Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

Maybe he made up the story of the dead cub to boost sales.

Wouldn't put it past him.

A fake news website with links to Russia helped spread lies about the Southport stabbings which led to a series of violent riots throughout the UK.

On Monday a 17-year-old boy was arrested over the killing of three young girls attending a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, in a mass stabbing rampage which saw nine others critically injured.

The suspect has been charged and was named in court as Axel Rudakubana after a judge lifted reporting restictions which would have granted him anonymity until he turned 18.

However, in the immediate aftermath of the killings a social media account named Channel3 Now, which masquerades as an American news network, published a false claim that the alleged murderer was an asylum seeker called Ali Al-Shakati who was ‘on the MI6 watch list’ and ‘known to mental health services’.

The claims were immediately amplified by Russian state media and far-right influencers Tommy Robinson and Andrew Tate, who claimed the suspect was an ‘illegal migrant’ who had recently entered the country on a small boat.

Channel3 News’ initial post was viewed nearly two million times before it was eventually deleted, with the sites ‘Editor’ posting an AI-generated apology on their website in which they claim the team responsible for the post had been ‘sacked’.

So widespread was the false claim that Merseyside Police even took the highly unusual step of releasing a statement claiming the name pushed by Channel3 news was ‘incorrect’ and that the suspect was born in Cardiff.

But that didn’t stop hundreds of far-right hooligans hijacking a vigil for the victims in Southport, attacking police and chanting ‘English til I die’ before trashing the town centre and setting a police van on fire.
More than 1,000 people descended on Westminster last night as the rioting intensified, amidst fears things could escalate further.

This week’s violence was not started by Channel 3 news, but their misinformation did play a role in amplifying the far-right response.

To get the latest news from the capital visit Metro.co.uk's London news hub.

Following an investigation by the Mail, it was revealed that Channel3 Now, which claims to be based in the US, actually started life 11 years ago as a Russian YouTube channel.

Its first video, posted in 2013, depicted a number of Russian men rally-driving in the snow in Izhevsk, a city about 750 miles east of Moscow.

The drivers named in the videos were later revealed to have connections to the country’s defence and IT industries, including a man who appears to be a former KGB operative who has since served in Russia’s parliament.

Channel3 Now then lay inactive for six years before it reemerged in 2019, posting a series of scattershot news pieces including a story about a tiger being beaten to death and a match report from the Manchester City Women’s team.

The organisation has since rebranded itself on a number of occasions, routinely changing its name to aliases such as ‘Fox3 News’ and Fox3 Now’ in an attempt to mimic legitimate news organisations.

Last June it set up a website, which has been accused of sharing ‘racially motivated click-bait’.

Although Channel3 claims to be based in the US, it is registered with an online hosting company in Lithuania, and uses privacy features to hide its owner’s identity.

The first mention of the Southport suspect’s false name appears to have been shared on Twitter by a well-known UK anti-lockdown activist, around five hours after the stabbings took place.

They were repeated by Channel3 just two minutes later, and then picked up by Russian state broadcaster Russia Today.

Although Channel3 deleted the tweet containing the false name, RT kept it on their website, adding an Editor’s Note which said ‘The outlet has later retracted the claim.’

Hans von Spakovsky, a Heritage Foundation official who has played a key role in Project 2025, previously attacked Vice President Kamala Harris as someone who “resembles in attitude the slave owners of the old South” because she supports access to abortion.

Von Spakovsky is a Heritage senior fellow who regularly appears in right-wing media. He is also, as ProPublica has documented, “a leading purveyor of the notion that voter fraud is rampant, claims that have been largely discredited.”

Von Spakovsky is a significant figure in Heritage’s push for Project 2025, the Heritage-backed and Trump-connected extremist plan to guide staffing and policy priorities for the next Republican administration. He authored a chapter of Project 2025 about the Federal Election Commission and has frequently appeared in the media to promote the project.

Media Matters has documented Project 2025’s extreme agenda for reproductive rights and numerous other key issues, like immigration and civil liberties.

During a July 18, 2022, speech to the NAACP, Harris said, “We know, NAACP, that our country has a history of claiming ownership over human bodies. And today, extremists, so-called leaders are criminalizing doctors and punishing women for making healthcare decisions for themselves.”

That set off von Spakovsky, who repeatedly said that in fact it was Harris who’s been acting like “slave owners.” He co-authored an opinion piece for Daily Caller with Heritage senior legal fellow Sarah Parshall Perry, which was cross-posted on Heritage's site. The piece claimed, “It is abortion supporters like Harris who deny the humanity of developing babies, just as slave owners denied the humanity of the men, women and children they owned. It is abortion supporters like Harris who believe that developing babies are property.”

From their piece:

Quote:

It is abortion supporters like Harris who deny the humanity of developing babies, just as slave owners denied the humanity of the men, women and children they owned. It is abortion supporters like Harris who believe that developing babies are property that can be disposed of based on, as she says, “the personal decision” of a woman, one that is “her right to make.”

How is that any different than the attitude of slave owners who treated their slaves like chattel and claimed that it was their right to dispose of them as they willed?

Answer: It’s not.

What is also astonishing is the reverence with which liberals like Harris treat Roe v. Wade, a decision that resulted in the deaths of literally millions of babies, a disproportionate number of which were African American and Latino. In fact, Roe v. Wade should really be regarded as the modern equivalent of Dred Scott v. Sandford, the infamous Supreme Court decision by Chief Justice Roger Taney in 1857 that denied Dred Scott his freedom.

African-Americans, said Taney, were “not regarded as a portion of the people or citizens” protected by the Constitution. And Roe v. Wade said much the same thing: that the life developing in a mother’s womb deserved no protection under the Constitution.

…

At the NAACP’s convention, Harris, the first woman and first person of color to serve as vice president, spoke of economic inequities that still fall disproportionately on black communities and women.

What she failed to acknowledge is that, without the Dobbs decision and the fall of Roe, many future female and African-American leaders might never have been born in the first place.

He also appeared on a radio program on July 25, 2022, and said: “If there's anyone who resembles in attitude the slave owners of the old South, it's Kamala Harris and her compatriots who all support basically abortion with no limit.”

Quote:

HANS VON SPAKOVSKY: Last week, she gave a speech to the NAACP annual convention in Atlantic City, and she compared pro-lifers, she compared the justices of Supreme Court to slave owners saying that they were just the same as slave owners back when some people thought that they could own another human being. And the problem with her historical analogy is she got it exactly reversed. Because it's people who are in favor of abortion who deny the basic humanity of developing life in the womb the same way slave owners denied the basic humanity of the men, women, and children that they owned. So, I mean, if there's anyone who resembles in attitude the slave owners of the old South, it's Kamala Harris and her compatriots who all support basically abortion with no limit.

The GOP and its right-wing media allies have frequently misled about Democrats' stance on abortion, saying that they support abortion “up to the moment of birth,” a claim that has been repeatedly debunked.

The comparison between slavery and support for abortion access has been made repeatedly in right-wing media. Media Matters recently documented that Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), former President Donald Trump’s running mate, appeared on a right-wing anti-abortion radio program in 2022 and, after being prompted, compared Roe v. Wade to the Dred Scott decision allowing slavery.

Christi Carras of the Los Angeles Times reported today that the reality TV industry has collapsed. From April to June, reality TV production in the Los Angeles region fell by 57% compared to the same period in 2023; that’s a 50% drop over the five-year average, excluding the Covid-induced production shutdown. The immediate reasons for the dropping production are systemic to the business, Carras reports, but the change seems to represent Americans’ souring on the blurring of reality and entertainment that gave us the Trump era.

Trump rose to political power thanks to his appearances on reality TV, which claimed to be unscripted but was actually edited to emphasize ruthless competition among people striving for ultimate victory in a closed system. The Apprentice launched in 2004, and its highly edited episodes portrayed its star, Trump, as a brilliant and very wealthy businessman despite his past failures.

Since 2015, Trump has offered a simple narrative of American life that did not reflect reality. Using the sort of language rising authoritarians use to attract a disaffected population, he promised those left behind economically by forty years of supply-side economics that he would bring back manufacturing, close tax loopholes, promote infrastructure, and make healthcare cheaper and better. He also promised sexists and racists who wanted to roll back the gains women and racial and gender minorities had made since the 1950s that he would, once again, center white, heteronormative men.

He never delivered on his economic promises: manufacturing continued to decline, he cut taxes for the wealthy and for corporations, “infrastructure week” became a national joke, and rather than expand the Affordable Care Act, Republicans repeatedly tried to kill it. But Trump and his followers did center those who had gravitated toward the MAGA movement for its cultural promises. Now, in 2024, that gravitation means that the Republican Party has become an antidemocratic vehicle for Christian nationalism.

In the 2024 contest, Trump has continued to push a fake narrative, but his ability to dominate the political conversation is slipping. Last Wednesday, his interview before the National Association of Black Journalists began more than an hour late; Trump publicly blamed the delay on the association’s technology, and there was, in fact, a brief issue with the audio. But it turns out that the delay was due primarily to Trump’s not wanting to be fact-checked during the interview. He was not willing to go on stage without a promise that the journalists would permit him to say whatever he wanted. They declined.

Trump’s determination to have a friendly audience to promote his narrative was behind the dust-up over planned presidential debates. Trump has not sat down for an interview with any but friendly right-wing interviewers. He agreed to a September 10 debate on ABC News back when he assumed the Democratic presidential nominee would be President Joe Biden. As soon as Biden said he would not accept the nomination, Trump suggested he would not be willing to follow through with the ABC News event if Vice President Kamala Harris was his opponent.

Over the weekend, he announced that he would be willing to debate Harris on September 4, but only on his terms: he wants the Fox News Channel—which had to pay a $787 million settlement for lying that Trump won the 2020 election—to host such an event, and he wants the arena full of people. Essentially, he wants to set up the conditions for one of his rallies and then “debate” Harris in that right-wing bubble.

But Harris has stood firm on the previous agreement, condemning Trump’s trash talk about her and daring Trump instead to “say it to my face.” She is taunting him for chickening out of the arranged debate, and says she will follow through with the September 10 event to which both campaigns agreed. Trump’s new plan doubles as a way to get out of debating altogether: he’s saying that if she doesn’t show up at his event, he won’t debate her at all.

At the same time, Americans have seen the Biden-Harris administration actually do the hard work of governing, completing the promises Trump made but didn’t deliver. Manufacturing has surged under Biden, with factories under construction and about 800,000 manufacturing jobs created. The Biden-Harris administration more fully funded the IRS to go after tax cheats, passing the mark of recovering more than $1 billion from high-income, high-wealth individuals earlier this month and scoring a $6 billion judgment against Coca-Cola Co. for back taxes just last week. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is rebuilding the nation’s roads and bridges, and a record high number of people have enrolled in affordable health coverage plans since January 2021.

The difference between sound bites and the hard work of governance was illustrated last week when Biden and Harris were the ones who pulled off a complicated multi-country swap that freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich—whom Trump had repeatedly boasted that he alone could get Russian president Vladimir Putin to release—along with fifteen other Russian-held prisoners.

That focus on complicated governance rather than sound bites has paid off in the Indo-Pacific region as well. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan wrote in the Washington Post today that “enhanced U.S. power in the [Indo-Pacific] region is one of the most important legacies of this administration.”

They note that “[n]o place on Earth is more critical to Americans’ livelihoods and futures than the Indo-Pacific.” It generates nearly 60% of global gross domestic product and its commerce supports more than 3 million U.S. jobs, while the area’s security challenges—North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and China’s provocations at sea—have far reaching effects.

As the U.S. turned inward during the Trump administration, China’s power grew, and when Biden and Harris took office, America’s standing in the Indo-Pacific was at “its lowest point in decades.” Biden’s transformation of the nation’s Indo-Pacific policy “is one of the most important and least-told stories of the [administration’s] foreign policy strategy,” the authors write. Biden’s team replaced one-to-one relationships in the region with wider partnerships: AUKUS, a new security partnership comprising Australia, the U.K., and the U.S.; a trilateral summit with Japan and South Korea; and a summit with Japan and the Philippines. It elevated the Quad—Australia, India, Japan, and the U.S.—and hosted both the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Pacific Islands Forum. With 13 other countries, it created the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity.

These partnerships do not translate to easy slogans, but they have strengthened defense and supply chains and helped address climate change. “Our security partnerships across the Indo-Pacific” make “us and our neighbors safer and stronger,” they wrote.

The stock market fell today, with the big indices—the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Nasdaq Composite, and the S&P 500—all sliding. The Dow, which measures 30 of the nation’s older, prominent companies, and the S&P 500, which measures 500 of the largest companies on the U.S. stock exchanges, took their biggest daily losses since September 2022, although they still remain up about 60% from the time of Biden’s election.

In June, Moody’s Analytics assessed that the economy would grow less under Trump’s policies than under a continuation of Biden’s, but today, Trump promptly wrote: “Stock markets are crashing, jobs numbers are terrible, we are heading to World War III, and we have two of the most incompetent ‘leaders’ in history.” His running mate, J.D. Vance, followed that up by blaming Vice President Kamala Harris. “The stock market is crashing because of weak and failed Kamala Harris’ policies and the world is on the brink of WW3,” he said.

But what is really at stake here is the complicated business of balancing the economy as it has come out of the worst of the coronavirus pandemic. The Biden-Harris administration made the decision to invest money in ordinary Americans, and it worked: the U.S. came out of the pandemic with a stronger economy than any other nation.

That economic strength came with inflation, both because people had more money to spend thanks to higher wages and because that cash meant that corporations could continue to charge higher prices: the net profits of food companies, for example, are up by a median of 51% since just before the pandemic, according to Tom Perkins of The Guardian, and one egg producer’s profits went up by around 950% (not a typo). To get inflation under control, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell—a Trump appointee, by the way—kept interest rates high.

He has been under pressure to cut interest rates in order to keep the economy humming but has not, and on Friday a jobs report showed that U.S. employers had added fewer jobs than economists had expected, while the unemployment rate ticked up. This hiccup in the booming economy prompted investors to sell.

Fine-tuning the economy through interest rates is like catching an egg on a plate. Economist Robert Reich notes that the economy will continue to need the antitrust regulations the administration has put in place to bring down costs, and just today federal judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google illegally maintained a monopoly for internet searches, a decision likely to influence other antitrust lawsuits the government has undertaken.

Voters seem increasingly aware of the difference between image and reality. Today the hospitality workers’ union UNITE HERE, which plays a big role in Nevada politics, endorsed Vice President Harris for president. Trump had tried to court the union with a promise to end taxes on tips, a plan Americans for Tax Fairness says avoids increasing the low minimum wage for waitstaff and instead opens the door to tax abuse by high-income professionals who reclassify their compensation as tips.

Union president Gwen Mills told Josh Boak of the Associated Press that Trump was just “making a play” for votes. The union says its members will knock on more than 3.3 million doors for Harris in swing states.

Certainly, many demonstrators have good, personal reasons for their pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

But demonstrating at a performance of Fiddler on the Roof in London?

A man in Virginia was arrested last week for allegedly making death threats against Vice President Kamala Harris, according to federal court documents.

Frank Carillo, 66, is accused of posting more than 4,000 comments to the social media platform GETTR, in which he threatened several public officials, including Harris, President Biden, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, an FBI special agent said in a complaint filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia.

Harris was mentioned 19 times on the account, according to the complaint, including several times in the days after announcing she was running for president in place of Biden.

Carillo was charged with one count of violating the U.S. Code that makes it illegal to “knowingly and willfully otherwise makes any such threat against the President, President-elect, Vice President or other officer next in the order of succession to the office of President.”

The Russia-based leader of the Base, which adheres to principles of accelerationism, seeks ‘A-team leader’ in US

While far-right extremists from all corners of the internet are targeting vice-president Kamala Harris as she takes the reins of the Democratic ticket, one of the longer standing US-based neo-Nazi terror groups is also attempting to continue its covert activities as the presidential election season begins in earnest.

Rinaldo Nazzaro, 51, a former Pentagon contractor and analyst at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) turned founder of the Base, wrote on his personal Telegram account that he’s seeking a stateside leader for his organization and is willing to pay them a salary of up to $1,200 a month.

The Russia-based leader, who is the subject of an FBI investigation and once called a Department of Justice “matter” by a US government official, is not known to have set foot in the US in years. With the recent surge in racially motivated riots in the United Kingdom, authorities across the west have become increasingly concerned with Russian sponsorship of far-right extremists.

The Base was considered a domestic terrorism threat in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election campaign. The group adheres to the principles of accelerationism; a hyper violent political doctrine calling on followers to hasten the collapse of society through acts of terrorism.

“You must have knowledge and experience in fieldcraft, wilderness survival, and/or small unit tactics,” he said in the post read over 500 times. Nazzaro makes it clear the “A-Team Leader,” who he says has to be 21 years old, have a valid driver’s license and a clean record, must also come with specific skills.

“Prior military experience is not required but is highly desirable,” he said. “As the team leader, your responsibilities will include recruiting, vetting, and retaining a 6-man (or possibly 12-man) A-Team; organizing, conducting, and documenting team training sessions at least once per month.”

Nazzaro claims the funding will come from a mixture of his own personal finances and monthly donations through cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Monero. He wants anywhere between six and up to 12 members in the cell, “which would mean $1200/month for the team leader.”

The call for donations isn’t a new development within the online, far-right ecosystem: NSC-131, a New England-based neo-Nazi group, founded by a former member of the Base, has claimed to have raised over $15,000 in donations via multiple crowdfunding and crypto schemes.

A 2020 Guardian investigation revealed Nazzaro had purchased several acres of undeveloped land near Republic, Washington, that he intended to use as a training ground for the Base. His latest job listing asks for a candidate who preferably lives near Republic and that land.

Nazzaro’s post calls for the leader to pay group members a stipend and to plan a meeting location in that region as a sort of paramilitary launchpad if a civil war or societal collapse does ensue.

Joshua Fisher-Birch, an analyst at the Counter Extremism Project who has kept tabs on the Base since its inception, says the group maintains several American members and that Nazzaro often talks of having poured thousands in personal finances into the group.

“Nazzaro has claimed that he has supported the accelerationist movement with over $10,000 through his ‘personal stash of crypto,’ and he has claimed that he has spent over $20,000 on the Base, not including land in Washington state he purchased,” said Fisher-Birch, who pointed out records he reviewed in the past showing Nazzaro receiving over $3,000 in Bitcoin donations.

Fisher-Birch believes accelerationist entities, unlike the louder white supremacist group Patriot Front that openly marches in public streets, are turning to more furtive activities as November approaches.

“Neo-Nazi accelerationist groups are mainly keeping a low profile,” he said. “Their focus on promoting chaos raises the possibility that they will encourage violence or commit acts of intimidation before the election.”

First appearing in 2018, the Base was already the subject of a major nationwide FBI counterterrorism investigation netting more than a dozen of its members in prison. Over the years, members of the Base have plotted an assassination in Georgia and mass shootings, while several countries designated it as an official terrorist organization alongside the likes of Islamic State.

Last week, the European Union moved to do the same, making the Base the first far-right organization to make its sanctions list. Nazzaro has admitted in the past that he and some of his family members faced US banking troubles because of those types of international designations.

Recent activities aside, the Base is a shadow of what it was following those mass arrests in the US and infiltration by both an FBI undercover and at least one anti-fascist activist.

Though it is unlikely to boast the nearly 50 members it counted at its zenith in 2020, its Telegram posts continue to show masked men posing with firearms and in paramilitary fatigues in states across the country. One image, released in April, shows three well-armed members of the group wearing tactical outfits and holding military-style rifles in Utah.

But the Base also continues to revel in its past and still uses a propaganda video showing a firing line of its members from a 2019 paramilitary training camp in rural Pennsylvania and embarrassingly, among the attendees was the anti-fascist infiltrator.

Both Nazzaro and the official Telegram account of the Base have encouraged Europeans to join.

“In 2023 and 2024, the Base posted photos of members or pictures of propaganda activity allegedly in Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Serbia, Sweden and Ukraine,” said Fisher-Birch. Last week, the Base posted an image of a new member in France.

Multiple sources in the counterterrorism field who spoke to the Guardian confirmed that Dutch and Belgian government officials were concerned about the Base and its growing presence in their respective countries, which pushed the group to be on the EU sanctions list.

Nazzaro, who is married to a Russian national and is believed to be living in St Petersburg, has long faced allegations from inside the Base and elsewhere that he is a Russian intelligence asset. In a 2020 appearance on Russian television, he tried to dispel those rumors, claiming “I’ve never had any contact with any Russian security services” and that he is a misunderstood family man.

Russian intelligence services are strongly suspected of recent destabilization operations on European soil; financing far-right extremists, sabotaging critical infrastructure and targeted killings, all in a bid to undermine the west and its support of Ukraine’s war effort.

“Nazzaro’s proposed plan to fund the organization of a group inside the US is notable in its timing and substance,” said Lucas Webber, a research fellow and an expert on global terrorism at the Soufan Center who reviewed the post.

Webber made clear the chatter surrounding Nazzaro and his links to Kremlin security services has never been fully disentangled, but his tradecraft is significant.

“While it is difficult to pin down his exact connections to the Russian government, he issued the call at a time when the US government is increasing warnings about foreign election meddling,” he said. “It also comes amidst an upsurge in suspected sabotage incidents in Europe and as French officials are concerned about a potential nexus between Russia and domestic activist and dissident groups.”

Frank Carillo, 66, is accused of posting more than 4,000 comments to the social media platform GETTR, in which he threatened several public officials, including Harris, President Biden, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, an FBI special agent said in a complaint filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia.

“In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. ..."

“Our study of history has brought us to this conclusion: Democracy has never worked to protect innocents from the unhumans,” write Posobiec and Lisec.

emptywheel @emptywheel
21m
One thing I think people are missing is Walz' really shrewd campaigning ability.

His wins have been (IMO) more impressive than Shapiro winning against a poor candidate.

And holy hell, he nailed the VP speed dating.

Today Vice President Kamala Harris named her choice for her vice presidential running mate: Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota. Walz grew up in rural Nebraska. He enlisted in the Army National Guard when he was 17 and served for 24 years, retiring in 2005 as a command sergeant major, making him the highest-ranking enlisted soldier ever to serve in Congress, according to the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.

He went to college with the educational benefits afforded him by the Army, and graduated from Chadron (Nebraska) State College. From 1989 to 1990, he taught at a high school in China, then became a social studies teacher in Alliance, Nebraska, where he met fellow teacher Gwen Whipple, who became his wife. They moved to Minnesota, where they both continued teaching and had two children, Hope and Gus, through IVF.

Walz became the faculty advisor for the school’s gay-straight alliance organization at the same time that he coached the high-school football team from a 0–27 record to a state championship. The advisor “really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married," Walz said in 2018.

Walz ran for Congress in 2005 after some of his students were asked to leave a rally for George W. Bush because one of them had a sticker for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Walz won and served in Congress for twelve years, sitting on the House Agriculture Committee, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.

Voters elected Walz to the Minnesota state house in 2018, and in his second term they gave him a slim majority in the state legislature. With that support, Walz signed into law protections for abortion rights, supported gender-affirming care, and legalized the recreational use of marijuana. He signed into law gun safety legislation and protections for voting rights, and pushed for action to combat climate change and to promote renewable energy.

Strong tax revenues and spending cuts gave the state a $17.6 billion surplus, and the Democrats under Walz used the money not to cut taxes, as Republicans wanted, but to invest in education, fund free breakfast and lunch for schoolchildren, make tuition free at the state’s public colleges for students whose families earned less than $80,000 a year, and invest in paid family and medical leave and health insurance coverage regardless of immigration status.

While MAGA Republicans are already trying to define Walz as “far left,” his votes in Congress put him pretty squarely in the middle. His work with Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan to expand technology production and infrastructure funding in the state was rewarded in 2023, when Minnesota knocked Texas out of the top five states for business. The CNBC rating looked at 86 indicators in 10 categories, including the workforce, infrastructure, health, and business friendliness.

Walz checks a number of boxes for the 2024 election, most notably that he hails from near the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania and comes across as a normal, nice guy. He favors unions, workers’ rights, and a $15 minimum wage. He is also the person who coined the phrase that took away the dangerous overtones of today’s MAGA Republicans by dubbing them “weird.” As a student of his said: “In politics he’s good at calling out B.S. without getting nasty or too down in the dirt…. It’s the kind of common sense he showed as a coach: practical and kinda goofy.”

Walz is also a symbol of an important resetting of the Democratic Party. He has been unapologetic about his popular programs. On Sunday, July 28, when CNN’s Jake Tapper listed some of Walz’s policies and asked if they made Walz vulnerable to Trump calling him a “big government liberal.” Walz joked that he was, indeed, a “monster.”

“Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn, and women are making their own health care decisions, and we’re a top five business state, and we also rank in the top three of happiness…. The fact of the matter is,” where Democratic policies are implemented, “quality of life is higher, the economies are better…educational attainment is better. So yeah, my kids are going to eat here, and you’re going to have a chance to go to college, and you’re going to have an opportunity to live where we're working on reducing carbon emissions. Oh, and by the way, you’re going to have personal incomes that are higher, and you’re going to have health insurance. So if that’s where they want to label me, I’m more than happy to take the label.”

Right-wing reactionary politicians have claimed to represent ordinary Americans since the time of the passage of the Voting Rights Act—on August 6, 1965, exactly 59 years ago today—by insisting that a government that works for communities is a “socialist” plan to elevate undeserving women and racial, ethnic, and gender minorities at the expense of hardworking white men.

Historically, though, rural America has quite often been the heart of the country’s progressive politics, and the Midwest has had a central place in that progressivism. Walz reintegrates that history with today’s Democratic Party.

That reintegration has left the Republicans flatfooted. Trump and J.D. Vance expected to continue their posturing as champions of the common man, but on that front the credentials of a New York real estate developer who inherited millions of dollars and of a Yale-educated venture capitalist pale next to a Nebraska-born schoolteacher. Bryan Metzger, politics reporter at Business Insider, pointed out that J.D. Vance tried to hit Walz as a “San Francisco-style liberal,” but while Vance lived in San Francisco as a venture capitalist between 2013 and 2017, Walz went to San Francisco for the first time just last month.

Head writer and producer of A Closer Look at Late Night with Seth Meyers Sal Gentile summed up Walz’s progressive politics and community vibe when he wrote on social media: “Tim Walz will expand free school lunches, raise the minimum wage, make it easier to unionize, fix your [carburetor], replace the old wiring in your basement, spray that wasp’s nest under the deck, install a new spring for your garage door and put a new chain on your lawnmower.”

Vice President Harris had a very deep bench from which to choose a running mate, but her choice of Walz seems to have been widely popular. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who are usually on opposite sides of the party, both praised the choice, prompting Ocasio-Cortez to post: “Dems in disconcerting levels of array.”

Harris and Walz held their first rally together tonight in Philadelphia, where Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, who had been a top contender for the vice presidential slot, fired up the crowd. “Each of us has a responsibility to get off the sidelines, to get in the game, and to do our part,” he said. “Are you ready to do your part? Are you ready to form a more perfect union? Are you ready to build an America where no matter what you look like, where you come from, who you love, or who you pray to, that this will be a place for you? And are you ready to look the next president of the United States in the eye and say, ‘Hello, Madam President?’ I am too, so let’s get to work!”

Pennsylvania is a crucial state, and Shapiro issued a statement offering his “enthusiastic support” to the ticket. He pledged to work to unite Pennsylvanians behind my friends Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and defeat Donald Trump.”

Walz was very impressive in Philly.

that rally gave me hope for the future of this country, a genuine feeling of optimism i haven't had since 2017...