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      Kamala Harris still needs to define herself – but she is the ultimate anti-Trump candidate | Arwa Mahdawi

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      A week has always been a long time in politics, but this might have been the longest week in Kamala Harris’s life. While Joe Biden is still technically the US president, he already feels irrelevant. All eyes are on Harris now. The speed with which she has gone from being one of the most unpopular vice-presidents in modern history to sitting at the top of the Democratic ticket, with an army of enthusiastic fans behind her, is astounding. Biden’s trajectory has been widely compared to a Shakespearean tragedy; Harris’s sudden reversal of fortune, meanwhile, is like something out of a fairytale.A quick recap: Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris on Sunday. The Democratic establishment then threw its weight behind her on Monday. So did hundreds of thousands of donors; Harris’s campaign raked in a record-breaking $81m in just 24 hours. By Tuesday, she had earned enough support from delegates to win the Democratic nomination for president next month. On Wednesday, Democrats approved rules meaning that any Democrat who wants to compete against Harris for the nomination only has days to do so. Then, on Friday, Barack Obama endorsed the vice-president. Her coronation is almost complete.Importantly, Harris doesn’t just have the consolidated support of party elites. She’s also got large swathes of social media cheering her on. The woman has undeniably mementum. “kamala IS brat,” the British pop star Charli xcx posted on X on Sunday. It may not be on the level of an Obama endorsement but Charli’s approval thrust Harris into the middle of the pop-cultural zeitgeist. Charli xcx’s new album, Brat, has undoubtedly been the meme of the summer – the album’s lime-green aesthetic plastered everywhere.In fact, soon after Charli’s approving tweet, @kamalahq changed its backdrop to brat green. Cue a lot of campaign staff trying to explain to high-ranking Democrats like Nancy Pelosi what on earth is going on. (“Well ma’am, Ms xcx, has defined a ‘brat’ as ‘just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, who feels herself, but then also maybe has a breakdown, but kind of parties through it’. Yeah, I know that sounds confusing. But trust me when I say it’ll help us get out the youth vote.”)Harris’s campaign hasn’t just embraced the brats, it’s leaning hard into all the Kamala memes that have been flooding the internet over the past few weeks, including a lot of coconut-related content. That is not a racial slur, I should make clear to British readers, but rather a reference to a speech the vice-president gave in 2023.“My mother … would give us a hard time sometimes,” Harris said at a White House event about educational opportunity. “… and she would say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’” She then paused for profundity before continuing with the philosophical bit. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”The coconut quote – which circulated online long before last week – is quintessential Harris: a bewildering series of words that sound like someone typed “come up with a profound sentence” into an early version of ChatGPT. Lines like this have been a liability in the past, used by her detractors to suggest she’s unserious. The internet, however, is now turning Harris’s unique rhetorical style into an asset. The TikTok mashups and coconut memes have helped inject some much-needed joy and levity into what until now has been an extremely depressing election cycle.At the moment, Harris seems unstoppable. A new Axios/Generation Lab poll shows she’s got a big edge with young voters and another poll has found she’s narrowed Donald Trump’s lead significantly. Nevertheless, it can’t be emphasised enough that we are still very much in the Harris honeymoon phase. People were desperate not to have another Trump-Biden matchup and eager to embrace change of any kind. The question is: can the momentum around Harris be sustained?There is certainly precedent in US elections when it comes to a woman being rapidly built up, only to be swiftly knocked down. And Republicans are already doing their best to knock Harris down with racist and misogynistic attacks. They’ve also attacked her record as vice-president, calling her the “border tsar” and blaming her for the migration crisis.Then there’s the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The internet may have positioned Harris as a lovable goofball now but that image will be hard to sustain among young people if she becomes the face of Biden’s horrific Gaza policy – which has been deeply unpopular with young people and lost the Democrats a lot of support in the important swing state of Michigan, where there is a large Arab American population.So far, Harris has been walking a careful tightrope when it comes to Gaza; trying not to alienate progressives while also making sure she isn’t branded “anti-Israel”. On Wednesday, the vice-president skipped Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress and met him privately instead. On Thursday, she said it was time for a ceasefire deal to be done, but also pledged “unwavering” support for Israel. There’s only so long she can play both sides, however. She will either continue Biden’s policy of letting Israel kill as many Palestinians as it wants, with only meek protestations, or she won’t.Harris will also have to define herself as a candidate more broadly. This has never been one of her strengths and a lack of substance was the undoing of her 2019 attempt to be the Democratic nominee. “She has proved to be an uneven campaigner who changes her message and tactics to little effect and has a staff torn into factions,” the New York Times decreed in a November 2019 piece about how her campaign unravelled.That said, running against her fellow Democrats is very different from running against Trump. While Harris didn’t fully shine as the primary candidate or the vice-president, she has the potential to come into her own now. She is the ultimate anti-Trump. She’s the prosecutor, he’s the felon. He’s the old guy, she’s the relatively young woman. He represents the US’s past, she represents its future. Just a few weeks ago, I was resigned to a Trump win. Now I think the US has a fighting chance of seeing a Madam President.Then again, a week is a long time in politics. And there are still 14 to go before the election.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

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      Harris navigates Netanyahu visit and stance on Israel – podcast

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      Kamala Harris enjoyed a brief period of excitement as Democrats rallied behind her presidential bid ahead of November’s election. Only a few days in, however, she is being asked questions over her stance on Israel and the war in Gaza.
      With fewer than 100 days left, Joan Greve speaks to the former adviser to Barack Obama and co-host of Pod Save The World, Ben Rhodes, about the state of play for November 2024

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Uncommitted voters who protested Biden over Gaza ‘need to see action’ from Harris

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      The protest movement that sought to use the Democratic primaries to pressure Joe Biden to shift his policy on Israel and Gaza breathed a sigh of relief when he ended his bid for re-election. But they’re not ready to promise they’ll support Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee.More than 700,000 Americans voted “uncommitted”, or its equivalent, in state primaries as a message to Biden that he risked losing significant support in November if he did not shift away from his support for Israel. As next month’s Democratic national convention inches closer, the movement has turned its sights to pressuring Harris to shape a new course on Gaza policy. Its demands of Harris include an arms embargo on Israel and support for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, where more than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed since the 7 October attack on Israel by Hamas, according to health officials.Uncommitted voters say that their message to the White House is clear: stop funding Israel’s war, or lose our votes.“[Harris] could get my vote, but it’s going to be a difficult journey. We actually need to see action,” said Fadel Nabilsi, a Palestinian American attorney who voted uncommitted in Michigan’s Democratic primary. Biden won the swing state, where 278,000 Arab Americans live, by just 154,000 votes in 2020. “You need to get on the same page with all of us,” Nabilsi said, “if you’d like to get our support and our backing.”Harris has spoken more forcefully about Palestinian suffering than her boss, and in remarks on Thursday after meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, she used sharp terms to call for a ceasefire and the protection of Palestinian civilians.“What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating. The images of dead children and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time.”She acknowledged that “Israel has a right to defend itself” and denounced Hamas, but also added: “We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies [in Gaza]. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering and I will not be silent.”But despite a difference in tone, she has not signaled how or whether her politics on the region would break from Biden’s – the departure that uncommitted activists are looking for.“The White House’s policy to continue to supply American bombs to Netanyahu is like a bartender serving drinks to an alcoholic while repeatedly urging them to stay sober,” Waleed Shahid, a progressive Democratic strategist and an adviser to the Uncommitted National Movement, said after Harris spoke on Thursday. “Empathy for Palestinians from the vice-president is a step in the right direction but people just want a policy change to stop the supply of American bombs to Israel’s war.”The uncommitted movement gained ground in March following a campaign called Listen to Michigan, which succeeded in persuading more than 100,000 voters to mark their ballots “uncommitted” during the state’s Democratic primary in February. The grassroots effort spread to more than two dozen states, ultimately earning the movement 30 delegates who will travel to the Democratic national convention next month.The movement is urging delegates outside of the uncommitted camp to support their policy demands during the convention. Harris delegates “can help push for an arms embargo”, said Shahid. “They don’t need to become uncommitted delegates.”Abbas Alawieh, an uncommitted delegate from Michigan, said that people close to the Harris campaign have reached out to uncommitted activists in recent days, but declined to share specifics.“We need her to meet with members of our community. We need her to meet with uncommitted delegates,” Alawieh said. “We need to hear from her and her team how she will embrace an approach that prioritizes and values Palestinian lives and the lives of every civilian.”More than 600 people joined an uncommitted national organizing call on Monday night for the movement’s recently launched Not Another Bomb campaign, which urges US leaders to end financial and military support for Israel’s war.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenChloe Lundine, a Detroit, Michigan, resident and uncommitted voter, joined a protest near the Capitol building in Washington DC during Netanyahu’s visit. Earlier this week, she said, she was pressured to resign from her position as an analyst at Wayne State University after posting pro-Palestinian art outside her office. While she was “cautiously optimistic” that Harris would change course on Gaza policy, she added that she’d “love to see her speak with Netanyahu and plainly say that she supports a permanent ceasefire at the very minimum”.Uncommitted voters are torn on whether they’ll vote for the Democratic candidate if their demands aren’t met – they recognize that Donald Trump is not likely to bring peace to Gaza but are resistant to pressure from Democrats to vote against their conscience. Some said they would be dissatisfied if Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor, were picked as Harris’s running mate, citing his efforts to quash pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses.For Ghada Elnajjar, a Palestinian American organizer based in Georgia, the decision of whether to vote for Harris or a candidate like the Green party’s Jill Stein keeps her up at night.“On the one hand, I do consider that it is time for this country to break shackles from a two-party system and introduce a third party,” said Elnajjar. “On the other hand, I understand there’s so many other policies that we need to support: the economy, education, the environment.”‘This could look two ways’A separate anti-war movement has also started mobilizing. On Thursday, Pennsylvania activists launched a campaign to collect pledges from voters refusing to vote for Harris unless she breaks more sharply from Biden policies.“President Biden lost the support of hundreds of thousands of voters because he refused to stop funding genocide in Gaza,” said Reem Abuelhaj, an organizer with the No Ceasefire No Vote campaign. “Vice-president Harris now has a unique opportunity to win back those votes. But that will only happen if she does everything in her power to bring about a ceasefire.”Other activists may not be pressuring people to withhold their votes, but they warn that Harris shouldn’t take their support for granted.“Instead of trying to stop support for Harris, our strategy is going to focus on holding her accountable to values and demands of the majority of the Democratic party base and electorate, which includes a lasting and permanent ceasefire via an arms embargo on Israel,” said Lexis Zeidan, a Palestinian American activist with the uncommitted movement from Dearborn, Michigan.A recent Gallup poll found that more Americans oppose Israel’s war on Gaza than support it: 48% compared with 42%. Just 23% of Democrats said they approve of Israel’s military campaign.“This could look two ways,” said Shahid, the Democratic strategist. “Either the 700,000 uncommitted voters could actively mobilize for vice-president Harris, if they felt like she had shifted significantly on Gaza from Biden.“If she doesn’t shift on Gaza, I think people will be much more reserved about their enthusiasm, in terms of knocking on doors, donating, telling their friends and family and their community to vote for Harris, even if they don’t like Trump.” More

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      JD Vance’s selection as Trump’s running mate marks the end of Republican conservatism

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      Since Donald Trump chose Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate, it’s been widely noted that Vance once described Trump as “reprehensible” and “cultural heroin.” However, the day after Vance won his own Senate race in 2022, he reportedly made it known that he would support Trump for president in 2024.

      Given this dramatic change, what does Vance’s selection mean for the Republican Party and conservatism, the political philosophy that the GOP once claimed to embrace?

      I am a political scientist whose research and political analysis focuses on the relationship between Trump, the Republican Party and conservatism. Everyday citizens define conservatism in different ways, but at its root it is a philosophy that supports smaller and less-centralized government because consolidated power could be used to silence political competition and deny citizens their liberties.

      Since 2015, Trump has tightened his grip on the Republican Party, moving it further away from its professed conservative ideology. The choice of Vance as Trump’s running mate – and the competition that preceded it – are the latest steps in this process.

      Political columnist George Will describes how Trumpism has steered the Republican Party away from traditional conservative views.

      Vance came from a small pool of contenders that included other noteworthy politicians who likewise once vehemently opposed Trump. By examining their trajectories, we can see how the Republican Party has abandoned conservative values to serve a single man.

      Elise Stefanik

      Elise Stefanik ran for Congress in 2014 from a district in upstate New York as a mainstream Republican who admired Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Ryan was a traditional conservative who had run for vice president alongside former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2012. Romney endorsed Stefanik for Congress, saying that she was “a person of integrity. Every campaign is different, but values don’t change.”

      But Stefanik’s values did change. When forced to share the ballot with Trump in 2016, she couldn’t even “spit his name out,” according to Republican consultant Tim Miller. But early in Trump’s presidency, she became a vocal ally, eventually replacing Rep. Liz Cheney as chair of the House Republican Conference in 2021.

      House Republicans ousted Cheney from that position after she criticized Trump’s refusal to support the 2020 election results and his actions during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Cheney justified her opposition to Trump by highlighting her respect for the rule of law and support for limited government – even when those positions meant opposing her own party leader. These are foundational conservative principles, centered in aversion to consolidated government power.

      This switch was a significant moment in the party’s ideological transformation. Stefanik’s rising star subsequently landed her in the mix for vice president, which she called “An honor. A humbling honor.”

      Marco Rubio

      Florida Sen. Marco Rubio challenged Trump for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. During that race, Rubio issued a news release calling Trump a “serious threat to the future of our party and our country,” and blamed him for ushering in a climate of violence.

      Statements like these made sense coming from a serious conservative whose worldview was defined by his family’s Cuban heritage and who opposed communism, tyranny and excessive government power.

      Eventually, though, Rubio became a Trump ally. He voted to acquit Trump in his second impeachment trial in 2021, which centered on charges that Trump had incited an insurrection. In line with Trump’s wishes, Rubio opposed establishing an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 events.

      In early 2024, Rubio was asked in an ABC interview if he really wanted to be vice president even though Trump had defended calls by Jan. 6 insurrectionists to hang former Vice President Mike Pence for certifying the 2020 election results.

      “When Donald Trump was president of the United States, this country was safer, it was more prosperous,” Rubio responded. “I think this country and the world was a better place.”

      This refusal to acknowledge and challenge Trump’s apparent support of lawlessness by his followers was an abdication of fundamental conservative values.

      Sen. Marco Rubio called Donald Trump ‘a con artist’ and a threat to conservatism in 2016, but sought to be his running mate in 2024.

      Tim Scott

      South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott has touted his conservative values and principles throughout his political life. It was logical for him to endorse Rubio as Trump gained momentum in the 2016 Republican primaries.

      In 2017, Scott insisted that Trump’s failure to condemn white nationalists after violent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, compromised his moral authority. Not long after, however, Scott met with Trump about his comments and was convinced that Trump had “obviously reflected” on what he said.

      When Trump refused to flatly condemn white supremacists a few years later in a 2020 presidential debate, Scott suggested that Trump “misspoke” and should correct the comments, but added, “If he doesn’t correct it, I guess he didn’t misspeak.” After dropping out of the Republican primaries in 2024, Scott endorsed Trump as someone who could “unite the country.”

      Why Vance?

      These converted Trump allies still hold modern conservative stances on issues such as abortion and health care. But in seeking to become Trump’s running mate, they tacitly endorsed an executive’s attempt to overturn a democratic election and subvert the liberties of U.S. citizens. Such a shift violates the spirit of conservatism.

      These politicians have also moved away from conservative principles in areas including U.S. foreign policy and immigration. But the fundamental shift that is most profound is in their attitudes toward abuse of government power.

      What should we make of Trump choosing Vance, who once privately compared Trump to Hitler but now says that he would not have readily certified the 2020 election if he had been in Pence’s shoes?

      Many considerations affect the choice of a running mate. But Vance doesn’t represent a swing state. He probably won’t appeal to MAGA-skeptical independent voters who have yet to make up their minds about who to vote for.

      Instead, people close to Trump call the 39-year-old Vance the new heir to Trump’s MAGA movement. Vance is more than a protegé, though; he embodies Trump’s influence on the Republican Party’s evolving relationship with government power and insists his political conversion is genuine.

      If there was any speculation that Republicans would revert to some form of traditional conservatism after Trump leaves politics, the prospect of a JD Vance presidency makes clear that the answer is no. More

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      The media is already failing in its duty to fairly cover Kamala Harris | Margaret Sullivan

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      It’s going to be ugly, that much is already clear.In the few days since Kamala Harris began her 2024 campaign for president, the media has shown us where some of their coverage is headed: no place good.Both the rightwing and traditional media are making some predictable blunders. Add in the swill that circulates endlessly on the social media platforms, and you’ve got a mess.Take, for example, the recent coverage of a Republican congressman’s smear of Harris.“One hundred percent she is a DEI hire,” Tim Burchett of Tennessee said on CNN, using the acronym for “diversity, equity and inclusion” to claim that she was ascending because of her race, not on merit. “Her record is abysmal at best.”An NBC headline was one of many to hand a giant megaphone to this racist trope: “GOP Rep Tim Burchett calls Kamala Harris a ‘DEI vice-president’.” Plenty of others did the same – parroting and thus amplifying the slur.Some news organizations added a fig leaf to their coverage, like the Tampa TV station whose headline read: “GOP representative called Harris a ‘DEI hire’: what does this mean?”There was a more responsible way to go. USA Today, for one, brought helpful context in a piece headlined: “DEI candidate: what’s behind the GOP attacks on Kamala Harris.” It did a good job of explaining that this phrase is all part of the right’s anti-“woke” culture wars. “DEI has become GOP shorthand to impugn the qualifications of people of color who ascend to positions of power and influence.” The reporter quoted the author Mita Mallick noting that the DEI label is an attempt to “discredit, demoralize and disrespect leaders of color by labeling them ‘diversity hires’ – or otherwise misappropriating the language of diversity, equity, and inclusion as thinly veiled racist insults.” You come away with greater understanding.Some insults are even more transparently racist, as when the perpetual liar and propagandist Kellyanne Conway went on Fox News in order to trash Harris: “She does not speak well. She does not work hard. She should not be the standard bearer for the party.”These stereotypes, painting a woman of color as unintelligent and lazy, echo well-established white-grievance themes, causing the author Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who studies authoritarian movements, to warn: “Propagandists know that you should build on existing prejudices when introducing a new hate object or theme.”Some commentary wasn’t racist but just pointless – as when Katy Tur asked, on MSNBC, if Harris was the kind of person voters would want to have a beer with. The “likeability” question certainly seems to come up for women candidates more than men.It’s a familiar election-cycle cliche, but the former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob didn’t find it harmless. He posted his disgust: “I want a president who won’t turn our country into a fascist hellscape. I’m not auditioning barstool partners.”Then there was the head-spinning opportunism of two columns in the Wall Street Journal by the same writer, Jason Riley, separated by only two weeks but managing to wildly contradict each other. The first headline, on 9 July: “Kamala Harris would be the best Democratic choice.” The second, on 23 July: “Kamala Harris isn’t the change Democrats need.”Parker Molloy, in her newsletter The Present Age, called it “a textbook example of the intellectual dishonesty that plagues much of our political commentary”.This hollow punditry is all about being provocative; consistency be damned.So far, Harris and her allies seem to be capable of flipping some stereotypes on their head. When JD Vance’s description of Harris and other urban career women – “childless cat ladies” who are “miserable at their lives” – resurfaced after he was named Donald Trump’s running mate, his sexist diss went viral.So did the backlash. Jennifer Aniston shot back at Vance, cat-lady apparel was sold at high volume, and Ella Emhoff posted on Instagram about her stepmother, also name-checking her brother: “How can you be ‘childless’ when you have cutie pie kids like Cole and I?”Still, sexist and racist tropes take their toll. To be sure, Harris deserves fair scrutiny from the press. But she doesn’t deserve to be the target of smears and stereotypes amplified by journalists and pundits addicted to conflict-driven clicks.As the election draws nearer, the media should consider the words of someone who has ridden in this rodeo.Writing in the New York Times this week, Hillary Clinton predicted that Harris’s record and character “will be distorted and disparaged by a flood of disinformation and the kind of ugly prejudice we’re already hearing from Maga mouthpieces”.Everybody has a role to play to prevent the spread. The campaign must find a way to cut through the noise, and voters must be careful about what they believe and share, as she urged.And I would add that the media must avoid spreading hateful stereotypes. November’s election is far too consequential for that.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      Conservatives’ racist and sexist attacks on Kamala Harris show exactly who they are | Judith Levine

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      Like a warm compress drawing pus from a wound, the Democratic presidential candidacy of Kamala Harris immediately brought out the misogyny and racism of the Maga Republican party.Tim Burchett, the Tennessee Republican representative, called Harris, the child of a Black Jamaican father and an Indian mother, a DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) hire – picked, that is, because she is Black, not because she’s qualified. Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, insinuated that Harris is a welfare queen. “What the hell have you done other than collect a check?” he asked at a Michigan rally of Harris, a former state attorney general, US senator and now the vice-president. At the same time, social media posts showing Harris with her parents falsely claim she’s not really Black, because her father is light-skinned.Popping up again are rumors circulated in 2020 by Trump lawyer John Eastman that Harris is ineligible to run for office because she might not be a citizen. Like Barack Obama, about whom Trump stirred the same “birther” calumny, Harris was born in the US.Far-right blogger Matt Walsh and former Fox host Megyn Kelly suggested Harris slept her way to the top. Conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer went further, alleging that the veep was “once an escort” who started out by “giving blow jobs to successful, rich, Black men”. The founder of Pastors for Trump tweeted: “Both Joe + the Ho gotta go!”While allegedly copulating with all comers, Harris is slammed for failing in her womanly duty to reproduce. In a video that recently turned up, Vance, the father of three, told Tucker Carlson in 2021 that the US was being run by “childless cat ladies” – Harris among them – who don’t “have a direct stake” in the country’s future. Will Chamberlain, a lawyer who worked on Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign, proclaimed that “people without kids … are highly susceptible to corruption and perversion. They have no care for the future and live in the present.”Being a step-parent – as Harris is to her husband’s biological children – doesn’t count, Chamberlain added. This criticism has never been leveled against the childless George Washington – although, to be fair, he was the Father of Our Country.And if misogyny and racism are not sufficient, the right keeps searching for plain weirdness to use against the Democratic candidate. All they’ve come up with, though, is one of her more charming characteristics, her laugh, from which Trump derives his lamest-yet political nickname: “Laughing Kamala”.This stuff is vile to watch. But as with drained pus, it’s got to be exposed to the air. Because it’s not just talk. It reveals what a Trump presidency would mean. By exposing what’s festering barely under the skin of Trumpism, the Republican party is telling us to vote against him.While in office, Trump’s ignorance and incompetence prevented him from accomplishing – or, often, knowing – what he wanted to do. In his madder moments, some of his advisers pulled him back from the edge. But this time, he’s got a team of smart, loyal experts and a detailed plan, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, to get it done.In 2020, when Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd’s murder spread across the country, Trump gunned to gun down the protesters – literally. “Can’t you just shoot them?” he asked Mark Esper, according to the then defense secretary’s memoir. In another memoir, then Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender quotes the apoplectic president calling on police and the military to “crack [protesters’] skulls” and “beat the fuck” out of them. For the most part, this didn’t happen.Should Project 2025 become reality, however, the commander-in-chief would be freer to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, which authorizes him to direct the military to put down domestic unrest. The blueprint also advises the administration to revoke all consent decrees imposing federal oversight on police departments with records of brutality and murder of civilians, particularly civilians of color.The 2024 Republican national convention, featuring Hulk Hogan, Kid Rock and another straight white man on the ticket, was practically a parody of the white hypermasculinity animating the party. But the Republican party promises to force its gender ideology on the rest of us. “Cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, radical gender ideology, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children,” reads the platform. Project 2025 proposes that “the redefinition of sex to cover gender identity and sexual orientation … be reversed” and the phrase “sexual orientation and gender identity” be eliminated from anti-discrimination policies across federal agencies. In fact, its aim is to eliminate anti-discrimination policies altogether.And, of course, there’s abortion. In 2016, Trump opined that “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions. Then he walked the statement back. This April, he told a reporter that states should be allowed to punish doctors. “Everything we’re doing now is states and states’ rights,” he elaborated, using the historical code words for legislated racial segregation – now updated to gender oppression. And while he’s distanced himself from a federal abortion ban, Project 2025 is riddled with pledges to protect the safety, dignity and humanity of the unborn.Clueless as he was, Trump attained the right’s holy grail: a supreme court majority that will decimate the civil and human rights of people of color, pregnant people, the poor, immigrants and the marginalized long into the future. The Trump court is already punishing people who seek abortions. Even if Congress founders, this court will realize every racist and misogynist dream.It’s hard to say whether this bigotry will sway voters. A month before the 2016 election, after a campaign of one racist, xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic outburst after another, Trump’s “grab them by the pussy” tape was leaked and a dozen women accused the candidate of sexual misconduct. Hillary Clinton surged to a lead of as much as 11 points. Then, FBI director James Comey released a letter equivocating on the extent or importance of those official emails on her private server, and Trump won. It’s still unclear whether the Comey report turned the election. But the pussy-grabbing tape did not.Still, in 2016, Trump was a pig but an untested pig. A lot has happened since then. His presidency was bookended by the Women’s March and the Black Lives Matter protests. In 2017, Tarana Burke’s #MeToo hashtag went viral and rage over sexual harassment exploded. Five years later, Pew Research found that the majority of Americans, including Republicans, felt the #MeToo movement had a positive impact. BLM engaged protesters of every age and race, and antiracist movements continue to. Trump has been convicted of sexual abuse. Now, if anything, Maga is focusing the anger of women and people of color.Republican leaders sense these changes, and they’re worried – worried enough that Richard Hudson, chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, called a closed-door meeting to tell the caucus to cut the slime and focus on the issues.Maybe they will. But Trump and his nastier champions will not: hatred will continue to ooze from their mouths. Disgusting as it, pay attention. Because sexism and racism are not just talk. They’re policies – the calamitous policies a Trump presidency augurs.

      Judith Levine is a Brooklyn journalist and essayist, a contributing writer to the Intercept and the author of five books More

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      Fines for child labor violations would increase under new Democratic bill

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      Democrats introduced a bill Friday proposing increased penalties for employers found guilty of child labor violations and toughening rules around minimum wage, overtime violations and breaches of health and safety rules.The Let’s Protect Workers act would also set new penalties for retaliating against workers who exercise their right to take family and medical leave, toughen oversight of workplace injury records, improve mine safety and ensure funding for workers affected by black lung.The bill comes as child labor violations have surged in the US. The Department of Labor reported an increase of 88% in such violations between 2019 and 2023 as Republican states have moved to relax child labor rules. Eight states have passed legislation to roll back child labor protections so far this year.For child labor violations, the US Department of Labor can currently fine employers up to $11,000 per employee who is the subject of a child labor violation and up to $50,000 for each violation that causes injury or death of a minor. The fines can be doubled if the violation is determined to be willful or repeated. The new bill would increase fines up to $150,000 per employee subject to a child labor violation and up to $700,000 for a violation that causes the death or injury of a minor, which still could be doubled for willful or repetitive violations.Wage and hour violations would increase from up to $1,100 per violation to $25,000 per violation, which may be doubled for willful or repetitive violations.“Every American should be fairly compensated and be able to return home safely at the end of the day,” said Robert “Bobby” Scott, Virginia representative and ranking Democratic member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.“Unfortunately, shortcomings in our labor laws enable unethical employers to exploit workers, endanger children and suppress the right to organize – with little accountability,” Scott said. “That’s why I’m proud to introduce the Let’s Protect Workers act, which will hold bad actors accountable and strengthen penalties for labor law violations. This bill will help level the playing field and, once again, restore the balance of power between workers and their employers.”The bill would also introduce civil monetary penalties for unfair labor practices committed by employers, up to $50,000 per violation. Currently, employers do not face any civil monetary penalties aside from back pay and reinstatement of workers for unfair labor practice charges.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe legislation comes in the wake of a report published by Scott in April 2024 that outlined the ineffectiveness of low or non-existent civil monetary penalties for labor violations committed by employers. The report outlines how current fines and penalties are merely “a slap on the wrist”, with employers facing little to no deterrents to breaking labor laws.“Unfortunately, unscrupulous employers are emboldened to violate these foundational worker rights and protections because of the weak civil monetary penalties assessed in response,” the report noted. “Under some labor and employment laws, workers are worse off as employers face no monetary penalty and can break the law cost-free.” More