Philippa Kaur

I’m standing in a basement kitchen prodding at a sheep’s liver, looking for marks on its smooth surface. People crowd around to film the proceedings, since I’m here to ask a question that everyone wants to know the answer to: will Donald Trump win the US election?

I’m following instructions that were first written down by the ancient Babylonians 4,000 years ago, and still survive today. Every crease on the liver has a meaning, and cuneiform tablets discovered in modern-day Iraq explain how to interpret them.

Armed with this knowledge, it’s possible to calculate the answer to any question, so long as it is yes or no, by adding up the number of positive or negative signs and seeing which comes out on top.

Since this liver had an overwhelming number of bad omens in it, I concluded that it declared no for Trump this time. Though in 2016 this method predicted a win well before he had won the Republican nomination, and in 2020 foretold that he would not be reelected that year.

Will Trump win the US election?

What started as an entertaining talk for a university open day has since become a serious part of my research – not because I sincerely believe in it, but because it gives us some of the earliest evidence in history for how human beings reason and think.

Looking at livers also makes a serious underlying point about how humans have coped with uncertainty throughout history, and still struggle to today. People have developed techniques as varied as astrology, tarot cards and even peering into entrails in response to the agony of not knowing, or the strain of trying to make a difficult decision.

Given the level of feeling invested in this election, it’s a unique moment where perhaps we can appreciate that, in this respect, we are not so different from those who lived thousands of years ago, even if our methods of looking into the future are different.

Asking the entrails

Developed in its classic form in Babylon, entrail divination was practised throughout ancient Mesopotamia, the written history of which spans from the 3rd millennium BC to the 1st century AD.

It was enormously important in all sections of society – a standard part of political decision-making at the royal court, but accessible to all. Budget options were even available for those who could not afford a sheep.

People addressed their questions directly to the gods and believed that at the moment of asking, the answer would be written on the entrails. This could then be “read” by a diviner trained in this esoteric language.

A map of Mesopotamia, a historical region in modern-day Iraq.
aipsidtr / Shutterstock

Sitting in the British Museum is an archive of real questions that were asked by the king of Assyria (a kingdom in northern Mesopotamia) in the 7th century BC. All kinds of affairs of state were put before the gods. Are the Egyptians going to attack? Has the enemy taken the town under siege? And will the governors return home safely?

Reading the archive, you get a real sense of nerves on a knife-edge as the king waited for news from far away, wanting to know what had happened to his troops and trying to decide what to do next.

Not only did he ask them about what would happen in the future, but he also consulted them on possible courses of action. Should the Assyrian army go to war? Should the king send a messenger to make peace? Asking the opinion of the gods would have helped him feel more confident in his next steps.

The Babylonians did not have elections. But that did not mean the king could do whatever he wanted. It was important for his public image to have the gods onside, as well as for his own reassurance.

Whenever a powerful official was appointed, the entrails would be read to ensure the gods approved. The head of the army, high priests and other important positions were all subject to this requirement. On one occasion, even the choice of crown prince – and hence the future king of Assyria – was put to this test.

Interpreting the entrails was held to almost scientific standards of exactitude. Diviners worked in pairs or groups of up to 11, checking each other’s work to make sure they got it right. This was not a vague or woolly process, but a real attempt to ensure “accuracy” that could not be manipulated to simply come up with the answer that the king wanted to hear.

Modern forecasting

We all want to know what the future has in store, and have come up with ingenious ways of trying to find out, from opinion polls and data modelling to Paul the octopus, who developed a reputation for picking the winners of football matches during the 2010 World Cup. But are our methods really any better than looking inside a sheep?

As all investors are warned, past performance does not guarantee future results. Yet the only data we have to inform our predictions comes from the past, and most of our models can’t take into account “unknown unknowns”.

As many experts have found, predicting the future is a difficult business: opinion polls can lie and people change their minds, while economists have often been blindsided by a sudden crash.

Read more:
Harris nudges ahead of Trump in the polls – but could the economy prove her downfall?

A Babylonian clay liver used for divination in Mesopotamia from 2050–1750 BC.
Science Museum Group Collection, CC BY-NC-ND

Since liver divination only answers “yes” or “no”, it is going to be right 50% of the time just through the law of averages. Despite its randomness, its success rate may well have seemed convincing at the time.

And when we trust the authority of the source, it’s easy to find a way to explain away a wrong result – the prediction got halfway there, answered a different question, or would have been right if x hadn’t happened.

We shouldn’t be blind to the weaknesses of our own methods. We are often wrong, and the Babylonians could sometimes be right. More

Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Gardens in New York City on Sunday, October 27 was called a “carnival of grievances, misogyny and racism” by the New York Times. The event, which came just over a week before the election, was a hostile and partisan affair. Trump doubled down on his assertion that one of America’s gravest threats is from “the enemy within”.

Trump’s rhetoric is a manifestation of the increasingly polarised nature of US politics, whereby hostility from one group towards their perceived enemies is amplified across social media platforms. Yet Trump’s comment about an insidious “threat” hints at a darker undercurrent of division, with the threat of violence.

A June 2024 poll by the University of Chicago suggested that there was more support for violence against Trump than in his favour – 10% of respondents agreed that “the use of force is justified to prevent Trump becoming president”, compared to 6.9% who believed violence was justified “to restore Trump to the presidency”. Two months earlier, a Marist poll revealed that 47% of Americans believed that another civil war was likely in their lifetime.

As a report from Chatham House recently observed, the US is more divided “along ideological and political lines than at any time since the 1850s”. And according to another report from UK-based think tank, the Foreign Policy Centre, Americans have “increasingly grown to hate supporters of the other party, viewing their capture of political power as not merely unfortunate but illegitimate”.

Americans have regularly articulated a preference for living among people who share their political outlook. And they have expressed a stronger aversion to dating, living, working or socialising with supporters of another party. These views point to a state suffering the ills of sectarianism.

Those who have observed sectarianism around the world know all too well the chaos that such divisions can wreak. In the Middle East, for example, politically charged religious difference has had a devastating impact on political, economic and social life. Hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions displaced from their homes across Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Libya because of violence along sect-based lines.

Trump speaking at a campaign rally in New York’s Madison Square Gardens that was marked by racist comments, coarse insults and threats about immigrants.
Sarah Yenesel / EPA

The US may be a long way from these scenarios, but there are some early warning signs. Competing forms of what American social theorist Irving Howe calls “epistemological authoritarianism” – or a sense of certainty that is zero-sum and rejects those of the other – can be easily seen across America’s political landscape.

Protests and counter-protests have played out both on the streets and online over abortion, gun laws and LGBTQ+ rights, as well as on university campuses over the war in Gaza. Elite entrepreneurs with political capital have also positioned themselves on opposite sides of sensitive issues to cultivate support.

Take, for example, Donald Trump’s false allegations that Democratic states executed babies after birth, or that migrants in Springfield, Ohio, have been eating pets. Such comments quickly spread across social media, regardless of their veracity. For Trump’s followers, truth matters less than the ability to justify their position on a particular issue. The stance taken by political communities is increasingly polemic and predictable.

Such dynamics are, of course, also shaped by local contexts. But the growing politicisation of social identities in recent years, and the increasing political importance of social issues, has created a landscape where difference is broadly antagonistic.

In this situation, grievance becomes a means of reinforcing in-group cohesion and disdain for the other. In such a landscape, society becomes divided into mutually distrustful camps set apart by a form of emotional polarisation that takes on political meaning.

It is the emotional dimension that is key here, as this is the foundation upon which political and social enmity is built. Supreme Court decisions, for example, relating to emotionally charged issues such as abortion, have strong mobilising potential on both left and right.

Entrenched differences

Elections often exacerbate uncertainty and division, as the 2020 US presidential election and its fallout demonstrate. According to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (Acled), a research group that analyses occurrences of political violence around the world, demonstrations and far-right activity peaked around the 2020 election. This reached a crescendo with the events of January 6 2021 when Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol building.

Far-right activity has dropped during Biden’s administration. But a number of far-right groups have recently become active in the run-up to the election. Meanwhile, divisions over abortion, LGBTQ+ mobilisation, and the war in Gaza have contributed to a precarious environment.

Indeed, a vast majority do not think that next week’s election will solve the issues that America faces. In a recent poll, 70% of respondents believe that things in the US are going “in the wrong direction” – a view shared more by Republican respondents (94%) than Democrat respondents (41%). And 19% of Republicans think that if Trump loses the election, he should declare the results invalid and do whatever it takes to assume office.

Pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in Washington DC on January 6 2021.
lev radin / Shutterstock

The schisms across the US are real and the pieces are not easily put back together. Narratives of division will continue to spread as election fever increases, further deepening the rifts in American society. And sectarianism will become the broad frame through which political and social life is viewed.

This need not necessarily become violent. But it can easily become entrenched. The increasingly hostile exclusion of “the other” in all its forms, along with a growing willingness to breach established norms and rules, requires a step back from the brink before it is too late. More

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has repeatedly denounced immigrants who enter the U.S. illegally and the danger he says that poor immigrants of color pose for the U.S. – often using hateful language to make his point.

In early October 2024, Trump took his comments a step further when he questioned immigrants’ faulty genes, saying without support that “Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they are now happily living in the United States. You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”

It was far from the first time Trump has invoked eugenics – a false, racist theory that some people, and even some races, are genetically superior to others.

In 1988, for example, Trump told Oprah Winfrey during an interview: “You have to be born lucky in the sense that you have to have the right genes.”

In 2016, Trump said that his German roots are the reason behind his greatness:

“I always said that winning is somewhat, maybe, innate. Maybe it’s just something you have; you have the winning gene. Frankly it would be wonderful if you could develop it, but I’m not so sure you can. You know, I’m proud to have that German blood, there’s no question about it. Great stuff.”

And in 2020, Trump again alluded to his belief that bloodlines convey excellence:

“I had an uncle who went to MIT who is a top professor. Dr. John Trump. A genius. It’s in my blood. I’m smart.”

Trump’s repeated and countless comments about white people’s racial superiority to people of color have prompted some comparisons to the Nazis and their ideology of racial superiority.

The Nazis are indeed the most infamous believers of the false idea that white, blue-eyed, blonde-haired people were superior to others – and that the human population should be selectively managed to breed white people.

But the Nazis didn’t originate these ideas. In fact, the Nazis were so impressed with many American eugenic ideas that they incorporated them into their racist, antisemitic laws.

Root of eugenics

The British scientist Francis Galton, a cousin of the evolutionist Charles Darwin, first developed the theory of eugenics in the 1860s, and it gained a foothold in the U.S. and Britain around this time.

Eugenics sets racial identity, and especially white identity, as the most desirable and worthy.

By the dawn of the early 1900s, much of the American eugenics scholarship looked down on American immigrants from any place other than Scandinavia, thus coining the term “Nordicism.”

In the late 19th and early 20th century, immigration to the U.S. was at its peak. In 1890, 14.8% of people living in the U.S. were immigrants. Many people felt concerned about immigration in the U.S., and there were many prominent eugenicists in America. Two of the most famous were Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard.

Both were avowed white supremacists who advocated for scientific racism. They wrote popular and widely read books that helped shape American and German law in the 1920s and 1930s.

Grant, Stoddard and other theorists in the U.S. embraced eugenics as a way to justify racial segregation, restrict immigration, enforce sterilization and uphold other systemic inequalities.

Stoddard attacked the United States’ immigration policies in his 1920 book, “The Rising Tide of Color: The Threat Against White World-Supremacy.” He wrote: “If the present drift is not changed, we whites are all ultimately doomed. … We now know that men are not, and never will be equal. We now know that environment and education can only develop what heredity brings.”

Another prominent eugenicist was Harry H. Laughlin, an educator and superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office, a now-defunct research group that gathered biological and social information about the American population.

Laughlin wrote an influential 1922 book, “Eugenical Sterilization in the United States,” which included a chapter on model sterilization laws. The Third Reich used his book and laws as a template when implementing them in Germany during the height of the Nazi period.

Laughlin also regularly testified before U.S. Congress, with this 1922 testimony representative of his message to lawmakers: “Immigration is essentially and fundamentally a racial and biological problem. There are many factors to consider, but, from the standpoint of the future, immigration is primarily a long time national investment in human family stocks.”

Eugenicists, including Laughlin, have long been specifically preoccupied with Norwegian genetics – believing that America is under attack when immigration occurs from non-Nordic countries.

In November 1922, Laughlin said, “Some of our finest and most desirable immigrants are from Norway.”

In 1924, Congress approved the Immigration Act, which severely limited immigration to the U.S., established quotas for immigrants based on nationality and barred immigrants from Asia.

It was only following the end of World War II and the Holocaust that eugenics fell out of favor and lost its prominence in American thinking.

Trump’s recycling of history

Fears over foreign immigrants weakening the U.S. were popular a century ago, and Trump and many of his followers still embrace them today.

Trump has promised that he will carry out mass deportations of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, forcibly detaining immigrants in camps and removing 1 million people a year.

In April 2024, Trump used dehumanizing language to express his apparent belief that immigrants are unworthy of empathy. “The Democrats say, ‘Please don’t call them animals. They’re humans.’ I said, ‘No, they’re not humans, they’re not humans, they’re animals.’”

Trump has also promoted eugenicists’ obsession with Scandinavia and the superiority of white people.

In 2018, Trump spoke about immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and Africa, saying “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”

In the same meeting, Trump also reportedly suggested that the U.S. should instead draw in more people from countries like Norway.

In April 2024, Trump again embraced this idea of Scandinavian superiority, saying that he wants immigrants from “Nice countries. You know, like Denmark, Switzerland? Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?”

A dangerous flash to the past

A person running for president in 1924 would seem more likely than a candidate in 2024 to espouse this now-discredited point of view.

President Calvin Coolidge ran for election on an “America First” platform in 1924, with the slogan only falling out of favor after groups like the Ku Klux Klan embraced it around the same time.

The idea of America First, at the time, denoted American nationalism and exceptionalism – but also was linked to anti-immigration and fascist movements.

When Coolidge signed the heavily restrictive 1924 Immigration Act into law he stated, “America must remain American.”

One hundred years later, Trump calls to mind an America First mentality, including when he regularly reads the lyrics to a song called “The Snake” during his rallies as a way to explain the dangers of welcoming immigrants into the U.S. The civil rights activist Oscar Brown wrote this poem in 1963, and his family has said that Trump misinterprets the song’s words.

‘I saved you,’ cried that woman.

‘And you’ve bit me even, why’

‘You know your bite is poisonous and now I’m going to die.’

‘Oh shut up, silly woman,’ said the reptile with a grin,

‘You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.’ More

Jezebel has long been used as a slur against women who are considered too self-confident, too independent or too close to power – particularly when they happen to be Black. From Beyonce to Nikki Minaj, US vice-president and Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris is only the latest in a long line of women of colour to be on the receiving end of the slur.

But beneath the use of Jezebel’s name as a way to paint powerful women as promiscuous lies something even more sinister: the threat of sexual violence for those who will not submit to white patriarchal control.

An increasing number of Christian nationalist personalities have taken to claiming that the vice-president is a Jezebel spirit. Notably, televangelist Lance Wallnau appears in multiple videos on X (formerly Twitter) claiming that: “with Kamala you have a Jezebel spirit, a characteristic in the Bible, that is a Jezebel spirit. The personification of intimidation, seduction, domination and manipulation”.

Nor is Wallnau shy about connecting his use of Jezebel to Harris’s race: according to his video, the fact that Harris is Black makes her even more of a seductive Jezebel than Hillary Clinton: “the spirit of Jezebel in a way that will be even more ominous than Hillary [Clinton] because she’ll bring a racial component, and she’s younger”.

Jezebels old and new

Different versions of Jezebel are found in the Old and New Testaments, but both are associated with power, independence and sexuality. In 1 Kings, Jezebel is a queen from Sidon (present-day Lebanon). She ruled along with her husband Ahab and refuses to worship the biblical God; she continued her traditional worship of Ba’al.

Her authority in her marriage and in politics attracted the prophet Elijah’s negative attention. Elijah utters a prophecy that: “The dogs shall eat Jezebel” (1 Kings 21:23), and indeed, 2 Kings 9:32-37 says that the prophecy is fulfilled.

Knowing her life is in danger, Jezebel puts on her make up and does her hair to prepare to meet her enemy.

Death of Jezebel. Engraving by Gustav Doré (1832-1883)

As religious studies academic Jennifer L. Koosed writes, while her self-beautification is used to sexualise Jezebel, “these acts are those of a proud and powerful queen” who boldly meets the man who is about to have her thrown from a window. Jezebel’s bloodied body is trampled by horses and her corpse utterly destroyed.

Her violent death and the desecration of her body, which is consumed by dogs, dehumanises Jezebel. The Bible presents this as apt punishment for a woman who was so bold as to defy her husband’s traditions and maintain her independence.

When we meet another Jezebel in the New Testament, the process begins again. In Revelation 2, Jezebel is a prophet, a rival of John the Seer, who travels to different early Christian communities and teaches them. John, the author of the Book of Revelation, imagines Jesus writing to the community who allow themselves to be taught by her. In that letter, the voice of Jesus declares that the punishment for this woman, who dares to be a leader, is rape. John uses vitriolic language to paint Jezebel as sexually immoral, but his complaint is with her authority.

Long and damaging history

The Bible frequently paints female characters as unacceptably sexual, or threatens them with sexual violence, in order to maintain its patriarchal hierarchy.

Definition of the word Jezebel in a religious dictionary.
Shutterstock

For example, as biblical scholars such as Renita J. Weems have pointed out, Hosea 1-3 uses the metaphor of God as (abusive) husband and the people of Israel as their (abused) adulterous wife in order to convince the Israelites to worship God again.

The infamous figure of the “Whore of Babylon” in Revelation 17-18 echoes that divine threat: her control over the kings of the world, her opulence and her sexuality all make her God’s enemy – and her punishment is sexual humiliation and violence.

Kamala Harris has been labelled Jezebel since at least as early as 2021 when pastor Steve Swofford as “Jezebel Harris” and pastor Tom Buck tweeted: “I can’t imagine any truly God-fearing Israelite who would’ve wanted their daughters to view Jezebel as an inspirational role model because she was a woman in power.”

Buck doubled down on his comments the next day, saying, “For those torn up over my tweet, I stand by it 100%. My problem is her godless character. She not only is the most radical pro-abortion VP ever, but also most radical LGBT advocate. She performed one of the first Lesbian ‘marriages.’ Pray for her, but don’t praise her!”

Understood in the context of the attack on women’s rights by Christian nationalists and their allies, giving Harris the name Jezebel connects the biblical threats with the move to criminalise abortion access and even divorce – to take power away from women and restore it to the patriarchal Christian structure.

While Jezebel is a clearly misogynist term, it has long been used in particular to dehumanise Black women. Racist stereotypes about Black women as hypersexual Jezebels were used by slavers to justify their rape of enslaved women. Even after the end of slavery, this use of the name persisted, as did the racist stereotype about Black women’s sexual availability to justify sexual violence. And Black women continue to experience sexual harassment and abuse at much higher levels than white women.

So, when Christian nationalists urge their followers to “confront this Jezebel spirit” we can’t forget that confronting Jezebel is violent – in the Bible confronting Jezebel means her death or her rape. These veiled threats should not be taken lightly.

Femicide is an ongoing crisis. A woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK and three women are killed by men every day in North America. Sexual violence against women is also rampant and is a weapon in the patriarchal arsenal for subduing independent women.

Calling a powerful woman like Harris a Jezebel, then, isn’t just an offensive slur – it carries with it the persistent threat of racist violence and sexual assault. More

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Republican contender Donald Trump could not be more different – and this split between them extends far beyond politics and into their fashion choices.

While Harris tends to wear form-fitting pantsuits and feminine tops, Trump opts for ill-fitting, boxy, navy suits and long red ties.

All American politicians often wear American flag pins on their lapels, as well as red, white and blue clothing. But my research shows how fashion plays an important, symbolic role in politics that goes far beyond patriotism. A person’s appearance reflects their identity and how they want others to perceive them.

It makes sense that political campaigns often work with professional stylists to dress and style their top candidates, as a way to define and reflect politicians’ different personalities, identities and policy positions.

Kamala Harris arrives to speak at the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 22, 2024, wearing a dark blue pantsuit.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

Harris’ professional, feminine look

Harris typically wears an updated version of Hillary Clinton’s famous power pantsuits.

While Clinton’s pantsuits during the 2016 presidential campaign had rigid silhouettes that did not show the shape of her body, Harris’ pantsuits are more relaxed and less formal.

As a senator, Harris, alongside other Democratic female politicians, wore a white pantsuit to commemorate and celebrate the suffragettes.

Harris now typically wears dark, bold hues, almost monochromatic ensembles, with either dark high heels or sneakers.

At the Democratic National Convention in August 2024, Harris accepted the presidential nomination wearing a perhaps unsurprising navy blue pantsuit with the standard politician’s American flag pin on the lapel. She topped off the look with medium-heel dress shoes and a dark blue pussycat bow blouse, sometimes also called a lavallière. The pussycat bow blouse, which was popularized in the 1970s among professional women, is a feminine version of a traditional tie.

This type of tie has a soft, floppy bow at the neck that can be tied in numerous ways.

Harris’ decision to regularly wear pussycat bow blouses shows that she has a feminine flair, and it’s also a nod to past feminist icons who wore that type of bow.

When Harris wears sneakers – which are often Chuck Taylors – with a pantsuit, it reminds me of how the actress Helen Hunt’s character wore practical commuter sneakers with business clothing in the 1990s and 2000s “Mad About You” TV series.

The unlikely combination of a pantsuit with sneakers shows that Harris is a busy, professional woman – who is also youthful, energetic and relatable to other women.

Walz’s American dad style

Tim Walz speaks at a campaign rally in Volant, Pa., on Oct. 15, 2024, wearing one of his signature flannel shirts.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, has also received public attention for his clothing choices.

At the Democratic National Convention in August, former President Barack Obama remarked about Walz regularly wearing plaid, flannel shirts. “You can tell those flannel shirts he wears don’t come from some political consultant. They come from his closet, and they have been through some stuff,” Obama said.

Walz’s typical outfits, including plaid shirts, jeans and a well-worn suit with the shirt collar unbuttoned and no tie, signals that he is authentic and relatable to the average American.

This unofficial uniform also helps cement the public perception of Walz as an archetypal American coach and dad.

The Harris-Walz campaign has capitalized on Walz’s image by selling merchandise that seems like something out of his closet.

The campaign’s camouflage hat, which spells out “HARRIS WALZ” in a bold, orange font, has become an extremely popular item – selling out and resulting in the manufacturer scrambling to find materials and sewing machines to make more hats.

Donald Trump and JD Vance attend a 9/11 remembrance ceremony at the World Trade Center at Ground Zero in New York City on Sept. 11, 2024.
Adam Gray/AFP via Getty Images

Vance’s and Trump’s aesthetics

Republican politicians also show who they are, or who they want to be, through their fashion choices. Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, for example, has noticeably changed his appearance from when he first became involved in politics a few years ago to when he became a senator in 2023.

In 2017, Vance often wore jeans, a button-down, open-collar shirt and an unbuttoned blazer during his book tour. When he was elected as a senator in 2023, he began wearing suits and ties.

More recently, Vance began dressing in the unofficial Make America Great Again uniform, consisting of a tailored dark blue suit, red tie and white shirt with dark shoes. With this outfit choice, Vance is wrapping himself in red, white and blue, referencing the American flag and signaling his patriotism.

Trump wears a nearly identical political uniform that has become instantly recognizable and closely associated with conservative politicians.

When Trump selected Vance as his running mate in July 2024, Vance also dyed his gray hair to brown to possibly appear more youthful. Perhaps it became more important for Vance to appear younger after 81-year-old President Joe Biden stepped down from the Democratic ticket and 60-year-old Harris became the presidential candidate.

Beyond the campaign, in February 2024, Trump released 1,000 pairs of limited edition high-top sneakers called “Never Surrender.” These shoes, which quickly sold out, were covered in gaudy, gold lamé and had an American flag printed around the collar of the sneakers.

I recently found several examples of pairs of Trump sneakers for sale on eBay and other online shops for thousands of dollars.

People at a Trump rally in Las Vegas hold a pair of his gold sneakers on Sept. 13, 2024.
Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

Fashion on both sides

Harris’ monochromatic blouses and pantsuit with sneakers combination, alongside Walz’s Midwestern dad outfits, will likely help the campaign’s effort for its candidates to appear as relatable to many working class voters and women.

Likewise, Trump’s classic MAGA red hat and tie, in addition to Vance’s similar uniform of navy blue suit, white button-down shirt and red tie, evoke their focus on masculine conservatism.

The candidates’ styles don’t tell voters any details about campaign promises or political policies, but they do give an idea of who the candidates think they are. More

The Apprentice – a new film dramatising Donald Trump’s business career during the 1970s and 80s – is the latest in a presidential election full of controversy.

The movie charts Trump’s (Sebastian Stan) professional rise from an awkward nobody to hotshot real-estate tycoon. Trump’s Pygmalion-like transformation is credited to his friendship with Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). Cohn was an infamous prosecutor who worked with Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Communist and Lavender (homosexual) scares, and as a political fixer for Richard Nixon.

The key storyline is that Trump becomes Cohn’s apprentice, learning underhanded ways of business and Machiavellian deal-making. Other figures said to have influenced Trump’s career, such as political adviser Roger Stone, get only cameos at best.

Trump does not look good. He is portrayed as vain, using amphetamines as diet pills and getting plastic surgery including liposuction and a scalp reduction. Trump rejects his alcoholic brother and later Cohn, who dies from AIDS in social disgrace.

Trump is also shown to rape his then-wife, Ivana (Maria Bakalova) – a scene which made headlines after the movie’s Cannes Film Festival premiere earlier this year. The rape claim was made during the couple’s divorce proceedings, although Ivana said afterwards that she did not consider the incident “rape” in a criminal sense.

Director Ali Abbasi says this depiction isn’t a take-down of the former president but a more nuanced exploration of Trump’s character. Indeed, there is sympathy for Trump – for example, by detailing the emotional pressure from his father.

The film explores how this experience fuelled Trump’s obsession with winning, which is cultivated by Cohn and his three rules of success: “attack, attack, attack”, “deny everything” and “never admit defeat”. The film seeks to get inside Trump’s mindset, not only as a businessperson, but unpicking what drove him in the White House, as well as the election he’s now fighting.

Some have criticised this approach for being too soft on Trump. A review in The Guardian called the film “obtuse and irrelevant”. A further concern is that presenting Trump as a “winner” could actually be seen to legitimise amoral business practices as successful, especially given that Trump’s later six bankruptcies are not clearly mentioned.

The Apprentice is also a deeper commentary on America. Another character comments that Cohn’s three rules also describe US foreign policy. The film raises big questions about the US, not least where Cohn repeatedly highlights what he identifies as the country’s virtues, and justifies his (sometimes illegal) actions as upholding these. The audience is left to consider what shapes America and its foreign policy – and what may be toxic about this.

Will the film influence the upcoming election?

The Apprentice’s screenwriter, Gabriel Sherman, insists the movie is not designed “to influence people’s minds”. Yet the film’s release so close to the polls means it is inevitably political.

The Apprentice is unlikely to radically shift the electoral needle. Trump’s negative portrayal may make some voters on the fence question his suitability for high office. But beyond this, the film will reinforce what people already thought.

Pro-Trumpers won’t like the movie, but this upset will likely just give oxygen to their support. Those against Trump will also be able to feel their opinion has been affirmed, even by those who would have wanted the film to take a harder line. Although it’s perhaps uncertain whether anyone who dislikes Trump will want to spend two hours watching even more of him than they already have in this election.

Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn and Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump.
Everett Collection Inc/Alamy Stock Photo

While the film likely won’t influence the final outcome, it is still a major marker in this election thanks to the huge controversy around it. Concern over its divisive portrait of Trump meant the movie took five years to reach production. Clint Eastwood turned down the option to direct due to the perceived business risk involved. Distribution also took time to secure – a situation Abbasi describes as a “boycott or censorship”.

Distribution problems were also exacerbated by legal threats. After Cannes (where the film received an eight-minute ovation), Trump’s legal team issued a cease-and-desist letter. Communications Director for the Trump election campaign, Steven Cheung, said the film was “garbage” and “pure fiction”, constituting election interference.

Strong resistance also came from billionaire and close Trump associate, Dan Snyder, who was involved in the film’s financing, thinking it would paint a positive picture of the presidential hopeful. Snyder later sought to block the film’s release after seeing a preview.

Controversy has only raised the movie’s profile. And while people will watch it for very different political reasons, some will buy a ticket purely because this film is now a standout event in one of the most contentious US elections in history.

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Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance infamously said in 2021 that the Democratic Party is run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they’ve made” – and do not have a “direct stake” in the future of the United States.

Three years later, after Vance’s selection as Trump’s vice presidential pick, these comments resurfaced and quickly became a cultural touchstone.

In July 2024, Vance clarified his controversial comments, saying that what he meant was that the Democratic Party has become anti-family and anti-child.

At a September 2024 campaign event alongside Donald Trump, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders echoed Vance’s sentiments about Democrats being anti-family. “My kids keep me humble. Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble,” she said.

The single cat lady theme was amplified further when singer Taylor Swift used it to sign off on her Instagram endorsement of Harris.

While the cat lady framing is new, politicians making parenthood and family a centerpiece in their appeals to the American public has a long history.

As we show in our 2012 book, “The Politics of Parenthood,” and subsequent research, politicians have been using messages about parenthood as a way to appeal to voters since the 1980s.

Content analysis of party platforms and speeches by presidential candidates reveals that both parties have devoted more and more time and space to making the case that they are the true pro-family party. Republicans argue that lower taxes and smaller government strengthen American families, while Democrats argue that strengthening social welfare programs represents the best way to support families.

Despite the parties’ contrasting pro-family messages and the image conjured by Vance’s childless cat lady comments, Republicans and Democrats are not really that different when it comes to their actual experiences having and raising children.

Our analysis shows that the age at which Americans have children, how many children they have and whether parents work outside the home are surprisingly similar across partisan lines.

A woman attends a CatCon event in Pasadena, Calif., in August 2024 and wears a ‘Childless cat ladies for Kamala’ shirt.
Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Democrats and Republicans find parenting rewarding

To explore whether there are differences between Republicans and Democrats in terms of their families, we analyzed data from the 2022 General Social Survey, which had 4,149 respondents. GSS is a nationally representative and well recognized survey of American adults that has been conducted since 1972. We also analyzed data from a 2022 Pew survey of 3,757 mothers and fathers focused on parenting in America.

This data shows that both Republicans and Democrats deeply value their roles as parents. In the Pew survey, 87% of parents said that their role as a parent is the most important or one of the most important aspects of their identity. Our analysis shows this is true for parents in both parties – 86% of Democrats and 88% of Republicans said they value their role as parents as the most or one of the most important aspects of their identity.

Similarly, our analysis of the Pew data reveals that Democrats and Republicans both enjoy being parents – 84% of Republicans say they find parenting enjoyable most or all of the time, compared with 81% of Democrats.

That said, contemporary parenting is also challenging.

The 2022 Pew survey showed that 29% of parents describe raising children as stressful most or all of the time. And 42% of parents report that raising children is tiring all or most of the time. Our analysis shows that this is equally true for Republicans and Democrats.

Indeed, the stresses of modern parenthood led the U.S. surgeon general in August 2024 to issue a public health advisory about parents’ declining mental well-being.

One of the reasons for this stress is that most parents today are balancing parenthood with work. The Republican Party has long embraced “traditional marriage,” meaning a marriage between a man and a woman, where the mother stays home to raise the children. Yet the reality is that most moms have jobs outside the home. In our analysis of the 2022 Pew data, we find that about the same portion of Republican moms – 67% – work outside the home as Democratic moms, who totaled 69%.

Both Republican and Democratic moms do more parenting

Another way that the experience of parenthood is similar across partisan lines is that moms spend more time parenting than dads. Pew asked parents with partners and spouses about the division of labor around a variety of child care tasks in 2022.

In our analysis of the full set of this data, which Pew provided us, we found that 77% of Democratic mothers and 80% of Republican mothers report doing more than their spouse or partner when it comes to managing their children’s activities. And 60% of Democratic mothers and 58% of Republican mothers report providing more comfort and emotional support to their children than their spouses or partners do.

This may account for why the Pew data reveals that mothers, more so than fathers, report parenting being tiring most or all of the time – 47% for moms, compared with 34% for dads. Once again, our analysis shows that mothers’ higher levels of fatigue hold true for both Republican and Democratic mothers compared with Republican and Democratic dads.

To assess the demographics of parenthood, we analyzed the 2022 General Social Survey data and found that Republicans and Democrats start their families at a similar age, just as they did a decade ago.

On average, male and female Democrats are 26 when they have their first kid, while Republicans are 25. Higher levels of education are associated with starting families later, but this is true for those in both parties.

Looking at women specifically, we find that Democratic women have their first child at 25 years old, and Republican women at 24. There is no evidence that Democratic women – more so than Republican women – are delaying having children so that they can pursue their careers, as suggested by Vance and Sanders in their critiques of the Democratic Party and Harris specifically.

It is true that Americans are having fewer children compared with a few decades ago. But this drop in having children is nearly universal in high-income democracies, even despite some government policies that seek to increase the birth rate in the U.S.

Our analysis reveals that the gap between Republicans and Democrats on this issue is modest. On average, Democrats are having 1.53 children, compared with 1.86 for Republicans.

And the 2022 General Social Survey data shows that Democrats do report having no children at a modestly higher rate than Republicans, but it is men – more than women – who report being childless at higher rates. Among Americans over 40, 22% of Democratic men and 16% of Republican men have no kids, compared with 17% of Democratic women and 10% of Republican women.

Despite political rhetoric suggesting there is a deep partisan divide among Americans on issues of families and child-rearing, the data tells a different story. It paints a picture of Americans, whether Democrats or Republicans, as remarkably similar in the basic demographics of parenting, as well as in their views about the joys and challenges of parenthood. More

Though crime and criminal justice policy are central issues in many elections, that’s not true in 2024. Surveys show that relatively few American voters rank crime as their most important concern.

Yet both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris say they take those problems seriously. Trump and the Republicans have focused attention on the problem of illegal immigration and the crimes that he says immigrants commit.

Harris, as The Economist noted, “is using her history as a prosecutor in San Francisco to burnish her tough-on-crime bona fides.” She has mentioned that background in connection with immigration, drug policy and corporate wrongdoing.

As someone who studies crime and justice in the United States, it is clear to me that there are substantial differences between the two candidates, though each of their records contains some interesting twists and turns.

Kamala Harris gives her first news conference as attorney general of California in November 2010.
AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes

Kamala Harris, the prosecutor

Harris has a long record of working in the criminal justice system. She worked in the Alameda County district attorney’s office in California, starting in 1990, where she specialized in child sexual assault cases. She then served as district attorney in San Francisco from 2004 to 2010 and as attorney general of California from 2010 to 2017, when she was elected to the U.S. Senate.

Axios reported that during her term as district attorney, “the number of violent crimes rose steadily in the city of San Francisco during her first five years in office then fell 15% in her last two years.” And when she served as the state’s attorney general, “the violent crime rate in the state was 439.6 per 100,000 residents the year before she took office and fell to 396.4 by 2014. … However, violent crime surged to 444.8 in 2016 during her last year in office to a six-year high,” Axios reported.

In both offices, Harris undertook a number of reforms in criminal justice policy.

For example, in San Francisco she developed a “Back on Track” initiative“ that aimed to help nonviolent drug offenders between the ages of 18 and 30. According to The New York Times, its key promise was that ”after a full year of employment, education, community service, regular meetings with a supervising judge and crime-free behavior, the charge would be expunged from the offender’s record.“ It was generally well received, especially among progressives.

When Harris became the state’s attorney general, she reformed California’s approach to school truancy by focusing on the parents of truant children. As The New York Times reported, she threatened them ”with fines or even imprisonment if they did not ensure that their children attended class.“ FactCheck.org found that as a result of her policy, ”district attorneys reported prosecuting 3 to 6 … cases per year,“ on average.

Considering Harris’ record in California, The Desert Sun (Palm Springs, California) said Harris ”earned a reputation as tough on sexual abuse, human trafficking and organized crime, and did not shy away from pursuing incarceration.“

Throughout her career, Harris has been an opponent of the death penalty. During her first campaign for San Francisco district attorney, she promised that she would never seek a death sentence no matter how heinous the crime. She stuck to that promise, but as attorney general she went to court to defend death sentences that had been imposed under prior administrations.

The Los Angeles Times said her decision to do so was an appropriate one for the attorney general, ”putting professional responsibility over personal politics.“

CNN summarized her record on capital punishment by saying it ”broke hearts on both sides.“

Donald Trump speaks at a meeting about prison reform in 2018.
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

Donald Trump’s record as president

Trump, by contrast, was a strong proponent of the death penalty during his time in the Oval Office. In March 2018, he directed the Department of Justice to seek the death penalty in cases involving drug traffickers. The department also vigorously pursued new death penalty prosecutions in other areas and defended existing death sentences in court.

After a long time without any federal executions, the Trump administration carried out 13 of them in the last seven months of his term. ProPublica said Trump’s administration ”executed more federal prisoners than any presidency since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s” and more than the prior 10 presidents combined.

In other areas, the Trump administration stepped in to stop some criminal justice reform initiatives. For example, according to ABC News, Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, stopped former President Barack Obama’s effort to end prison privatization, and then began distributing contracts for new privately run detention centers.

But during his presidency, Trump was not consistent in being tough on crime. For instance, in March 2018, he signed an executive order creating the Federal Interagency Crime Prevention and Improving Reentry Council. He charged it with identifying ways “to provide those who have engaged in criminal activity with greater opportunities to lead productive lives” and to develop “a comprehensive strategy that addresses a range of issues, including mental health, vocational training, job creation, after-school programming, substance abuse, and mentoring.”

The Biden administration built on and extended those efforts.

And in December 2018, Trump supported the so-called “First Step Act,” which passed Congress with bipartisan support. It funded efforts to reduce the likelihood that inmates would be convicted again after their release, including by providing addiction treatment, mental health care, education and job training.

Trump also commuted the sentences of more than 90 people and pardoned more than 140 others. His use of clemency power was quite controversial, as some of its beneficiaries were Trump associates, such as Steve Bannon and Paul Manafort, who led Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and had committed financial fraud.

As far as the crime rate during Trump’s presidency, the Dallas Morning News reported that “During the first three years of Trump’s presidency, the violent crime rate per 100,000 population … fell each year. But, the Morning News – citing Politifact – said that in 2020, “the violent crime rate spiked,” though it was slightly lower than it had been in Obama’s final year in office.

Crime and criminal justice in the next administration

The next president will have choices to make about the crime and justice policies that the federal government will pursue and about whether to emphasize reform or harsh punishment. He or she will also have to decide whether, and how, the federal government should use grants and other funding, guidelines and enforcement to further those goals.

Their records suggest that Harris and Trump would make very different choices about those and other crime and criminal justice issues. More