In the days leading up to the announcement of Kamala Harris’ VP pick, progressives argued that the sitting veep needed to choose a running mate who would excite the Democrats’ more liberal voters, rather than chasing centrists. Others insisted that picking a vice presidential candidate is merely a game of electoral math, and that Harris should choose an inoffensive candidate who can also help the ticket win a key swing state — the same logic behind the selection of former Virginia governor Tim Kaine as Hillary Clinton’s potential VP in 2016.
On Tuesday, all sides got their wish granted.
By now, you are likely already aware that Harris has chosen Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who was once viewed as a longshot in the veepstakes behind buzzier picks like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. But many of those selections, while better known to the general public, would have brought with them specific liabilities.
Choosing Kelly, a former astronaut, would have permitted Republicans to call a special election to fill his Senate seat, thus imperiling the Democrats’ control of the Senate. While Shapiro could have helped Democrats secure Pennsylvania, his office has been rocked by several scandals in the past week, including the unearthing of an op-ed he penned in college in which he said Palestinians were “too battle-minded” for self-governance. As Attorney General in 2018, when his office was tasked with reviewing the controversial decision to rule the 2011 death of Philadelphia resident Ellen Greenberg a suicide rather than a homicide, Shapiro’s office declined to change the ruling. Beshear, hailing from a red state that Republicans won by 25 points in 2020, brings little electoral map benefit.
Walz, although previously unknown to most Americans, brings several advantages to the ticket. Polls have indicated throughout the year that Minnesota is a potential surprise swing state pickup for the GOP in November, despite having gone blue since 1972: Although President Joe Biden won the state by seven points in 2020, challenger Donald Trump had been within spitting distance in Minnesota polling throughout the year. An April survey showed Biden up just two points, and four in June, likely just outside the poll’s margin of error. While Biden is no longer the nominee, a major part of Harris’ task early in the race has been rebuilding her predecessor’s pallid polling, especially in the Midwest and the Sun Belt, which are considered key for victory in November.
But the selection of Walz is not merely a defensive move: He also brings with him a solid record on LGBTQ+ equality. Walz was one of the earliest governors to sign a bill making his state a sanctuary for gender-affirming care. Authored by state Rep. Leigh Finke (D), the legislation orders courts not to comply with out-of-state prosecutions against individuals who flee to Minnesota to access treatments like puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, or surgery. Even before Finke’s bill passed the legislature, Walz issued an executive order in May 2023 to strengthen protections for trans health care in his state, saying in a statement that all Minnesotans should “grow up feeling safe, valued, protected, celebrated, and free to exist as their authentic versions of themselves.”
With neighboring states like Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota all restricting trans youth health care, Minnesota’s refuge law has made the state a hub for trans health care. Dozens of individuals and families have reportedly moved to Minnesota permanently to escape anti-LGBTQ+ policies in their previous states, and that number will likely increase as more state-level restrictions are enacted. To date, 26 states limit doctors from providing some or all gender-affirming treatments to minors, most recently New Hampshire.
But Walz is actually a longtime ally to the LGBTQ+ community on several key issues, dating back to even before his tenure as governor. As a U.S. House representative, he joined a coalition of veterans in 2012 to speak out in opposition to a proposed constitutional amendment that would define marriage equality exclusively as a union of one man and one woman. “At this point it’s become very clear that limiting the rights of a subsect of the population, whether they are veterans or not, is simply unconstitutional,” he said at the time. “I think we can do better.” His years as a member of the armed forces also motivated his opposition to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the now-defunct policy barring gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members from being open about their identities. “Always the issue for me was if you met the standards and did your job, your personal business was your personal business,” he remarked after DADT’s 2013 repeal.
Walz was ahead of the curve on several key LGBTQ+ rights issues, including the federal codification of the freedom to marry. He announced his support for the Respect for Marriage Act, which effectively declares marriage equality the law of the land, back in 2011 — more than a decade before Biden would have the opportunity to sign the contemporary iteration of that legislation. He was a key vote in favor of a law recognizing sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes under federal hate crime legalization and backed early versions of the Equality Act, an inclusive LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination bill that has yet to meet approval in the U.S. Senate despite passing the House twice.
Outside of his political career, Walz was the advisor of Mankato West High School’s first ever Gay-Straight Alliance. As a football coach and geography teacher at the greater Minneapolis district, having his support was actually instrumental in getting the club greenlit. “It really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married,” Walz told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in 2018.
As governor of Minnesota, Walz has signed legislation making the state a refuge for trans youth.
Many of the other veep contenders have also proven themselves allies to the LGBTQ+community, including Beshear, who last year vetoed one of the nation’s worst laws targeting trans youth. (Republicans enacted the omnibus legislation, however, over his veto.) In opposing the regulations, Beshear said that “all children are children of God.” “I heard from children that believe this bill is picking on them, and asking — in many ways — why?” he remarked at the time. “I told them that I was going to show them that there is at least one person in Frankfort that cares for all of our children in the commonwealth, no matter what.”
With 90 days left to go until the presidential election, Harris’ veep pick was an opportunity to indicate what her priorities would be in the White House and contrast herself with the extreme policies being pushed by her Republican opponents. If elected, Trump has vowed to gut federal protections for LGBTQ+ students and ban the federal government from supporting the “concept of sex and gender transition at any age.” His running mate, J.D. Vance, has authored legislation to jail doctors who treat trans youth. With Walz on the ticket, the difference is especially stark.
(Authoritarians always go too far before they’ve made sure what they’re doing is legal. It seems that Gov. DeSantis came the closest to figuring that out, and setting himself up, though courts won’t back him. Still, he’s going until they make him stop. Anyway, I hope Oklahomans do hold the entire Board accountable, especially the Superintendent, and make him restore the inappropriate charges for his trips, too.)
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — Legal experts tell News 4 the events of Wednesday’s Oklahoma State School Board meeting are unprecedented, and should alarm anyone with power to hold State Superintendent Ryan Walters and the Oklahoma State Board of Education accountable.
Those events include Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters personally attacking multiple public officials by making verifiably false claims about them, and the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office alleging Walters and the Board may have violated state law.
At Wednesday’s meeting, the Oklahoma State School Board (OSBE) and Supt. Ryan Walters voted to table a decision on whether they would allow State Sen. Mary Boren (D-Norman) and other legislators to sit in on their executive session discussions, despite getting guidance from the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office advising them they legally had to let the legislators in.
In comments made to reporters following Wednesday’s meeting, Walters seemed to be unaware the Attorney General’s Office had emailed him and all state school board members a letter with guidance on July 18.
Following the meeting, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office released a statement suggesting Walters and the board may have willfully violated Oklahoma’s Open Meeting Act.
After the meeting, Walters also falsely claimed to reporters that Sen. Boren wants to “make it where we can’t remove pedophiles from classrooms.”
He also called Bixby Public Schools superintendent Rob Miller a “clown” when asked about claims Miller had made on social media.
Boren says she showed up to Wednesday’s meeting with one focus: to sit in on the second of two scheduled executive session discussions OSBE had on its agenda for the meeting.
The agenda indicated the board planned to use the first executive session to hold “confidential communications with board counsel concerning a request by Senator Mary Boren to observe all executive sessions of the Board on July 31, 2024.”
It said, in the second executive session, the board would “discuss possible action” on four separate issues involving the possible revocation of certain teachers’ teaching certificates.
The second executive session is what Boren said she wanted to observe.
According to the agenda, the board would first take a vote to enter the first executive session. After the board completed that session they were to vote to return to open session, and then discuss and take “possible action regarding the matters discussed” in the first session.
Boren expected, after the first session, the board would vote as to whether or not they would allow her to observe the second executive session.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis addresses the crowd before publicly signing “Stop W.O.K.E” bill in Hialeah Gardens, Florida, on April 22, 2022. (Daniel A. Varela/Miami Herald via AP)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis often says the Sunshine State is the place where “woke goes to die.” But a federal judge on Friday killed part of the Stop W.O.K.E. Act championed as standing up against “indoctrination.”
Judge Mark Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida issued a permanent injunction, saying the law that bans diversity training in private workplaces “violates free speech rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.” The ruling follows a three-judge appeals court panel’s March decision that upheld Walker’s original injunction. The State of Florida did not oppose the motion to make the ruling permanent.
Florida honeymoon registry company Honeyfund.com and Primo Tampa, a subsidiary of a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream franchisee, were among those who filed the lawsuit after the Legislature passed the law in 2022. Shalini Goel Agarwal counsel for Protect Democracy which filed the lawsuit on their behalf said the ruling is “a powerful reminder that the First Amendment cannot be warped to serve the interests of elected officials.”
“Censoring business owners from speaking in favor of ideas that politicians don’t like is a moved ripped straight from the authoritarian playbook,” she said in a statement.
“We have every right as a state to provide protections for employees and businesses to say if they are doing woke training which is basically discriminating against folks on the basis of race, you have a right to opt out,” he said. “It’s not a question of what the company can say. They can say whatever they want. But you have a right to not self flagellate. You have a right to not sit there and listen to that nonsense.”
Sara Margulis, CEO of Honeyfund.com, hailed the appeals court decision from March.
“We moved Honeyfund to Florida in 2017 because it was known as a business-friendly state,” she said in a statement. “Passing laws that seek to squash free speech like HB7 is not only a violation of The First Amendment but is also a losing strategy because businesses serve people of all backgrounds, walks of life, and political views. Therefore the law would have effectively hampered the ability of Florida businesses to grow and serve their market. I don’t think that’s what Florida really wants. It’s clearly not in line with American values. I couldn’t be happier that we stood up for free speech and business in the state of Florida.”
The legislation — HB 7, formally called the “Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act” — is also aimed at blocking school teachers and college professors from offering their opinions on what DeSantis described as “pernicious ideologies” that could potentially make students, because of their race, feel personally responsible for past racism, sexism, or other discrimination in the U.S. That part of the law also has an injunction and is awaiting a ruling from a higher court.
Critics have said it’s an attempt to stop meaningful discussion of the ongoing effects of longstanding systemic discrimination and topics including critical race theory and privilege. A slew of lawsuits were filed against the legislation including by professors, students and the ACLU. Courts have repeatedly blocked portions of the law.
According to the bill’s text, “[i]t shall constitute discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, or sex under this section to subject any student or employee to training or instruction that espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels such student or employee to believe” the following:
1. Members of one race, color, national origin, or sex are morally superior to members of another race, color, national origin, or sex.
2. A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, national origin, or sex is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.
3. A person’s moral character or status as either privileged or oppressed is necessarily determined by his or her race, color, national origin, or sex.
4. Members of one race, color, national origin, or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race, color, national origin, or sex.
5. A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, national origin, or sex bears responsibility for, or should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of, actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex.
6. A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, national origin, or sex should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment to achieve diversity, equity, or inclusion.
7. A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex.
8. Such virtues as merit, excellence, hard work, fairness, neutrality, objectivity, and racial colorblindness are racist or sexist, or were created by members of a particular race, color, national origin, or sex to oppress members of another race, color, national origin, or sex.
Matt Naham and Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report.
