GOP Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake announced Tuesday an event that will feature current and former Democrats supporting her campaign.

The coalition, called “Democrats/former Democrats for Kari Lake & America First,” was revealed after Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign announced its “Republicans for Harris” initiative, which held a press conference in Mesa, Arizona, and after Lake’s opponent for Senate, Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., announced his “Republicans and Independents for Ruben” coalition.

Lake called on members of the press to give her event, which will be held Thursday, as much coverage as the events for Harris and Gallego.

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“Hello Media— We see how you have given Kamala and her favorite liberal congressman Ruben Gallego so much news coverage of their ‘Republicans’ for Kamala/Ruben/America Last press conferences,” Lake wrote on the social media platform X.

“We ask that you give us equal coverage of our event coming Thursday. It’s called Democrats/former Democrats for Kari Lake & America First,” she continued. “Clear your schedule and we’ll let you know the time/place to meet us. I promise this will be eye-opening.”

Gallego announced on Sunday endorsements from 40 Republicans and independents, including officials and operatives who have shown support for other Democrats, in an effort to prove he has appeal across the aisle as he seeks to defeat Lake in November, according to The Arizona Republic.

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Lake called on members of the press to give her event, which will be held Thursday, as much coverage as the events for Harris and Gallego. (Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)

At least 10 of these supporters for Gallego have also endorsed Harris for president, the outlet noted.

Republicans for Harris, consisting of “Never Trumpers,” also officially launched on Sunday, in an initiative that features several former officials, including former Trump White House officials Stephanie Grisham and Olivia Troye, as Harris’ campaign looks to rebrand her more moderately ahead of November’s presidential election against former President Trump.

Lake and Gallego will also face off in the general election in November. Arizona’s open Senate seat, currently held by outgoing Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, is rated as “Lean Democratic” by non-partisan political handicapper the Cook Political Report.

In 2020, I wrote a column about Kamala Harris’ mixed-race identity in which I made the case that a lack of critical thinking on race would make it easier for unscrupulous politicians to manipulate voters.

Four years later, that theory is being put to the test. Onstage last week at the National Assn. of Black Journalists convention, former President Trump tried to raise questions about the authenticity of the vice president’s identity, implying she had changed races to get votes.

Trump is perhaps the last person on Earth whose racial commentary I’d take seriously. What he said was not just juvenile but obviously insincere. In modern internet parlance, he is outrage farming, trolling, speaking disingenuously purely to get a response. And I have to ask: Is it working?

Even such a transparent attempt to discourage Black and South Asian voters from supporting Harris has sparked understandably furious reactions. His comments were crudely delivered to an audience of Black journalists, a context that added insult to injury.

Now, even though no liberal I know would be seriously swayed by Trump’s racial analysis (if you can call it that) we are trapped in the news cycle he has created. And I begrudge every second spent taking Trump’s trolling seriously. Harris was born to a Black father and Indian mother, so she is Black and Indian. I won’t go through an analysis of why people born to parents with two races are both of those races rather than one, because it doesn’t need to be explained.

This isn’t critical race theory. This is just the birds and the bees. This is one plus one equals two.

When Harris appeared on “Asian Enough,” a podcast I co-hosted for the Los Angeles Times, she expressed impatience with the demand that she articulate a journey of racial discovery, namely because she believes she didn’t have any such story to tell.

“I didn’t go through some evolution about, ‘Who am I, and what is my identity,’” Harris said. “I guess the frustration I have is that people think that I should have gone through such a crisis and need to explain it.”

I understand if you’re skeptical of this story because it is too convenient, too aspirational, too uncontroversial. Sure, Harris’ childhood probably wasn’t a post-racial dream, no more than former President Obama’s. But if there’s any place in America where a child may have grown up with secure attachments to both halves of a mixed-race identity, it would probably be Northern California in the 1970s, one of the most diverse and progressive places in the nation.

And I never truly expected her to racially triangulate herself on our podcast. I expected her to do what every politician has ever done, which is present the identity that is most likely to win votes. When Trump is the alternative, why take the risk?

It’s more important to me to analyze the assumptions behind Trump’s trolling. Namely, that in America you’re supposed to vote for whoever will put the most money in your pocket. And you’re supposed to believe that the person most likely to put the most money in your pocket is someone who is the same race as you.

That implies that a vote is not a democratic act but a transaction, like trying to pick the bank or credit card with the best terms and perks. It recasts America as not a country but a company, where voters choose not just a leader but a CEO, the best one being one from our own tribe.

Vice President Kamala Harris, pictured July 30 in Atlanta, told an L.A. Times podcast in 2020: “I didn’t go through some evolution about, ‘Who am I, and what is my identity.’ I guess the frustration I have is that people think that I should have gone through such a crisis and need to explain it.”

(John Bazemore / Associated Press)

It’s a piece of conventional wisdom, “voting your pocketbook.” But am I supposed to believe the bizarre conclusion that my lot in life improves because Harris is part Indian and, in America, we are both considered Asian American, and thus some benefit will flow to me?

We have to ask ourselves why Trump is trying to convince us that one plus one does not equal two. Who benefits from rigid tribalism about racial identity?

Definitely Trump and his supporters. But also, anyone who doesn’t want to spend time or resources thinking about or dealing with race.

Whether that’s campaigns that are content with one photo-op per race, no more, or politicians whose racial outreach ends at placing one person of each race in the backdrop of their speech. We are easier to marginalize and to pacify if we fold ourselves into such tiny boxes.

We have to resist that flattening wherever we see it. Treat Trump’s comments as you would those of any other online troll: Forget them, as soon as possible.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was surprised by news of a deal struck between prosecutors and the mastermind and two others who planned the Sept. 11 attacks. 

“This is not something that the secretary was consulted on,” Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters during a Monday briefing. “We were not aware that the prosecution or defense would enter the terms of the plea agreement.”

The Biden administration revoked the deal amid public outrage and anger from loved ones of the victims. 

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“He believes that the families and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military commission trials carried out in this case,” said Singh.

Austin revoked the agreement last week after prosecutors agreed to move forward with the deal that would have taken the death penalty off the table for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, and collaborators Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi. 

The defendants are being held at a military installation in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. 

“Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pretrial agreements that you signed on July 31, 2024,” a letter from Austin states. 

That decision was made by retired brigadier general and senior Defense Department official Susan Escallier, whom Austin had tapped to serve in the Office of Military Commissions (OMC), the New York Post reported.

LAWMAKERS, FAMILIES OF 9/11 VICTIMS REACT TO PLEA DEAL WITH TERRORISTS: ‘SLAP IN THE FACE’

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a suspected al-Qaeda terrorist, is shown in this photo released by the FBI October 10, 2001, in Washington, D.C. Mohammed was arrested at a house in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. It was reported October 21, 2003, that U.S. officials believe Mohammed killed Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan.  (Getty Images)

No explanation was given on why this was not settled earlier before the deals were signed off and publicly released.

The deal shocked the loved ones of the 9/11 victims as well as lawmakers who blamed Biden for going easy on the terrorists. 

“They’re the ones that want this off of their plate. It’s an election year,” Terry Strada, the national chair of 9/11 Families United, told Fox News Digital. “They (terrorists) committed this heinous crime against the United States. They should have faced the charges, faced the trial and faced the punishment. Since when do the people responsible for murder get to call the shots?”

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said the Biden administration did not play a role in the now-dead plea bargain.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan speaks during the daily briefing in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 1. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

“This is not something that we were involved in,” Jean-Pierre told reporters last week. 

“We had no role in that process. The president had no role. The vice president had no role. I had no role. The White House had no role,” Sullivan said in a Thursday press briefing. “And we were informed yesterday — the same day that they went out publicly — that this pretrial agreement had been accepted by the convening authority.”