The last time we see DeAndre in One Battle After Another, tears are streaming down her face as an ICE agent questions her about the whereabouts of her comrade Bob. “I don’t know,” she says repeatedly through sobs — and she doesn’t. This does not satisfy the agent, who continues to grill her. Scene ends. It’s never clear what happens to her after that; the film finishes about forty-five minutes later without any of the characters even questioning her absence. 

So little cinematic real estate is given to DeAndre in Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film. The story is primarily fascinated with Bob, a white former member of the left-leaning, anti-government group called the French 75. Bob has been living in semi exile for nearly two decades with his sixteen year old daughter, Willa, after he was forced to flee with her when she was just an infant, after his lover and Willa’s mother, Perfidia Beverly Hills, was captured by the state. Following Perfidia’s arrest and coerced confession, several members of the French 75 were assassinated. Along with Bob and Willa, the only other members who were able to make a run for it were DeAndre and a character named Sommerville. 

It’s never mentioned where DeAndre ends up going. After Bob and Willa’s dramatic exit, we simply see her walk away into the night. It makes it all the more stunning when sixteen years after those events, she appears, like a radical fairy godmother, in Willa’s high school bathroom to rescue the teen after a distress signal had been put out following Sommerville’s arrest. “I know you have a lot of questions, and I’ll answer them later, but right now we have to roll,” DeAndre says to Willa. 

While on the presidential campaign trail, one of her staffers brought Kamala Harris in on a little secret: “People hate Joe Biden.” This had apparently not occurred to the vice president, even after the formation of the Uncommitted Movement, or the then ongoing college protests, or the dozens of disruptions at various political events in response to Biden’s unfettered support of Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Gaza Strip. Or not even as she stood in the midst of her history-making run for the White House. “It was hard for me to hear that,” Harris writes. 

In her new memoir, 107 Days, Harris devotes an extensive amount of time to writing about her relationship with President Biden, as she assumed the position of Democratic nominee for president after Biden’s abysmal performance at the presidential debate in June 2024 heightened criticisms around his age and cognitive health. “The rapport between Joe and me was genuine. For two people who seemingly couldn’t have been more different, our values were incredibly aligned,” she writes. 

It's a significant shift from when people first saw the pair interact in 2019 on the debate stage, where Harris zeroed in on Biden about his views on busing and desegregation. It was one of the early moments in her campaign that made the California senator seem like the destined choice to become the party’s nominee. In the years that followed, however, after Harris ended her first campaign for president before primary voting even began and later became Biden’s vice president, some people have used that moment in the debate to question her fealty to the president. 

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