Iconic film franchises '<keyword id="6357995" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="harry-potter" source="Orion">Harry Potter</keyword>' and 'The Lord Of The Rings' are returning to Indian cinemas getting a re-release on the big screen to create the magic again. As part of the 100 years celebration of the iconic studio <keyword id="33396" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="warner-bros" source="Orion">Warner Bros</keyword>., audiences in India will get to watch two of the biggest movie franchises on the big screen. PVR-Inox, Miraj cinemas are releasing the Harry Potter films at their cinemas till May 11. 'The Lord Of The Rings' Trilogy will play in cinemas from May 13 to May 15. Speaking on the initiative, <keyword id="5143854" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="denzil-dias" source="Orion">Denzil Dias</keyword>, VP &amp; Managing Director India Theatrical at Warner Bros. Discovery said: "As part of our Centennial Celebrations, we plan to re-release some of our most cherished films and franchises in cinemas starting with the Harry Potter Series and the 'Lord of the Rings Trilogy with many more to come to serve our loyal fans." The 'Harry Potter' is a film series based on the eponymous novels by J. K. Rowling. It consists of eight fantasy films, beginning with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and culminating with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2. As per Kamal Gianchandani, Chief Business Planning &amp; Strategy, PVR INOX Ltd: "These iconic films have captured the hearts and imagination of fans around the world, and we are excited to offer them a chance to relive the magic at our cinemas across the country." "We look forward to welcoming movie-goers of all ages to join us in this celebration of cinema and storytelling. I also congratulate Warner Bros for completing a stupendous 100 years of entertaining the world." The 'Lord of the Rings' is a series of three epic fantasy adventure films directed by <keyword id="59081" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="peter-jackson" source="Orion">Peter Jackson</keyword>, based on the novel The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. The films are subtitled 'The Fellowship of the Ring', 'The Two Towers' and 'The Return of the King'. SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/corporates/news/britannias-q4-net-profit-rises-47-yoy-to-559-crore-on-softer-input-costs/articleshow/100017366.cms">Britannia’s Q4 net profit rises 47% YoY to ₹559 crore on softer input costs</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/news/indigo-airlines-stock-to-surge-further-as-go-firsts-troubles-mount/articleshow/100009541.cms">The skies are clearer for IndiGo stock to surge further as Go First’s troubles mount</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/finance/banks/news/raghuram-rajan-speaks-out-on-zombie-companies-a-simmering-real-estate-time-bomb-more/slidelist/100014762.cms">Raghuram Rajan speaks out on zombie companies, a simmering real estate time bomb &amp; more</a>

Harry Potter movies, The Lord Of The Rings triology to re-release on big screen in India

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Vice President Kamala Harris and husband <keyword id="10160446" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="doug-emhoff">Doug Emhoff</keyword> earned $1,695,225 in 2020, tax returns show.</li><li>Emhoff's work as partner at law firm DLA Piper accounted for most of the couple's joint income.</li><li>Harris and Emhoff earned less than in 2019, when they collected $3,018,127.</li></ul>Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, collectively earned $1,695,225 last year, newly released <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/2021.05.17-VPOTUS-Redacted-2020-Federal-and-State-Returns.pdf">tax returns show</a>. Most of the second couple's 2020 income came from Emhoff's work as partner at law firm DLA Piper, according to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-17/biden-harris-incomes-dropped-in-2020-tax-returns-show?sref=lAVQtUwz">Bloomberg</a>. Harris contributed her salary as a US Senator and $293,902 from sales of her 2019 book, "The Truths We Hold: An American Journey."Their income was substantially down on 2019, when <a href="https://joebiden.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/2019-Harris-Emhoff-California-Federal.pdf">they earned $3,018,127</a>. The drop was mostly due to Emhoff stepping back from his law firm. In August 2020, Emhoff took a leave of absence from the company following Harris' nomination to vice president, and left the firm after the election in November. Harris and Emhoff paid $621,893 in federal income tax in 2020, a rate of 36.7%, according to their joint tax filing shared Monday.Their income in 2020 was much higher than the Bidens'. President <keyword id="99719" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Joe-Biden">Joe Biden</keyword> and first lady <keyword id="191986" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Jill-Biden">Jill Biden</keyword> earned a collective $607,336 in 2020, and paid $157,414 in federal income tax, a rate of 25.9%, according to their <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/2021.05.17-POTUS-Redacted-2020-Federal-and-State-Returns.pdf">joint return</a>. This is a substantial drop from 2019, when the <a href="https://joebiden.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/2019-Biden-Delaware-Virginia-Federal-3.pdf">first couple earned $944,737</a>. The president stopped taking paid speaking engagements during his election campaign.Harris and Emhoff have collective assets between $3.1 million and $7 million, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-17/biden-harris-incomes-dropped-in-2020-tax-returns-show?sref=lAVQtUwz">Bloomberg reported</a>.

Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff made nearly $1.7 million last year - $1 million more than the Bidens, new tax returns show

Hello, everyone! Welcome to the new edition of <keyword id="9095853" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="insider-today">Insider Today</keyword>. Please <a href="https://www.insider.com/insider-today">sign up here</a>.<h2>QUOTE OF THE DAY</h2>"Our state appetizer, calamari, is available in all 50 states." — <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08/19/calamari-rhode-island-comeback-dnc/">Rhode Island Democratic Party Chair Joseph M. McNamara</a>, interrupting his state's roll-call endorsement of <keyword id="99719" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Joe-Biden">Joe Biden</keyword> to tout the local seafood. <h2>WHAT'S HAPPENING</h2><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/postmaster-general-will-suspend-service-changes-until-after-election-2020-8">Postmaster general will suspend all service changes until after the election</a>. In the face of immense public outcry, Louis DeJoy said he'd delay his operational reforms until after the election. Post offices will maintain retail hours. Overtime will be permitted. Mail-processing facilities won't be cut back.Rave reviews for the second night of the Democratic convention. The party <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-biden-formally-attains-democratic-nomination-for-president-2020-8">officially nominated Biden</a> for president with a glorious coast-to-coast (and beyond) video montage from 57 states, territories, and districts. Jill Biden also gave a much-praised speech, and more Republicans (Cindy McCain, Colin Powell) explained why they're choosing a Democrat over Trump. Tonight is star-studded: Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, and Barack Obama will headline, and Kamala Harris will give her much anticipated acceptance speech. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/19/world/covid-19-coronavirus.html?action=click&amp;module=Top%20Stories&amp;pgtype=Homepage#link-2b2713a52b2713a5">Top health officials delayed emergency FDA approval of blood plasma COVID treatment.</a> The Food and Drug Administration was poised to approve the treatment, which is derived from survivors of COVID-19, but last week Anthony Fauci and the National Institutes of Health director intervened, arguing that the clinical data is not yet strong enough to justify the approval. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-supports-oracle-buy-of-tiktok-larry-ellison-donor-2020-8">Trump seems to favor Oracle's bid to acquire TikTok's US operations.</a> Oracle boss Larry Ellison is a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-oracle-trump-support-2020-4">Trump supporter</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-billionaire-larry-ellison-is-fundraising-for-donald-trump-2020-2">donor</a>, and Trump seems to want Oracle, not Microsoft, to acquire ByteDance's US operations. Last week, Trump gave ByteDance 45 days to start a US sale or risk being shut down.<h2>VIEWS OF THE DAY</h2><div type="image" title="Erik Prince" height="1000" width="2000" msid="77641588" hostid="261"></div>So you can just lie to Congress now?In June 2019, the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote a criminal referral letter to the US attorney's office in Washington, DC, for Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, former Trump adviser <keyword id="3581499" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Steve-Bannon">Steve Bannon</keyword>, Donald Trump Jr., and <keyword id="4323281" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Erik-Prince">Erik Prince</keyword> (a modern-day mercenary, extremely wealthy Trump donor, and brother to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos). The <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-08-14/senate-committee-sought-investigation-of-bannon-raised-concerns-about-trump-family-testimony">Los Angeles Times</a> broke this story on Friday, and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/senate-made-criminal-referral-trump-jr-bannon-kushner-two-others-n1237155">NBC News</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/senate-intelligence-committee-donald-trump-jr-jared-kushner-stephen-bannon-erik-prince/2020/08/15/a7905a84-def5-11ea-b205-ff838e15a9a6_story.html">The Washington Post</a> have since confirmed it.The letter was bipartisan, signed by Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the panel's chairman at the time, and Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia. It raises concerns that these people may have misled Congress in their testimony about the investigation into Russia's ties to the Trump campaign.The committee said it had questions about issues with testimony from Trump Jr., former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks, and Kushner because it contradicted things said by Rick Gates, a former associate of Paul Manafort, who is serving out a prison sentence in home confinement. Those may or may not have been outright lies.Prince, Bannon, and Sam Clovis (a lesser known Bannon associate also involved in this Russia mishegoss) get a more severe treatment from the committee's letter. Those men are suspected of making false statements outright. According to the LA Times, they may have lied about a meeting they planned in Seychelles along with Rick Gerson, a hedge-fund manager, and Kirill Dmitriev, the head of a Russian sovereign fund. Congress suspects they were attempting to establish a back channel to communicate with the Russian government.It's unclear what happened once this letter got to the US attorney's office. Sometimes letters like this get shrugged off because they seem like partisan witch hunts (but this one was signed by both parties) or because they don't actually detail a crime (lying to Congress is undoubtedly a crime). So where's the action? The American people need to see it.The Trump administration has been a test of this country's faith in the rule of law from the beginning. Trump promised to drain the swamp, but there are few things swampier than getting to lie to Congress just because you're the president's donor or campaign manager. I guess — to borrow a turn of phrase from the man himself — if you're the president's son, "they let you do it." <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/linette-lopez">— Linette Lopez</a><div type="image" title="Screen Shot 2020 08 19 at 12.42.24 PM" height="1433" width="2866" msid="77641592" hostid="261"></div>DNC night 2 was a much better show, even if somewhat misleadingI'm not saying the <keyword id="805524" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Democratic-National-Convention">Democratic National Convention</keyword>'s producers might have read <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/dnc-night-one-joe-biden-eva-longoria-democratic-national-convention-2020-8">my column yesterday</a>; I'm just saying they took my advice.Out were the squirm-inducing minutelong interviews with "just regular folks"; in were more speeches and more face time with luminaries of the party's past and present.The most effective bit of programming was unquestionably the roll call. Once an interminable episode of mostly anonymous delegates holding pole-shaped placards bearing their state's name on the cramped floor of a basketball arena, the coronavirus created an opportunity for each state (and territory) to have its moment in the spotlight.Roll call kicked off with Alabama Rep. Terri Sewell placing her delegation's vote for Biden with Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge — the site of the civil-rights march led by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 — in the background. Instant stars were created by Rhode Island's <a href="https://twitter.com/thedailybeast/status/1295918471600103424">calamari-touting</a> delegate and <a href="https://twitter.com/ScarletAvengers/status/1295904540240347143">the Louisiana kid</a> holding up a poster of Joe Biden's aviator sunglasses. Matthew Shepard's parents representing the Wyoming delegation and <a href="https://www.13newsnow.com/article/news/politics/khizr-khan-represents-virginia-in-roll-call-dnc-night-2-still-wants-trump-to-read-constitution/65-006f47c0-10e5-484f-8460-751440d3419b">Khizr Khan representing Virginia</a> were also strikingly powerful moments.The parade of disaffected Republicans for Biden also continued last night, with ringing endorsements (and denunciations of Trump) from Chuck Hagel, Colin Powell, and Cindy McCain. Like night 1, a lot of this was directed toward a part of the electorate that doesn't like Trump but is not all that enthused about a future Democratic Party represented by young socialists such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.AOC might have gotten only 90 seconds to speak, where she seconded the nomination of Sen. Bernie Sanders to lead into the roll call vote, but she and her cohort would have far more influence on a Biden administration than the mostly retired Republicans who vouched for their pal Joe. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/anthony-l-fisher">— Anthony Fisher</a><div type="image" title="Screen Shot 2020 08 19 at 12.35.31 PM" height="1431" width="2862" msid="77641597" hostid="261"></div>The Democratic roll call was the most inspiring moment of the entire campaign.Fisher, I don't think you're appreciating the roll call enough. It was absolutely magnificent, the most inspiring thing on television this entire campaign! It was the road trip we all dream of making in the pandemic, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/19/us/politics/dnc-roll-call.html">"Magic School Bus" tour</a> of the whole nation, its landscapes, its history, its present, and its people.We began on the Edmund Pettus Bridge celebrating Rep. John Lewis, saw the shores of the Pacific with a deliriously excited Rep. Barbara Lee, commemorated the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment with a young college student in the Tennessee hotel where its passage was announced, shared the sorrow and determination of Matthew Shepard's parents in Casper, Wyoming, reveled in the "Fight Club" vibe of the Ohio union organizer Josh Abernathy, basked in the sunshine of the US Virgin Islands, visited New Mexico's Pueblo of Sandia with tribe member Derrick Lente, and reveled in the unapologetic calamari hawking of the Rhode Islanders.We learned about the issues that are preoccupying Americans in different parts of the country, from the Colorado family, New York nurse, and Nebraska meat-packer struggling with COVID-19, to the Iowans recovering from one of the worst storms in state history, to the Florida father hoping to stop the gun violence that took his child's life at Parkland, to the Gold Star father mourning the racist violence that besieged his city of Charlottesville, Virginia, to the Utah mayor affirming her state's excellent experience with voting by mail.This roll call was not merely a mild improvement on the shouty convention-hall roll calls of the past. It is a genuinely brilliant new tradition that must — and will — become the standard.At a time when we're atomized, narrowly restricted to our homes, limited in our social interactions, it showed us America at its most expansive and wonderful, our variety of landscapes and skies, the multiplicity of issues that concern us, the depth of our history (the 19th amendment, the Tulsa race massacre, and the civil-rights movement were just a few of the capsule reminders). And most of all, it showed us the variety of us. Young and old, immigrant and native-born, Indigenous, Black, white, Hispanic, island people, mountain people, and plains people.It was a Walt Whitman poem come to life. We are large. We contain multitudes. —DP<div type="image" title="GettyImages-laura-loomer" height="489" width="978" msid="77641600" hostid="261"></div>Another fringe candidate won a GOP primary, and Trump congratulated herLaura Loomer — a 27-year-old Islamophobic internet personality who's been barred from all the major social-media platforms, as well as from Uber, Lyft, GoFundMe, and Venmo — just won the GOP primary in Florida's 21st Congressional District. Loomer is well-known in alt-right and ultranationalist internet cadres, but she's never been able to achieve the mainstream attention she so desperately seeks. She's essentially a B-list <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59n99q/milo-yiannopoulos-says-hes-broke">Milo Yiannopoulos</a>.She tried, and failed, to get arrested at Twitter headquarters <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/lara-loomer-chained-herself-twitter-hq-after-banned-2018-11">when she handcuffed herself to the front door</a> after being barred. She <a href="https://splinternews.com/laura-loomer-is-at-it-again-1831755717">trespassed on Nancy Pelosi's</a> property as an act of protest, again failing to get arrested. She did manage to get arrested in 2017 <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumpkins-cry-free-speech-and-stab-it-in-the-back">when she disrupted a Shakespeare in the Park production</a> of "Julius Caesar," using the same shutdown-of-speech tactics she claims to oppose when acted out by the progressive left.Loomer is such an obnoxious exhibitionist that <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/anti-muslim-activist-laura-loomer-banned-from-cpac-after-harassing-reporters">she was barred in 2019 by the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)</a> — about as <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cpac-2020-trump-worship-hating-socialism-bullied-victim-left-2020-2">Trump-friendly a venue</a> as you're likely to find — for harassing reporters. Unlike the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-marjorie-taylor-greene-georgia-bio-age-beliefs-qanon-2020-8">QAnon-supporting Marjorie Greene</a>, Loomer has almost no chance of winning the heavily Democratic district (which happens to include Mar-a-Lago, making President Trump and first lady Melania Trump constituents). The GOP primary was a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gop-candidates-florida-21st-congressional-district-trump/2020/08/16/a8d710b8-de2d-11ea-8051-d5f887d73381_story.html">rogue's gallery of fringe candidates</a> with no support from the national party.But <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1295932138290917376">Trump congratulated Loomer on her primary win</a> anyway. Despite Loomer being an inconsequential candidate, she represents a significant and vocal portion of the Trump base, and he dares not to offend it this close to Election Day. — AF<h2>BUSINESS &amp; ECONOMY</h2><div type="image" title="mike Lindell MyPillow my pillow " height="529" width="1057" msid="77641604" hostid="261"></div><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mike-lindell-founder-ceo-mypillow-donald-trump-ally-2020-8">MyPillow CEO has a stake in the company that developed the COVID-19 "cure" Oleandrin.</a> Trump ally Mike Lindell has been pushing to get FDA approval for the unproven remedy, and now the president says the feds will "take a look at it."<a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/apple-stock-price-market-cap-valuation-hits-2-trillion-milestone-2020-8-1029517431">Apple becomes the first US-listed company to hit a $2 trillion market cap.</a> Aramco, a Saudi oil giant, briefly hit $2 trillion in December.<h2>LIFE</h2><div type="image" title="tiger king" height="797" width="1594" msid="77641607" hostid="261"></div><a href="https://www.insider.com/tiger-king-zoo-closed-after-animal-exhibition-license-pulled-2020-8">The USDA shut down the "Tiger King" zoo in Oklahoma.</a> Federal officials suspended the animal-exhibition license of the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park because of animal-welfare violations.<a href="https://www.insider.com/swiss-town-covered-in-chocolate-snow-lindt-factory-malfunction-olten-2020-8">A gentle chocolate snow fell on a Swiss town.</a> A ventilation malfunction at the local Lindt factory released a cocoa cloud that dusted houses nearby.<h2>THE BIG 3*</h2><div type="image" title="Mike Tyson" height="1000" width="2000" msid="77641611" hostid="261"></div><a href="https://www.insider.com/roy-jones-jr-is-threatening-to-cancel-mike-tyson-exhibition-2020-8">Roy Jones Jr. is threatening to withdraw from Mike Tyson fight.</a> Jones is annoyed that promoters pushed back the fight from September to November to increase the audience and wants compensation for the two-month delay. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/long-term-coronavirus-immunity-t-cells-2020-8">Everyone infected with the coronavirus develops immunity, according to a new study.</a> The study finds that even people with mild or asymptomatic COVID cases develop immunity thanks to virus-fighting T cells.<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/revealed-donald-trump-letters-to-vladimir-putin-miss-universe-russia-2020-8">"I'm a big fan of yours."</a> Trump's fawning letters to Putin were included in the Senate Intelligence Committee report showing the connections between his campaign and the Russians. *The most popular stories on Insider today.

So you can just lie to Congress now?

Indian Space Research Organisation on Saturday tweeted its thanks to Prime Minister Narendra <keyword id="6354642" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="modi" source="Orion">Modi</keyword> who on Saturday morning visited the space agency's command centre in Bengaluru. PM Modi congratulated <keyword id="6358064" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="isro" source="Orion">ISRO</keyword> <keyword id="6367929" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="scientists" source="Orion">scientists</keyword> who were involved in the Chandrayaan-3 project that culminated in the historic lunar landing mission of India. On Wednesday, the country became the first to place a lander on the uncharted south pole of the moon. "Interacting with our @isro scientists in Bengaluru. The success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission is an extraordinary moment in the history of India's space programme," PM Modi tweeted. In response, ISRO posted on its social media platform, X, formerly Tiwtter, "Dhanyavaad, Honorable Prime Minister of India Shri @narendramodiji". PM Modi, who followed the final moments of the touchdown of the lunar lander, '<keyword id="1091" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="vikram" source="Orion">Vikram</keyword>', virtually from South Africa where he was attending the 15th BRICS Summit, met the scientists behind the country's maiden lunar landing project at the ISRO's Telemetry Tracking and Command Network Mission Control Complex in Bengaluru today. ISRO Chairman S Somanath personally received PM Modi, who patted his back and hugged him for the successful culmination of the daunting lunar landing mission. During his address, PM Modi turned emotional while recalling the final 15 challenging minutes of the Chandrayaan-3. The prime minister also announced that August 23 will be celebrated as National Space Day to mark Chandrayaan-3's landing on the Moon. PM Modi said that the touchdown spot of the Vikram lander on the lunar surface would be known as the 'Shivshakti' point while the Chandrayaan-2 Lunar landing point will be called the 'Tiranga' point. The Prime Minister also posed for a group photo with the team of scientists behind the project. Somanath briefed PM Modi on the ISRO's 40-day journey to the <keyword id="3359616" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="lunar-south-pole" source="Orion">lunar South Pole</keyword> and the efforts that went into the project. Prior to meeting the scientists, PM raised the slogan 'Jai Vigyan Jai Anusandhan' and greeted people lining the streets outside HAL airport after his arrival in Bengaluru. After a 40-day journey into space, the Chandrayaan-3 lander touched down on the uncharted lunar South Pole on Wednesday evening, making India the first country to do so. As India achieved a successful lunar landing, becoming only the fourth country to reach the milestone after the US, Russia and China, congratulations and good wishes poured in from world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, US Vice President Kamala Harris and Nepal Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka 'Prachanda', among others.

'Dhanyavaad', says ISRO after PM Modi visits Bengaluru centre, lauds Chandrayaan-3 scientists

List of 165 politicians, journalists, military officials and other prominent personalities that China Revival was tracking

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5c62d9e12628982e0c79972a-2000/ap19038525510982.jpg" border="0" alt="nancy pelosi" data-mce-source="Evan Vucci/AP Images" />Evan Vucci/AP ImagesHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi pointed to the decline in the size of Americans tax refunds as proof that the GOP tax law is not working for the middle class, but it's more complicated than that.</div></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>Democrats are attacking the GOP's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act after reports that tax refunds dropped during the first week of the 2019 tax season.</li><li>Democrats say the decline in refunds proves the TCJA did not benefit the middle class.</li><li>But that doesn't tell the whole story.</li><li>Taxes for middle-income Americans fell on average in 2018, according to multiple analyses.</li><li>Financial experts also said the size of a refund is not indicative of the size of a person's tax bill.</li></ul>Prominent Democrats are blasting the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/gop-tax-law">GOP's massive tax reform law</a> over reports indicating the average Americans' tax refund is slipping. But the fresh line of attack against the tax code overhaul isn't telling the whole story.The new argument comes after <a href="https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/filing-season-statistics-for-week-ending-february-1-2019">IRS data released on Friday showed</a> the average tax refund in the first week of the 2019 tax filing season was down 8% from the year before, to $1,865. The total number of refunds also fell 24% from last year.High-ranking Democrats jumped on the decline as proof the GOP tax law, called the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/tax-cuts-and-jobs-act">Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA),</a> was not a boon for the middle class like President Donald Trump and Republican leaders promised."The average tax refund is down about $170 compared to last year. Let's call the President's tax cut what it is: a middle-class tax hike to line the pockets of already wealthy corporations and the 1%," Sen. Kamal Harris, who recently announced a run for the 2020 Democratic nomination, tweeted Monday.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also cited a slew of stories from <keyword id="6355005" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="news">news</keyword> outlets that reported the slide in refund size as a way to criticize the TCJA."Once again, American families are feeling the reality behind the empty promises of the GOP Tax Scam," Pelosi said in a release.But while the decline of refunds is <a href="https://fox4beaumont.com/news/nation-world/shrinking-tax-refunds-stir-complaints-about-tax-reform-but-truth-is-more-complicated">drawing the ire of many Americans</a>, the line of attack by the Democrats is missing some key context.The most glaring error is Harris' claim that the lower refunds prove that middle class families are paying more in taxes, or received a "hike." According to most tax experts, a sizeable majority of American households making $100,000 or less are getting a tax decrease this year.According to the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation, 80% of all households received a tax bill cut in 2018. Those in the middle quintile of income earners <a href="https://taxfoundation.org/the-distributional-impact-of-the-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act-over-the-next-decade/#_ftn3">saw an increase</a> to their after-tax income of 1.6% on average for the year.Similarly, the nonpartisan <a href="https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/distributional-analysis-conference-agreement-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act/full">Tax Policy Center estimated</a> the middle quintile of earners would also see a 1.6% after-tax income increase and an average tax cut of $930 per tax unit.This isn't to say every single household in the middle class received a tax cut. According to the TPC, around 7.3% of tax units in the middle income quintile saw a tax increase due to the elimination of certain tax credits and deductions. But the think tanks also estimated that more than 91% of middle income taxpayers saw a cut. So overall it's fair to say that the middle class, on average, saw their taxes go down.In addition to the overall cut for the middle class, a focus on tax refunds does not reflect a person's overall tax bill.As <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/financial-planner-advice-tax-refund-size-explained-2019-2">Business Insider's Tanza Loudenback laid out</a>, financial planners say a larger or smaller refund is not indicative of whether a person paid more or less in taxes, but rather how much was withheld from their paycheck.Employers withhold a certain amount of money from every paycheck a workers received that goes to cover their taxes. When the worker files their taxes at the end of the year, that person either a.) receives a refund if the amount withheld was higher than the amount owed or b.) pays a tax bill if the amount withheld was less their their tax obligation."Just because you receive a small refund doesn't mean you didn't get everything back you were owed or that you're worse off financially - it most likely means you paid the right amount of federal taxes you owed during the year and didn't overpay," Mark Jaeger, the director of tax development at <a href="http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/3861930/type/dlg/sid/bi_012919_seamless-new-tax-law/https://www.taxact.com/tools/tax-calculator" target="_blank" rel="noopener">TaxAct</a>, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/financial-planner-advice-tax-refund-size-explained-2019-2">told Business Insider</a>.Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/financial-planner-advice-tax-refund-size-explained-2019-2" data-analytics-position="1">Financial experts say there's no reason to panic if your tax refund is smaller this year»</a>After the TCJA, the IRS rolled out new withholding rules that were generally more conservative about the amount employers should withhold. While this increased take-home pay - around 90% of workers saw larger paychecks due to the TCJA in 2018 - it also means that employers erred on the side of withholding less from workers. According to a Treasury Department report, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/27/us/politics/tax-refund-code-shutdown.html">projected four million fewer taxpayers</a> will receive a refund this year while the number of people owing a tax bill will increase by roughly the same number.Additionally, the Treasury Department responded to concerns about refunds in a tweet on Monday."News reports on reduction in IRS filings &amp; refunds are misleading. Refunds are consistent with 2017 levels and down slightly from 2018 based on a small initial sample from only a few days of data," the Treasury said.Interestingly, few Americans noticed the bump in take-home pay from the new withholding rules. But according to <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/243611/disapprove-approve-2017-tax-cuts.aspx">an October Gallup poll</a>, 64% of people surveyed said they did not notice an increase in their take-home pay due to the tax reform.And now people are complaining about the lack of tax refunds, with many Americans taking to Twitter <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/02/10/millions-americans-could-be-stunned-their-tax-refunds-shrink/">using the hashtag #GOPTaxScam</a>.Whether the TCJA was successful in its other goals, or whether it favors the wealthy over middle-income families is a debate among tax experts and economists. But claiming that the middle class got screwed because of a decline in refunds misses the mark. <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/roger-stone-donald-trump-richard-nixon-2017-2">Roger Stone explains what Trump has in common with Richard Nixon</a></h3> <div> <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/dmeOdLyE-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script> </div> </div>

Democrats claim the decline in Americans' tax refunds is proof the GOP tax law screwed over the middle class - but the truth is more complex

A good school for the children, a bungalow in an elegant part of the Indian capital, a job as a freelance writer, a maid, a driver, an inverter for the power cuts, and a water purifying system. These were some of the items Indian expat Jyoti Pande Lavakare ticked off on her list as “done” as she prepared to leave the piercing blue skies of Palo Alto in California to return to New Delhi in June 2009 with her husband Ajay, a technology start-up executive. The move proved smooth. Within months, the household had settled into a new rhythm. They were returning to spend time with their elderly parents and ensure their son, Madhav, and daughter, Naina, both in their early teens, had some “connection” with India, where both Jyoti and Ajay had grown up. They hoped to make them more resilient by teaching them to cope with power cuts, water shortages, and similar hardships. What Lavakare, now in her early 50s, hadn’t bargained for was the poisonous air. The city had a “hidden” secret: its air was fouler than Beijing’s but hardly anyone knew. With every passing winter, the air quality was plummeting. <img src="https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/methode/2019/11/04/ac71c3c8-fecf-11e9-93ee-a5388fc1b87d_972x_201810.jpg" class="wrapper__img preview-img-item img--portrait" /> Jyoti Pande Lavakare. “In 2014, I realised something was making us all sick. At my children’s school, children were falling ill constantly. My friends’ children were falling ill. I had a bad asthma attack. When we met other expats, the talk was about what was wrong with the air,” says Lavakare. She thought she was being hypersensitive. Indian friends teased her for having become too “American”. But Lavakare began reading about and researching the air quality and soon became obsessive about the pollution. When the American embassy in Delhi, which had been collecting air quality data but keeping it private, released the figures to the public in 2015, the secret was out. Lavakare was right to be obsessed: New Delhi’s pollution was off the charts, registering 222 during US President Barack Obama’s visit in January 2015. Readings from 151 to 200 are considered unhealthy, and any above that very unhealthy, meaning “health warnings of emergency conditions”. The Indian capital’s residents were living in a gas chamber. In January 2015, Bloomberg quoted David Spiegelhalter, a University of Cambridge statistician, as saying that, by visiting the capital and breathing its air for just three days, Obama might have cut six hours from his expected lifespan. New York Times correspondent Gardiner Harris (a neighbour of Lavakare’s in Sunder Nagar) wrote a quietly impassioned article on how he was leaving New Delhi after his young son suffered a horrifying asthma attack. Breathing the air was the equivalent of smoking 44 cigarettes a day, according to the independent Berkeley Earth science research group. “At first I was in denial. Had I brought my children back to India to breathe pure poison and harm their lungs? But when the data started coming out … I knew we were in a crisis,” says Lavakare. She bought face masks and air <keyword id="2029750" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="purifiers">purifiers</keyword>, but that was only dealing with her own patch. Angry at the horror of the city’s 20 million residents breathing filthy air, she co-founded Care for Air in 2015 with other professionals, as a platform to build awareness that the city was in the midst of a “public health emergency” and to lobby for clean air. With her colourful silk saris and long wavy hair, pushed back by her glasses, Lavakare is now well-known as an expert on air pollution; she is invited to join television debates. She is unimpressed with the measures the New Delhi government has just announced to “minimise” (no one is talking of eliminating) the pollution this winter that turns the capital into a kind of “air gulag”, thick with tiny particles known as PM2.5 which damage not just respiratory systems, as many seem to think – but many other human organs too. The quality of October’s air plunged to “poor” even before Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights when the bursting of firecrackers makes the “normal” pollution many times worse. On some days in late October, the state-run Central Pollution Control Board’s air quality index stood at around 300 – six times the recommended level. The index has risen as high as 999 after Diwali for two consecutive years. This year, the government began putting tougher measures in place. Under its Graded Response Action Plan, drivers are allowed to use their cars every other day, depending on whether their number plates end in an odd or even number, to limit vehicle emissions; people found burning waste are fined; bus and metro services are increased; the use of diesel generators has been banned; and water sprinklers and mechanical sweepers will be used to deal with the construction dust and debris that is responsible for the bulk of the pollution. <h2 style="margin-top: 1.14286rem; margin-bottom: 0.428571rem; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: 1.71429rem; line-height: 2.21429rem; font-family: Merriweather, serif; vertical-align: baseline;">At first I was in denial. Had I brought my children back to India to breathe pure poison and harm their lungs?Jyoti Pande Lavakare</h2> By getting the doctors on Care for Air’s board to appear on television to talk about its effects, visiting schools to educate children, and galvanising the media to cover the subject, the group has succeeded in raising public awareness and making people, even the poor, demand action. You can see the difference in the booming sales of air purifiers and face masks. “When people first began wearing masks a few years ago, people used to stare. It seemed odd. Or they’d cross the street, thinking the person was contagious. Now no one thinks twice about wearing a mask,” says Mukesh Nath, a chemist in Sarai Jullena. For Lavakare, the fight for the right to breathe clean air has become fused with her personal life. She’s not worrying about her children – Naina has gone to Barnard College in New York, where she is studying sociology, and Madhav, currently on a gap year, has been accepted by Yale University in Connecticut. It’s more that, while she was campaigning and lobbying against pollution, it sneaked into her family, devastating it. <img src="https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/methode/2019/11/04/bbbff092-fef8-11e9-93ee-a5388fc1b87d_972x_201810.JPG" class="wrapper__img preview-img-item img--landscape" /> Jyoti Pande Lavakare (left), her late mother Kamale Pande and father Jagdish Chandra Pande. Photo: courtesy of Lavakare family She had returned to India to spend time with her parents. But over a year ago, her mother, Kamale Pande, a classical vocalist and non-smoker, was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. She had no family history of the disease and was otherwise in excellent health. Suddenly, all those abstract statistics were embodied in her own mother’s lungs. Specialists linked the disease directly to <keyword id="55910" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Air-Pollution">air pollution</keyword> and Lavakare has no doubt at all about the causal link. In her book Choked, published this year, Beth Gardiner wrote: “You see one person run over in the street and you’ll never forget it, but thousands dying from the effects of dirty air will never even faze you.” Lavakare’s mother died last year. Trying to process her grief is one reason Lavakare is working on her own book, called Breathing Here is Injurious to Your Health, to be published next year. It’s the story of her relationship with her dying city, with pollution, her mother’s suffering and on what can be done to spare Indians from pollution’s catastrophic impact. The fight for clean air is going to be prolonged. Misleading statistics have to be contested, for one. The Delhi government recently issued full-page advertisements to trumpet how air pollution had been cut by 25 per cent thanks to its efforts. <h2 style="margin-top: 1.14286rem; margin-bottom: 0.428571rem; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: 1.71429rem; line-height: 2.21429rem; font-family: Merriweather, serif; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes, I wish we hadn’t given up our green cardJyoti Pande Lavakare, who returned to India with her family from Palo Alto, California, in 2009</h2> “Experts agree that there is no data available – at least in the public domain – that clearly validates the claim. It doesn’t mean the government is lying, but unless independent data analysts and scientists can access the data, no one can say whether this is just another piece of fake news or a manipulation of cherry-picked statistics,” says Lavakare. Sunita Narain, director general of the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi, says the coming weeks will see pollution getting worse. “There are 14 ‘hotspots’ – areas where pollution levels exceed the average because of the burning of municipal solid waste and industrial waste. To reduce the remaining 65 per cent of pollution, these sources need to be tackled,” she says. Lavakare wants action on a “war footing”. The city needs an empowered and accountable authority whose sole goal is to reduce pollution. She is convinced that neither New Delhi nor the country – last year, 11 of the world’s 15 most polluted cities were in India – can afford incremental progress. Anger inflects her voice, mostly when she talks of how little has been done. “Take 2018 – there was not a single ‘clean air’ day in the city. Take the government’s Clean India (Swachh Bharat) campaign. “How you can have a Clean India without clean air?” Or the government’s other pet scheme, Make in India. “How can you Make in India if you can’t breathe in India?” Lavakare asks. The figures are not just dispiriting, they are apocalyptic. A report by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago in 2016 said air pollution was reducing the life expectancy of the average New Delhi resident by about 10 years. She and Ajay discuss whether they should become “pollution refugees” by leaving the city for Goa, a coastal state in India’s southeast. Friends have already sold up and fled. Many have had nasty health scares. Some have opted for crazy commutes, such as between Delhi and Toronto or Delhi and London. “Sometimes, I wish we hadn’t given up our green card,” she says.

New Delhi’s toxic air and how one expat family was affected – sick children, asthma, a death, and a campaign to awaken city to pollution threat

Hello, everyone! Welcome to the new edition of <keyword id="9095853" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="insider-today">Insider Today</keyword>. Please <a href="https://www.insider.com/insider-today">sign up here</a>.<h2>QUOTE OF THE DAY</h2>"Let me be as honest and clear as I can: Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is." —<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/michelle-obama-delivers-urgent-call-for-americans-vote-for-biden-2020-8">Michelle Obama</a>, addressing the first night of the Democratic National Convention.<h2>WHAT'S HAPPENING</h2><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/senate-intelligence-trump-russia-report/2020/08/18/62a7573e-e093-11ea-b69b-64f7b0477ed4_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-high_intel-11am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans">Bipartisan Senate investigation finds web of ties between Russia and 2016 Trump campaign.</a> The report from the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee chronicles tons of contacts between Russia and Trump officials and labels campaign chair Paul Manafort a "grave counterintelligence threat" for his close connections with Russian intelligence.<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/michelle-obama-virtual-democratic-national-convention-speech-analysis-2020-8?_ga=2.175783138.1191101739.1597663919-163033034.1594207157">Michelle Obama's and Bernie Sanders' powerful speeches capped an unusual first night of the DNC.</a> The virtual convention mixed kitschy patriotism and strong speeches, with a focus on Trump's incompetence and unfit character. Tonight's lineup includes <keyword id="10212" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Bill-Clinton">Bill Clinton</keyword>, Jill Biden, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.<a href="https://www.axios.com/unc-coronavirus-remote-learning-f7761036-68e7-49e5-9556-77a4155221f2.html">UNC cancelled in-person classes a week into the term following a COVID spike.</a> More than 100 students recently tested positive or are quarantined already. Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/us/coronavirus-fraternities-sororities.html?action=click&amp;module=Top%20Stories&amp;pgtype=HomepageHomepage">members of fraternities and sororities</a> around the country continue to gather and party, despite instructions not to.<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/just-6-trumps-top-donors-have-given-2020-reelection-bid-2020-8">Just 6 of Trump's top 38 donors from 2016 and 2018 have given to his reelection bid.</a> His centralized reelection PAC, America First, has raised only $107 million, far short of the $300 million planned. The Adelsons, for example, who gave $20 million to Trump last time, have not donated to him, presumably because his anti-China policies endanger their Macau casinos.<h2>VIEWS OF THE DAY</h2><div type="image" title="michelle obama vote necklace" height="1000" width="2000" msid="77621539" hostid="261"></div>DNC Night 1 was awkward and dull, until two impassioned speeches saved the show.The people behind the Democratic National Convention curtain need to throw out the script.Actress and activist Eva Longoria did the best she could with a flawed concept, but halting one-minute interviews with "ordinary Americans," time-delayed "applause breaks," from the viewers at home, and a seemingly endless parade of "unity" montages only served to highlight that the flaws in the virtual DNC as a televised entertainment event.With rare exceptions, the only effective, entertaining, memorable moments were the speeches — Bernie Sanders' and <keyword id="27526" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Michelle-Obama">Michelle Obama</keyword>'s, in particular.The producers should just chalk it up to opening-night jitters, and then do everything they can to provide what are always the most memorable moments at past DNCs: more time with the party's stars addressing the nation.In <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/dnc-night-one-joe-biden-eva-longoria-democratic-national-convention-2020-8">my latest column</a>, I break down what went wrong and propose how the DNC can save the remaining three nights of their prime-time infomercial for <keyword id="99719" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Joe-Biden">Joe Biden</keyword>'s candidacy. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/anthony-l-fisher">—Anthony Fisher</a><div type="image" title="Bill Clinton" height="1100" width="2200" msid="77621545" hostid="261"></div>Bill Clinton shames the Democratic Party and shouldn't speak at the convention.You can't hold a Democratic convention without a Bill Clinton speech. It's the law, apparently. He's haunted every convention hall since before AOC was born. Every balloon that has ever been Democratically inflated since 1988 has had a small chance of falling gently onto his head. And so of course we must hear from him again tonight.But must we, really?He is, of course, a two-term president, and he's given a couple of great convention speeches. (He really <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8F7JgqXQX4">saved Obama's bacon in 2012</a>, when he made Obama's case better than Obama did.) But Clinton, who has every political gift except knowing when to shut his mouth, should have given 2020 a pass, and have had the wit to know that the party doesn't need to hear from him.What has changed since the 2016 convention is #MeToo. When the #MeToo movement exploded in October 2017, within days it compelled even Clinton's admirers to reckon with the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/1/6/10722580/bill-clinton-juanita-broaddrick">allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault</a> levied <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/these-are-the-sexual-assault-allegations-against-bill-clinton-2017-11">against Clinton</a>. We've long known Bill Clinton was a philanderer and a liar. And while Clinton's lawyers have offered broad denials when confronted claims such as those <a href="https://www.npr.org/2016/10/09/497291071/a-brief-history-of-juanita-broaddrick-the-woman-accusing-bill-clinton-of-rape">made by Juanita Broaddrick</a>, he never persuasively rebutted these claims.The Democratic Party no longer needs Bill Clinton to make their case. They have Obamas and Joe Biden and Kamal Harris and Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and even Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton no longer belongs at the podium. He brings shame on the party. —DP<div type="image" title="Mike Bloomberg" height="900" width="1800" msid="77621554" hostid="261"></div>Mike Bloomberg should try harder.Poor Mike Bloomberg. He's spending more of his own money on the 2020 election than any person has ever spent on <keyword id="6358883" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="politics">politics</keyword>, and still people (like me) are just griping that he should do more.He <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/07/29/896545732/bloomberg-vowed-to-spend-whatever-it-takes-to-beat-trump-dems-are-still-waiting">vows to spend whatever it takes to help Democrats and weaken Trump</a>. He's given Democrats a $35 million data platform. He dropped $18 million cash in the Democratic Party's kitty. His gun-safety group is spending $60 million to help candidates. And Bloomberg announced yesterday that he'll <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mike-bloomberg-pledges-60-million-to-help-house-democrats/2020/08/17/a5756994-e0b5-11ea-8181-606e603bb1c4_story.html?hpid=hp_politics1-8-12_bloomberghouse-830pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans">spend another $60 million</a> helping hold the House for Democrats. (His $100 million in 2018 spending helped <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/video-bloomberg-appears-say-bought-21-seats-congress-2020-2">win 21 seats for House Democrats</a>.)Still, it feels like he's not trying hard enough. Put it this way. Bloomberg has spent or pledged about $160 million so far to help Democratic candidates in 2020. That's a lot of money! Yet he spent <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/us/politics/bloomberg-campaign-900-million.html">more than $900 million on his own failed presidential campaign</a> last winter.Politics is cheap. <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/10/state-for-sale">In a brilliant 2011 piece</a>, Jane Mayer explained how a medium-rich North Carolina businessman named Art Pope essentially gave that purple state a deep red legislature by tactically spending relatively small amounts of money.Fifty-billion-dollar Mike has enough money and enough smart people to change politics around the country in this wide-open year. He should be spending hundreds of millions — not tens of millions — on the Senate races that Democrats need to win if they hope to be able to govern. He should be spending even more on state legislatures, state attorneys general, state judges, and state secretaries of state. That would help build Democratic foundation for a generation. —DP<div type="image" title="jared kushner" height="1000" width="2000" msid="77621560" hostid="261"></div><keyword id="2599781" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Jared-Kushner">Jared Kushner</keyword> can go ahead and give up on the Black vote.Kushner is still telling his father-in-law that the Trump campaign can double <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/08/how-jared-kushner-became-trumps-most-dangerous-enabler/615169/">its share of the Black vote</a>, in a profile in The Atlantic. And according to reports he's chatting with rapper <keyword id="39150" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Kanye-West">Kanye West</keyword>, who has been trying to hop on the presidential ballot in states across the nation. Republican Party offices in <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/how-the-trump-campaign-hopes-to-boost-black-voter-turnout">Michigan, Wisconsin</a>, and<a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2020/08/06/donald-trump-black-voters-texas/"> Texas</a> are all gearing up to target the Black vote too.In other words, picking up some of the Black vote has become an important part of the way Kushner sees his father-in-law's campaign, and it is patently ridiculous. Trump and his administration have been actively offensive to Black people, and parading Kanye West around only adds insult to this injury. It demonstrates that Kushner still thinks of the Black community as a caricature of itself, so impressed with money and hip-hop fame that — in the most important presidential election in decades — significant numbers of Black people would vote for a guy who <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/01/entertainment/kanye-west-slavery-choice-trnd/index.html">said slavery was "a choice."</a>The GOP track record with Black people certainly won't help Kushner attract their votes either. Last night, the Democrats held their national convention and there were Black faces everywhere. This representation matters, a seat at the table matters, and there is no way you'll see that kind of diversity at the GOP convention later this month. The Black community has a long history of fighting against all odds to force this nation to live up to its promise of "equal justice for all." It is a community that knows true sacrifice and heroism and has experienced devastating losses. This history has lent the community a natural, sometimes harmful skepticism of politicians and the political process. Earning the black community's trust takes years of dedication and loyalty.So Donald Trump — a dedicated racist — is one of the last politicians on God's green earth who could break through that.Trump's "What do you have to lose?" pitch may have worked on 70,000 voters on the fence in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin who didn't have an answer to that question, but history has given Black people several. And so they were not swayed then and they won't be now.The only way to beat the Black community is to play on its skepticism and, cynically and hypocritically, the Trump campaign has abused that too. Back in 2016 Black voter suppression was part of its Facebook strategy. The same went for Trump's ally on the internet, the Russian government.The fact that the Russians are aware of this isn't new either. The USSR saw racism as one of this country's great weaknesses and <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/new-method-same-strategy-russia-has-long-exploited-us-racial-divisions">used that to its advantage</a> to discredit the US constantly. Racism is an inherently anti-democratic ideology, and when any politician employs it you can be sure that a subversion of our founding principles is not far behind. Black people know that. And so Kushner should understand that he is wasting his time with Black voters. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/linette-lopez">—Linette Lopez</a><h2>BUSINESS &amp; ECONOMY</h2><div type="image" title="Elon Musk" height="1401" width="2802" msid="77621564" hostid="261"></div><a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/elon-musk-fourth-richest-person-world-tesla-stock-price-soars-2020-8-1029513542">Tesla stock jumped 11% on Monday, making Musk $8 billion richer.</a> He's now the fourth-richest person on earth, with $85 billion.<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-lyft-consider-franchise-model-to-avoid-california-shutdown-2020-8">Uber and Lyft are considering franchise model to comply with new California law classifying drivers as employees.</a> Under one model, they might license their name and technology to a contractor who owned a fleet of cars, shifting the employment responsibility down the chain. A California judge has ordered Uber and Lyft to start complying with the law within days.<h2>LIFE</h2><div type="image" title="Sturgis Rally 2020" height="2145" width="4290" msid="77621566" hostid="261"></div><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sturgis-rally-attendees-traveling-covid-phone-data-2020-8">Phone data shows where Sturgis Rally riders came from.</a> The data suggest that most of the riders at the South Dakota motorcycle gathering came from the South and Midwest.<a href="https://www.insider.com/influencers-allegedly-kicked-out-of-party-for-being-transgender-2020-8">A pair of influencers say they were kicked out of a Sway House party because they're transgender.</a> They claim TikTok star Bryce Hall booted them from his massive party, telling their friend: "Why didn't you bring real girls?" Also, why is anyone having a massive party now?<h2>THE BIG 3*</h2><div type="image" title="near earth asteroid 2020 qg path closest approach iau mpc near" height="907" width="1814" msid="77621570" hostid="261"></div><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/car-size-asteroid-2020qg-missed-earth-by-2000-miles-2020-8">A car-sized asteroid just missed Earth on Sunday, and we didn't even see it coming.</a> It avoided the planet by only 1,830 miles, the closest measured miss of any asteroid ever.<a href="https://www.insider.com/arkansas-farmer-defaced-grave-nemesis-police-say-2020-08">An Arkansas farmer was arrested for defacing the grave of his nemesis.</a> According to authorities, he snuck into the cemetery dressed as a woman and left animal carcasses by the gravestone. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-xinjiang-hospitals-abort-uighur-pregnancies-killed-newborns-report-2020-8">China performed 3rd-trimester abortions on Uighur women and killed Uighur newborns, according a report from Radio Free Asia.</a> As part of its suppression of Uighurs, Chinese authorities forced abortions and committed infanticide to prevent Uighur women from having third or fourth children.*The most popular stories on Insider today.

You Searched For "kamal harris" and got 8 results

Harry Potter movies, The Lord Of The Rings triology to re-release on big screen in India

IANS

Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff made nearly $1.7 million last year - $1 million more than the Bidens, new tax returns show

Anna Cooban

So you can just lie to Congress now?

David Plotz,Henry Blodget,Anthony L. Fisher,Linette Lopez

'Dhanyavaad', says ISRO after PM Modi visits Bengaluru centre, lauds Chandrayaan-3 scientists

ANI

List of 165 politicians, journalists, military officials and other prominent personalities that China Revival was tracking

Prabhjote Gill

Democrats claim the decline in Americans' tax refunds is proof the GOP tax law screwed over the middle class - but the truth is more complex

Bob Bryan

New Delhi’s toxic air and how one expat family was affected – sick children, asthma, a death, and a campaign to awaken city to pollution threat

SCMP

Bill Clinton shouldn't speak at the DNC

David Plotz,Linette Lopez,Anthony L. Fisher,Henry Blodget