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    Free meals v hungry children: is this the school lunch election? | Marcus Weaver-Hightower

    The humble school meal is having a moment. With the nomination of Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, as Kamala Harris’s running mate, many voters and pundits are suddenly talking about school meals. And that’s good, because the stakes are high for the national school lunch and school breakfast programs since the campaigns and their parties have very different records and plans.Since Walz became the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, an image of him has frequently circulated. In the photograph, he’s surrounded by smiling children hugging him after he signed a 2023 bill making school meals universally free for all Minnesota children. His was the fourth state to commit to feeding all children at school; now nine states have done so, and more are considering similar measures. No more forms to fill out to prove your income, which busy parents can forget or that get crumpled in a backpack. No more penalizing children when their parents fall behind on lunch accounts. Every kid gets fed, powering them up for their day’s work learning and growing.By most measures, the Minnesota program has been successful and popular. Participation in the meals program soared, increasing 15% at lunch and 37% at breakfast compared with the previous year. Due to those increases, the economies of scale improved, and some districts have been able to invest more in scratch cooking with ingredients from local farmers. It turns out that relieving cafeteria staff of the duty to go after parents who fall behind on lunch payments leaves them more time to focus on food quality.Minnesota’s registered voters are overwhelmingly happy with the program, too. A KSTP/SurveyUSA poll showed that 72% agreed with the legislation, including 90% of liberals and 57% of conservatives. Even 59% of Trump voters in 2020 agreed. In online forums, Minnesota commenters tend to be remarkably supportive of feeding all children, even if they don’t have any themselves or if they think the food could be better. Parents rave about the convenience and savings.Minnesota’s success isn’t an outlier, but a consistent feature of free meals for all. A 2022 study of the national Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which provides universally free meals nationwide in districts that have a poverty rate of 25% or more, found that more kids eat when the meal is free. That’s true even among kids who were already eligible for free or reduced-price meals, suggesting that stigma is keeping many from accepting assistance. Even more helpful, families with children in schools that provide meals tend to spend less at the grocery store while still improving the quality of their diets. And, perhaps most important, research consistently shows that school meals improve students’ academic performance, behavior and health outcomes.It’s not assured that a Harris-Walz administration would push such legislation nationally. Harris has mentioned school meal programs at least twice, once in a 2017 Facebook post deploring lunch shaming and recently on X, when she touted Walz’s school lunch program as a sign of support for the middle class. But if the Democratic ticket does put the issue on its platform or list of priorities, school meals would at least have a knowledgable champion in Walz. He has seen it work on the ground, and he knows the benefits that it brings to the vast majority of families with children in his state.Meanwhile, Minnesota Republican lawmakers have criticized the free meals program. State representative Kristin Robbins’s complaint is typical: “All the low-income students who need – and we want to provide, make sure no one goes hungry – they were getting [meals] through the free and reduced lunch program. This [new legislation] gave free lunch to all the wealthy families … Is that really a priority?” Walz’s reply to this argument dripped with irony: “Isn’t that rich? Our Republican colleagues were concerned this would be a tax cut for the wealthiest.” The year before, the Minnesota GOP proposed a $3.5bn tax cut that largely would have benefited the wealthiest 20%. Feeding all the state’s schoolchildren, even after going over budget because it was so popular, costs only about one-seventh of that.Republicans at the national level, too, disdain expanding access to free meals and improving nutrition standards. In March, the Republican Study Committee, a caucus to which roughly three-quarters of all Republican House members belong, released its 2025 budget proposal. It called for ending the CEP for high-poverty districts. Doing so would snatch school meals from millions of children currently receiving them, shifting that cost back to their families. It would also probably increase the bureaucracy for schools, though Republicans claim that this administrative system is rife with “fraud and abuse”. While there have been high-profile cases of fraud in the school meals programs (for instance, a Chicago area nutrition director was recently convicted of stealing $1.5m, largely in chicken wings), most identified “abuse” entails clerical errors like giving wrongly categorized meals (free or reduced-price) to kids very near the income cutoffs or ringing up a meal without one of the required components on the tray, like enough vegetables. I would also point out that, if all children got the meals free, there would be no “fraud” in giving a hungry child a school meal, and we could save the labor and cost of all that paperwork.Reducing access to free school meals is also a priority of the now-infamous Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the next administration. Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, but his ties to it are indisputable and a second Trump White House would probably be well populated with its adherents.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRegarding school meals, Project 2025 repeats the willful deception that the federal lunch and breakfast programs are “specifically for children in poverty”. In truth, from their beginnings, these programs were meant for all children. But they always made allowances for impoverished children’s access – not only poor children, but inclusive of poor children. The authors of Project 2025 argue that any expansion of free meals is against the “original intent” and creates “an entitlement for students from middle- and upper-income homes”. (I wonder what they think of all those wealthy children getting free textbooks?) Their stated policy goals are to “work with lawmakers to eliminate CEP” and to “reject efforts to create universal free school meals”.While Trump himself may know little about school meals policy (I have never found an instance of him directly talking about it), his first administration set out immediately to relax nutrition standards set under President Obama. The very first policy announcement from Sonny Perdue, Trump’s secretary of agriculture, was that his department would seek to bring back higher-fat chocolate milk, reduce whole grain requirements and stop sodium reductions. And despite the US Department of Agriculture’s own research findings that Obama-era rules had made school meals significantly healthier and debunking claims that plate waste was increasing, one of the last acts of the Trump USDA was to propose a further weakening of nutrition standards to require fewer fruits and allow yet more usually high-salt items such as pizza and hash browns. But the clock ran out on that proposal, and the Biden-Harris administration then increased school meals’ nutrition standards.Given the Republicans’ legislative goals and the direction of one of the GOP’s leading thinktanks, a second Trump administration would almost surely unravel access to school meals and gut hard-won, incremental gains that have made them healthier. All this despite nationwide polls that indicate a majority of US voters agree that all kids should get universally free school meals. More

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    Kamala Harris must speak to the press | Margaret Sullivan

    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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    Familiar vitriol, and Musk the enabler: key takeaways from Trump’s X interview

    Donald Trump returned to the social media platform that skyrocketed his career for a live discussion with Elon Musk. The former president unleashed familiar rambling, vitriolic talking points to a sympathetic Musk.Here are key takeaways from the event.1. A terribly slow startThe event started about 45 minutes later than scheduled, with listeners struggling to join the live stream. The issues echoed the meltdown that took place during Ron DeSantis’s campaign launch on X last year, which experts at the time attributed to infrastructure issues on the platform after Musk laid off much of its workforce and shut down multiple data centers.On Monday, Musk attributed the delay to a cyberattack, namely, a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack in which bad actors deliberately flood a website with traffic to overwhelm its servers. That claim could not independently be verified, and it can be difficult to distinguish between a deliberate DDoS attack and a routine outage caused by an influx of legitimate traffic to a site.Trump, meanwhile, attributed the glitches to regular traffic, congratulating Musk for “[breaking] every record in the book with so many millions of people” on the live interview.2. The greatest hits Once the conversation got going, Trump rehashed the greatest hits, and biggest lies, from his rallies – absurdly claiming he oversaw the “greatest economy in the world”, lying about his own record, about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s records, and spreading conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic, his criminal cases and election security.His most dangerous lies were about immigration and climate change. He baselessly claimed that migrants arriving at the US southern border were dangerous, calling them “murderers” as well as “non-productive” people. Trump, who built his political career on promises to “build the wall” at the southern border, has ramped up his anti-immigrant rhetoric lately, and promised a dystopian vision for mass deportations and migrant labor camps if he is reelected.He also dismissed climate change as a threat, saying that rising sea levels would at best create more “oceanfront properties”. That latter point, which he has made before, is, of course, wrong – rising sea levels are more likely to destroy beachfront property, devastating coastal communities. Sea level rise is, however, an actual driver of global migration – as it creates climate refugees. 3. Trump derides HarrisTrump also seemed to sharpen his critiques of Kamala Harris, who he has struggled to attack as her nascent campaign gains momentum. The former president attempted to paint Harris as a “radical” leftist, falsely suggesting that she wanted to ban fracking and defund the police. He also came at her with classic sexism, insisting on calling her by her first name, rather than by her title or surname, as he does for Joe Biden. He also lingered on her looks, saying that she was a “beautiful woman” who looked like Melania Trump, his wife.And for a measure of intersectionality, he also repeatedly mispronounced Harris’s south Asian first name.  4. Musk the enablerThroughout the conversation, the two men lavished praise and admiration on each other. Trump, who has been a critic of electric vehicles, called Musk’s Teslas “incredible”. Musk, meanwhile, nodded along and agreed as Trump that it was wrong to “vilify” the oil and gas industry. At the beginning of the event, the tech billionaire had noted his belief that “no one is themselves in an adversarial interview” and that the conversation was “aimed at kind of open-minded independent voters who are just trying to make up their mind”.But in the end, the softball format seemed like it was aimed more at those who had already bought into Trump and Musk’s rightwing politics. At the end, Musk told Trump he was “on the right path”. More

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    US election live: former Republican House speaker urges Trump to ‘stop questioning’ size of Harris’s crowds

    Kevin McCarthy, the former Republican House speaker, said Donald Trump should stop questioning the size of Kamala Harris’s crowds at her campaign rallies and instead focus on her as a candidate.As we reported earlier, Trump has falsely accused Harris of using artificial intelligence to create a photo showing a large rally of supporters outside of her campaign plane. Trump shared a photo from a conspiracy theorist’s post to his millions of followers on Truth Social, claiming that a real image of a Harris event in Detroit was a “fake image”.“You’ve got to make this race not on personalities,” McCarthy said in an interview on Fox News today.
    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?
    A Trump campaign spokesman told EU regulators to “mind their own business” in response to a letter urging Elon Musk to abide by hate speech and disinformation regulations in his interview with Trump scheduled for this evening.“Only in Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ America can an un-Democratic foreign organization feel emboldened enough to tell this country what to do,” Steven Cheung wrote on X. “They know that a President Trump victory means America will no longer be ripped off because he will smartly utilize tariffs and renegotiated trade deals that puts America First. Let us be very clear: the European Union is an enemy of free speech and has no authority of any kind to dictate how we campaign.”The Trump campaigned shared the same statement with supporters by email this afternoon.The Digital Services Act, which the EU adopted in 2022, requires large social networks, like X, to aggressively police disinformation and hate speech, or face fines of up to 6% of its global turnover.In an open letter, EU commissioner Thierry Breton warned Elon Musk today that Musk must abide by European hate speech laws in his interview with Trump this evening.Because the interview will be available to EU users, Breton said, Musk must comply with regulations under the Digital Services Act to stop the “amplification of harmful content”.“DSA obligations apply without exceptions or discrimination to the moderation of the whole user community and content of X (including yourself as a user with over 190 million followers) which is accessible to EU users and should be fulfilled in line with the risk-based approach of the DSA, which requires greater due diligence in case of a foreseeable increase of the risk profile,” Breton wrote.In response, Musk shared a meme that was as mature as only Musk can be:Musk has recently faced pushback from EU regulators, who ruled last month that X breached the DSA in its use of blue checkmarks. In response, Musk threatened to sue.Read more about it here:A pro-Trump Super Pac will fund $100m in TV ads, starting next week as the Democratic national convention kicks off. The Maga, Inc Super Pac is planning to air commercials calling Harris a “soft-on-crime radical who is too dangerous for the White House”, the organization’s top strategists, David Lee and Chris Grant, write in the memo, which Politico first reported. The ads will air in seven Rust belt and Sun belt states: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina.The memo also announced that the leader of Maga, Inc, Taylor Budowich, is leaving the Super Pac to join the Trump campaign.The news comes as conservative groups try to ramp up funding for Trump, following Harris’s recent record-setting fundraising. Last month, billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that he had founded the America Pac to raise additional funds for Trump.Read more here:Here are some campaign images from the weekend that you might not have seen. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz were in the swing state of Nevada on Saturday.What was that about crowds?Donald Trump campaigned in Montana on Friday night.The Pentagon said yesterday that defense secretary Lloyd Austin had ordered the deployment of a guided missile submarine to the Middle East and for the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group to accelerate its deployment to the region.But a US official told Reuters the Lincoln carrier strike group was currently close to the South China Sea and would likely take more than a week to reach the Middle East.Oil prices jumped by more than 3% on Monday, rising for a fifth consecutive session on expectations of a widening Middle Eastern conflict that could tighten global crude supplies.Israeli forces pressed on with operations near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis today amid an international push for a deal to halt fighting in Gaza and prevent a slide into a wider regional conflict with Iran and its proxies.Meanwhile, Reuters also reports, British prime minister Keir Starmer held a call with Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian today, asking him to refrain from attacking Israel and saying that war was not in anyone’s interest, the prime minister’s office said. Starmer called on Iran to stop its “destabilizing actions”.The US has prepared for what could be significant attacks by Iran or its proxies in the Middle East as soon as this week, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said today.Kirby said the US had increased its regional force posture and shared Israel’s concerns about a possible Iranian-backed attack after Iran and Hamas accused Israel of carrying out the assassination of a Hamas leader in Tehran last month, Reuters reports.
    We have to be prepared for what could be a significant set of attacks,” he said.
    Israel has been braced for a major attack since last month when a missile killed 12 children and teenagers in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and Israel responded by killing a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut.A day after that operation, Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, was assassinated in Tehran, drawing Iranian vows of retaliation against Israel.
    We obviously don’t want to see Israel have to defend itself against another onslaught, like they did in April. But, if that’s what comes at them, we will continue to help them defend themselves,” Kirby said.
    You can follow all of the Guardian’s coverage of the region here and here.Joe Biden will speak at the Democratic national convention next week, the White House has confirmed.Biden will use his remarks at the convention to focus on the issues he “cares about”, the White House’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told CNN.
    It’s an event that he views as very important. It’s an opportunity to talk about the issues that he cares about. It’s an opportunity to talk about unity.
    Joe Biden is scheduled to deliver remarks on the opening night of the Democratic national convention next Monday alongside the former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, according to a report.Former president Barack Obama is down to speak on Tuesday, and former president Bill Clinton is scheduled for Wednesday, NBC is reporting, citing sources. One of the sources told the outlet that the schedule was still tentative.Kamala Harris is to deliver an acceptance speech on Thursday, and her running mate, Tim Walz, is to speak Wednesday, as is customary.Donald Trump appeared to be paying X to promote his interview with the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, scheduled for tonight 8pm ET, the New York Times reported.The Times said:
    The hashtag #TrumpOnX landed at the top of the platform’s “Trending” section, with a disclaimer that it was promoted by Donald J. Trump — a tag that typically marks paid ad campaigns on the social media site.
    As we reported earlier, the former Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy said Donald Trump should stop questioning the size of Kamala Harris’s crowds at her campaign rallies and instead focus on her as a candidate.Here’s the clip from McCarthy’s interview on Fox News, where he urged Trump to “start questioning [Harris’s] positions”, highlighting several of the Democratic presidential candidate’s policy positions that have shifted over the years.“This is a perfect person to run against,” McCarthy said.
    You thought John Kerry was a flip-flopper? She is the biggest flip-flop, with the most extreme positions, and you got a short time frame to do it. So don’t sit back, get out there and start making the case and use her own words to do it.
    Debbie Dingell, the Democratic congresswoman for Michigan, has dismissed Donald Trump’s false claims that crowds at Kamala Harris’s campaign in her state were generated by artificial intelligence.“Sorry, Donald Trump, you’re wrong again,” Dingell, who attended the Michigan rally and spoke before Harris and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, went on, told MSNBC. She added:
    I was really there. And I haven’t seen that large a crowd in a long time, and it was great to feel the energy, the enthusiasm. More

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

    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

    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

    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