Kamala Harris is travelling to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, today where she will hold her first campaign rally since she launched her presidential campaign on Sunday with Joe Biden’s endorsement. Biden won Wisconsin by about 20,000 votes in the 2020 election, and recent polling had suggested a tight race between Biden and Donald Trump in the battleground state again.
Tuesday’s visit was scheduled before Biden ended his campaign, but took on new resonance as Harris prepared to take up the mantle of her party against Trump, who is scrambling to pivot his campaign against the vice-president.
According to Wisconsin Democratic party chair Ben Wikler, 89 of Wisconsin’s 95 delegates, including senator Tammy Baldwin and governor Tony Evers, had already pledged their support for Harris as of yesterday afternoon.
After confirming the state Democratic Party had officially backed Harris for the nomination, Wikler was quoted by Wisconsin Public Radio as saying:
And in hearing from elected officials across the state of Wisconsin, hearing from Democratic Party activists, hearing from donors, there is a surge of focus, of enthusiasm – a kind of flowering of the kind of unity that we’re going to need to defeat Donald Trump.
During her visit to Wisconsin today (see post at 10.14), Kamala Harris is to be joined by major elected officials in the state, including governor Tony Evers, senator Tammy Baldwin, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, attorney general Josh Kaul, secretary of state Sarah Godlewski and Wisconsin Democratic party chair Ben Wikler, as well as state labor leaders.
House Democrats and Republicans will meet separately today for the first time since the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on 13 July and Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the presidential race on Sunday, Chad Pergram, the senior congressional correspondent for Fox News, has posted on X. He said there will be a House hearing today on the shooting at Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Kamala Harris is travelling to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, today where she will hold her first campaign rally since she launched her presidential campaign on Sunday with Joe Biden’s endorsement. Biden won Wisconsin by about 20,000 votes in the 2020 election, and recent polling had suggested a tight race between Biden and Donald Trump in the battleground state again.
Tuesday’s visit was scheduled before Biden ended his campaign, but took on new resonance as Harris prepared to take up the mantle of her party against Trump, who is scrambling to pivot his campaign against the vice-president.
According to Wisconsin Democratic party chair Ben Wikler, 89 of Wisconsin’s 95 delegates, including senator Tammy Baldwin and governor Tony Evers, had already pledged their support for Harris as of yesterday afternoon.
After confirming the state Democratic Party had officially backed Harris for the nomination, Wikler was quoted by Wisconsin Public Radio as saying:
And in hearing from elected officials across the state of Wisconsin, hearing from Democratic Party activists, hearing from donors, there is a surge of focus, of enthusiasm – a kind of flowering of the kind of unity that we’re going to need to defeat Donald Trump.
As we have already reported, Kamala Harris has earned enough delegates to become the likely Democratic party nominee, after California delegates voted unanimously to endorse her.
Several state delegations met on Monday evening to confirm their support for the vice president, including Texas and her home state of California. By Monday night, Harris had the support of more than the 1,976 delegates she needs to win on a first ballot, according to a tally by the Associated Press. No other candidate was named by a delegate contacted by the AP.
California state Democratic chairman, Rusty Hicks, said 75% to 80% of the state’s delegation were on a call on Tuesday, all supporting Harris.
“I’ve not heard anyone mentioning or calling for any other candidate,” Hicks said, adding “tonight’s vote was a momentous one”.
Hicks had urged delegates to quickly line up behind Harris and had circulated an online form to submit endorsements.
Daniel Boffey is the Guardian’s chief reporter
The spectacle of the Olympic Games opening ceremony could be overshadowed by the human drama in the White House after it was confirmed that Jill Biden will attend the event on the Seine.
It will be a first appearance on the world stage for the president’s wife since her husband withdrew from his re-election campaign over concerns about his deteriorating health.
Rumours had swirled in Paris that the first lady could pull out of the games at the last minute with some suggesting that she might even be replaced by vice president Kamala Harris whose husband, Douglas Emhoff, is leading the delegation at the closing ceremony.
The White House, however, confirmed on Monday evening that Jill Biden would lead a delegation of seven other senior US figures at the opening ceremony, including the US ambassador to France, Denise Campbell Bauer, senators Chris Coons and Alex Padilla, and the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass.
Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the presidential race on Sunday sets the stage to end a nearly five-decade run when either a Bush, Clinton or Biden was on the ballot for president or vice-president.
USA today reports:
Members of the Bush and Clinton families, along with Joe Biden, have been on every presidential election ticket since 1980, when Ronald Reagan and running mate George HW Bush won.
Reagan and Bush easily won reelection in 1984 before Bush won the presidency himself in 1988.
The next four elections would feature either a Bush or Clinton on the ballot, with Bill Clinton defeating George HW Bush in 1992, before defeating Bob Dole in 1996, and George W. Bush winning elections in 2000 and 2004.
The following four elections (2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020) all had Biden or Hillary Clinton on the ballot, with Barack Obama and Joe Biden winning election in the first two contests, Hillary Clinton losing to Donald Trump in 2016 and Biden defeating Trump in 2020.
Ed Pilkington is chief reporter for Guardian US
When Joe Biden finally ends his self-imposed seclusion at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, this week he will emerge into a very different world than the one from which he isolated when diagnosed with Covid last Wednesday.
He will still be president of the United States, and as such the most powerful person on Earth. But it may not feel like that to him. His hopes of carrying on in that office died at 1.46pm ET on Sunday when he announced that he was standing down from the 2024 race.
Very little is known about Biden’s specific plans for the next six months. Given the speed at which the final demise of his campaign happened, he may not know much himself.
What we do know is that attempts by Donald Trump and his inner circle to force him out of the Oval Office now, on grounds that “if he can’t run for office, he can’t run our country”, are as half-hearted as they sound. Barring surprises, Biden will remain in the White House until noon on 20 January 2025.
You can read the full analysis piece here:
Donald Trump is due to appear on professional golfer Bryson DeChambeau’s YouTube show on Tuesday for a “special episode”.
In a post on X, DeChambeau said the Republican presidential nominee will appear on his Break 50 show.
The golfer’s show will be donating $10,000 to the Wounded Warrior Project for every stroke they score under par, according to the X post.
DeChambeau said Tuesday’s episode “is about golf and giving back to our nation’s veterans, not politics”.
The post added:
A few weeks ago I reached out to both parties’ presidential campaigns and @realDonaldTrump was down for the challenge. It is an incredible honor to be able to enjoy a round of golf with any sitting or former president, and all have an open invitation to join me for a round of Break 50 anytime.
A new CBS News/YouGov poll found that 83% of Democratic registered voters surveyed approved of the US president, Joe Biden, withdrawing from the race while just 17% disapproved.
Four in ten registered Democrats said Biden exiting makes them more motivated to vote now he is out of the race, with 79% thinking the party should nominate the US vice president, Kamala Harris, as a replacement, according to the poll.
45% of those surveyed believe the party’s chances of beating Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, in November have improved since Biden’s announcement, though 10% say the electoral prospects have got worse for the Democrats, while 28% say it depends on who the nominee is and 17% say a change in candidate won’t make a difference.
Democratic voters have long had doubts about Biden’s reelection bid. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in January, while the party’s nomination contest was still under way, 49% of Democrats said the 81-year-old should not run again in 2024.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has told families of the estimated 116 hostages still held in Gaza that a deal that would secure their loved ones’ release could be nearing, his office has said.
“The conditions are undoubtedly ripening. This is a good sign,” Netanyahu told the families on Monday in Washington, where he is expected to meet Joe Biden later this week after making an address to Congress.
It will be Biden’s first meeting with a foreign leader since he opted not to run for reelection and endorsed vice president Kamala Harris as his successor as the Democratic presidential nominee. Harris is to meet Netanyahu, who is under increasing pressure from much of the Israeli public to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza, this week separate from Biden’s meeting.
Efforts to reach a Gaza ceasefire deal, outlined by Biden in May and mediated by Egypt and Qatar, have gained momentum over the past month.
Israeli protesters are calling for a deal with Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, which would free the hostages in exchange for a pause in fighting. Negotiators from Israel’s the Mossad intelligence service are expected in Qatar later this week, continuing talks that have dragged since early this year.
Democrats are urging Kamala Harris to consider choosing her potential running mate from the so-called battleground states, which this year are: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“That is the first presidential decision that vice president Harris has, so she’s got a lot of good choices ahead of her,” senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) told reporters at the Capitol, according to the Hill.
He listed a number of Democratic governors as possible choices – Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Roy Cooper of North Carolina, alongside transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg (who has deep ties in Michigan) and senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. Here is a useful explainer on who else could be Harris’ running mate for the November election:
Andrew Roth is in Washington for the Guardian, and has this analysis on how Kamala Harris will tread a careful path on Israel and Gaza while Benjamin Netanyahu is in the US:
For much of Monday, no meetings between Benjamin Netanyahu and either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris had been confirmed, even though the Israeli PM had already departed for the US and was scheduled on Wednesday to address a joint session of Congress at the request of the House leader, Mike Johnson.
Harris appears likely to skip that session, where she would have sat directly behind Netanyahu as the president of the Senate. She will be out of Washington for a public event at a college sorority in Indiana.
Late on Monday, an aide to Harris said that both she and Biden would sit down with Netanyahu in separate meetings at the White House and denied that her travel to Indianapolis indicated any change in her position towards Israel.
Harris backers and insiders say that she is more likely to engage in public criticism of Netanyahu than Biden and to focus attention on the civilian toll among Palestinians from the war in Gaza – even if she would maintain US military aid and other support for Israel that has been a mainstay of Biden’s foreign policy.
“The generational difference between Biden and Harris is a meaningful difference in how one looks at these issues,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel lobbying group that has endorsed Harris’s presidential bid.
Read more of Andrew Roth’s analysis here: As Netanyahu arrives in Washington, Kamala Harris treads a careful path on Israel and Gaza
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. My colleague Yohannes Lowe will take it from here.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
