Protesters march and chant 'Free Palestine'
Protesters with the Coalition to March on the DNC are marching west on Washington Blvd. in northwest Chicago.
Leaders are directing the crowd of several thousand in loud call-and-repeat chants of “No justice, no peace,” “Free Palestine,” “From the river to the sea,” and several other slogans.
There is a robust police presence at the peaceful protest. The streets are closed to traffic and hundreds of police on bicycles have created a barrier separating the street, where the protesters are, from the sidewalks.
There is a cacophony of sounds at the head of the protest. A helicopter is loudly buzzing overhead while reporters from all over the world — part of the cadre of hundreds of media members keeping pace with the march — speak in different languages. The elevated train at Paulina Street and Washington Boulevard screeches by every few moments.
A protester is periodically releasing a flare of green smoke — sending a trove of thirsty photographers every few minutes scrambling for the perfect shot of it blowing in the wind.
Trump says Harris is pushing 'communist price controls'
Trump blasted Harris and her economic policy proposals in lengthy remarks this afternoon from York, Pennsylvania.
At a machine manufacturing plant, Trump said Harris’ economic agenda rewards companies that outsource jobs and “punishes American workers by making it economically impossible to manufacture in America.”
“We don’t need lectures on the economy from a candidate pushing communist price controls," he said. "Kamala has no idea what the hell she’s doing. Her father is a Marxist professor, and I believe he taught her well, you know, he’s a Marxist professor. Can you imagine?”
He also addressed attacks by Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, on him and JD Vance calling them "weird."
“I wonder if they knew where she comes from, where she came from, what her ideology is. But you could see it a little bit by this whack job. You know, he said, we’re weird," Trump said. "I think we’re extremely normal people like you ... Did you ever see him go on the stage and go like crazy? It’s like he, between his movement and her laugh, there’s a lot of craziness."
Coalition to March on the DNC’s demonstration begins with thousands in attendance
After more than three hours of speeches, the Coalition to March on the DNC’s demonstration is finally kicking off.
Protesters will walk 1.1 miles in a loop, leaving from — and returning to — Union Park.
Protester urging for cease-fire yells 'Shame on them!' at DNC welcome party
Pro-Palestinian protesters appeared on the stage and floor at the DNC welcome party in Chicago last night and urged attendees to call for a cease-fire in Gaza, according to a video posted on X by the anti-war group CODEPINK, which says it organized the demonstration.
In the video, a protester can be heard yelling on the floor at the DNC welcome event: “The Democratic administration is supporting an ongoing genocide in Gaza. Shame on them! Shame on them! Shame on them! Make sure you go to the convention and call for accountability. Call for peace and call for a cease-fire!”
Josh Shapiro says antisemitism played no role in VP discussions and slams Trump’s comments
CHICAGO — Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said antisemitism played no role in his not becoming the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nominee, as Donald Trump has charged.
Shapiro said Trump was the “least credible person” when it came to standing up against hatred and bigotry.
“He’s trying to use me and he’s trying to use other Jews to divide Americans further,” Shapiro said after concluding remarks to the Pennsylvania delegation at the Democratic convention this morning.
Shapiro then said he wanted to be clear: “Antisemitism played absolutely no role in my dialogue with the vice president. Absolutely none. It is also true that antisemitism is present in our commonwealth, in our country and in some areas within our party, and we have to stand up and speak out against that.”
Vietnam War protester traveled to Chicago for DNC protest
Mark Friedman, 73, from Los Angeles, was part of an organization in 1968 called the Student Mobilization Committee to end the war. During the DNC in 1968, he protested against the Vietnam War on his college campus in Boston.
He’s not sure who he is voting for yet but hopes a Labor Party candidate comes forward. In 2020, he voted for the socialist ticket.
Friedman said the big difference between the 1968 and 2024 protests is “the city is not planning on physically attacking the demonstrations.”
“None of us have come here with the intention of disrupting activities of the Democrat National Convention, but rather influencing the positions of the Democratic Party to defend abortion rights, to defend immigrant rights, to end the blockade of Cuba, to recognize Palestine and to stop sending U.S. military aid to Israel,” he said.
Lifelong Chicago resident reflects on 1968 DNC protests compared to today
Fred Schein, a 76-year-old lifelong Chicago resident, was inside Lincoln Park during the 1968 DNC protests when police came in aggressively and chased him and his fellow demonstrators out.
He says today’s march is nothing like that.
In fact, the whole scene this year — which has drawn comparisons to the 1968 DNC — is entirely different from the one here 56 years ago, Schein said.
“This is nothing like ‘68,” he said. “They wouldn’t even let us stay in the park,” he said, referring to Chicago police.
In contrast, police have worked to keep Union Park protected and peaceful today, while also declining to have officers wear riot gear proactively.
More generally, Schein continued, “‘68 was much more broadly cultural.”
“This is strictly about politics,” he said.
Conversely, when it came to exactly what demonstrators were protesting against in 1968, “it was one thing: End the Vietnam War,” he said.
While this year’s protests do center on the war in Gaza, “they also are really wrapping in quite a lot of issues,” he said, listing off reproductive rights, climate change and immigrant rights as a few examples.
“Trump is a fascist and I would never vote for him, but the Democrats are the ones in power during this war,” Schein said.
Police say between 3,000 and 6,000 protesters are here for march
March organizers had said as recently as Sunday that they were expecting as many as 20,000 people to attend today’s protest.
As of now, they don’t seem close to that. Police officers at the protest estimate there are around 3,000 to 6,000 people present.
March organizers this afternoon disputed the police estimates and claimed that 15,000 people were here.
At least a dozen piles of hundreds of unused protest signs dotted the softball fields in Union Park. It was a clear indication that attendance for today's protest — which had been billed as the largest of six major demonstrations scheduled to occur this week — fell short of expectations.
Harris campaign launches WhatsApp channel aimed at bilingual Latino voters
As the DNC kicked off Monday, the Harris campaign launched a new WhatsApp channel aimed at bilingual Latino voters who could be consequential in the presidential race.
It’s the first time a presidential campaign has created a channel to specifically engage with Latinos on the platform, said Julie Chavez Rodríguez, manager of the Harris campaign, in a selfie-style welcome video message. The channel will be a place where users “can go to get behind-the-scenes info” about the campaign and what it’s doing for Latino families, she added.
WhatsApp is more popular among Hispanics than all other U.S. demographic groups, with 54% of Hispanic adults reporting they use the app. But Latinos’ greater reliance on messaging platforms such as WhatsApp has also disproportionately exposed them to misinformation in both English and Spanish, since there are few effective tools to crack down on the large volume of false information shared bilingually across encrypted private group chats, according to a 2021 Nielsen report.
Latino voters, especially those living in battleground states, stand to reshape the race in ways that are hard to predict since many of them are young people and newly registered voters, according to a memo on a recent Equis Research poll.
Georgia Election Board adopts another rule that could delay certification of votes
The Georgia Election Board adopted a new rule today that could give county election administrators additional options to delay certification.
Specifically, the rule known colloquially as the “Grubbs Rule” for its proponent, Cobb County GOP Chair Salleigh Grubbs, requires county boards to do what’s being described as a precinct-by-precinct “reconciliation” of votes in which they “compare the total number of ballots cast to the total number of unique voter ID numbers.”
The rule further requires that if any discrepancy exists, no matter how small or non-outcome-determinative, “no votes shall be counted from that precinct” until an investigation is conducted and presented to the board.
The rule also empowers county-level election commissioners to “examine all election-related documentation created during the conduct of elections prior to certification of results.”
Although the rule also demands that the county’s consolidated returns be certified by the superintendent no later than 5 p.m. on the Monday following the election and “immediately transmitted to the Secretary of State,” various Georgia election workers, residents and advocates raised concerns that the reconciliation processes and investigations would prevent counties from reporting results by the time required by Georgia law.
The full text of the proposed rule is available at the end of this petition.