All posts tagged: Kamala Harris

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani launches Twitch show like FDR fireside chats

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani launches Twitch show like FDR fireside chats

Published by Sam Flores

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks alongside New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch (L) during a news conference at Gracie Mansion in New York City on March 9, 2026. Leonardo Munoz | AFP | Getty Images The fireside chat is getting a livestream reboot. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose meteoric rise to City Hall was powered in large part from his social media moxie, launched a recurring Twitch series Thursday called “Talk With the People,” where he will answer questions from New Yorkers in real time on a platform better known for gaming than government. The show will also be simulcast across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, X and a host of other social media platforms, the mayor’s office said. “With the launch of ‘Talk with the People,’ we’re bringing City Hall directly to the platforms where New Yorkers already spend their time,” Mamdani said in a statement. During Mamdani’s run for mayor, he leaned heavily on social media videos, online explainers and appearances outside traditional political media to reach younger voters and discuss …

Why Kamala Harris’s Foiled Joe Rogan Interview Still Looms Large for Democrats

Why Kamala Harris’s Foiled Joe Rogan Interview Still Looms Large for Democrats

Published by Sam Flores

A representative for Harris referred V.F. to her comments on the Rogan dust-up in her recent book 107 Days. “Even though most of my team thought doing the interview at all was a gamble, and others bluntly argued it was a bad idea, I really wanted to do it,” Harris wrote, adding that it “came as a surprise” when her campaign found out that Rogan was interviewing Trump on a day that his team had described to hers as a personal day. Addressing the claim on his podcast, Rogan has said, “we just didn’t tell you that Trump was coming on” and that Harris “never agreed to do the show.” Representatives for the podcaster didn’t immediately return requests for comment. Flaherty, like so many Democrats in the aftermath of the election, has been reflecting on the nature of the modern attention economy, and what they could do to better harness it in the future. “Successful content on the internet is a reflection of an audience that already exists,” he says, “Joe Rogan is Joe Rogan …

Milken-adjacent Power100 aims to reclaim the finance DEI narrative

Milken-adjacent Power100 aims to reclaim the finance DEI narrative

Published by Sam Flores

CEO Jacob Walthour, Kourtney Gibson and The 49th Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris onstage at the 2026 Power100 Honoree Dinner at Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel on May 3, 2026 in Beverly Hills, California. Arnold Turner | Getty Images The Power100 gathering on the sidelines of the Milken Institute Global Conference took on a different tone this year as its diverse leaders in finance attendees fight to reclaim the narrative about people of color and women. “We are trying to show the world what success looks like,” said Jacob Walthour, co-founder of Power100 and founder and CEO of Blueprint Capital. “And over the course of the last year, what success looks like has been redefined in a way that has not been respectful and not truthful about the contributions of women and people of color.” President Donald Trump, who campaigned on and speaks often about rolling back diversity, equity and inclusion measures in both the federal government and the private sector, was not mentioned at the conference, but the impact of …

7 takeaways from marathon Mandelson vetting hearing – POLITICO

7 takeaways from marathon Mandelson vetting hearing – POLITICO

Published by Sam Flores

Early in the hearing, McSweeney told MPs that he “didn’t feel” he had got the whole truth back from Mandelson in those three answers. This would be political dynamite, given Starmer pressed ahead anyway. But later in the hearing, McSweeney corrected himself — saying he acquired these doubts in September, after it emerged Mandelson had been better friends with Epstein than he let on (“it was like a knife through my soul”). “I didn’t think he had lied [at the time]. I thought he had told the truth, and that was the basis of which I thought we were going ahead,” said McSweeney. “But I also thought if I was wrong, if he had been lying … that might be picked up at [developed vetting].” In other words, each part of the system was relying on the other to make a judgment call. Barton, too, said he was “worried” about Mandelson’s Epstein links and expressed reservations to No. 10 National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell, but added: “There was no space or avenue or mechanism for …

Trump’s lack of focus on economy spooks Republicans in 2026 election

Trump’s lack of focus on economy spooks Republicans in 2026 election

Published by Sam Flores

US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters next to a Doordash delivery worker outside the Oval Office at the White House, in Washington, DC, April 13, 2026. Brendan Smialowski | Afp | Getty Images Over the span of four days earlier this month, President Donald Trump posted to his Truth Social account about his proposed triumphal arch, ballroom construction, the Iran war, a UFC fight at the White House and Bruce Springsteen’s alleged plastic surgery. He also posted (and later deleted) an AI-generated photo of himself as Jesus, on the heels of a screed aimed at Pope Leo XIV, who Trump said “should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.” What’s absent for long stretches in the president’s social media presence and from his discourse more generally of late is the economy — an issue Trump rode to the White House in 2016 and 2024. “Trump’s original deal with the American people was ‘I’m a boorish lout …

Democratic contenders, MAGA heirs emerge

Democratic contenders, MAGA heirs emerge

Published by Sam Flores

The shadow primary for the next presidential race is already underway as both parties ramp up this year’s midterm fight.  Potential Democratic contenders, from established names to rising stars, are openly weighing 2028 bids, signaling a wide-open field as their base searches for a new standard-bearer. Several top names, including former Vice President Kamala Harris, addressed the possibility at the National Action Network (NAN) conference last week as they pitched visions for their party’s future.  Across the aisle, Vice President Vance is positioned as the MAGA movement’s heir apparent, but recent polling and President Trump have suggested that Secretary of State Marco Rubio could be the successor, stoking questions about where the GOP base will go after more than a decade of Trump dominating party politics.  Here is The Hill’s latest roundup of the top 2028 presidential hopefuls: Democratic comeback bids Harris, who ran in 2020 and became the party’s pick in 2024, has remained at the fore of Democratic polling and chatter about who will lead the party in 2028 — and she’s openly admitted to considering a comeback bid. “Listen, …

What Tuesday’s elections tell us about the ‘blue wave’ coming — and why Trump should be worried

What Tuesday’s elections tell us about the ‘blue wave’ coming — and why Trump should be worried

Published by Sam Flores

While much of the world, let alone Washington, waited to see whether Donald Trump would carry out his pledge to make Iran’s civilization “die” before the president ultimately backed down from his threat, political observers noticed a different but no less earth-shattering storm brewing closer to home this week — one that could impact the Republicans’ hold on both houses of Congress. Georgia and Wisconsin both held elections on Tuesday evening — while the world was digesting Trump’s latest threats to send Iran “back to the Stone Ages” — that showed that the swing states, both of which voted for him in 2016 and 2024, are trending leftward. Down south, Republican Clay Fuller won the runoff race to fill Marjorie Taylor Greene’s old seat in Georgia’s 14th congressional district. Trump endorsed Fuller and he inevitably will be much more of a loyalist than was Greene, who broke with the president over the Epstein files and other matters before her resignation. But that does not tell the full story. In 2024, Greene won the district by …

Iran-induced fertilizer shortage threatens Republicans in farm states

Iran-induced fertilizer shortage threatens Republicans in farm states

Published by Sam Flores

Garrett Mauch spreads manure as fertilizer on fields at his family’s farm in Lamar, Colorado, on January 21, 2026. RJ Sangosti | The Denver Post Via Getty Images | Denver Post | Getty Images The Strait of Hormuz shutdown caused by the war in Iran is jacking up fertilizer prices, hitting farmers in their pocketbooks and threatening to raise food prices. Now, Democrats trying to win the U.S. midterm elections in November see another new opportunity to pound the affordability crisis and turn the tide after years of losses in the states that produce crops and livestock. The Strait of Hormuz is a critical channel for fertilizer, including about 50 percent of global nitrogen-rich urea fertilizers, according to the Fertilizer Institute, the industry’s trade association. The Strait has been effectively impassable since President Donald Trump launched the assault, which is now dragging into its third week with no end in sight. The closure has spiked fertilizer prices just before planting season, potentially scrambling decision-making for farmers across the U.S. And it comes on top of …

What Josh Shapiro’s new memoir tells us about a potential presidential run

What Josh Shapiro’s new memoir tells us about a potential presidential run

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro opens his new memoir, “Where We Keep the Light: Stories From a Life of Service,” on the night his governor’s mansion was set on fire in the quiet hours after his family celebrated the Passover Seder. Shapiro describes the arsonist and his motives: “He later told police that he harbored hatred for me. If he had found me, he told them under questioning, he would have beaten me with the hammer. He added that he would not take part in my ‘plans’ for whatever I ‘[wanted] to do to the Palestinian people.’ Now, I never have had any ‘plans,’ nor do I know what he meant by what I want ‘to do to the Palestinian people,’ but the statement seemed pointed.”  To the incident, Shapiro responded with faith. He writes: “We don’t look toward the darkness. I knew that we would find meaning from the fire. I knew that we would lean on our faith and our community even more as our way through. I knew that after everything, that’s where …

Harris’ dual loyalty test for Shapiro

Harris’ dual loyalty test for Shapiro

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — It is an almost predictable rite of passage in American Jewish life. I am talking about how so many Jewish kids spend time in Israel when they are teenagers or college students. They go on youth movement trips, study abroad programs, gap-year experiences. Some do various kinds of volunteer work. They come home sunburned, thoughtful and changed.  It is an unremarkable story. And it is precisely what young Josh Shapiro did.  Josh would grow up to become Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. He is an appropriately ambitious politician — so much so, that he came within inches of becoming Kamala Harris’ running mate.  And then, there was the vetting process — as Shapiro has revealed in his new memoir, “Where We Keep the Light.” Members of the campaign team asked Gov. Shapiro whether he had ever been a “double agent for Israel.” When he responded with disbelief, the question escalated. Dana Remus asked him: Had he ever communicated with an undercover agent for Israel? To which Shapiro responded: “If they were undercover, how …