Vice President Kamala Harris in Detroit on Saturday slammed former President Donald Trump over his 34 felony convictions last month over hush money payments to an adult film actress before the 2016 election and said his actions are “disqualifying.”

“Donald Trump openly tried to overturn the last election. And now, he openly attacks the foundations of our justice system,” Harris said at the Michigan Democratic Party’s annual Legacy Dinner in Detroit, according to pool reports.

Harris traveled to Michigan on Saturday for two fundraisers, with the first at an Ann Arbor home. She also stopped at the Black Stone Bookstore and Cultural Center in Ypsilanti along with actress Octavia Spencer and was greeted by a crowd. Both Harris and President Joe Biden have made a point to visit Black-owned businesses during their trips to Michigan.

In Macomb County, Giuliani and Eric Trump slam Donald Trump’s guilty verdict

“Just look at the facts. Over the course of six weeks, a jury of 12 Americans reviewed the evidence,” she said. “His defense attorney actively participated in selecting that jury. And actively made decisions about which witnesses to call and cross examine. And the jury came back with a unanimous decision. Guilty on 34 counts.

“You know why he complains? Because the reality is, cheaters don’t like getting caught,” she added.

Harris condemned Trump’s attacks on judges and witnesses and said he plans to “use a second term for revenge.

“Simply put, Donald Trump thinks he is above the law. This should be disqualifying for anyone who wants to be President of the United States,” she said.

In response to Harris’ remarks, Victoria LaCivita, a spokeswoman for Trump’s Michigan campaign, said in a statement: “The American people have seen this trial for what it is — a rigged political witch hunt orchestrated by the failing Biden campaign.”

Biden was last in Michigan in May, serving as the keynote speaker at the annual Detroit NAACP dinner, while Harris campaigned in Detroit that month in an event touting the administration’s record on African Americans and the auto industry. Trump held a rally in Saginaw County last month during which he promised mass deportations and touted Roe v. Wade being overturned.

Harris also addressed the Israel-Hamas war, which has sparked dozens of pro-Palestinian protests in Southeast Michigan.

“Before I begin, I will say a few words about the morning which I know weighs heavily on all of our hearts,” Harris said in Detroit. “On Oct, 7, Hamas committed a brutal massacre of 1,200 innocent people and abducted 250 hostages. Thankfully, four of those hostages were reunited with their families tonight. And we mourn all of the innocent lives that have been lost in Gaza, including those tragically killed today.”

Biden has been trying to negotiate a permanent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, as the eight-month-long conflict has killed about 1,200 in Israel and more than 34,000 in Gaza, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry. The Associated Press has been able to confirm the deaths of almost 23,000 people in Gaza.

Harris’ speech was interrupted by a female protester who stood up, shouted at her and was removed from the ballroom, per the pool report. There also were pro-Palestinian protesters outside the event.

“I value and respect your voice, but I’m speaking right now,” Harris responded. “… We have been working every day to bring an end to this conflict in a way that ensures Israel is secure, brings home all hostages, ends ongoing suffering for Palestinian people and ensures that Palestinians can enjoy their right to self determination, dignity and freedom. As President Biden said last week, it is time for this war to end.”

Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J. Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on Facebook and Twitter.

Back in 2016, there were all sorts of clumsy fake memes claiming various celebrities were secretly voting for Donald Trump, including Taylor Swift.

It was a not-at-all subtle way of telling folks that it’s OK to be for the crude alleged billionaire who called Mexicans rapists and bragged about grabbing women “by the pus—” because your faves are.

Apparently, some Republicans really bought it — no doubt assuming that a blonde, blue-eyed, pop-country star who tradwife influencers model their looks after would naturally be one of “theirs.” And so anger has been boiling up against Swift ever since she endorsed Democrats in 2018 and President Joe Biden two years later.

“In the past I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now,” Swift wrote to her fans in 2018.

By 2020, Swift was far sharper in her political messaging, blasting Trump for “stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency” and “threatening violence.”

Swift is literally everywhere now, from her “ Taylor’s Version” album rereleases to her sold-out Eras Tour (which sparked actual legislation regulating online ticket sales) to NFL games where she’s cheering on her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce (which has attracted just a wee bit of attention).

Trump is reportedly preoccupied with Swift endorsing Biden again (which doesn’t seem like it would be a big surprise), muttering that he’s “more popular” than the megastar, while aides are chest-beating that they’ll start a “holy war” against her. The hope seems to be to intimidate Swift into silence or make the whole thing seem cringe to dampen excitement if she does become a Biden surrogate.

But it gets weirder.

The MAGA Swift hate seems to have reached a bizarre tipping point as she and Kelce have been hailed as the All-American couple, a veritable Norman Rockwell painting come to life. Real Americans are Trumpers, so the lore and Rust Belt diner-fed punditry goes. This simply cannot stand.

“I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month,” former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy posted. “And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall.”

And lo, this election’s wackiest conspiracy theory was born. Kelce and Swift, you see, aren’t two rich, crazy kids in love. No, they’re integral parts of a Deep State psyop to ensure Biden’s reelection.

Uh, sure.

But when a not-insignificant part of your base believes the COVID vaccine contains microchips to control us and you’d be better off drinking urine or ingesting horse dewormer, these are the sort of hallucinations that pass for actual political analysis.

Republicans also have been increasingly (and sometimes creepily) obsessed with young women, who have been voting against them in droves since Trump’s 2016 victory and the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Tudor Dixon helped lead the charge during her failed GOP gubernatorial campaign where she slammed her opponent, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, saying her “dream for women” was “single women working. Last time I checked, that was a pretty lonely life.” (The oddest part is that the governor, who trounced Dixon in 2022 by 11 points, is a married mom of two).

Republicans steadfastly refuse to abandon unpopular policy positions that might help them win over Gen Z and Millennial women, like opposing abortion rights, birth control and even no-fault divorce. And so attacking Swift, the embodiment of successful young women in total control of their destiny, is just an extension of this right-wing fixation.

Even some conservatives realize what a massive political blunder this is, with former Republican National Committee Chair Reince Preibus pleading that it’s a “powder keg of stupidity.”

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote an entire column that the right has an “abnormality problem” with its Swiftboating, as it were (look it up). But he couldn’t help descending into ickiness himself by musing that Swift and Kelce are “maybe the last best hope for America, we need them to marry and procreate.”

I wonder how surreal it must be for Swift, who, first and foremost, is a real-life person, to contend with so many people trying to stake ownership of her, what she believes and what she owes the world — especially when she’s devoted these last years to rerecording her greatest hits with her own vision.

To be clear, I don’t claim to have encyclopedic knowledge of Taylor Swift. I’ve been watching all this unfold as an outside observer, as neither my Zoomer kids nor I are Swifties. (Thankfully for you, Dear Reader, that means this column isn’t chock-full of lyrical puns, unlike Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s State of the State speech this year).

Republican presidential candidate former U.S. President Donald Trump arrives for a campaign event at the Orpheum Theater on October 29, 2023 in Sioux City, Iowa. On Saturday, Trump joined other Republican presidential candidates when he addressed Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual conference where his one-time vice president, Mike Pence, announced he was suspending his campaign. | Scott Olson/Getty Images

While some analysts may choose to turn their noses up at the Swift controversy, you can’t fully understand American politics while ignoring the impact of celebrity culture. Look no further than Trump, who wouldn’t have become president without being a staple in the New York tabloids and mounting his carefully crafted comeback with “The Apprentice.”

Hopefully, the right’s silliness over Swift will start to dissipate, perhaps after Kelce plays in the Super Bowl — although it almost certainly will be replaced by an even more outré conspiracy.

It remains somewhat unbelievable that the woman causing these unhinged meltdowns gave such innocuous advice during her first foray into politics six years ago:

“For a lot of us, we may never find a candidate or party with whom we agree 100% on every issue, but we have to vote anyway.”

To be honest, we could probably use a little more of that brand of normie earnestness this election.

Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J. Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on Facebook and Twitter.

After decades of eroding wages and benefits, UAW workers this month won blockbuster contracts with the Detroit Three that few thought possible.

During the “Stand Up Strike” — an homage to the Sit-down Strike against Ford in Depression Era Flint that spawned the first industry collective bargaining agreement — the union for the first time took on GM, Ford and Stellantis simultaneously, with plants being called up to the picket line at strategic times.

Workers will now see raises ranging from 33% to 160%, with less time needed to achieve the top pay rate, as well as strike pay and better retirement benefits. All three automakers agreed to bring thousands of electric vehicle and battery plant jobs under the union’s national agreements — a key concern for the bumpy transition to electric vehicles that’s often resulted in lower-paying, non-union jobs.

“There were many in the media and in the corporate class who were saying we didn’t know what we were doing, and they thought we’d never get a deal,” UAW President Shaw Fain said in Chicago this month. “But then we got all three. We weren’t going to stop short of pounding everything we could out of these companies.”

The UAW’s victory capped a huge year for organized labor, with unions winning big concessions from UPS, Kaiser Permanente and major Las Vegas resort companies.

With 76% of Americans siding with UAW workers in a CNN poll — and unions overall enjoying an 67% approval rating in a separate Gallup survey — even some Republicans took a break from their typical union-bashing to issue at least tepid support for the workers, while trashing environmentally friendly policies.

Members of the UAW picket line in Delta Township, Michigan on September 29, 2023. (Photo: Anna Liz Nichols)

“The all Electric Car is a disaster for both the United Auto Workers and the American Consumer,” former President Donald Trump declared on social media shortly after the strike began, darkly predicting that it will mean the union “will be wiped out.”

Trump’s sometimes populist rhetoric never translated to actual policy, with his much-ballyhooed 2017 tax cut resulting in headlines like: “Trump’s tax cuts helped billionaires pay less than the working class for first time.”

Still, when Trump announced he would head to Michigan shortly after the UAW launched its historic strike in September, it was hailed as a political masterstroke. Surely it meant the Republican was well on his way to winning the Rust Belt (Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) like he did in 2016 (ignoring the fact that he lost them all in 2020).

Pundits largely ignored that Trump, who is facing 91 charges from his four indictments, was clearly looking to divert attention from that and his refusal to debate against other GOP presidential candidates who, unlike him, can recall that Barack Obama isn’t still president.

Trump ended up giving a speech at a non-union plant in Macomb County (apparently the only place in Michigan he’ll step foot in) — a giant slap in the face to striking workers (which some national media were painfully slow to realize).

While Trump told workers he supported them and their “goal of fair wages and greater stability,” he argued that any deal “doesn’t make a damn bit of difference” because EVs will kill the domestic auto industry anyway.

And as usual, he made the event mostly about him, announcing weirdly in the third person, “They [the UAW] have to endorse Trump, because if they don’t, all they’re doing is committing suicide.”

It’s no wonder Fain refused to meet with Trump, telling CNN: “I don’t think the man has any bit of care about what our workers stand for, what the working class stands for. He serves the billionaire class and that’s what’s wrong with this country.”

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden showed he really has been a lifelong union supporter by being perhaps the first sitting president in modern history to walk a picket line — and he let Fain take the lead at the event.

“You deserve what you’ve earned,” Biden told workers, “and you’ve earned a hell of a lot more than what you’re getting paid now.”

Analysts weren’t nearly as sanguine on the way Biden was handling the labor dispute, as they unleashed a flood of takes on how the strike is Bad for Biden™ (part of the long-running genre of how anything — hurricanes, boffo job reports, the Detroit Lions being … good? — means the Democrat will surely lose next year).

In the end, the union stood strong for over 40 days and won the best deals in decades, with Fain vowing to organize non-union automakers like Honda, Toyota and Subaru next.

Biden and Fain reunited this month at Stellantis’ idled Belvidere Assembly Plant in Illinois — which is set to reopen under the UAW agreement. The president made it clear that he and Fain view economic progress the same way.

“I don’t look at the economy through the eyes of Wall Street or Park Avenue. I look at it through the eyes of the people I grew up with in Scranton, Pa., and Claymont, Del.,” Biden said. “My guess is that’s how Shawn looks at it, too — the people he grew up with in Kokomo, [Ind.].”

That will, no doubt, be a key campaign message for Biden next year.

Meanwhile, the UAW deals include the long-sought-after “just transition” to EVs for workers, which renders much of Trump’s hyperbolic criticism moot.

He’s been awfully quiet about the strike since his ego trip to Michigan a couple of months ago — he hasn’t bothered to cheer the contracts with big pay bumps, especially for newer workers who often took other jobs to make ends meet.

It’s easy to mix in some populist rhetoric in between hurling barroom-style insults at your enemies, but what is Trump actually offering working-class voters? What did they really win during his four years in office? Is he truly on their side when the chips are down?

Trump could end up prevailing in Michigan and other swing states anyway. But with workers winning record contracts by sticking together, they just might not feel they need to gamble on another four years of Trumpian turmoil.

Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on Facebook and Twitter.