Politics & Government

Democrats are exuberant. Money is flowing in. Volunteers are signing up. But campaign veterans say there will come a day when attacks start to land and mistakes will be made.

Minnesota Public Radio's Brandt Williams talks about Gov. Tim Walz and the George Floyd protests. Walz is now the presumed Democratic vice presidential candidate.

Ever since Minnesota governor and Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz called Republicans "weird," we've seen other Democrats embrace this name-calling strategy and deploy it in interviews and in memes online. We've also seen Republicans lobbing the "weird" moniker right back at Democrats. To get into how "weird" this all is, Brittany chats with NPR culture reporter Andrew Limbong and NPR political correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben about this new political strategy and redefining "normalcy" in 2024.

This week, the Biden administration announced it is taking on more of what it calls "everyday headaches and hassles that waste Americans' time and money."

And it's doing that by having federal agencies make new business rules.

There are actions to simplify health insurance paperwork, crack down on fake product reviews, streamline parent-teacher communications in schools and circumvent those automated customer service calls that the White House labels "doom loops."

It's all part of a wider economic mission to eliminate modern business practices that the Biden administration believes exploit Americans.

Neera Tanden, the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, breaks down why this is happening and how it will work in reality.

For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

Since President Biden abandoned his bid for re-election and Vice President Harris became her party’s standard bearer, national polls have shifted in favor of the Democrats. That trend has begun to extend into some battleground states as well.

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar faces a familiar primary challenger as voting closes on Tuesday. Yet even as the war in Gaza is also a focus for voters in Minnesota, the dynamics of this race are different.

In his first solo campaign experience, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will address a prominent public sector union to highlight both his own and Vice President Kamala Harris' support for workers.