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      Exonerated Central Park Five councillor to speak at Democratic convention – report

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      Yusef Salaam, a New York City councillor who was wrongly jailed for a notorious rape in the city’s Central Park, has reportedly been invited to address next week’s Democratic national convention in Chicago in a move that could highlight Donald Trump’s key role in the case and history of racially charged rhetoric.Salaam was one of the “Central Park Five”, a group of Black and Hispanic teenagers who were convicted of attacking and raping Trisha Meili, a 28-year-old investment banker, while she was jogging in April 1989.He could be joined at the convention by other members of the group, according to Semafor, which broke the story but said Salaam’s appearance had yet to be confirmed.Salaam served seven years but was later exonerated and released along with the other four after a convicted serial rapist and murderer, Matias Reyes, admitted to the crime, a confession confirmed by DNA evidence.The case became a major cause célèbre, largely due to an intervention by Trump, then an up-and-coming property magnate, who took out full-page adverts in four New York papers calling for the return of the death penalty at a time when the crime had captured media attention.The five defendants, who were all minors, had already been arrested, paraded in public and had their names and addresses published when Trump took out the advert.In a style that was to become familiar in his social media posts of a later era, the advert – carrying Trump’s signature – blared in block capitals: “Bring back the death penalty and bring back our police!”Trump, who did not specifically call for the execution of the five defendants, wrote: “I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyse or understand them, I am looking to punish them.”In a 2016 interview with the Guardian, Salaam said Trump’s high-profile intervention had been a major factor in the teens’ wrongful convictions.“He was the fire starter,” Salaam said. “Common citizens were being manipulated and swayed into believing that we were guilty.”Trump has declined to apologise for his perceived role in the wrongful convictions. After the men were awarded $41m in damages in a civil case in 2014, Trump wrote an article for the New York Daily News calling the award “the heist of the century”.He took a similarly hard line while he was president, telling journalists at the White House in 2019 that “you have people on both sides of that. They admitted their guilt.”He added: “If you look at some of the prosecutors, they think that the city never should have settled that case, so we’ll leave it at that.”His comments were triggered by the release of a four-part Netflix dramatisation of the case, When They See Us, directed by Ava DuVernay, which Kamala Harris – then a Democratic senator and presidential hopeful, and now vice-president and Trump’s opponent in the forthcoming presidential election – urged him to watch.Salaam won election as a Democrat representing New York’s Harlem district in November last year.Months before, Salaam trolled Trump after the former president was indicted by a Manhattan court on 34 felony charges – on which he was subsequently convicted – for document falsification relating to the payment of hush money to an adult film actor.“For those asking about my statement on the indictment of Donald Trump – who never said sorry for calling for my execution – here it is: Karma,” Salaam posted on X, then known as Twitter, in February 2023.Salaam’s proposed convention appearance follows attempts by Trump to focus on Harris’s racial identity. Two weeks ago, Trump falsely told the National Association of Black Journalists that the vice-president, who has mixed heritage, had only recently identified as Black after previously emphasising her Indian ethnicity.It also comes after the Republican nominee has been making efforts to woo Black voters. Mike Tyson, the former world heavyweight boxing champion and a prominent Trump supporter, told Semafor that the Central Park Five case played to an image of the former president as racist among Black celebrities.“The only thing they can say is that he’s a racist. Central Park Five,” he said. “Other than that, they can’t bring up anything else.” More

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      Arizona to vote on enshrining abortion rights in state constitution in November

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      Arizona voters will decide this November whether to add abortion rights into their state constitution, a prospect that could turbocharge voter turnout in a critical battleground state in the 2024 election.Late Monday, the Arizona secretary of state’s office announced that it had validated an estimated 577,971 signatures in support of a ballot measure, the Arizona For Abortion Access Act, to establish a constitutional right to abortion in the state.On X, the office called the measure “the largest petition effort in Arizona history”. The measure will be listed on the ballot as Proposition 139.Arizona is not the only state to face the prospect of an abortion-related ballot measure this November. So far, states including Colorado, Florida and Nevada – another key battleground state – are also set to hold similar ballot measures. Tuesday also marks the deadline for the state of Missouri to determine whether to add its own abortion-related measure to its ballots.Since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, ballot measures that protect or preserve abortion rights have successfully passed even in red states such as Ohio, Kansas and Kentucky. However, they have never been tested during a presidential election. Democrats are hoping that enthusiasm for the measures will boost turnout among their base, especially since the vice-president, Kamala Harris, one of the Democrats’ most effective messengers on abortion rights, became the party’s nominee.Abortion is currently legal up until 15 weeks in Arizona. Earlier this year, the state supreme court ruled that a near-total abortion ban from 1864 – enacted before Arizona even became a state – could take effect. That ruling unleashed weeks of nationwide outrage and ultimately led a handful of Republicans to break with their party to vote in favor of a bill to repeal the 1864 ban.If passed, Arizona for Abortion Access Act would establish that Arizonans have “a fundamental right to abortion”. It would protect the right to abortion until fetal viability, which is typically dated to around 24 weeks of pregnancy, and allow for abortions past that point if a medical provider deems them necessary to protect a pregnant individual’s life, physical health or mental health.In May, a CBS poll found that 66% of Arizona adults want abortion to be legal in all or most cases. More

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      ‘He has a proven track record’: behind Tim Walz’s appeal to workers

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      Vice-presidential picks have little effect on who wins a presidential election, many political scientists say. Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s choice as her running mate, could prove the exception to that rule. Not least because of his track record of successfully appealing to working people.Angela Ferritto, president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, voiced confidence that Walz will help the vice-president win in three pivotal states: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin: “I strongly believe that Governor Walz will help the ticket. He has a proven track record of accomplishing things for working people.”Ferritto noted that as Minnesota’s governor, Walz enacted paid sick days, guaranteed more protection to construction workers against wage theft, and gave teachers greater negotiating power “over class sizes so they can give students the attention they need”.Celinda Lake, a longtime Democratic pollster, said Walz had an underappreciated strength that is political gold. “He gets policies out of the left-right divide and gets people to agree that this is the right thing to do,” she said. “Who’s for large class size? Who’s for poorly paid teachers? Who’s not for letting Mom and Dad have time with their new baby? He has a way of taking ideology out of policies and making them seem like things we can get together on.”Steve Rosenthal, a political strategist and former political director of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s main labor federation, said Walz had another important trait – he is the type of candidate blue-collar workers would be happy to have a beer with. Walz likes to hunt and fish, he was long a union member while a teacher, and his financial disclosure forms show he owns no stocks or bonds.“What the two parties’ vice-presidential picks say is that both sides recognize the critical nature of winning Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania,” Rosenthal said. “I think Walz is a huge addition in those states.”He explained that people normally focus on who is at the top of the ticket, but “to the extent Harris has someone who can represent her in those three states, he can be a big help. He can camp out in those states. He can walk a picket line and go to union halls. He can be a huge plus.”While history shows that vice-presidents don’t often move voters to the polls, with Walz things “could be a little different”, said Lake, noting that Harris’s selection of Walz was getting huge attention partly because it was the biggest, early decision of her presidential campaign. “I think Walz definitely helps in terms of the blue wall strategy [of winning Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin]. It’s great to have someone from the midwest on the ticket. His story is great and complements hers.”On paper, political experts say, Walz should be an alluringly strong running mate because he served in the army national guard for 24 years, was a high school teacher for two decades and coached his football team to a state championship. Moreover, Walz, a 60-year-old father of two, grew up on a farm in a Nebraska town of just 300 people.Ever since Walz’s selection was announced, he and Harris have trumpeted his rural roots and decades of public service, while Donald Trump and his campaign have rushed to portray Walz as “dangerously liberal” and in other unflattering ways. In recent days, the Harris and Trump campaigns have been rushing to put forward clashing definitions of Walz, and which side prevails in defining him to the nation could have a major effect on how much Walz boosts the Democratic ticket.“A handful of national polls show that 60% and up of voters say they don’t know enough about Walz to have an opinion,” said Charles Franklin, director of the Milwaukee-based Marquette Law School Poll. “The Republicans are pushing hard to paint him in a negative way. Things are wide open as to whether he will be defined as a Minnesota dad or the socialist governor of Minnesota.”The Trump campaign’s attacks “are really exploding on him”, Franklin said, adding, “If Walz deals with them effectively, more power to him. If he ends up being swiftboated, just like John Kerry was, that’s not so good.”JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, has accused Walz of leaving the military early to avoid serving in Iraq, but Walz says he retired from the national guard in 2005 to run for Congress, months before his artillery unit received orders to deploy to Iraq.Many Democrats voice confidence that Walz will beat back the Trump-Vance attacks and be a boon to the ticket. They point to his superb communications skills – he’s down to earth, clever and humorous, and he came up with the term “weird” to describe and deride Trump and Vance. Many Democrats applaud the policies he ushered in as Minnesota governor, including 12 weeks’ paid family and medical leave, free breakfasts and lunches for public school students, strong protections for reproductive freedom, and free college tuition at public universities for students from families making less than $80,000 a year.Even though studies have shown that vice-presidential picks usually affect election results by only a small margin, Walz’s addition to the ticket – and his midwestern, pro-worker bona fides – could make a crucial difference in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump won each of those states by less than 1% in 2016.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn June, Emerson College Polling and the Hill did a poll in Minnesota that found that Walz was plus 12 with women, minus nine with men, and plus 11 with 18-to-29-year-olds. Spencer Kimball, director of Boston-based Emerson College Polling said Walz could certainly help Harris attract and motivate younger voters. “Younger voters had moved away from Biden, not necessarily to Trump, maybe to a third party,” Kimball said. “What we’ve seen recently is the youth vote moving toward Harris, and I think Walz helps double down on that. The youth vote is one of the Democratic party’s bases. To get young people excited about the race is a potential gamechanger and can help reset the election map.”With regard to the three key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Ken Kollman, director of the University of Michigan’s center for political studies, said that there was “a big mother lode” of votes in Detroit and that voter turnout in Philadelphia and Milwaukee was hugely important. “The national election may very well hinge on turnout in those areas,” he said, adding that he didn’t think Walz would make much difference in those three cities.Walz could prove important, however, Kollman said, in making overtures to Democrats and blue-collar voters who have gravitated to Trump. “There is a group of Trump supporters who are pretty liberal on issues, which is one of the paradoxes of Trump’s appeal – people who actually rely on or believe in government support and active government intervention in their lives, their industry or their company.”Kollman said that Walz, because of his rural background and pro-worker record, “might be able to get some of them to break away from Trump. That remains a big question.”Lake, the pollster, agreed that Walz “can provide an opening” to voters leaning toward Trump, but said that Walz’s personal appeal alone could not win over many Trump-leaning voters. Lake said the “whole ticket has to improve” its efforts to reach them and persuade them.Ferritto of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO voiced optimism about Walz’s ability to win over Trump voters. “He flipped a congressional district that borders Iowa from red to blue,” she said. “He wouldn’t have been able to accomplish that unless he appealed to blue-collar voters.”Some, perhaps many, blue-collar Trump supporters will never hear Walz’s or Harris’s message, Ferritto acknowledged, because they are inundated from one side. “But I believe there are blue-collar voters who are willing to listen,” she said. “They want to hear facts. They want to hear about achieving real results. I do believe that Walz can reach those voters.” More

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      Kamala Harris must speak to the press | Margaret Sullivan

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      I can understand why Kamala Harris hasn’t given a sit-down interview to a major media organization or done a no-holds-barred press conference since she began her presidential campaign a few weeks ago.From a tactical or strategic point of view, there’s little reason to.After all, she’s enjoying a honeymoon phase with a lot of positive media and a nearly ecstatic reception from much of the public.Just this week, as one example, Time magazine published a story on her ascendency with the cover line: Her Moment. The illustration showed the Democratic candidate with a beatific expression, looking serenely (but somehow powerfully) into a promising future. Granted, Time isn’t the opinion-maker that it was decades ago, but you can’t buy that kind of exposure.What’s more, when the vice-president has interacted with reporters in recent weeks, as in a brief “gaggle” during a campaign stop, the questions were silly. Seeking campaign drama rather than substance, they centered on Donald Trump’s attacks or when she was planning to do a press conference. The former president, meanwhile, does talk to reporters, but he lies constantly; NPR tracked 162 lies and distortions in his hour-long press conference last week at Mar-a-Lago.But Harris needs to overcome these objections and do what’s right.She is running for the highest office in the nation, perhaps the most powerful perch in the world, and she owes it to every US citizen to be frank and forthcoming about what kind of president she intends to be.To tell us – in an unscripted, open way – what she stands for.We don’t know much about that, other than vague campaign platitudes about “freedom” and “not going back”.As journalist Jay Caspian Kang recently put it – under the New Yorker headline How Generic Can Kamala Harris Be? – the candidate hasn’t explained “why she has changed her mind on fracking, which she once said should be banned, and has wobbled on Medicare for all, which she once supported, or what she plans to do with Lina Khan, the head of the Federal Trade Commission, who is said to be unpopular among some of Harris’s wealthy donors; or much about how a Harris administration would handle the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East”. And that’s just a start.I don’t have a lot of confidence that the broken White House press corps would skillfully elicit the answers to those and other germane questions if given the chance. But Harris should show that she understands that, in a democracy, the press – at least in theory – represents the public, and that the sometimes adversarial relationship between the press and government is foundational.The pressure on Harris to open up is growing. It’s a constant complaint on Fox News, both by Fox anchors and by Republican politicians, including her rival Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance.And mainstream media, perhaps tiring of being so unnaturally positive, has picked up on it, too.“Time’s just about up on Harris to avoid this becoming a thing,” warned Benjy Sarlin of Semafor. He was responding to a front-page story in the New York Times about Harris’s inaccessibility, whose headline included another ominous phrase, describing her campaign as spirited but “shrouded from public scrutiny”.Hear the drumbeat building?skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIdeally, Harris will do both a lengthy press conference and a televised, in-depth interview – perhaps with Lester Holt, Jake Tapper or Rachel Scott – or with a major newspaper or equivalent.Apparently feeling the heat, Harris has said she plans to get something scheduled before the end of this month. But that’s too long to wait.Not everyone agrees, of course. One Democratic politician, Jon Cooper, posted on Twitter/X: “My thoughts on Kamala Harris largely ignoring the media and instead speaking directly to American voters: F*** the corporate media.”Harris, while she will probably be effective in the 10 September debate with Trump, isn’t especially skilled when answering questions on the fly. She tends to conjure a vague “word salad” as she did when asked a softball question just after the prisoner swap involving Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.When she finally does speak to the press at length, I’m sure some unfavorable headlines will result. There will be some nonsensical controversies and unnecessary intrigue.Even if you very much hope that Harris prevails in November over her corrupt, felonious rival, that’s not a good enough reason to cheer on her press avoidance.If Harris is truly “for the people”, as she has long claimed, she needs to speak to their representatives – flawed as they may be.

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

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      Kevin McCarthy says Trump needs to stop questioning Harris’s crowd sizes

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      Kevin McCarthy, the former Republican speaker of the House, urged Donald Trump on Monday to stop questioning the size of Kamala Harris’s crowds at her campaign rallies, and to instead focus on her policies and record.“You’ve gotta make this race not about personalities,” McCarthy said in an interview with Fox News on Monday. “Stop questioning the size of her crowds, and start questioning her position, when it comes to: what did she do as [California] attorney general on crime? … What did she do when she was supposed to take care of the border as a czar?”This comes just one day after the former US president and current Republican presidential nominee falsely accused Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, of using artificial intelligence to create a photograph displaying large crowds of supporters at her rally last week in Detroit, Michigan.On Sunday, Trump shared a photograph of the large crowd at Harris’s rally to his millions of followers on his Truth Social and claimed that the image of the crowd from Harris’s event was fake.“Look, we caught her with a fake ‘crowd’. There was nobody there!” Trump wrote.In another post on Sunday, he called Harris a “CHEATER” and said that “there was nobody at the plane, and she ‘AI’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!”Many videos and photographs from the event in Detroit last week show a large crowd in attendance, and shortly after Trump accused Harris of fabricating the crowd, her campaign responded to the allegations on X, and denied that the photo was manipulated.The photograph in question “is an actual photo of a 15,000-person crowd for Harris-Walz in Michigan” the Harris campaign said, adding: “Trump has still not campaigned in a swing state in over a week … Low energy?”David Plouffe, a senior adviser for the Harris campaign, also responded to Trump’s allegations, and said: “These are not conspiratorial rantings from the deepest recesses of the internet. The author could have the nuclear codes and be responsible for decisions that will affect us all for decades.” More

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      Getting back together: Swifties mobilize to support Kamala Harris

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      When Emerald Medrano learned Joe Biden was dropping out of the 2024 presidential election and endorsing Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, Medrano knew he had to speak now – as his favorite artist, Taylor Swift, would say.“I feel like us US Swifties should mass organize and help campaign for Kamala Harris and spread how horrendous Project 2025 would be to help get people’s butts down to the polls in November,” the 22-year-old posted to his 70,000 followers. He added a sobbing emoji. “Like if we don’t want democracy to end we really need to move and push blue votes.”Fourteen thousand likes later, the coalition Swifties4Kamala was born. Dozens of people signed up to help and run accounts on X, Instagram and TikTok, as well as strategize activities and communications. Within three weeks, Swifties4Kamala amassed more than 180,000 followers across its social media platforms.Twenty-four hours after Swifties4Kamala announced its kick-off Zoom call, scheduled for 27 August, more than 5,000 people had signed up to join, according to April Glick Pulito, the coalition’s political director.With organizing collectives built around identities like Win With Black Women and White Dudes for Harris drawing record-breaking numbers to Zoom calls, Swifties4Kamala is built around a different kind of identity: fandom. Long dismissed as unserious, in part because it has long been thought of as the domain of women and young people, fandom is now a potent political force in the 2024 elections – an election in which young women and LGBTQ+ people are expected to vote, rally and otherwise participate in politics at historic levels.On its social media accounts, Swifties4Kamala posts Swift-themed video edits and memes involving Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, as well as suggested action items, such as specific organizing calls or rallies that Swifties can join. The coalition’s most recent Substack includes volunteer opportunities for phone banking and working at the polls, explanations of the proposals found in the conservative policy wishlist Project 2025, and information about down-ballot races. Naturally, each section is a reference to a different Swift lyric.The goal is in effect twofold. First, Swifties4Kamala wants to use the decades-old Swiftie community to energize people in support of Harris. Second, they want to infuse politics with fun.View image in fullscreen“We’re talking about throwing bracelet-making parties and talking to people there about making sure they’re registered to vote, making sure they know how to vote,” said Glick Pulito, a 36-year-old who works in political communications and worked on Biden’s 2020 campaign. “These individual identity groups that are popping up –everyone feels so excited to connect with their own communities, and the Swiftie community is so big and so powerful.”Swifties4Kamala’s explosive growth is not only a reflection of the sheer scope of Swift’s fanbase – even before her planet-conquering Eras tour, 16% of Americans identified as “avid fans” of the singer – but also of the burgeoning political power of fandom itself. K-pop fans first proved back in 2020 that the social media skills that fuel modern fandoms, such as coordinating fundraising and ticket-scoring campaigns, could be turned towards political aims, when they claimed credit for sinking a Donald Trump rally.Four years later, fandom has already shaped the course of the 2024 election.Memorably, the first fandom to seize on Harris’s candidacy was not the Swifties, but the Angels, fans of the singer Charli xcx. Hours after Biden dropped out and endorsed Harris, Charli xcx tweeted: “kamala IS brat,” a reference to her album Brat and its brash party-girl aesthetic. The internet was immediately awash with green-tinted supercuts of Harris – the Brat album’s signature color – while CNN reporters tried to decode the meaning of “brat” for less online audiences at home. (“So is the idea that we’re all kind of brat and Vice-President Harris is brat?” Jake Tapper asked.) Harris’s official campaign account even changed its banner on X to brat green.Swift’s political cachet, though, far outstrips that of Charli xcx and the Angels. In 2022, after Swift urged her millions of Instagram followers to vote, Vote.org recorded more than 35,000 voter registrations. Ticketmaster’s botched rollout of the Eras tour led to a 2023 Senate hearing. Swift’s endorsement is one of the coveted prizes in the 2024 election; although she has not said anything about this year, the odds are not looking good for Donald Trump and JD Vance. Not only did Swift endorse Democrats in 2018 and 2020, but she is also probably the world’s most famous “childless cat lady”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionExperts told the Guardian earlier this year that Swift’s endorsement could compel people who might otherwise sit out the election to vote. Most Swifties identify as Democrats, a Morning Consult poll found last year.Irene Kim, co-founder and senior communications director of Swifties4Kamala, expects that Swift will ultimately endorse Harris. But Kim isn’t waiting on the singer.“I also personally resent this idea that floats around a lot, that Taylor needs to issue an order to activate the Swifties. We are a diverse group of very intelligent, very different people. We’re not mindless drones,” said Kim, 29. “These are our friends, so of course, I’m going to care if their rights are being taken away. They’re going to care if my rights are being taken away.”“I knew I was gay from a younger age, so my life is turned into politics. I’m forced to keep up with it,” said Rohan Reagan, a 21-year-old first-time voter. “I’ve attended rallies, protests, donated – but it’s never been something where I’m helping coordinate anything. It’s always like showing up in support instead of me trying to help be part of leading people.”Now, Reagan, who has 60,000 followers on his Swift-focused Instagram account, leads Swifties4Kamala’s Instagram presence. (He’s particularly proud of his “You Need to Kamala Down” video edit.) He’s more engaged in politics than he’s ever been.“I don’t want to go back to what it was like when Trump was president,” he said. “To me, that is just not really an option.” More

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      Tim Walz pick excites hopes of taking US healthcare beyond Obamacare era

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      When Kamala Harris picked the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as veep for the Democratic presidential ticket, advocates for healthcare reform felt a jolt of electricity.Here, they saw a man who proclaimed healthcare a “basic human right”, reformed medical debt collections, and who laid the groundwork for expanded government insurance and denied corporate health insurers contracts with Medicaid, a state-run health insurance program for the poor. Walz even once joined Harris at an abortion clinic in support of abortion rights.It was a sense of possibility some had not felt since the Obama era, and hard for some to contain their excitement.“We’re celebrating here at the cabin,” said the Democratic Minnesota state representative Liz Reyer, who helped Walz pass a medical debt collection reform bill in 2023. She was on vacation in northern Wisconsin, sipping coffee next to her sleeping dog – a quiet, midwestern kind of celebration. Reyer felt compelled to stress “how absolutely strongly I was pulling for Governor Walz to be the VP pick”.“It feels really important and like a huge opportunity,” said Reyer, about the possibility of making such reforms nationally. “I share with Governor Walz the bedrock belief that healthcare is a human right. So, to me – yeah, let’s go.”Since the Obama era, health reformers have had a tough run. After the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) better known as “Obamacare”, in 2010, the Democratic party suffered heavy midterm losses to what would become known as the conservative Tea Party movement.Perhaps worse, the ACA became a focal point of Republican rage well into the Trump administration. Republicans only abandoned calls to “repeal and replace” the ACA in 2017, after the now-deceased Republican senator John McCain stunned party leaders by casting the decisive vote against Trump’s plan, returning to Washington amid a brain cancer diagnosis.Although Republicans were not able to repeal Obamacare, they were successful in another way: years of attacks left little room to expand coverage or rein in healthcare prices, essentially the unfinished work of Obamacare.Republicans policy wonks have since retreated to time-worn proposals for a second Trump term, primarily fleshed out in the Project 2025 document. Among the early 2000s hits now on a nostalgia tour: Make healthcare shoppable! More privatization! Less regulation! Tax-free savings accounts!The former president has disavowed Project 2025, though the official Republican platform does not look dissimilar. Notably, Trump’s current campaign and former administration has close ties to authors of the project.The 2024 Republican platform focuses on “transparency”, “choice” and “competition” (read: shoppable prices and fewer regulations). It also promises “no cuts” to Medicare, a government program for the elderly, though Project 2025 promotes further privatizing the program.Today, about 92% of Americans have health insurance. That still leaves about 26 million people out of the system – potentially vulnerable to the full force of market prices in the world’s most expensive health system. A catastrophic illness or ailment can easily lead to financial ruin.What’s more, even for people who have health insurance, medical debt remains a persistent problem. Forty-one per cent of Americans owe money to a medical provider, credit card or family member for healthcare. Often, when people have or fear medical debt, they cut back on food, clothing and other household items, according to a widely cited Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker poll. People with medical debt tend to be sicker and die sooner.At the same time, the cost of healthcare now eats up 17% of America’s gross domestic product, nearly double that of peer nations. That is in spite of the fact that Americans see the doctor less than peers in other wealthy nations and have worse health outcomes.View image in fullscreenWhile not all of America’s health problems can be pegged to problems with the insurance industry, anecdotal reports show at least some can be – such as adults waiting until they reach Medicare eligibility age to get cataract surgery or Americans feeling reticent to smile for fear of revealing a mouth full of decay.Exactly what Harris and Walz’s healthcare platform will be remains to be seen. The 2020 Democratic platform included a call for a public option, reining in pharmaceutical spending and strengthening Obamacare. The administration accomplished some of this.Notably, the Biden administration just finished its first Medicare prescription drug price negotiation – a process common in peer nations but which was prohibited when Biden took office. The most recently released Democratic party platform came in July, before Biden dropped out of the race.What is clear is the similarities in Harris’s and Walz’s records. The Biden administration capped insulin prices at $35 a month for Medicare beneficiaries. So did Walz for Minnesotans not on Medicare – an act he named after resident Alec Smith, a 26-year-old who died from rationing his $1,300-a-month insulin supply.Walz worked closely with Reyer to pass a comprehensive package of reforms for medical debt collection, which included a prohibition on hospitals from denying care to patients with outstanding balances, and which stopped the automatic transfer of debt liability to spouses. Similarly, the Biden administration has sought medical debt restrictions through rule-making with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.Walz said in his inaugural address as governor that he believed healthcare was a “human right”. That’s widely accepted wisdom outside the US, and all but the unofficial tagline for single-payer healthcare advocates – the kind of government-run universal healthcare that is a source of pride for the UK’s National Health Service.Similarly, Harris co-sponsored 2019 legislation introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders that would have established single-payer healthcare nationally. The revolutionary proposal stood no chance of passing, and she has since sought to moderate from that moment. Her campaign has said she would “not push” single-payer as president. Still, it has got advocates excited.“From our standpoint, this is fantastic,” said Dr Philip A Verhoef, a critical care doctor in Hawaii and president of Physicians for a National Health Program, the nation’s largest single-payer advocacy organization.“Ten years ago, single-payer burst on to the scene,” with Sanders’s presidential run, said Verhoef. “Prior to that, nobody ever talked about this.” Similarly, single-payer advocates were “shut out” of Obamacare discussions, Verhoef added.Walz also laid the groundwork for a “public option” health insurance plan in Minnesota, where the government would allow people to buy into Medicaid, and banned private health insurance companies, such as behemoth UnitedHealth, from contracting with Minnesota’s Medicaid plan.How the Harris-Walz ticket will translate the excitement of reformers into action – and what exactly their proposals will be – remains to be seen. For the time being, activists are enjoying a sense of possibility, knowing difficult discussions lie ahead.“So often, we see people in positions of political power are thinking, ‘Well, what can we get done without blowing up the system,’” said Verhoef. “I appreciate that attitude – in a way that’s what the ACA was. It helped a lot of people. But it still left 30 million people uninsured in this country and it hasn’t stopped people from going bankrupt from healthcare bills.” More

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      ‘She makes us proud’: Harris raises over $12m in California as Pelosi welcomes her home

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      Kamala Harris returned home to the San Francisco Bay area for a Sunday fundraiser that drew top California Democrats and captured more than $12m for the conclusion of a swing state tour by the vice-president and her running mate, Tim Walz.Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and California governor Gavin Newsom attended the event in San Francisco at the Fairmont Hotel, where nearly 700 people had purchased tickets that cost at least $3,300 and as much as $500,000.“This is a good day when we welcome Kamala Harris back home to California,” Pelosi said of the former US senator, attorney general and district attorney from the state.“She makes us all so proud. She brings us so much joy. She gives us so much hope,” Pelosi said at the fundraiser. She went on to describe Harris as a person of “great strength” and someone who is “politically very astute”.Harris and Walz, the Minnesota governor, have just finished a tour of multiple political swing states, packing rallies with thousands of people and building on the momentum that has propelled her since she took over at the top of the Democratic ticket.Pelosi, the longtime lawmaker and Washington power broker, is credited with helping usher Joe Biden out of the presidential race.The president, 81, stepped aside last month after a poor debate performance against Donald Trump sparked turmoil within the Democratic party and concerns that he could not beat the former president nor complete a second four-year term.Pelosi’s comments in a television interview suggesting that Biden had not yet decided whether to step aside were viewed as giving an opening to worried Democratic lawmakers to urge him to leave even as Biden said he was staying.Pelosi has praised Biden’s achievements while criticizing his former campaign. On Sunday she connected Harris, 59, to the accomplishments of Biden’s administration.“She knows the issues. She knows the strategy. She has gotten an enormous amount done working with Joe Biden,” Pelosi said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHarris acknowledged the enthusiasm but cautioned against getting caught up in it.“We can take nothing for granted in this critical moment,” she said, after thanking Pelosi for her friendship and support. “There is so much about the future of our country that has relied on leaders like Nancy Pelosi that have the grit, the determination, the brilliance to know what’s possible and to make it so,” Harris said.“The energy is undeniable,” Harris said of her campaign. “Yes, the crowds are large.”Her campaign hauled in $36m in the 24 hours following Walz’s selection as running mate and raised $310m in July, according to a campaign spokesperson.Harris, making her own case against Trump, said that if Trump got back into office, he would sign a national ban on abortion into law and warned that California would not be immune. Trump has sought to distance himself from Republican efforts to ban abortion, saying it should be up to individual states.Harris noted that some states’ laws don’t include exceptions for rape and incest, and said it’s “immoral”. “When this issue has been on the ballot, the American people have voted for freedom,” Harris said. More