Kamala Harris participated in Wired’s autocomplete interview series and was asked about what it’s like getting endorsed by Taylor Swift, perhaps the most famous celebrity on the planet these days. The pop star endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket following Harris’ first presidential debate against Donald Trump earlier this month. “I am very proud to have the […]
Oprah Winfrey interviewed Kamala Harris in a virtual rally in Michigan on Thursday night, gathering organizers and celebrity guests to help get out her campaign message. Harris fielded questions from a studio audience in Farmington Hills, Mich., in a format that echoed “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” She addressed topics including immigration, abortion and the cost […]
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Donald Trump presidency—you know, that document he knows nothing about even though 140 people from his first administration, including six former Cabinet members, helped create it—is full of delightful little Easter eggs. One provision that has attracted almost no public notice, perhaps because it seems so reasonable, is the authors’ call for the government to create “universal savings accounts” (USAs).
Heck, it even has a patriotic name!
All taxpayers should be allowed to contribute up to $15,000 (adjusted for inflation) of post-tax earnings into Universal Savings Accounts (USAs). The tax treatment of these accounts would be comparable to Roth IRAs. USAs should be highly flexible to allow Americans to save and invest as they see fit, including, for example, investments in a closely held business. Gains from investments in USAs would be non-taxable and could be withdrawn at any time for any purpose. This would allow the vast majority of American families to save and invest without facing a punitive double layer of taxation.
But let’s think about this. Over the past few decades, Congress passed a series of bills to help Americans save for old age privately via government-subsidized pensions, 401(k)-type plans, and individual retirement accounts—of which Roth IRAs are one type. These tax breaks and program expansions have all been bipartisan, and all have passed with flying colors, because they sound pretty good—much like these universal savings accounts—until you examine them more closely.
And then you have to ask: Good for whom?
Taken collectively, the various retirement subsidies are mind-bogglingly expensive. They are, in fact, the federal government’s single largest tax expenditure, projected to deprive the Treasury of almost $2.5 trillion over five years (2023–2027), according to the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT)—mostly, as I’ve written, to the wildly disproportionate benefit of our most affluent.
In the most extreme case reported thus far (by ProPublica), the Silicon Valley entrepreneur and political puppet-master Peter Thiel used a $1,700 contribution to his Roth IRA—Roths are intended for middle-class savers—decades ago to purchase 1.7 million “founder’s shares” of PayPal at one-tenth of a cent each. Because of that, by 2002, the year eBay purchased PayPal, ProPublica reported, the balance in Thiel’s Roth was up to $28.5 million, with all of those gains nontaxable. He then repeated this cycle with other fledgling companies, culminating in a Roth IRA containing north of $5 billion in assets.
Thiel was an outlier, but ProPublica identified others with IRAs worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Indeed, in 2021, at the request of Senate Finance Committee chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the JCT counted more than 28,000 taxpayers with traditional or Roth IRAs with balances exceeding $5 million—497 of the accounts contained $25 million or more.
What does this have to do with Project 2025? Well, USAs would be Roths on steroids. The $15,000 annual contribution limit is more than twice what people under 50 are allowed to contribute to a Roth. And even the highest earners could contribute to a USA—with Roths, you can only make the full contribution if your income is $146,000 or less. The fact that one needn’t wait until retirement to withdraw funds make USAs all the more compelling.
Heck, if you can afford to put $15,000 a year into an investment fund and let it take a tax-free ride—which the majority of Americans cannot—there would be no reason not to. “High bracket taxpayers would get the biggest tax benefits and could find the disposable savings to participate most easily,” says Steven Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center who has written about the retirement system’s income and race disparities.
Roth IRAs cost taxpayers relatively little, mainly because most people play by the rules. USAs would obliterate the rules, and cost the government a pretty penny.
But the real poison pill is this line: USAs should be highly flexible to allow Americans to save and invest as they see fit, including, for example, investments in a closely held business.
That sounds an awful lot like what Thiel did. Or, for example, a private equity fund manager could put his “carried interest” in a USA at the outset of a project. A CEO could contribute tens of thousands of shares of cheaply acquired stock options before the company goes public. A garage inventor—like Bill Gates once was—could value his company initially at $15,000 and put all of the stock into his USA. It’s not worth much now, but wait 10 years—Jackpot!
“Their tax avoidance potential would be infinitely greater. They would have the potential to exempt multibillion-dollar gains, even trillion-dollar gains, from taxation,” tax attorney Bob Lord and Morris Pearl, chair of Patriotic Millionaires, wrote in a Fortunecommentary.
“Allowing taxpayers to invest ‘as they see fit,’ could fuel stuffing…when an individual uses a tax-free account to acquire non-publicly traded assets at prices below fair market value,” Rosenthal told me in an email. (He and New York University law professor Daniel Hemel have written to the Senate Finance Committee, urging lawmakers to crack down on the practice.)
Whether Thiel’s Roth magic trick violates current IRS rules on “prohibited transactions” is a private matter for him and agency lawyers to hash out—but legal minds who have thought it through see some potential red flags. What’s more, the IRS has issued guidance that deems similar-sounding strategies “abusive” and says it views them as “tax avoidance transactions.”
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris regularly asks Americans to imagine Donald Trump without guardrails. Well, imagine Roths without guardrails—larger contributions, no income cap, and no rules about how the funds can be invested. Roth IRAs in particular cost US taxpayers relatively little—about $14 billion a year—mainly because most people play by the rules. USAs would obliterate the rules, and in doing so, cost the government a pretty penny.
But this isn’t just about tax revenues. The bigger problem is how wildly inequitable America’s wealth and income distributions have become over the past four decades, a shift that started with the wealth-friendly tax cuts of the Reagan era. Just this week, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the average 2021 household income for the top-earning 1 percent of taxpayers was more than $3.1 million—42 times the average for the bottom 90 percent, according to an analysis of the data by Americans for Tax Fairness. That’s the most skewed income distribution since CBO began reporting on the data in 1979. Back then, the income disparity was 12 to 1.
America has ceased to be recognizable as a land of opportunity—or rather, one must now ask, a land of opportunity for whom?
USAs would be worth considering if Congress limited them to people with few assets who earn less than $100,000, for example, and imposed strict rules to prevent wealthy investors from gaming them for tax avoidance. As proposed by that nonprofit Trump knows nothing about, they would make our class divisions even worse. And that would truly be unaffordable.
Another open letter from Republicans endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bidjust dropped.
This one, first reported by the New York Times, is signed by 111 former national security and foreign policy officials who worked under former presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush—and, yes, Trump himself.
The blistering letter characterizes Trump as “unfit to serve,” alleging that he “cannot be trusted” to uphold the Constitution. The signatories include onetime Republican stalwarts such as Charles Boustany, the Louisiana congressman who gave the party’s rebuttal to former President Obama’s speech to Congress about health care reform; William Cohen, secretary of defense in the Clinton administration and former senator from Maine; Gen. Michael Hayden, CIA and National Security Agency director under Obama and George W. Bush; and Miles Taylor, former chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security under Trump.
The group writes that they “firmly oppose” Trump’s reelection, alleging that “as President, he promoted daily chaos in government, praised our enemies and undermined our allies, politicized the military and disparaged our veterans, prioritized his personal interest above American interests, and betrayed our values, democracy, and this country’s founding documents.” The letter also states that “by inciting the violent attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and defending those who committed it, he has violated his oath of office and brought danger to our country.”
Like Harris mentioned in last week’s debate, the supporters also write that Trump is susceptible “to flattery and manipulation by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping,” and that these influences, along with his “contempt for the norms of decent, ethical and lawful behavior” and “chaotic national security decision-making,” are “dangerous qualities.”
By contrast, they write, “Vice President Harris has demonstrated a commitment to upholding the ideals that define our nation freedom, democracy, and rule of law,” citing her experience as vice president, attorney general of California, and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. (The letter also cites some of Harris’ promises that have rankled some on the left, including her pledges to “ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world”; to “always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself”; and to support the border security package that would hire 1,500 new Customs and Border Protection personnel.)
The group acknowledges that while they have concerns “about some of the positions advocated by the left wing of the Democratic party…any potential concerns pale in comparison to Donald Trump’s demonstrated chaotic and unethical behavior and disregard for our Republic’s time-tested principles of constitutional governance.”
Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign’s communications director, said in a statement that the signatories “are the same people who got our country into endless foreign wars and profited off of them while the American people suffered. President Trump is the only President in the modern era not to get our country into any new wars.”
As I have written, hundreds of other high-ranking onetime Republican officials—including ex-Reagan, Bush, Romney, and McCain staffers—have also publicly endorsed Harris over Trump, and urged other Republicans to follow their lead when they cast their votes. The Harris campaign has also been actively courting Republicans in what it calls “a campaign within a campaign.” This concerted effort to reach across the aisle is likely part of why a slate of new polls out today bring good news for Harris, showing her leading in the swing states of Pennsylvania and Michigan and gaining a six-point lead over Trump since the debate.
George Clooney and Brad Pitt are optimistic about the upcoming presidential election, which is less than 50 days away. “I’m feeling very hopeful,” Clooney told Variety‘s Marc Malkin at the “Wolfs” premiere in Los Angeles on Wednesday night. “Feeling hopeful,” Pitt chimed in. Vice President Kamala Harris will go head-to-head with former President Donald Trump […]
Another open letter from Republicans endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bidjust dropped.
This one, first reported by the New York Times, is signed by 111 former national security and foreign policy officials who worked under former presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush—and, yes, Trump himself.
The blistering letter characterizes Trump as “unfit to serve,” alleging that he “cannot be trusted” to uphold the Constitution. The signatories include onetime Republican stalwarts such as Charles Boustany, the Louisiana congressman who gave the party’s rebuttal to former President Obama’s speech to Congress about health care reform; William Cohen, secretary of defense in the Clinton administration and former senator from Maine; Gen. Michael Hayden, CIA and National Security Agency director under Obama and George W. Bush; and Miles Taylor, former chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security under Trump.
The group writes that they “firmly oppose” Trump’s reelection, alleging that “as President, he promoted daily chaos in government, praised our enemies and undermined our allies, politicized the military and disparaged our veterans, prioritized his personal interest above American interests, and betrayed our values, democracy, and this country’s founding documents.” The letter also states that “by inciting the violent attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and defending those who committed it, he has violated his oath of office and brought danger to our country.”
Like Harris mentioned in last week’s debate, the supporters also write that Trump is susceptible “to flattery and manipulation by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping,” and that these influences, along with his “contempt for the norms of decent, ethical and lawful behavior” and “chaotic national security decision-making,” are “dangerous qualities.”
By contrast, they write, “Vice President Harris has demonstrated a commitment to upholding the ideals that define our nation freedom, democracy, and rule of law,” citing her experience as vice president, attorney general of California, and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. (The letter also cites some of Harris’ promises that have rankled some on the left, including her pledges to “ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world”; to “always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself”; and to support the border security package that would hire 1,500 new Customs and Border Protection personnel.)
The group acknowledges that while they have concerns “about some of the positions advocated by the left wing of the Democratic party…any potential concerns pale in comparison to Donald Trump’s demonstrated chaotic and unethical behavior and disregard for our Republic’s time-tested principles of constitutional governance.”
Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign’s communications director, said in a statement that the signatories “are the same people who got our country into endless foreign wars and profited off of them while the American people suffered. President Trump is the only President in the modern era not to get our country into any new wars.”
As I have written, hundreds of other high-ranking onetime Republican officials—including ex-Reagan, Bush, Romney, and McCain staffers—have also publicly endorsed Harris over Trump, and urged other Republicans to follow their lead when they cast their votes. The Harris campaign has also been actively courting Republicans in what it calls “a campaign within a campaign.” This concerted effort to reach across the aisle is likely part of why a slate of new polls out today bring good news for Harris, showing her leading in the swing states of Pennsylvania and Michigan and gaining a six-point lead over Trump since the debate.
Vice President KamalaHarrishas lost no time blaming former President Donald Trump for the death of a single mother in Georgia after hospital doctors,working under the constraints of an abortion ban, delayed treating her catastrophic infection.
The story of Amber Nicole Thurman’s death in August 2022—and its connection to the six-week abortion ban enacted in Georgia the month before she died—was first reported by ProPublica’s Kavitha Surana. While doctors, patients, and reproductive justice advocates have long warned that abortion bans were causing profound disruptions and delays in healthcare for pregnant women, Thurman’s is the first death to come to public attention.
“This young mother should be alive, raising her son, and pursuing her dream of attending nursing school,” Harris said in a statement reported by the Associated Press. “Women are bleeding out in parking lots, turned away from emergency rooms, losing their ability to ever have children again. Survivors of rape and incest are being told they cannot make decisions about what happens next to their bodies. And now women are dying.”
“This young mother should be alive, raising her son, and pursuing her dream of attending nursing school.”
“These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s actions,” Harris added.
Later on Tuesday, during ainterview moderatedby the National Association of Black Journalists and WHYY public radio station in Philadelphia, Harris once again drew a link between Thurman’s death and Trump. “Over 20 states have passed what I call ‘Trump abortion bans,’ because I understand how we got here,” Harris told an audience of journalism students from historically Black colleges and universities. “The former president handpicked three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade. They did as he intended, and in state after state, laws have been passed criminalizing health care providers.”
The doctors who delayed Thurman’s care were operating under these laws, Harris pointed out. “It appears the people who should have given her health care were afraid they’d be criminalized after the Dobbs decision came down,” she said.
According to ProPublica, Georgia’s ban on abortions after six weeks affected Thurman in multiple ways. When Thurman discovered she was pregnant with twins in July 2022, she was just over the gestational limit. Because the 28-year-old medical assistant could not get an abortion near where she lived, she had to drive four hours with a friend to North Carolina. Then, stuck in traffic, she missed her appointment for a surgical abortion using a technique called dilation and curettage (D&C), so the clinic instead gave her medication to end her pregnancy and sent her home. The distance meant that days later, when Thurman began experiencing a rare complication from the medication abortion—her body hadn’t expelled all the fetal tissue, putting her at risk of a dangerous infection—she couldn’t go back to the provider for a free D&C. Only when her condition deteriorated did she end up going to a hospital outside Atlanta.
There, her blood pressure falling and organs failing, Thurman was diagnosed with “acute severe sepsis.” But physicians waited 20 hours to operate. The hospital and doctors did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment. But the delays mirrormanyotherstoriesabout abortion bans leading to dangerous disruptions in pregnancy care since the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Physicians afraid of being prosecuted have raised alarms about the laws’ hard-to-interpret exceptions: How close to death does a pregnant patient have to be in order for them to perform emergency abortion?
Thurman ultimately died in the operating room. A Georgia state committee tasked with reviewing maternal deaths found that the delay in providing the D&C had a “large” impact on her death, and they deemed it “preventable,” according to ProPublica.
Harris’ attention to Thurman’s story is no surprise given her reputation as a forceful defender of abortion rights on the campaign trail and in her debate against Trump. But her attention to pregnancy-related deaths—which are far more common in the United States than in other high-income countries—dates back years. In the Senate, Harris focused on reducing maternal mortality for Black women like Thurman, who are 2.6 times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes than white women, according to 2022 CDC data. In 2018, she sponsored a resolution recognizing “Black Maternal Health Week” and introduced the Maternal CARE Act to create a grant program to address racial bias in obstetrics and gynecology. As vice president, she pushed efforts to expand postpartum Medicaid coverage from 60 days to 12 months.
“For years, I have worked to make sure our country treats maternal mortality as the national crisis it is,” Harris wrote in 2022, prefacing a 50-point plan to use government agencies to lower maternal deaths. “I am proud to lead our Administration’s efforts to address this issue.”
Billie Eilish and Finneas have officially endorsed Kamala Harris for president over Donald Trump. In a joint video post on Instagram, the Grammy and Oscar-winning duo celebrated National Voter Registration Day by encouraging their followers to register, vote early and to vote for the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket. “We are voting for Kamala Harris and […]
Earlier this month, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign dropped an issues page detailing the Democratic candidate’s priorities if elected. One brief but important point: Harris’ platform commits to ending the federal subminimum wage for disabled workers.
Since the establishment of a federal minimum wage in 1938, an exception has allowed employers, through a certificate system, to pay disabled workers much less than the national minimum of $7.25 an hour—sometimes as little as 25 cents. It’s a practice that 25 states, most recently Ohio, have introduced or enacted legislation to phase out. If Harris succeeds, at least 40,000 workers across the countrywill see a wage rise.But for most disabled workers earning below minimum wage, it won’t make a difference.
That’s because workers in prison—including disabled ones—are subject to another subminimum wage, which neither candidate aims to roll back. Imprisoned workers in all 50 states, including the 17 where prison work is enforced, can earn pennies an hour, or even nothing at all, as a 2022 American Civil Liberties Union report highlights. In Louisiana, people working in prisons can make as little as 2 cents an hour; if they worked 30 hours each week, they would earn just over $30 annually.
Federally, and in seventeen states, “incarcerated people under law are required to work, and they actually cannot opt out of that work.”
Kate Caldwell, director of research and policy at Northwestern University’s Center for Racial and Disability Justice, told me that more than half of incarcerated people in US prisons have a disability, including psychiatric disabilities. Given that Black and Latino people are disproportionately incarcerated, disabled people of color face the brunt of low prison wages.
“Most incarcerated individuals want to work,” Caldwell said, “but they want to earn a wage.”
Caldwell explained that getting rid of subminimum wage for disabled people in prison involves different legal frameworks: Ending the practice for disabled people in sheltered workshops, as workplaces allowed to engage in the practice are known, would mean amending the Fair Labor Standards Act—whereas ending subminimum wages for incarcerated people would mean requiring workers in prison to be recognized as employees under federal law, which they aren’t.
Federally, and in the seventeen states where it is mandatory, “incarcerated people under law are required to work, and they actually cannot opt out of that work,” Caldwell told me, “nor can they opt out of work when there are dangerous conditions in most states.” This includes fighting wildfires, a strikingly common form of prison labor. Work done while in prison also does not count toward work requirements for Social Security Disability Insurance, Caldwell noted.
On the other hand, as the ACLU report describes, some disabled people in prisons are denied the opportunity to work when they want to. The extent of the problem is hard to capture, Caldwell says, given the lack of data on disability and the criminal justice system—but regardless, it’s “in violation of the ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act,” Caldwell said. “It’s either because of the stigma that disabled people can’t work, or the perceived cost of providing accommodations.”
Being incarcerated can also be incredibly expensive: health care is pricey, poor, and limited, not to mention financing your own incarceration, essentials from the commissary, paying restitution, continuing to pay child support, and affording costly phone calls with loved ones.
“There are typically medical co-pays involved in seeing a doctor,” Wanda Bertram, a communications strategist with the Prison Policy Initiative, told me. “For instance, in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, there’s a $2 co-pay every time you request a doctor visit.” That could represent 17 hours of work—and given the health issues that many disabled people experience, the cost can quickly add up.
Bertram raised another issue, one that also comes up in connection with sheltered workshops: whether or not some jobs typically given to prisoners, like making license plates, develop skills that will help them when they leave prison. Bertram and Caldwell both note that many jobs for incarcerated workers also involve essential administrative and maintenance work that keeps their prisons running.
“The largest beneficiary of prison labor is the prison system itself,” Caldwell said. “Those workers are providing over $9 billion of services a year to the prisons where they are incarcerated.”
In her latest video, Mother Jones video creator Kat Abughazaleh traces the history of former President Donald Trump’s dangerous lie that some states allow parents to “execute” babies in so-called “post-birth abortions.”
“You can look at the governor of West Virginia,” Trump said during last week’s debate, prompting an incredulous head shake from Vice President Kamala Harris. “He said the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we’ll execute it.”
Northam, of course, did not say that. Trump wasn’t even correct about his own right-wing smear. His reference was to a wildly out-of-context quote from former Virginia governor Ralph Northam (not West Virginia). Northam’s 2019 radio appearance, in which he explained the tragic medical emergencies that can result in late-term abortions, has since been selectively edited by Republicans and used to claim their opponents are permitting infanticide—a lie that has been repeated with relish across Fox News, again and again.
As Kat explains, “There’s no such thing as a ‘post-birth’ abortion. These procedures are extremely rare and reserved for cases where the mother’s life is in danger or when a fatally ill or deformed baby needs palliative care.” In this video, Kat shows how this wasn’t Trump’s first time exploiting these tragedies, which are “designed to demonize grieving mothers and doctors,” while clarifying the facts about late-term abortion care that are too often lost to political noise. She notes that less than one percent of abortions occur after 21 weeks of pregnancy.
“By limiting abortion access in the first place, whether it’s totally or at the six-week mark, or by making parents jump through hoops just to get the medical care they need,” Kat explains, “Republicans are ensuring that there will be more cases that require traumatic medical intervention than if people were allowed to have control over their bodies in the first place.”
In reality, Harris’ role was mostly limited to addressing the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras through task forces focused on corruption and smuggling, and by working with the private sector to expand economic opportunities. That increased collaboration is generally viewed favorably by immigration advocates—but Harris’ focus on deterrence-based policies at the border has been criticized. As the Democratic nominee, she has come out in favor of the bipartisan immigration bill championed by Joe Biden, which would, among other things, allow the Department of Homeland Security to suspend most access to asylum outside of ports of entry when border encounters reach a certain level.
I think the hope is that overall, she’ll be taking a much more humanistic approach to immigration.
Adriel D. Orozco is a senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Council, which works to improve the immigration system. He believes that cutting off access to asylum based on the number of migrant encounters is the wrong approach to solving the problems of a strained and under-resourced system. Orozco does support the Biden administration’s use of parole to allow people to stay in the United States while they seek residency—he hopes to see Harris continue the practice. I spoke with him about Harris’ approach to tackling immigration challenges as a senator and as vice president, and what advocates hope to see from her administration if she becomes the 47th president.
Republicans have falsely billed Harris as Biden’s “border czar.” What do you think is the basis?
I think that there [were] some inaccurate representations of her work from the beginning: A lot of the headlines that were coming out at the time were focused on her addressing immigration generally, and White House officials said that she would oversee a whole government approach to dealing with immigration. There was a lot of confusion.
What was Harris’ actual role in the Biden administration when it came to immigration policy?
President Biden announced at a press conference that Vice President Harris would take on a diplomatic campaign to address the root causes [of migration] from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. The idea was to think about why folks were leaving that region. She was tasked with increasing public and private sector investment in the area to strengthen the economies. She was also trying to figure out ways to address corruption within the government and address some of the smuggling and human trafficking networks.
But from the beginning, it was meant to be a long-term strategy. It wasn’t meant for her to be focused on the border policy. That was always under the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas.
What were the specific goals of the “Root Causes Strategy”?
Really thinking about [the] problems that are occurring in these Northern Triangle countries that are impacting people’s livelihoods and pressuring them to leave the region. She wanted to increase investment, particularly from the private sector, but also investment from other entities like the UN and USAID. Part of it was trying to address some of the networks that were being established around drug trafficking, human trafficking, [and] human smuggling, that were also leading to increased migration levels in the region.
Did the strategy represent a departure from that of previous administrations?
It depends on which administration, but there’s always been an attempt to try to provide investments in the region to support local economies. It was a pretty clear departure from the Trump administration, which was primarily trying to bolster the enforcement mechanisms within these countries to stop migration. So this was a departure in the sense that it was trying to look more broadly, not just from an enforcement and deterrence lens, but also about why people [are] coming.
Has it been successful?
That’s a little bit difficult to pinpoint. There are things that one can point to to say that it was successful. Vice President Harris and the Biden-Harris administration have pointed out that they secured more than $5 billion in private-sector investment in the region. They established a task force to try to create more collaboration between Mexico and these Northern Triangle countries to try to address smuggling and human trafficking. Generally speaking, there are lower numbers of migrants coming from that region, but there are many other reasons why that could be, particularly Mexico preventing them from getting to the US-Mexico border [and] some changes in El Salvador around security issues. So it’s hard to say, but it is important to create more regional cooperation. You can’t really just stop it border by border.
She tries to take a humanistic lens to migration, considering her background as a child of migrants, but she’s also a prosecutor.
What was Harris like in the Senate regarding immigration policy?
She is probably most well known for her ability to almost cross-examine Trump administration officials, particularly around the “zero-tolerance” policy that led to the separation of families at the border. More than 3,000 children were separated from their parents. In terms of policy, she was a vocal proponent of the DACA program and criticized the Trump administration when it rescinded the program. She also advocated for pathways for citizenship and was willing to take the administration head-on when she saw that [it] was doing real harm to immigrant communities.
What would your organization like to see from a Harris administration if she wins?
We would like to see a shift away [from] primarily relying on deterrence and enforcement policy at the border. We think immigration needs to be thought about more holistically. Unfortunately, we’ve seen, from the Biden-Harris administration, a rightward shift in its policy proposals. Particularly the Senate bipartisan bill that both Biden and Harris supported trying to cut off access to asylum as a means to deter migrants. And we think that that’s the wrong approach.
From what I’ve read and seen from Vice President Harris, I think she tries to take a balanced approach. She tries to take a humanistic lens to migration, considering her background as a child of migrants, but she’s also a prosecutor. She also sees the importance of enforcing the law and protecting vulnerable communities, so we think that there’s a prime opportunity for her to become much more of a vocal supporter of increasing pathways for individuals, so that they don’t have to make the treacherous journey to the United States border.
It was difficult to see that the bipartisan Senate bill was largely focused on trying to shut off access to asylum at the border. [We need] the proper balance of saying we need to have security at the border, but also that the folks who have been in the United States for a long time deserve a dignified process to becoming citizens.
What changes would you like to see to the asylum system in the United States?
The Senate border bill wasn’t all bad. Our organization thinks that there were some components that made sense. One was to make the asylum process non-adversarial. So, right now, the overwhelming majority of migrants are unable to get an attorney to represent them in immigration court proceedings, but the government is always represented by their government attorney. So if you’re able to have trained asylum officers, where it’s non-adversarial, you give people more of an opportunity to present their stories, and if they qualify to be in the United States, they can stay.
One of our concerns with heavy-handed deterrence-based policies is that a lot of people are being sent back into harm’s way, when internationally, we have obligations to protect people from being placed back in harm’s way. The unfortunate thing for the Biden-Harris administration is that they have not been able to get the resources they need to address the larger [number] of individuals who had been presenting at the border.
What we’ve seen from her previous work is that she tries to be pragmatic.
And so they have been placed in an impossible situation by Congress, particularly conservatives who decided that they did not want to fund the systems that exist now. The system is broken in a myriad of ways, not just the laws that exist but also the fact that our Congress is unwilling to actually fund the laws that exist.
When it comes to undocumented people already living in the United States, what do you think the Harris administration should do?
We do believe that the pathway to citizenship for immigrants who have been in the United States for a long time should be something she advocates for. I think it’s difficult to see, without a fundamental change in the makeup of Congress, how she would be able to actually get that passed. A lot of the tools that the Biden administration has been using, a Harris administration can use, [like] temporary protected status as a means to protect more populations in the United States.
Has Harris signaled any potential changes from the Biden administration on immigration policy?
We have heard from her speeches that she is supporting the bipartisan border bill and that she would advocate for it if she is able to win. Generally, she has said that she supports a pathway to citizenship. But we haven’t really received specifics on other policies. I do think that given her involvement with the Biden administration, she would take a similar approach around parole and TPS [Temporary Protected Status].
How do you view Harris’ recent move towards a more aggressive approach to campaigning on immigration?
I think it is good to see her out there taking a stronger approach to rhetoric and really trying to shape the narrative. Obviously, she has a strong position, given Donald Trump’s involvement in making sure that the bipartisan bill didn’t move through Congress, but she is adopting the language of Republicans around crime and protection.
It fits with her role as a prosecutor—so part of it is politics, trying to meet folks who are concerned about the border and security, given the years of fear-mongering around that issue. I think what we’ve seen from her previous work is [that] she tries to be pragmatic. I’m sure that she’s trying to think about how you have rules in place while still honoring the folks who have been here for long periods of time without authorization.
It is a little bit concerning that the Democratic Party has adopted that language, but I think the hope is that overall, she’ll be taking a much more humanistic approach to immigration. And her opponent, his campaign’s rhetoric around immigration is just horrific—trying to use the military and the National Guard to round up migrants. So Vice President Harris is looking like the reasonable person in the room, even though, if [you] compare her to four years ago, she would probably be very much to the right in that rhetoric.
Kamala Harris will make a fundraising visit to Los Angeles on Sept. 29, according to an invitation issued by the Harris Victory Fund. Tickets to the event, billed as “An Afternoon with Vice President Kamala Harris,” start at $500 and go up to $1 million. Those who donate at least $100,000 can get in line […]
Just over a month ago, the Harris-Walz ticket launched what it called “a campaign within a campaign”: an initiative called “Republicans for Harris,” aimed at wooing Trump-skeptical conservatives.
Proof continues to emerge that it’s working. On Sunday, yet another group of influential Republicans—more than a dozen former high-level staffers in former President Ronald Reagan’s administration—voiced their support for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and urged other Republicans to follow suit.
In a blistering letter, first reported by CBS, the group invoked the title of Reagan’s famous 1964 speech, “A Time for Choosing,” he delivered on behalf of Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, whichwound up putting the future president on the national map.
“The time for choosing we face today is a choice between integrity and demagoguery, and the choice must be Harris-Walz,” the ex-staffers wrote. “The choice between truth and lies demands support for Harris-Walz. The choice between freedom and suppression of freedoms means support for Harris-Walz. The choice between serving the people and serving the few leads us to support Harris-Walz.”
The signatories—who include Ken Adelman, US Ambassador to the United Nations under Reagan; Pete Souza, White House photographer for both Reagan and former President Barack Obama; B. Jay Cooper, deputy assistant to Reagan—also said they “know [Reagan] would join us in supporting the Harris-Walz ticket.” (Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger [R-Ill.] said the same in a post on X this week.)
“Our votes in this election are less about supporting the Democratic Party and more about our resounding support for democracy,” the letter continues. “It’s our hope that this letter will signal to other Republicans and former Republicans that supporting the Democratic ticket this year is the only path forward toward an America that is strong and viable for our children and grandchildren for years to come.”
The group’s endorsement follows that of more than 200 Republican officials who once worked for former President George W. Bush, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), and the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), as Iwrotelast month. Like the ex-Reagan group, those signatories warned of the dangers of a second Trump term at home and abroad.
Trump does not appear to have commented on the former Reagan staffers’ endorsement of his opponent, instead spending his Sunday morning railing against Taylor Swift, who endorsed Harris this week.But even if he’s not aware of the letter, he has reason to be upset: With “the time for choosing” being only 51 days away, many polls show the candidates neck-and-neck, or Harris pulling ahead by a few points within the margin of error. A new post-debate ABC News/Ipsos poll out Sunday shows Harris leading Trump among all adults 51 to 46, increasing her lead by one point compared to before the debate.
When Project 2025 staffer and former Trump White House personnel chief John McEntee tried to score points on social media on Thursday by denying that women were “bleeding out” due to abortion bans, he probably didn’t expect them to reply to him directly.
“Can someone track down the women Kamala Harris said are bleeding out in parking lots because Roe v. Wade was overturned?” McEntee asked in a TikTok video filmed at a restaurant as he dipped fried food into sauce.
“Don’t hold your breath,” he added, smirking.
“I’m right here,” replied Carmen Broesder, a mother living in Idaho, which enacted a trigger law after the fall of Roe, a making it a felony for doctors to provide an abortion unless it was necessary “to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.”
In a TikTok video of her own, Broesder recalled how hospital staff turned her away from the ER three times during an excruciating 19-day miscarriage. She said she was repeatedly denied a procedure to remove tissue from the uterus—a procedure known as dilation and curettage (D&C) that is also used in abortions—and that they gave her just one dose of pain medication in 19 days. “I blacked out in my hallway due to blood loss,” she recounted.
In June, the Supreme Court gave Idaho hospitals the green light to perform emergency abortions to protect pregnant people’s health, as well as their life—but the ruling is temporary while the lower courts reconsider the issue. But the problem isn’t confined to Idaho. In Oklahoma, Jaci Statton developed heavy bleeding, dizziness, and weakness from a molar pregnancy, a condition in which a fertilized egg does not develop into a fetus. For more than a week, she told NPR, doctors denied her treatment, and she was transferred to three different hospitals. Ultimately, she had to drive three hours to an abortion clinic in Kansas to get an D&C.
“The record shows that, as a matter of medical reality, such cases exist,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a concurring opinion in the Idaho case. “Hospitals in Idaho have had to airlift medically fragile women to other States to receive abortions needed to prevent serious harms to their health. Those transfers measure the difference between the life-threatening conditions Idaho will allow hospitals to treat and the health-threatening conditions it will not.”
“I was told when I had a possible ectopic pregnancy that I would have to ‘wait until it made me septic’ to get the surgery to save my life.”
According to Rolling Stone, Broesder’s severe blood loss during her miscarriage caused erratic blood pressure and a stress response that led her to be diagnosed with a heart condition she said could lead to a heart attack if she gets too excited or upset. “I have to deal with these side effects for the rest of my life because of abortion laws,” Broesder said in her video.
Broesder’s experience is a clear illustration of what Vice President Kamala Harris was talking about when she responded to former president Donald Trump’s bizarre claim during the debate that “every legal scholar” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. “Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term, suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail, and she is bleeding out in a car in the parking lot—she didn’t want that,” Harris said. “Her husband didn’t want that.”
McEntee, the founder of a conservative-only dating app, has a large following on TikTok, where he posts snarky and often offensive quips about race and gender designed to tickle his MAGA audience. But his video garnered thousands of first-person responses, many telling stories about severe medical complications after pregnant people were denied care.
“I was told when I had a possible ectopic pregnancy that I would have to ‘wait until it made me septic’ to get the surgery to save my life,” one commenter said.
“My daughter. Nearly lost her life after she miscarried triplets that didn’t expel her body & 3 hospitals wouldn’t remove them,” another replied.
“I’ve been anemic on and off since my weeks-long miscarriage,” wrote yet another commenter. “Three hospitals refused to give me a DNC or pill protocol. Unimaginable pain and distress.”
And so it goes, on and on, for more than 19,000 comments as of Saturday.
The Kamala Harris/Tim Walz campaign took advantage of Donald Trump’s blunt “I hate Taylor Swift!” social media statement by releasing a rather longer Swift-related statement of its own — one in which they name-check 28 Swift titles or lyrics. The release that was issued by the Democratic candidates’ campaign Sunday morning was titled “Trump’s Bad […]
Just over a month ago, the Harris-Walz ticket launched what it called “a campaign within a campaign”: an initiative called “Republicans for Harris,” aimed at wooing Trump-skeptical conservatives.
Proof continues to emerge that it’s working. On Sunday, yet another group of influential Republicans—more than a dozen former high-level staffers in former President Ronald Reagan’s administration—voiced their support for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and urged other Republicans to follow suit.
In a blistering letter, first reported by CBS, the group invoked the title of Reagan’s famous 1964 speech, “A Time for Choosing,” he delivered on behalf of Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, whichwound up putting the future president on the national map.
“The time for choosing we face today is a choice between integrity and demagoguery, and the choice must be Harris-Walz,” the ex-staffers wrote. “The choice between truth and lies demands support for Harris-Walz. The choice between freedom and suppression of freedoms means support for Harris-Walz. The choice between serving the people and serving the few leads us to support Harris-Walz.”
The signatories—who include Ken Adelman, US Ambassador to the United Nations under Reagan; Pete Souza, White House photographer for both Reagan and former President Barack Obama; B. Jay Cooper, deputy assistant to Reagan—also said they “know [Reagan] would join us in supporting the Harris-Walz ticket.” (Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger [R-Ill.] said the same in a post on X this week.)
“Our votes in this election are less about supporting the Democratic Party and more about our resounding support for democracy,” the letter continues. “It’s our hope that this letter will signal to other Republicans and former Republicans that supporting the Democratic ticket this year is the only path forward toward an America that is strong and viable for our children and grandchildren for years to come.”
The group’s endorsement follows that of more than 200 Republican officials who once worked for former President George W. Bush, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), and the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), as Iwrotelast month. Like the ex-Reagan group, those signatories warned of the dangers of a second Trump term at home and abroad.
Trump does not appear to have commented on the former Reagan staffers’ endorsement of his opponent, instead spending his Sunday morning railing against Taylor Swift, who endorsed Harris this week.But even if he’s not aware of the letter, he has reason to be upset: With “the time for choosing” being only 51 days away, many polls show the candidates neck-and-neck, or Harris pulling ahead by a few points within the margin of error. A new post-debate ABC News/Ipsos poll out Sunday shows Harris leading Trump among all adults 51 to 46, increasing her lead by one point compared to before the debate.
When Project 2025 staffer and former Trump White House personnel chief John McEntee tried to score points on social media on Thursday by denying that women were “bleeding out” due to abortion bans, he probably didn’t expect them to reply to him directly.
“Can someone track down the women Kamala Harris said are bleeding out in parking lots because Roe v. Wade was overturned?” McEntee asked in a TikTok video filmed at a restaurant as he dipped fried food into sauce.
“Don’t hold your breath,” he added, smirking.
“I’m right here,” replied Carmen Broesder, a mother living in Idaho, which enacted a trigger law after the fall of Roe, a making it a felony for doctors to provide an abortion unless it was necessary “to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.”
In a TikTok video of her own, Broesder recalled how hospital staff turned her away from the ER three times during an excruciating 19-day miscarriage. She said she was repeatedly denied a procedure to remove tissue from the uterus—a procedure known as dilation and curettage (D&C) that is also used in abortions—and that they gave her just one dose of pain medication in 19 days. “I blacked out in my hallway due to blood loss,” she recounted.
In June, the Supreme Court gave Idaho hospitals the green light to perform emergency abortions to protect pregnant people’s health, as well as their life—but the ruling is temporary while the lower courts reconsider the issue. But the problem isn’t confined to Idaho. In Oklahoma, Jaci Statton developed heavy bleeding, dizziness, and weakness from a molar pregnancy, a condition in which a fertilized egg does not develop into a fetus. For more than a week, she told NPR, doctors denied her treatment, and she was transferred to three different hospitals. Ultimately, she had to drive three hours to an abortion clinic in Kansas to get an D&C.
“The record shows that, as a matter of medical reality, such cases exist,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a concurring opinion in the Idaho case. “Hospitals in Idaho have had to airlift medically fragile women to other States to receive abortions needed to prevent serious harms to their health. Those transfers measure the difference between the life-threatening conditions Idaho will allow hospitals to treat and the health-threatening conditions it will not.”
“I was told when I had a possible ectopic pregnancy that I would have to ‘wait until it made me septic’ to get the surgery to save my life.”
According to Rolling Stone, Broesder’s severe blood loss during her miscarriage caused erratic blood pressure and a stress response that led her to be diagnosed with a heart condition she said could lead to a heart attack if she gets too excited or upset. “I have to deal with these side effects for the rest of my life because of abortion laws,” Broesder said in her video.
Broesder’s experience is a clear illustration of what Vice President Kamala Harris was talking about when she responded to former president Donald Trump’s bizarre claim during the debate that “every legal scholar” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. “Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term, suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail, and she is bleeding out in a car in the parking lot—she didn’t want that,” Harris said. “Her husband didn’t want that.”
McEntee, the founder of a conservative-only dating app, has a large following on TikTok, where he posts snarky and often offensive quips about race and gender designed to tickle his MAGA audience. But his video garnered thousands of first-person responses, many telling stories about severe medical complications after pregnant people were denied care.
“I was told when I had a possible ectopic pregnancy that I would have to ‘wait until it made me septic’ to get the surgery to save my life,” one commenter said.
“My daughter. Nearly lost her life after she miscarried triplets that didn’t expel her body & 3 hospitals wouldn’t remove them,” another replied.
“I’ve been anemic on and off since my weeks-long miscarriage,” wrote yet another commenter. “Three hospitals refused to give me a DNC or pill protocol. Unimaginable pain and distress.”
And so it goes, on and on, for more than 19,000 comments as of Saturday.
Marta Kauffman didn’t think twice about signing on as a co-host for Cooking for Kamala, a fundraiser for the vice president featuring an “intimate dinner” designed by celebrity chef Nancy Silverton. The evening, set for Sept. 14 in Los Angeles, includes an appearance by Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. “Nancy is my neighbor and I […]
When Vice President Kamala Harris used Tuesday night’s debate to tout her bipartisan appeal, she emphasized the backing she’d received from two particularly notable GOP officials.
“I actually have the endorsement of 200 Republicans,” she said, including “the endorsement of former Vice President Dick Cheney and Congressmember Liz Cheney.”
On its own, Harris welcoming the Cheneys to her tent is no big shakes. Liz’s work on the January 6 committee left her popular with Democrats. Dick is 83, old enough to seem less likely to start a reckless war, and long ago surpassed as a top Democratic bogeyman by Trump himself.
But if the Cheneys are no longer Republican voters, they remain unrepentant hawks, advocates of aggressively using US military power to achieve American policy aims. And Harris’ embrace of a top architect of the disastrous militarism of George W. Bush’s administration was one of several signals she offered suggesting fans of the neoconservative foreign policy associated with the Cheneys should feel comfortable with her as president.
On Gaza, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and other national security matters, Harris appeared to deliberately strike notes aimed at appealing to the interventionist consensus in Washington’s foreign policy establishment. The result was Harris’ latest and perhaps clearest suggestion that she will not venture far to the left of President Joe Biden, or former President Barack Obama, on national security. That may or may not be good politics, but it is a disappointment to the substantial number of Americans hoping that Harris would pursue a more restrained, anti-war foreign policy than Biden.
Harris, eager to make the election about Trump’s unfitness for office, is clearly trying to play it safe on national security, as with other policy areas. What’s notable, though, is what playing it safe entails.
Nowhere is that dynamic clearer than on Israel. While a handful of pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with Philadelphia police outside the debate, Harris responded to a question about achieving a ceasefire in Gaza by emphasizing her support for Israel’s “right to defend itself.” To be sure, she then pivoted. “It is also true far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed,” she said in a by-now-familiar caveat. “Children, mothers. What we know is that this war must end.” She also called for a two-state solution. But Harris’s formulation provides no real departure from Biden’s policy, which has, so far, failed to end the war.
On Tuesday Harris even seemed to suggest that she would limit US efforts to restrain Israel from actions that could cause a broader regional war. “The one thing I will assure you always, I will always give Israel the ability to defend itself, in particular as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel,” Harris said.
On Ukraine, Harris focused on distinguishing herself from Trump, who has touted his cozy ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and repeated his dubious claim he could settle that war “before I even become president,” presumably by letting Russia keep the Ukrainian territory it now occupies.
Harris—appealing to “the 800,000 Polish-Americans right here in Pennsylvania”—argued that without US support, “Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland.” What the vice president did not mention is that Poland, as NATO member, enjoys protection Ukraine does not, a mutual defense agreement with the US and its allies. Russia has invaded former Soviet republics, but never, dating to the formation of NATO, risked nuclear war by attacking a member of the alliance.
Harris also avoided offering her own prescription for ending the war in Ukraine, absent Ukraine, which is currently losing ground, achieving its increasingly far-fetched goal of regaining all the territory Russia has seized since 2014. (Nor did she or Trump opine on whether the US should allow Ukraine to launch missiles supplied by the US and other states at targets more than 60 miles inside Russian territory.)
Harris “acted as though it was still 2022 and would be forever as long as the U.S. kept funding the war,” with “no real explanation as to why this was in anyone’s best interest, even Ukraine’s, to continue on this course,” wrote Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, a senior adviser at the Quincy Institute, a think tank advocating more dovish US policy.
On Tuesday, Harris ticked off policy goals that included “ensuring we have the most lethal fighting force in the world.” Asked about US soldiers who died during the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Harris said she “agreed with President Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan.” But the vice president also ripped Trump for launching the negotiations that preceded that pull-out. “He negotiated directly with a terrorist organization called the Taliban,” Harris said. Harris argued that the Trump gave away too much in those talks and failed to include Afghanistan’s then-government. That may be true, but her answer left her supporting the end of a 20-year war while deriding the mere existence of negotiations with the group the US had been fighting in that war.
Harris also mocked Trump for exchanging “love letters with Kim Jong Un.” The details of Trump’s diplomatic efforts are very much open to debate. But in singling out negotiations with the Taliban and North Korea, Harris flirted with the argument that the US should avoid talking to bad actors at all. That kind of criticism that has more often come from the hawkish right, and evokes the attacks that Republicans like John McCain and Mitt Romney—both of whom Harris name-checked Tuesday—once hurled at Obama.
In speaking about Afghanistan, Harris also made the curious statement that “as of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world.” That’s true if you do not consider the roughly 3,500 American solders in Syria and Iraq to be in war zones. But many of those troops are on bases repeatedly targeted by rocket attacks attributed to allies of Iran. In January, three American solders stationed in Jordan near the Syrian border were killed, and 30 injured, in a drone attack.
A Harris campaign spokesperson did not respond to questions about that statement. But the vice president’s comment does not suggest she sees an urgent need to end the US military presence in the Middle East.
Dick Cheney, who helped put US troops in Iraq 20 years ago, presumably approves.
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