welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. replacing joe biden with kamala harris has injected a shot of adrenaline into the democratic party's campaign to retain the white house. the upcoming party convention should maintain that bounce. but then what? well, the next three months will be a battle for the hearts and minds of key swing voters. my guest will be in the thick of it. shannon watts founded a nationwide gun control movement led by women, and now she's rallying women — specifically white women, for harris. is her activism, strategically savvy or potentially divisive? is her activism strategically savvy or potentially divisive?

shannon watts in san francisco, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for having me. it's a pleasure to have you on the show. you have had a powerful voice in the american political arena for the last decade and more, but you never sought elected political office. you chose to be an activist. why? i think you can in many ways get more done and not have to have a certain persona or act a certain way, or present yourself a certain way. and for me, you know, being in the trenches, organising women, really summoning their audacity and helping them find ways to have an impact on the political system,

when in america we have very little political power as women, or at least have in the past, that has been incredibly rewarding. and, you know, people ask me all the time, "are you going "to run for office?" and the answer is no! i feel like i've been running for office now for 12 years in many ways, but i do get incredible joy from helping other women run for office and win. and it seems to be working. right, now, let's take it back to 2012, when you founded moms demand action in response to, i think, one particular terrible mass—school shooting. why was it so important to you that this was very much a women—focused and a women—led movement? you know, when i think back to the day of the sandy hook school shooting in december of 2012, i just was shocked, as so many other women and mothers were across the country,

that 20 children and six educators could be slaughtered in the sanctity of an american elementary school. and, you know, in many ways, i was living in a bubble, because children were shot and killed every day in communities 30 miles from where i lived. but it was that shooting that got me off of the sidelines. and i had grown up as a teen in the 1980s, when an organisation in america called mothers against drunk driving became so influential in our society and our communities and really changed the culture of driving while drinking, seemingly overnight. it did take them a decade to pass federal laws, but very instantaneously, it was thought of as immoral if you drank and drove. and so that was really my north star when i started moms demand action, i really knew that the only thing that could take on the most powerful, wealthy, special interests that had ever existed in our country was really an army of angry mothers. and that's what i set out to create.

and today, moms demand action is the largest grassroots women—led movement in the nation. now, in the last year or more, you've stepped away from leadership of moms demand action, and you talk very publicly about the need to make more time and space for yourself and for your family. and yet now, here we are. and one reason we're interviewing you today is because you've stepped right back into the arena and you've just done something pretty extraordinary. you were the sort of co—organiser of an amazing zoom call for women to get involved and back kamala harris�*s new presidential campaign. and as i understand it, within hours of setting up the call, the call took place. you had almost 200,000 women who wanted to be part of it, and you raised more than $8 million in just a couple of hours. what prompted you to come back into the arena? you know, i stepped away from moms demand action at the end

of 2023 because i never imagined it would be an infinite position, and i really wanted to hand the reins over to someone with a different perspective so the organisation would evolve. the leader of moms demand action now is a mother—of—four, a queer woman, a black woman who lives in washington dc, has a much different life experience and take on gun violence than i do. and i kind of thought, "ok, "i'm going to take some time off." and i was just wide awake at 5am on the tuesday afterjoe biden stepped back, and kamala harris became the presumptive nominee. and i had seen on that sunday, black women organised in just hours a call of a4,000 women. they raised over $1 million. the next day, a group of black men did the same. they had 50,000 people and raised over $1.5 million. and i just sent a tweet out and i said, you know, when are women really going to come to the table with their own political power and economic power and emulate and honour what these calls had done? yeah.

but if i may interject forjust a moment, you didn'tjust send that message out to women. it was very specifically to white women. white women, yes. it was an appeal to white women to "answer the call". and itjust seems to me there's something a little bit odd about this, about this sort of focus on sectional interest and, in this particular case, on a notion that there's something special about white women, their interests and their issues. 0ram i misreading it? i think you are. so, it is actually the opposite, which is when i called jotaka eaddy, the woman who leads win with black women, who had organised the sunday call, she said yes, white women in this country need to do a similar call, but they have different work than black women to do. so, in america, white women are about 40% of the country's voters, or the largest voting bloc in this country. but we have not voted to protect the interests of everyone,

really to protect our own. since the 19505, the majority of white women have voted for republican candidates in all but two elections. in the last two elections, they voted for donald trump more the second time than the first time. and so there really needs to be a course correction in this country among white women who, you know, their voting patterns are very rooted in the white supremacy and the patriarchy of america. and so that really was the point of this call. it was more of a reckoning than a rally, to talk about how do we, the 47% of women who vote for democrats on the call, persuade the 53% of white women who don't? let me put this as politely as i mean it to be. but isn't there something very condescending about what you've just said about how white women need a course correction? i mean, in a democracy, white women have every right to vote just ever which way they want. and when you, and this is taken

from one of your substack columns recently, when you say time and again, "too many of you," and you're addressing white women, "vote against your own "interests because white supremacy "is in your own best interest." i mean, what right have you got to define other women's best interest, and to suggest that many of them are somehow beholden to white supremacy? i mean, that's clearly the case in this country. donald trump is a white supremacist, and he has put policies forward that have stripped women of their rights in america. we no longer have the right to an abortion. he would like to remove ivf. he has passed racist policies around immigration. i could go on and on and on. are you implying that a lot of white women are not as intelligent as you, or intelligent enough... no. ..to make their own decisions about what represents unacceptable racism or white supremacy to them? i actually think it's the opposite.

and you look at polling — many women in america, white women, vote the way that their religion or their marital status or their education level dictate. and we want to change that. we want to flip the script. we want women, white women in particular, who, again, are the largest voting bloc, to vote to protect all people, not just their own families and their own communities, but those of black and brown people in this country. the figures are interesting. you talk about the majority of white women who have voted for trump in the last two elections. that is interesting. but if you dig deeper into the figures, maybe there's something else going on, because this figure i found doing a bit of research — 64% of white women without a college degree voted for trump, compared with 35% for biden, so it wasn't even close. so, maybe the key indicator here isn't so much gender as education and socio economic class. and i just wonder whether you, with your zoom reach—outs and your activism in the community, are you reaching those women who didn't go to university and beyond, but left school

after high school, and maybe are very different from you? well, i mean, those are our parents. those are our sisters. those are ourfriends and family members. those are the parents of our kids�* friends. and so that was really also part of what we talked about on this conversation, was that it is incumbent to begin to have this conversation with women, regardless of education status, who don't want to be referred to as cat ladies, or to be punished for being childless, or to have abortion or ivf removed from them as a right and a freedom. so that's really what we're talking about, is how do white women get off the sidelines in this country and start getting involved in the process to get out the vote?

a lot of us have sat on the sidelines, and a lot of us have regrets about what happened in this country in 2016, when hillary clinton won the popular vote but lost the election. see, i suspect that donald trump, jd vance, whose words you've just referred to, and leaders of the republican campaign are clearly going to try to portray kamala harris as a california progressive, part of a liberal elite who has nothing in common with and is out of touch with so many of those women ijust referred to, who voted for trump in the past. how are you going to convince them that kamala harris is the everywoman that you'd like her to be? well, i'm not seeing any kind of a label around elitism stick to kamala harris so far. she seems to be in a period that some people have said is a honeymoon, but it shows no signs of slowing down. and i think it's also a conversation about donald trump's elitism. i mean, he's very wealthy. he went to the best schools. so did jd vance, you know. jd vance tries to portray himself as an everyman.

he simply isn't. and i think the women in this country, maybe even regardless of political party, i mean, we had 70,000 people show up on a zoom last night called republicans for harris, i think this country is ready for a woman president, and kamala harris grew up in oakland. she has a very diverse and economic background that shows that she really is like many people in america. so i'm not really concerned about that label sticking so far. you already had a bit of fun withjd vance in that old interview in which he talked about childless cat ladies, and he's also made some pretty extraordinary comments about the childless, childless women and parents, having perhaps the right to use the votes of children, voting on behalf of their children, which of course the childless find a pretty weird concept, but nonetheless, isn't there something that vance and many other republicans who talk about family, family values and small c conservative values are on to? that, you know, in these swing states that we talk about,

from michigan to pennsylvania to wisconsin to georgia to north carolina, there are many women who actually share these family values, these small c conservative values. mm. i mean, i think it depends on what you call a conservative value. i know that women are very upset about the idea of nf being taken away from them, which is something that project 2025, which the republicans want to put in place immediately if donald trump is elected. just one piece of the rights and freedoms that would be taken away from women as a part of their long—term plan. but, you know, i'm not even sure that's true. i mean, there is this base of extremism, extremists who support donald trump. but when you look at something, let's talk about guns, something i know a lot about, and you poll both republican and democratic women, they agree on the same solutions,

things like background checks, keeping guns away from domestic abusers, red flag laws, and so i don't know that there's as big of a divide or a chasm as there is among the lawmakers themselves. so i'm pretty confident that they... i promise i want to come back to guns, because that is your signature issue, butjust one more thought before we get back to guns. and that's on the hot button, really important issue of abortion. now, kamala harris has committed already to be, quote, a champion for reproductive rights, for women's rights. she has said that she will push for federal laws to guarantee abortion access, but she's not provided detail. and when it comes to extremism, there are going to be some americans, including some american women, who think that there is, if there is a federal law guaranteeing a woman's right to an abortion, and indeed one that is very liberal in terms of the time limitations on that right to an abortion, they would regard that as a form of extremism. so how far do you think harris is going to go? i mean, i have no idea

what her policy will be, but as vice president with president biden, i mean, the majority of americans agree and support those rights to an abortion. and it was decided by the states in terms of, you know, what the length was or the timing of the pregnancy. exactly, that's my point. that's a different situation from a federal law where, you know, quote unquote, states�* rights to actually nuance abortion law would be taken away. but we don't even have that right now, right? so, i think what she's talking about is codifying the fact that we do have the right, which has been removed from us. and in the past, you know, we have negotiated this among the states. i don't know, i can't speak for kamala harris and what her abortion policy specifically will be, but she's only been the nominee for, you know, just less than three weeks now. and i'm assuming, as we go into the convention, we will see her roll out a robust policy. mm—hm. let's bring it back to guns because it is so important to you. i just wonder what lesson

you learned from pretty much 11 years leading moms demand action. because it seems to me one lesson you might have learned is to be deeply cynical about all politicians, notjust republican politicians, but democratic ones, too, because they've argued for years for tougher gun controls on the democratic side. and yet they've delivered so very little. mm—hm. i think i would disagree with you on that. i mean, we've passed over 500 good gun laws in this country. we've stopped the gun lobby�*s agenda 90% of the time in statehouses across the country. in 2022, we passed the first federal legislation in a generation, the bipartisan safer communities act. when i started doing this work, democrats in congress had... ..about a quarter of them had an a rating from the nra. today, none do. so, there's been a seismic shift in american politics, and that does take a while. it took a decade, but now we're even seeing republicans... 15 of them voted for the federal legislation i mentioned, so i do think we're seeing a change. certainly the red states in this country have gotten redder. and i also believe that

there are extremists, and we are not going to be able to change their hearts and minds. but if they see there are consequences to their inaction, for example, extreme republicans lose theirjobs, then we will see a change. and in a state, for example, tennessee, where they actually weakened gun laws after a mass school shooting, we're seeing a lot of republican women begin to push back on those lawmakers that they helped elect. so, i am feeling very hopeful about this country and where we're going to go, especially if kamala harris becomes the president. i'm just... i'm wondering why you feel so hopeful, because i'm looking at the subtitle of your book that you wrote about your long campaign. you subtitled it how a grassroots movement took on the gun lobby and why women will change the world. i mean, it's a wonderful title, but the truth is, your women—led campaign didn't change the world when it comes to guns in america. i mean, still, there are, what, 400 million guns in circulation in a country of 330 million? it's way beyond gun ownership in any other country in the world.

you've got the endemic gun violence in america's big cities. you haven't changed the world, is all i can say. well, i mean, certainly gun violence is still a crisis in america, but there are nations that have high rates of gun ownership and very low rates of gun violence, and we can get there as a country. i mean, we're never going to get rid of all these guns. it's part of our constitution, but we can regulate them. and so, in blue states, where we have actually passed significant laws, everything from assault weapons bans to requiring background checks, to disarming domestic abusers, we see much lower levels of gun violence and gun death than we do in red states that have weakened their gun laws. and so we have certainly a partisan issue in this nation where red states are getting redder. but if we have a president in place who is willing to pass these laws at a federal level, we will see significant life—saving laws go into place and we will see a real change. but again, i kind of explained,

i think, what we have accomplished over a decade, which is very significant and a sea change in american politics, and that wouldn't have happened if these women hadn't come together. so, they absolutely have changed america. right, no, well, you made the case, but let me bring it back to this coming election, which i think everybody agrees will be close and where everybody agrees these swing states really matter. you must be aware from the opinion surveys that the american public, including in the swing states, puts as its number two issue crime and insecurity, and some of it they associate with immigration. now, i'm just not sure that in those swing states, a message which puts gun control very high up the agenda is going to be very appealing at this particular time when the border security and the criminal issues are so very high. well, i mean, it's a misnomer to believe that somehow being armed is going to protect you. we know that from the data.

if you have a gun in your home, you're five times more likely to be killed with that gun, or someone in your family will use that gun to die by suicide... if i may say so, cnn just ran a poll which said most americans who own guns say that they got them for protection. so, you know, a lot of americans are not buying your theory that guns don't offer protection. well, actually, most of the guns are concentrated within less than 20% of gun owners. so this group of extremists have been convinced that they should own an arsenal, right? and so it's not accurate to say most americans own guns. it's more accurate to say a small subset of americans own many guns. but, yes, there is a group of extremists who have bought in to the rhetoric and the misinformation that a gun will make you safer. but that said, we know and we should be having the conversation, that it's actually gun laws passed by republicans which have been weakened or completely overturned, that is what leads to high rates of gun violence and crime.

most of the crime in this country involves guns, so that is a conversation. and again, when you poll republican women and democratic women, they agree on the same solutions to solve gun violence. and so, going back to women, i mean, i think that's why these conversations are so important. we are the swing voters in this election. and if we can talk to women who are married to gun owners and explain what the data shows, most often they do have a change of heart and mind. they don't want a gun in their homes that's going to endanger them or their kids. before we end, i do want to talk not just about the message, your messaging, but also about the medium, if i can put it that way? and the medium in this case, increasingly, is the whole world of social media. you, as we just discussed at the top of this interview, did this dramatic thing on zoom, bringing people together online to raise millions of dollars in two hours for kamala harris. you've been a real social media activist for years. what we see increasingly is that activism and political campaigning is focused online and on social media. 0ver your decade and more

of activism, has that really changed things? i mean, it's interesting, you know, it really wasn't where we did activism before the pandemic. and then, during the pandemic, certainly zoom became a tool for that, but i think zoom was so synonymous with work that people didn't really want to get on zoom at the end of the day to do their activism. and now that the pandemic is effectively over, i think we're seeing this interest in coming together in community and to do that all over the country and to do it for reasons ofjoy and not sort of, you know, grunt work or the unglamorous, heavy lifting of grassroots activism. it's to come together and to celebrate. and i willjust tell you, as a democrat, that's how we feel right now in america. we are full ofjoy and hope and excitement and this energy, i mean, even i would say president 0bama, like, i don't remember ever experiencing anything like this. and so what i saw on that two—hour zoom were little boxes full of women

who were crying and dancing and pumping theirfists and clapping. and i think zoom is a great medium for that, as you said... yeah, that's interesting, shannon, butjust a final thought, because, you know, it's not all about zoom. i was just thinking also about the role of x, for example, owned by elon musk, who's come out as a strong supporter of donald trump and many right—wing causes. he's no fan of gun control, that's for sure. i mean, do you worry that those kind of platforms are going to be extraordinarily influential over the next three months? i don't see them ultimately impacting the election. elon musk has been a conservative through other election cycles. and, you know, his party got wiped out in the midterms. so i'm not very worried about it. there are a lot of platforms to use. women often flock to instagram. ijust think it's a great tool to be able to use when you can't be in person. but it is not a substitute for making calls and knocking doors and getting together with your community and having conversation. i guess you'll be doing plenty of that over the next three months. shannon watts, i thank you very much

forjoining me on hardtalk. thank you. good evening. it's been a fairly quiet weekend of weather. that's about to change. as we head into the new week, dare i say it, for some, it's going to feel distinctly autumnal. there will be heavy rain at times, and the potential for some unseasonably windy weather, as well. not this evening, though. the showers are fading, the cloud will melt away, and we are in for a coolish night across central and eastern areas. could be a little bit of mist and fog for the morning rush.

the nights are getting longer, it's hanging around a little later now. but further west the temperatures won't fall that much, because we will have the first signs of the cloud and patchy rain in here. so, this is the first deep area of low pressure, with its thundery rain moving through monday and tuesday. a brief respite before this system, the remains of hurricane ernesto entrained in there, so some tropical air delivering heavy rain and potentially very windy weather for this time of year. more on its way for friday. so, you will expect to see the wettest weather across parts of wales, northern ireland, north—west england, but especially western scotland this week — in excess of 100 millimetres of rain — but not as much, or not that much, further south and east, where we will start the day with some sunshine. the mist and fog clears away, and we will hold onto that dry and fairly sunny weather in the south and the east. but already, by the middle of the day, really wet across northern ireland, the west of scotland, hence the met office warning for a couple of inches of rain in places, as it will be slow—moving. strong winds with it, so not feeling very pleasant, but i do think it will feel quite

warm in that sunshine in central and eastern areas. the wind is from the south west instead, and that heavy, thundery rain will push its way southwards and eastwards. not giving that much rain across southern and eastern areas, but we will continue with more heavy showers in the north and west through the night. so what we will notice about monday night is it will be much more so, what we will notice about monday night is it will be much more uncomfortable again for sleeping. we've got that humid airwith us again. but it doesn't last long, because that weather front�*s out the way, and there may be another bout of heavy, thundery showers following on for a time, but then some drier weather away from the north and west. that low pressure�*s anchored here, with its strong winds, so obviously it's going to feel quite cool here. and for most of us, anyway, having lost the humidity, it will be a fresher feeling day, despite some sunshine, which may well prevail in southern areas on wednesday. but by wednesday, there's that next area of low pressure barrelling in, of course, with some tropical air, so it is going to give a lot of rainfall across the north and west. as ever, we will keep you posted.

welcome to newsday. reporting live from singapore, i'm steve lai. the headlines... us secretary of state, antony blinken, is in israel, amid hopes that a gaza ceasefire deal can be reached. kamala harris campaigns in the vital us swing state of pennsylvania, ahead of monday's democratic national convention. ukraine says it's destroyed another key bridge in russia's kursk region — almost two weeks after its offensive into russia. we have a report from inside russia and hear what local people think of the situation at their border with ukraine. also coming up on newsday... and the sound of scotland on a global stage — we report from the world pipe band championship.