AOC and Entire Squad Protest DNC Rejection of Palestinian Speaker

Democratic members of the Squad joined an Uncommitted movement sit-in outside the Democratic National Convention, protesting organizers’ decision to reject a Palestinian speaker on the convention stage.

The protest began Wednesday evening, after DNC organizers rejected the Uncommitted movement’s request for a Palestinian speaker on stage, and continued into Thursday morning.

Those sitting outside the United Center were joined by sympathetic Squad members, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who spoke at the first night of the convention.

“I think it is critically important for us to send this message of shared humanity,” said Ocasio-Cortez via FaceTime, emphasizing that the request is “a basic thing to ask for.”

On Wednesday night, Representative Ilhan Omar joined the demonstration in person, embracing protesters, as other politicians called in.

“To still speak up in your grief in the face of people who would essentially spit in your face and to do it anyway is a love that some people will never understand,” said Representative Summer Lee, who also joined the encampment Wednesday night.

On Thursday, Representative Rashida Tlaib joined the Uncommitted movement’s press conference via FaceTime, stating that protesters “shouldn’t have to beg” for a Palestinian voice to be heard.

Outed Squad members Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman also promoted the sit-in on social media. “Michelle Obama implored us all to do something. I’m imploring our party to do better,” wrote Bush. On Thursday afternoon, Bush joined protesters in person, declaring, “We need a Palestinian American to speak from that stage.”

Here is the speech that the Uncommitted movement wanted to give to the convention.

This story has been updated.

J.D. Vance made another awkward, slightly sinister appearance Thursday at a press conference in Valdosta, Georgia.

“First of all, if it’s a fake news anchor, I’d appreciate y’all just letting them ask their question, it’s OK,” Vance joked to the crowd. “We can run them out of town after they ask their question.” There were mild laughs, but Vance’s joke hit a dark note as the running mate of the guy who once called the American press the “enemy of the people.”

The vice presidential candidate noted that he was “just kidding,” but the grim joke isn’t a first for Vance, who regularly makes awkward, often hostile remarks about the press. Earlier this week, he visited a deli in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and made a similar joke. 

“You have any food here you really don’t like? We’ll take some and feed it to the journalists on the plane,” Vance quipped, according to Reese Gorman, a reporter for NOTUS. 

It should hardly come as a surprise that Vance has a certain resentment toward the press, as they’re the ones telling everyone just how weird he actually is. 

Later, Vance was asked about Trump’s immigration plan, which he has promised will be the largest deportation plan in history. 

“As a husband of someone who is a daughter of immigrants, how do you look at the deportation plan that Trump will put in place? Specifically the detention of families and children,” one reporter asked. 

“Let me say three things about this,” Vance replied. “First, I am married to the daughter of immigrants to this country, I am married to the daughter of legal immigrants to this country—people who respected the country enough to follow the rules before they came.”

Beside the strange fact that Vance felt it was necessary to clarify his family member’s immigration status, the Ohio senator clearly imagines that it is a lack of respect that draws immigrants from around the world to the U.S. border, rather than any of the actual root causes of immigration.

“You can’t reward people for breaking the laws,” Vance continued, without a trace of irony for his rule-breaking running mate, who expects to be rewarded with the presidency in November.  

To top the whole thing off, as Vance walked away from the podium, the Guns N’ Roses cover of Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die” started playing—not quite an anthem of political victory, but one of disillusionment. 

Donald Trump is losing his grasp on a key demographic.

A poll published Wednesday revealed that the Republican presidential nominee is bleeding support from older voters—historically the voting bloc most likely to show up at the polls—because they find him to be in “very poor” health.

The University of New Hampshire poll surveyed residents in Vermont, where Trump won roughly 30 percent of the vote in 2016 and 2020. If the election were held today, 27 percent of the respondents said that they would vote for Trump, while 67 percent said they would elect Kamala Harris.

But underneath the favorability odds were deep concerns about Trump’s physical and mental condition. The poll found that 61 percent of voters aged 65 and older in Vermont found Trump’s physical and mental fitness to be “very poor.” Other age demographics were slightly less bleak about Trump’s health, with 58 percent of 50- to 64-year-olds identifying Trump as in “very poor” health, 40 percent of 35- to 49-year-olds, and just 37 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds.

Added up, half of the 934 respondents identified Trump’s physical and mental health as “very poor.” Just 14 percent described his health as “very good,” while 12 percent described his health as simply “good.”

Harris’s mental and physical fitness report was much more optimistic from the Green Mountain State. Approximately 62 percent of voters described Harris’s health as “very good,” with an additional 16 percent describing it as “good.” Only six percent found Harris’s health to be “very poor.”

Democratic National Convention organizers are facing criticism from their own party after refusing to allow any Palestinian speaker or member of the Uncommitted movement speaking time on the convention stage.

On Wednesday, Jon Polin and his wife Rachel Goldberg-Polin spoke to DNC delegates about their son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who is being held captive in Gaza.

“In our Jewish tradition, we say ‘kol adam olam um lo’o,’ every person is an entire universe,” Polin said. “We must save all these universes. In an inflamed Middle East, we know the one thing that can most immediately release pressure and bring hope to the entire region, a deal that brings this diverse group of 109 hostages home and ends the suffering of the innocent civilians in Gaza. The time is now.”

But little else has been said on the convention stage about Palestinian civilians suffering from Israel’s brutal war on Gaza. Muslim Women for Harris-Walz announced they would disband after learning of the DNC’s rejection of a Palestinian speaker. The Uncommitted movement also launched a sit-in protest on Thursday to demand a Palestinian speaker be included.

The sit-in has received support from vocal pro-Palestine Democrats, including Squad members Representatives Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley. But it’s not just the Squad. Their demands have also spread to other Democrats, including convention speakers. And the list keeps growing:

• Representative Greg Casar
• Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison
• Representative Maxwell Frost
• Representative Val Hoyle
• Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson
• Representative Ro Khanna
• Representative Mark Pocan
• Representative Delia Ramirez

Israel’s war has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, including nearly 16,500 children. The Uncommitted delegates represent Democrats who support the party but want action to end the war, including an arms embargo against Israel, and they are only asking for a speaker to voice their concerns to the convention. Their speaker recommendations were pro-Harris and would have their remarks vetted ahead of time. 

“We talked to the DNC, we offered options, we said we’ll identify someone who is willing to express support for Vice President Harris … we did everything right, you know?” delegate Abbas Alawieh told Mother Jones. The question is, does anyone in the Harris campaign even care?

Elon Musk’s X is apparently getting money from some pretty shady people.

A federal judge ordered Tuesday that a list of investors who helped fund Musk’s $44 billion takeover of X, formerly Twitter, in October 2022 be unsealed. Buried among the lengthy list of nearly 100 investors are several particularly troubling figures.

One entity listed is Sean Combs Capital, LLC—better known as Sean “Diddy” Combs, the rapper who has been accused of rape, assault, forcible drugging, and even implicated in a sex trafficking operation.

In the early days of his X takeover, Musk once touted his relationship with Combs to push back on another investor’s concern about increasing racism on the social media platform.

In the forthcoming book Character Limit by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, Detavio Samuels, the CEO of the media company Revolt, voiced his concerns about anti-Black speech being emboldened on X.

“As you continue down the path that you’re going, I really recommend that you have conversations with this specific community, and we make sure that whatever solutions are created are solutions that make them feel safe and in a welcoming space,” Samuels said.

While Musk said he wanted to make sure people were comfortable, he thought that Samuels might be comforted to hear that one of his high-profile Black friends had also invested in Musk’s social media site. “I don’t know if you know this, but Puff is an investor in Twitter,” Musk said, using Combs’s nickname. “You know, he’s a good friend of mine, we text a lot.”

The list also includes several Silicon Valley entities run by billionaires like Musk himself and backing Donald Trump in the 2024 election.

One of the first names included is Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm run by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who recently announced that they were backing Trump in 2024. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the big issues that people care about,” Andreessen claimed, making clear that he was ignoring Trump’s platform on immigration and abortion, for a more favorable view on issues like crypto—in which Andreessen and Horowitz claim to be some of the world’s largest investors.

Also on the list is Sequoia Capital, run by Douglas Leone and Shaun Maguire, who donated a whopping $1 million and $500,000 respectively to Musk’s pro-Trump super PAC, the America PAC, which is currently under investigation for the shady way it was collecting voter information.

Another investor is 8VC, a venture capitalist firm run by Joe Lonsdale, who also donated $1 million to Musk’s PAC in June. Lonsdale is a co-founder of intelligence contractor and data analysis platform Palantir, which was also headed by Peter Thiel. While it’s hardly surprising that Musk’s billionaire buddies are invested in his social media company, it’s clear that X is being heavily underwritten by the same individuals funding Trump’s campaign.

Also included on the list of investors is Saudi Prince Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud, who has long had a stake in the social media company. In 2015, bin Talal owned 5.2 percent of Twitter, more than the company’s co-founder Jack Dorsey.

In November 2017, bin Talal was arrested as part of a sweeping “anti-corruption” purge that forced numerous wealthy Saudis and members of the royal family to sign over their assets to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, an autocratic dictator with no tolerance for dissent. This sparked major concerns that Twitter was being used by the Saudi government to surveil its own citizens.

After Musk’s takeover, bin Talal and Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding Company maintained their ownership of X shares valued at $1.89 billion, making them jointly the company’s second-largest investors, according to Al Jazeera.

Another notable entity is the Pershing Square Foundation, which is headed by Bill Ackman, the CEO of the giant hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management. Last year, Ackman, a staunch Zionist who funded violent pro-Israel counterprotesters on college campuses, spearheaded the campaign to see Harvard’s President Claudine Gay removed from her seat.

Earlier this week, it was reported that the debt on Musk’s $13 billion in loans borrowed from several banks in order to buy X was never off-loaded from these banks’ balance sheets, leaving his debt “hung” in industry terms. Not only is X the longest-lasting hung deal since the 2008 financial crisis, it’s also reportedly one of the biggest. While the banks have been able to collect a hefty interest, it’s unclear how Musk will ever repay the principal if X continues on its current trajectory.

The internet fell in love with vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s son Gus on the third night of the Democratic National Convention after the neurodivergent 17-year-old started tearing up seeing his father on stage.

But not everybody seemed to be on board the love train. Instead, the so-called “party of family values” decided to take potshots at the emotional high schooler.

“Talk about weird …” posted conservative media pundit Ann Coulter, sharing an article about Gus.

“Walz’ kid is acting just like his dad! BIZARRE!” wrote X user ProudArmyBrat.

Failed MAGA congressional candidates also got in on the action, outright mocking a kid with a learning disability.

“Tim Walz stupid crying son isn’t the flex the left thinks it is,” Mike Crispi, chairman of the America First Republicans of New Jersey, wrote in a since-deleted post on X. “You raised your kid to be a puffy beta male. Congrats.”

Conservatives also spent the week mocking Vice President Kamala Harris’s stepdaughter, Ella Emhoff, for her outfit the first night of the convention, which consisted of a camouflage Harris-Walz merch hat and a sleeveless, caped gown that showed off her tattoos. And on Thursday, Donald Trump ally and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell got into (and badly lost) an argument with 12-year-old content creator Knowa De Brasco.

Meanwhile, MAGA Republicans are embracing something that is objectively weird: Trumpy Trout, an orange, fish-head version of the former president with a matching toupee.

“I am the hugely, bigliest fish in the pond,” the open-lipped animatronic says in a very real advertisement reportedly airing on Newsmax.

Donald Trump threw out a claim on Fox & Friends Thursday morning that the show hastily corrected.

According to Trump, President Joe Biden “sent comrade Kamala to see Putin in Russia three days before the attack [on Ukraine],” falsely claiming that it was a “little-known fact” that the “press doesn’t want to talk about.”

Trump didn’t stop there, saying that in this meeting, Harris “gave her case” to Putin, who still attacked Ukraine days later.

“He laughed at her,” Trump said. “He thought she was a joke. Now he’s really laughing when he sees her. Can you imagine her negotiating with President Xi of China, with Kim Jong Un of North Korea? The whole thing is like we’re living in a fantasy land.”

After the interview, host Brian Kilmeade quickly tried to correct Trump’s comments.

“Just as a quick clarification, we don’t have confirmation that the vice president went to Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin,” Kilmeade said. “I know she went over to Europe right before the incursion when Russia invaded Ukraine, and it’s a war that’s still going on right now.”

In true Fox News fashion, one of Kilmeade’s colleagues tried to defend Trump, claiming to have heard about the meeting.

“I’ve heard that said a lot,” Ainsley Earhardt said to Kilmeade. “You don’t have confirmation that that’s true?”

“No,” Kilmeade replied. “I don’t think that—I don’t know if the vice president ever met Vladimir Putin.”

In reality, Harris traveled to the Munich Security Conference in Germany before the 2022 invasion, but Putin did not attend. Instead, she met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. And, according to a Russian spokesperson, it’s unclear whether Harris and Putin have ever met at all.

While it’s no surprise that Trump would make something up, it is unusual to see Fox News correcting him, even after the fact, considering the network’s efforts to help his campaign. Even this week, they let Maria Bartiromo repeat lies about noncitizens voting. Maybe in Trump’s case, they’re starting to worry about his cognitive decline.

Former television star Donald Trump might be heartbroken to learn this: His Republican National Convention television ratings pale in comparison to the numbers coming out of the Democratic National Convention.

The number of viewers tuning into the DNC night after night continue to beat out the television ratings from the Republican Convention in Milwaukee last month.

Night one of the DNC reached an average of 20 million viewers, versus the 18 million who watched night one of the RNC. The disparity on night two was even more extreme, with 20.8 million viewers tuning in to the DNC as Barack and Michelle Obama spoke, while only 14.8 million watched the RNC with keynote speakers Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley.

Even Fox News couldn’t get its fan base to care. While over 5.1 million people watched the DNC’s late night speeches on Tuesday, Fox News averaged a measly 1.7 million viewers.

Democrats also continue to stream on Twitch, X, Amazon Prime Video, as well as vertically on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Roughly one-third of young Americans under 30 say they regularly watch their news vertically on TikTok.

Data from the third and fourth night of the DNC is still to come—but meanwhile, it’s almost certain Trump is having a full-blown panic attack behind closed doors.

Donald Trump had a Freudian slip on live TV Thursday while discussing President Joe Biden’s administration.

In the middle of complaining about Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s foreign policy during a phone interview with Fox News, the Republican presidential nominee accidentally seemed to throw them a huge compliment.

“Most importantly, they’ve made our country very safe,” Trump said. “And internationally, they’ve made it even more safe!”

But the bombastic populist regained his linguistic footing shortly afterwards.

“As bad as—when you Chicago and the cities—as bad as they are, much worse internationally. We’re going to end up in World War III because she’s incompetent,” Trump continued. “Biden sent her—Russia would have never happened with Ukraine if I were president. Israel, the attack on Israel, would have never happened. Iran had no money, they had no money to give to Hamas or Hezbollah.”

Then, the interview took a turn for the worse.

“Let me tell you a little-known fact that the press doesn’t want to talk about,” Trump told the news outlet. “Biden sent, I call her Comrade Kamala, sent comrade Kamala to see Putin in Russia three days before the attack. She went, she said, she gave her case, he attacked three days later.”

That last point ushered an immediate fact-check by the station, with Fox News co-host Brian Kilmeade clarifying that there was zero evidence for Trump’s story about Harris.

“Just as a quick clarification, we don’t have confirmation that the vice president went to Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin,” Kilmeade said. “I know she went over to Europe right before the incursion when Russia invaded Ukraine, and it’s a war that’s still going on right now.”

Trump has been panicking since Harris was announced as the Democrats’ presidential nominee. Since then, he has wavered on backing out of debates against her, attacked her personally, and has completely reprogrammed his campaign strategy, downsizing from large, boisterous rallies to small, supposedly narrowly focused pressers.

All the while, Trump’s numbers have plummeted. The Republican nominee has even lost some of his staunchest supporters, including white supremacists, with alt-right political pundit Nick Fuentes pulling his endorsement from Trump earlier this month under the belief that his presidential campaign is headed for a “catastrophic loss.”

Kamala Harris is beginning to face the consequences of not pushing for a Palestinian American speaker at the Democratic National Convention, amid widespread backlash to Israel’s deadly U.S.-backed military campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 40,000 people.

Muslim Women for Harris-Walz announced late Wednesday that it would disband after members of the Uncommitted delegation at the DNC were notified that Harris’s team had denied their many requests to have a Palestinian American speaker appear on the main stage.

“We cannot in good conscience, continue Muslim Women for Harris-Walz, in light of this new information from the Uncommitted movement that VP Harris’ team declined their request to have a Palestinian American speaker take the stage at the DNC,” the group said in a statement.

“The family of the Israeli Hostage that was on the stage tonight, has shown more empathy towards Palestinian American speakers than our candidate or the DNC has,” the statement said. “This is a terrible message to send to Democrats. Palestinians have a right to speak about Palestine.”

Earlier Wednesday, Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg, the parents of 23-year-old Israeli American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, had been invited to speak from the main stage, making an emotional plea for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and the safe return of the remaining hostages. “There is a surplus of agony on all sides of the tragic conflict in the Middle East and a competition of pain,” Polin said. “There are no winners.”

In a statement posted to X, the Uncommitted Movement, which organized massive “uncommitted” votes during the Democratic primaries, wrote that they supported the decision to have the family of an Israeli hostage speak, and asked the DNC “to reject a hierarchy of human value by ensuring Palestinian voices are heard on the main stage.”

“Excluding a Palestinian speaker betrays the party’s commitment in our platform to valuing Israelis and Palestinian lives equally. Vice President Harris must unite this party with a vision that fights for everyone, including Palestinians,” the statement said.

The 30 Uncommitted delegates in attendance at the DNC began a sit-in outside of the convention center Wednesday night, requesting that Harris’s team reconsider their decision. Representative Ilhan Omar sat with them, and Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez called in via FaceTime to lend her support, although earlier this week, she had neglected to advocate for Palestinians during her rousing primetime speech.

The United Auto Workers, which has endorsed Harris, posted a statement to X Thursday, urging Harris’s team to reverse course on its decision. “If we want the war in Gaza to end, we can’t put our heads in the sand or ignore the voices of the Palestinian Americans in the Democratic Party,” the statement said. “If we want peace, if we want real democracy, and if we want to win this election, the Democratic Party must allow a Palestinian American speaker to be heard from the DNC stage tonight.”

Earlier this week, the Uncommitted Movement was invited to host a panel discussion about Palestinian human rights at the DNC, the first time such an event has happened. At the time, the group thanked the DNC and reiterated a request that Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a Palestinian American pediatric physician who has been working in Gaza throughout Israel’s assault, should be invited to speak from the convention’s main stage.

Inside the United Center, pro-Palestinian speech has been entirely absent, and attempts to protest have been repeatedly quashed. On Monday, several members of the Florida delegation dropped a banner that read “Stop Arming Israel” during Joe Biden’s speech but were blocked and even hit with signs by others standing around them. The protesters were then escorted out of the main room. Outside the convention center, more than 2,000 pro-Palestinian protesters marched in Chicago for a third day, after violent clashes with the police outside of the Israeli consulate.

“The word Palestine is not allowed inside the Democratic National Convention. The word cease-fire has barely been uttered,” said Rabbi Brant Rosen, a founder of the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council, Wednesday night. “This is a Hollywood-style coronation of a candidate. They assume they are entitled to our votes, but they are not entitled to our votes.”

As the DNC enters its fourth and final day Thursday, the clock is ticking on Harris’s team to reverse its decision to exclude Palestinians from its big tent.