Legos in My Library (Click on to enlarge).

Dear Commons Community,

Toymaker Lego said yesterday it will replace the fossil fuels used in making its signature bricks with more expensive renewable and recycled plastic, as its sales and profits surged.

The Danish company reported that profit for the first half of the year jumped 26% to 8.1 billion Danish krone ($1.2 billion). Sales to consumers grew 14%, considerably outperforming the wider toy industry.  As reported by CNN and Reuters.

In an interview with CNN, CEO Neils Christiansen pointed to the brand’s strength “throughout the world with all consumers.”

“Our product portfolio resonates super well across ages and interests,” he added.

Lego’s blockbuster results come even though toy sales globally have suffered as consumers cut back on non-essential spending. Hasbro (HAS) announced plans to cut 20% of its workforce late last year due to the sales slump.

Lego, which sells billions of plastic bricks annually, has tested over 600 different materials to develop a new material that would completely replace its oil-based brick by 2030, but with limited success.

Now, Lego is aiming to gradually bring down the oil content in its bricks by paying up to 70% more for certified renewable resin, the raw plastic used to manufacture the bricks, in an attempt to encourage manufacturers to boost production.

“This means a significant increase in the cost of producing a Lego brick,” Christiansen told Reuters.

He said the company is on track to ensure that more than half of the resin it needs in 2026 is certified according to the mass balance method, an auditable way to trace sustainable materials through the supply chain, up from 30% in the first half of 2024.

Lego aims to make all of its products from renewable and recycled materials by 2032. The company will absorb the additional cost for now in the hope that its investment will spur the companies making these materials to increase volumes.

“With a family-owner committed to sustainability, it’s a privilege that we can pay extra for the raw materials without having to charge customers extra,” Christiansen said. “We don’t see consumers really ready to take on the cost,” he told CNN.

The move comes amid a surplus of cheap virgin plastic, driven by major oil companies’ investments in petrochemicals. Plastics are projected to drive new oil demand in the next few decades.

Lego’s suppliers are using bio-waste such as cooking oil or food industry waste fat as well as recycled materials to replace virgin fossil fuels in plastic production.

The market for recycled or renewable plastic is still in its infancy, partly because most available feedstock is used for subsidised biodiesel, which is mixed into transportation fuels.

According to Neste, the world’s largest producer of renewable feedstocks, fossil-based plastic is about half or a third of the price of sustainable options.

“We sense more activity and willingness to invest in this now than we did just a year ago,” said Christiansen. He declined to say which suppliers or give details about price or volumes.

Rival toymaker Hasbro has started including plant-based or recycled materials in some toys, but without setting firm targets on plastic use. Mattel (MAT) plans to use only recycled, recyclable or bio-based plastics in all products by 2030.

Around 90% of all plastic is made from virgin fossil fuels, according to lobby group PlasticsEurope.

When my grandchildren were younger, I would buy one or two Lego products for them to build.  It kept them occupied for hours. I still keep many of their finished projects in my office and library (see above).

Tony

Daniel Greenstein.  Credit – Bryan Thomas for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education interviewed Daniel Greenstein, the outgoing Chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. His major initiative during his tenure was to consolidate six colleges into two new merged institutions. Here is the introduction.

When Daniel Greenstein took over as chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education in 2018, it was bleeding students and money, and he was an unknown quantity as a system leader. Last month he announced he would step down in October, having led for six tumultuous years that included merging six of the system’s 14 four-year public universities in an attempt to save all of them from fiscal insolvency. Whether he ultimately “saved” the system still remains to be seen, but Greenstein has shown he can marshal the forces of a large public-university system for change.

Greenstein, the former director of postsecondary success for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation began his tenure at the system, known as PASSHE, with the usual listening tour of campuses and constituencies. But he also proved more forthcoming than many past chancellors, sources say. He shared data and other information more openly and cultivated less adversarial relationships with the system’s labor organizations. The good will he bought helped when he announced a controversial plan to combine six of the system’s most troubled campuses into two new institutions, Pennsylvania Western University and Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania. That initiative has consumed most of the rest of his stint in office.

First-time enrollment rose by 3.4 percent across the system in the fall of 2023, but overall enrollment fell by 2.2 percent and is still down 31 percent from its 2011 peak of 120,000 students. Commonwealth’s second fall class in 2023 saw a more than 10-percent increase in enrollment over its first, but Penn West’s fall-2023 enrollment was down nearly 12 percent from the previous year. Enrollment figures for the fall of 2024 are not yet available.

Greenstein is leaving PASSHE for a position he says he will announce next month. He’s interested to see if the work he’s done has taken root. Back in his Gates days, he says, the foundation often invested in people who had a particular idea or drive more than in the organizations they worked for. But “at the end of the day, you always want to know what happens after the leader leaves,” he says, “because that’s inevitable.”

The entire interview is worth reading if you have any interest in the state of higher education in an era of declining enrollment.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Vice President Kamala Harris will sit down with CNN this Thursday at 9:00 pm (EDT)  for her first interview since President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid.

Harris will be joined by her running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz in an interview with CNN anchor Dana Bash in Savannah, Georgia.

Harris’ lack of access has become one of Republicans’ key lines of attacks against her as she ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket after Biden’s July 21 announcement. The CNN interview may be an opportunity for Harris to quell criticism that she is unprepared for uncontrolled environments, but it may also carry risks as her team tries to build on momentum from the ticket shakeup and Democratic National Convention.

During her three-plus years as vice president, she has done on-camera and print interviews with The Associated Press and many other outlets, often at a pace more frequent than Biden.

The Trump campaign has kept a tally of the days she has gone by as a candidate without giving an interview. On Tuesday, the campaign reacted to the news by noting the interview was joint, saying “she’s not competent enough to do it on her own.”

Earlier this month, Harris had told reporters that she wanted to do her first formal interview before the end of August.

Harris travels with members of the media on Air Force Two for all trips and nearly always comes to the back of the plane to speak to them for a few minutes before takeoff. Her office insists that those conversations are off the record, though, so what she says can’t be used publicly.

It should be an interesting interview!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Special counsel Jack Smith provided the latest development in the 2020 election subversion case against former President Donald Trump, filing a reworked indictment yesterday in Washington, D.C. that he hopes comports with the US Supreme Court’s immunity ruling and will let the case move forward.

The new indictment is 36 pages, down from the original 45 pages. The special counsel did not drop any of the four counts against Trump, but he was forced by the conservative Supreme Court justices to refashion the allegations underlying the charges.

Trump previously pleaded not guilty to the charges, which stem from his attempts to overturn the 2020 election after he lost to Joe Biden resulting in the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol. The new indictment was filed weeks before voters begin casting ballots in the 2024 presidential election, but a trial isn’t expected to happen anytime soon.

Below are takeaways courtesy of CNN.

Tony

———————————————————————–

What’s different and why?

The most glaring difference between the two indictments: prosecutors removed the entire section about Trump’s attempts to weaponize the Justice Department to help his reelection.

And the new indictment no longer mentions “co-conspirator 4,” who was referenced nearly 30 times in the original case and was previously identified by CNN as Jeffrey Clark, a Trump appointee at the Justice Department who embraced his false voter-fraud theories and supported his efforts to use federal law enforcement powers to try to overturn the election.

“Smith removed the allegations about Trump’s use of the Justice Department to perpetrate the scheme since the Supreme Court made clear that those acts were official acts and therefore immune from prosecution,” said Barbara McQuade, a former prosecutor and University of Michigan Law School professor.

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig called the superseding indictment “a strategic retreat by Jack Smith” in cutting the claims relating to the Justice Department.

“The indictment now rests primarily on Trump’s effort to pressure state and local officials and to submit false slates of electors,” Honig said.

Steve Vladeck, a CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, emphasized that the special counsel did not drop any of the charges themselves.

That, Vladeck said, suggests that prosecutors “are confident” that the law “still encompasses the conduct they allege former President Trump engaged in leading up to and on January 6.”

Trump’s role in election certification

Trump continues to be charged with illegally interfering with state election officials who certify their state’s presidential election results, and of obstructing Congress’ certification of the Electoral College results on January 6.

But the superseding indictment explicitly highlights the fact that the sitting president has no role whatsoever in this quadrennial exercise, neither on the state nor federal level.

The reworked indictment states, “The Defendant had no official responsibilities related to any state’s certification of the election results.” Regarding January 6, it states that “the Defendant had no official responsibilities related to the certification proceeding, but he did have a personal interest as a candidate in being named the winner of the election.”

Neither of those lines were in the original indictment that Smith filed last year.

Trump’s 2020 election rhetoric

Much of the case involves Trump’s words – specifically, his repeated false claims that the election had been “rigged” and “stolen” from him. (Democratic and Republican election officials, Trump’s handpicked attorney general, many of his own advisers, and the nation’s leading cybersecurity agency have all concluded the election was legitimate and secure.)

This adjustment by prosecutors was a reaction to the Supreme Court’s ruling, which commentated on how presidents use social media and speeches to communicate with the public, but didn’t set out a hard-and-fast rule for when those communications are personal conduct.

“The Defendant continued to make false claims nonetheless, with deliberate disregard for the truth, including through his Twitter account,” prosecutors said in the new indictment. “Throughout the conspiracies, although the Defendant sometimes used his Twitter account to communicate with the public, as President, about official actions and policies, he also regularly used it for personal purposes.”

Like the original indictment, the new one quoted from Trump’s incendiary Ellipse speech on the morning of January 6, where he urged his supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell.”

But in Tuesday’s document, prosecutors said that the event was a “campaign speech” and “a privately-funded, privately-organized political rally.”

Trump’s role in post-election lawsuits cited

Another example of how Smith retooled and reworded his indictment revolves around a lawsuit that Trump’s 2020 campaign filed regarding the results in Georgia, which he narrowly lost.

The original indictment said the lawsuit was “filed in his name.” But the new indictment says it was “filed in his capacity as a candidate for President,” explicitly arguing that this solely pertained to his campaign and was wholly removed from his presidential duties.

Trump personally signed a verification swearing that the information in the lawsuit was accurate, even though it contained “false election fraud allegations,” prosecutors wrote.

The right-wing lawyer who advised Trump on that lawsuit, alleged co-conspirator John Eastman, even told Trump’s team beforehand that the filing contained some “inaccurate” information, prosecutors claim.

Why is Mike Pence still in the indictment?

The reworked indictment is a response to the Supreme Court’s divisive ruling on July 1 granting sweeping immunity to Trump. The 6-3 conservative majority ruled that Trump’s interactions with Justice Department officials was entitled to absolute immunity from prosecution.

“The president cannot be prosecuted for conduct within his exclusive constitutional authority,” the Supreme Court wrote. “Trump is therefore absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials.”

Other actions, such as Trump’s interactions with Vice President Mike Pence, were entitled to “presumptive” immunity, but the majority said that lower courts would need to thrash out whether Smith could overcome that presumption and pursue his case. By keeping Trump’s contacts with Pence in the new indictment, Smith is plowing ahead with that part of the case in hopes it will be upheld.

The alleged conspiracy to pressure Pence into overturning the election is a core part of the indictment and a huge part of the 2020 election aftermath. Prosecutors retooled and reframed the section about Trump pressuring Pence to emphasize that, in their view, it was an abuse of power that had nothing to do with the constitutional role of the vice presidency and the normal lawful relationship between a president and vice president.

McQuade said she was “somewhat surprised” to see the allegations remain relating to Trump’s efforts to pressure Pence.

“The court said that this conversation was at least presumptively immune, but that the prosecutor could rebut the presumption,” she said. “It seems that Smith believes he can rebut the presumption, perhaps by framing Pence as acting in his legislative role as president of the Senate rather than in his executive branch role as vice president.”

The Supreme Court left open the possibility that other actions Trump took, such as his interactions with state election officials, might be open to prosecution. The high court didn’t resolve whether any of Trump’s conduct was, in fact, unofficial but rather left it to the trial court considering his case to decide.

“Unlike Trump’s alleged interactions with the Justice Department, this alleged conduct cannot be neatly categorized as falling within a particular presidential function,” the court wrote. “The necessary analysis is instead fact specific, requiring assessment of numerous alleged interactions with a wide variety of state officials and private persons.”

What happens next

Although the charges haven’t changed, Trump must enter a new plea to the superseding indictment. Prosecutors yesterday indicated they would waive a requirement for the former president appear in court.

Meanwhile, expect Trump to continue his strategy of challenging every aspect of the case, especially since the Supreme Court left aspects of the case unresolved.

“Trump still can litigate and then appeal the immunity issue before trial,” Honig said. “There’s no chance this trial happens before the election.”

Eamonn Fitzmaurice/The 74

Dear Commons Community,

Forbes published an article last Saturday entitled, “Will This Be The Year That Schools Shut Down Cellphones?”  It is a growing question among education policy makers that my colleague, David Bloomfield, is referenced as saying “it’s going to take time, it’s going to take expense, and it’s going to take enforcement.” 

The article also refers to the best-selling book, The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt as fanning the flames for restricting access to cellphones.

It is an important issue that will be reviewed carefully by state education departments and school boards in the months and maybe years ahead.

Below is an excerpt from the Forbes article.

Tony

Just a couple of decades ago, teachers at conferences heard that smartphones were the education tool of the future. Now it appears that the national mood is to take broad steps to keep those devices out of classrooms.

Since students could pass notes in class, student personal communication technology has been a classroom challenge. Teachers of a certain age can remember when digital pagers posed a problem. But smartphones represent a whole new problematic level; students could be distracted by everything from checking their socials to starting or continuing a fight to arranging a rendezvous in the hall, all while the teacher tries to explain quadratic equations.

Schools, trying to embrace current technology or just caught flatfooted, have for years left teachers to develop their own policies and procedures for dealing with the ubiquitous devices. Larger bans have fared poorly. In 2006, the Bloomberg administration banned cellphones in New York City schools, raising an uproar from parents and teachers, with outspoken opposition from everyone from Councilman Bill De Blasio to UFT President Randi Weingarten opposed the policy and parents threatened to sue.

While students often push back against phone bans, parents can be the real challenge for a school district. For helicopter parents, the power to stay in touch throughout the entire day can be irresistible. For families that are stretching resources (two jobs, three kids, one car), cellphones can be invaluable. And in an age with heightened fear of school shootings and other emergency situations, many parents to do not trust the schools to provide the kind of quick crisis communication that they need.

But in the last few years, schools have reached their breaking point. In 2015, Mayor Bill De Blasio lifted New York’s cellphone ban, but New York—both city and state—are now contemplating a new ban. And AFT President Randi Weingarten in a 2024 speech took credit for helping Cleveland craft a ban of their own.

And while pressure to ban the devices has been building in education circles for years, works like Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation have fed the idea that internet connection is at least partly responsible for a growing mental health problem among children.

Some parents still pose an obstacle. Philadelphia principal Jose Lebron told Education Week of parent pushback on his cellphone ban, “You would have thought the world was going to end.” One teacher told me that when their school imposed a new rule requiring students to keep phones all day in magnetic lock bags, parents showed up at school to protest, complete with protest signs.

There are also logistical challenges. How and when are phones collected? Where are they stored, and how are these very valuable pieces of personal property safeguarded?

With all that settled, classroom cellphone bans still come down to one moment. The teacher sees a student with a cellphone out. The teacher tells the student to hand it in. The student says no. What happens next? Does the teacher stop class in order to engage in a battle of wills? Does the teacher let it go as not worth the trouble? Does the teacher involve the office, and if so, does the office provide meaningful support?

It’s the irony of large sweeping policies like this. Education Week counts at least twelve states that have laws or policies containing student cellphone use, and innumerable districts have created policies as well. But the effectiveness of all those policies will boil down to how effectively building principals back up their teachers.

State policies make it easier for local district to pass the buck (”There’s no point in arguing with us; this came from the state”). But as David Bloomfield, an education leadership, law, and policy professor told NPR, implementation is “going to take time. It’s going to take expense, and it’s going to take enforcement.” While some teachers are already writing about “the joy of a cellphone free school day,” it will be up to local school leaders to provide the support for effective implementation of these policies. Where administrators find the strength to handle all the various obstacles, this may be the year that teachers finally have one less device competing for student attention.

Dear Commons Community,

More than 200 Republicans who previously worked for either former President George W. Bush, the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., or Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president in an open letter Monday obtained exclusively by USA TODAY.

The letter above from alums of the three Republican presidential nominees prior to former President Donald Trump comes on the heels of a Democratic National Convention last week in Chicago that showcased Republican detractors of the GOP nominee. At least five former aides to former President George H.W. Bush also signed the letter, which has 238 signatures in all.

A similar group of about 150 anti-Trump former staffers of Bush, McCain and Romney pledged support for President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

“We reunite today, joined by new George H.W. Bush alumni, to reinforce our 2020 statements and, for the first time, jointly declare that we’re voting for Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz this November,” the letter reads. “Of course, we have plenty of honest, ideological disagreements with Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz. That’s to be expected. The alternative, however, is simply untenable.”

(See the letter with endorsements here.)

Among those who signed the letter in support of Harris and her running-mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, include: former McCain chiefs of staff Mark Salter and Chris Koch; Joe Donoghue, former legislative director for McCain; Jennifer Lux, press secretary for McCain’s 2008 campaign, and Jean Becker, longtime chief of staff for George H.W. Bush.

Also backing Harris are David Nierenberg, Romney’s 2012 campaign finance chair; David Garman, under secretary of Energy for George W. Bush; and Olivia Troye, a former advisor to both George W. Bush and Vice President Mike Pence. Troye spoke from the stage of the DNC convention last week.

Thank you to these Republicans for putting the country before party!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Western Governors University (WGU), one of the nation’s largest online universities, surprised many of its staff members recently by announcing they would need to work in the office if they wanted to keep their jobs. As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education and Reddit.

In a series of meetings earlier this month, senior administrators at WGU told employees that beginning this fall, 19 of its 26 departments will be “co-located” at the university’s Salt Lake City headquarters, with staff members eventually required to be in the office four days a week. All vice presidents and directors on one team, for example, will need to move to Salt Lake City in the next one to two years, and all new hires will now be based there.The policy does not, however, apply to those with student-facing jobs, including course instructors, evaluators who grade students’ work, and enrollment and financial-aid professionals.

WGU employees who currently live within a 50-mile radius of Salt Lake City will need to work from the office three days per week beginning on October 1, and four days beginning January 1. According to a presentation leaked on Reddit, on the marketing and external communications team, vice presidents who live outside of Utah must decide by November 1 whether they will move; if they opt to do so, they must arrive in Utah by August 2025. Directors have until July 2025 to make their decisions and August 2026 to move. Those who opt not to relocate will be out of a job, though the presentation notes that “severance support will be available.

Tony

Courtesy: @Flight_19_FT28 on X

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd skewered Donald Trump yesterday in her New York Times column entitled,  “Daffy Donald, Turning Pea Green With Envy.”  She compares Trump to Kamala Harris and points out his desperateness in trying to denigrate her and her running mate Tim Walz.  Dowd comments:

“Harris can take heart that she’s driving Trump crazy. He is jealous of her looks, her crowd sizes, her star power and her vivacious, bodacious vibes.”  

Dowd also cautions:

“Top Democrats warn that Trump could still be formidable if he stops unraveling.

Kamala came across as tough talking about the military and foreign policy in her speech. But there are many tests yet to come — including vicious Trump attack lines, eventually a difficult interview and next month’s debate. She has to show she has what it takes once she steps away from the teleprompter. Can she manage to get through a minimum of policy stuff with no viral blunders?’

Good advice!

Dowd’s entire column is below.

Tony

—————————————————–

The New York Times

Daffy Donald, Turning Pea Green With Envy

Aug. 24, 2024

By Maureen Dowd

Opinion Columnist, reporting from Chicago

I have a crow in my backyard in D.C. that has been cawing for three weeks. It has been driving me crazy, so I was happy to get out of town and back on the trail.

But now comes Donald Trump cawing and cawing even louder than the damn crow.

If you need more evidence that Trump is flummoxed about how to counter Kamala Harris, just check out his daffy reaction to her dynamite convention.

Friday morning, Trump crowed on Truth Social: “My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights.”

Friday evening, Trump crowed, “The Republican Party is charging forward on many fronts, and I am very proud that we are a LEADER on I.V.F.”

Yeah, a leader in trying to get rid of it.

At first, I thought there must have been an Iranian hack. These posts were too ridiculous even for Trump. His modus vivendi is projection, but the posts seemed intended to back up Kamala’s line in her big speech that, when it comes to women’s reproductive rights, Trump and JD Vance are simply “out of their minds.”

Trump is usually crowing, after all, about the three conservative justices he put on the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe. If he gets back in the Oval, he’ll probably put yet another religious fanatic onto the court who will try to foist some other horrible legal restriction on the country.

And the worst part about it is that Trump is not even a true believer. He was pro-choice long before he decided to run for president as a Republican. The amoral man who was once a famously promiscuous New York playboy wrecked the Supreme Court simply because it helped him with his Christian right disciples.

Kamala ridiculed Trump in her speech, dismissing him as “an unserious man,” but the real dagger in his heart was that she trumped him in the ratings. That set off a meshuga meltdown on Truth Social, with Trump maniacally capitalizing any piffle that entered his head.

When Kamala came out onstage, looking strong and elegant in a Chloé navy pantsuit, Trump demanded: “WHERE’S HUNTER?”

Then he accused Tim Walz of résumé enhancement for his role on a high school football team. “Walz was an ASSISTANT Coach, not a COACH.”

Ripping defensive coordinators is not a good strategy for running up the vote in “Friday Night Lights” territory.

He followed up the posts with a scream-of-consciousness call to Fox News, filibustering Bret Baier and Martha McCallum for 10 minutes until Baier abruptly cut him off to throw to the Greg Gutfeld comedy show.

“At several points during the call, a familiar beeping sound interrupted Mr. Trump’s remarks,” wrote The Times’s Michael Grynbaum and Michael Gold. “It appeared that the former president was accidentally pressing buttons on the keypad of his phone.”

Trump conceded that the Democrats had “a nice-looking room” for their convention.

Friday was another day of lunacy, as R.F.K. Jr. — the anti-vaxxer — dropped out and endorsed Trump, who once proclaimed himself “father of the vaccine” for Covid. In Phoenix, R.F.K. Jr. gave an incoherent speech that went from contaminated food to media collusion and censorship to Democrats being the party of “big money.” (That last, even though he chose a billionaire as a running mate, got millions from a billionaire, and is endorsing a billionaire.)

Among other delusional statements, R.F.K. Jr. said he could still somehow win and end up in the White House. He said his former party “abandoned democracy” by swapping Joe Biden for Harris, even as he gave his backing to a man who tried to overthrow the democracy he was running.

At an evening rally with Trump in Glendale, Ariz., Kennedy said, without irony, that Trump would protect us from totalitarianism. The fast-food champion praised Kennedy, saying he wanted to clean up the food supply.

Trump loves being embraced by a Kennedy — even an off-kilter one. But the former president’s motto is more like, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for me.”

Kennedy brought up his father and uncle during his announcement, and his other relatives must have been mortified.

R.F.K.’s cousin and J.F.K.’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, a convention speaker, commented on X: “Never been less surprised in my life. Been saying it for over a year — RFK Jr. is for sale, works for Trump. Bedfellows and loving it.”

At an event in Las Vegas on Friday to tout his no-tax-on-tips policy, Trump continued his obsessive critique of Kamala’s performance while still mispronouncing her name, and saying that she had mentioned his name 21 times in her speech. (Trump’s name actually appeared 16 times, but everyone knows he can’t help inflating numbers.)

“She lied,” he said. “But that’s OK because a lot of people lie. They’ll do anything to get elected.”

Well, he should know.

“She’s a copycat,” he said. “She’s a flip-flopper.”

Well, he should know.

Now we begin what is going to be a very ugly slugfest between the Unserious Man and the Untested Woman.

Top Democrats warn that Trump could still be formidable if he stops unraveling.

Kamala came across as tough talking about the military and foreign policy in her speech. But there are many tests yet to come — including vicious Trump attack lines, eventually a difficult interview and next month’s debate. She has to show she has what it takes once she steps away from the teleprompter. Can she manage to get through a minimum of policy stuff with no viral blunders?

Kamala holds the hopes of a lot of people in this country who are praying that she doesn’t fall on her face in the next 72 days.

She can take heart that she’s driving Trump crazy. He is jealous of her looks, her crowd sizes, her star power and her vivacious, bodacious vibes. That’s a good start.

Meaghan McCain.  Courtesy of ABC News.

Dear Commons Community,

Conservative commentator Meghan McCain piled on praise of the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, angering many on the right.

The former “View” host, who’s the daughter of the late GOP presidential nominee John McCain, expressed her admiration on social media over the party atmosphere around Kamala Harris formally accepting the Democratic presidential nomination.

“Maybe republicans just shouldn’t have conventions… just forfeit because I DO NOT KNOW HOW YOU CAN COMPETE WITH THIS!” McCain wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

McCain gushed over a percussion performance of The Pack at the convention.

“Oh man, how cool is this drum line?!” she enthused.

She thanked Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Democratic candidate for senator in Arizona, after he honored her father.

Before the fourth night’s session even began on Thursday, she was already dishing out accolades for Democrats’ A-list impact. She called the convention “better than the last 15 years of MTV Awards.”

“Republicans cannot compete on the culture space with artists, musicians or celebrities on any level whatsoever,” she wrote.

Of course McCain got pushback from conservatives, notably Fox News Media contributor Tomi Lahren, who called the DNC performances “tone deaf” and “insulting” for “struggling Americans.”

Another person on X questioned McCain for going out of her way to compliment the gathering. “I’m not that impressed to be honest. I actually can’t believe you are,” the commenter wrote.

Others called her a RINO (Republican in name only) and accused her of being a turncoat. “You’re the Dems #1 Cheerleader, huh?!” someone wrote with a vomiting emoji.

He father was a war hero denigrated by Trump.  She has every right to express her feelings as she wishes!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Gus Walz, the son of Vice Presidential Nominee Tim Walz, was visibly emotional as he cheered on his father at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday.

“That’s my dad!” Gus Walz, the 17-year-old son of Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, mouthed, blinking through a flow of tears in the audience.

He rose to his feet and pointed emphatically at his father, who had just shouted him out in the most consequential speech of his political career. His sister, Hope, 23, seated next to him, held up her hands in a heart sign.

Against stiff competition — speeches from Oprah Winfrey and former President Bill Clinton, plus a Prince tribute — the moment would become one of the night’s most resonant on social media.  As reported by The New York Times. 

Within hours, the cutaway to Gus circulated on TikTok, Instagram and X in posts that have received hundreds of thousands of views. Many of them were accompanied by the hashtag #ThatsMyDad. Another hashtag, #TeamGus, was trending on X on Thursday morning.

“Tim Walz was the headliner, but his son, Gus, won the night on social media,” Cory Smith, an NBC10 Boston anchor, wrote online.

Many supporters of the Harris campaign said they appreciated the Walz family’s unabashed displays of affection for one another. Several linked it to the more expressive version of masculinity that Mr. Walz has espoused on the campaign trail.

“You know you’ve done well as a parent when your kids are as proud of you as Gus and Hope are of Tim Walz,” Senator Amy Klobuchar wrote in a post that has been viewed more than a million times. “‘That’s my dad,’” she added, “No three words better describe our next Vice President.”

Some said Gus’s reaction had brought additional warmth to the Democratic ticket, which just two weeks earlier had gained the plain-spoken Minnesota governor as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate. “To see the way that he looks at his father just has me in my feels,” said Brenton Guice, a therapist and content creator, in a TikTok video.

But in more conservative spheres online, some Trump supporters posted split-screen images of Gus in tears alongside more stoic ones of Barron Trump, the former president’s youngest son, with one social media user calling Gus “an example of what is wrong with this country.” Politico reported on Thursday that the conservative commentator Ann Coulter posted and deleted a message on X that described Gus as “weird,” the term that Mr. Walz has used to disparage Mr. Trump and his running mate, JD Vance.

Such posts were fiercely criticized by other commenters, who pointed out that Gus is a minor and that his family has said he has a learning disorder.

Gus is the younger of Tim and Gwen Walz’s two children, who were conceived after the couple’s yearslong fertility struggle. The couple said in a statement to People magazine this month that Gus had seemed different from his classmates as a child: “Gus preferred video games and spending more time by himself.”

They learned when Gus was an adolescent that he had “a nonverbal learning disorder in addition to an anxiety disorder and A.D.H.D., conditions that millions of Americans also have.” Nonverbal learning disorders affect a person’s ability to process visual and social patterns. (It is a common misconception that people with nonverbal learning disorders do not speak.)

“It took time, but what became so immediately clear to us was that Gus’s condition is not a setback — it’s his secret power,” the Walzes added in their statement to People.

Mr. Walz, a former high school football coach, approached the stage at the United Center in Chicago on Wednesday night as if it were a giant pep rally, using sports metaphors to urge Democrats to make a fourth-quarter comeback against Mr. Trump.

In his 16-minute speech, Mr. Walz also discussed his family’s experience in having children with the help of fertility treatments — a topic rarely broached by male political candidates. He used the point to underscore his support for reproductive rights.

“Hope, Gus and Gwen, you are my entire world, and I love you,” he said from the stage. “I’m letting you in on how we started a family because this is a big part about what this election is about.”

When the speech concluded, Gus, wearing a blue suit and white Nike Air Force 1 sneakers, joined his father onstage and wrapped him in a tight embrace.

God bless Tim Walz and his family!

Tony