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Walz and legions of 'dudes' want to give men permission to vote Democrat
Vice President Harris (R), introduces Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (L) during a campaign rally at Temple University on Monday in Philadelphia.
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Alex Wong/Getty Images
When Vice President Harris introduced her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, to the nation this week, she ran through his biography – dad, military member, high school football coach, teacher – but lingered on one particular story about his time teaching and coaching.
“Coach Walz was approached by a student in his social studies class,” Harris said. “The young man was one of the first openly gay students at the school and was hoping to start a gay straight alliance at a time when acceptance was difficult to find for LGBTQ students. Tim knew the signal that it would send to have a football coach get involved. So he signed up to be the group’s faculty advisor.”
It was a story about Walz helping a kid out, but it was also a story about how, decades ago, Walz understood something that Democratic men are understanding en masse right now: not only that they have a gender, but that they can use their gender to send a political signal.
Building permission structures
There has been a remarkable trend since Kamala Harris ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket: reaching out to men voters as men. There’s White Dudes for Harris, which held a recent organizing call, plus other virtual meetups from groups including Win With Black Men, Men for Harris and Dads for Kamala.
Often, gender-specific organizing is aimed at women – think Moms Demand Action, Moms for Liberty, or Women for Trump. And indeed, there have been an array of Harris organizing calls aimed at different groups of women.
But men as a group vote substantially more Republican than women, and men continue to be a big part of Donald Trump’s base. Indeed, the GOP (and particularly Trump’s GOP) has made itself the party of overt displays of masculinity.
So Democrats have been considering for years how to pull men to their side. In putting together these calls aimed at men, leaders of these groups say they are creating a permission structure for men to support a Democratic woman at the top of the ticket.
“If you have men who are recognizably successful as men within the traditional terms say, ‘We’re supporting Kamala Harris,’ then it makes it easier for men who are more self-conscious about that identification,” explained Jackson Katz, a writer and cofounder of the Young Men Research Initiative, a super PAC aimed at energizing young progressive men.
Bakari Sellers agrees. He was one organizer of the Win With Black Men call.
“The power of being able to go back to your barber shop and saying, ‘I was on a call with 50,000 men for Harris,’ that starts a totally different conversation,” Sellers said.
Just as Walz believed his status as a football coach would show students – likely, especially boys – that it was okay to support a gay peer, organizers hope that these groups help show men that they won’t be alone in supporting a Democratic woman of color.
Indeed, Walz himself – days before becoming the Democratic VP nominee – emphasized Harris’ gender and race on the White Dudes for Harris call while taking aim at Trump.
“How often in 100 days do you get to do something that’s going to impact generations to come? And how often in the world do you make that bastard wake up afterwards and know that a Black woman kicked his ass and sent him on the road?” Walz asked.
Men’s gender becomes visible
None of this would have been possible with Biden at the top of the ticket, according to Katz.
“Because Harris is a woman, her presence in the race makes gender visible in a way that it wasn’t with Biden,” Katz said. “You’ll see things like Men for Harris in a way that you wouldn’t have seen Men for Biden, because that would strike people as very odd and even redundant.”
But then, men are not a monolith. Different groups have different motivations.
For example, Sellers said that Black men feel a particular duty to show up for Harris.
“This is our time to show that we can stand up with her. Black women are always the backbone of the Democratic Party – we hear it, we hear it, and we hear it,” Sellers said. “And we’re like, ‘No, they are, but we’re here too.’ And we’re going to do everything we can.”
Meanwhile, Mark Linton, co-founder of Men for Harris, talked about making the pitch to white men using historic terms.
“This is that moment where white men are going to actually step up and say, this is actually our moment to really begin to turn a page and write a new chapter in America’s racial history,” Linton said.
Across all these groups, though, it’s clear that participants are thinking hard about their own identities, too.
“We’re here not only because we’re reimagining politics or reimagining the White House, but we’re reimagining what it means to be a dad,” said Mohan Sivaloganathan on a Dads for Kamala call. “And we’re retiring that tired stereotype of the dad who yells for everything but stands up for nothing.”
One observer of the current Senate race in Louisiana noted that Sen. Bill Cassidy could lose his reelection bid.
Annie Flanagan for NPR
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Annie Flanagan for NPR
Sen. Bill Cassidy lost Saturday’s Louisiana Republican primary according to a race call by the Associated Press.
Cassidy, who served two terms in the Senate, was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict President Trump after the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. That vote put him at odds with Trump and his MAGA coalition, ultimately leading Trump to push Rep. Julia Letlow to run against Cassidy.
Cassidy’s bid for a third term was viewed as a test of Trump’s grip on the party–and of what voters want from their representatives in Washington. The primary pitted Cassidy, a veteran lawmaker, former physician and chair of the powerful Senate health committee, against Letlow, a political newcomer and a millennial MAGA loyalist.
A detailed view of a hat that reads, Run Julia Run, is seen at a campaign event for Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA) on May 6, 2026 in Franklinton, Louisiana.
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A former college administrator, Letlow won a special election in 2021 for the House seat her late husband, Luke, was set to assume before he died from COVID in 2020.
In Congress, Letlow sponsored a bill to collect oral histories from the pandemic and has focused on education and children. She introduced the “Parents Bill of Rights Act,” which would allow parents to review classroom materials like library books and require schools to notify parents if their child requests different pronouns, locker rooms or sports teams.
She also serves on the powerful appropriations committee and has embraced Trump’s agenda.
Letlow, who came first in Saturday’s primary, will face Louisiana state Treasurer John Fleming in the runoff on June 27. Cassidy came in third.
The election result is a victory for President Trump who has put Republican loyalty to the test on the ballot so far this year in Indiana state senate primaries and in Cassidy’s race.
Another major test of Trump’s influence comes in Kentucky’s primary on Tuesday when Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who has found himself at odds with the president, faces a challenger endorsed by Trump.
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Brass bands in Beijing make way for sticker shock at home as Trump returns to escalating inflation
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump returned from the spectacle of a Chinese state visit to a less than welcoming U.S. economy — with the military band and garden tour in Beijing giving way to pressure over how to fix America’s escalating inflation rate.
Consumer inflation in the United States increased to 3.8% annually in April, higher than what he inherited as the Iran war and the Republican president’s own tariffs have pushed up prices. Inflation is now outpacing wage gains and effectively making workers poorer. The Cleveland Federal Reserve estimates that annual inflation could reach 4.2% in May as the war has kept oil and gasoline prices high.
Trump’s time with Chinese leader Xi Jinping appears unlikely to help the U.S. economy much, despite Trump’s claims of coming trade deals. The trip occurred as many people are voting in primaries leading into the November general election while having to absorb the rising costs of gasoline, groceries, utility bills, jewelry, women’s clothing, airplane tickets and delivery services. Democrats see the moment as a political opportunity.
“He’s returning to a dumpster fire,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, a liberal think tank focused on economic issues. “The president will not have the faith and confidence of the American people — the economy is their top issue and the president is saying, ‘You’re on your own.’”
The president’s trip to Beijing and his recent comments that indicated a tone-deafness to voters’ concerns about rising prices have suggested his focus is not on the American public and have undermined Republicans who had intended to campaign on last year’s tax cuts as helping families.
Trump described the trip as a victory, saying on social media that Xi “congratulated me on so many tremendous successes,” as the U.S. president has praised their relationship.
Trump told reporters that Boeing would be selling 200 aircraft — and maybe even 750 “if they do a good job” — to the Chinese. He said American farmers would be “very happy” because China would be “buying billions of dollars of soybeans.”
“We had an amazing time,” Trump said as he flew home on Air Force One, and told Fox News’ Bret Baier in an interview that gasoline prices were just some “short-term pain” and would “drop like a rock” once the war ends.
Inflationary pain is not a factor in how Trump handles Iran
Trump departed from the White House for China by saying the negotiations over the Iran war depended on stopping Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.
That remark prompted blowback because it suggested to some that Trump cared more about challenging Iran than fighting inflation at home. Trump defended his words, telling Fox News: “That’s a perfect statement. I’d make it again.”
The White House has since stressed that Trump is focused on inflation.
Asked later about the president’s words, Vice President JD Vance said there had been a “misrepresentation” of the remarks. White House spokesman Kush Desai said the “administration remains laser-focused on delivering growth and affordability on the homefront” while indicating actions would be taken on grocery prices.
But as Trump appeared alongside Xi, new reports back home showed inflation rising for businesses and interest rates climbing on U.S. government debt.
His comments that Boeing would sell 200 jets to China caused the company’s stock price to fall because investors had expected a larger number. There was little concrete information offered about any trade agreements reached during the summit, including Chinese purchases of U.S. exports such as liquefied natural gas and beef.
“Foreign policy wins can matter politically, but only if voters feel stability and affordability in their daily lives,” said Brittany Martinez, a former Republican congressional aide who is the executive director of Principles First, a center-right advocacy group focused on democracy issues.
“Midterms are almost always a referendum on cost of living and public frustration, and Republicans are not immune from the same inflation and affordability pressures that hurt Democrats in recent cycles,” she added.
Democrats see Trump as vulnerable
Democratic lawmakers are seizing on Trump’s comments before his trip as proof of his indifference to lowering costs. There is potential staying power of his remarks as Americans head into Memorial Day weekend facing rising prices for the hamburgers and hot dogs to be grilled.
“What Americans do not see is any sympathy, any support, or any plan from Trump and congressional Republicans to lower costs – in fact, they see the opposite,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Thursday.
Vance faulted the Biden administration for the inflation problem even though the inflation rate is now higher than it was when Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 with a specific mandate to fix it.
“The inflation number last month was not great,” Vance said Wednesday, but he then stressed, “We’re not seeing anything like what we saw under the Biden administration.”
Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 under Biden, a Democrat. By the time Trump took the oath of office, it was a far more modest 3%.
Trump’s inflation challenge could get harder
The data tells a different story as higher inflation is spreading into the cost of servicing the national debt.
Over the past week, the interest rate charged on 10-year U.S. government debt jumped from 4.36% to 4.6%, an increase that implies higher costs for auto loans and mortgages.
“My fear is that the layers of supply shocks that are affecting the U.S. economy will only further feed into inflationary pressures,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon.
Daco noted that last year’s tariff increases were now translating into higher clothing prices. With the Supreme Court ruling against Trump’s ability to impose tariffs by declaring an economic emergency, his administration is preparing a new set of import taxes for this summer.
Daco stressed that there have been a series of supply shocks. First, tariffs cut into the supply of imports. In addition, Trump’s immigration crackdown cut into the supply of foreign-born workers. Now, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has cut off the vital waterway used to ship 20% of global oil supplies.
“We’re seeing an erosion of growth,” Daco said.
Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, the Food and Drug Administration’s top drug regulator, said she was fired from the agency Friday after she declined to resign.
She said she did not know who had ordered her firing or why, nor whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. knew of her fate. The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The departure reflected the upheaval at the F.D.A., days after the resignation of Dr. Marty Makary, the agency commissioner. Dr. Makary had become a lightning rod for critics of the agency’s decisions to reject applications for rare disease drugs and to delay a report meant to supply damaging evidence about the abortion drug mifepristone. He also spent months before his departure pushing back on the White House’s requests for him to approve more flavored vapes, the reason he ultimately cited for leaving.
Dr. Hoeg’s hiring had startled public health leaders who were familiar with her track record as a vaccine skeptic, and she played a leading role in some of the agency’s most divisive efforts during her tenure. She worked on a report that purportedly linked the deaths of children and young adults to Covid vaccines, a dossier the agency has not released publicly. She was also the co-author of a document describing Mr. Kennedy’s decision to pare the recommendations for 17 childhood vaccines down to 11.
But in an interview on Friday, Dr. Hoeg said she “stuck with the science.”
“I am incredibly proud of the work we were doing,” Dr. Hoeg said, adding, “I’m glad that we didn’t give in to any pressures to approve drugs when it wasn’t appropriate.”
As the director of the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, she was a political appointee in a role that had been previously occupied by career officials. An epidemiologist who was trained in the United States and Denmark, she worked on efforts to analyze drug safety and on a panel to discuss the use of serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants, during pregnancy. She also worked on efforts to reduce animal testing and was the agency’s liaison to an influential vaccine committee.
She made sure that her teams approved drugs only when the risk-benefit balance was favorable, she said.
The firing worsens the leadership vacuum at the F.D.A. and other agencies, with temporary leaders filling the role of commissioner, food chief and the head of the biologics center, which oversees vaccines and gene therapies. The roles of surgeon general and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also unfilled.
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