Trump’s women’s issue, Obama’s tough talk & Bush’s ceasefire tweet
Plus: News and notes on Harris’s Black men’s agenda, and reads on the future of progressive economics, why local sheriffs are so powerful and when you should get your flu shot.
👋🏾 Hi, hey, hello! Welcome back to Once Upon a Hill. I forgot to mention in last Thursday’s letter that I intended to take yesterday off in observance of Indigenous Peoples’ Day so I’m in your inboxes today instead.
The general election is in three weeks. Vice President Kamala Harris is blitzing the Blue Wall battlegrounds while former President Donald Trump is turning his town halls into impromptu concerts. In addition to campaign events in Pennsylvania, Detroit and Wisconsin this week, she held interviews with Roland Martin Unfiltered and The Shade Room, where she discussed housing, health care, education, voting and civil rights, and criminal justice reform. Charlemagne tha God just interviewed Harris live for his iHeart radio show. And she’ll meet with Black entrepreneurs today in Detroit to bookend the campaign’s ongoing outreach to Black voters (more on that in a second).
For tonight’s headliner, I write about the cold water Georgia’s Democratic senators threw this morning on Trump ahead of the pre-taped all-women town hall Fox News will air with him tomorrow—an acknowledgment that his abortion record and all-around vulgar style have perhaps stretched the gender gap too wide. But first things first…
On Harris’s Black men’s agenda
The Harris campaign on Monday released an economic plan focused on Black men as Vice President Harris works to shore up support from a group characterized throughout the election cycle as Trump-curious and who feels undervalued by the Democratic Party.
I encourage you to read the agenda in full, but among the toplines is a proposal to provide one million fully forgivable loans up to $20,000 to Black entrepreneurs to start a business and a national equity initiative to address health challenges that disproportionately affect Black men, including sickle cell disease, diabetes, mental health and prostate cancer. It also would create feeder education, training and mentorship programs for high-demand industries, including public education. And it would legalize recreational marijuana while addressing the racial disparities that marginalize Black people from accessing the economic benefits of the cannabis industry.
The agenda also serves as another tool for the Harris campaign to address the chasm between what Trump says he has done and will do for the Black community and his actual record, which includes the millions of Black men who lost their jobs, businesses, and health insurance during the Trump administration as the former president denied the severity of COVID-19. His history of racial discrimination and divisive rhetoric towards Black protestors and nations further demonstrates his hostility to the community. And if re-elected, he plans to cut funding for urban education, bring back stop-and-frisk practices, and raise costs for Black families through tariffs on exported goods that threaten to erase financial gains and job growth for Black men.
Harris’s plan also promises to regulate cryptocurrency and other digital assets to protect Black men who invest in alternative forms of payment that use encryption algorithms. The online response from Black Twitter to the policy ranged between mockery and confusion. But as the Harris campaign noted, more than 20 percent of Black Americans own or have owned cryptocurrency assets. I’d been reading about and hearing from Black men who said their support for Trump stemmed from his crypto policy, which would block the Federal Reserve from creating its own digital currency and create an advisory council, so much in recent weeks that I texted a Democratic insider last week to see if the party was taking the issue as seriously as young Black men online seemed to be. I found my answer in Harris’s agenda.
Ultimately, this is the political process at work. Black men, like other cornerstones of the Democratic base, recognize their value in this election and have transformed it into concrete policy commitments from a candidate who says she isn’t taking any for granted and is campaigning like it. Of course, none of this guarantees Trump won’t increase his share of Black male support from 2020 to 2024, but in a margin-of-error race, Harris can’t afford not to try to appeal to this persuadable voting bloc.
On the Obama of it all
The release of Harris’s Black men’s agenda followed a days-long public conversation online about comments former President Barack Obama made about Black men and who may be considering sitting out or voting for Trump in the upcoming election.
“Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that,” Obama said during a stop at a Harris-Walz campaign field office in Pittsburgh last week.
The comments sparked a debate about the role misogyny plays within the Black community and whether Obama’s lecturer-in-chief schtick he reprised throughout his two terms as president elicited the appropriate tone. Despite the firestorm, the reality is that Obama and former President Bill Clinton, who recently stumped for Harris in Georgia—are still two of the most effective surrogates on the Democratic bench.
“He replicated what Bill Clinton did, which hasn’t been done since,” a Democratic operative told me about Obama. “He built a multiracial, multigenerational coalition for victory. He’s a Black guy who resonates with white people of all incomes, ages and backgrounds. He can speak to them in a way that works, particularly white women. And of course, he drives the energy with Black folks and young people.”
On Cori Bush’s ceasefire tweet
As the election nears and the war in Gaza rages on with no end in sight, the Biden administration’s Israel policy remains a political and cultural flashpoint. Last Thursday, three days after the anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) marked one year since White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre described calls from Bush and other House progressives for a ceasefire in Gaza as “repugnant” and “disgraceful.” Bush added that she had yet to receive an apology from the White House while characterizing her position as official administration policy.
To be clear, Bush and her colleagues have demanded an immediate and unconditional ceasefire and for the US to stop sending Israel weapons for the war. At the same time, the administration supports the three-phase peace plan that Biden outlined in May, which requires the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gazan cities, increased humanitarian aid and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Hamas returning some of the hostages and captured Israeli soldiers.
I’m told the congresswoman and her office have been in communication with the White House since Oct. 7, sent numerous letters and pushed the Biden administration to withhold military funding from the war in Gaza. In February, a week before the State of the Union, Reps. Bush and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), the only Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress, requested in a letter a meeting with Biden ahead of Israel’s then-planned invasion of Rafah. The request, which was documented in a press conference the same day the members sent their letter, went unanswered.
The White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment on whether the administration agreed with Rep. Bush’s tweet characterizing her and the Squad’s call for an immediate ceasefire as official White House policy and if it apologized for or regretted the words Jean-Pierre used to describe the members’ demands.
Bush, who defeated a 10-term incumbent in 2020 to become the first Black woman to represent Missouri in Congress, lost the Democratic primary for her seat in August to St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell under the weight of millions of dollars from the pro-Israel lobby to unseat her.
I was curious if she planned to continue her advocacy after her term ends in January, and she told me in a statement that the issue didn’t start for her as a member of Congress and that she would continue championing issues of human rights and equal rights for all people, including Palestinians.
“This violence must end, and until that happens I will continue advocating for a ceasefire, an arms embargo, and Palestinian rights and self-determination,” Bush told me in a statement. “My commitment to justice for all marginalized people is unwavering, and whether inside or outside of traditional political spaces like Congress, I will keep pushing for real, transformative change rooted in equity, dignity, peace and liberation for all.”
Now, back to tomorrow’s Trump town hall in Georgia…
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