UPDATE: Donald Trump Takes Office as the 47th US President

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Hi friends,

We hope you are doing well. What a historic week it has been. This week’s newsletter is a long one, so let’s roll the tape:

Gen Z helping to make history at the DNC
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The convention was nothing short of electrifying, with Democrats coming together to support Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz as they officially accepted the Democratic nomination for President and Vice President of the United States. Each day, we heard from phenomenal speakers — from former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama to Sec. Pete Buttigieg to Oprah — who talked about the stakes of this election and the importance of turning our hope and joy into action in the lead-up to Election Day.

We also saw and heard from a number of young people throughout the Convention. Those voices included:

  • Deja Foxx, Reproductive rights activist and content creator, spoke about the importance of content creators and why young people are committed to protecting freedoms in this election
  • Olivia Julianna, Reproductive rights activist, spoke about Texas and that young people are ready to make their voices heard and turn out in full force this election.
  • Maxwell Frost, the first Gen Z member of Congress, took the stage on the final night of the Convention and spoke about the stakes of this election for the issues that matter most to young people
  • Hadley Duvall, a reproductive freedom storyteller, spoke about why abortion rights are so personal to her and why she supports Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz when it comes to reproductive freedoms
  • John Russell, a content creator, spoke about his personal story and how Vice President Harris will fight for all Americans everywhere
  • Carlos Eduardo Espina, an immigrant rights activist and content creator, spoke about his immigration story and how much it meant to him to be at the DNC Convention
  • Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave a powerful and electrifying speech about her journey in politics, daring for a better future, and her strong belief in the Harris-Walz ticket
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To top it all off, both Vice President Harris and Governor Tim Walz gave electrifying speeches on Day 3 and Day 4 of the Convention, during which they offered their hopeful visions for the future and their fight for a new way forward that strengthens our democracy, protects reproductive freedom, and ensures every person has the opportunity to not just get by, but to get ahead. Do not worry if you missed their speeches.

Watch Governor Walz’s speech HERE and VP Harris’s speech HERE.
Organizing Gen Z-ers throughout the Convention
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Throughout the Convention week, the youth engagement team also hosted a number of trainings on the ground in Chicago, including a youth organizing training with hundreds of attendees. The team also had a presence at the variety of youth caucus and council meetings throughout the week. Check out some pictures below:

That’s not all! Our team also hosted a number of ways for those who couldn’t make it to Chicago to be part of the historic moment from wherever they found themselves. See our roundup of exciting actions below:
  • On Sunday, 8/19, our team held our weekly national youth phone bank to make calls into battleground states
  • On Wednesday, 8/21, our team hosted our first live Discord chat during the entire third day of the convention and celebrated Governor Tim Walz’s keynote address
  • On Thursday, 8/22, young people across the country hosted house parties to celebrate Vice President Harris officially accepting the nomination forof President of the United States
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Engaging HBCUs!

We know that HBCUs and minority serving institutions will be critical to mobilizing young people and winning this election. Last week, our Deputy Youth Engagement Director Kaya Jones hosted a HBCU SGA President and Black student leader call. She spoke about this historic election and the importance of young Black voices in this election. Check out a photo of this fired up and inspiring group below!
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How to stay plugged in

With the Convention officially over and the election approaching in less than 70 days, we are moving full steam ahead and have a number of ways young people can get involved. Below are some of the top ways you can take action:

  1. Youth Engagement LinkTree: View and bookmark our Linktree with all of the opportunities to get involved with Young Voters for Harris → https://linktr.ee/hfpyouth24
  2. Join our Discord: If you want to join our channel, click HERE and share it with your friends who may be interested too!
  3. Phone Bank: Every Sunday between now and Election Day, our team will be hosting youth phone banks at 5:00 p.m. ET. Sign up for any phone banks you can make and share → HERE.
  4. Organize Your Campus: Start or join a Students for Harris-Walz chapter on your college campus → HERE
  5. Join Reach: Join Reach, our relational organizing and content-sharing app → HERE

Thanks, as always, for your continued support and engagement in this election. We truly can’t do this without you.

Keep the faith,
Harris Youth Engagement Team

###

Paid for by Harris for President
 
I love that the Democrats are going on the offensive now. Using their ads to attack the Republicans with facts about who the Republicans are and what they want for this nation.

The Republicans releasing a whole ass book for Project 2025 What's the most arogant thing They could have done. They just knew They had this whole shit in the bag, now everyone can read Project 2025 and see exactly how it affects them and everyone they know.

 
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Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson tells CBS News she's concerned about the Court's immunity decision. "I was concerned about a system that appeared to provide immunity for one individual under one set of circumstances, when we have a criminal justice system that had ordinarily treated everyone the same."
 

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson tells CBS News she's concerned about the Court's immunity decision. "I was concerned about a system that appeared to provide immunity for one individual under one set of circumstances, when we have a criminal justice system that had ordinarily treated everyone the same."

The only way to stop this is to get out there and vote for Kamala. Let her have that power.
 
The only way to stop this is to get out there and vote for Kamala. Let her have that power.

Take more than the POTUS position for that kinda power! She needs House and Senate…preferably as close to a super majority as possible.

If not, they’re going to make it hell for her to get anything meaningful done.

The GOP SC justices are in a fuck you mood to Biden’s and Dems…Trump bought and paid.
 
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Trump’s Evangelical Supporters Just Lost Their Best Excuse​

The pro-life justification for supporting the former president has now collapsed.
By Peter Wehner
Donald Trump

Julia Nikhinson / Associated Press
August 27, 2024, 6 AM ET
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The most common argument made by former President Donald Trump’s evangelical supporters in defense of their support is that although Trump may not be a moral exemplar, what matters most in electing a president is his policies. And for them, abortion is primus inter pares.

Trump is a great pro-life champion, they say, perhaps the greatest in history, and that is what most distinguishes him from the abortion extremism of Kamala Harris. On that basis alone, they insist, Trump, regardless of his faults and failures, deserves their votes.


I understand that line of argument, though I strongly disagree with it. The rationale was always weaker than Trump’s supporters were willing to admit, because Trump’s moral depravity was always far worse and more dangerous than they were willing to acknowledge. And his achievements fell far short of their hopes and claims to end abortion.

But the pro-life justification for supporting Trump has just collapsed. Trump, who described himself as “strongly pro-choice” in the 1990s—including support for so-called partial-birth abortion—has returned to his socially liberal ways. “My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights,” he recently declared on Truth Social. Kamala Harris couldn’t have stated it any more emphatically.

It’s true that Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court played an essential role in overturning Roe v. Wade. But ending Roe is not the same thing as reducing the number of abortions in America. In fact, the number of abortions has increased since the 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe. As Philip Klein wrote in National Review, “overturning Roe was only the necessary first step of a much longer battle to protect the lives of the unborn. And on that battle, it increasingly looks like Trump is joining the other side.”

Helen Lewis: Abortion takes center stage


From a pro-life perspective, though, it’s actually worse than that. Trump has done what no Democrat—not Bill or Hillary Clinton, not Mario Cuomo or John Kerry, not Joe Biden or Barack Obama, not any Democrat—could have done. He has, at the national level, made the Republican Party de facto pro-choice. Having stripped the pro-life plank from the GOP platform, having said that Governor Ron DeSantis’s ban on abortion after six weeks is “too harsh” and a “terrible mistake,” and having promised to veto a national abortion ban, Trump has now gone one step further, essentially advocating for greater access to abortion.

Recommended Reading​

But that’s not all. The public is more pro-choice today than it was at the start of Trump’s presidential term, with pro-choice support near record levels. Approval for abortion is strongest among younger people, who will be voting for many decades to come. (Seventy-six percent of 18-to-29-year-olds say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.) Since the Dobbs decision, ballot measures restricting abortions have lost everywhere, including deep-red states such as Kansas and Kentucky. In addition—and this fact doesn’t get nearly enough attention—the number of abortions increased 8 percent during Trump’s presidency, after three decades of steady decline.

So voting for Donald Trump didn’t mean you were voting for fewer abortions. Abortions declined by nearly 30 percent during Barack Obama’s two terms, and by the end of his term, the abortion rate and ratio were below what they were in 1973, when Roe v. Wade was decided. But they went up again on Trump’s watch. Public opposition to abortion is collapsing. Pro-life initiatives are being beaten even in very conservative states. The GOP has jettisoned its pro-life plank after having it in place for nearly a half century. And Trump himself is now saying he’d be great for “reproductive rights,” a position that pro-lifers have long insisted is a moral abomination.

This is not a surprise. Betrayal is a core character trait of Trump’s. He’s betrayed his wives, his mistresses, his friends, his business associates, people who have worked for him, and his country. There is no person and no cause he will not double-cross. The pro-life movement is only the latest thing to which he has been unfaithful, and it won’t be the last.


The question to ask yourself is: Who in the pro-life movement—Al Mohler, Mike Huckabee, Franklin Graham, Eric Metaxas, Marjorie Dannenfelser, Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins, Robert Jeffress, and countless others—will speak out, publicly and forcefully and relentlessly, against Trump’s about-face? Will they tell the full truth, which is that abortions increased during the Trump presidency, that the pro-life movement is weaker than at almost any time in its history, and that, when it comes to making the Republican Party the home of the pro-life cause, Trump is doing unprecedented damage?

Will they now say of Trump what they say of liberal Democrats, that he supports the murder of innocent unborn children?

Now ask yourself this: How could an evangelical who claims to be passionately pro-life vote for a presidential candidate who now promises that his administration will “be great for women and their reproductive rights”? Especially when that person has cheated on his wives and on his taxes, paid hush money to porn stars, and been found liable of sexual assault?

And how can those who profess to be followers of Jesus cast a ballot for this candidate, once the excuse of casting a pro-life vote is gone? For a convicted felon and a pathological liar, a man who has peddled racist conspiracy theories, cozied up to the world’s worst dictators, blackmailed an American ally, invited a hostile foreign power to interfere in American elections, defamed POWs and the war dead, mocked people with handicaps, and encouraged political violence? How can they continue to stand in solidarity with a person who has threatened prosecutors, judges, and the families of judges; who attempted to overthrow an election; who assembled a violent mob and directed it to march on the Capitol; and who encouraged the mob to hang his vice president?


Ben Marsh, a pastor at First Alliance Church in Winston-Salem, put it this way on X:


This is not a hard call. Trump deserves the disapprobation of evangelical Christians, not their vote. But he will get their vote, in overwhelming numbers, even if he has sold out the very cause they once professed greatest devotion to. Character counts? That’s so passé. Being pro-choice is a moral travesty? Only, it seems, if you’re a Democrat. Moral relativism is a threat to our nation? Not if you’re part of MAGA world; in that case, taking a blowtorch to moral norms and truth is a blast. Love your enemies? Not if they’re progressive.


Jill Filipovic: Kamala Harris’s biggest advantage

Donald Trump has done incalculable damage to our political and civic culture. But he has also performed, even if inadvertently, a public service. He is a political and moral CAT scan, showing the ethical core of many of his supporters. It has been quite the revelation.

The evangelical movement comprises tens of millions of Americans; many of them are people of integrity and faithfulness. My own life has been profoundly enriched by its adherents. But we cannot deny what is true: Much of the evangelical world has validated many of the worst indictments of the secular world. There are so many scandals, so much cynicism and hypocrisy, so much to grieve. Much of what evangelicals and fundamentalists have claimed to stand for, certainly in the realm of politics and culture, turns out to have been an affectation, an illusion. They want power and revenge. Donald Trump Jr., in channeling the attitudes of many Trump supporters, said at a Turning Point USA gathering in 2021 that the teachings of Jesus have “gotten us nothing.”


In his book The Subversion of Christianity, the French sociologist and lay theologian Jacques Ellul argued that what we call Christianity is “the opposite of what we are shown by the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.” In many cases, and throughout history, according to Ellul, the Church, with its emphasis on moralism and its teachings in the political sphere, has perverted the Gospel. Ultimately, Ellul is hopeful because, as he puts it, “Christianity never carries the day decisively against Christ.” That is the hope many of us hold on to, but it’s hardly ideal. A movement that claims Jesus as its own should be more than a whitewashed tomb.

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About the Author​

Peter Wehner is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum.

Appears to be Betraying his investors on truth social by going back to Twitter. Go figure?
 
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