former US President and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump points to supporters in the crowd after speaking during a campaign rally at the Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina, on July 24, 2024. (AFP)

Vice President Kamala Harris took her presidential campaign blitz to the largest US teachers' union on Thursday, promising a "fight for the future" as new opinion polls showed her narrowing the gap with Republican rival Donald Trump.

Harris' swift emergence as the successor to President Joe Biden, 81, as the Democratic presidential candidate in the Nov. 5 election has shaken up a stagnant presidential race, with polls showing her narrowing former President Trump's advantage.

In an address in Houston to the American Federation of Teachers, Harris, 59, focused on economic policy and workers' rights, touting plans for affordable healthcare and child care and criticizing Republicans for blocking gun limits in the wake of school shootings.

"Ours is a fight for the future," Harris told a crowd of about 3,500 people. "We are in a fight for our most fundamental freedoms. And to this room of leaders, I say: Bring it on."

More than 100,000 predominantly white women later joined a Zoom call to raise money for Harris and discuss strategy, organizers of #AnswerTheCall said. The call followed similar ones recently among Black women, Black men and Latinas.

A series of polls conducted since Biden ended his reelection bid on Sunday, including one by Reuters/Ipsos, show Harris and Trump beginning their head-to-head contest on roughly equal footing, setting the stage for a close-fought campaign over the next three-and-a-half months.

A New York Times/Siena College national poll published Thursday found Harris has narrowed what had been a sizable Trump lead. Trump was ahead of Harris 48% to 46% among registered voters, compared with a lead of 49% to 41% over Biden in early July, following Biden's disastrous debate performance that led to a wave of Democratic calls for him to step aside as candidate.

While nationwide surveys give important signals of American support for political candidates, a handful of competitive states typically tilt the balance in the US Electoral College, which ultimately decides who wins a presidential election.

Harris also got good news on that front as Emerson College/The Hill published a poll finding that she had begun to close the gap with Trump in five critical battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump still narrowly leads Harris in all but Wisconsin, which is tied, according to the poll of registered voters in those states.

Together, the polls suggest that while Trump, 78, retains a narrow advantage, he has not seen the sort of bump in support following last week's Republican National Convention that candidates hope to get out of the highly scripted, televised and expensive events.

Trump on Wednesday night laid into Harris in his first rally since she replaced Biden atop the ticket, then continued his criticism online on Thursday.

"We're not ready for a Marxist President, and Lyin' Kamala Harris is a RADICAL LEFT MARXIST, AND WORSE!" Trump posted on his social media platform.

DEBATE UP IN THE AIR

Trump's campaign on Thursday cast doubt about a Sept. 10 debate that had been previously scheduled against Biden. Harris has said she is prepared to debate Trump that day, but the Trump campaign said in a statement that debate details cannot be finalized until the Democrats formally name a candidate, which could happen the first week of August.

More than 40 former US Justice Department officials, primarily from Democratic administrations, signed a letter endorsing Harris and calling Trump a threat to the rule of law in the US.

"Former President Trump presents a grave risk to our country, our global alliances and the future of democracy. As President, he regularly ignored the rule of law," reads the letter, a copy of which was seen by Reuters and signed by former US Attorney General Loretta Lynch and other former officials.

Former President Barack Obama has been in regular contact with Harris and plans to soon endorse her as the Democratic presidential candidate, a source familiar with his plans said on Thursday.

The Harris campaign released its first video advertisement online on Thursday. Harris narrates the ad, framing the campaign as a battle to protect Americans' individual liberties to the sound of Beyonce's song "Freedom."

Harris also reached out to younger voters by creating an account on TikTok, amassing over 500,000 followers in a few hours.

The next highly anticipated development will be Harris' choice of a vice-presidential candidate to counter Trump's selection of US Senator JD Vance of Ohio.

The list of contenders amounts to a who's-who of rising Democrats, including US Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, Governors Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Andy Beshear of Kentucky, as well as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Harris' rise has largely pushed Trump out of the headlines, a week after the Republican National Convention and 12 days after he narrowly survived an assassination attempt that wounded his ear.

FBI Director Christopher Wray told a House panel on Wednesday that investigators are not certain whether Trump's injury was caused by a bullet or by shrapnel. Trump has said a bullet hit his ear.

A Trump campaign spokesperson, Jason Miller, called the idea that Trump was not hit by a bullet a "conspiracy," adding an expletive.

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World

Iran Warns Will Not Give Up Enrichment Despite US War Threat

Traffic moves through a street in Tehran on February 7, 2026. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP)
Traffic moves through a street in Tehran on February 7, 2026. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP)
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Iran Warns Will Not Give Up Enrichment Despite US War Threat

Traffic moves through a street in Tehran on February 7, 2026. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP)
Traffic moves through a street in Tehran on February 7, 2026. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP)

Iran will never surrender the right to enrich uranium, even if war "is imposed on us,” its foreign minister said Sunday, defying pressure from Washington.

"Iran has paid a very heavy price for its peaceful nuclear program and for uranium enrichment," Abbas Araghchi told a forum in Tehran.

"Why do we insist so much on enrichment and refuse to give it up even if a war is imposed on us? Because no one has the right to dictate our behavior," he said, two days after he met US envoy Steve Witkoff in Oman.

The foreign minister also declared that his country was not intimidated by the US naval deployment in the Gulf.

"Their military deployment in the region does not scare us," Araghchi said.

World

Washington Post Publisher Will Lewis Stepping Down Days after Big Layoffs

A person walks outside The Washington Post headquarters in Washington, DC, USA, 04 February 2026. EPA/JIM LO SCALZO
A person walks outside The Washington Post headquarters in Washington, DC, USA, 04 February 2026. EPA/JIM LO SCALZO
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Washington Post Publisher Will Lewis Stepping Down Days after Big Layoffs

A person walks outside The Washington Post headquarters in Washington, DC, USA, 04 February 2026. EPA/JIM LO SCALZO
A person walks outside The Washington Post headquarters in Washington, DC, USA, 04 February 2026. EPA/JIM LO SCALZO

Washington Post publisher Will Lewis said Saturday that he’s stepping down, ending a troubled tenure three days after the newspaper said that it was laying off one-third of its staff.

Lewis announced his departure in a two-paragraph email to the newspaper's staff, saying that after two years of transformation, “now is the right time for me to step aside.” The Post's chief financial officer, Jeff D'Onofrio, was appointed temporary publisher, The Associated Press reported.

Neither Lewis nor the newspaper's billionaire owner Jeff Bezos participated in the meeting with staff members announcing the layoffs on Wednesday. While anticipated, the cutbacks were deeper than expected, resulting in the shutdown of the Post's renowned sports section, the elimination of its photography staff and sharp reductions in personnel responsible for coverage of metropolitan Washington and overseas.

They came on top of widespread talent defections in recent years at the newspaper, which lost tens of thousands of subscribers following Bezos' order late in the 2024 presidential campaign pulling back from a planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, and a subsequent reorienting of its opinion section in a more conservative direction.

Martin Baron, the Post’s first editor under Bezos, condemned his former boss this week for attempting to curry favor with President Donald Trump and called what has happened at the newspaper “a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction.”

The British-born Lewis was a former top executive at The Wall Street Journal before taking over at The Post in January 2024. His tenure has been rocky from the start, marked by layoffs and a failed reorganization plan that led to the departure of former top editor Sally Buzbee.

His initial choice to take over for Buzbee, Robert Winnett, withdrew from the job after ethical questions were raised about both he and Lewis' actions while working in England. They include paying for information that produced major stories, actions that would be considered unethical in American journalism. The current executive editor, Matt Murray, took over shortly thereafter.

Lewis didn't endear himself to Washington Post journalists with blunt talk about their work, at one point saying in a staff meeting that they needed to make changes because not enough people were reading their work.

This week's layoffs have led to some calls for Bezos to either increase his investment in The Post or sell it to someone who will take a more active role. Lewis, in his note, praised Bezos: “The institution could not have had a better owner,” he said.

“During my tenure, difficult decisions have been taken in order to ensure the sustainable future of The Post so it can for many years ahead publish high-quality nonpartisan news to millions of customers each day,” Lewis said.

The Washington Post Guild, the union representing staff members, called Lewis' exit long overdue.

“His legacy will be the attempted destruction of a great American journalism institution,” the Guild said in a statement. “But it’s not too late to save The Post. Jeff Bezos must immediately rescind these layoffs or sell the paper to someone willing to invest in its future.”

Bezos did not mention Lewis in a statement saying D'Onofrio and his team are positioned to lead The Post into “an exciting and thriving next chapter.”

“The Post has an essential journalistic mission and an extraordinary opportunity,” Bezos said. “Each and every day our readers give us a roadmap to success. The data tells us what is valuable and where to focus.”

D'Onofrio, who joined the paper last June after jobs at the digital ad management company Raptive, Google, Zagat and Major League Baseball, said in a note to staff that "we are ending a hard week of change with more change.

“This is a challenging time across all media organizations, and The Post is unfortunately no exception,” he wrote. “I've had the privilege of helping chart the course of disrupters and cultural stalwarts alike. All faced economic headwinds in changing industry landscapes, and we rose to meet those moments. I have no doubt we will do just that, together.”

World

US Concerned About Expansion of Terrorism in Sahel, West Africa

Members of the Nigeria Armed Forces interact with residents following an attack in Woro, Kwara State, on February 5, 2026. (Photo by Light Oriye Tamunotonye / AFP)
Members of the Nigeria Armed Forces interact with residents following an attack in Woro, Kwara State, on February 5, 2026. (Photo by Light Oriye Tamunotonye / AFP)
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US Concerned About Expansion of Terrorism in Sahel, West Africa

Members of the Nigeria Armed Forces interact with residents following an attack in Woro, Kwara State, on February 5, 2026. (Photo by Light Oriye Tamunotonye / AFP)
Members of the Nigeria Armed Forces interact with residents following an attack in Woro, Kwara State, on February 5, 2026. (Photo by Light Oriye Tamunotonye / AFP)

The United States is concerned by the “expansion” of al-Qaeda affiliates in the Sahel and West Africa, including Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and ISIS-Sahel’s territorial gains.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz shared the concern in his remarks at this week’s UN Security Council Briefing on Terrorist Threats to International Peace and Security caused by terrorist acts.

Highlighting JNIM and ISIS-Sahel’s territorial gains and use in particular of kidnapping for ransom, Waltz said the threats are increasingly diffuse and complex as they involve foreign fighters converging in multiple conflict zones.

The diplomat cited the latest Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team report, which showed that terror cells continue to adapt and exploit instability across Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.

Waltz said ISIS’ growing focus on Africa, and the resilience of its cells in Syria and Iraq, and the persistent threat from ISIS-K in Afghanistan, truly reinforces the need for sustained, coordinated counterterrorism efforts.

Washington is particularly concerned by terrorist groups’ exploitation of new technologies, such as commercial satellite communications, artificial intelligence, drones and cryptocurrencies, he said.

“All of these further complicates the threat landscape and it requires our vigilance, vigilance from Member States and particularly where I think there is room for all of us to improve – is our coordination with the private sector as we face this threat,” Waltz added.

The ambassador called for further disruption of terrorist financing networks, saying the recent successes in Somalia and in West Africa demonstrate that following the money and stopping the money to these various groups can have bold decisive effects.

He said the US commends UN Member States whose counterterrorism operations have constrained ISIS and al-Qaeda, especially in Iraq, Syria, and Somalia.

He also urged all states to strengthen cooperation, including intelligence sharing and joint operations, and to support the effective implementation and evolution of the 1267 sanctions regime.

“Member States should collaborate on screening and information sharing to prevent terrorist movement across borders, in support of UN Security Council Resolution 2396,” Waltz noted.

Last November, the United Kingdom, which currently chairs the UN Security Council, expressed similar concern about the proliferation of terrorist groups in the Sahel and West Africa.

The US has sent a small team of troops to Nigeria, the general in charge of the US command for Africa said on Tuesday, the first acknowledgment of US forces on the ground since Washington struck by air on Christmas Day.

General Dagvin RM Anderson, head of the US military's Africa Command AFRICOM, said the US team was sent after both countries agreed that more needed to be done to combat the terrorist threat in West Africa.

“That has led to increased collaboration between our nations to include a small US team that brings some unique capabilities from the United States,” he told journalists during a press briefing in Dakar on Tuesday.