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Team Trump was winning the internet until the Harris–Walz campaign took over. But Democrats can’t just keep calling Republicans “weird” and celebrating Brat Summer until Election Day. Today on the show, writer and critic Hunter Harris on how Kamala Harris is harnessing social media, and what comes next in the run-up to November.

Influencers have never been more important to electoral politics. They’re tastemakers, meme sharers, video creators, and organizers; they also wield significant power when it comes to encouraging their followers to vote. That’s why we built a visual and interactive list of influencers and content creators from the right and the left, where you can see how their followings compare to one another and how they’re connected to this election.

The list we put together here likely includes some creators you know and others you might not: Ever since the 2020 election, the internet has become increasingly fragmented and personalized with social media algorithms creating bespoke feeds for each user. We put together this list to show who’s who in politics in communities across the internet.

This is a very exciting day! In addition to a fresh makeover for this newsletter, I just published a new project today outlining some of the biggest names in online political influencing from both the right and the left.

Over the past week, I crowdsourced the names of some of the top meme accounts, TikTokkers, and podcasters from across the political spectrum, and we built this interactive list. You’ll probably see some faces you recognize from your own social media feeds, but with how fragmented and personalized social media has become in recent years, it’s nearly impossible for the average internet user to keep up with everyone. This list can serve as a sampling for what’s out there in the world of digital politics, from micro influencers to mega celebrities.

When Donald Trump’s presidential campaign publicly stated last week that it had been successfully targeted by Iranian hackers, the news may have initially seemed like a sign that the Middle Eastern country was particularly focused on the candidate whom it perceived to take the most hawkish approach to its regime. It’s since become clearer that Iran has had the Democrats in the sights of its cyber operations, too. Now Google’s cybersecurity analysts have confirmed that both campaigns were targeted not simply by Iran but by the same group of hackers working in service of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Pinned on vice president and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ official Instagram page is a post featuring her alongside her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz. In the comments, along with praise, criticism, and more than one “Trump 2024,” are several comments asking if Harris had offered Walz oral sex, with one calling her “Kamel toe.”

Harris has long been the subject of online abuse, which is likely to intensify as her campaign wears on. But a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit that tracks hate speech and misinformation online, found that Instagram failed to remove 93 percent of the 1,000 hateful and violent comments it flagged to the platform targeting both Republican and Democratic female politicians, including Harris.

It’s been one month since former president Donald Trump was shot during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

At first, it seemed to those close to them as if QAnon adherents might finally be shaken from their long-held conspiratorial belief systems. In their universe, Trump was waging a secret war against the deep state, and no matter what happened in the real world—like Trump losing the 2020 election, or being found guilty in court—it was always explained away as being part of the plan. Trump was always in control. But the assassination attempt had people wondering.

Former president Donald Trump is back on X, and Elon Musk appears to be ecstatic.

In the hours after Musk and Trump’s meandering, disinformation-filled chat on X Spaces—which was, Musk claimed without evidence, delayed because of a cyberattack—the X owner stayed online well into early Tuesday morning, sharing dozens of fawning posts from supporters about the event. In a post that is now pinned at the top of his timeline, Musk claimed the conversation had generated almost 1 billion views, even though on the X Space itself, only 1.3 million people were listening at the peak. Additionally, X had only 251 million global daily active users in the second quarter of 2024, many of whom were fast asleep while the conversation took place.

On the same day that former president Donald Trump said vice president Kamala Harris “happened to turn Black,” Harris was at a Black sorority conference in Texas.

“As a proud member of the Divine 9, when I look out at everyone here, I see family,” said Harris, speaking on July 31 at Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority’s 60th Biennial Boule in Houston, Texas. Sound bites from Harris’ speech and high-pitched “EE-yips,” the call associated with Sigma Gamma Rho, echoed through countless videos that circulated on Instagram.

In a rambling, two-hour-plus conversation in an X Space, Elon Musk caved to former president Donald Trump on policy issues that directly affect the billionaire’s businesses, like energy policy and climate change.

Trump dominated the conversation, appearing to speak with a pronounced lisp and at times leaving little room for Musk to speak. After starting the call discussing the July assassination attempt against Trump, Musk and Trump bemoaned millions of criminals from all over the world flooding into the US, which is not happening. The former president voiced views and support for policies at odds with Musk’s business interests, like increasing US oil drilling and universal electric vehicle adoption.

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The election denial movement lives on, thanks in part to the efforts of well-funded and well-organized far-right activists. Today on the show, CNN correspondent Donie O’Sullivan joins WIRED Politics Lab to talk about his forthcoming documentary examining election deniers’ new tactics, and what happens after the November vote.