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      Democrats use AI in effort to stay ahead with Latino and Black voters

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      Latino and Black-led Democratic and progressive organizations are mobilizing to come up with novel uses of AI to reach voters of color.On Discord, a social messaging app that connects gamers, it’s taking the form of a smiling chatbot powered by artificial intelligence that evokes Pixar’s animated robot Wall-E. When you click, a conversation opens up that says: “This is the very beginning of your legendary conversation with Vote-E.”You can ask election related questions such as “How do I register to vote?” or when North Carolina’s voter registration deadline is – and the answers are almost instantaneous.Vote-E is an experiment in how to crack one of the toughest problems for Democrats – reaching voters of color, especially younger ones, using platforms where they actually spend time, and persuading them to vote for Democrats. And it comes at a transformative, but uncertain time for the party, with Kamala Harris replacing Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, who must use existing infrastructure to beat Donald Trump.NextGen America, which built Vote-E and is one of the nation’s largest youth voter organizations, says it allows young men to access the bot from Discord chats and Twitch streams of Latino and Black gaming influencers.“We’re seeing voter turnout gaps between Black men and women and Latino men and women,” said Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, NextGen America’s president, noting that while there’s a focus on connecting with young people on college campuses, not everyone is there. The chatbot is active in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada and North Carolina.It’s just one example of progressive groups of color experimenting with artificial intelligence which wasn’t on their radar four years ago: AI chatbots are now also recruiting Latino voters from WhatsApp and Black voters from Facebook Messenger; they’re using natural language processing to record voter interactions with canvassers and identify shared concerns; and even using it to index and identify friendly Spanish-language sites to place an ad touting Democrats’ clean energy plan.With the election mere months away, the challenge facing Democrats remains how to galvanize younger voters and voters of color.While more Latinos turned out in 2020 than ever before, Hispanics still lag behind white, Black, and Asian and Pacific Islander voters as a proportion of their population of eligible voters, according to Catalist, a progressive data hub, which noted this is true across communities of color, “where non-voting rates are substantially higher”.Héctor Sánchez Barba, the president and chief executive of Mi Familia Vota, told companies he was less interested in their diversity dollars than in their budgets and expertise in the realm of data, research, and innovation. It’s why he recruited Denise Cook, a Cuban American former enterprise software architect who spent 16 years at IBM to join MFV as its chief data and innovation officer. She leads an all-Latina team, which created its own chatbot and uses AI to have human-sounding, bilingual conversations with Latino voters on platforms like WhatsApp.Canvassers with the group ask for permission to record conversations with voters on their mobile phones or tablets. Those interactions are then turned into data using natural language processing, a type of AI. This way, MFV is able to quickly summarize voter priorities and figure out if it is speaking about the economy, reproductive rights or climate optimally to voters.“We need this kind of brainpower when we’re fighting the biggest enemy our community has ever had,” Sánchez Barba said of Trump. “This is about using the most important technological advancements, including artificial intelligence, for good and to save our democracy.”Many leaders of color said they are mindful of pitfalls around AI but open to harnessing its power and testing possible strategies. Larry Huynh, the president of the American Association of Political Consultants and the founder of Trilogy Interactive, is so interested in incorporating AI into political campaigns that he followed leaders in other industries by creating an internal taskforce at his company.He believes campaigns should follow the lead of brands, which use AI voiceovers of celebrities and public figures, to have their natural mouth movements seamlessly disseminate campaign messages. Huynh’s research has found AI voices tailored to their target audience – young male speaker, young male voter, say – appear to be more persuasive.One example he gave is of an allied group creating a video of the candidate – now Harris – speaking perfect Spanish in her own voice aimed at Arizona or Nevada voters.“If it’s well-delivered and it doesn’t seem odd or off, some voters could appreciate that communication in their predominant language,” he said.Putting out a wholly AI-made Harris, however, would be highly scrutinized both from within the party and by Republicans. Harris is already a target of deepfakes that put words in her mouth as well as ones meant to sexualize and demean her. Yet another deepfake of her, even a positive one, could strike the wrong chord. A Trump has said she used AI to fake a huge rally crowd. The photo of her campaign stop was real, though. Concerns over disinformation have only been heightened by the spread of AI-generated images of Trump getting arrested in New York and an AI robocall that mimicked Biden’s voice telling New Hampshire voters not to cast a ballot.Still, progressive groups are charging forward. Poder Latinx, an advocacy group committed to building Latino political power, created an ad touting the clean energy plan from the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act. It was timed to coincide with the popular Copa América soccer tournament last month. Partnering with Mundial Media, the group was able to serve the ad to US Latinos reading Spanish-language news sites in places like Arizona. Mundial Media’s Cadmus AI engine crawled the sites and indexed their keywords to make sure the soccer-themed clean energy ad would fit in with the content on the pages.Yadira Sanchez, the co-founder of Poder Latinx, was happy with how the campaign reached voters, over-delivering impressions and click-thru rates from Latinos, including finding a 64% Hispanic male audience.“We know that the best connection is voter to voter contact. This technology is complementing the on-the-ground canvassing we are already using,” she said. “Technology, AI in particular, is great to reach younger, more online voters.“But AI may not be viewed as safe enough for initiatives that require serious resources to scale up in time for November. And there are concerns it could freak out voters in the wrong context.In focus groups in Detroit, Cleveland and Philadelphia this year, Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPac, found “hesitation” from Black voters around AI.“There’s a concern people have with what they’re seeing and where it’s coming from exactly,” she said, noting voters “don’t know what to trust and are suspicious and skeptical of everything.”Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, a group that advocates for Black Americans and has a $25m program for 2024, has met with Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, alongside senior staff at Meta, Google and OpenAI, to call for commitments on how AI will be used around election tools, which he says aren’t ready for primetime.“Imagine if there were no regulations for cars and it was all about who could get their new vehicle to market fastest?” he said, citing Musk’s Tesla, which has recalled its latest model four times. “It’s Tesla on steroids. At least cars get recalled, but there is no infrastructure or body that recalls tech.”Quentin James, founder and president of The Collective Pac, a group that works to elect Black Democrats and is using the Facebook Messenger chatbot to get registration information from voters, stressed that deepfakes or ads where one campaign is using the likeness of their opponent to mislead voters should be shut down immediately.Still, he said, Democrats must be willing to use the tools at their disposal to beat Trump, because the other side will be looking at them as well.“I don’t know if FEC law can catch up to this in a few months, so we should use it to our advantage,” he said. “There’s no way we can control what happens with technology in this short time period.” More

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      Midwestern guys: Vance and Walz’s opposing views of being from the US heartland

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      For 30 years, Michael Bailey worked at the former Armco steel plant in Middletown, Ohio, eventually becoming president of a union that represented thousands of workers. Among them was James Vance, grandfather and sometimes stand-in father of the Republican party’s current vice-presidential candidate, JD, who worked as a skilled tradesperson at the plant.So Bailey, today a 71-year-old pastor at the Faith United church in downtown Middletown, says he’s confused by claims from Donald Trump’s running mate that he “grew up as a poor kid” in Middletown.“As a rigger, [James Vance] made good money. Where he lived, on McKinley Street, he didn’t live in poverty,” he says. “JD came up in a middle-income family. He didn’t come up on the rough side of town.”Politicians assuming working-class identities to attract votes is nothing new. But this year’s election pits vice-presidential candidates against each other – ostensibly picked for their “real American” chops – who hold contrasting views of what it means to be a boots-on-the-ground midwesterner.Endless corn fields, small towns and wide-open highways are characteristics of life in the midwest that most can agree on. Beyond that, experts say the region is far more complex.Cities such as Chicago, Detroit and Cincinnati are home to millions of people that, for a time during the 20th century, were among the most innovative in the world.“Midwesterners have historically been on the frontlines of progressive politics and education. Midwesterners also have been innovators in both an economic and cultural sense,” says Diane Mutti Burke, the director of the Center for Midwestern Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.But many agree there are a few features that typically set midwesterners apart.“Midwesterners also are said to be ‘nice’,” says Mutti Burke. “The idea is that midwesterners are often friendly and gracious to a fault.”Perhaps that’s why Democratic party vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz’s characterization of Vance and Trump as “weird” last month has struck such a chord with voters in the midwest, propelling the Harris-Walz ticket to a four-point lead in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in a recent poll.As governor of Minnesota, Walz’s brand of “nice” saw him introduce universal free breakfast and lunch for K-12 students in the state last year. The move was informed by his previous firsthand experience as a high school teacher who saw that lower-income kids using different colored food tickets to others could end up being stigmatized.What’s more, Walz has asked to appear on Millennial Farmer, a popular YouTube channel run by a Minnesota crop farmer that depicts everyday, midwestern farm life, despite its host’s anti-Democrat leanings. That request has yet to be fulfilled.At his first rally with Kamala Harris in Philadelphia on 6 August, Walz went straight after Vance’s midwestern chops, saying sarcastically: “Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires.”Vance has defended his upward mobility as illustrative of having succeeded in achieving the American dream.For his part, Vance has said he’d like to increase the child tax credit, currently at $2,000 per child, to $5,000, and eliminate the upper income threshold, which currently stands at $200,000 for single tax filers and $400,000 for couples.However, this month Vance failed to vote on a bill to increase the child tax credit program, claiming it would have failed regardless of whether he had taken part or not. The day of the vote, Vance was at the border in Arizona falsely claiming that the vice-president was the current administration’s “border czar”. (Harris aides have said that she was never given the responsibility of policing the border.)While Vance visited with picketing auto workers in Ohio last October, those who have closely watched his 18 months in office as a US senator say that, compared to Walz, he hasn’t achieved anything substantial for midwesterners.“Walz has been a teacher, a coach, a governor [and] a congressman,” said Charles “Rocky” Saxbe, a former senior member of Ohio’s Republican party who opposes the Maga movement. “I think when you look at vice-presidential contests – to the extent that they matter – you want someone who can step into the role of presidency, if it’s necessary and you want someone who has leadership experience, which JD Vance has never had.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnsurprisingly, Vance’s camp disagree, citing his working with Democrats to introduce rail safety and banking regulation bills as evidence of his political achievements.Politics aside, there’s an obvious financial gap dividing the two candidates. While in 2022 Walz earned $127,629 as governor of Minnesota, Vance raked in more than $1m the same year through a salary and company profits at a venture capital firm, a property rental, book royalties and from a host of investments. The Wall Street Journal suggests Vance’s net worth could be more than $10m.For some midwesterners, however, it’s the rhetoric that most keenly separates the two.Last year, Vance lobbied against, and failed to defeat, an amendment to the Ohio constitution to enshrine access to abortion. His “childless cat ladies” comments resurfaced last month were almost universally panned.But Bailey says his first opinions of Vance were formed several years ago, when the senator was in town publicizing his 2016 book, Hillbilly Elegy.As a pastor and former president of a major workers’ union at Armco Steel, Bailey figured that someone of Vance’s emerging public persona meant that the senator might want to speak with him and other Middletown community leaders, so he gave Vance his business card.“I said: ‘I’d like to talk to you and if you’re thinking about running for office, we’d like to have your ear,’” says Bailey.“We’ve never had a response.”Despite Vance being elected nearly two years ago, his Middletown constituency office has no external signs or obvious indications highlighting the location for locals seeking to meet with him. A recent visit by the Guardian found the office door locked and the only communication made available by a staffer was through an intercom.Bailey says he thinks that rather than running for the benefit of Middletown and midwesterners at large, Vance is being used as a political stooge by the Silicon Valley billionaires who bankrolled his successful 2020 senate campaign.“I think they looked at someone with JD’s background,” he says, “and said: ‘We can use him to take away our democracy.’” More

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      How Philando Castile’s mother helped pioneer Tim Walz’s free school lunch program

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      When the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, named the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate two weeks ago, the public lauded Walz for bringing free breakfast and lunch to all students throughout the state. Ever since, the topic of universal school meals has become a nationwide discussion. But it’s little known that the work of Valerie Castile, the mother of Philando Castile, helped drive Walz’s legislation.After Philando was fatally shot by Minnesota police during a traffic stop in July 2016, Castile learned from her son’s co-workers about his passion for reducing school lunch debt – the amount of money that households owe to school districts for covering meals they can’t afford. As a school nutrition supervisor in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Philando was intimately familiar with food insecurity. He often paid for students’ meals when they couldn’t afford them and interjected when kids were bullied for receiving free lunch. Affectionately deemed “Mr Phil” by students, he knew the names of all 500 children at JJ Hill Montessori school, their food allergies and how to keep them safe.Students would “try to be slick, and get something they’re not supposed to have. If they were lactose-intolerant, [Philando would say] ‘you want that chocolate milk, but you can’t have it,’” Castile said.In 2017, she launched the Philando Castile Relief Foundation in her son’s honor to help pay off lunch debt and to support other families who lost their loved ones to gun violence.For years, she worked with lawmakers to ensure that all Minnesota children had access to nutritious meals at school. Due to Castile’s advocacy, as well as the work of Hunger Free Schools Campaign, last spring Walz signed legislation to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students, regardless of their qualifications. Castile and other advocates hope that the spotlight on Minnesota will lead to the passage of similar laws throughout the nation.“It’s been great to see that early work come to full fruition,” Leah Gardner, the campaign manager of Hunger Free Schools Campaign and the policy director of the non-profit The Food Group, said about the Philando Castile Relief Foundation. “The ideal is that the federal government should just make this be a thing across the country.”At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the federal government provided free meals to all children. But that program ended in 2022, leaving states to draw from state funds if they wanted to continue the initiative.In Minnesota, before the passage of the free school meals legislation, about a third of students received free and reduced lunches, “and that doesn’t count low income families that are just over the qualifications required for free and reduced meals”, said Minnesota state senator Heather Gustafson, the bill’s author, during a committee hearing. At the time, lunch debt in Roseville area schools, one of more than 300 school districts in the state, totaled $120,000.Black and Latino families in Minnesota are twice as likely as white households to lack access to nutritious food, according to Gardner. The Hunger Free Schools Campaign, which is composed of 30 organizations, saw free meals as an opportunity to address racial inequality throughout the state. “When they’re at school and can have two of their three meals at school at no cost, that goes a long way to making sure that they’re getting access to food,” Gardner said.So far, eight states including Michigan, California, Maine, New Mexico, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Colorado and Vermont have passed universal school meal programs. And on the national level, the representative Ilhan Omar from Minnesota introduced legislation to provide free breakfast and lunches throughout the nation last year.View image in fullscreenThough the Hunger Free Schools Campaign is still analyzing the impact of the Minnesota program’s first year, Gardner said that participation in breakfast had increased by 41% and lunch by 19% since 2023.Castile said she was grateful that fewer students are going hungry in the state, but wished that the legislation also forgave students’ prior lunch debt. “Unfortunately, there was no retroactive thing in place when the bill was passed … to wipe all this away,” Castile said. Still, school districts are prohibited from denying children free meals based on their unpaid lunch debt.“The ultimate goal was to get them guys to see it our way and actually do something about that issue,” Castile said about the legislation’s passage. “It was a hidden burden on family.”Since Minnesota launched its meal program, the Philando Castile Relief Foundation has pivoted to helping single mothers find housing. “There are quite a few parents that are dislocated because of the economic problems that we’re having,” Castile said.Over the past seven years, the foundation has donated goods totaling upwards of $250,000 through its various initiatives, including providing turkeys on Thanksgiving, backpacks with school supplies to children, and $50 gift cards to families during the holiday season.For other states that are considering similar legislation, politicians who worked on the bill recommend centering the voices of people who are personally affected by food insecurity. “This was always about Philando and Mr Phil and why I voted yes on this bill,” the Minnesota state senator Clare Oumou Verbeten said.Ultimately, Castile wants to see free school meals throughout the nation and has considered taking “this show on the road and go and speak with other legislators and representatives and let them know how important it is”, she said. “Children, they don’t learn to their full capacity when they’re hungry.” More

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      Why did this conservative US judge endorse Kamala Harris? | Margaret Sullivan

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      J Michael Luttig has never endorsed a Democrat before. That’s no surprise since the well-respected legal scholar – a retired federal appeals court judge – leans well right of center.Appointed by the first President Bush in 1991, Luttig is from the old school of the Republican party. He once worked in Ronald Reagan’s White House and served as a law clerk to Antonin Scalia.But now, whatever his policy views or personal politics, Luttig has set them aside. He will pull the lever in November for Kamala Harris.Luttig wrote a withering statement about Donald Trump as he explained his decision to endorse the Democratic rival of the former president and Republican presidential nominee: “In voting for Vice President Harris, I assume that her public policy views are vastly different from my own, but I am indifferent in this election on any issues other than America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, as I believe all Americans should be.”Although couched in restrained language, Luttig’s statement packs a punch.How remarkable to read his view that every American should be indifferent to policy differences between themselves and Harris. Right now, he argues, any such disagreements are not worth quibbling over.What really matters, in Luttig’s view, is getting past January of next year with US democracy intact. We can argue later about how to govern.With that in mind, he sees Trump as utterly unfit and existentially dangerous.Luttig’s statement ought to be a clarion call. It should be emulated by every conservative with a conscience and a sense of patriotism.Sadly, there are too many on the right who ascribe to the misguided view that Trump’s supposed policy positions (what – mass deportations? More tax cuts for the super-wealthy?) should come before the obvious truth that electing him could destroy the United States as we know it.These conservatives may criticize Trump, but they won’t endorse his rival.How many times have we heard from Republican politicians that while, yes, they disagree with Trump’s words and behavior, they still intend to vote for him? Or they stay silent on the alternative.Apparently, the notion of supporting a progressive Democrat such as Harris is beyond the pale.“Respect to Judge Luttig,” wrote James Fallows, the journalist, former presidential speechwriter and incisive commentator. He called Luttig’s endorsement “an instructive contrast” to a long list of prominent Republicans including John Bolton, Nikki Haley, HR McMaster and George W Bush.They and many others of their ilk have (so far) failed the integrity test. At this crucial time, they haven’t fully used their influence to make sure Trump can’t bring his wrecking ball to what remains of the US experiment.Luttig has a greater sense of history – and a truer moral compass. Nor is this the first time he’s proven it.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe famously helped to persuade Mike Pence to certify the 2020 presidential election, defying Trump’s vehement urging and not-so-veiled threats.In a series of tweets, Luttig set forth the rationale for the then vice-president to reject efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s legitimate victory. He publicly gave Pence a legal foundation for defying his boss.Pence, notably, has said he won’t endorse Trump, startling in itself for a former vice-president; but despite everything he’s been through and all he knows, he has not pledged publicly to vote for Harris. Maybe Luttig’s example will inspire him to go there.Two years later, Luttig endorsed Biden’s nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the supreme court. While Trump World was portraying Jackson as nothing but a high-level DEI hire, Luttig urged bipartisan support for the accomplished jurist, calling her eminently qualified. Jackson, of course, became the first Black woman appointed to the supreme court.In an interview with CNN, which first reported his endorsement, Luttig explained that arriving at his decision to back Harris wasn’t complicated.He described it as a simple matter of knowing right from wrong – not merely right from left.Simple? Maybe so, but also admirable. And at this singular moment for US democracy, all too rare.

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

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      ‘Clear eyes, full heart’: the unlikely championship that launched Tim Walz

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      “We’re hiring another football coach,” Mankato West high school principal John Barnett told Scarlets head football coach Rick Sutton after interviewing Tim Walz about a geography teaching position. “You’re definitely gonna want to talk to him.”This was back in the spring of 1997, when Walz was a 30-something national guardsman relocating to Minnesota from Nebraska so his wife could be closer to her family. So Sutton arranged a second informal interview at his house, one that would ultimately decide whether Walz’s $25,000-a-year teaching gig would come with a $2,500 bonus for working with the football team. “I knew very, very early on in our conversation that this was a guy that I definitely wanted on my staff,” Sutton recalls of Walz, who took the job.By all accounts Walz made as strong a first impression with Kamala Harris; strong enough that the Democratic presidential nominee picked him to be her running mate over more popular choices. On Wednesday, the Minnesota governor takes center stage at the Democratic National Convention to accept the party’s vice-presidential nomination. His primetime speech could well come off sounding like one of his old half-time pep talks.Walz, whose progressive wins in the state legislature also recommended him for the job alongside Harris, has only recently emerged as a national figure since describing Maga Republicans and their retrograde politics as “weird”. With that one simple word, which suddenly has the right taking offense, Walz did in a single news cycle what Democrats haven’t been able to do in 16 years – and that’s retake control over the national political narrative by stealing a page from Donald Trump’s negative-branding playbook. “He’s always been pretty good at one-liners,” says Seth Greenwald, a standout Mankato West linebacker who played for Walz.“He hasn’t changed,” adds Chris Boyer, a former Mankato West running back.When Harris introduced Walz as her running mate in early August at a packed rally in Philadelphia, she referred to him as “governor” twice. Otherwise, she either called him “Tim” or “Coach” – a title that, in America, is arguably more respected than “Doctor” or even “President”. Walz’s coaching resume seems ripped from Friday Night Lights; the highlight, a worst-to-first turnaround that launched Mankato West as a perennial power in the state, is a study in flinty midwestern self-determinism. “The first couple times he gained political office, it was like ‘Wow,’” Greenwald says. “But then after seeing him accomplish more, after playing for the guy, having class with the guy – this is gonna sound crazy, but after a while nothing really surprises you. Now this is just his story.”View image in fullscreenAbout two hours south of the Twin Cities, Mankato West was considered a relatively large Minnesota public school, with about 750 students back then. Tom Boone, who started out coaching junior varsity football under Sutton, didn’t think he’d lack for turnout until just eight kids showed up for the first tryout in the summer. He was told more kids would show up once school began, which didn’t leave him much time to prepare for the season opener. “If it wasn’t rock bottom,” Boone says, “it was one step below us.”Walz brought a fresh energy to the school, challenging everyone and accepting challenges in kind. In the teachers’ lounge, Walz became renowned for his rolling debates with the theater teacher over whether the Great Wall of China could be observed from space, leveraging a connection to Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in hopes of settling the debate – which just mushroomed into a new argument about where space begins. (“What made his classes so fun is that he had been to so many of these other countries we would talk about,” Boyer recalls.) Walz offered extra credit to students for their civic engagement, explicitly during the 2004 presidential election. Famously, he served as faculty coordinator for the students’ gay-straight alliance. “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 of the symbolic significance of his decision to advise the group.He took that same open-minded energy into football meetings, stirring up passionate strategic arguments among his fellow coaches. “But once we made a decision, we walked out and carried out the mission,” Sutton says. Outside of work, Walz was the colleague who’d bail you out of a snowstorm and sign up for any adventure. “I remember one time he asked me what I was doing after school, and I told him I was gonna replace my dishwasher,” Boone says. “And he was like, ‘I’ll come over.’ We didn’t know what we were doing. It didn’t matter.”When Mankato West replaced their old dungeon of a weight room with a new space, Walz turned it into a showcase for lifting competitions against his fellow coaches, some of whom were throwing up an impressive 350lbs in the bench press and the squat. “Back in the day it was on the players to put in the prep work, and they weren’t,” says Greenwald. “It took the coaches showing up at the ages that they were and saying, ‘Hey, if I can do it, you can do it too’, for the culture to change.”As Sutton tells it, the athletes in that weight room, many of whom played sports in addition to football, were the ones who spurred Mankato West’s “ascension” along with a number of large lineman who played in the trenches. All the while, he leaned heavily on a three-man staff that included Walz; Boone, the math teacher; and Aaron Miller, who taught social studies. Sutton made his assistants coach both sides of the ball. After a promotion to offensive coordinator, Boone also coached the defensive backs. Miller coached the offensive and defensive lines. Walz doubled as the running backs coach and defensive coordinator. The high demands they put on players ran the gamut. “I just remember having to compete in practices, on game days, even in the classroom,” Greenwald says. “The coaching staff was really good in terms of not letting us get away from working hard.”View image in fullscreenA diehard fan of the Nebraska Cornhuskers, Walz ran a 4-4 scheme that took inspiration from the hard-nosed defenses assembled by legendary Huskers coach Tom Osborne. Like Nebraska, Mankato West’s school colors are red and white – but Walz began outfitting his defensive starters in black shirts during practices, a longstanding Huskers football tradition. Eric Stenzel – a 6ft 3in, 240lb outside linebacker who also ran track, put the shot and played basketball – was the gleaming cornerstone. “[He] ended up playing fullback at the University of Minnesota,” Walz said in a recent Pod Save America interview.While coaching football in the state at Alliance high school in Nebraska, Walz gained a reputation for getting the most out of available talent, defying students’ drill sergeant expectations and embracing them and exhorting them whether they succeeded or stumbled. After 1995 drunk driving arrest, Walz pleaded guilty to lesser charges for reckless driving. He stepped down as Alliance’s linebackers coach over protests from colleagues at the school, which kept him on the teaching faculty. Two years later, when Walz returned to football at Mankato West, the mistake became his oft-cited life lesson on what not to do; his insistence on not letting the mistake define him set an example for how to overcome.With passing not yet being en vogue at the high school level in Minnesota at the turn of the century, Walz ran a basic defense: the large linemen took up space, and the linebackers took care of the rest. “You weren’t getting too many blitz calls,” Greenwald says. “So when that call came in and you looked over to the sideline and saw him looking back, you knew he was rewarding you for having done something well. It gave you a little extra juice.” In 1998, Walz’s second season, the Scarlets made a shocking turn. Improbably, the squad was flush with playmakers. Early in that season, the Scarlets beat a team that finished runner-up in the state championship. That victory had them believing that maybe they could make a deep playoff run, too.But those hopes were dashed when their starting quarterback tore his ACL midway through the season. Without a dedicated backup, Sutton was forced to put his punter in at quarterback. Boyer, the feature back, became the Scarlets’ entire offense. (“That didn’t go well,” he says.) A once-optimistic season ended in a letdown. “You gotta understand, we were trying to do something that had never been done,” Greenwald says of the Scarlets’ title aspirations. “It was like we were trying to go to the moon. The seniors ahead of us in ’98 did a really good job of showing us what it was like to try to do it.” But that breakthrough put extra pressure on the team to improve on those results. It nearly cracked them.View image in fullscreenIn 1999, Mankato West started 2-4. The seniors on the team wrestled with their leadership roles. New quarterback Jay Nessler, a baseball and basketball star coming off a season-long football sabbatical, floundered. And all these growing pains came into sharp relief as Mankato West were pitted against bigger schools from the Twin Cities area. Greenwald remembers Walz telling the seniors on defense: “This is it, the breaking point. Your high school career could be over in as little as three weeks. You’ve got to decide who you are.”“The coaching staff in general did a great job of kind of laying that out on a silver platter and saying, ‘It’s right here if you want it,’” Greenwald adds.Ultimately, the Scarlets decided not to lose again, ticking off wins in their next seven games to streak into the state championship at the Metrodome, formerly the home of the NFL’s Vikings. Facing Cambridge-Isanti, a suburban Minneapolis high school, Mankato West hung on for a 35-28 triumph; a fourth-down interception by defensive back Jake Schmiesing deep in Scarlets territory sealed the Class 4A championship. “I remember us being upset with him because we coaches always talked about going for the knockdown instead of the interception on fourth down,” Boone says. “But Schmies was like, ‘Coach, it’s the state championship!’ Then it was like: ‘Alright, alright. We’ll let it pass.’”Once the Scarlets’ legacy of failure had been lifted, it was time to celebrate. After the game, a procession of emergency vehicles escorted the Scarlets back home for a massive pep rally in the school gym. But amidst the happiness and euphoria was a twinge of sadness.Here after all was a team breaking up at its peak, not because it wanted to but because it was all grown up. The seniors moved on to college. Boyer, who ran for 202 yards and three touchdowns in the title game, was looking forward to a big career at Division III Augsburg University until he suffered a grand mal seizure while driving and crashed into a utility pole his college freshman year. Physically and cognitively disabled now, he struggles to recall moments from that season – not least the fact that Walz was his position coach. It goes to show how fragile the memory of that championship is. And it’s no surprise that Walz was one of the first people to reach out to Boyer after the accident. “He’s just my teacher and my coach and my friend,” Boyer says.Before long, the Scarlets coaches would move on to other jobs. Walz quit teaching three years later to start his political career. And while Mankato West have gone on to win four more state titles, those who were part of that first championship in 1999 can’t help feeling that was the high point.The 25th-year anniversary of that championship team is coming up this fall. Walz’s recent rise would certainly raise the stakes for any reunion plans, especially if the Scarlets’ canny ex-coordinator pulls off another historic upset in November. “I can actually say I’ve been in the showers with a guy who could be in the Oval Office,” jokes Boone. “I would be lying if I said I agreed with every political decision Tim’s ever made. But I also know Tim’s doing what he believes is the best thing. Most people around here, whether they affiliate with the Democrats or Republicans, I know they can say Tim is a good guy that you can get behind regardless.” More

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      Barack Obama calls on Americans to elect Kamala Harris – as it happened

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      Barack Obama brought the crowd to his feet when he described Kamala Harris and Tim Walz as leaders who would care about blue-collar workers.“In this new economy, we need a president who actually cares about the millions of people all across this country who wake up every day to do the essential, often thankless work to care for our sick and clean our streets and deliver our packages – and stand up for their right to bargain for better wages and working conditions,” he said, as he drew a standing ovation. “Kamala will be that president.”“Yes, she can,” he continued, and the crowd joined in, briefly chanting, “yes, she can!”Thanks for following our coverage of day two of the DNC. This blog is now closing. You can find our reporting on the US election here.The same chant greeted Obama when he took the stage in Chicago just after 10pm ET on Thursday and embraced his wife, Michelle. But halfway through his speech, Obama broke from his teleprompter remarks to ad lib: “Yes, she can!” The crowd instinctively chanted, “Yes, she can!” in response.There was a symbolic echo for Democrats who had come to fear that Obama’s election might be a historic aberration but now sense that it might in fact be Trump who represents the last gasp of a dying order.In a nod to his debut at the 2004 convention, Obama, now 63, quipped: “I’m feeling hopeful because this convention has always been pretty good to kids with funny names who believe in a country where anything is possible.“Because we have the chance to elect someone who’s spent her whole life trying to give people the same chances America gave her. Someone who sees you and hears you and will get up every single day and fight for you: the next President of the United States of America, Kamala Harris.”The crowd roared its approval. Obama went on to pay tribute to outgoing president Joe Biden, who was not present, having delivered a valedictory address on Monday. “History will remember Joe Biden as a president who defended democracy at a moment of great danger,” he said. “I am proud to call him my president, but even prouder to call him my friend.”The torch has been passed, he continued, but “for all the rallies and the memes”, the race for the White House remains tight. He suggested the people who will decide the election are asking a simple question: who will fight for them.Amid chants of “Yes, she can!”, Barack Obama returned to the scene of past triumphs on Tuesday to pass the mantle of political history to Kamala Harris – and eviscerate her opponent Donald Trump.The former US president delivered the closing speech on night two of the Democratic national convention in his home city of Chicago. Obama prompted raucous cheers as he delivered a withering critique of Trump, who succeeded him in the White House in 2017.“We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos,” he told delegates. “We have seen that movie before and we all know that the sequel is usually worse. America is ready for a new chapter. America is ready for a better story. We are ready for a President Kamala Harris.”It was another night crackling with energy in the packed arena as America’s first Black president made the case for the nation to elect the first woman and first woman of colour to the Oval Office.Obama was speaking 20 years after he first exploded on to the political stage at the Democratic convention in Boston. That summer, Harris helped host a fundraiser for Obama’s run for the US Senate in Illinois. Four years later, she backed him against Hillary Clinton in the presidential primary, a campaign in which he coined the phrase “Yes, we can!”:Harris took aim at Trump at a rally in Milwaukee on Tuesday, criticising him for saying he had no regrets about the US Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade decision that had recognised women’s constitutional right to abortion:Tuesday night featured the ceremonial roll call when delegates from each state announce their support for the nominees. This portion of the event was led by Grammy-nominated DJ Cassidy and had party vibes as each state had its own song.Celebrities made surprise appearances – film-maker Spike Lee with the New York delegation; rapper Lil Jon with Georgia; the Stranger Things actor Sean Astin with Indiana; and actor Wendell Pierce with Louisiana. Lil Jon sang a spin on his hit, Get Low, saying, “VP Harris … Governor Walz” to the tune of the “To the window … to the wall.”The DNC brought out Stephanie Grisham, Donald Trump’s former press secretary, to offer a firsthand account of the Republican nominee’s character. Grisham, a Republican operative who also served as spokesperson for former first lady Melania Trump, said Donald Trump “has no empathy, no morals and no fidelity to the truth”. Behind closed doors, she said, “Trump mocks his supporters. He calls them basement dwellers. On a hospital visit one time when people were dying in the ICU, he was mad that the cameras were not watching him.”Before Grisham, Kyle Sweetser, an Alabama voter, told the convention crowd he previously voted for Trump and donated to his campaign, but was now supporting Harris: “I’m not leftwing, period. But I believe our leaders should bring out the best in us, not the worst. That’s why I’m voting for Kamala Harris.” John Giles, mayor of Mesa, Arizona, said: “I have a confession to make. I’m a lifelong Republican. But I feel more at home here than in today’s Republican party.”Although Harris’s big speech is scheduled for Thursday, she made a surprise appearance at the convention when her large Milwaukee rally with Tim Walz was live-streamed in Chicago. The moment allowed her to energize two large crowds at the same time. On Monday at the start of the convention, Harris also made a surprise speech on stage to thank Joe Biden.In Milwaukee, Harris criticized Trump for comments earlier in the day saying he had “no regrets” about Roe v Wade. She also told her supporters: “We know this is going to be a tight race until the very end.”The former first lady had one of the most energetic receptions of the night. She reflected on how the GOP nominee had attacked her family: “For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking and highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black.” She offered heartfelt praise for the vice-president, praising the “steel of her spine, the steadiness of her upbringing, the honesty of her example, and yes, the joy of her laughter and her light.“Kamala has shown her allegiance to this nation, not by spewing anger and bitterness, but by living a life of service and always pushing the doors of opportunity open to others. She understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward. We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth,” Obama said.The former first lady described “a deep pit in my stomach, a palpable sense of dread about the future”. But she got a standing ovation when she said, “America, hope is making a comeback.”The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders detailed an extensive progressive agenda that he said Democrats must enact if Harris and Walz take the White House. Sanders mentioned Harris’s name only a handful of times and instead focused his forceful speech on the need to expand healthcare access, reduce the cost of higher education and raise the minimum wage. In a nod to big money that has targeted progressives in primaries, Sanders said: “Billionaires in both parties should not be able to buy elections, including primary elections.” He also earned cheers when he said: “We must end this horrific war in Gaza, bring home the hostages and demand an immediate ceasefire.”A group of uncommitted delegates earlier in the night told reporters that they still hadn’t heard back from the Democratic convention on their demand to have a Palestinian American leader speak on stage.Here is Gwen Walz’s response to Obama’s comments on her husband’s wardrobe:The former president ended the second night of the convention with a characteristic call to action: “We’ll elect leaders up and down the ballot who will fight for the hopeful, forward-looking America we believe in. And together, we too will build a country that is more secure and more just, more equal and more free. So let’s get to work.” His speech prompted repeated throwbacks to his own campaign slogans, with the crowd chanting, “Yes she can!” and Obama telling the crowd, “Do not boo, vote!”He mocked Trump for his “childish nicknames”, “crazy conspiracy theories” and “weird obsession with crowd sizes”: “It’s been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually gotten worse now that Trump is afraid of losing to Kamala … The other day, I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day.” Of Walz, Obama said, “I love this guy,” and of Harris, he said: “She had to work for what she’s got and she actually cares about what other people are going through. She’s not the neighbor running the leaf blower – she’s the neighbor rushing over to help when you need a hand.”Kamala Harris has pushed back on Donald Trump for saying he has “no regrets” about overturning Roe v Wade and ending women’s access to abortion in much of the US.“Yesterday, when he was asked if he has any regrets about ending Roe v Wade, Donald Trump, without even a moment’s hesitation – you would think you’d reflect on it for a second – said: ‘No regrets,’” said the vice-president at tonight’s rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, just after a raucous ceremonial roll call at the Democratic national convention being held in Chicago confirmed her as the party’s nominee for president.“Bad behavior should result in a consequence. Well, we will make sure he does face a consequence, and that’ll be at the ballot box in November.”The remarks come on the heels of the former president’s repeated boasts about overturning Roe v Wade.As she wound up her speech, Michelle Obama talked about the limited time left until voting day, and warned them not to be foolish.Don’t complain if nobody has specifically reached out to you to ask you for your support, she said. “There is no time for that kind of foolishness”.“Consider this to be your official ask. Michelle Obama is asking – no I’m telling y’all, to do something.”The crowd started to chant, “Do something! Do something!”.She ended by saying there were 77 days left to “turn from the fear and division of our past” and “go higher, yes, always higher than we have ever gone before as we elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.” More