DNC to Host Historic Panel on Palestinian Rights

The Democratic National Convention will hold its first ever panel discussion on Palestinian human rights on Monday, the result of months of effort from activists advocating for an end to U.S. support for Israel’s deadly military onslaught in Gaza, which has killed more than 40,000 people.

Panelists will include Layla Elabed, one of the founders of the Uncommitted Movement, which organized massive “uncommitted” votes during the Democratic primaries, as well as Hala Hajazi, a Democratic donor and fundraiser who has lost several family members to Israel’s ongoing military campaign. Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a Palestinian-American pediatric physician who has been working in Gaza throughout Israel’s assault, will speak, as well. 

The panel will also include Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, former U.S. Representative Andy Levin of Michigan, and Jim Zogby, the founder of the Arab American Institute. 

Elabed and her Uncommitted Movement co-chair Abbas Alawieh, who is also a DNC delegate, released an official statement from the group, thanking the DNC for working with them on the panel. 

“This is an important step toward recognizing the rightful place of human rights advocates for Palestinian rights within the Democratic Party. With this panel and throughout our current engagement at the DNC, we will use our platform to announce the cries of the majority of Democratic voters who want an end to the unconditional flow of U.S. weapons that Netanyahu is using to kill Palestinian families,” the statement said.

The group reiterated a previous request that Dr. Haj-Hassan should be invited to speak during the convention itself.

Harris’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez-Rodriguez, met privately with Alawieh in Detroit on Thursday, ahead of the convention. When Harris appeared in Detroit earlier this month, Alawieh and Elabed were invited to greet her, and they spoke candidly about the need for an arms embargo to Israel.  

While Harris indicated that she was open to meeting with them to discuss an arms embargo, her national security adviser has insisted that the vice president does not support an arms embargo, a position that is in line with the Biden administration’s policy. 

This week, 30 delegates from the Uncommitted Movement, representing the more than 730,000 Democratic voters who voted “uncommitted” in the Democratic primaries, will attempt to engage with Democratic leaders at the DNC, pushing for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and arguing for a U.S. arms embargo to Israel. Elsewhere in Chicago, massive protests are planned for the week, as activists hope to reignite dialogue around the mass killing in Gaza, which has stretched on for nearly 11 months. 

Donald Trump decided to double down rather than explain what he meant when he denigrated the military’s highest award for valor in armed service, the Medal of Honor.

Speaking with MSNBC on Saturday, the former president repeated that he believed the honor’s civilian variant, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, is “better.”

“When I say ‘better,’ I would rather in a certain way get it because people that get the Congressional Medal of Honor, which I’ve given to many, are often horribly wounded or dead,” Trump said. “They’re often dead, they get it posthumously.”

“When you get the Congressional Medal of Honor—I always consider that to be the ultimate, but it is a painful thing to get it,” Trump continued. “When you get the Presidential Medal of Freedom, it’s usually for other things, like you’ve achieved great success in sports or you’ve achieved great success someplace else.”

The clarification comes after Trump, who famously avoided the Vietnam War draft with a timely diagnosis of bone spurs, infuriated veterans across the country by claiming that the Presidential Medal of Freedom was “much better” because recipients of the Medal of Honor have been “hit so many times by bullets.”

The off-color comment was made all the worse by the fact that Trump made the remark to elevate one of his top patrons, Miriam Adelson, a heavy-handed Republican donor and the richest Israeli in the world. Adelson and her husband, Las Vegas Sands billionaire Sheldon Adelson, earned Trump’s favor after they funneled $25 million to Trump’s super PACs in 2016 and donated $5 million to his inauguration. That earned them a spot on the dais, just a few rows behind Jared Kushner, as Trump was sworn in. In 2018, their contributions effectively bought Mrs. Adelson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in 2019 influenced Trump to recognize Israel’s sovereignty in Golan Heights, an Israeli-occupied portion of southwest Syria that the religious state captured in 1967.

Former Trump chief of staff and retired Marine General John Kelly threw out Trump’s comparison of the two honors, telling CNN Monday that the two medals are “not even close. No equivalency of any kind.”

“Think of Normandy, Iwo Jima, Vietnam, or Fallujah,” Kelly told CNN. “The Medal of Honor is earned, not won, by incredibly brave actions on the battlefield under fire typically by very young men who joined when others did not to defend their country.”

“To the service member, the oath is sacred and taken with the understanding that one could be seriously wounded, captured, or killed in living up to the words,” Kelly continued, referring to the oaths of enlistment. “No president, member of Congress, judge, or political appointee—and certainly no recipient of the Presidential Medal—will ever be asked to give life or limb to protect the Constitution. The two awards cannot be compared in any way. Not even close.”

Both comments have drawn comparisons to other disrespectful remarks Trump flung at the military during his time in office, including a 2020 Atlantic report that caught the former president repeatedly referring to fallen soldiers as “suckers and losers.”

J.D. Vance thought he made a clever remark when he compared Kamala Harris to Jeffery Epstein on Fox News Sunday, but he was wrong.

“Giving Kamala Harris control over inflation policy, Shannon, it’s like giving Jeffrey Epstein control over human trafficking policy,” Vance told Shannon Bream Sunday morning.

“The American people are much smarter than that. They don’t buy the idea that Kamala Harris represents a fresh start. She is more of the same,” Vance added.

Far from scoring points on economic policy, Vance’s comments instead reminded everyone of Donald Trump’s associations with the notorious sexual abuser and trafficker.

It also brought attention to the fact that Trump has been using Epstein’s plane, derisively referred to as the “Lolita Express,” on the 2024 campaign trail.

On the eve of the Democratic National Convention Sunday night, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear called out Vance’s poor analogy, pointing out on CNN that it didn’t look good coupled with Vance’s views on abusive relationships and sexual assault.

“For this guy to mention Jeffrey Epstein when he has encouraged women to stay in relationships with domestic violence, and when he called someone getting impregnated through rape as inconvenient, is really something,” Beshear said.

When Trump was mentioned in the first release of Epstein-related documents from a decade-old lawsuit against the sex trafficker in January, Trump was uncharacteristically quiet—a sign that he may have something to hide and doesn’t want to draw attention to his relationship with Epstein. Vance’s remarks probably won’t make Trump and his campaign staff happy.

Donald Trump’s late night social media spree over the upcoming Democratic National Convention and his lackluster Pennsylvania rally had Republican strategists—and Swifties—thinking that the presidential nominee was melting down.

Trump posted at least 25 times to his Truth Social account Sunday night. In numerous separate posts, he shared A.I. images of Vice President Kamala Harris, accusing the Democrat’s team of sharing a misleading video of Trump’s crowd size at his rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the day before.

Saturday was intended to be a campaign reset, but instead ended up reinforcing that Trump only knows how to personally belittle his political opponents. Jumping off script from what was supposed to be a speech on economic policy, Trump tapped back into some elementary-grade insults for the Democratic nominee, mocking her as “Comrade Kamala” and complaining that her team would use clips from the event that make it look like he’s “rambling, rambling.”

But that same old song and dance wasn’t enough for his supporters, who began to leave the 8,000-person arena before Trump even finished speaking.

Seeing unadulterated images of his own crowd size was apparently enough to send Trump into a spiral, claiming over several posts on Truth Social that Harris’s social media operation had inaccurately portrayed his turnout.

“We had to turn away lots of people yesterday in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, but Comrade Kamala Harris’ Social Media Operation showed empty seats, long before the Rally started, early in the afternoon when, in actuality, we had to turn away 11,500 people!” Trump wrote. “Comrade Kamala is a STONE COLD LOSER, she will FAIL and, if she doesn’t, our Country will cease to exist as we know it, turning into a Communist, Crime Ridden Garbage Dump. November 5th will be the Most Important Date in the History of the U.S.A. It’s as simple as that!…”

That didn’t sit well with political pundits and Republican strategists, who felt the hyperbolic claims and nose-wrinkling urgency made Trump look “nervous.”

“Looks like someone woke up on the gibbering barking panicked side of the bed today,” wrote Lincoln Project senior advisor Jeff Timmer.

But his waning rallies weren’t the only thing on Trump’s mind during his extended social media binge. Bizarrely, Trump also seemed to be in the mood to provoke notoriously litigious pop star Taylor Swift’s notoriously mob-minded fans, sharing an A.I.-generated image of Swift clad in red, white, and blue, posing like Uncle Sam before an American flag emblazoned with the text: “Taylor wants YOU to vote for Donald Trump.”

“I accept!” Trump captioned the image.

Another Swift-related post shared by the former president depicted a group of women marching in “Swifties for Trump” shirts. (The post was labeled satire by its creator.)

“It’s a good thing that Swifties are so cool with people using her image in deep fakes and using AI to make it look like Taylor Swift is doing things she’s not,” posted Republican Representative Jack Kimble. “I’m sure none of them will be mad about this.”

It’s not the first time this summer that Trump has obsessed over Swift. During a closed-door meeting between Trump and House Republicans in June—his first visit to Capitol Hill since before the January 6 insurrection—Trump insisted on discussing the pop phenom, lamenting that she might endorse President Joe Biden while he was still in the race. Days before the meeting, Variety reported that Trump had spoken at length about Swift in a one-on-one interview, describing her as “unusually beautiful.”

Swift has not yet endorsed any candidate in the 2024 election and has been notoriously close-lipped about her political beliefs throughout her career, even through the 2016 presidential election when she was rumored to be a closet Republican. That changed when she sided with Tennessee Democrats in the 2018 midterms against now-Senator Marsha Blackburn. In her 2020 Netflix documentary Miss Americana, Swift said that she didn’t mind getting bad press for railing against Trump, whom she described as a “homophobic racist.”

Donald Trump capped the first week of his campaign’s so-called “reset,” already punctuated with chaotic speeches that veered off topic into personal attacks against Kamala Harris, with yet another chaotic speech that veered off topic into personal attacks.

While Trump initially seemed more interested in staying on script than his previous failed forays, he still couldn’t help but shift his speech on economic issues into immature smears and complaining.

“Joe Biden hates her, okay? Hates her. You don’t mind if I go off teleprompter for a second, do you? Joe Biden hates her,” Trump said. “This was the overthrow of a president. This was an overthrow. They went out, and I spent $100 million fighting Joe Biden.”

Trump proceeded to make several asides, diverting to his same tired lines and some particularly meandering stories. At one point, he caught himself getting off topic.

“They’ll say, ‘He was rambling.’ I don’t ramble. I’m a really smart guy, you know, really smart. I don’t ramble,” Trump rambled.

“Anytime I hit too hard, they say, ‘He was rambling!’ Rambling?” Trump said, incredulous.

No matter how many times his campaign may try to keep its candidate on message, Trump can’t seem to stop revisiting his worn-out attacks against Harris. He once again started talking about her laugh, claiming it was “the laugh of a lunatic.”

Trump also complained again about the photo-illustration of Harris on the cover of Time magazine, which he’d previously said made her look like the “most beautiful actress to ever live.”

Trump now claimed it was because they couldn’t get a good enough picture, and scoffed at the idea that Harris was “beautiful.”

“I am much better looking than her,” Trump said, murmuring, “Much better. Much better.”

“I am a better looking person than Kamala!” Trump shouted, as the crowd cheered. But the enthusiasm of his audience was hardly consistent.

Trump’s long-winded tales lost the crowd. He told a particularly meandering story about French president Emmanuel Macron to a mostly quiet audience. Later, he reminisced about being endorsed by renowned basketball coach Bobby Knight ahead of the 2016 election.

“He endorsed me and Indiana was mine.” Trump said, to some mild clapping.

While the former president’s lame insults may wind up his crowds, even they can’t pretend to follow his winding stories.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz showed off his football coach pep talk skills speaking to a high school football team in western Pennsylvania on Sunday.

At a campaign stop, the former high school teacher and football coach spoke on the field to Aliquippa High School football players, many of whom were likely too young to even vote, and linked the values of the sport to democracy.

“Politics isn’t that much different than this,” said Walz, who helped rebuild the Mankato West Scarlets and led them to victory in 1999. “It’s about setting a future goal and trying to reach it. It’s about doing it with dignity and hard work.”

Walz described the fourth quarter of a game where players have to trust their teammates.

“Our country’s not that different,” he continued. “Our neighbors want to be with you. Our neighbors want to do what’s right. And the more we figure out that we’re in this thing together, and we have more in common than we have separated. We’re going to do a heck of a lot better.”

He urged the students not to turn away from politics, despite political conversations feeling “pretty ugly” and “pretty negative” these days.

That negativity can be seen in many Republicans claiming that Walz is lying about coaching his winning team. One recent social media post was shared 5,000 times before it was deemed misinformation.

Clearly, the Harris campaign has a different understanding of “locker room talk” than its opponents. 

Donald Trump is looking for anything to boost his fortunes as his polls continue to drop, so he’s resorted to using A.I. to claim Taylor Swift and her fans endorsed him.

The former president and convicted felon shared several A.I.-generated photos on Truth Social Sunday, including one showing the pop star dressed like Uncle Sam, pointing forward with the text “Taylor Wants You To Vote For Donald Trump.” The post also included other A.I. photos of women wearing “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts. He captioned the post, “I accept!”

The post contained one photo of a Swift fan with a “Swifties for Trump” T-shirt, which reportedly is legitimate, The Independent reports. However, Swift herself has not made any endorsements in the 2024 election. She has spoken out against Trump in the past and opposed Republican Marsha Blackburn in her run for the U.S. Senate in 2018.

Trump is desperate for Swift’s endorsement, and has made some creepy comments about her appearance, repeatedly calling her “very beautiful.” Privately, some of his supporters earlier this year reportedly called for a “holy war” if she endorsed Joe Biden, and presumably that extends to Kamala Harris.

On social media, Trump’s attempt to gain sympathy from Swifties was quickly dismissed and criticized, with some calling for Swift to take legal action.

Republicans and the right wing have some bizarre views when it comes to Swift, inventing conspiracy theories about her and calling her a “psyop” because they can’t understand her popularity. Her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has fueled many of those conspiracies, with conservatives bewildered over her fans’ new interest in the National Football League.

Recently, Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s comments criticizing “childless cat ladies” drew a large backlash from many, particularly Swift fans, as the pop star is famously a cat person. If Trump thinks that some weak deepfake images will be enough to win over Swift fans after that, he fails to realize that they know him all too well.

J.D. Vance desperately tried to downplay new polls showing Kamala Harris in the lead on Sunday—but he couldn’t back up his outlandish claims.

During an interview on Fox News, host Shannon Bream asked Vance about a New York Times/Siena Poll published Saturday that found Harris was leading Donald Trump among likely voters in Arizona, 50 percent to 45 percent. The poll also found that Harris had passed Trump in North Carolina, leading him 49 percent to 47 percent, and that she had significantly narrowed the former president’s lead in Georgia and Nevada.

“What is the administration doing—the campaign doing with that data, as it comes in?” Bream asked Vance, who is not doing so well in the polls himself. “I mean, these are critical states that you’ve gotta have to have a path to 270. Are there any pivots, are there any, um, you know, reconfiguring of what you’re doing in this strategy? Because you talk about your message—but is it not landing?”

“First of all, the polls tend to radically overstate Democrats, we certainly saw that during the polling of summer of 2020 and summer of 2016. And of course, a lot of those polls were wrong when it came to Election Day,” Vance replied.

“Kamala Harris got a bit of a sugar high a couple of weeks ago, but what we’ve actually seen from our own internal data, Shannon, is that Kamala Harris has already leveled off,” Vance said. “If you talk to insiders inside the Kamala Harris campaign, they’re very worried about where they are.”

By Vance’s account, there was absolutely no reason for the campaign to change course to address Trump’s weakening polls—or the high-energy campaign that caused the shift. Behind the scenes, however, the Trump team hired several new staffers last week from old Trump campaigns, including Trump’s campaign manager from 2016, Corey Lewandowski.

Bream also asked Vance about a national Washington Post/ABC/IPSOS poll published Sunday, which found Harris to have a slight lead nationally. “Those are new numbers, so if you think the momentum is not swinging, or your internal polls are suggesting differently—every other poll that’s been released has shown great momentum in her direction,” Bream said.

“You know, Shannon, I think there are a lot of polls that actually show her stagnating and leveling off,” Vane said, claiming that Washington Post/ABC had been “a wildly inaccurate pollster in the summer of 2020.”

“And look, if you see the numbers that we’re seeing and you actually talk to the American people, I feel extremely confident that we’re gonna be in the right place come November. We can’t worry about polls, we have to run through the finish line and encourage everybody to get out there and vote,” Vance said, but he wasn’t done, he had time to sprinkle in one last conspiracy theory.

“Consistently what you’ve seen in 2016 and 2020 is that the media uses fake polls to drive down Republican turnout and to create dissension and conflict with Republican voters,” Vance said, insisting that the campaign was in a “very, very good spot.”

There is little evidence to suggest that a poll published in August could convince someone not to vote in November. If anything, a positive poll might convince someone not to vote, because they think their preferred candidate is safe, rather than a negative one convincing someone it’s a lost cause.

Since Harris began her meteoric rise in the polls, the Trump campaign has taken to the practice of disseminating “unskewed” polls, which means adjusting poll results based on the difference between election results and recalled votes of respondents, or how they claim to have voted four years ago. Trump’s pollster Tony Fabrizio and data consultant Tim Saler have claimed that new polls understate support for Trump in 2020, and that adjusting according to recalled votes creates a more accurate picture of Trump’s chances. Recalled votes are considered by some to be an unreliable metric.

The Trump campaign appears to have decided that if a new poll doesn’t line up with the recall record, it must be inaccurate. Using this method, the campaign has begun to claim that any poll that doesn’t find Trump in the lead is a lie.

The Democratic National Convention started off with a bang Sunday night, literally branding Trump Tower Chicago in lit-up phrases that Donald Trump isn’t likely to be too happy about.

Locals noticed projections on the side of the 96-floor glass scraper that included “Trump-Vance: Out For Themselves,” as well as “Trump-Vance: ‘Weird as Hell,’” “Harris-Walz: Fighting for You,” and “Project 2025 HQ.”

DNC leadership took responsibility for the troll, confirming to Rolling Stone that the group had rented a room across from the massive hotel and set up a high powered projector in order to accomplish the prank.

“He’s a grifter and nothing we said wasn’t the truth,” Abhi Rahman, deputy communications director for the Democratic National Committee, told the Daily Beast.

“Tonight, everyone is seeing a preview of the contrast that will take center stage this week throughout the Democratic National Convention,” Rahman said in a statement that heavily criticized Project 2025. “Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz have proven records of delivering for working families, and now, they’re running to lead our country into a brighter future.”

But Trump didn’t seem to notice the prank by Monday morning, instead continuing to harp on calling Democrats a lot of socialists and communists.

“The Radical Left protesters in Chicago are going after the Democrat Party because the know they are weak and ready to break into a full blown party of Socialism or, if they really do their job, and with a little bit of luck, the Communist Party of the United States of America,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They are already very close and, having a Marxist trained and believing President whose father is a Marxist professor, Comrade Kamala Harris, stranger things have happened! November 5th, 2024, will be the most important day in the history of our Country. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

The former chair of the Fulton County Board of Elections filed an ethics complaint Friday against three of the Georgia State Election Board’s members, accusing them of breaking the law in their efforts to help Donald Trump disrupt the presidential election. 

In the complaint addressed to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, former Chair Cathy Woolard alleged that board members Rick Jeffares, Janice Johnston, and Janelle King had violated the ethics code by failing to follow state law and violating the public’s trust. Through their efforts to  make significant changes to the rules governing Georgia’s elections, they had “at minimum created the appearance that their actions are intended to further their own political preferences,” Woodlard wrote.

Woolard described an instance on July 12, when Jeffares, Johnston, and King had hurriedly organized a private meeting, away from the public and the two other board members, to pass two election rules pitched by Georgia Republican Party Chair Jeff Koons.The first rule required county election boards to post daily ballot counts online, and the second increased the number of partisan monitors during the vote-counting process. Woolard argued that their quorum-lacking rendezvous that day had violated the Open Meetings Act, which requires meetings to be open to the public and for all board members to be given due notice. 

Woolard noted that the same day, Cleta Mitchell, a Trump ally and staunch election denier, posted on X saying, “There are now 3 great members of the GA State Election Board—support them. They are fighting hard for us!!! The Dems + Kemp + Raffensperger + Carr are fighting our great SEB Members. Fight back!” 

Last week, the Georgia State Election board voted 3-2 in favor of a new rule, which required a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results, making it significantly easier for county election officials to delay or refuse certification of election results in November. 

“This type of regulation is unprecedented nationally, but it is consistent with a broader strategy among Trump allies to lay the groundwork for refusing to certify presidential election results if he loses in November,” wrote Woolard. 

The next day, Johnston moved to reopen a complaint into the administration of the 2020 election in Fulton County, which Woolard said had been closed in May, before Johnston had been appointed to the board. The state attorney general had advised them not to reopen the fully adjudicated case, but Johnston allegedly indicated she had received outside counsel on the legality of reopening the case. 

That day, Trump reposted a video of the board meeting on Truth Social and called for the attorney general to take action on the reopened complaint into Fulton County. Trump wrote, “We can’t let this happen again. WE MUST WIN GEORGIA IN 2024!!!”

Woolard noted that Trump named the three members specifically during his rally in Atlanta, Georgia, earlier this month. While speaking to the audience of thousands, Trump called the trio “pitbulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory.”

“The members have done nothing to dispel that appearance of impropriety, instead receiving a standing ovation at a Trump rally and openly discussing a position in the Trump administration,” Woolard wrote. “Taken together, these actions pose a serious risk of creating confusion about the rules governing the rapidly approaching election and undermining voter confidence in the integrity of Georgia’s elections.”

Woolard also alleged that Jeffares had stated that he was angling for a position in a potential Trump administration. Jeffares told The Guardian that, when speaking to a former Trump campaign adviser, he’d said, “[I]f y’all can’t figure out who you want to be the EPA director for the south-east, I’d like to have it.”

Woolard served as the election board chair from September 2021 to June 2023. When her replacement, Patrise Perkins-Hooker, resigned in April, Woolard stepped in as interim chair to assist with the Georgia primary elections. While some were hopeful she would hold the position until after the general election, Woolard submitted her own resignation on July 3, writing that “it is time for someone who can serve through the fall elections take the reins.”

Government ethics watchdog American Oversight filed a lawsuit against the board in July, similarly accusing the trio of violating Georgia’s Open Meetings Act. Since 2020, Georgia has had the highest number of certification refusals anywhere in the country—and remains the likely epicenter for Trump’s claims of election fraud in 2024. A report from American Doom found that Georgia had at least twenty-two people who’d pushed election denying conspiracy theorists employed as election officials—including two on its board of elections.