Republicans Officially Enact Their Most Extreme School Book Ban

Utah has become the first state to institute a statewide book ban, prohibiting 13 books by authors including Margaret Atwood, Judy Blume, and Rupi Kaur in public school classrooms and libraries. 

The move comes after the state passed a bill on July 1 that allowed for books with “pornographic or indecent” material to be banned. Utah has a Republican governor and GOP supermajorities in both its state House and Senate. 

Six of the 13 banned books were written by fantasy romance author Sarah J. Mass. Twelve of the 13 have women authors. School districts as well as charter schools must now “legally” dispose of these books, which “may not be sold or distributed.”

The nonprofit free expression organization PEN America called the ban “a dark day for the freedom to read in Utah.”

The state’s ban “will impose a dystopian censorship regime across public schools and, in many cases, will directly contravene local preferences,” the organization’s Freedom to Read program director, Kasey Meehan, told The Guardian. “Allowing just a handful of districts to make decisions for the whole state is anti-democratic.”

Banning books is a theme across a lot of  dystopian fiction, for instance in Fahrenheit 451 and Nineteen Eighty-Four, titles that ironically could be banned next under Utah’s new law. In real life, book bans commonly occur in repressive and authoritarian societies. That fits into a pattern with Utah Republicans, who have also proposed monitoring which public restrooms people use. Utah’s extremism isn’t unique among red states, though: In Oklahoma, the state is requiring that the Bible be taught in schools.

According to The Salt Lake Tribune, the full list of banned books in Utah is:

• Blankets by Craig Thompson
• A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas
• A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
• A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas
• A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
• A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas
• Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas
• Fallout by Ellen Hopkins
• Forever by Judy Blume
• Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur
• Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood
• Tilt by Ellen Hopkins
• What Girls Are Made Of by Elana K. Arno

Donald Trump has tried desperately to back out of his presidential debate with Kamala Harris, which was previously scheduled for September 10—so now, J.D. Vance has offered to take it off his plate.

During Vance’s rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Wednesday, the Republican vice presidential nominee inexplicably invited Harris to debate next week.

“So here’s my offer to Kamala Harris: If she’d like to do a debate with me on August 13, I’ll do it,” Vance said.

Before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, Harris had agreed to debate Vance on CBS News on either July 23 or August 13. But Trump declined to commit his running mate to a debate.

In the weeks since, Harris has been elevated to the Democratic presidential nominee (she was officially certified as the nominee on Tuesday), challenging Trump to a debate. While Harris’s circumstances have obviously changed, Vance voiced his skepticism that anything was certain.

“I don’t think she wants to anymore, because one, she probably doesn’t even know that she’s going to be the Democratic nominee, and two we don’t know who the vice presidential nominee is going to be, either,” he said.

Vance claimed that it was still unclear whether Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, whom Harris tapped on Tuesday, would be the nominee because “he’s got a lot of skeletons that are coming out of the closet.”

“We’ll see if the Democrats pull a bait and switch on Tim Walz, or on Kamala Harris, just like they did with Joe Biden,” Vance warned.

Just as Vance can’t seem to come to terms with the fact that he’s not debating Harris anymore, Trump can’t seem to cope without Biden.

On Tuesday night, Trump wrote a surreal post on Truth Social in which he imagined Biden crashing the Democratic National Convention to seize the nomination back from Harris.

Fanfiction aside, Trump and Vance just can’t seem to face the reality that this is a fundamentally different race from the one they signed on for. Their slate of bad excuses for not debating Harris and Walz respectively has betrayed the depths of their obstinate, delusional approach to campaigning, as well as something much more troubling: that the two are plainly incapable of adapting to their new opponents.

Meanwhile, Walz seems more than happy to debate Vance. “I can’t wait to debate the guy,” Walz said at a rally in Pennsylvania Tuesday night. “That is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”

Kamala Harris has officially pulled ahead of Donald Trump, according to two key national polling averages.

Harris and Trump were neck and neck toward the end of July, with Harris leading by a narrow 0.2 percent on July 28, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Over the course of little more than a week, the gap between Harris and her Republican opponent widened to 1.8 percent, after several recent polls found that she was polling between one and four points ahead of Trump. 

As of Wednesday, the vice president was leading Trump 45.2 percent to 43.3 percent, according to Project 538.  

Real Clear Politics, another poll aggregator, had Harris trailing Trump by 1.8 to 2 percent at the end of July. Over the course of the last week, Harris officially surpassed Trump, leading 47.4 percent to 46.9 percent. 

While that polling average reported a smaller lead for Harris, only 0.5 percent, it represents a major change in momentum for the Democratic Party, which has uniformly trailed Trump over the last six months, according to RCP.  

Several other polls have also found Harris seizing the lead. VoteHub’s national poll aggregation found that Harris was leading by 0.3 percent. A poll The Economist published Tuesday had Harris in the lead, as well, beating the former president 47 percent to 46 percent. An NPR/Marist poll published Tuesday found that Harris had secured a lead, at 51 percent to Trump’s 48 percent. 

Across the board, Harris has seen a significant uptick in positive polling in early August, which should cause Trump some concern.

Last week, the former president claimed he didn’t need to debate Harris because he was “leading in the polls, it seems, by quite a bit, still,” though Harris had already begun to pass him. 

The Georgia State Election Board voted to make it easier for county election officials to delay or refuse certification of election results.

In a 3–2 vote on Tuesday, members voted in favor of a new rule requiring a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results. The board did not elaborate, however, on what exactly that inquiry would look like, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

That could spell chaos come November, especially considering that at least 70 election officials across 16 counties in key swing states, including Georgia, have been identified as pro–Donald Trump election denialists.

Trump praised the MAGA members of Georgia’s board days before the vote, describing Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares, and Janelle King as “pit bulls fighting for victory.”

“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Georgia State Election Board is in a very positive way,” Trump said at his rally in Atlanta on Saturday. “They’re on fire, they’re doing a great job.”

According to the state election board’s website, the body is “entrusted with a variety of responsibilities and authority to protect all Georgians’ right to cast a ballot.”

Georgia has had the largest number of certification refusals since 2020 of anywhere in the country. The five-person board has been accused of ethics violations—including one instance in which its Trump-friendly majority failed to give proper notice to their Democratic colleagues about a meeting that they used to advance changes to state election rules.

And Republicans are already well into cooking up other strategies to undermine future election results. In May, Fulton County election board official Julie Adams launched a lawsuit seeking a court ruling on whether her duty to certify election results could be considered “discretionary, not ministerial, in nature.”

Meanwhile, the Fulton County election interference case—which intended to deal with Trump and his allies’ election chicanery in the state—has been put on hiatus until after November by the Georgia Court of Appeals as it weighs whether to allow Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to stay on the case.

Willis was allowed to remain on the Georgia RICO case after a judge determined she had not hired special prosecutor Nathan Wade—a man she had a relationship with and who billed her office (and taxpayers) more than $728,000 in legal fees—for personal financial gain.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s personal finances are much different from what one would expect from a politician.

Axios reports that the Democratic vice presidential nominee doesn’t own any stocks, nor does his wife, Gwen. His financial disclosures as a member of Congress from 2007 to 2019 and as governor don’t show him owning bonds, private equities, mutual funds, or other securities. He and Gwen’s only investments appear to be in state pensions, including teacher pensions from their years as educators.

Walz also has never earned money from book sales, because, unlike other elected officials, he has never published a book. He doesn’t have extensive real estate assets, with he and Gwen selling their house in Mankato, Minnesota, for below the $315,000 asking price after he was elected governor. Unlike Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance, he doesn’t own any crypto, and unlike Donald Trump, he doesn’t have his own currency.

These revelations seem to provide another justification for Kamala Harris selecting Walz as her running mate. There are no embarrassing business deals that Walz is hiding, nor real estate scandals, nor tone-deaf remarks about wealth. In fact, Walz has more in common with the average American when it comes to money, and as a congressman, he often showed he could relate to financial struggles.

He even has legislation to back up his words: While serving in the House, Walz introduced the STOCK Act, which was meant to prohibit insider trading by members of Congress and other government employees. The bill was signed into law in 2012 by President Barack Obama. His refusal to own stocks adds to his sterling record for labor and his appeal to heartland voters. The only question is whether all of this can translate to success for Democrats and the Harris ticket in November.

Ohio Senator J.D. Vance has gone on the attack against Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s military service—even if he’s not the right guy to be pointing the finger.

“When were you ever in war?” Vance asked rhetorically at a Michigan rally on Wednesday. “What bothers me about Tim Walz is this stolen valor garbage. Do not pretend to be something that you’re not.”

“And if he wants to criticize me for getting an Ivy League education, I’m proud of the fact that my Mawmaw supported me, that I was able to make something of myself—I’d be ashamed if I was him and I lied about my military service like he did,” Vance continued.

“When the U.S. Marine Corps asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it,” Vance said. “When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, he dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him.”

Vance has offered veterans another snapshot of executive-level representation since he was selected as Donald Trump’s number two on the Republican ticket. But his service in the Marines wasn’t exactly the boots-on-the-ground experience that he’s now framing it as. Instead, Vance served a single four-year enlistment in the public affairs section in the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, and wrote in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, that he was “lucky to escape any real fighting.”

Meanwhile, Walz served as an enlisted soldier in the Army National Guard for two decades, ultimately attaining the rank of command sergeant major. He enlisted in the Nebraska National Guard at the age of 17 and transferred to the Minnesota National Guard 15 years later in 1996.

As part of the job, he responded to natural disasters, served with the European Security Force to support the war in Afghanistan, and was stationed around Europe to train with NATO militaries. He received several Army medals and retired as a master sergeant shortly before running for Congress in 2006. Walz has repeatedly said he left the military in order to run for office, not out of cowardice, as Vance implies.

Bringing the military disparity to the foreground of the election is, ultimately, an interesting choice for Vance and Trump, considering that a conveniently timed bone spur diagnosis helped the Republican presidential candidate skirt the Vietnam War draft in 1968.

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance claimed Wednesday that he had never suggested Kamala Harris hadn’t tapped Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate due to his faith.

During a press conference at a campaign stop in Michigan, a reporter from NBC News asked Vance to clear up some confusion surrounding his assertion that Shapiro had been skipped over for antisemitic reasons.

“You have repeatedly suggested that the only reason Kamala Harris didn’t pick Josh Shapiro to be her running mate was because of his Jewish faith,” the reporter asked. “Do you have any evidence to support that assertion, that a person who is married to a Jewish man is somehow antisemitic, or bowing to antisemites?”

Vance responded with hostility, refusing to answer the question.

“Well, I reject the premise of the question. I did not say that was the only reason that Kamala Harris didn’t choose Josh Shapiro,” Vance replied. “So you should, you know, take a little less DNC talking points when you ask your questions, and ask a real question.”

But just two days earlier, Vance had said precisely the opposite.

“I think that they will have not picked Shapiro, frankly, out of antisemitism in their own caucus and in their own party,” Vance told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday, hours before Harris’s campaign had even announced her pick of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

Vance would continue to trot out this argument over the next 48 hours. On Tuesday, Vance responded to the news of Walz’s pick by claiming that Harris had “listened to the Hamas wing of her party.”

At a rally in Philadelphia later that day, Vance immediately piggybacked off that sentiment and the statements of other Republicans who had begun claiming that Harris hadn’t picked Shapiro because he’s Jewish.

“I genuinely feel bad that for days, maybe even weeks, the guy actually had to run away from his Jewish heritage because of what the Democrats are saying about him. I think that’s scandalous and disgraceful,” Vance said. “Whatever disagreements on policy you have about somebody, the fact that that race, the vice presidential race on the Democratic side, became so focused on his ethnicity, I think is absolutely disgraceful.”

Vance’s weak attempt to walk back his statements on Wednesday fell flat, as it came just hours after Trump proudly repeated the exact same argument the Ohio senator claimed he’d never made.

On Wednesday morning, Trump suggested that Harris had not chosen Shapiro “because of the fact that he’s Jewish, and they think they’re going to offend somebody else.” In the same breath, Trump suggested that Jewish voters not supporting him ought to have their heads examined.

One of the leaders of the conservative manifesto Project 2025, Kevin Roberts, is delaying a book he wrote until after the 2024 election.

“There’s a time for writing, reading, and book tours—and a time to put down the books and go fight like hell to take back our country,” Roberts told RealClearPolitics. “That’s why I’ve chosen to move my book’s publication and promotion to after the election.”

The book, Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America, includes an introduction by Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance and was due to be published in September. The book will now come out on November 12, one week after Election Day.

Vance’s foreword to the book lauds Roberts for criticizing corporations and breaking with the Republican establishment, as well as his strong emphasis on family. Most notably, Vance endorses Roberts’s call for revolution:

As Kevin Roberts writes, “It’s fine to take a laissez-faire approach when you are in the safety of the sunshine. But when the twilight descends and you hear the wolves, you’ve got to circle the wagons and load the muskets.”

We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay [sic] ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon.

It’s highly likely that Roberts is delaying his book due to the negative publicity that Project 2025 has brought to Republicans and the Trump campaign. It contains plans to dismantle abortion rights, LGBTQ+ rights, labor rights, and numerous other protections. Trump has tried and failed to distance himself from the project, belying his own past support for the manifesto and Vance’s extensive ties to it.

Trump’s frustration with being tied to Project 2025 has led to one of its leaders stepping down from his role, bad blood between Trump’s campaign staff and the project’s operatives, conflict within MAGA world over the former president’s disavowals, and now a delayed book. But the Heritage Foundation’s massive effort means the project won’t go away, no matter how much Trump wants, and if he’s elected, Project 2025’s architects will put its dangerous ideas into practice.

Republican Vice Presidential nominee J.D. Vance appeared at a Kamala Harris rally in Phila—oh, it wasn’t a Harris rally? Then why on earth did he bring a massive sign that said “KAMALA”?

Donald Trump’s gaffe-prone running mate appeared at his own rally in Philadelphia Tuesday, where he stood in front of a sign that said, “KAMALA CHAOS”—only it didn’t quite read that way.

Vance had invited several people onstage with him to speak about the ways they’d been negatively affected by the Biden administration’s policies, specifically immigration. However, the small crowd that lurked behind Vance covered the word “CHAOS” on the low-hung banner. Vance appeared to stand in front of a giant sign that just read, “KAMALA.”

Across town, Harris and her newly announced running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz held a rally of their own. The campaign reported that 12,000 people had been in attendance, between the arena and the overflow section. Meanwhile, Vance’s rally drew a crowd of “more than 200 supporters” to a venue with a 1,300-person capacity, according to WHYY.

The ironic image quickly circulated online. The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, or IATSE, posted the image on X (formerly Twitter) Tuesday.

The account captioned the photograph, “Here’s why you should hire union stagehands and stage designers: (They did not).”

IATSE confirmed Wednesday to The New Republic that Vance’s rally was nonunion. As their post went viral, the union took the opportunity to further criticize Trump.

“In 2004, Trump crossed our picket line as workers on ‘The Apprentice’ spoke up to get paid fairly,” IATSE wrote in another post. “He is dangerously anti-worker and anti-union.”

This should sting extra hard for Vance, who was brought in to appeal to white, working-class voters specifically. Earlier Tuesday, several prominent unions and union leaders had expressed their support for Walz, including the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Teachers, and the United Automobile Workers.

Clearly, union support has tangible benefits. Harris’s rally, which was devoid of similar rigging errors, sported a large sign thanking “local union labor” for setting up the event.

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s attempts to paint Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as a progressive bogeyman could morph into instant wins for Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign.

In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday night, McCarthy described Walz as an ardent leftist, claiming that the governor’s politics were akin to those of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

“This is the most extreme,” McCarthy said. “I served with Tim. We came into Congress together. He’s known for being the Bernie Sanders of Congress.”

Putting aside the fact that Sanders is literally “the Bernie Sanders of Congress,” that comparison could work wonders for Harris’s fresh campaign, which has energized voters across the political spectrum but has yet to show evidence of capturing the progressives.

Harris chose Walz as her running mate on Tuesday, but the selection is still too recent to indicate whether he has moved the needle on her campaign. Still, his addition has piqued the interest of young voters, who have warmly described the 60-year-old as having “peak Midwestern dad vibes.”

It’s been less than three weeks since she announced her bid for the White House, but Harris’s candidacy has already galvanized the electorate. She’s won the support of Black voters, white college-educated women, and independent women voters, all of whom have shown more than 20-point gains in their levels of support since Harris announced her candidacy.

Republicans have suggested that Walz’s involvement could help to rejigger how they approach chipping away at Harris’s momentum, which so far has amounted to elementary-level ad hominem attacks on Harris’s race and identity that have only angered conservative voters.

“This provides the much-needed reset,” Trump ally Vivek Ramaswamy told NBC News on Tuesday.

“If this race does come down to policy, I think it should be a hands-down victory—not just for Trump but for candidates all the way down the ballot,” he continued—adding that the possibility is on the table only “if Republicans keep our eye on the ball.”

Unfortunately for Ramaswamy, Trump doesn’t seem all that interested in only discussing policy.