Evelyn Reynolds

The Saturday Night Live cast member Kenan Thompson carted out a massive version of the Project 2025 book onto the main stage at the Democratic national convention on Wednesday night. Despite the comedian’s involvement with the prop, which has been used throughout the convention, Democrats want voters to know that the conservative manifesto for a second Trump administration is no joke.Democrats have sprinkled the words “Project 2025” into speech after speech for months, culminating in the big book’s spot on the big stage – a sign of the toxicity that the mere mention of the project has with voters of multiple political persuasions.The project would dismantle much of what Democrats have done in the federal government under Joe Biden’s administration. The 900-plus-page policy outline, the Mandate for Leadership, is just one piece of the plan, which also involves assembling a roster of potential political appointees for jobs if Donald Trump wins, training those allies on how it thinks the government should work and coming up with a playbook to swiftly put those plans into place if Trump wins in November.A poll from the University of Massachusetts Amherst released earlier this month showed that more than half of respondents had heard of Project 2025, and the majority of those surveyed did not agree with many of its aims.Trump and his campaign have worked to distance the candidate from the project, which was put together by the conservative thinktank the Heritage Foundation. But many of the authors and groups behind the project have Trump ties, and the policy goals often align with things Trump has said he intends to do if he wins again. Trump’s team cheered when a Project 2025 leader announced he was stepping down from his role after pressure from the campaign.After the Minnesota governor and vice-presidential nominee, Tim Walz, mentioned Project 2025 in his speech on Wednesday night, Trump called into Fox & Friends on Thursday morning to say it was “disgraceful” that Democrats keep tying him to it.“They know I have nothing to do with it,” he said. “I had no idea what it was. A group of people got together, they drew up some conservative values, very conservative values, and in some cases perhaps they went over the line, perhaps they didn’t, but I have no idea what Project 25 is.”Each night at the convention, an elected official has lugged the book back on to the stage to cite an exact page number for a policy that should concern Democrats. The Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow talked about plans to weaponize the Department of Justice. The Pennsylvania state representative Malcolm Kenyatta talked about its plans to stop Medicare from negotiating drug prices. The Colorado governor, Jared Polis, pointed to plans to limit abortions and promote “traditional” families.“Usually Republicans want to ban books but now they’re trying to shove this down our throats,” Kenyatta said.The bit with SNL’s Thompson involved video appearances by a handful of Democrats from around the country who would be affected by policy changes the project suggests, including a teacher, a federal employee and a doctor.“What do you do for a living?” Thompson asks an OB-GYN. “An OB-GYN that delivers babies? Uh-oh.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It’s bad news, isn’t it?” the OB-GYN responds.“It sure is. On page 459, Project 2025 resurrects a law from the 1800s called the Comstock Act to ban abortion nationwide and throw healthcare providers in jail,” Thompson replies.The speakers, including Thompson, reference a webpage put up by the Harris campaign to highlight parts of the project that are most egregious for Democrats.“Just remember, everything that we just talked about is very real. It is in this book,” Thompson said. “You can stop it from ever happening by electing Kamala Harris as the president of the United States.” More

On the third night of the Democratic national convention, the group Muslim Women for Harris released a statement announcing that it was disbanding in response to the Harris-Walz campaign’s refusal to allow a Palestinian person to speak on the main stage.The statement was released as members of the Uncommitted National Movement, which won 30 delegates to the convention, and their supporters held a sit-in outside of the convention. Ilhan Omar joined the demonstration for some time, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called in to the sit-in via FaceTime. The sit-in came after the anti-war group was told a Palestinian person would not be allowed to speak on the main stage – until then, whether or not such a speech would happen was up in the air.During the sit-in, Muslim Women for Harris pulled their support for the Democratic nominee.“We cannot in good conscience continue Muslim Women for Harris-Walz, in light of this new information from the Uncommitted movement, that VP Harris’ team declined their request to have a Palestinian American speaker take the stage at the DNC,” the group’s statement reads.Kamala Harris’s campaign notably invited the family of Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin to speak on Wednesday, which Uncommitted supported. The group called for a similar platform for a Palestinian person.“Uncommitted delegates urge the Democratic party to reject a hierarchy of human value by ensuring Palestinian voices are heard on the main stage. We are learning that Israeli hostages’ families will be speaking from the main stage. We strongly support that decision and also strongly hope that we will also be hearing from Palestinians who’ve endured the largest civilian death toll since 1948,” the Uncommitted statement read.During the family’s speech, Goldberg-Polin’s father, Jon Polin, called for a return of the hostages and an end to “the suffering of the innocent civilians in Gaza”, joining other speakers like Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, who both made reference to Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza. During the course of the Democratic convention, calls for a ceasefire have been met with raucous applause from audience members. Still, some have said the party’s nods have fallen short.“The family of the Israeli hostage that was on the stage tonight, has shown more empathy towards Palestinian Americans and Palestinians, than our candidate or the DNC has,” Muslim Women for Harris’s statement read. “This is a terrible message to send to Democrats. Palestinians have the right to speak about Palestine.”Alana Zeitchik, who has multiple family members who are hostages, spoke out in support of having a Palestinian American speak on the main stage. “Rachel and Jon deserved every second on that stage. I also believe a Palestinian American voice deserves to be heard on that stage,” Zeitchik wrote on X. “I’d love to hear from @Ruwa4Georgia and I hope the DNC will give her the chance to be heard.”Chicago, where the Democratic convention is being held this year, has one of the largest Palestinian communities in the United States. Muslim Women for Harris did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

Six hours and 26 minutes after Joe Biden endorsed Kamala Harris to be the Democratic presidential nominee, a three-word tweet upended the presidential race.“Kamala IS brat,” singer Charli xcx tweeted.The British pop star’s tweet wasn’t just referencing her album, brat – already the soundtrack of the summer – but merely adding to the viral cacophony of mashup videos that featured Harris laughing and dancing to songs from her album.It was also a larger exaltation of Harris’s personality. Being “brat”, according to Charli xcx, is “just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, who feels herself, but then also maybe has a breakdown, but kind of parties through it”.Put another way, “the brat girl is authentic and unabashed, wholly herself, says what she thinks, means what she says, can’t be shamed because she owns all of her messiness, awkwardness, shortcomings”, said Abigail De Kosnik, a professor at the Center for New Media at the University of California, Berkeley.“Harris has long come across in interviews and social media videos as real and very much herself, unafraid to laugh loud and dance in public, proud to geek out and be weird about things she loves (Venn diagrams, her campaign buses), so she has never been invested in being or seeming ‘perfect’,” she said.The meme exploded on Twitter, TikTok and beyond, helping the Harris campaign engage younger voters – a critical demographic. The Harris campaign immediately embraced the meme, changing the background of its rapid response account on Twitter to match the chartreuse album cover with its plain font.The Guardian asked some attendees at the Democratic convention whether they had heard of the meme.“Brat? What’s that?” said Pamela Cleveland, 60, who had travelled up to Chicago all the way from Temple, Texas. “I don’t know what brat is, though I’ve been hearing it a lot recently.”Her friend and travelling companion, Sharon Rose, 66, was equally bemused: “I’ve been hearing that it’s something cool, but I don’t know why.”After the Guardian gave one explanation of brat as slightly messy, strong, street smart and authentically real, both faces lit up.“Then Kamala is definitely brat,” exclaimed Cleveland. “She’s relatable, people of all races and nationalities can relate to her. It makes sense.”Harold Love, a Democrat who represents Nashville in the Tennessee legislature, told the Guardian he also hadn’t heard of the meme.“I haven’t seen that,” he said on the floor of the Democratic convention Monday evening. “I don’t know what that means.”Raumesh Akbari, the Democratic leader in the Tennessee state senate and a self-described “geriatric millennial”, said she had learned the term recently.“Kamala is brat,” she said. “I’m like, OK, Charli, I get it, I get it. I understand what it means. I need to get a button, I’ve seen them around.”Priya Sundareshan, an Arizona state senator who just turned 40, was wearing lime-green shoes to signify brat.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’m a little too old for that, but I heard about it and that’s why I wear these lime-green shoes, because apparently that is the colour of brat!” she said with a laugh.Asked whether brat signifies that Harris has a strong connection with young voters, Sundareshan replied: “Absolutely. I know we’ve seen that with the gen Z and millennial influencers who have come out in support and are spreading the message. Kamala is definitely #brat and I’m a young cool kid, yeah!”The Guardian attempted to approach Greta Gerwig, the Barbie director, on the convention floor Monday evening to ask her whether Kamala was brat.“No, sorry, she can’t talk,” an assistant said before a Guardian reporter could pose the question.An effort to inquire with Amy Klobuchar, the Democratic senator from Minnesota, was also unsuccessful.“I’m not doing interviews,” Klobuchar said.Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a professor at Syracuse University who has studied social media and presidential campaigns, said that it made sense that some voters may not have heard of the meme. She noted the campaign had visibly embraced the meme on Twitter, but not on other platforms.“That’s strategic on the part of the campaign. They didn’t amplify it across platforms,” she said. “It’s strategic because it only resonates or resonates clearly with a particular demographic, which is meaningful to the Democrats. The Democrats need young voters.“They’re an important voter segment for the Democratic party, but they’re not the base. And so they can’t alienate the base by going too far into this pop culture reference that they don’t get.“Strategically, it is a dance that the campaign has to walk,” she added. “That’s because their voter base doesn’t get Kamala as brat, because for the most part, right, voters tend to be older. And that meme in particular is confusing. Those older voters, like, they’re not listening to Charli xcx’s music.” More

I’m glad Democrats are finally hitting back at Trump. Enough with the “high road”.They’re calling him “weird”.They’re mocking him. “Donald Trump fell asleep at his own trial,” Hillary Clinton sneered at the Democratic convention. “When he woke up, he’d made his own kind of history – the first person to run for president with 34 felony convictions.”Barack Obama noted Trump’s “weird obsession with crowd sizes”.Michelle Obama asked: “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?”Trump hates to be laughed at. He cannot abide ridicule. So, keep it up.But in addition to the mockery, we must not forget Trump’s treachery.The values a president enunciates and demonstrates ricochet through society, strengthening or undermining the common good.George Washington’s biographer, Douglas Southall Freeman, noted that by June 1775, when Congress appointed him to command the nation’s army, Washington had already “become a moral rallying post”.In the 2016 presidential campaign, 240 years later, candidate Donald Trump’s moral squalor was on full display. When accused of failing to pay his income taxes he responded: “That makes me smart.”He thereby signaled to millions of Americans that paying taxes in full is not an obligation of citizenship.Trump also boasted about giving money to politicians so they would do whatever he wanted. “When they call, I give. And you know what, when I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me.”In other words, it’s perfectly OK for business leaders to pay off politicians, regardless of the effect on our democracy.After Trump launched an attack on NFL players who kneeled during the national anthem, Steve Kerr, coach of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, explained that the players were trying to protect a core American value. “They’re protesting excessive police violence and racial inequality,” said Kerr. “Those are really good things to fight against. And they’re doing it in a nonviolent way. Which is everything that Martin Luther King preached, right?”Before Trump, the peaceful transfer of power was assumed to be a central feature of American democracy.As the Harvard political scientist Archon Fung has noted, when losing candidates congratulate winners and deliver gracious concession speeches, they demonstrate their commitment to the democratic system over the result they fought to achieve – an important means of reaffirming the common good.Think of Al Gore’s gracious concession speech to George W Bush in 2000, after five weeks of a bitterly contested election and just one day after the US supreme court ruled in favor of Bush:“I say to President-elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of this country … Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the court’s decision, I accept it … And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.”Consider what might have occurred had Gore bitterly accused Bush of winning fraudulently and blamed the five Republican appointees on the supreme court for siding with Bush for partisan reasons. Or if, during his campaign, Bush had promised to put Gore in jail for various alleged improprieties, and then, after he won, accused Gore of spying on him during the campaign and trying to use the FBI and CIA to bring his downfall.These statements – close to ones Trump actually made – might have imperiled the political stability of the nation.Instead, Gore made the same moral choice his predecessors made at the end of every previous American presidential election, and for the same reason: he understood that the peaceful transition of power confirmed the nation’s commitment to the constitution, which was far more important than his own loss.Trump has had no such qualms. When he lost, he embarked on a coup against the United States and instigated an assault on the US Capitol, resulting in five deaths.At this moment, Trump and his lackeys are installing loyalists in state and county election offices to deny certification to the Harris-Walz ticket and other Democrats down the ballot.The essence of Trump’s failure as president – and the fundamental reason he doesn’t merit a second term – is not that he has behaved in childish and vindictive ways or is “weird”.It is that he sacrificed – and continues to sacrifice – the processes and institutions that undergird America to achieve his own selfish aims.He abused the trust we place in a president to preserve and protect the nation’s capacity for self-government.Trump is a traitor.He and the Republican party – now a personality cult based on Trump’s “big lie” – violate everything America stands for.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

For Sonia Smith Kang, it hasn’t come as a surprise that Kamala Harris’s ethnic background has been challenged by her opponent and other members of the Republican party. “It’s what mixed folks have been dealing with for a long time,” said Smith Kang, who is both Mexican and Black and is married to a Korean man.Since Donald Trump’s false attacks on the racial identity of Kamala Harris at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention last month, he has purposely mispronounced her name, posted a photo of her in a traditional Indian sari and employed supporters to claim that the Democratic presidential candidate is not Black. For mixed-race voters who heard Trump state that Harris “happened to turn Black”, feelings of anger, frustration and annoyance instantly arose.“Everyone thinks we’re in this post-racial time, but Trump proved why classes and courses still need to be taught,” Smith Kang said.When the landmark case Loving v Virginia overturned state laws that restricted interracial marriage in the US in 1967, just 3% of marriages were interracial. By 2019, that number grew to 11%. Today, about one in 10 Americans – 33.8 million people – identify as mixed race.The rapid rise of multiracial people could not only affect the 2024 election, but reshape American electoral politics since mixed-race people tend to be young and the country’s white population is ageing. The Guardian spoke to numerous biracial and multiracial Americans who see their own stories in Harris and believe her mixed heritage gives her a political advantage.Smith Kang, the founder of the multicultural children’s apparel line Mixed Up Clothing and the vice-president of the non-profit advocacy group Multiracial Americans of Southern California is organizing a national call later this month to galvanize the mixed-race community to support Harris. “We’re really excited to mobilize and show up for her,” said the San Fernando Valley resident.View image in fullscreenAfter Barack Obama, Harris is the second-ever presidential nominee of a major political party to identify as biracial or mixed race. The daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, Harris has long embraced her south Asian and Black ethnic background. As her popularity has shot up in recent weeks, the topic of multiracial identity has been thrust into the spotlight.“I had to reread Trump’s quotes and the first things I felt were shock and also anger and defensiveness of Kamala Harris,” said Charlee Thompson, who lives in Seattle and works on clean energy and climate policy. “The fact that mixed identity is in the mainstream media on this political stage is shocking to me.”Thompson, who has a Japanese mother from Hawaii and a Mexican and white father, said multiracial people like herself and Harris were still treated as different or exotic even in 2024. “In the last month, I had three different people in completely different situations ask me or guess what I was,” she said. “I think light needs to be shed on the fact that multiracial people exist and how people respond can be othering or make people feel like they don’t belong in the community they belong to.”Dr Jenn Noble, a psychologist and educator who coaches parents of mixed-race kids, believes something more sinister than ignorance is going on when it comes to Trump questioning Harris’s identity. “He’s doing something a lot of people accuse mixed-race people of, which is being deceitful or somehow playing their background in a way that benefits them or suits them when it fits them,” she said.Los Angeles-based Noble, who is of Black and Sri Lankan heritage, said research shows there are benefits to being mixed race such as cognitive flexibility, which allows for people who are exposed to multiple languages or cultures to switch between groups easily, which could benefit the vice-president during her run. “I think Harris would have quite a bit of the skills to see the needs of varying groups and meet them in a way that works for that group,” she said.View image in fullscreenAfter Trump received widespread criticism for his remarks about Harris, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, defended the former president’s comments, saying Harris was “fundamentally a fake person” and “chameleon-like”. Vance has biracial children with his Indian American wife, Usha. (Vance recently told CNN he believed Harris was “whatever she says she is”.)Academics and mental health professionals have said they worry about the implications of Trump’s comments, as “identity denial” – telling someone they are not what they actually are – is a common stressor for mixed-race Americans. Historically in the US, the one-drop rule asserted that anyone with a Black ancestor was considered Black and even today, multiracial people are often spoken about in fractions rather than using words like “both” or “and”.The 2020 US Census made it easier for multiracial people to identify themselves, which led to an increase in population and a more accurate portrait of a racially diverse country. According to a recent New York Times analysis, the number of Americans who identify as both Black and Asian has tripled over the last 15 years to more than 600,000 – and about 20% of them live in Harris’s home state of California.For David Chetlain, a resident of Newberg, Oregon, who was born to a white American mother and a Black father from Ghana and adopted by a Native American mother and white father, Trump’s recent remarks made him recall the times strangers interrogated his own appearance, making comments such as: “Where did you come from?” and asking his mother: “Did the milkman pay you a visit?”“When people do that it’s to demean you or put you in a box,” said Chetlain, a navy veteran who works in software sales. “People try to make you feel less of an American.” What Chetlain has learned so far about Harris and her late mother, a breast cancer researcher, and father, a prominent economist, impressed him.“They are the American Dream,” said Chetlain of Harris and her immigrant parents. “That’s a true meritocracy. Nobody gave [Harris] $400m to start a career of fraud and tax evasion.” More

As Donald Trump accuses Kamala Harris of waging “war on American energy”, some advocates are pressing the vice-president to embrace a bold climate message at the Democratic national convention this week.Harris will have a major opportunity to lay out her key platform as she accepts the Democratic party’s presidential nomination on Thursday evening. Some are hoping climate features heavily in her speech.“There’s a moment here and we think she’s got to seize it,” said Saul Levin, legislative and political director of the progressive advocacy group Green New Deal Network.Harris’s candidacy has excited much of the climate movement, with scores of green groups, including Levin’s, endorsing her presidential run. At a Wednesday meeting, influential climate hawks such as Ed Markey, the Massachusetts senator; Gina McCarthy, the former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator; and Robert Bullard, the esteemed environmental justice scholar and advocate encouraged climate voters to stand behind Harris.But Harris has yet to release an official plan to take on the climate crisis. Unlike Joe Biden, who placed climate at the heart of his 2020 presidential run, Harris has so far only mentioned the issue in passing on the campaign trail. And though the issue has been woven into Democratic national convention events, it has not yet been a central focus of the convention.“It’s a bit of a bummer that it hasn’t gotten more time,” said Cassidy DiPaola, spokesperson for the Make Polluters Pay Campaign, which focuses on climate accountability.Harris may find it difficult to make bold climate promises amid Trump’s attacks. At a campaign stop in Pennsylvania this week, the former president called Harris a “non-fracker”, though she has distanced herself from past support for a fracking ban, disappointing climate advocates.Trump has also repeatedly claimed Harris wants to ban red meat and “get rid of all cows”. In response, she said she enjoys eating the occasional cheeseburger but added that Americans should be incentivized to eat a lower-carbon, healthier diet.Amid this pressure from the right, some climate advocates have said they will stand behind Harris no matter how much she mentions climate.“Regardless of whether this issue is in the speech or not tomorrow night, we know Vice-President Harris is an environmental champion,” said Michelle Deatrick, who chairs the Democratic National Committee’ Council on the Environment and Climate Crisis. She said Harris’s record speaks for itself.Recent polling from progressive group Data for Progress and environmental organization Climate Power shows that a strong majority of US voters prefer Harris’s approach to climate.It’s an indicator that focusing on climate is “good politics”, said Stevie O’Hanlon, spokesperson for the youth-led environmental justice group the Sunrise Movement.“Climate is one of the issues where voters trust Harris the most over Trump,” she said. “To capitalize on that, she needs to talk about it.”An ‘existential threat’The 2024 Democratic party platform approved on Monday refers to the climate crisis as an “existential threat” and “a consequence of delay and destruction by people like Donald Trump and his friends in Big Oil”.It also includes a commitment to “making polluters pay”. It’s something DiPaola said she was “stoked” to see, though she added that she’d eventually like to see “less vague language about how they’re going to make climate accountability real”.Additionally, the platform underlines the creation of hundreds of thousands of clean-energy jobs and highlights the historic green investments spurred by the 2021 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).But Levin says he hopes Harris lays out plans to go beyond the IRA and increase investments in green jobs, public transit and renewable power. Though the bill constitutes the largest downpayment on climate policy in US history with hundreds of billions of dollars in green funding, experts say that is a fraction of what the US must ultimately spend.“We can’t just say, oh, we did the IRA, so we did climate and now let’s move to another issue,” said Levin. “The IRA made tremendous progress, but it was just a start.”He said some aspects of the platform, including pledges to double funding for public transit and cut down public subsidies for oil companies, inspired hope that a bolder climate platform will emerge.That platform and Harris’ rhetoric, said DiPaola, should lean “populist,” said DiPaola.“Voters are frustrated with corporate power and influence,” she said. “She can ultimately appeal to both climate-motivated voters as well as economically motivated voters … by highlighting the need to clamp down on big oil’s greed.”‘Big oil’s hold on our economy’Though the Democratic party platform rails against “big oil’s hold on our economy”, the Democratic convention itself has not been unfriendly to the industry. The American Petroleum Institute, the country’s largest fossil fuel lobby group, participated in several events this week.Oil major ExxonMobil sponsored two Wednesday panel discussions hosted by Punchbowl News on the sidelines of the convention, one of which featured the firm’s senior director of climate strategy and technology and a representative from gas lobby group the American Gas Association.Activists with environmental non-profits including Friends of the Earth, Oil Change International, and Climate Hawks Vote disrupted the event.“I am here because Exxon lied and people died,” chanted RL Miller, the Climate Hawks Vote founder and a former Democratic National Committee member, before being escorted from the room.Federal data shows Exxon has poured $111,500 into Republican congressional campaign committees. Collin Rees of Oil Change International, who took part in the protest, said if the party is looking to take on big oil, the company “should have no platform at the DNC”.War in GazaGaza solidarity protesters interrupted a meeting of the environment and climate crisis council at the convention on Wednesday, chanting “free, free Palestine”.“If you want to show some political courage, go and interrupt one of Donald Trump’s rallies,” responded Jamie Raskin, the Maryland representative, who had been speaking. “Anybody who interferes with that is objectively helping Donald Trump … so cut it out.”Some climate groups, however, are pushing for the Harris campaign to stop supporting Israel’s deadly war in Gaza by issuing an arms embargo. Among them is the Sunrise Movement.“Young people want a livable world for our generation and generations. We want everyone to have clean air and water and safe homes,” said O’Hanlon. “Everyone must have those rights and freedoms, including Palestinians.” More

Kristine serves gamblers playing countertop video poker screens at the center bar of Las Vegas’s Ellis Island casino. She declines to share her last name for privacy reasons, but is not timid about her support for Donald Trump when asked about his campaign promise to end federal taxation on tips.“I want that!” Kristine says as she fulfills cocktail waitresses’ orders. “Our tip compliance is too high. They take so much from our paycheck.”Tip compliance – the tax process for expected earnings from tips – has become a political football in Nevada, with federal lawmakers from both parties piling in to co-sponsor bills or present their vision for how tax exemption for tips should work.The push for tax relief for a specific sector of wageworker may seem out of the blue if the idea wasn’t so brazenly opportunistic. According to state employment figures, one in four jobs in this crucial swing state are in leisure and hospitality, many if not most of which are tip-earning positions at bars, restaurants, casinos, spas and hotels in Las Vegas and Reno.The frenzy over the issue started in June, during a Trump rally in Las Vegas, where he surprised supporters, press and members of his own party, saying: “Hotel workers and people that get tips, you’re going to be very happy because when I get to office we are going to not charge taxes on tips.”It was a “wild-ass promise”, says Ted Pappageorge, treasurer for the Culinary Union Local 226, which represents 60,000 hospitality workers in Nevada.He points out that during Trump’s four years in office and the four years since, the union’s heard “not a peep out of him” regarding overtaxed wage workers. Indeed, Trump’s signature legislative achievement as president was a tax cut that mainly benefited corporations, real estate developers, and billionaires and millionaires transferring wealth to their scions. “One of the problems is Trump lies, and he lies a lot,” Pappageorge said.But, Pappageorge added, Trump’s comments created an opening. “There’s actually a requirement now to have a discussion and an opportunity for us to wedge into the discussion, to make it real.”The union is now seeking tip compliance relief for their members while also advocating to raise the federal sub-minimum wage, which allows employers in some states to pay tipped earners as little as $2.13 per hour.Trump’s opponents have been listening. In Kamala Harris’s first Las Vegas rally as the presumptive Democratic nominee, she announced that she wouldas also pursue no taxes on tips, delighting rank-and-file Democrats who had become intrigued with the proposal, and irritating Trump supporters who wanted him to have the policy all to himself.“Why is she copying him?” says Kristine, the Ellis Island bartender. She voted for Trump in the last two election cycles and will again this fall. “I believe in women power, but I feel like we need a better president, like a strong personality, a tough one, to put [things] back to normal.”Wistful for the pre-pandemic economy, before food, fuel and housing prices shot up, Kristine says it would be nice if people could afford to enjoy themselves again: “Go on vacation again, because everything we make goes to bills, that’s it, and it’s not enough still. Everything is so expensive and you’re making the same money.”Southern Nevada’s vulnerability to economic slumps has led to two local sayings: the region is “the first to suffer, last to recover” because “when the economy gets sick, Las Vegas catches pneumonia.”The city was hit hard by pandemic-era travel restrictions. Since then, resorts have recovered strongly, reporting record profits from gaming each of the past three years. In resorts and casinos that are unionized (Ellis Island is not), the culinary union leveraged these historic profits to negotiate higher wages for their members.Still, many workers say their tip earnings have remained stagnant.Machines such as the Smarttender beverage-mixer and screen-based ordering systems have depressed tip earnings by dehumanizing the experience and distorting the scale of service, says Sheri Earl, 51, a cocktail waitress at Mandalay Bay. “It looks like a lot of the servers are bringing out so many drinks, but we’re not being tipped on all of those.View image in fullscreen“Also,” Earl adds, “people just aren’t tipping the way that they used to because they don’t have the money. I noticed when I’m serving, more people will give $1 for four drinks, whereas it used to be $1 per drink, so I’m serving more drinks, but bringing back less money.”A lifelong Democrat, Earl’s loyalty to the party had wavered in recent years, and her conversations in the employee break room suggest that many her colleagues will support Trump out of nostalgia for how they thrived before Covid.But Harris’s candidacy has reaffirmed her allegiance to the Democratic ticket, Earl says. “She’s very optimistic about changes that she wants to do as a female president, and a lot of the tax cuts for the working class helps.“Now, I don’t think there will ever be no taxes on tips,” Earl clarified. “I expect to pay it, but not at rates where it’s unrealistic, or I can’t support my family, or I can’t pay my bills at the end of the month.”Others were less inspired.“It’s a ‘so you vote for me’ promise,” says Samantha, a blackjack dealer at Ellis Island. “I don’t think Congress will let it happen. [The candidates] can say it, and they can hope that because they said it, you’re going to vote for them, but it isn’t going to happen.” Shrugging, she says she does not intend to vote. “Unfortunately, I don’t believe that my vote matters.”Democratic presidential candidates have enjoyed a winning streak in Nevada that goes back four cycles from Biden’s narrow 2020 win, to Hillary Clinton’s 2.4% margin over Trump, to Barack Obama’s victories in 2012 and 2008. Survey averages currently show Trump leading Harris by 2 to 3 percentage points.Before Biden dropped out, Trump led by 9 points in Nevada. Harris has rejuvenated Democratic enthusiasm and made strides to corral the unwieldly coalition that defeated Trump four years ago, but Nevada is proving to be a different beast. It’s one of the few swing states in which Trump continues to lead in most major polls. But her canny decision to jump on the no tax bandwagon may help.Badass Tax Guys, a tax preparation company in Henderson, Nevada, has hundreds of tip-earning clients, and many have mentioned to owner Robert Wagner that the proposal, while intriguing, seems too good to be true.“‘We see all the upside, and we love keeping our money, but what’s the catch potentially?’ is what I’m hearing right now,” he paraphrases while warning that it would be exploited if not written carefully to solely target those who need relief.“I would put a tip jar on my desk, you know what I mean?” Wagner quips. “I’ll charge lower fees and you can throw the difference in the tip jar. All of a sudden, my income is to going to go down quite a bit. I generally like the idea overall, but if you’re going to do that there needs to be a way to stop Wall Street from taking advantage of it.” More

A couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump decided it would be fun to accuse the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, of using AI in images showing a large crowd greeting her at an airport. “Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport?” Trump furiously thumbed into his phone. “There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘AI’d it […] She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!”Just as some animals are more equal than others, some politicians are more honest. So this week, when the former president himself posted an obviously AI-generated image of what looks like the back of Harris’s head in front of an enormous communist crowd with a huge hammer and sickle unfurled above them, he presumably did not consider it election interference. Trump has also recently shared AI-generated images of himself, Elon Musk and Taylor Swift.These images are concerning – especially given most image generators have put up guardrails against making content of real people. But it seems that Trump isn’t trying to pass the images off as real: I think this is him trying to be funny.Over on the Trump campaign team, someone has learned how to work an AI-image generator and has become a little prompt-happy. A weird video of Trump and Elon Musk dancing together isn’t exactly an example of the kind of election-manipulating deepfake media that many disinformation commentators are worried about. It is an example of a candidate desperately trying to remain on your algorithm. AI generation just requires a few prompts and maybe a paid subscription to a generator. It’s a lot cheaper, and quicker, than hiring creatives who need to spend time ideating and creating before something is ready to publish.AI-generated images and deepfakes are the poor man’s meme. Actual successful memes – a humorous piece of content designed to be spread online – are crafted by individuals who have adopted the language and culture of the internet, and know how to inject zeitgeisty topics into social posts designed to resonate and go viral. The combination of text with images or video is a subtle art, and it is one that Harris’s campaign team practises well. Everyone online knows about the coconut tree, and the chronically online will know about the Charli xcx accolade that “Kamala IS brat”.By contrast, the AI posts Trump has shared are not high internet humour; they’re cheap algo-fodder. A trick he is also trialling is combining AI images with real ones in an attempt to lend them some veracity, or perhaps just to sharpen the comedy potential. In his post where he states “I accept!” alongside images suggesting Swifties are “turning to Trump”, he has combined a real photograph of a woman wearing a “Swifties for Trump” T-shirt with a satirical AI compilation of fans wearing T-shirts with the same slogan and an AI-generated image of Swift as Uncle Sam, captioned “Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump”. It’s the kind of content your family’s errant uncle might forward to you, that he in turn got from his mate, because they haven’t got anything better to do.Trump doesn’t expect or need Swift’s endorsement, and so the humour is in the incredulousness of it. Posts like this aren’t about genuinely persuading audiences that Swift supports him; it’s about ensuring the intravenous drip of content into his supporters’ Facebook groups and WhatsApp conversations never runs dry. Trump has also always been a wind-up merchant. He knows Swift fans would react angrily to his post. He also knows that such rage-baiting will amplify his content on Truth Social’s and X’s algorithms – and garner coverage in the mainstream media. When people wag their fingers at him for posting content like this, some see it as righteously battling misinformation, but to his fans it looks like not getting the joke. (Of course, it is easier to understand jokes when they have at least one measly crumb of decent comedy to them.)The idea that Harris is a communist, that Trump and Musk are dancing pals, and that even Swifties can’t escape Trump fandom aligns with the narrative of popularity, relatable light-heartedness and prestige that Trump likes to court. Narrative is far more important than truth, particularly in the US, where political ideology is so powerful it was one of the most significant factors determining whether somebody would take the Covid-19 vaccine or not. Trump’s AI posts are best understood not as outright misinformation – intended to be taken at face value – but as part of the same intoxicating mix of real and false information that has always characterised his rhetoric. Trump isn’t interested in telling the truth; he’s interested in telling his truth – as are his fiercest supporters. In his world, AI is just another tool to do this. Whether he is willing to accept the reality that he can’t make a joke, or take one, is another story.

Sophia Smith Galer is a journalist, content creator and the author of Losing It More