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      No tax on tips fires up Nevada hospitality workers: ‘I want that!’

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      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

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      If you are outraged by Trump’s use of AI and deepfakes, don’t be – that’s exactly what he wants | Sophia Smith Galer

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      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

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      ‘She may be family, but we need to hold her accountable’: Howard students cautiously excited by Kamala Harris

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      On Tuesday, day two of the Democratic national convention in Chicago, Howard University, in Washington DC, was abuzz with students excited about alumna Kamala Harris’s presidential candidacy. The Guardian spoke to several students who expressed pride that one of their own may assume the highest office, which they hoped would shine a light on historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Others emphasized the need to hold Harris accountable on Gaza policy, as well as on issues that affect Black communities, such as overpolicing and high maternal death rates.“I was pretty happy to not only be a Howard student, but to be Black as well,” Shondo Green, a 20-year-old biology major, said about Harris’s nomination. The general sentiment on campus since classes started on Monday has been uplifting – everyone is smiling, he said. “There’s something different about this year compared to my previous two years. There’s something in the air.”Hundreds of Howard University students milled around the Yard, the central hub of campus life, in between classes during the first week of school. Surrounding the grassy area were trees painted with Greek letters that represent the Black sororities and fraternities known as the Divine Nine. Harris, a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, pledged as a Howard student in the 1980s.Dezmond Rosier, a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and a senior studying political science and economics, said he was thrilled to vote in a presidential election for the first time. His main concerns were about cancelling student debt and ensuring that “the justice system is justice for all”. Rosier wants to see Harris create just policies around the possession of cannabis as it becomes legalized in states throughout the nation while “there’s still people in our prison systems who are unfortunately being held up for things that are now considered legal”.View image in fullscreen“She may be our family member in the sense of the university,” Rosier said, “but we also need to hold her accountable.”Outside the university’s auditorium, Ruqayyah Taylor, a senior from Norristown, Pennsylvania, attended a back-to-school pop-up event hosted by DTLR Radio. The 21-year-old journalism major wants to see Harris continue working toward the student debt forgiveness plan put forward by the Biden-Harris administration, which was thwarted by court challenges. She lauded the Harris campaign’s use of social media to galvanize gen-Z voters.“I think that she has the ability to [change course on Gaza policy],” Taylor said. “She has a different sense of awareness that Biden doesn’t have, whether it be because of age or demographics.”At the library, senior Jaden Lopes da Silva said he wanted to see more outreach efforts that catered to young Black voters. “[Her engagement] is more of a broad gen-Z sort of thing, but it appears to be more towards pop culture,” he said, referencing the Harris campaign’s embrace of the “brat” label from the pop musician Charli xcx. “I haven’t really seen anything specifically towards the Black gen-Z community.” Sitting next to him, junior Nala Francis said she considered Harris’s nomination her generation’s version of Barack Obama, who became president when she was a toddler. “I never had the experience of ‘oh we could get a Black president,’ and now that we get a Black president that is also a woman and from Howard,” she said. “This is literally history in the making and I’m now old enough to be a part of it.”Friends Jada Phillips and Jada Freeman, 19-year-old sophomores from Chicago, chatted on a walkway in between classes. “I think it’s going to bring a lot of light to Howard itself and how good of a school it is,” Freeman said about an alumna being the Democratic nominee. She plans to vote for Harris, but Phillips said that she wants to see how Harris’s economic policies will differ from previous administrations.View image in fullscreenAt a nearby cafe, Msia Kibona Clark, an associate professor in Howard’s department of African studies, recalled receiving a pop-up alert on her phone that Harris would be the presumptive nominee. She said that she was waiting to see if Harris changes course on US’s Gaza policy; however, she felt hopeful that Harris seems to be more empathetic toward the plight of Palestinians than Biden does. “From her talks before, her appearances, she definitely has been less embracing of Israel, so that has given me hope,” Kibona Clark said.Marcus Board, an associate professor of political science, said that if Harris becomes president, he would like to see her work with racial justice organizers. “I hope that they do choose to work with movement organizers who, as my research shows, are the people who are reinforcing democracy … reinforcing inclusion, access to care, access to human rights,” he said. “Without them, this whole thing is gonna fall faster than a freshman’s GPA.”View image in fullscreenLast week, freshman Elijah Sanford Abdul-Aziz waited in a long line to hear Harris speak on campus. “I’ve only been here for like two weeks, so that’s fire to me,” said Sanford Abdul-Aziz, an 18-year-old political science major. “It was like when one of the old ladies from church tells you about how they used to know you, when she talked about her orientation in the auditorium.” He said he was inspired by her statement that students could become president of the United States with hard work and determination. “She’s a vision of what you can be,” he said.Even though he said that he will cast a ballot for Harris in November, he wasn’t “super-duper excited”, given the US’s continued funding of Israel’s war on Gaza, in which more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October. “It’s either Kamala or Donald Trump,” Sanford Abdul-Aziz said. “I look at it as we can’t advocate as much as we can under Trump as we can for Kamala.” Sanford Abdul-Aziz said that he has one message for Harris about US allyship with Israel: “In 2020 I remember she said during a vice-presidential debate that allies are like your friends. And I know that to be a good friend, you have to hold your friends accountable.” More

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      Stop using the term ‘centrist’. It doesn’t mean what you think it does | Arwa Mahdawi

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      I would like to start a petition for journalists – and everyone else – to immediately stop using the C-word. Centrist. It’s an insidious word that has degraded how we think about politics and distorted how we see the world.Perhaps that statement sounds a little over the top. After all, being a “centrist” sounds eminently reasonable, doesn’t it? A centrist is a moderate, right? Someone who is rational and practical and takes the middle ground. Someone who isn’t extreme like those crazy ideologues on the far right or far left. A centrist, logic dictates, is really what everyone should strive to be.But stop for a moment and ask yourself how you would define a centrist in more specific terms. When you start spelling out what the word really means, it becomes clear that it obfuscates more than it illuminates. The word does not describe a set of ideas so much as it reinforces a system of power.This, of course, is a feature not a bug of political language. As George Orwell wrote in his famous essay Politics and the English Language: “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.”Orwell wrote that essay in 1946. Today, 78 years later, it feels just as relevant. Look, for example, at the carnage in Gaza and the West Bank. Look at the statements from Israeli leaders that clearly suggest genocidal intent. Look at the tragedies that barely make a dent in the public consciousness any more. This week, for example, an Israeli airstrike killed four-day-old twins, along with their mother and grandmother, when their father went to collect birth certificates in central Gaza. Look at the levels of brutality that barely seem to register any more: there is video evidence of the sexual abuse of Palestinians at a notorious Israeli military prison (though the more accurate term is “torture camp”) and, even with that evidence, we know there will be no real accountability.Look at the dead. Nearly 40,000 people in Gaza are now dead, including nearly 15,000 children. When you look at the scale of devastation, it seems likely that those figures are an underestimate. Further, counting the dead is excruciatingly difficult: kids are being blown into fragments so small that their surviving relatives have to collect pieces of them in plastic bags. Then there are the tens and thousands more who are now dying from starvation, or facing a looming polio epidemic.Look at the West Bank, meanwhile, where Israel has published plans for new settlements, which violate international law. Since 7 October, the Israeli army and settlers have displaced 1,285 Palestinians and destroyed 641 structures in the West Bank, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Ethnic cleansing is taking place before our eyes.Now look at how all of this is being justified. This war isn’t just being waged with bombs, it’s being waged with “euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness”. When you lay out what is happening in clear language, it is indefensible. So political language dresses all those dead and starving children up in euphemism. It obscures ethnic cleansing with vagaries. Don’t believe your eyes, political writing says. What you are seeing is far more complex than your eyes can possibly comprehend.This narrative is so entrenched that people don’t believe their eyes when it comes to Palestinians. Last October, the actor Jamie Lee Curtis posted a photo on Instagram showing terrified-looking children peering up at the sky. She captioned the post “terror from the skies” with an Israel flag emoji. When it was pointed out that the kids were Palestinian, she deleted the post. Her eyes may have told her that those innocent children were terrified; the narrative, however, was more complicated.Around the same time, Justin Bieber posted a photo of bombed houses with the caption “praying for Israel”. When it was pointed out the picture was of Gaza, he deleted it and apparently stopped praying.In 2022, a picture of a small blonde confronting a soldier was widely shared online, with the claim that it was a Ukrainian girl standing up to a Russian soldier. How brave, people though. How inspiring! When it was revealed that it was actually old footage of a then 10-year-old Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian activist, interest in the image fizzled out.Again: when you lay out what is happening in clear language it is indefensible. When people see what is happening with their own eyes, it is indefensible. I say that as someone who has seen what life is like for Palestinians with my own eyes. As someone who had to run from soldiers shooting teargas when I visited my dad’s village in the West Bank when I had just turned six. Who was interrogated by an IDF soldier when I visited my dad’s village at 15, because I had a school chemistry book in my bag. Who knows what is like to be harassed and humiliated by heavily armed soldiers at checkpoints when you are just trying to go from one village to another. If you experience life under occupation for even a day it becomes starkly apparent that there is no way to defend it.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn order to defend the indefensible, politicians and political writers move away from concreteness, from clear language, and hide behind the respectableness of terms like “centrism”. Pro-Palestinian protesters are labelled the far-left or extremists. Continuing to unconditionally send arms to Israel and shield the country’s far-right government from accountability, however, is considered a centrist – and therefore reasonable – position.See, for example, this paragraph from the New York Times, earlier this month, when Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, was still being considered as a possible candidate for Kamala Harris’s running mate.“Mr Shapiro has emerged as the choice of the party’s pro-Israel donors, those with ties to the school-choice movement and business-friendly contributors in Silicon Valley. But his centrist positions that appeal to those groups are the same ones that make him the least favorite of the party’s most liberal funders.”This paragraph is one of the rare instances where there is some explanation as to what centrism actually means. Centrism we are told, is being pro-Israel and pro-business, no matter what. This piece came out while Shapiro was facing criticism from the left for an old essay he wrote in which he called Palestinians too “battle-minded to be able to establish a peaceful homeland of their own”. He has never properly apologized for this, nor will he ever have to, because being racist against Palestinians is a centrist position.As Orwell wrote, atrocities can be defended, “but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties”. If the Democratic party were to be honest about why it is doing very little to stop the carnage in Gaza and the settlements in the West Bank, the bluntest argument would be along the lines of: “Israel is an important tool in maintaining US imperialism and western interests. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is expedient to those interests. Human rights law doesn’t apply to the west.” Of course, being pro-ethnic cleansing doesn’t quite square with the do-gooding branding of the Democratic party. Instead, we are bombarded with the idea that massacring children is somehow a centrist and moderate position.“If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy,” Orwell wrote. There is very little that most of us can do to change what is happening in Gaza, but the one thing we can all do is simplify our English. So let’s begin with “centrism”. If we are to be honest about what we mean, if we are to express it in its simplest terms, we should use the word “status-quoism” instead. The point of words like “centrism” is to prevent thought and prompt acquiescence. It’s up to you whether you want to acquiesce.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Harris to face biggest test of her political life with Democratic convention speech

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      Kamala Harris will tonight face the biggest test of her political life so far when she addresses the Democratic national convention in Chicago in a bid to persuade American voters to defeat Donald Trump in November’s presidential election and put her in the White House.The vice-president’s rocket-fueled campaign is still barely a month old following Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from seeking re-election in the face of a disastrous debate performance and questions over his age and mental acuity.Harris, and her vice-presidential pick Minnesota governor Tim Walz, have quickly overturned the election’s narrative, turning a solid Trump lead in the polls over Biden into a slight – but clear – advantage over the former Republican president.In addressing the Democratic convention on Thursday night – and by proxy the wider US electorate watching in their millions on television – Harris will be making a direct pitch to voters to back her vision for the United States.Harris’s campaign has sought to portray a more optimistic, future-focused view of the country than her rival, and perhaps also than that of the president, who based much of his pitch on dark warnings of Trump’s autocratic sympathies.Over the course of the week at the convention, the audience has heard from the Democratic party’s most powerful players, who threw their support unequivocally behind Harris. Biden, Barack and Michelle Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi all gave primetime speeches, as did some of the party’s rising stars, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.Now it is expected that Harris’s speech will seek to lay out her personal story as she bids to become a historic president: the first woman president and the first woman of color due to her south Asian and Black background. Her speech is likely to focus on her work as a prosecutor, defending victims of crime.But her speech will also lay out a sharp contrast between her positive view of the country’s future prospects and Trump’s almost wholly grim warnings about the state of the nation and his focus on immigration and crime.Across three days so far, speaker after speaker has already hailed Harris as a change-agent who would not only defeat Trump but lift the country higher, ushering in a new chapter of possibility and seek to return US politics to some semblance of normality since Trump came onto the political stage eight years ago.The Harris campaign – and especially the outspoken Walz – has also displayed sharp elbows and an ability to insult and poke fun at Trump.The switch in the polls and newfound edge has impressed many observers. “She has had a very good month not just because of a honeymoon, but because of the way she’s presented herself, the way her campaign has positioned her,” David Axelrod, a former top aide to Barack Obama, told the Guardian.Certainly it seems to have unsettled Trump and his campaign. Trump has adopted a policy of directly insulting Harris and inventing a series of nicknames for her while trying to paint her as a leftwing extremist and questioning her racial identity. But the jibes have had little effect and even drawn criticism from some senior Republicans.They have not blunted her lead. Harris consistently tops Trump by three or four points in recent head-to-head surveys and has also improved her standing in the handful of key states that are crucial to victory. While the electoral contest remains impossibly close, she has widened the battleground once more from the Rust belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to once again include Sun belt states like North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia.Throughout the convention so far, Democratic speakers have tried to make Trump seem small and diminished. They have sought to keep him on the backfoot and in a reactive mode, responding to attacks and being kept off-balance.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, compared Trump to an “old boyfriend” who has spent the last four years spinning the block, trying to get back into a relationship with the American people.“Bro, we broke up with you for a reason,” Jeffries said.“Kamala Harris has always understood the assignment,” said Laphonza Butler, a California senator and friend of Harris’s.“Kamala, your mom would be so proud of you,” said Doris Baptiste, a family friend who was close to Harris’s mother.On Wednesday night, Walz offered a full-throated attack on Trump, a defense of his record running Minnesota and a passionate advocacy for Harris. After criticizing the Trump campaign, he led the crowd of cheering delegates in a chant of: “We’re not going back! We’re not going back!”Turning to the theme of freedom – which was the focus of the night’s convention programming – Walz said: “That’s what this is all about, the responsibility we have to our kids, to each other and to the future that we’re building together, in which everyone is free to build the kind of life they want. But not everyone has that same sense of responsibility. Some folks just don’t understand what it takes to be a good neighbor. Take Donald Trump and JD Vance.”Walz said Trump and his running mate had an agenda to only benefit the “richest and most extreme” people in the US. Walz added: “It’s an agenda nobody asked for. It’s an agenda that does nothing for our neighbors in need. Is it weird? Absolutely, absolutely. But it’s also wrong. And it’s dangerous.” More

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      Tim Walz channeled grit and empathy at the Democratic national convention

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      “You might not know it, but I haven’t given a lot of big speeches like this,” Tim Walz said demurely towards the end of his keynote Democratic national convention address on Wednesday night.The moment wreaked of understatement. The look on his face, the way he raised his white eyebrows as if he were apologizing, the shrug of his shoulders. Even the phrase “big speech”.This wasn’t a big speech. It was a monumental speech, with the future direction of a country of 333 million people riding on it.But then Walz dropped his faux modesty and got to work. “I have given a lot of pep talks,” he said.From then on it was full steam ahead towards the goal line. After all, if you’re Walz, a scarcely known governor from the midwestern state of Minnesota, and you’ve just been yanked into the most significant election of recent times in the most powerful country on Earth, then what else are you going to do at the climax of your 16-minute oration than invoke your years as a high school football coach?Friday Night Lights never had it so good.As thousands of Democratic delegates from all 50 states packed into the United Center chanted “Coach! Coach! Coach!”, he conjured up the nail-biting finish that the US is now entering. “It’s the fourth quarter,” he said, rocket launching the crowd into a paroxysm of excitement.“We’re down a field goal. But we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field. And, boy, do we have the right team.”Walz never got to tell the delegates the score at the end of the game, but then he didn’t have to. He had already won the contest for their hearts and minds.If Donald Trump were watching the speech on his favoured Fox News, it might have stirred the odd feeling in him. Last month, the former president and Republican nominee caused quite the stir by claiming that vice-presidential running mates make “virtually no impact” on elections.Trump better pray he’s right. Not because of his guy, JD Vance, who is flunking in the polls. But because of this other guy: the plain-talking, gun-owning, and football-coaching former public school teacher.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhen Kamala Harris’s VP pick took the stage sometime after 10pm, he began a little hesitantly. Maybe Walz wasn’t joking, that “big speech” thing was a little much.But as he warmed to his subject, and the delegates got behind him with their deafening cheers, this “son of the Nebraska plains”, as his wife Gwen Walz described him, got into his stride. He channeled the grit and the empathy that has already endeared him to millions of Democrats in the 15 short days in which he has been on the national stage.He deployed words such as “neighbor” (seven times), “school” (eight) and “freedom” (nine) to flesh out a picture of himself as the homely guy next door who cares about you and your family and wants you to lead your best life. When he got to the bit about his record as governor, he turned the dial up, giving vent to his anger and passion.“We made sure that every kid in our state gets breakfast and lunch every day,” he said, eliciting one of the biggest roars of the night. “While other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing kids’ hunger from ours.”In the two weeks of Walz’s breathtaking propulsion into the political stratosphere – meteoric doesn’t do justice to his rise – Trump and team have tried hard to land punches on him. They have accused him of lying about his military record, pegged him as a “radical leftist” who wants to turn the country communist, and rolled out the old attack line that he wants to take your guns.So far, opinion surveys suggest, such efforts have been as sticky as water on a duck’s back.But then, how do you knock the military service of someone who spent 24 years in the national guard, even if he did misstate certain details of his time in uniform? Nor is it easy to portray his legislative record as extreme liberalism when the so-called “Minnesota miracle” of bills that he passed last year included not only universal free school meals, but paid family and medical leave as well as several other reforms that are no more revolutionary than the basic public services routinely provided by virtually every other industrialised nation.And how do you tear down a person for being anti-second amendment when, as he said on Wednesday night: “I was a better shot than most Republicans in Congress, and I got the trophies to prove it”?Not to mention that before Walz came on, the convention organisers reconvened the 1999 football team that he coached at Mankato West high school all the way to the state championship.In the end, though, it wasn’t the folksy football metaphors that hang in the air after the speech was done. It was the determination that was conveyed of a man with values forged in small town Nebraska to stop the advance of a someone who spends all day “insulting people and blaming others”.“We’ll turn the page on Donald Trump,” Coach Walz said. “That’s how we’ll build a country where workers come first, healthcare and housing are human rights, and the government stays the hell out of your bedroom.” More

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      Tim Walz accepts VP nomination and pitches voters: ‘We have the right team’

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      Minnesota governor Tim Walz accepted the Democratic party’s vice-presidential nomination by emphasizing his rural bonafides and Americana background as a teacher and coach in a more sweeping speech than the unassuming midwesterner has given before.“You might not know it, but I haven’t given a lot of big speeches like this,” Walz said as he closed out Wednesday’s Democratic convention in Chicago. “But I have given a lot of pep talks.”The former football coach laid out the metaphor as the crowd again chanted: “It’s the fourth quarter. We’re down a field goal, but we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field, and boy do we have the right team. Kamala Harris is tough, Kamala Harris is experienced, and Kamala Harris is ready.”The pep talk capped off a well-received speech full of Walzian refrains – that he knows what small-town neighborliness is, that his time in the classroom taught him about public service. He walked out to John Mellencamp’s Small Town, amid a sea of signs that said “Coach Walz”. The crowd chanted “coach” as Walz put his hand to his heart.Almost immediately, Walz leaned in to his rural upbringing. “I grew up in Butte, Nebraska, a town of 400 people. I had 24 kids in my high school class, and none of them went to Yale,” Walz said, taking a swipe at Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick, JD Vance.He described growing up in a small town and the tolerance that was required for respecting your neighbors. “We’ve got a golden rule,” he said, as the crowd began to finish one of his common lines on the campaign trail. “Mind your own damn business.”Walz also focused on his background in the military service, which Republicans have attacked in recent days, and as a public school teacher in Mankato, Minnesota, where he taught social studies and coached the high school football team. “Never underestimate a public school teacher,” he said.Like many other speakers on Wednesday night, he built on the days’s theme of freedom and pointed to the conservative manifesto backed by Trump allies, Project 2025.“That’s what this is all about, the responsibility we have to our kids, to each other and to the future that we’re building together, in which everyone is free to build the kind of life they want,” Walz said. “But not everyone has that same sense of responsibility. Some folks just don’t understand what it takes to be a good neighbor. Take Donald Trump and JD Vance.”“Their Project 2025 will make things much, much harder for people who are just trying to live their lives. They spent a lot of time pretending they know nothing about this. But look, I coached high school football long enough to know and trust me on this. When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re going to use it,” he said.During Walz’s speech, his family was visibly moved, with clips of his emotional son circulating as his father spoke.The main stage speech came at the end of another dynamic night at the convention. The audience heard from former president Bill Clinton and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi as well as rising stars in the party, Maryland governor Wes Moore and transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg. And there were interludes from comedian Kenan Thompson and actor Mindy Kaling.But perhaps the most rousing speech was from a surprise guest, Oprah Winfrey, the Chicago-based talk show host and political independent who called on fellow independents to rally around the Harris-Walz ticket. “Values and character matter most of all. In leadership and in life”, she said. “And more than anything, you know this is true: decency and respect are on the ballot in 2024.”Meanwhile, Walz’s place on the ticket has catapulted Minnesota to the forefront. The state isn’t a swing state, but his record is notable for Democrats. A trifecta in the Minnesota house, senate and governorship has allowed the party to pass a spate of progressive policies, including universal free school meals, gun safety measures, clean energy mandates, child tax credits and more.The North Star state featured heavily on Wednesday’s stage before Walz’s speech. John Legend and Sheila E performed a tribute to Prince, a Minneapolis native near-synonymous with the state, playing Let’s Go Crazy as the room was lit up purple.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKeith Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general and a Walz friend, said Walz called him after the murder of George Floyd by police and asked him to prosecute the case. Walz and Harris “know that nobody is above the law, and nobody is below the law”, Ellison said.Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar introduced Walz, alongside Ben Ingman, a former student and neighbor of the Walzes. Football players and the former head coach from Walz’s Mankato West teams joined Ingman on the stage. “Tim Walz is the kind of guy who will push you out of a snowbank,” Ingman said. “I know this because Tim Walz pushed me out of a snowbank.”Klobuchar talked about how Walz’s attributes, such as how he has a viral video about changing a headlight and that he’s a “dad in plaid”, make him perfect for the VP role. “A former public school teacher knows how to school the likes of JD Vance,” she said.Elementary students from Moreland Arts & Health Sciences magnet school in St Paul, Minnesota led the pledge of allegiance; the students benefitted from the universal free school meals program that has become a key accomplishment of the Walz administration. And Jess Davis, a math teacher who was Minnesota’s teacher of the year in 2019, sang the national anthem.After the speech, the Minnesota delegation celebrated on the convention floor, chanting Walz’s name and cheering.Democratic convention highlights:

      Tim Walz rallies Democrats: ‘We’re gonna leave it on the field’

      Watch speeches from Bill Clinton, Pete Buttigieg, Josh Shapiro

      Oprah Winfrey takes swipe at Vance’s ‘childless cat lady’ comment in surprise appearance

      Here are the rising stars and politicians to watch this week

      What to know about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz More