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      The coach v the couch: key takeaways from the first Harris-Walz rally

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      Kamala Harris introduced her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, to supporters at a packed, energetic rally at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.The event, which kicks off a week-long tour through the most politically competitive US states, marks a new chapter for the Harris campaign after securing enough delegates to be the Democratic nominee.Here’s what you need to know:Harris sought to define Walz foremost as a teacher, veteran and football coachHarris called Walz the “kind of teacher and mentor that every child in America dreams of having”. She told a story about him agreeing to lead his school’s gay-straight alliance, knowing “the signal it would send to have a football coach get involved”.Harris also spoke of his skills as a marksman and his views on the second amendment. And finally, she talked at length about Walz’s time in the army national guard and his service to the country.Walz focused on a unifying, future-focused messageWalz, who like Harris is known for his smile, started his speech by saying: “Thank you for the trust you put in me, but more so, thank you for bringing back the joy.” He then spoke about growing up in the “heartland”, respecting neighbors, and his family of educators, attempting to differentiate the ticket from Donald Trump and JD Vance’s focus on mass deportation and crime.“If Donald Trump and JD Vance are irritated that Kamala Harris smiles and laughs, they’re really going to be irritated by Tim Walz,” Melissa Hortman, the Democratic speaker of Minnesota’s house of representatives, told the Guardian.’Mind your own damn business’: Walz attacked the Trump-Vance ticket with a focus on reproductive rights and other freedomsWalz talked about his daughter Hope, who often appears in videos and photographs with her father, being born through IVF, and Republican attacks on contraception and abortion. Abortion opponents have been increasingly pushing for broader measures that would give rights and protections to embryos and fetuses, which could have big implications for fertility treatments.He also spoke about gun control, a tenet of the Harris campaign, saying he supported the second amendment but that children should have the freedom to go to school without the concern of school shootings.Walz made a direct hit at Project 2025, the conservative manifesto created by Trump allies and advisers. “Don’t believe him when he plays dumb,” he said of the former president. “He knows exactly what Project 2025 will to do restrict our freedoms.”He encapsulated his idea in another sticky colloquialism to counter Republicans hoping to intervene in medical practices and schools: “Mind your own damn business.”Josh Shapiro, who had been a vice-presidential contender, still made his markThe Pennsylvania governor who was also in the final running to be Harris’s running mate, spoke before Harris and Walz. His pitch-perfect and fiery speech helped set the tone for the rally, and he threw his support behind the newly announced ticket.Shapiro and Walz’s speeches also made the distinction between the two politicians clear. Shapiro has been described as Obama-like in his polished and forceful delivery. Meanwhile, Walz, whose speech spanned dad jokes and pointed attacks on his opponents, seasoned his remarks with midwestern dialect, adding a “damn well” here and a “come on” there. “Say it with me! We are not going back,” he said, starting a chant from the audience. “We’ve got 91 days. My god, that’s easy,” he said. “We’ll sleep when we’re dead.”The couch joke was madeWalz said his GOP rival, Trump’s running mate JD Vance, and Trump “are creepy and yes, they’re weird as hell”. He added that he “can’t wait to debate the guy”, speaking of Vance. Then, to sustained cheers and laughter, he made a reference to the baseless, but much-shared claim, that Vance admitted to having sex with a couch in his memoir. “That is if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up”.Stumping earlier today in Pennsylvania, Vance said: “I absolutely want to debate Tim Walz,” but not until after the Democratic convention, he said, because of the sudden change in the Democratic ticket. More

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      Utah Supreme Court Upholds a Block on a Strict Abortion Ban

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      Utah cannot enforce its near-total ban on abortion while a challenge to the law proceeds in the courts, the State Supreme Court ruled on Thursday. The Utah Supreme Court upheld on Thursday a suspension of the state’s near-total ban on abortion, meaning the procedure remains legal while a court challenge to the law proceeds. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade, it cleared the way for two Utah laws to come into force: a ban on most abortions after the 18th week of pregnancy, which was passed in 2019 and is currently in effect, and a near-total abortion ban passed in 2020 that would prohibit the procedure at any time during pregnancy, with very limited exceptions, including for cases of rape or incest or to save the life of the mother.The near-total abortion ban took effect in 2022, but the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah almost immediately filed a lawsuit in the state seeking to block the ban. The organization argued that the ban violated several provisions in the State Constitution, including those that guarantee a right to determine family composition and a right to gender equality.A trial court issued a preliminary injunction in July 2022 blocking the state from enforcing the near-total ban while the case proceeded. Utah state officials appealed, but the State Supreme Court ruled against them on Thursday and left the injunction in place. Camila Vega, a staff attorney for Planned Parenthood Federation of America and one of the litigators on the case, said after the state’s appeal was filed last August that the organization would “once again make the case that the trigger ban violates the Utah constitution, which protects pregnant Utahns’ ability to make their own medical decisions and their right to determine when and whether to have a family.”In court filings, the state argued that the Utah constitution does not protect a right to abortion, and that the injunction imposed “severe irreparable harm on the State side of the balance, given the profound state and public interest at stake — the preservation of human life, both the mother’s and the unborn child’s.” The state challenged Planned Parenthood Association of Utah’s standing to file the lawsuit, and argued that the trial court had abused its discretion and erred in issuing the injunction. The State Supreme Court rejected those arguments on Thursday. Whether abortion up to 18 weeks will remain permanently legal in the state of Utah depends on the outcome of Planned Parenthood Association of Utah’s lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the near-total ban. The ruling on Thursday did not decide that question; rather, it said that the lower courts were right to let the case proceed and to keep the state from enforcing the ban in the meantime. More

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      Harris urges Americans to vote after six-week abortion ban takes effect in Iowa

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      Kamala Harris, the likely Democratic nominee for president, urged Americans to vote after a six-week abortion ban took effect in Iowa on Monday.“This ban is going to take effect before many women even know they’re pregnant,” Harris said in a video posted to YouTube. “What this means is that one in three women of reproductive age in America lives in a state with a Trump abortion ban.”During the 33-second clip, Harris used the phrase “Trump abortion ban” three times – part of a wider effort by her campaign to blame her rival Donald Trump, who appointed three of the supreme court justices who overturned Roe v Wade and enabled states to outlaw abortion, for the spate of unpopular bans that now blanket the south and midwest.The Republican-dominated Iowa state legislature passed the ban last year, but a lengthy court battle initially stopped it from taking effect. Last month, the Iowa supreme court ruled that the ban could be enforced, leading a lower-court judge to rule it could take effect on Monday morning at 8am local time.“The upholding of this abortion ban in Iowa is an absolute devastation and violation of human rights, depriving Iowans of their bodily autonomy,” Leah Vanden Bosch, development and outreach director of the Iowa Abortion Access Fund, said in a statement. “We know a ban will not stop the need for abortions.”Up until Sunday, abortion had been legal in Iowa up to roughly 22 weeks of pregnancy. Now, abortion clinics in the state have indicated that they will continue offering the procedure to the legal limit. The closest options for Iowans who want abortions after six weeks of pregnancy will probably be Minnesota and Illinois, Democratic-run states that border Iowa and that have become abortion havens since Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022.The Iowa ban permits abortions past six weeks in cases of rape or incest, or in medical emergencies.Fourteen other states enacted near-total bans on abortion since the US supreme court overturned Roe. Three other states – Georgia, South Carolina and Florida – have banned abortion past about six weeks of pregnancy.Roe’s demise led to surge in support for abortion rights, even in red states. Sixty-one per cent of Iowans, including 70% of women, say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, a Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll found last year.The end of Roe has made abortion rights one of the top issues in the 2024 election. Harris, the face of the issue for Democrats, has said that she would sign a bill codifying Roe’s protections into law. On the other side of the aisle, Trump, the Republican nominee has tried to downplay the issue as it has become a liability for Republicans.Kim Reynolds, Iowa’s Republican governor, celebrated the ban, calling it a “victory for life”. In a statement, she added: “There is nothing more sacred and no cause more worthy than protecting innocent unborn lives.” More

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      JD Vance Stumbles in His Debut as Democrats Go on Offense

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      In the 12 days since Ohio’s junior senator was tapped as the future of Donald J. Trump’s movement, old comments and a chorus of derision have blunted any sense of invulnerability.The choice of Senator JD Vance as former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate reflected the confidence of a campaign so sure of victory in November that it could look beyond a second Trump term to the legacy of his movement.But in less than two weeks, Mr. Vance has found himself on the defensive, and his struggles have dented the sense of invulnerability that only a week ago seemed to be the overriding image of the Trump campaign.A stream of years-old quotes, videos and audio comments unearthed by Democrats and the news media in recent days has threatened to undermine the Trump campaign’s outreach to women, voters of color and the very blue-collar voters to whom Mr. Vance, a first-term Ohio senator, was supposed to appeal.His past comments deriding “childless cat ladies,” supporting a “federal response” to stop abortion in Democratic states and promoting a higher tax burden for childless Americans have yielded a chorus of criticism from Democrats. Mr. Vance’s fresh efforts to explain them have provided Democrats more material, with the Harris campaign promoting one short clip in which he seems to suggest that when he spoke of childless cat ladies, he meant no insult to cats — “I’ve got nothing against cats,” he said.And his first handful of appearances on the stump have drawn unflattering attention. During an appearance in his hometown, Middletown, Ohio, he tried to explain how his critics would call his drinking Diet Mountain Dew racist, with an awkward aside assuring the audience that Diet Mountain Dew was good.Mr. Vance’s stumbles have come after a remarkable two weeks when Mr. Trump survived an assassination attempt, and then rallied the party — and even some skeptics — behind him. The Republican National Convention began with calls for national unity, and though those calls were at times undercut by the Republican presidential nominee, the ticket vaulted out of Milwaukee with a head of steam and an expanded lead in the polls.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Silent No More, Harris Seeks Her Own Voice Without Breaking With Biden

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      The vice president’s expressions of concern for Palestinian suffering marked a shift in emphasis from the president’s statements as she moved to establish herself as the leader of her party.After meeting with Israel’s prime minister this week, Vice President Kamala Harris said she “will not be silent.” She was referring to her concerns about Palestinian suffering in the Gaza war, but in a way it was a larger declaration of independence.For nearly four years, she has been the quiet understudy, relegated to the role of the supportive deputy while President Biden made pronouncements. Now she has suddenly been thrust to the fore as the new presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and neither silence nor agreeable head nods are sufficient any more.The challenge for her over the next 100 days will be to find her own voice without overtly breaking with Mr. Biden, a delicate political high-wire act without a reliable net. Every statement she makes, every sentence she utters, will be scrutinized to determine whether it is consistent with the president she serves. Yet even as she wants to demonstrate loyalty to Mr. Biden, she also hopes to show the public who she is.She is fortunate in that she and Mr. Biden do not diverge all that much, according to people who have worked with them. While friction between presidents and their vice presidents is common, there have been few notable instances where Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris have been reported to be at odds. So for her, it may not be as difficult to suppress contrary instincts in the truncated election campaign she faces as it has been for other vice presidents eager to differentiate themselves.But this is a balancing act being figured out on the fly. Because Mr. Biden was running himself until less than a week ago, neither he nor Ms. Harris has had much time to figure out how to coordinate their messages. It was notable that Mr. Biden left it to Ms. Harris on Thursday to be the public voice of the administration during the White House visit by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, taking the silent role himself.Mr. Biden cares deeply about keeping former President Donald J. Trump out of the White House and therefore has reason to be invested in Ms. Harris’s success. He also knows that because, until he was forced to quit the race, he had insisted on running again despite concerns about his age, many will blame him for not ceding the stage earlier if Mr. Trump wins.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      JD Vance called for ‘federal response’ to block women from traveling for abortions

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      JD Vance, the Ohio senator and Donald Trump’s running mate, promoted a baseless rightwing talking point in 2022 when he warned of George Soros-funded planes transporting Black women across state lines for abortions.“I’m sympathetic to the view that like, okay, look here, here’s a situation – let’s say Roe v Wade is overruled,” Vance said in a recently resurfaced podcast interview. “Ohio bans abortion in 2022, or let’s say 2024. And then, you know, every day George Soros sends a 747 to Columbus to load up disproportionately Black women to get them to go have abortions in California. And of course, the left will celebrate this as a victory for diversity – uh, that’s kind of creepy.”The US supreme court overturned Roe in 2022. Vance’s statements echo a common anti-abortion talking point accusing abortion providers and their supporters of targeting people of color.Black women did seek abortions at a higher rate before Roe fell, but public health experts say that this is far from proof of a racist conspiracy. They point to a number systemic factors – for example, Black women are more likely to live in areas where it’s harder to access contraception. They are also disproportionately harmed by abortion bans.Vance continued: “And, and it’s like, if that happens, do you need some federal response to prevent it from happening? Because it’s really creepy. And I’m pretty sympathetic to that actually. So, you know, how hopefully we get to a point where Ohio bans abortion in California and the Soroses of the world respect it.”While Open Society Foundations, which was founded by Soros, does support reproductive rights, the billionaire philanthropist is not directing planes to swoop up Black women for abortions. He has been the target of antisemitic conspiracy theories for years.Vance’s comments were reported by CNN. On Thursday evening, Kamala Harris’s campaign posted audio of the remarks on X.Vance’s record on abortion has come under national scrutiny since Trump picked the Hillbilly Elegy author as his vice-presidential running mate. In 2022, Vance suggested he would support a national 15-week abortion ban with exceptions. But, like other Republicans wary of the political fallout of Roe’s demise, Vance has more recently sought to soften his position and said in an interview that “we have to accept people do not want abortion bans”. He has also expressed support for the availability of mifepristone, a common abortion pill, and said he agrees with Trump’s position that states should decide their own abortion laws. (Trump has flip-flopped on this stance.)But in January 2023, Vance signed ont o a letter urging the Department of Justice to use the Comstock Act, a 19th-century anti-obscenity law, to ban the mailing of abortion pills nationwide. Since Roe’s fall, anti-abortion activists have begun claiming that the Comstock Act remains good law and can be used to enforce a federal abortion ban. Project 2025, a wish list for a conservative administration written by the influential thinktank Heritage Foundation, reiterates this argument.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Senator Vance has made his position clear: he agrees with President Trump that each state should have the chance to individually set their own abortion laws,” Taylor Van Kirk, a spokeswoman for Vance, said in a statement. “Desperate attacks from Democrats will not distract voters from the deadly effects of Kamala’s wide-open border, the untenable cost of living caused by her inflationary spending or any other aspect of her far-left, radical agenda.”Vance’s vice-presidential run is off to a rocky start, and he has spent the last week haunted by other resurfaced remarks. In a 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson, Vance said that the United States and the Democratic party wwere run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies, who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too”.He then named Harris, who has two step-children, as an example, along with Pete Buttigieg (who has since had children) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” he said. “And how does it make sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”Those comments have provoked an uproar, drawing condemnation even from relatively apolitical celebrities like Jennifer Aniston. Kerstin Emhoff, the ex-wife of Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff, called the attacks on the presumptive Democratic nominee “baseless” and praised her co-parenting. In an Instagram story, Harris’s step-daughter Ella Emhoff posted: “I love my three parents.” 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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      Kamala Harris memes are all over the internet. Will tweets and TikToks turn into votes?

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      In a series of events over 24 hours that would have been unimaginable a week ago, Kamala Harris ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket, secured the backing of Joe Biden and key leaders, brought in a record-breaking $81m, and became the face of brat summer.“kamala IS brat,” pop star Charli xcx declared on Sunday, a reference to her new album released last month that has launched countless memes declaring it the season of the brat. A brat, in the British singer’s own words, is “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”.Brat was having a moment, Kamala was having hers, and the two came together in cultural union via a tidal wave of posts – largely from younger Americans – like videos with the pop star’s music over clips of the vice-president’s frequently shared coconut tree remarks.Harris’s campaign quickly embraced the memes, adopting a lime green Twitter/X background in the same aesthetic of the Brat album. The internet went wild.Now the question is what it might mean for Harris’s chances come November. Will tweets and TikToks turn into votes?While this year’s election drew plenty of memes and online engagement, there was little excitement about the rematch of Joe Biden, 81, and Donald Trump, 78, and instead a pervasive sense of cynicism.Young people had reported feeling disengaged and apathetic about the upcoming elections, and US politics in general. In a US News-Generation Lab poll of voters 18-34 from early July, 61% of respondents agreed that the upcoming election would be among the most important in history, but nearly a third said they would probably not or definitely not vote.Of those who said would not or were unlikely to vote, 40% said it was because they didn’t like any of the candidates, and 15% said they were turned off by politics.After Biden’s widely criticized debate performance, and amid growing calls for him to bow out of the election, there was a flurry of Harris-related memes. The KHive, as Harris fans have been called, seemed rejuvenated by the renewed interest around her.The memes and posts surged after Biden announced that he would step aside, and that he was endorsing Harris, including videos of her with music from Chappell Roan and Kendrick Lamar, and along the way the tone of the content shifted from oftentimes just ironic and silly to something more earnest.“It went from being just shitposting to shitposting into reality and as it became more and more real people also understood what power this could actually hold and what this could actually mean,” said Annie Wu Henry, a digital and political strategist who has worked with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive congresswoman from New York, and Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman.She views the furor around Harris among younger voters as both about Harris but also something larger. “It’s about the potential for something new, it’s about a political party that can be agile and make adjustments based on what they are hearing from the people.”“I think it is really exciting and bringing a lot of energy and hope to folks that haven’t felt this way in some time and for young people that maybe haven’t had a moment of hope like this in politics before.”The buzz online is bringing results, said Marianna Pecora, the communications director for Voters of Tomorrow. The gen-Z led liberal advocacy organization had its best fundraising day in history, Pecora said, and saw more apply to join a chapter or start a chapter in two days than in the last month combined.Priorities USA, one of the largest liberal Super Pacs, told the Guardian on Tuesday that after Biden endorsed Harris, it saw a notable increase in the share of young people who said they plan to vote in the upcoming election.It’s also brought a sense of joy and excitement not often seen in politics, Pecora said, particularly for a generation that came of age during one of the most difficult periods in recent history from growing political turmoil and the rise of far-right extremism in the US to Covid-19.“We’ve had this history as young people not seeing a system that really works for us and not having too many figureheads that are really fighting for us,” said Pecora, who was 13 when Donald Trump was elected.While polls show that Harris – like Biden and Trump – has struggled with favorability ratings, she has helped elevate issues that are important to younger voters, including abortion rights and Israel’s war on Gaza.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHarris, a biracial woman who is set to be the first Asian American and black woman to lead a major party’s presidential ticket, is an appealing candidate to gen Z voters, who are among the most diverse generation in US history, said Yalda T Uhls with the Center for Scholars & Storytellers at the University of California, Los Angeles.This year 41 million members of gen Z will be eligible to vote, and nearly half of them are people of color.A report from the center published last year that surveyed people from ages 10 to 24 found that adolescents are most interested in hopeful uplifting content of people beating the odds. “I feel like that’s the Kamala story,” Uhls said. That same study also found that in their entertainment, older teens were most interested in seeing a Black woman as the hero of a story.“Maybe young people have been waiting for this. They have been waiting for a candidate they feel is representative of them,” said Uhls, who co-authored the report and also grew up with Harris.But while Harris’s entry into the race has energized young voters, they also want to see real policy proposals that align with the issues most important to them, experts say.“Whether this translates to a large surge in youth voter turnout in November may come down to whether the new Democratic nominee also can convince young voters of a credible plan to address the existential threats they see in their everyday lives,” said Sarah Swanbeck, the executive director of the Berkeley Institute for Young Americans, pointing to the climate crisis, protections for democratic institutions, and economic policy that will improve social mobility.The events of this week have marked a special moment for young women, said Pecora. Young women for decades have been the arbiters of culture, she said, and this moment is tying the culture of young women to the vice-president.“We know we’re the margin of victory and that is translating into how this is happening online. It’s no coincidence to me that young women who have become the base of the Democratic party, who are fighting for reproductive freedom, their culture is the culture that is becoming mainstream with this movement,” she said. (Conservatives have frequently railed against the growing number of unmarried women supporting Democrats.)“It’s showing that we have power and sway in this world where young women are typically told wait your turn or let a man do it.”Uhls, the UCLA scholar who has studied gen Z, said she predicts the enthusiasm of the last few days will make a difference in November.“I think it’s going to translate to votes,” Uhls said. “Young people get most of their news and political information from social media. Some of them have written about this but they are thrilled that someone is actually marketing to them.”Still, Harris’s path to the White House is tough. The latest poll from PBS News/NPR/Marist found that if the election were today, 46% of voters would support Trump and 45% would vote for Harris, a close race though within the margin of error. The outcome of November’s election is expected to be decided by a few thousand voters in a handful of swing states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.But, Pecora said, the discourse about the election that is unfolding online is also happening elsewhere between friends and family at dinner tables and in classrooms, Pecora said.“That engagement is taking itself into people’s conversations, into their homes, into their communities. That’s where voters are turned out,” she said. “The energy that’s happening online is not siloed to the internet. It translated to dollars, and those dollars are translating to real organizing capacity and an ability to turn out young voters in November.”And so, Democrats say, there’s hope. More