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Trump calls his supporters ‘basement dwellers’, says former press secretary
Stephanie Grisham, Donald Trump’s former press secretary, excoriated the Republican presidential nominee at the Democratic national convention on Tuesday, saying: “He has no empathy, no morals, and no fidelity to the truth.”Grisham, a Republican operative who also served as a spokesperson to Melania Trump, offered firsthand accounts of the former president’s behavior behind closed doors.“I wasn’t just a Trump supporter, I was a true believer, I was one of his closest advisers. The Trump family became my family,” she said, saying she spent her holidays at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. “I saw him when the cameras were off … Trump mocks his supporters. He calls them basement dwellers. On a hospital visit one time when people were dying in the ICU, he was mad that the cameras were not watching him.”She continued: “He used to tell me: ‘It doesn’t matter what you say, Stephanie, say it enough and people will believe you.’” She repeated a story she has told before: that during the January 6 insurrection, she asked Melania Trump whether she could tweet that there was “no place for lawlessness or violence”, and the first lady gave a one-word reply: “No.”Grisham earned applause when she said she was the first senior staffer to resign that day. She ended her short speech with an endorsement of Kamala Harris, saying: “I love my country more than my party. Kamala Harris tells the truth. She respects the American people and she has my vote.”The Harris campaign and the Democratic national convention have been highlighting Republican voters who oppose Trump and are supporting the Democratic ticket.Before Grisham, Kyle Sweetser, an Alabama voter, told the convention crowd that he voted for Trump three times and repeatedly donated to the Republican: “He told us he’d look out for blue-collar workers.” But Trump’s tariffs policy negatively affected him, he said: “Costs for construction workers like me were starting to soar. I realized Trump wasn’t for me. He was for lining his own pockets.”Sweetster added: “I’m not left wing, period. But I believe our leaders should bring out the best in us, not the worst. That’s why I’m voting for Kamala Harris. She’s tough. She’s going to tackle inflation. Trump will make it worse. I’m voting for Kamala Harris because she’ll make us proud to be American again.”Other Republicans due to speak at the convention include Olivia Troye, a national security staffer who worked for Mike Pence, the former vice-president; Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican representative who has been a vocal critic of Trump; John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona; and Geoff Duncan, the former lieutenant governor of Georgia.Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, also showed up at the convention on Tuesday night. He and Trump have fallen out, and Cohen served as a witness for the prosecution in Trump’s hush-money trial in New York. It was not exactly clear why he showed up, but when a reporter asked if he would speak at the convention, he responded, “Only if they let me” and, “Of course I would.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocratic convention highlights:
Six key takeaways from day two of the Democratic convention
Michelle Obama lauds Kamala Harris and takes swipe at Trump
Bernie Sanders urges Democrats to improve lives of ‘struggling’ Americans
Trump calls his supporters ‘basement dwellers’, says former press secretary
Here are the rising stars and politicians to watch this week
What to know about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz More
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Barack Obama to deliver ‘forceful affirmation’ for Kamala Harris in Democratic convention speech – live
The Democratic national convention just released the full schedule of its second night, confirming that Barack Obama will deliver the evening’s keynote speech, and Michelle Obama, second gentleman Doug Emhoff and independent senator Bernie Sanders are also scheduled to make remarks.The grandsons of John F Kennedy and Jimmy Carter will be among the early speakers at the convention, along with Stephanie Grisham, Donald Trump’s former White House press secretary.As the night goes on, we’ll hear from Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, and then Sanders, both of whom will speak at the 8pm CT hour. Emhoff and Michelle Obama will speak after 9pm, and Barack Obama is to address delegates starting at 10pm.Do not be surprised if the schedule runs late, as it did last night.Away from the Democratic convention, RFK Jr is considering ending his campaign for president to help Donald Trump, according to his running mate.The startling disclosure was made by Nicole Shanahan, Kennedy’s vice-presidential candidate, who said the pair was considering dropping their campaign over fears it might help elect Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, as president.Shanahan’s remarks, made on the Impact Theory With Tim Bilyeau podcast, were close to an all-out admission that Kennedy’s campaign had more in common with Trump’s than Harris’s. Kennedy was a member of the Democratic party and attempted to run as its nominee before choosing to stand as an independent.Read the full story here:Valerie Jarrett, a former senior adviser to Barack Obama, has warned that Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, currently riding high in the polls, faces plenty of ups and downs before November.“You all remember when President Obama won the Iowa caucuses – if you are old enough to remember that,” Jarrett, speaking at Axios House in Chicago, said of Obama’s first primary campaign against Hillary Clinton in 2008. “We got: ‘Oh, my goodness!’ and ‘We are going for gold!’”Then came the New Hampshire primary and a “devastating defeat”, she added. “But out of that, people found out who he was. We came out of that terrible experience. It forced us to have to go to many more states and introduce him to many more people and, in the end, it was actually good for us.”Harris is bound to undergo “a whole multitude of tests”, Jarrett said. “She is absolutely on a roll right now. I think it’s a hands-up enthusiasm. People are just tired of all the negativity, the polarisation, the toxicity. I think what Governor Walz said: she’s full of joy. People want joy. They actually want to like each other.”Harris, who has replaced Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, has embarked on a much shorter campaign than the one Obama fought. Jarrett expressed confidence in Harris and running mate Tim Walz and their advisers to deal with obstacles and keep pushing forward.Hot from his primetime appearance at the Democratic convention on Monday night, Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers (UAW), has been explaining to reporters why he wore a T-shirt imprinted with the phrase “Trump is a scab.”“I’ve been a union member for UAW for 30 years, and we have a term for people that cross picket lines and don’t respect working-class people. We call them scabs, and that’s what Donald Trump is.”Fain said that the political leanings of the UAW’s more than 1 million active and retired members had remained stable over the years at about 65% Democratic and 30-32% Republican. But he predicted that this time around, the gap would widen as union members gravitate towards Kamala Harris.“She’s an amazing, very strong woman. I think people underestimate her, and that’s a huge mistake. I think she’s going to move a massive mountain come November,” he said.The UAW is preparing to launch in the next week or so what has been billed as the biggest field campaign in its history to persuade its members to turn out to vote.Fain said that in his view, people would lean towards the Democratic ticket because when they look at Harris and her running mate Tim Walz, “they see themselves. I mean, no one looks at Donald Trump and says: ‘I identify with that person.’”The Democratic national convention just released the full schedule of its second night, confirming that Barack Obama will deliver the evening’s keynote speech, and Michelle Obama, second gentleman Doug Emhoff and independent senator Bernie Sanders are also scheduled to make remarks.The grandsons of John F Kennedy and Jimmy Carter will be among the early speakers at the convention, along with Stephanie Grisham, Donald Trump’s former White House press secretary.As the night goes on, we’ll hear from Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, and then Sanders, both of whom will speak at the 8pm CT hour. Emhoff and Michelle Obama will speak after 9pm, and Barack Obama is to address delegates starting at 10pm.Do not be surprised if the schedule runs late, as it did last night.Lurking in the United Center’s rafters are thousands of balloons that are primed to drop:Political conventions, both Democratic and Republican, typically end with a cascade of balloons. Expect to see that on Thursday night, after Kamala Harris ends her keynote address.Arizona senator Mark Kelly and transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg spoke at the Veterans and Military Families Council at the Democratic national convention today, arguing that concepts of patriotism and freedom are not the monopoly of the Republican party.“Folks come from all over our country, with all kinds of backgrounds to serve,” Kelly said. “We’ve all served alongside folks of different political stripes, and some who are not political at all … Some Republicans want to think that their political party has a monopoly on patriotism. No party does. But it’s clear which political candidate supports military veterans, and which one does not.”Kelly took Trump to task for his recent comments suggesting that the Presidential Medal of Freedom was a “better” award than the Medal of Honor because “everyone [who] gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead.”“The VFW, of which I am a member, called these comments asinine,” said Kelly, a former astronaut and Gulf war veteran. “I agree.”Both Kelly and Buttigieg made oblique references to the attacks made by Republicans on the record of Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz.“You can count from the despicable way – the weird way – that he talks about the service,” Buttigieg said, “There’s a through-line that goes all the way back to the days when Donald Trump used his status as a teenage multimillionaire to procure a doctor’s note to pretend that he was unable to serve, so that some working-class man from who knows, maybe the south side of Chicago went to Vietnam in his place. There’s an unbroken pattern right there of not being able to grasp service to others. Veterans understand service to others. Today’s Democrats understand service to others.”Gwen Walz, wife of the Democratic VP pick, spoke with pride of their service as teachers, and his service as a national guardsman. “I will put that service up against anyone’s,” Walz said. “We are building a future for all of us, each and every one of us that we can be proud of.”It’s sound check time inside the United Center, where the Democratic national convention is being held, and the few journalists and guests in the venue early are getting a sneak peak of who’s performing tonight.Rapper Common is onstage now, spitting verse that pays tribute to Kamala Harris.“Let’s go, ya’ll! Chitown! DNC!” he said, to a smattering of applause. There aren’t that many people here, but he will probably get a much louder reception in a few hours.We reported earlier that the US Secret Service was looking into bomb threats made on Tuesday at “various locations” in Chicago where the Democratic national convention is taking place.According to a police scanner, 14 bomb threats were made today, mostly at hotels in downtown Chicago.I’ve been over at the McCormick Place convention center all day again, popping in and out of caucus and council meetings. And I finally had a chance to check out Dempalooza, an expo event with a bunch of vendors – some selling Democratic and Harris merch, some selling local goods, some selling politics.I saw at least five Kamala Harris cardboard cutouts and a “coconut room”, a nod to Harris’ iconic “you think you just fell out of a coconut tree” line that social media loves.One of those cutouts had Harris in a superhero outfit, and people came up to take photos alongside it. There is also a display of presidential footwear, with displays cases of old shoes.The area wasn’t very busy – the Democratic convention is spread across McCormick Place and the United Center, and getting from one to the other was a major challenge for some delegates yesterday, so as the day wears on, the McCormick location is getting quiet as folks start to make their way to the United Center for tonight’s speakers.Singer-songwriter James Taylor was scheduled to perform on Monday night on the first night of the Democratic national convention in Chicago, but as the evening ran long, organizers skipped elements of the program, meaning that Taylor never took the stage.DNC officials said in a statement that because of the “raucous applause interrupting speaker after speaker, we ultimately skipped elements of our program to ensure we could get to President Biden as quickly as possible so that he could speak directly to the American people,” per NBC News Chicago.Taylor himself released a statement this afternoon, saying that it “became clear” as the evening went on that there “wouldn’t be time for our ‘You’ve Got a Friend’” adding that “maybe the organizers couldn’t anticipate the wild response from the floor of the United Center.” “Sorry to disappoint,” he added.
But a great and inspirational, quintessentially American moment. We were honored to be there.
Donald Trump, in an interview with CBS News that aired last night, said he would accept the election outcome if he believes the election is “free and fair”. He said:
I think if I lose, this country will go into a tailspin, the likes of which it’s never seen before – the likes of 1929 – but if I do, and it’s free and fair, absolutely, I will accept the results.”
“Fair” to Trump “means that votes are counted,” he said, adding:
It means that votes are fair. It means that they don’t cheat on the election, they don’t drop ballots, they don’t install new rules and regulations that they don’t have the power to do.”
He added:
If I see that we had a fair and free election, which I hope to be able to say, but if I see that, I will be – you will never see anybody more honorable than me. I’m an honorable person.”
Exactly 20 years ago, Barack Obama was a relatively unknown state legislator when he delivered a keynote address at the Democratic party’s convention. Obama said that evening:
I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on Earth, is my story even possible.
His 2004 speech offers one of the clearest examples of how convention speeches can elevate a rising political star to national prominence. Four years later, he returned to accept the party’s nomination for president.In 2012, he made the case for his re-election bid; in 2016, he advocated for Hillary Clinton to succeed him in office; and during the 2020 convention, he issued an attack on Donald Trump and urged Americans to back Joe Biden for president.Now, his speech will make the case for the Harris-Walz ticket and the need to defeat Trump.Here’s what else to know about Obama’s speech tonight.Donald Trump, in his interview with CBS News, said he would “gladly” release his medical records and insisted that he is not experiencing any post-traumatic stress disorder or other lasting effects following his assassination attempt last month.Trump said he had recently passed a medical exam with a “perfect score” and that he had “aced” two cognitive tests.Donald Trump said he has “no regrets” over how his appointment of three conservative supreme court justices led to the reversal of Roe v Wade and ended the constitutional right to an abortion.Trump, speaking to CBS News on Monday night, said:
The federal government should have nothing to do with this issue. More - in US Politics
Obama to bring message of hope on 20th anniversary of Democratic convention speech
From “skinny kid with a funny name” to elder statesman: Barack Obama, the former US president, will be the headline speaker at the Democratic national convention in Chicago on Tuesday – 20 years after he first burst onto the national political scene.Obama, a state legislator from Illinois, was days from his 43rd birthday and months from being elected to the Senate when he was given a slot at the party’s 2004 convention in Boston. “Rising star to woo voters with upbeat keynote speech,” was the Guardian headline on 27 July 2004.Obama brought Democrats to their feet with a plea for hope and unity. Two decades later, America is more divided than ever, but on Tuesday the first Black president, back in his home city, will make the case for party nominee Kamala Harris to become the first woman and first woman of colour to win election to the White House.“The president will talk again in personal terms about what it takes to be president in this moment and what he’s prepared to do and that this is an all-hands-on-deck moment, where we all have to get involved,” Valerie Jarrett, a former senior adviser to Obama, said at an Axios House event in Chicago on Tuesday.“One of the lessons we certainly should have learned: it’s not just enough to elect a president. You also have to stay engaged throughout the term of your presidency. Sometimes you elect a president and you go, OK, I’m done, and you go back to your jobs, and that’s not the way democracies work.”Michelle Obama, the former first lady, who is popular enough in her own right that some Democrats floated her as an alternative to Joe Biden, will be speaking on Tuesday night as well.Jarrett, chief executive of the Obama Foundation, added: “Our democracy has been under threat and under attack and it is up to us to be those active and engaged citizens to ensure that we get back on track. I think that’s part of the message you’ll hear from both of them tonight. So be there or be square.”Back in July 2004, in a 16-minute speech, Obama framed the presidential election, talked up nominee John Kerry and told his origin story as the son of a Black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. He told delegates: “Let’s face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely.”Obama did not dwell on policy, but his sweeping indictment of divisive politics struck a chord. “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America,” he said. “There is not a Black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America – there’s the United States of America. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?”Joel Rubin, a Democratic strategist, recalled: “It was such a wonderful moment. It was an inspiring moment. It was like a moment to feel truly patriotic and proud to be part of a political party that wanted to bring back the country together. It spoke to the power of our country as a unified people.”Two and a half years later, Obama reprised that theme when he launched his presidential campaign before thousands of supporters gathered outside the Illinois capital of Springfield. His campaign motto was “hope and change”.Yet the flipside of hope was fear, an emotion that Republican Donald Trump was able to exploit to win the White House in 2016. After eight toxic years, the young Obama’s dream of a genuinely united nation seems as elusive as ever.Rubin, a former Obama administration deputy assistant secretary of state, added: “He diagnosed the problem in America right now. One speech never fixes a country. It’s part of a process.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“What you do is you elect leaders who have a commitment to that kind of vision and, unfortunately, we regressed in 2016 because we had Donald Trump come in committed to the opposite vision by not healing but destroying and magnifying difference rather than unity. But the message for the Democratic convention today is similar to the Obama message of unity and forward purpose.”“The historic nature of this convention is not lost on any of us, but especially those of us who grew up in the civil rights movement,” said Rev Al Sharpton. “Last night, we felt the clear through-line from Fannie Lou Hamer in 1964, Shirley Chisholm in 1972, Rev Jesse Jackson in the 1980s, and Barack Obama in 2008.”“I think that will be felt as much when Obama takes the stage here in his hometown. I cannot help but think of when I ran for president in 2004 and met briefly with him before each of us spoke. It was clear that night that he struck a tone with the nation – one that still resonates with many of us 20 years later.”On Tuesday, Obama will also honour the legacy of Joe Biden, who served eight years as Obama’s vice-president. Biden will not be in the hall to see his former running mate speak, as he departed Chicago after delivering his own speech.Media reports suggest that Biden is still needled by the role that Obama – along with party leaders Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer – played in pressuring the 81-year-old to not seek re-election due to concerns over his mental capacity.Schumer, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, told a CNN-Politico Grill event on Monday: “I’m not going to give my private conversations with the former president. That’s up to him to decide. But we had a number of serious discussions.” More
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‘Guys go where their buddies are’: the young men recruiting each other to fight for abortion rights
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View image in fullscreen“Oh, no, no, I think you’re trying to get in contact with my wife.”That’s what a man in Florida recently told an activist who knocked on his door to talk about abortion rights. But the man was wrong. The activist, who represented a group called Men4Choice, was there to talk to him, because the group is dedicated to getting more men who support abortion rights involved in the fight for them.“They have to get off the sidelines,” said Dewayne Martin, the youth organizing director for Men4Choice, who relayed the activist’s account to the Guardian. “They have to become the foot soldiers of this movement.”Two years after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to ban almost all abortions, most men in the United States support abortion rights. Within months of the decision, 65% of men between the ages of 18 and 29 said they supported abortion being legal in all or most cases. But Men4Choice calls these young men “passively pro-choice”.Young women still support abortion rights at higher rates than their male peers – and young men are just not as motivated to take a public stand on the issue. Just 43% of gen Z men say that abortion rights are a “critical issue”, compared with 68% of gen Z women, the political scientist Melissa Deckman found in her forthcoming book The Politics of Gen Z. This indifference has consequences: compared with women, men between the ages of 18 and 44 are less likely to say that abortion is motivating them to vote in the 2024 elections, according to polling from the firm PerryUndem. They are also less likely to say that the state of abortion rights will affect whom they vote for.Men4Choice’s goal is to get these young men to vote, canvass and otherwise act on their beliefs – instead of leaving the work to women.“When we think about our organizing strategy, it’s: help men see the harm,” said Oren Jacobson, a Men4Choice co-founder. “Help men understand how this issue is not just a woman’s issue. It’s not just about abortion. It’s about freedom, it’s about power, it’s about control. It is an issue that impacts all of us, our families, our loved ones.”View image in fullscreenIt affects young men’s futures, too. Compared with young men whose partners got pregnant and gave birth, young men whose partners had abortions are almost four times more likely to graduate college. Young men who have been involved in an abortion are also more likely to make more money than those whose partners gave birth. Overall, an estimated one in five men has impregnated somebody who has had an abortion.Democrats have made abortion rights one of their central issues in the 2024 elections, while Republicans – wary of how outrage over Roe’s downfall probably lost them a much heralded “red wave” in the 2022 midterms – have tried to downplay the issue and their own role in overturning Roe. However, as they’ve backed away, rightwing commentators and politicians have become far more adept at discussing masculinity than their leftwing counterparts, experts have told the Guardian. These rightwing public figures are not only willing to acknowledge that young men are struggling – with getting into college, with their finances, with their mental health – but also to portray these struggles as the result of women’s growing social and political power.This kind of talk – which is so popular it has essentially spawned a cottage industry – is believed to be a major reason why, despite their past support for liberal causes, so many young men are now pivoting towards conservatism (and potentially towards supporting Donald Trump).“It feels good. It’s telling men: ‘You’re the priority. You’re the superior being,’” said Davan’te Jennings, a Men4Choice fellow who lives in Georgia. “‘You act like this, this is when you get all the cars, the women, the mansion. Grind 24/7. Don’t think about mental health. Depression isn’t real.’”In Jennings’ view, such “toxic masculinity” is part of the reason why young men don’t feel like they can be openly passionate about abortion rights. He hears references to it all the time: when Jennings talks to men through Men4Choice, the men often use phrases like “to be a man” and “the manly thing to do”. Expressing emotions – including caring about abortion rights – doesn’t fit into that mold of masculinity.View image in fullscreenMen4Choice, then, aims to reframe how abortion fits into antiquated and restrictive notions of masculinity. “Masculinity is taking action,” Martin said. “Masculinity is caring for the people that you love. Masculinity is ensuring that you are building a pathway towards freedom for you and your people, and realizing that those two things are not separate.”Christian Shephard, a 26-year-old Men4Choice fellow who serves as an organizer for the group in central Florida, tries to open up conversations about abortion rights with men by discussing how some men treat women, including how they may objectify or sexualize women.“It may sound like that has nothing to do with reproductive justice, but it certainly does,” Shephard said. “There is a clear connection between how people talk about women and how these [anti-abortion] laws are being created to deprive them of fundamental rights.”In a recent Men4Choice “community conversation” – virtual and in-person discussions where fellows are expected to bring male friends – one man claimed he didn’t have to take any responsibility for abortion because “women should keep their legs closed”, Jennings recalled.“That was literally the words he used,” Jennings said. “Most of us who are pro-choice on the call are like: ‘Now we see why it’s important to dismantle that way of thinking.’”Jacobson launched Men4Choice in 2015, but the group has exploded in the years since Roe’s demise. The Men4Choice fellowship program, which runs three times a year and is training 70 men between the ages of 18 and 28 this summer, has almost tripled in size since the summer of 2022. Many Men4Choice fellows are based in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina – all states with abortion bans.Though he was raised in a Democratic area of Miami, Martin, 22, said he hadn’t acted on his support for abortion rights until 2020. He was a high school senior working on organizing around school boards when a friend told him about Men4Choice.“It was in that moment that I realized, despite my being raised by a community of women who have served as my village and have made my life possible in several ways, I’ve never taken a direct action to support them on this issue,” recalled Martin, who became a Men4Choice fellow that year.View image in fullscreenIn the months before Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee for president, Men4Choice partnered with Doug Emhoff, Harris’s husband and the second gentleman of the United States, to host events centered on energizing men to fight for abortion rights. (“This is an issue of fairness to women. Women are dying,” Emhoff told NBC in May. “It’s affecting men’s ability to plan their lives.”) Now, the group is trying to mobilize male volunteers and funnel them towards partner organizations working on the ground.“Guys go where their buddies are,” Jacobson said. “You have to create an ecosystem of men to get them to show up.”Men4Choice is also heavily focusing on Florida, which has banned abortion past six weeks of pregnancy – before many people even know they’re pregnant – and where voters will decide in November whether to amend the state constitution to protect abortion rights.Abortion-rights ballot measures previously have succeeded in Republican strongholds, such as Ohio and Kentucky. Exit polls found that 73% of male voters between the ages of 18 and 29 voted in favor of the Ohio measure – a significant share of voters, but still less than the 81% of young female voters who supported it.The Florida amendment must garner 60% of the vote to pass. This fall, Men4Choice wants to reach 400,000 voters through phone and text banking, according to Martin. The group also wants to hold 100 community conversations with men.There is, however, a limit to the organization’s activism. Men4Choice focuses on men who already support abortion rights or are at least open to having a discussion about it – not men who are adamantly opposed to the procedure. “If there’s not an understanding or a clear line of wanting to understand,” Jennings said, “and we’re just going to sit here and get into a debate – it’s pointless.” More
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Harley-Davidson drops DEI initiatives amid pressure from ‘anti-woke’ activists
Motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson has become the latest manufacturer to drop diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives amid sustained pressure from anti-DEI activist Robby Starbuck.In a statement Monday, the Milwaukee-based company said it has not operated a corporate DEI function since April, no longer has minority-owned supplier goals and plans to exit socially motivated training for employees.Harley-Davidson’s statement, posted on X, said that it sees “every leader’s role to ensure we have an employee base that reflects our customers and the geographies in which we operate” – and the company would limit training to legal requirements.“We are saddened by the negativity on social media over the last few weeks, designed to divide the Harley-Davidson community,” the statement said. “As a company, we take this issue very seriously, and it is our responsibility to respond with clarity, action and facts.”The company said in the statement that it will also reorganize employee resource groups to focus on business development, mentoring and training. Having a “broad customer base is good for business”, it added.Harley-Davidson has been in the cross-hairs of anti-DEI activists who earlier this summer won similar concessions from retailer Tractor Supply and farming equipment maker John Deere & Co. The tractor maker said in a statement in July it would no longer participate in “cultural awareness parades”.The motorcycle maker said in an email to staff that it began a review of its “stakeholder and outreach activities” earlier this year. Harley-Davidson had been under attack from anti-DEI activist Starbuck, who accused it of adopting “the woke agenda of the very far left”.More broadly, the issue of DEI has become a political lightning rod that reflects US political divisions, with American businesses anticipating an even broader roll-back of such initiatives if Donald Trump wins a second presidency in November.“It’s time to get rid of these policies and bring back a sense of neutrality and sanity in corporate America,” Starbuck said in an interview with Bloomberg, pointing to activism on social media by Harley-Davidson influencers for the company’s move. He reportedly added: “We kind of reached critical mass.”Harley-Davidson’s shares are up 5% since Starbuck started his campaign in July, according to the outlet.Earlier this year, a Washington Post-Ipsos poll found 61% of adults think DEI programs in the workplace are “a good thing”. But another survey from Bentley University and Gallop found that fewer than four in 10 US adults (38%) believe businesses should take public stances, a decline of 10% since 2022.Harley-Davidson became a focus of Trump’s attention in 2018 after it responded to his administration’s tariffs by moving some production overseas. The former president subsequently encouraged people to boycott the company.The company has also grappled with falling demand from younger buyers for its old-school touring bikes – or “hogs” – according to one analyst who has said “an experience for them is not about hitting the open road”.Harley-Davidson’s decision to drop DEI training received pushback on Tuesday from Eric Bloem, the Human Rights Campaign president, who criticized the company’s decision as “impulsive”.“With nearly 30% of gen Z identifying as LGBTQ+ and the community wielding $1.4tn in spending power, retreating from these principles undermines both consumer trust and employee success,” Bloem said in a statement.There had been a national shift in favor of DEI initiatives after the 2020 murder of George Floyd, who was Black, by a white police officer in Minneapolis. More
