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      Tim Walz channeled grit and empathy at the Democratic national convention

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      “You might not know it, but I haven’t given a lot of big speeches like this,” Tim Walz said demurely towards the end of his keynote Democratic national convention address on Wednesday night.The moment wreaked of understatement. The look on his face, the way he raised his white eyebrows as if he were apologizing, the shrug of his shoulders. Even the phrase “big speech”.This wasn’t a big speech. It was a monumental speech, with the future direction of a country of 333 million people riding on it.But then Walz dropped his faux modesty and got to work. “I have given a lot of pep talks,” he said.From then on it was full steam ahead towards the goal line. After all, if you’re Walz, a scarcely known governor from the midwestern state of Minnesota, and you’ve just been yanked into the most significant election of recent times in the most powerful country on Earth, then what else are you going to do at the climax of your 16-minute oration than invoke your years as a high school football coach?Friday Night Lights never had it so good.As thousands of Democratic delegates from all 50 states packed into the United Center chanted “Coach! Coach! Coach!”, he conjured up the nail-biting finish that the US is now entering. “It’s the fourth quarter,” he said, rocket launching the crowd into a paroxysm of excitement.“We’re down a field goal. But we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field. And, boy, do we have the right team.”Walz never got to tell the delegates the score at the end of the game, but then he didn’t have to. He had already won the contest for their hearts and minds.If Donald Trump were watching the speech on his favoured Fox News, it might have stirred the odd feeling in him. Last month, the former president and Republican nominee caused quite the stir by claiming that vice-presidential running mates make “virtually no impact” on elections.Trump better pray he’s right. Not because of his guy, JD Vance, who is flunking in the polls. But because of this other guy: the plain-talking, gun-owning, and football-coaching former public school teacher.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhen Kamala Harris’s VP pick took the stage sometime after 10pm, he began a little hesitantly. Maybe Walz wasn’t joking, that “big speech” thing was a little much.But as he warmed to his subject, and the delegates got behind him with their deafening cheers, this “son of the Nebraska plains”, as his wife Gwen Walz described him, got into his stride. He channeled the grit and the empathy that has already endeared him to millions of Democrats in the 15 short days in which he has been on the national stage.He deployed words such as “neighbor” (seven times), “school” (eight) and “freedom” (nine) to flesh out a picture of himself as the homely guy next door who cares about you and your family and wants you to lead your best life. When he got to the bit about his record as governor, he turned the dial up, giving vent to his anger and passion.“We made sure that every kid in our state gets breakfast and lunch every day,” he said, eliciting one of the biggest roars of the night. “While other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing kids’ hunger from ours.”In the two weeks of Walz’s breathtaking propulsion into the political stratosphere – meteoric doesn’t do justice to his rise – Trump and team have tried hard to land punches on him. They have accused him of lying about his military record, pegged him as a “radical leftist” who wants to turn the country communist, and rolled out the old attack line that he wants to take your guns.So far, opinion surveys suggest, such efforts have been as sticky as water on a duck’s back.But then, how do you knock the military service of someone who spent 24 years in the national guard, even if he did misstate certain details of his time in uniform? Nor is it easy to portray his legislative record as extreme liberalism when the so-called “Minnesota miracle” of bills that he passed last year included not only universal free school meals, but paid family and medical leave as well as several other reforms that are no more revolutionary than the basic public services routinely provided by virtually every other industrialised nation.And how do you tear down a person for being anti-second amendment when, as he said on Wednesday night: “I was a better shot than most Republicans in Congress, and I got the trophies to prove it”?Not to mention that before Walz came on, the convention organisers reconvened the 1999 football team that he coached at Mankato West high school all the way to the state championship.In the end, though, it wasn’t the folksy football metaphors that hang in the air after the speech was done. It was the determination that was conveyed of a man with values forged in small town Nebraska to stop the advance of a someone who spends all day “insulting people and blaming others”.“We’ll turn the page on Donald Trump,” Coach Walz said. “That’s how we’ll build a country where workers come first, healthcare and housing are human rights, and the government stays the hell out of your bedroom.” More

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      ‘On fire with excitement’: Tim Walz’s former students react to nomination

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      Imagine your teacher in the White House.For Tim Walz’s former students, the hypothetical could become real. And they’re stoked.The Minnesota governor and Democratic vice-presidential candidate was a teacher in Nebraska and Minnesota before he ran for Congress in 2006. His time in the classroom features heavily on the campaign trail and in his governing. He has approved laws that provide universal school meals and add more money for education.He and his wife, Gwen, taught at Mankato West high school, in a town south-west of the Minneapolis area.There was high demand for his classes, said Jillian Hiscock, a former student at Mankato West. “It was hard to get into global geography. Who would have thought students would be fighting to get into global geography?“If you want to talk about strict, you got to talk about Mrs Walz,” she added. “I don’t think Tim had a strict bone in his body.”Mankato West alumni have convened in a Slack channel to share memories and excitement, finding community in the surreality of their former teacher potentially becoming vice-president. The alums usually bring up both Walzes as memorable and impactful educators who left impressions on them for different reasons.Beyond his teaching duties, he was part of the football coaching staff and an adviser to student groups, including the school’s first gay-straight alliance – in the late 1990s, in a small town in the midwest – after a student worked to set up the chapter.View image in fullscreen“It really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married,” Walz told the Star Tribune in 2018.For Kamala Harris, the titles of teacher and coach played heavily into Walz’s potential as a running mate. The vice-president repeatedly called him “coach” during their first rally together.Hiscock, 41, had Mrs Walz as a teacher and knew Mr Walz through his advising of a youth in government program and volunteering to plan prom. He was a fun-loving teacher who met students where they were, known to play a Jeopardy game in the classroom.Walz was known to care about students, even those who weren’t in his classes, and knew about their interests, wishing them luck at their softball game or asking if they were ready for the choir concert, she said. He was named “most inspiring” teacher in the school yearbook one year.Walz was passionate about teaching the underlying causes that can lead to atrocities like the Holocaust. One oft-cited story from 1993 shows how Walz taught students in Alliance, Nebraska, to study those factors and then identify which country could be at greatest risk of genocide. They landed on Rwanda, the New York Times reported in 2008, accurately predicting the country’s genocide before it happened.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLaura Muhm, 40, had Walz as a teacher in 11th grade in 2001. He encouraged free-flowing discussion and would toss the lesson plan if needed, she said. He worked to expose students to different cultures, inviting a student who was Muslim to share about their culture.View image in fullscreenShe was thrilled when Walz was chosen to be Harris’s running mate. “I felt like I drank five shots of espresso. That’s how energized I felt. Like, almost too energized,” Muhm said.Mankato, the Minnesota town that Walzes claimed as home, is “just on fire right now with excitement. Everybody’s like, I know that guy,” Muhm said.Hiscock owns a women’s sports bar in Minneapolis, A Bar of Their Own, and hosted a watch party to view Walz’s first rally as vice-president nominee. The bar was standing-room only as they served a tequila-based “blue wave” cocktail, and a non-alcoholic drink of Mountain Berry Blast Powerade. Walz himself does not drink after a 1995 drunk-driving arrest – he prefers Diet Mountain Dew.She said she was talking to a reporter this week who noted how rare it was that so many people had such good things to say about their high school teacher – not always a well-liked constituency among teenagers.“I’m not trying to be like Pollyanna with you. It just literally doesn’t surprise me that nobody has a bad story about him,” she said. More

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      Walz in the National Guard: A Steady Rise Ending With a Hard Decision

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      In a military career that spanned three decades, Tim Walz achieved one of the highest enlisted ranks in the Army. Some peers took issue with the timing of his retirement.In the 1980s, the U.S. military was in the middle of a transformation. The Vietnam War was over, and a force once staffed with drafted troops who had fought and died in the jungles of Southeast Asia was transitioning to ranks filled solely with volunteers.In Nebraska, Tim Walz was one of those volunteers.Mr. Walz, now Minnesota governor and the presumptive Democratic candidate for vice president, raised his hand to join the Army National Guard just two days past his 17th birthday on April 8, 1981. In a career in the military that spanned three decades, he battled floods, managed an artillery unit and achieved one of the highest enlisted ranks in the Army. He also navigated a full-time job teaching social studies alongside his part-time military occupation as an enlisted combat arms soldier, a role that trained him for war.Mr. Walz never went to war. Most of his service covered a period when America was bruised from foreign entanglements and wary of sending troops into combat overseas for long stretches. And it ended when Mr. Walz was 41, as the military ramped up for war after Sept. 11.Since being picked as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate this week, he has found himself facing allegations previously aired by Minnesota Republicans and newly amplified by JD Vance, former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate.Those criticisms center on Mr. Walz’s decision to retire from the Army in 2005, the year before his artillery battalion deployed to Iraq. He was thinking seriously about a run for Congress and spoke with other soldiers about being torn between his loyalty to his fellow troops and his desire to move on with his life. At the time, there were vague expectations that the unit might deploy, but actual orders came several months later.The unit deployed to Iraq for more than one year beginning in 2006. During that time, soldiers in the unit provided security for transportation convoys and other tasks common in a combat zone. 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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      Thunderstorms in Omaha Leave Thousands Without Power

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      Two tornadoes were also reported near the city, which was battered by winds of up to 80 m.p.h. on Wednesday. Other parts of the Midwest were under severe thunderstorm warnings.Destructive thunderstorms lashed Omaha, Neb., on Wednesday evening, leaving more than 200,000 customers without power, shutting down the city’s airport and felling trees. Two tornadoes were reported on the city’s outskirts, the National Weather Service said.The storms swept across south-central Nebraska on Wednesday evening, bringing wind gusts of 65 to 80 miles per hour, according to the Weather Service, before moving east into Iowa, where tree damage was also reported in the Des Moines area. By about 9:20 p.m., the storms had weakened, the Weather Service said. Other parts of the Midwest, including in Kansas and South Dakota, were also under severe thunderstorm warnings.One tornado was reported in Pottawattamie County, Iowa, just east of Omaha, and another in Cass County, Neb., to the city’s southeast.Weather Damage Around OmahaReports by trained spotters of tornadoes or high winds and damage believed to be caused by them. More

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      Woman Declared Dead Is Found Alive at Funeral Home

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      Constance Glantz, 74, of Lincoln, Neb., was pronounced dead in a nursing home. A funeral home employee preparing her body realized that she was breathing.A Nebraska woman who was pronounced dead at a nursing home on Monday was discovered breathing hours later by a funeral home employee, the authorities said.The woman, Constance Glantz, 74, of Lincoln, Neb., was brought to a hospital and declared alive, Chief Deputy Ben Houchin of the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office said at a news conference on Monday.“At this point we have not been able to find any criminal intent by the nursing home, but the investigation is ongoing,” he said.Ms. Glantz was receiving hospice care when she was pronounced dead at 9:44 a.m. by the nursing home staff at the Mulberry at Waverly in Waverly, Neb., Chief Deputy Houchin said. An investigation by the sheriff’s coroner was not necessary at the time of death, he said.The funeral home, which the local news media has reported is Butherus-Maser & Love Funeral Home in Lincoln, transported someone “they believed was a deceased individual” from the nursing home, Chief Deputy Houchin said. But an employee who began preparing Ms. Glantz’s body noticed she was still breathing. Two hours after she was declared dead, the staff called 911, he said.Staff members were performing C.P.R. on Ms. Glantz when emergency medical workers with Lincoln Fire and Rescue arrived, M.J. Lierman, an agency spokeswoman, said.They treated Ms. Glantz at the scene and transported her to a hospital, Ms. Lierman said.Ms. Glantz’s family has been notified, officials said. The authorities did not provide any additional details about Ms. Glantz, including how long she’d been in hospice or whether she had any medical conditions.Investigators were looking into whether any laws were broken, but so far “we have not been able to determine anything,” Chief Deputy Houchin said.Calls to the nursing home were not answered on Monday night.“This is a very unusual case,” Chief Deputy Houchin said. “I’ve been doing this 31 years, and nothing like this has ever gotten to this point before.”While rare, there have been cases of people who were declared dead only to be found alive soon after.In 2023, a woman in Iowa was taken in a body bag to a funeral home, where workers discovered that her chest was moving as she gasped for air.In 2020, a woman in Michigan with cerebral palsy was declared dead by paramedics but was discovered to be breathing hours later by a funeral home worker who was preparing to embalm her body.In 2018, a South African woman was pronounced dead at the scene of a car wreck but hours later was found breathing in a mortuary. And in 2014, a Mississippi man who had been pronounced dead was found alive inside a body bag at a funeral home. More

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      Don Bacon Beats Right-Wing Challenger in Nebraska

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      Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, a mainstream Republican, on Tuesday easily fended off a primary challenge from a right-wing businessman, advancing to what is expected to be a tight re-election contest in a competitive district won by President Biden in 2020.Mr. Bacon, a fourth-term congressman who has maintained a reputation as an independent voice in a party increasingly dominated by the hard right, won with an overwhelming share of the vote, according to The Associated Press.In recent years, a number of mainstream Republicans in politically competitive districts have been felled in primaries by ultraconservative candidates who went on to drag the party down in the general election.But since he was elected in 2016, Mr. Bacon, a former brigadier general in the Air Force, carved out a niche for himself as one of the only Republicans who could hold the Omaha-based swing seat. Since 2000, voters in the district have backed the winner of the presidential election, except in 2012.That brand came through for him on Tuesday night.His opponent, Dan Frei, a hard-line Republican who secured the endorsement of the state’s Republican Party, had painted Mr. Bacon as a fixture of the Washington establishment and ran on cutting federal spending and an “America First agenda.” Mr. Frei described himself as “a Trumper” but did not ultimately secure an endorsement from the former president.He also lagged far behind Mr. Bacon in fund-raising.Mr. Bacon, 60, has broken repeatedly with his party to support several bipartisan pieces of legislation, including Mr. Biden’s infrastructure bill, a bill to establish an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and a measure calling for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act.He was one of several Republicans in purple districts who pressed Speaker Mike Johnson to allow a foreign aid package including funding for Ukraine to come to a vote on the House floor. “We need to have a Churchill, not a Chamberlain,” Mr. Bacon said at the time.Mr. Frei sought to weaponize Mr. Bacon’s support for aid to Ukraine against him; Mr. Bacon, in turn, received backing from Mark Levin, a prominent right-wing radio host.“I am not into these radical isolationists,” Mr. Levin said. “I don’t side with terrorists against Israel. I don’t side with Russia against Ukraine.”Mr. Bacon also received some backup from the Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with House Republican leaders, which ran advertisements supporting the congressman on the southern border, an issue his opponent had sought to leverage against him.Mr. Bacon won re-election last year by 3 points against Tony Vargas, a state senator, even though Mr. Biden won the district in 2020 by 6 points.He will have a rematch against Mr. Vargas in November. More

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      He led a strike at Kellogg’s. Now he’s aiming for a Nebraska Senate seat

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      Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada – these are the swing states most pundits expect will decide the 2024 election. No one has deep-red Nebraska on that list. But a 48-year-old pipefitter and union organizer from Omaha is hoping to change that.Three years ago, Dan Osborn led the Nebraska leg of a US-wide strike against the cereal giant Kellogg’s as the company pushed for concessions in a new union contract despite posting record profits during the Covid-19 pandemic.Now he’s taking on Deb Fischer, a Republican senator, who is running for her third US Senate term in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in 18 years. Osborn is running as an independent and says he hasn’t yet decided who will get his vote come November but his pro-labor, pro-choice views are unlikely to sit well with conservative Republicans.“This from the beginning was considered a long shot,” said Osborn. “I’ve enjoyed proving people wrong from the very beginning of this and I look forward to continue proving people wrong, that this isn’t impossible. I want to show that Nebraska has an independent spirit.”Nebraska is historically a stronghold for Republicans. A Democrat has not won a US Senate seat to represent the state since Ben Nelson in 2006. An independent hasn’t won since George Norris in 1936.Despite the odds, Osborn’s campaign is off to an impressive start. A November 2023 poll, the only one conducted so far for the race, put Osborn at 40% to 38% for Fischer, with 18% undecided. Osborn has also fundraised more than $600,000 so far, a record for an independent candidate in the state, primarily from small donors.Osborn said he was approached to run by railroad workers in Nebraska who have been disgruntled with Fischer over her refusal to support the Railroad Safety Act.The bill was drafted in response to the East Palestine, Ohio, disaster as railroad workers and unions have decried poor working conditions and safety issues driven by railroad corporations, which Osborn has pointed out are big donors to his opponent. In contrast, Fischer had introduced legislation to further deregulate the railroad industry.Improving railroad safety is a part of Osborn’s campaign platform, along with cannabis legalization, enacting congressional term limits, lowering tax rates for small business owners and the middle class, and improving pay and support for veterans.“We’re dealing with people like Deb Fischer who take corporate Pac money and they vote accordingly,” added Osborn. “They are not for the workers, for the people, they’re for corporations.”His former employer Kellogg’s has also hit the headlines, with Kellogg’s CEO, Gary Pilnick, stating during an appearance on CNBC that poor families facing financial distress should consider eating cereal for dinner.“This just goes to show how out of touch CEOs are with regular people,” said Osborn.Osborn is a long shot for Nebraska but he’s hoping that his story will resonate with people who are fed up with business as usual and a 1% that seem to think “let them eat cereal” is an answer to income inequality. He cited a 2020 report that calculated the redistribution of wealth in the US from the bottom 90% of earners to the top 1% of earners, finding that $50tn has been taken in redistributed income in recent decades.“How does that happen on everybody’s watch? It’s because the special interests and corporations own the politicians and they vote accordingly,” concluded Osborn. “I’m tired of it and I think people are starting to wake up to that fact because we’re all hurting right now. I’m hurting. I’m still working 40-50 hours as a steamfitter while I’m running for Senate and my dollar doesn’t stretch like it used to, I’m getting hurt at the gas pump, I’m getting hurt at the grocery stores and everybody else is too.” More

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      Severe Weather Expected to Bring Tornadoes and Flooding to Great Plains

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      Forecasters on Saturday said that “dangerous supercell thunderstorms” were possible that could produce strong tornadoes.The threat of tornadoes loomed across parts of the Central U.S. as warnings were posted in parts of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas amid severe thunderstorms and high winds throughout the Great Plains on Saturday.The severe weather followed a day in which tornadoes tore through parts of Nebraska and Iowa, leveling dozens of homes on Friday.Tornadoes Friday and SaturdayLocations of tornado sightings or damage reported by trained spotters. More