Morning Report — Harris secures nomination ahead of VP pick
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Vice President Harris today has an announcement to make about her running mate hours after Democratic Party delegates completed a virtual roll call and officially made her the nominee.
She will unveil her choice following an accelerated 16-day candidacy after President Biden withdrew his bid for a second term and endorsed her.
Harris and her new election partner plan tonight to showcase the Democratic ticket on a Temple University stage in Philadelphia and are scheduled to barnstorm through at least six swing states this week to try to build party unity and mobilize voters to defeat former President Trump and running mate Sen. JD Vance (Ohio). The four-day Democratic National Convention begins Aug. 19 in Chicago.
Harris amassed an impressive war chest in the course of weeks, inspired organic organizations of supporters rooting for the first female president and tapped into a tight circle of advisers who know a lot about winning the White House, including former President Obama.
The VP field reportedly narrowed to two likely choices as of Monday: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Both bring legislative and leadership experience in important states for the Democrats in November.
Shapiro, 51, is the popular governor of the biggest swing state, an effective communicator and a fast-rising star within the Democratic Party. He has a reputation as a moderate with crossover appeal. Progressives have increasingly targeted Shapiro, who is Jewish, in recent days over his stances on Israel and handling of pro-Paletsinian protests, write The Hill’s Amie Parnes and Julia Manchester. Some Jewish Democrats on Capitol Hill say Shapiro has been unfairly maligned because he’s the only Jewish politician on Harris’s known candidate list, write The Hill’s Mike Lillis and Mychael Schnell.
“Josh’s position on Israel is almost identical to everybody else, but he’s being held to a different standard. So you have to ask yourself why,” said Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.).
Meanwhile, Walz, 60, spoke before an energetic crowd Monday at a fundraiser in downtown Minneapolis. He didn’t drop any hints about Harris’s VP suspense, but the governor touted an upbeat focus on the future that he hopes to spread on the campaign trail in defense of the Democratic ticket.
“We’ve got to run this campaign against the serious threat that’s there, but we have to do it every single day with a sense of joy,” Walz said.
Walz, who enjoys a warm relationship with Biden, governs a once-solidly blue state that has leaned purple in the Trump years. His rhetorical style connects well with votes — Walz’s characterization of Trump and other Republicans as “weird” has caught fire within the Democratic Party. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain praised him this weekend as a stalwart representative of the working class voters.
The Hill’s Niall Stanage in The Memo: The final odds in the Harris veepstakes.
3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY:
▪ Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in online search, a judge ruled. For the Justice Department, it’s a landmark victory and may alter the way Big Tech companies do business.
▪ Here’s how the U.S. and Mexico drove border crossings down in an election year.
▪ As Ukraine collects medals at the Paris Olympics, its sports pipeline is in tatters, and the country faces a long hard road toward rebuilding its athletic programs.
LEADING THE DAY
© The Associated Press / Richard Drew | Worries about a weakening U.S. economy led investors to a steep global selloff Monday, the biggest daily drop in nearly two years. “Don’t panic yet,” was among the day’s advice.
ECONOMY & MARKETS
It wasn’t quite Black Monday, but it was a bleak start to the week among investors who drove financial markets to the biggest single-day swan dive in nearly two years. A rout that began in Asia continued in Europe Monday, and U.S. stocks fell sharply. Some investors said the sell-off was an overdue pullback, The New York Times reported.
The problems as investors saw it: a lower-than-expected employment report last week, weakness among tech stocks, ebbing consumer demand and renewed predictions of a potential recession.
It has not helped that economists disagree as they gaze into their crystal balls — and data predictions in the recent past have turned out to be off the mark. There is no conclusive evidence that the economy is heading into recession, but investors Monday began to speculate that the Federal Reserve could decide to cushion the fallout with an emergency interest rate cut. Unlikely.
The financial markets are not the same as the fundamental economy, of course, but psychologically, Monday’s plummet was unwelcome news for Americans who are retired or nearing retirement and relying on market-invested nest eggs. It was glum election-season news for Biden and Harris who understand Republicans are blaming them for inflated prices, the high costs of housing and gasoline pump prices. Harris’s campaign themes to date have echoed Biden’s: The U.S. economy is the envy of the world.
Trump turned to social media Sunday to say, “I TOLD YOU SO!” while warning about a market “crash.” Harris “DOESN’T HAVE A CLUE,” he wrote. Trump’s campaign emailed a statement Monday heaping blame on the Democratic nominee: “The stock market is crashing because of weak, failed, and dangerously liberal Kamala Harris’ policies and the world is on the brink of WW3.”
The Dow dropped more than 1,000 points, or 2.6 percent Monday. The Nasdaq Composite lost 3.43 percent while the S&P 500 slid 3 percent. Japan’s stock market posted its worst drop since Wall Street’s Black Monday in 1987, contributing to fears of global turmoil in the markets (CNBC).
Experts’ advice Monday to investors: Do not panic; balance portfolios.
The U.S. economy has been cooling. That’s been the stated goal of the Fed while it hiked interest rates by more than 5 percentage points over two years to battle inflation. The central bank is widely expected to begin cutting rates when policy makers meet Sept. 17-18.
WHERE AND WHEN
The House and Senate are out until after Labor Day.
The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 2:15 p.m.
The vice president will be in Philadelphia tonight to rally supporters and publicly campaign with her new running mate.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Annapolis, Md., today meeting with Australian counterparts. He will take press questions at 4:50 p.m. in Annapolis with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 1:30 p.m.
ZOOM IN
© The Associated Press / Charles Rex Arbogast | Former President Trump in Chicago in July.
CAMPAIGN POLITICS
HARRIS NARROWLY LEADS Trump in pollster Nate Silver’s election forecast for the first time since the model launched. She tops Trump by 1.4 percentage points in the Silver Bulletin’s national polling average. The latest model shows Harris with 45.5 percent support compared to Trump’s 44.1 percent (The Hill). According to a Decision Desk HQ/The Hill average of polls, Trump and Harris are tied nationally, each at 47 percent support.
Harris has momentum but the race is still tight. NPR outlines the paths to the presidency for the candidates.
ROLEX AND A CYBERTRUCK: Trump appeared as a guest on video game streamer Adin Ross’s livestream Monday, where the 23-year-old gifted the Republican presidential nominee a Rolex watch and a Cybertruck wrapped in a photo taken of him during the July 13 assassination attempt on his life. The 22-minute interview, broadcast on the gaming and live streaming platform Kick, took place in Trump’s living room in Mar-a-Lago.
During the livestream, Trump said Harris is “actually worse” than Biden (USA Today).
“She’s ultra-left (and) ultra-radical,” Trump said. “We can’t allow her to be president, she’s going to destroy our country.”
2024 Roundup:
▪ In Arizona, Harris brings new energy to Democrats, but still faces challenges mending cracks in Biden’s 2020 coalition, writes CNN’s John King, who is traveling the country to interview Americans about their election choices.
▪ Arizona schools don’t want to be polling locations. As false information about elections continues to spread, many school leaders in Maricopa County have closed their doors to the democratic process.
▪ Republicans currently control Arizona’s state House and Senate by just one seat. Democrats see a chance to flip both.
▪ Gene Sperling, a veteran former economic policy adviser to previous presidential campaigns who served as National Economic Council chair to former Presidents Clinton and Obama, is leaving Biden’s White House staff to advise the Harris campaign. “Our nation is stronger and more just because of the families that Gene has spent every day fighting for over the past 3-1/2 years,” Biden said in a Monday statement.
▪ Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is bogged down in negative (and odd) news accounts involving a dead bear cub he confirmed he dumped in Central Park a decade ago and a photo of Kennedy next to a charred carcass while eating what he described as goat meat.
▪ Usha Vance, wife of GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance whose “childless cat ladies” interview on Fox News in 2021 continues to be controversial, came to her husband’s defense by asserting that her husband’s remark was “a quip.”
▪ PBS’s “Frontline” tonight reports on Biden’s decision to drop his reelection bid. A preview is HERE.
ADMINISTRATION
LAST WEEK’S ABRUPT DECISION by Defense Secretary Austin to reject a plea deal in an election year that would have taken the death penalty off the table for three accused terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay since 2001 is controversial, unusual and an “emotional whiplash” for family members on all sides of the case, report The Hill’s Ellen Mitchell and Brad Dress.
As back-to-school season ramps up, The Hill’s Lexi Lonas examines the most pressing concerns for educators and students, from artificial intelligence (AI) bullying to students planning renewed protests against the war in Gaza.
ELSEWHERE
© The Associated Press / Carlos Fyfe, The White House | President Biden, Vice President Harris and the national security team met Monday in the White House Situation Room, pictured in 2023, to assess rising tensions in the Middle East.
INTERNATIONAL
TENSIONS REMAIN HIGH in the Middle East, stoking fears of a wider war. The Biden administration is carrying out a full-court, diplomatic press on its allies and partners in the region to limit escalation in the likely attack by Iran and its proxies against Israel, but it faces fresh challenges as it seeks to replicate April’s multinational coalition to help Israel intercept a barrage of Iranian missiles and drones.
Biden and Harris on Monday convened in the situation room with their national security team as the region braces for Iran to retaliate for the assassinations of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders 10 months into the war in Gaza. Within hours of the White House announcement Monday, a spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry told a news conference that “no one can weaken our determination to punish the aggressor” behind the killing of the Hamas leader (The Hill and The Wall Street Journal).
“We don’t want to see Iran take further action, and that’s the message we are consistently delivering to our partners in the region,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at the Monday briefing. “We’re at a critical moment for the region, and it’s important that all parties take steps over the coming days to refrain from escalation and calm tensions. Escalation is in no one’s interest.”
▪ The Associated Press: What Iran’s attack against Israel could look like with the support of regional allies.
▪ The New York Times: A quarrel between Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel’s approach to cease-fire talks mirrors growing domestic tensions over his perceived resistance to a swift deal with Hamas.
▪ Al Jazeera: The United Nations says nine employees of UNRWA, its agency for Palestinian refugees, “may have been involved” in the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas, adding that they have been fired.
▪ CBS News: Several U.S. personnel appear to have been injured in a suspected rocket attack against U.S. and Coalition forces at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq on Monday, a Pentagon spokesperson said.
Venezuela’s opposition candidate trounced President Nicolás Maduro in last week’s election, according to election tallies that show the opposition’s Edmundo González received more than double the votes of Maduro. Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (NEC) declared Maduro the winner without initially publishing precinct-level results from the voting machines. Now, the country’s Public Ministry has opened a criminal investigation into González and opposition leader María Corina Machado, sparked by the two opposition figures’ call for the military and police to stand “on the side of the people” in a Monday open letter (The Hill and CNN).
▪ Politico: The European Union joins the U.S. and other countries in not recognizing Venezuela’s proclaimed election result.
▪ CNN: Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country after weeks of deadly anti-government demonstrations gripped the South Asian nation. The military is expected to form an interim government, according to the army chief.
COURTS
OUT OF JURISDICTION?: The Supreme Court on Monday declined to intervene in a long-shot lawsuit brought by Missouri attempting to block legal proceedings in Trump’s hush money case in New York. The court rejected Missouri’s bid to sue the state of New York, meaning the justices will not lift the gag order or delay sentencing in the unusual claim brought by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican who is running for a full term this fall. NBC News reported that the filing was perceived by many observers as a political stunt aimed at gaining publicity.
ETHICS: Biden has proposed changes that in effect place Supreme Court ethics on this year’s ballots. At the same time, Justice Clarence Thomas’s lucrative friendships remain in the headlines. Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said Monday that Thomas failed to disclose flights he and his wife took in 2010 between Hawaii and New Zealand on a private jet paid for by conservative benefactor Harlan Crow. “I am deeply concerned that Mr. Crow may have been showering a public official with extravagant gifts, then writing off those gifts to lower his tax bill,” Wyden wrote.
TRUMP WORLD: Former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis agreed to a cooperation agreement with the Arizona attorney general in the state’s “fake electors” case (NPR).
OPINION
■ The reinvention of Kamala Harris, by Gerard Baker, editor at large, The Wall Street Journal.
■ We’re likely not in a recession — but we could talk ourselves into one, by Catherine Rampell, columnist, The Washington Post.
THE CLOSER
© The Associated Press / Francisco Seco | Stephen Nedoroscik, a pommel horse specialist, helped the U.S. men’s gymnastics team win a bronze medal at the Olympics in Paris.
And finally … Some athletes at the Paris Olympics are winning medals … and others are winning the internet.
American rugby sevens player Ilona Maher had a sizable internet following pre-Olympics, and managed to recruit retired NFL player Jason Kelce to her team’s hype squad. Now, with a historic U.S. women’s rugby bronze under her belt, that fan base is only growing.
Norwegian swimmer Henrik Christiansen’s focus at the games was twofold: to compete in two freestyle races, and, based on his TikTok account, sing the praises of the dining hall chocolate muffins. The internet quickly dubbed him the “Muffin Man.”
Then there’s “Pommel Horse Guy,” or American gymnast Stephen Neodoroscik, a specialist whose skill is on a contraption that looks vaguely like a headless beast of burden with handles. After waiting patiently for hours during the men’s team event, it was Neodoroscik’s turn. Affectionately compared to Clark Kent, he calmly removed his glasses, did his thing and helped the U.S. secure a bronze. (His teammate, Frederick Richard, is an internet darling in his own right).
For more Olympians who won the internet’s heart, look no further.
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