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      Far-right online attacks against Tim Walz focus on conspiracy theory

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      Just as he was officially announced on the ticket, Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, often lauded as the safest pick for Kamala Harris to make as a running mate, was already facing racist and nativist attacks from the online depths of the far right.In media speculation leading up to Harris’s potential pick, Walz, a midwesterner who once coached a high school football team, was seen as evening out the Californian vice-president’s candidacy for the White House.The thinking among pundits was that Walz, who is white and 60, was appealing to battleground states, namely Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – one of the keys to victory in the electoral college spread this November.But the far-right users of Telegram, Gab, 4chan and other adjacent social media sites frequently used to spread extremist propaganda have taken a different tack.The nexus of many of the early attacks have focused on the conspiracy theory that he changed the state flag of Minnesota to mimic a Somali flag.“Replaced Minnesota flag with Somali flag, loves loves loves Somalis moving into America by planeload,” said one anonymous post on the chatboard 4Chan, with an image of Walz at a press conference.“Timmy Somali changed the state flag to look African, lmao,” said another post on the same site, which was published following the news of Walz as Harris’s pick. “Dude is a fucking cuck. This is a worse VP pick than even Vance was.”This rhetoric stems from Walz unveiling the new Minnesota flag in December last year. The 1957 version was criticized for overtly depicting a Native American man being driven away from the land by threat of a rifle. The new design partly features a blue backdrop with a white star – an allusion to the official state motto “Star of the North” – something the Somali flag also happens to include.“Tim Walz is the perfect pick to sell you out to the hordes,” wrote one pro-Proud Boys channel on Telegram with more than 15,000 followers, putting a video of Walz and the new flag in the post.As the brutal civil war persisted into the 90s, Minnesota became a destination for many Somali immigrants, who established a rich and successful group of new Americans. Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar, who was born in Mogadishu, was part of that same wave of immigration fleeing the violence.But, of course, the more than 85,000 Somali Americans in the state of close to 7 million has become the racist fodder of neo-Nazis, nativists and far-right commentators of all types in recent years.“This is Minneapolis, Minnesota,” read one post with more than a thousand views on a neo-Nazi-sympathizing channel on Telegram, with photos of a vibrant Somali street festival in Minneapolis, not unlike annual Italian street festivals in every major US city. “This isn’t Mogadishu.”Mainstream Republicans have started adopting this racist invocation of Somalia when it comes to Walz. Stephen Miller, former senior adviser to Donald Trump, went on Fox News on Tuesday night to say the Democrat ticket will “turn the entire midwest into Mogadishu”.On Gab, a fringe and rightwing X-wannabe, an image showing a cartoon Harris and Walz carrying a Somali flag was making the rounds, while others largely focused on the Minnesota governor’s stewardship of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in 2020, which first began in his state after the police killing of George Floyd.“Minneapolis before and after Governor Tim Walz allowed BLM to destroy it,” wrote one Gab user posting images claiming to show Minneapolis buildings that were once pristine before the protests.Walz’s midwestern, folksy appeal was undeniably a major reason Harris and her team took the decision to include him. He’s a counter to Donald Trump’s running mate: the Ohio senator JD Vance, who uses any public appearance to stress his working-class and Appalachian roots.Vance and the far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is an often antisemitic and racist mouthpiece for the extremist branches of the Republican party, immediately cited the BLM protests in their attacks on Walz.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionVance accused Walz of allowing “rioters to burn down Minneapolis” while Greene said he similarly did “nothing while Minneapolis burned”, telegraphing a surefire Republican attack line in the coming months.“The incoming rightwing assault on Walz will be pretty predictable,” said Amarnath Amarasingam, an extremism expert and professor at Queen’s University in Canada who has researched the rise of the far right since the Trump presidency.Amarasingam explained that there was the underlying racial component to Walz’s candidacy that was sure to inflame the far right and be an implicit attack against him in mainstream Republican circles.“American politics is so tribal now that the same reasons that make [Walz] attractive to the Harris campaign will be the same reasons he will be considered ‘un-American’ by the right.”Amarasingam also pointed out that beyond his track record on Covid, LGBTQ+ and trans rights will surely be topics of conversation.“The predictable culture war fault lines – immigration, equity, gender fluidity, race – will be trotted out as insults and accusations: he took too long to call in the national guard against BLM protests, his state was too restrictive during Covid and so on,” he said.“When there aren’t verifiable policy choices to attack, conspiracy theories will take their place – like the idea that he changed the state’s flag to resemble the Somali flag due to an immigrant takeover.”Another point of criticism on Walz that’s gaining momentum among Republicans is … tampons? Walz supported a law that went into effect in Minnesota this year, requiring tampons in both boys and girls public school bathrooms.The perhaps uninspired hashtag “TamponTim” trended on X among rightwing circles for most of Tuesday. On Gab, there’s a meme dubbing Walz “Tampon Tim” and shows a manipulated picture of him menstruating from his jeans.Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson, wasted no time appearing on Fox News only hours after Walz was announced to criticize the vice-presidential pick and his legislative track record.“As a woman, I think there’s no greater threat to our health than leaders who support gender transition surgeries for young minors,” she said in an animated appearance, “who support putting tampons in men’s bathrooms in public schools.” More

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      ‘We invest in artists as changemakers’: using art to help increase US voter participation

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      Everything is politics, so the saying goes, and never more so during an election year. With its newest collection, Art for Change is taking the “everything” one step further.Since 2018, Art for Change has curated programs of online sales and exhibitions to raise money for a number of charities. Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Art for Change has partnered with When We All Vote, a non-partisan non-profit founded by Michelle Obama that seeks to up voter participation.On their own, many of the pieces in this collection may not feel overtly political. An art novice would probably imagine a collaboration like this to include art similar to the red, white and blue of Shepard Fairey’s Hope and We The People posters – not Jordan Kasey’s surreal illustration of a baby and mother, Daniel Gordon’s still life of red apples and white poppies, or Aaron Johnson’s vivid auroral depiction of a couple with a bird flying from one’s heart.But interspersed with pieces like Caris Reid’s playful rendering of the word “VOTE” against a starry backdrop and Rico Gatson’s colorful celebration of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, each piece in this collection takes on new context. Especially under the mission statement of When We All Vote, which will receive a portion of all the sales of prints and original works, the artwork of this collection come together to show what’s at stake with each election – what exactly a person risks losing by choosing not to vote.“The When We All Vote collection as a whole creates a narrative that we hope evokes various nuances of America,” said Jeanne Masel, founder of Art for Change. “As a group, they convey a sense of Americana, from the image of an apple to a whimsical take on a ‘Vote’ poster, to abstractions that evoke raw emotions.”Masel added: “What I love about this collection is how varied and multivalent it is, which I think can also be read as reflecting our country’s diversity.”Johnson completed Oh My Heart in 2023 and had not originally intended for it to convey a political message. “My piece can be looked at as kind of a love story,” he said. “It’s a coming together of two figures, melded together into like a non-duality.”As part of this collection, the love story of Oh My Heart comes to represent the ties that hold us together. “In a lot of times in my work, I’m thinking about the interconnectedness of all beings, our interconnectivity with each other as humans or interconnectivity with nature,” Johnson said. “I think that all wraps back around to the idea of community and the idea of why of it’s important to vote, having empathy for others and having a sense of a shared community. I feel like that’s a message that runs kind of kind of parallel to what we’re looking for when we’re going to vote. How do we function together as good citizens? How do we take care of each other as citizens?”View image in fullscreenLike Johnson, Kenny Rivero’s body of work, which looks at architecture and outdoor street space as sentient observers of our daily lives, does not always translate into something political. But once he agreed to work with Art for Change for this collaboration, he thought of Witness Revelator, a painting he finished in 2020 of a Black individual emerging from a dark rectangular portal in a gray brick wall. The witness in Witness Revelator is “a witness to your vote”, Rivero said.“There’s a lot of things that we do alone, that we do intimately and in private and in secret, and I think voting is one of those things, especially now where everything is so polarized,” he said. “There’s this thing you’re doing that is private but you’re being tallied in something greater, something much more impactful. Witness Revelator, for me, is connected to that in the way of somebody witnessing the effort that you’re making to create progress or create change.”Since its start six years ago, Art for Change has raised more than $300,000 for nonprofit partners and has collaborated with more than 100 artists, all of whom are guaranteed 50% of the profits from sales. Masel describes Art for Change as “art for the socially conscious collector”, but also a way for artists to have a platform for social change. “We invest in artists as changemakers,” she said.View image in fullscreenThis collection is the second time Rivero has worked with Art for Change, in part because he said he believes that artists have a unique role in a democracy, no matter the subject matter or intended message of their work.“I think that artists are on the frontlines of creating new ideas on how to relate to each other,” Rivero said. “Because we’re constantly engaging with these ideas around family, community and relationships, so I think that we look to artists, not necessarily on how to rebuild society, but to tell us what’s wrong with it. Where does it hurt?”Art for Change collaborated with When We All Vote for the 2020 election, working with four artists to raise more than $30,000 for the non-profit. This year, 14 artists are participating, with Art for Change pledging to donate a guaranteed $10,000.“A visual medium has the power to drive social change and impact, and having these artists involved and spreading the word to get out and vote is so important,” Masel said. “This project really harnesses a great creativity and joy to inspire change.”

      The When We All Vote virtual exhibit is now available on the Art for Change website More

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      JD Vance attacks Tim Walz’s military record as election race heats up

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      JD Vance went on the offensive on Wednesday, attacking the military record of Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick.Speaking in Michigan, Donald Trump’s Republican running mate said: “You know what really bothers me about Tim Walz? When the United States Marine Corps … asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it. I did what they asked me to do and I did it honorably, and I’m very proud of that service.“When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the army and allowed his unit to go without him.”Now a US senator from Ohio, Vance, 40, deployed to Iraq in 2005, as a military journalist. Despite his title – combat correspondent – he did not experience combat.Walz, 60, was in the army national guard for 24 years, in infantry and artillery, deploying in response to natural disasters on US soil and to Europe in support of operations in Afghanistan. He retired in 2005, to run for Congress, shortly before his unit deployed to Iraq.He has faced attacks before. In 2018, he told Minnesota Public Radio: “I know that there are certainly folks that did far more than I did. I know that. I willingly say that I got far more out of the military than they got out of me, from the GI bill to leadership opportunities to everything else.”A soldier who served under Walz, Al Bonnifield, said: “Would the soldier look down on him because he didn’t go with us? Would the common soldier say, ‘Hey, he didn’t go with us, he’s trying to skip out on a deployment?’ And he wasn’t.“… He weighed that decision to run for Congress very heavy. He loved the military, he loved the guard, he loved the soldiers he worked with.”Calling Walz “very caring” and a “very good leader”, Bonnifield said Walz helped him and other soldiers when they returned from Iraq.Vance seized on footage publicized by the Harris campaign in which, discussing gun control reform, Walz says: “We can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are at.”Vance said: “He says, ‘We shouldn’t allow weapons that I used in war to be on the American streets.’skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Well, I wonder, Tim Walz, when were you ever in war? What was this weapon that you carried into war given that you abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq? He has not spent a day in a combat zone. What bothers me about Tim Walz is the stolen valor garbage. Do not pretend to be something that you’re not.”Observers suggested Vance was attempting to “swift boat” Walz – a reference to attacks on John Kerry, the decorated US navy Vietnam veteran and Massachusetts senator who ran for president against George W Bush in 2004.Bush avoided serving in Vietnam but Republicans attacked Kerry regardless. The Republican operative (and wounded Gulf war veteran) widely credited with coordinating the effort, Chris LaCivita, now runs the Trump-Vance campaign.In a statement, the Harris campaign said: “After 24 years of military service, Governor Walz retired in 2005 and ran for Congress, where he chaired veterans affairs and was a tireless advocate for our men and women in uniform … As vice-president … he will continue to be a relentless champion for our veterans and military families.”It added: “In his 24 years of service, the Governor carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times. Governor Walz would never insult or undermine any American’s service to this country – in fact, he thanks Senator Vance for putting his life on the line for our country. It’s the American way.” More

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      Biden ‘not confident at all’ in peaceful transfer of power if Trump loses race

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      Joe Biden has said he is not confident there will be a peaceful transfer of power after the November presidential election.“If Trump wins, no, I’m not confident at all. I mean, if Trump loses, I’m not confident at all,” the president said in an interview with CBS News that is due to air in full this Sunday.Biden added: “He means what he says, we don’t take him seriously. He means it, all this stuff about ‘if we lose it will be a bloodbath’ … [and] ‘stolen election’, you can’t love your country only when you win.”The TV network posted the excerpt from the interview on Twitter/X.Donald Trump, who is the Republican nominee for president, said in March: “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath. That’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion

      Reuters contributed reporting. More details soon … More

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      Kamala Harris and Tim Walz inspire enthusiasm at Wisconsin rally: ‘I’m elated’

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      Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, continued their swing-state tour with a rally in rural Wisconsin on Wednesday.The rally, which followed a raucous event in Philadelphia, served as an opportunity for Harris to continue to introduce Walz, a formerly low-profile midwest governor, to Democrats in the critical swing state. Held in Eau Claire, a north-western Wisconsin city less than two hours from Minneapolis and St Paul, Minnesota, the rally drew attendees from both states.Walz spoke first, focusing on his midwestern background and noting he had family in the crowd. “Being a midwesterner, I know something about commitment to the people,” he said.He also spoke at length about his experience coaching football, teaching social studies and serving in the Minnesota National Guard, underscoring his role as a kind of ambassador to rural and working-class Americans for the Democratic party.And he directly took on Trump. “Don’t believe him when he plays dumb. He knows exactly what he’s talking about. He knows exactly what Project 2025 will do in restricting and taking our freedoms. He knows that it rigs the economy for the super rich if he gets a chance to go back to the White House. It will be far worse than it was four years ago.”Walz also revisited his support for and personal experience with IVF, the fertility treatment, which has become a contentious issue for Republicans after an Alabama court ruled that frozen embryos have personhood.The rally highlighted Harris’s focus on Wisconsin, where she held her first rally after Joe Biden announced the end of his bid for re-election. In 2016, Donald Trump won Wisconsin by about 20,000 votes, and Biden won the state in 2020 by a similar margin.Harris’s speech was similar to those at other recent campaign stops, with a focus on the future and Trump’s threat to democratic norms.“Donald Trump has openly vowed, if re-elected, he will be a dictator on day one, that he would weaponize the Department of Justice against his political enemies, that he would round up peaceful protesters and throw them out of our country, and even, quote, ‘terminate the United States constitution’,” she said.“Let us be clear, someone who suggests we should terminate the constitution of the United States should never again have a chance to stand behind the seal of the president of the United States.”Rallygoers were enthusiastic at seeing the duo at the event.“I’m elated,” said Lori Schlecht, a teacher from Minnesota who said she is excited about Walz given his background in public education – Walz was a public school teacher before he was elected to the US House of Representatives in 2006. “Minnesota is blessed to have him, and I’m glad to see him at the national level. He is authentic and real – he’ll get shit done.”Many Minnesota residents in attendance pointed to Walz’s down-to-earth manner as an asset for the Democratic party ticket.“Walz is my homeboy,” said Colin Mgam, who is 65 and retired and drove from St Paul for the rally. “He brings straight talk, and he’s going to do well,” Mgam added.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe indie folk band Bon Iver, whose lead singer is from Eau Claire and previously supported Bernie Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, opened for Harris at the Wednesday event.Walz, who was not initially an obvious contender for Harris’s vice-presidential pick, garnered widespread attention within the party after giving a candid and upbeat interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe in which he boosted Harris and wrote off Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance as “weird”.The “weird” moment went viral, and Democratic party officials and politicians quickly seized on the term to dismiss the Republican presidential ticket as reactionary and out-of-touch with everyday Americans.Walz’s comments – and subsequent references to the “weirdness” of the Maga movement, including at the Wednesday rally – marked the beginning of a rhetorical shift for Democrats, with Harris reframing the election in more positive terms than the Biden campaign, which leaned heavily on grave warnings about Trump’s autocratic tendencies. Since ascending to the top of the ticket, Harris has instead emphasized a policy agenda with issues that are popular among Democratic voters, such as abortion rights, labor unions and the cost of childcare.Donald Trump has been quick to paint Walz, who has worked with progressive lawmakers in Minnesota to pass a raft of progressive laws – codifying the right to abortion, expanding protections for workers and establishing landmark voting rights legislation – as a member of the “radical left”, a line of attack that the former president will likely continue to push.But Walz pushed back against Trump on Wednesday. “This election is all about asking that question, which direction will this country go in? Donald Trump knows the direction he wants to take it. He wants to take us back.” More

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      Harris-Walz merch unites gen X dads – and Chappell Roan fans: ‘We’re not used to politicians making cool choices’

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      With less than 100 days to go until the election, Kamala Harris announced her VP pick – the avuncular Minnesota governor Tim Walz – and dropped a new official logo.Harris-Walz merchandise, including yard signs, T-shirts, and one much-memed camouflage printed hat, launched as soon as the current vice-president put Walz on her ticket on Tuesday. The logo looks simple, with some even calling it boring: tall, white, sans serif lettering spelling out the nominees’ last names.“The logo needs a little more [flair] to reflect the excitement of the base,” read one tweet posted to X. “Oh my god this is minimalist hell get me out of here,” said another.But, as Hunter Schwarz pointed out for Fast Company, others viewed the logo as historic, tracing its branding back to Shirley Chisholm’s 1972 presidential campaign. Chisholm, the first Black congresswoman and first Black woman to run for a major party’s nomination, used all-caps, sans serif lettering. (Harris took nods from Chisholm’s campaign design when running in 2019.)“The logo looks bold and strong, and the brilliance of it is that it doesn’t have to be clever,” said Ross Turner, a graphic designer who works on political campaigns.Turner noted that the Harris Walz design looks similar to Trump Vance signs, which also utilize an all-caps, sans serif font. “I initially thought, wow, Harris kind of dropped the ball, because this looks so much like the Trump logo,” Turner said. “Isn’t the goal to differentiate? But they didn’t have to differentiate with the logo, because Harris already does as a candidate. And [Republicans] can’t turn around and mock this logo, because then they’d have to do the same for Trump since it’s so similar.”View image in fullscreen“I like their lack of preciousness,” said Charles Nix, senior executive creative director of the typeface company Monotype. “The speed of this campaign and this design coming together demands a sort of truth. It doesn’t have a full year to be tested in focus groups. It speaks plainly and urgently.”“They’re clearly emphasizing Harris,” said Katherine Haenschen, an assistant professor of communications and political science at Northeastern University. “It’s a good, solid logo.”If the campaign’s logo is straightforward, its merch comes off as more playful. One $40 camo hat with Harris Walz embroidered in orange looks strikingly similar to a cap sold by the gen Z pop star Chappell Roan in support of her Midwest Princess tour.View image in fullscreenWalz, a game-hunting Minnesotan who signed gun control measures into law, was wearing a camo baseball cap when he got the call from Harris offering him the VP slot, and he’s worn camo in the past. But some online commentators are reading into the campaign’s cap, released Tuesday after a high-energy rally in Philadelphia, as a nod to Roan. The singer even posted a side-by-side of her merch with the Harris-Walz hat on X, writing: “is this real.”The cap, which the campaign called “the most iconic political hat in America”, can be interpreted as a rebuttal to Donald Trump’s red Maga option. The gen-X-dad styling might be seen as an attempt to appeal to middle American voters who might actually use it while hunting. “There’s a lot of connotations with camouflage print and preparing for battle, which I’m sure crossed the in-house design team’s mind, given how fraught the leadup to November is going to be,” said the fashion writer Freya Drohan. Fitting, too, as one of the Harris campaign’s slogans is “when we fight, we win”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOne could even imagine coastal hypebeasts who have never held a gun in their lives wearing the hat: camo has emerged as one of 2024’s most unlikely fashion trends, seen on runways from Balenciaga to A$AP Rocky’s AWGE label.“This is the bushwick x los feliz unity that our nation needs,” wrote the comedian Desus Nice on X about the hat, citing two hip neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Los Angeles where it’s not uncommon to see people dressed in what can only be described as fish and game warden-chic.“I’m personally really encouraged that it seems like the campaign is listening to young voices,” said Ziad Ahmed, head of Next Gen, a gen Z marketing practice at United Talent Agency. “I think everyone can feel that energy across the internet right now. When we first saw the hat, we almost couldn’t believe our eyes, as we are so not used to our politicians actually making good, cool, smart choices.”Nate Jones, an executive at UTA Next Gen, added that he wanted to buy Harris merchandise after she announced her bid, but felt “quite disappointed” by the lineup. “I didn’t see anything I would actually wear, until this hat,” he said. “It’s simultaneously street style and gen X dad style.” Jones ordered the cap, which is expected to drop in early October. The Harris campaign told Teen Vogue it sold $1m worth of caps in less than 24 hours.Merch alone will not win an election, but the excitement around the hat reiterates how Harris’ presidential bid continues to liven up a once dreary election cycle. It’s also clear that Harris’s team has set its sights on delivering viral moments meant to thrill the very-online voting bloc.“It is my hope that those in power continue to pay attention to what young voters are saying across the internet,” Ahmed said. “Not just to draw inspiration for their next merch drop, but also to shape their policy platforms that will define our generation’s present as well as our future.” More

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      Young women are the most progressive group in American history. Young men are checked out

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      View image in fullscreenWhen Donald Trump strutted on to the stage at the Republican national convention last month, it was to a raucous cover of James Brown’s It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World. The song credits men with inventing cars, trains, lights, boats, toys and commerce. The message was not subtle. At least, not to Melissa Deckman.“This idea of America needing someone who is a strong masculine figure – I think the Republican campaign this year is doing it even in a more pronounced and overt way than it did in 2016,” said Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute. “You have a lot of younger men admiring the strength of Trump – or what they think is strong.”Deckman would know. In her forthcoming book The Politics of Gen Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape Our Democracy, she dives into the deep political divides between gen Z women and men and explores how they feel about growing up in the Trump era. Based on interviews with roughly 90 gen Z political activists, numerous focus groups and extensive polling, Deckman has identified what she calls a “historic reverse gender gap”.View image in fullscreenShe has found that gen Z men are becoming more conservative as well as increasingly indifferent to politics, bucking longstanding trends, dating back at least to the 1970s, that saw young people across the board voting liberal and men being generally more involved in politics than women. Meanwhile, gen Z women have not only become the most progressive cohort in US history but are also expected to outpace their male peers across virtually every measure of political involvement, such as donating money, volunteering for campaigns, registering people to vote – and, of course, voting.Young women were outstripping men on political engagement well before Joe Biden stepped aside in favor of Kamala Harris, setting the internet ablaze with memes and teeing up yet another presidential contest between Trump and a woman. Now, with Harris the presumptive Democratic nominee, a generation already riven by a canyon-wide political gender gap is watching a contest between a woman who could become the nation’s first Black and south Asian female president and a man who likes calling women “nasty”.“For me, the question come November is gonna be: to what extent do attitudes about gender influence the vote for Trump?” Deckman asked.Polls indicate that young men’s views on gender, femininity and masculinity are rapidly shifting. In 2022, 49% of gen Z men said that the United States had become “too soft and feminine”, Deckman found. Just a year later, 60% of gen Z men said the same. Deckman found that those who agreed with the statement were far more likely to have voted for Trump in 2016 – even after controlling for political party.No matter their age, women have long voted at higher rates than men – but that is the only political activity where they have consistently exceeded men. Men historically donated more, volunteered with campaigns more and otherwise participated in political life more. This year, Deckman believes young women will surpass young men not only at voting, but in all political activities. Democrats have historically had a firm grip on voters under 30 – a grip they may now be losing. Gen Z men, Deckman noted, have “reverted to the mean of men”: while they’re not necessarily more conservative that most men, they are more conservative than their millennial counterparts.Not all menThese trends are even more pronounced among white gen Z men. If you combine the number of independent gen Z men who lean Republican with those who identify as Republicans, Deckman said, young white men “look very conservative compared to even older white men”. She believes Trump will probably win young white men.In 2020, 49% of white men between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for Biden, according to an analysis of AP VoteCast data by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. Meanwhile, 42% voted for Trump.The damage that could do to Harris, however, is mitigated by the fact that white men make up a shrinking segment of gen Z. About half of gen Z is white, making it the most diverse generation in US history. Several polls have suggested that Trump could win among young Black and Latino men – a claim that Deckman eyes with suspicion, especially since Harris has entered the race and the GOP seems unable to stop themselves from making racist comments about her. Some Republicans have started calling Harris the “first DEI president”.Deckman’s surveys have found that gen Z men are less likely than their female counterparts to say that racial equality is important to them, but 45% do believe that it’s important, including 52% of Black gen Z men.“If Donald Trump uses misogynistic, racist language toward Kamala Harris, I think the net effect for young men will be more off-putting than not,” Deckman said. “The end result for him is a net negative. It’s also, of course, wrong.”‘They don’t care’Another mitigating factor could help Harris: young men don’t seem all that interested in politics, period.“They don’t care,” Deckman said. In surveys, “I asked them: what are you passionate about? What issues are critically important to you? There’s like 20% gaps between young men and young women on everything.”In addition to caring more about issues like LGBTQ+ rights and abortion, as might be expected, gen Z women care more about economic issues like inflation, jobs and unemployment, which are typically thought to be more important to men. (LGBTQ+ zoomers also cared equally or more about every issue than straight zoomers.) Even men who agree that the US is too “soft and feminine” don’t feel more motivated to act. Instead, it is Democratic women who reject that notion who tend to get more involved in politics.While young men fall behind women in political engagement, women have, over the last few decades, gone to college and joined the workforce at higher and higher rates. These trends are not unrelated. The more education and money you have, the more likely you are to be invested in politics.Feeling like your rights are under “direct threat” also increases political involvement – and in the age of Trump, #MeToo and the fall of Roe v Wade, plenty of gen Z women feel like their rights are under threat. Gen Z men just don’t feel the same urgency.Surprisingly, there is one area of political involvement where young men and women feel similarly: they are both deeply uninterested in running for office. Women have long been less interested in running for office than men. But as of 2022, Deckman found, only 6% of gen Z men said they definitely planned to run for office, while 4% of gen Z women said the same. Despite women’s political enthusiasm, zoomers as a whole remain unconvinced that joining government is worth it.“Gen Z is far less likely to be confident in the federal government, in the media, in organized religion, in the police, in the criminal justice system,” Deckman said. “This is just endemic to a generation of young people who have grown up in one crisis after another.” More